Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* As this year’s election cycle got underway, Ohio’s U.S. Senate race was not expected to be one of the top-tier contests, but the latest Spectrum News/Siena College poll nevertheless shows Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan narrowly leading Republican J.D. Vance, 46% to 43%.
* In Kansas, Gov. Laura Kelly continues to pick up support from prominent in-state Republicans: Former GOP Gov. Mike Hayden has announced his support for the Democratic incumbent, on the heels of former GOP Gov. Bill Graves doing the same thing.
* In a new interview, Herschel Walker was asked about allegations that, on different occasions, he threatened to murder his ex-wife, including an incident in which he allegedly held a gun to his wife’s head. The Republican Senate hopeful in Georgia responded that his opponents are “talking about something I was a part of over 15 years ago.”
* Texas A&M is one of the nation’s largest universities, but local officials took away an on-campus early-voting location — and yesterday, they said it won’t be returned ahead of this year’s elections.
* In Alabama, state Republican Party Chairman John Wahl reportedly has an unusual problem: Some members of his family don’t vote because the state requires photo ID to cast ballots and they consider all biometric identification to be the mark of the beast foretold in the Book of Revelation. * Though Donald Trump has withheld support from Sen. James Lankford in the recent past, the former president yesterday endorsed the Republican incumbent’s re-election bid in Oklahoma. * In Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race, Republican Tim Michels has assured supporters, “I’m not going to soften my stance on abortion.” It was against this backdrop that the far-right candidate announced last week that he’d support an abortion ban that includes exceptions — which was a departure from his earlier position.
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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