Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* As New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s advantage grows as more votes are counted, Republican Jack Ciattarelli will reportedly concede defeat today.
* Though it was widely assumed that Sen. Lisa Murkowski would run for re-election, the Alaska Republican made it official this morning. The incumbent senator will face an intra-party rival: Republican Kelly Tshibaka, the former commissioner of the Alaska Department of Administration, is also running.
* Speaking of Senate Republican primaries, in Alabama, Donald Trump has thrown his support behind far-right Rep. Mo Brooks to succeed retiring Sen. Richard Shelby. The senator, however, is reportedly prepared to spend $5 million of his campaign funds to help elect his former chief of staff, Katie Britt.
* Just when it seemed Ohio’s Republican Senate primary couldn’t get much worse, IT entrepreneur Mark Pukita said in a debate last night that “everybody should know” that rival Josh Mandell is Jewish, since Mandell references the Bible in his campaign messaging.
* Caught up in a campaign-finance controversy, Republican Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana has said he can’t fully respond to the Federal Election Commission’s questions because his former campaign treasurer “vanished.” As it turns out, it only took The Daily Beast five minutes to find him. * In New Hampshire, Republican Senate hopeful Don Bolduc claimed this week that he drove Gov. Chris Sununu from the 2022 race. At the same time, Bolduc, a retired brigadier general, also shared a variety of strange conspiracy theories, including the idea that the Republican governor is a “Chinese Communist sympathizer.” * And in Texas, Donald Trump has endorsed Rep. Michael McCaul’s re-election campaign, despite the fact that the GOP congressman said earlier this year that the former president “very well may have” committed impeachable offenses before and on Jan. 6.
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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