Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.) was rejected by his own party over the weekend, losing the GOP nomination to Bob Good, a former athletics director for Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. The incumbent Virginia congressman quickly alleged fraud.
* On a related note, while Donald Trump has repeatedly boasted in recent months that candidates who’ve enjoyed his support are undefeated this year in Republican primaries, Riggleman’s failure broke the streak: the president backed the incumbent.
* In Iowa, the latest Des Moines Register-Mediacom Iowa Poll found Theresa Greenfield (D) narrowly leading incumbent Sen. Joni Ernst (R), 46% to 43%, in one of this year’s closely watched U.S. Senate races.
* The same poll found Democrats leading Republicans in three of Iowa’s four congressional districts.
* In one of those stories that seems like a caricature, but is apparently quite real, a group of Republican voters in Michigan held a protest near Grand Rapids last week in which they “burned letters informing them that they can vote by absentee ballot in future elections.” No, really.
* Though Georgia’s recent primary elections were marred by systemic breakdowns, NBC News reported that Democratic turnout in the contests soared, “with three times as many votes cast in the Senate primary as in 2016.” The Atlanta Journal Constitution added today that Georgia Democrats managed to “set a new turnout record for primary voting” in the state. * Facing headwinds in his primary, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) has picked up endorsements from House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). Engel’s faceoff against middle-school principal Jamaal Bowman is a week from tomorrow. * And last week, Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, told the Wall Street Journal, “We’re probably looking at a number of 25 [pickups] at a minimum.” If true, that would be more than enough to put the chamber in GOP hands. The same article added this memorable sentence: “Asked for comment, a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokeswoman responded with a gif of a clown putting on makeup.”
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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