Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* Fresh off his third-place finish in West Virginia’s Republican Senate primary, Don Blankenship is moving forward with a plan to run as a third-party candidate in the fall as the right-wing Constitution Party’s candidate. Whether Blankenship can overcome the state’s “sore loser” law is unclear.
* Voters in Arkansas, Georgia, and Kentucky will be able to vote in primaries tomorrow, when Texas also holds primary runoffs. Among the races to watch are Georgia’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, pitting former state House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams against former state Rep. Stacey Evans, and the Democratic primary in Kentucky’s 6th congressional district, where Lexington Mayor Jim Gray is going up against former fighter pilot Amy McGrath.
* American Action Network, a conservative group closely aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan, picked up $24.6 million “from a single anonymous donor” last year. Because AAN is a dark-money organization, we’ll never know who wrote that check.
* Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to speak at a fundraiser tonight for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) super PAC. Because the event is being held at the Trump International Hotel near the White House, it means the president will profit from the gathering.
* Though California Republicans have low expectations about this year’s gubernatorial race, Donald Trump has nevertheless formally thrown his support behind businessman John Cox’s (R) candidacy. (Rumor has it, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a presidential ally, urged Trump to back Cox.) * Republican leaders were led to believe Hirsh Singh would invest $2 million of his own money into his campaign in New Jersey’s 2nd congressional district, but it turns out he has a lot less money than he claimed. * And the New York Times had an interesting piece over the weekend, reporting, “The pace of new voter registrations among young people in crucial states is accelerating, a signal that school shootings this year — and the anger and political organizing in their wake — may prove to be more than ephemeral displays of activism…. Voter data for March and April show that young registrants represented a higher portion of new voters in Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, among other states.”
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." Recommended
