Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* As hard as this may be to believe, Andrew Yang has apparently now qualified for the next round of Democratic presidential debates, thanks to a Monmouth University poll that found him with 2% support in Iowa. The entrepreneur, who’s never held elected office, is the ninth White House hopeful to become eligible to participate in the next debates.
* On a related note, Julián Castro and Tom Steyer are close to also qualifying — Castro, in particular, needs just one more good poll — and are facing a deadline of August 28.
* In Pennsylvania, the latest Franklin & Marshall poll found Joe Biden leading his party’s presidential primary field, but his margin over Elizabeth Warren is modest: 28% to 21%. Bernie Sanders is third in the poll with 12%, followed by Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg with 8% and 6%, respectively.
* As the field of Democratic U.S. Senate candidates continues to grow, there’s increased chatter about former Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) shifting away from his presidential campaign and running for the Senate instead. But if he were to make the change, Colorado Dems have begun making it clear that they won’t clear the field for Hickenlooper, and it may very well be too late for him.
* Tensions between Twitter and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) campaign aren’t going away, and a growing number of Republican groups are temporarily freezing their ad spending on the social-media site in response. * Speaking of McConnell, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), another Democratic presidential hopeful, is reportedly going to help lead a “caravan” of activists supporting gun-law reforms from Niles, Ohio, to the GOP leader’s hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. * And though it seems like a longshot, a group of activists in Alaska have begun collecting signatures to recall Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R), who’s currently in his first year as governor. As the Anchorage Daily News reported, the Recall Dunleavy initiative has formally organized as a group with the Alaska Public Offices Commission. The same article added, organizers “must gather 28,501 signatures from registered voters, or 10% of the number of voters in the state’s last general election.”
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." Recommended
