Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* We’ve reached the point at which Republican presidential candidates have to be asked whether they might try to overturn the election results if they lose. Sen. Tim Scott told NBC News yesterday that he would not.
* Speaking of the South Carolinian, every recent GOP candidate looks for a billionaire backer, and Scott has apparently found one: Oracle co-founder and Republican megadonor Larry Ellison is preparing to spend considerable sums backing the senator’s 2024 candidacy.
* In related news, Donald Trump tends to condemn his rivals for the GOP nomination, but the former president published a surprisingly pleasant missive to his social media platform yesterday, wishing Scott luck, and comparing him favorably to “Ron DeSanctimonious.”
* After Lev Parnas was arrested in 2019 for funneling a Russian oligarch’s money into American political campaigns, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis downplayed his connections to the controversial businessman. A new Reuters report, however, said the two “worked more closely together than the Republican governor has disclosed, according to a detailed account of their relationship Parnas provided to Reuters and 63 previously unreported text messages from DeSantis to Parnas between May and October 2018, as DeSantis campaigned for governor.”
* Though Democrats hoped to avoid a messy U.S. Senate primary in Michigan, Rep. Elissa Slotkin is not running unopposed: Michigan State Board of Education President Pamela Pugh became the newest candidate today. * In Ohio’s Republican U.S. Senate race, incumbent GOP Sen. J.D. Vance has thrown his support behind business executive Bernie Moreno in the 2024 race. Last year, Moreno ran for the seat Vance now holds, though he ultimately dropped out and endorsed the eventual winner. * And Politico had an amusing item yesterday, noting the number of recent campaign ads that have accidentally relied on foreign footage. Each of the examples cited in the piece were from Republican campaigns.
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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