Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* In New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) is confronting a controversy over disclosing nursing-home deaths, a new Siena College poll shows the governor’s approval rating slipping from 55% to 51% over the last month. Cuomo’s third term ends next year.
* On a related note, the same Siena poll found Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D) with a 49% favorability rating in his home state of New York ahead of his own re-election campaign next year. There’s chatter about a possible primary race, but the survey found the incumbent senator with a 69% favorable rating among New York Democrats.
* In Florida, which is generally seen as a model for how to run an effective early-voting system, the Republican-led state government is moving forward with plans to scrap all standing requests for mail-in ballots.
* In South Carolina, the Post and Courier in Charleston reported the GOP-led state legislature is moving forward with a bill to give Republicans more power on the State Election Commission, “while simultaneously granting that agency more power to handle what happens at the ballot box.”
* Though Rep. Joyce Beatty (D) expressed an interest in Ohio’s open U.S. Senate race, the congresswoman announced yesterday that she will instead seek re-election to the U.S. House. * Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, Alex Lasry, a senior executive of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks, announced this morning that he’s launching a Democratic U.S. Senate campaign, joining what’s expected to be a crowded primary field. Though Lasry, who’s 33 years old, has never held elected office, he worked with White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett during the Obama era. * And on the heels of reports that lapsed Republican Evan McMullin is interested in the creation of a new third party, the 2016 presidential hopeful this week launched a new organization hoping to defeat radical GOP incumbents. The group is called Stand Up Republic, and among its initial targets are Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Jim Jordan (Ohio), Andy Biggs (Ariz.) and Paul Gosar (Ariz.).
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."
Latest Post
Recommended
