Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* As Rachel noted on the show last night, officials in Maricopa County, Arizona, will apparently now have to buy new voting machines as a result of the Cyber Ninjas’ disastrous “audit” of the 2020 election results.
* A Democratic National Committee source confirmed this morning that the party raised $15.6 million raised in April, the best off-year April in the DNC’s history. Through the first four months of 2021, the DNC has now raised $63.8 million, while the Republican National Committee has raised $57.6 million.
* In Wyoming, state Sen. Anthony Bouchard (R), a leading primary challenger to U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney (R), shared a secret from his past with the Casper Star Tribune: When Bouchard was 18, he impregnated a 14-year-old girl, and married her in Florida when she was 15. They divorced when she was 18 and the unidentified young woman committed suicide at the age of 20.
* Ahead of an “America First” event in Arizona today featuring Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), the right-wing Floridian bought radio ads to promote the gathering.
* Speaking of Arizona, Donald Trump is apparently furious with “weak” Republicans who aren’t talking up the bonkers “audit” underway in the Grand Canyon State. (He’s also lashing out at House Republicans who supported the creation of an independent Jan. 6 commission.) * And speaking of the former president, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) suggested this week that Trump should stay out of Senate GOP primaries next year and let “the citizens in that state pick their primary winner.” I have a hunch the Florida senator, who chairs the NRSC, is going to be disappointed. * In Nevada, North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee (R) launched his gubernatorial campaign this week, and hours later, he announced that he’d tested positive for COVID-19. The 65-year-old Republican, a former cancer patient, acknowledged in a written statement that he had not been vaccinated. * And in New Jersey, Monmouth conducted a poll gauging Garden State residents’ views on their former governors. Republican Tom Kean, who served in the 1980s, fared the best, while Republican Chris Christie, who left office three years ago, fared the worst. Nevertheless, Christie continues to express public interest in running a 2024 presidential campaign.
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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