Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* With time running out in Iowa, a new Monmouth University poll found Joe Biden narrowly leading Bernie Sanders in the Hawkeye State, 23% to 21%. Pete Buttigieg is third with 16%, followed by Elizabeth Warren at 15% and Amy Klobuchar at 10%. No other candidate reached double digits.
* The latest national Quinnipiac poll also found Biden with a modest lead over Sanders, 26% to 21%, followed by Warren at 15% and Michael Bloomberg at 8%.
* In an exceedingly unusual campaign dynamic, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) has begun airing an anti-Biden ad in Iowa, with bogus attacks about the former vice president’s efforts in Ukraine.
* The Biden campaign reportedly reached out to the Klobuchar campaign about a possible alliance ahead of the Iowa caucuses, but the Minnesota senator’s team apparently wasn’t interested.
* Rep. Doug Collins (R) made it official this morning, telling Fox News he’s running for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, where he’ll be running in a Republican primary against appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R). The National Republican Senatorial Committee does not appear pleased.
* It seems hard to believe, but Politico reported this morning, “Allies of Donald Trump have begun holding events in black communities where organizers lavish praise on the president as they hand out tens of thousands of dollars to lucky attendees.” (Take a moment to consider what would happen if allies of Barack Obama’s re-election campaign held events in which black voters were given envelopes filled with cash.) * A federal appeals court this week struck down voting restrictions in Arizona, and as the New York Times noted, the result is a possible battleground state in which “many voters will find their ballots considerably easier to cast and less likely to be excluded from election-night tallies.” * And in Texas, a state House special election sparked national attention recently as a possible pick-up opportunity for Democrats, but the results weren’t especially close: Gary Gates (R) defeated Eliz Markowitz (D) by 16 points yesterday. MORE: Today’s Maddowblog
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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