Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* The final special election of 2025 is in Iowa, where voters in a Des Moines-area district will choose a new state senator. A Republican victory would give the GOP a supermajority in the state legislative chamber.
* In Virginia, Democratic Sen. Mark Warner was already favored to win re-election, but his odds of success just went up: Republican state Sen. Bryce Reeves dropped out of the race over the weekend, leaving the GOP without a leading candidate.
* Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman announced last week that she’ll give up her House seat to run for the U.S. Senate in Wyoming. She’s now the front-runner to succeed Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis, who’s retiring after one term.
* On a related note, Donald Trump has already endorsed Hageman’s Senate bid, which should help discourage would-be primary rivals.
* Florida’s GOP gubernatorial primary has already taken an ugly turn, with businessman James Fishback accusing Rep. Byron Donalds, who is Black, of being a “slave” to “corporate interests” and “tech bros.” * Advancing a White House priority, Republican officials in Ohio have banned grace periods for mail-in ballots. This means that in future elections, ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but reach election offices after Election Day will no longer be counted. * And in Alabama, A.J. McCarron, a former college football player who had never even registered to vote until a couple of months ago, was running for lieutenant governor as a Republican. He has since decided to drop out of the race and accept a job coaching football.
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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