Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* In New York, the latest Siena College poll offered at least modestly good news for scandal-plagued Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D): only 35% of New Yorkers want him to resign. The same survey showed the governor’s approval rating dropping from 56% to 46%.
* As part of the campaign to promote the Democrats’ new American Rescue Plan, Vice President Kamala Harris visited a vaccination site in Las Vegas yesterday, while First Lady Jill Biden toured a New Jersey elementary school. Today, President Joe Biden will tout the relief package’s benefits in Pennsylvania.
* The Arizona Republican Party’s lawsuit challenging last year’s election procedures was so groundless that a local judge is now ordering the state GOP to pay Arizona $18,000 in legal fees.
* The Alaska Republican Party’s central committee voted over the weekend to censure Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R). The censure resolution added that the state GOP “will hereby recruit a Republican Party challenger to oppose and prohibit Senator Murkowski from being a candidate in any Republican primary to the extent legally permissible.” (Given Alaska’s top-4 system, Murkowski probably doesn’t much care.)
* J.D. Vance, perhaps best known as the author of the bestselling Hillbilly Elegy, hasn’t yet said whether he’ll run a Republican U.S. Senate campaign in Ohio next year, but if he does, money apparently won’t be a problem: billionaire PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel has donated $10 million to a super PAC backing Vance’s prospective candidacy. * Putting to rest speculation about his future, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) announced yesterday that he will seek re-election to his U.S. House seat and will not run for governor in Nebraska next year. * And in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) established a political committee yesterday as part of a larger effort to keep his job in the face of a possible recall election. The committee will help allow the governor to raise money for the possible race, and as the Associated Press reported, the money will be there: “It’s likely he will soon receive a flood of cash from his familiar Democratic constituency, including powerful public workers’ unions that spent millions of dollars helping get him into office in 2018. The California Democratic Party quickly showed its support with a $250,000 contribution.”
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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