Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* Lin Wood failed by a wide margin in his bid to become the new chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party over the weekend. Wood, a lawyer and conspiracy theorist who has argued that Donald Trump is still the president, challenged GOP Chairman Drew McKissick and the incumbent won by 40 points.
* In Pennsylvania, Republican Lou Barletta, a former far-right congressman, kicked off a gubernatorial campaign this morning. It will be Barletta’s second bit for statewide office, following a failed U.S. Senate campaign in 2018, when he lost to Sen. Bob Casey (D) by 13 points.
* At the Ohio Political Summit over the weekend, U.S. Senate hopeful Josh Mandel (R) declared, “Let me be very clear, this election was stolen from Donald Trump. My squishy establishment opponents in this race won’t say those words. But I will.”
* On a related note, Trump hasn’t held a partisan campaign event since January, when he tried and failed to help Republican U.S. senators in Georgia, but he’s now scheduled to speak at North Carolina’s Republican Party state convention on June 5. [Update: Trump also spoke at CPAC in February, though it was not, strictly speaking, a GOP or campaign-related event.]
* Last month, North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee announced that he was switching parties and becoming a Republican. Over the weekend, he confirmed that wants to run against incumbent Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) in 2022. Lee was also a right-leaning Democratic legislator before losing in a 2012 primary. * As if Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) weren’t in enough trouble, a local report from Friday raised the prospect of the right-wing congresswoman and her husband having “two active homestead exemptions, which is against Georgia law.” * And Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson (D) announced that he’s retiring following four terms in office. He’s the longest serving mayor in the city’s history.
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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