Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* How close is Kentucky’s gubernatorial race? The final survey from Emerson College found incumbent Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear and Republican state Attorney General Daniel Cameron tied, 47% to 47%.
* On a related note, while the Kentucky race is one of the more closely watched contests on deck for Tuesday — which is to say, tomorrow — there are also important statewide elections in Ohio, Mississippi, and Maine. There’s also a congressional special election in Rhode Island, and key state legislative races in Virginia and New Jersey. Election watchers should also keep an eye on local elections in Philadelphia, Houston, and New York City.
* Confirming months of rumors, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds will endorse Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Republican presidential campaign later today. Donald Trump didn’t take the news well.
* In Michigan, former Rep. Peter Meijer kicked off a U.S. Senate campaign this morning, a year after he lost his re-election bid in a GOP primary. Shortly after the former congressman launched his statewide bid, the National Republican Senatorial Committee said it does not consider Meijer a competitive candidate.
* In an unfortunate typo, House Speaker Mike Johnson sent out a fundraising appeal late last week that quoted the Louisiana Republican declaring, “I refuse to put people over politics.”
* Rep. George Santos declared last week that even if his colleagues were to eventually vote to expel him from Congress, the New York Republican would run again next fall anyway.
* And while I continue to believe general election polling a year in advance has little predictive value, a new set of New York Times/Siena College polls found Trump leading incumbent Democratic President Joe Biden in five of the nation’s six most closely watched battleground states. The crosstabs indicated that 38% of Americans don’t expect the Republican frontrunner to be convicted in any of his criminal cases — and asked how they’d vote if Trump were convicted, Biden’s polling deficits turned to advantages in each of the six states.
