Steve Southerland

Kansas Sen Pat Roberts, during a campaign stop at a livestock auction barn, told listeners, “When we get a Republican majority, I’ll be chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and we are gonna put the livestock producer first."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and 70 other members of Congress, mostly Democrats, got perfect grades from advocacy group Food Policy Action for their votes on food and agriculture issues over the past two years.

Food Policy Action, a two-year-old advocacy group, says conservative Rep Steve Southerland, who proposed the largest food stamp cuts in a generation, is its No 1 target for defeat in the November 4 elections.

Second-term Rep Steve Southerland, the Florida Republican who proposed $40 billion in food stamp cuts as part of the farm bill, faces a tough contest for re-election, say Politico and Roll Call. In its "Homestretch" series, Politico says Southerland is among three House candidates repeatedly mentioned by GOP strategists as "well-positioned to win but seen as running poor campaigns."

Second-term Rep Scott DesJarlais, a House Agriculture Committee member, had a 33-vote lead with all precincts reporting in his Tennessee congressional district, a razor-thin margin in a race that may not be decided until the month, said the Associated Press.

Eli Saslow's "unsettling and nuanced reporting on the prevalence of food stamps in post-recession America, forcing readers to grapple with issues of poverty and dependency," won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting.