Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* Barack Obama will return to the campaign trail today for the first time since his presidency ended in January. He’ll stump for Ralph Northam’s (D) gubernatorial candidacy in Virginia and Phil Murphy’s (D) campaign in New Jersey.
* If nothing else, the latest polling in Virginia’s gubernatorial race offers variety. The latest Quinnipiac poll shows Northam leading Ed Gillespie (R) by 14 points, 53% to 39%, which is wildly out of step with other recent surveys. A Fox News poll released last night, meanwhile, found Northam ahead by seven points.
* Speaking of the Gillespie campaign, with time running out before Election Day in the commonwealth, Jack Morgan, a prominent member of the Republican gubernatorial hopeful’s team, resigned this week.
* In New Jersey, the latest Fairleigh Dickinson poll, released Tuesday, found Phil Murphy (D) with a 15-point lead over Kim Guadagno (R), 47% to 32%. The election is just 20 days away.
* The HuffPost reports that Roy Moore’s foundation in 2005 accepted “a $1,000 donation from a group founded by Willis Carto, a white supremacist, Nazi supporter and World War II vet who famously said he regretted fighting for the U.S instead of Germany.” * Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to headline a Republican fundraiser in Denver next week, but local interest is so low, tickets to the event have already been marked down. * Speaking of Pence, the vice president’s brother, Greg Pence, has filed the paperwork to run for Congress next year in Indiana, in the same U.S. House seat Mike Pence used to hold. * And Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) returned to Capitol Hill this week following a recent ailment, and Politico reported that he appeared “frail and at times disoriented.” Nevertheless, the Mississippi Republican insisted he’s not stepping down.
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
