Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* With only six months remaining before New Jersey’s gubernatorial race, the latest Monmouth University poll, released yesterday, showed incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy (D) with a 57% approval rating. The same survey showed President Joe Biden with 55% support in the Garden State.
* Democratic leaders yesterday tweaked their sweeping democracy-reform legislation, known as the “For the People Act,” in the hopes of giving it a legislative boost. As things stand, however, the bill isn’t close to being able to overcome a Republican filibuster, and conservative Senate Democrats won’t allow the party to circumvent the rules.
* New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) this week signed into law a bill to automatically restore the voting rights of New Yorkers after they’re released from prison. It codified a policy the governor created through a 2018 executive order.
* In Georgia, a new Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll, conducted by the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs, helped capture “sharp partisan divisions in the state.” According to the results, Biden has a 51% approval rating in Georgia, while the state’s new U.S. senators, Democrats, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, have approval ratings around 48%. Gov. Brian Kemp’s (R) support, meanwhile, came in at 45%.
* Remember when former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg eyed paying off Floridians’ court debts so they could vote in the 2020 elections? Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) requested a criminal investigation, and the Tampa Bay Times reported yesterday, “After devoting more than 700 man hours to the case, which included reviewing 7,600 records and trying to interview more than 100 people, agents found no evidence that anyone was told to vote for a specific political party as a condition of having their outstanding court fees and fines paid off, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said Wednesday. Agents didn’t find any evidence that Bloomberg had donated to the effort, either.” * D.C. probably won’t become a state anytime soon, but in a symbolic gesture, the Democratic Governors Association this week welcomed D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) into its ranks. * Asked yesterday about Republicans efforts to oust Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) from her leadership post, Biden told reporters, “Look, it seems as though the Republican Party is trying to identify what it stands for. And they’re in the midst of a significant, sort of, mini-revolution going on in the Republican Party. I’ve been a Democrat for a long time. We’ve gone through periods where we’ve had internal fights and disagreements. I don’t ever remember any like this.” Earlier in the day, the president also said, on the same subject, “I don’t understand the Republicans.”
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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