Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* Former HUD Secretary Julian Castro, the only Latino candidate seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, ended his campaign this morning. There are still 14 candidates vying for the party’s nod.
* The end of the calendar year marked the end of the candidates’ fourth-quarter fundraising push, and Donald Trump’s re-election campaign raised $46 million in the last three months of 2019. Aides said the haul — the best of the year — was fueled by a Republican backlash to impeachment, but Barack Obama raised a comparable amount in the fourth quarter of 2011.
* Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also unveiled his quarterly fundraising, and it was extremely impressive: the Vermont senator raised $34.5 million, which is a significant increase over his third-quarter haul and the best quarter any Democratic candidate has seen all year.
* Two other 2020 Democratic candidates have announced their fourth-quarter fundraising tallies: former Mayor Pete Buttigieg raised an impressive $24.7 million, while Andrew Yang took in $16.5 million. (Expect candidates with unimpressive figures to release them late tomorrow.)
* Just a few months after a heart attack, Bernie Sanders’ campaign this week released medical information from three physicians who agreed that the senator is “more than fit enough” for the presidency. A Washington Post report noted that the Sanders campaign had vowed to “release the candidate’s health records by the end of the year. The letters are not raw medical data, but they contain specific information about his health.”
* Rep. Abby Finkenauer (D-Iowa) became the first Democratic member of Iowa’s congressional delegation to endorse a presidential candidate, this morning throwing her support behind Joe Biden. The former vice president now has 24 endorsements from current U.S. House members, which is more than double his next closest competitors. (Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker have 11 each.) * Corey Lewandowski, one of Trump’s former campaign managers, announced on New Year’s Eve that he would not run for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire. The news disappointed Democrats, who saw him as a candidate likely to lose to incumbent Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D). * Kayleigh McEnany, the press secretary for the Trump campaign, insisted on Fox News over the weekend, “In 2016, President Trump was the foregone nominee from the beginning. Never did anyone go up against President Trump. We loved our nominee.” In reality, Ted Cruz won 11 nominating contests, Marco Rubio won three, and John Kasich won one. McEnany made the comments in the context of the Iowa caucuses — which Trump lost four years ago. MORE: Today’s Maddowblog
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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