Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* Only one Democrat holds statewide elected office in Iowa: Rob Sand, the Hawkeye State’s auditor. With this in mind, party officials were delighted to see Sand launch a gubernatorial campaign this week, giving Democrats a top contender in the race to replace retiring Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds.
* On a related note, Republican Rep. Randy Feenstra also filed the paperwork this week for a gubernatorial candidacy of his own in Iowa.
* In New Jersey, one of only two states with gubernatorial races this year, time is running out before the GOP primary, and frontrunner Jack Ciattarelli just received a significant boost: Donald Trump has thrown his support behind the former assemblyman’s candidacy. In 2015, Ciattarelli said Trump was a “charlatan” who was unfit to be president, but he’s since become a Trump loyalist.
* The Democratic National Committee’s credentials committee voted to invalidate the process that elevated David Hogg to his current leadership post. If the full DNC agrees, Hogg and his fellow vice chair, Malcolm Kenyatta, might need to run again for their positions.
* In Georgia’s U.S. Senate race, now that Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has decided not to run, the GOP field is starting to grow with lower-profile contenders: Georgia Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner John King is the latest to throw his hat into the ring.
* In Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race, it’s a crowded Democratic field, but Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan just received a high-profile endorsement: Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts threw her support behind the lieutenant governor, calling her “the partner I need in the Senate.”
* And in Texas, a poll commissioned by the Senate Leadership Fund, the GOP leadership–backed super PAC, found incumbent Sen. John Cornyn trailing state Attorney General Ken Paxton by 16 points in their upcoming Republican primary. That’s not great news for the incumbent. (Details on the poll’s methodology and margin of error are not available.)
