Oops -- Karl Rove's designated Hillary-slayer has suffered a few stumbles:

Two Republican leaders in upstate New York on Thursday disputed the claim by Jeanine F. Pirro's campaign that they had endorsed her candidacy for the United States Senate, dealing another embarrassing setback to a campaign struggling to build momentum as she seeks to unseat Hillary Rodham Clinton.

On her campaign Web site, Ms. Pirro has been mentioning endorsements she said she had received from Republican leaders in the politically important upstate region, including Gordon Brown, the chairman of the Wyoming County Republican Party, and Tom Hayden, the chairman of the Allegany County Republican Party.

But in separate interviews on Thursday, Mr. Brown and Mr. Hayden took issue with that claim, saying that neither they nor the county parties they lead had endorsed Ms. Pirro, who is in a primary battle for her party's nomination.

Mr. Hayden said he had not even met Ms. Pirro....

"The statement is inaccurate," [Mr. Brown] said of the campaign's claim about his endorsement....

This is part of a larger problem:

...Mrs. Pirro entered the race saying that she had the support of 46 Republican Party county chairmen around the state. "So my support in the Republican Party runs deep and wide," she said, according an August article in The New York Observer. But only 17 of these chairmen have officially endorsed her candidacy, according to her campaign....

Also, since she announced her candidacy, her disapproval rating has skyrocketed:

As more voters have gotten to know potential Senate candidate Jeanine Pirro, more have decided they don't like her, according to a new poll.

...Voters polled favored Clinton over Pirro, 59 percent to 31 percent....

Maybe more troubling for Pirro than being so far behind Clinton is that 25 percent of the respondents had an unfavorable opinion of her in this poll, compared to 12 percent who felt that way in July....

You know, Rove used to be able to clear the GOP field and run a winner, but now he's got contested Senate primaries in Florida (the candidate he dreads, Katherine Harris, won't go away) and New York (Pirro is screwing up and Nixon son-in-law Ed Cox wants the nomination, too). Clearly, he was losing his touch even before the Plamegate noose started tightening.