Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* To the enormous relief of the Republican establishment, Rep. Roger Marshall defeated Kris Kobach in Kansas’ U.S. Senate GOP primary yesterday. (It wasn’t that close.) Marshall will face Barbara Bollier (D) in November in a state where Democrats haven’t won a U.S. Senate race since 1932.
* In Missouri yesterday, longtime Rep. William Lacy Clay (D) was defeated in a primary by Cori Bush (D), a nurse, pastor, and Black Lives Matter activist who was once homeless. This was a rematch of a race Bush lost in 2018. Given the district’s leanings, she’s heavily favored to win the seat in the fall.
* As it turns out, Clay wasn’t the only congressional incumbent to be rejected in a primary yesterday: in Kansas, Rep. Steve Watkins (R) lost to state Treasurer Jake LaTurner (R) by 15 points. Last month, Watkins was charged with voter fraud, which almost certainly doomed his re-election candidacy. (There has, incidentally, been amazing turnover in Kansas’ congressional delegation in recent years.)
* In Michigan, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D) had little trouble yesterday winning her primary against Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones (D).
* Just hours after Donald Trump urged Florida voters to embrace mail-in voting, his re-election campaign filed suit to derail mail-in voting in Nevada. * Joe Biden’s campaign announced this morning that it has reserved $280 million for advertising over the remaining three months of the presidential race. The former vice president’s operation is targeting 15 states: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin and Virginia. Of these states, the Republican ticket won 10 of them in the 2016 cycle. (The five exceptions are Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Virginia, each of which backed the Clinton/Kaine ticket.) * Six weeks after New York’s primaries, it appears incumbent Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D) has narrowly won her primary in the state’s 12th congressional district. The New York City Board of Elections certified Maloney’s victory yesterday over Suraj Patel, a former hotel executive and former campaign aide to President Barack Obama. * And though I’ve made a conscious effort not to mention Kanye West’s interest in a presidential campaign, it appears Republican operatives in a variety of states — including Arkansas, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Ohio — have launched an effort to get his name on the 2020 ballot. The entertainer’s wife, Kim Kardashian, recently suggested the entertainer is struggling with mental-health issues.
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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