Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* Tomorrow will be a busy day for election watchers, with primaries in Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, and the state of Washington. The marquee race, however, is tomorrow’s congressional special election in Ohio’s 12th district.
* On a related note, the latest Emerson College poll in Ohio’s 12th shows Danny O’Connor (D) with a narrow lead over Troy Balderson (R), 47% to 46%. The survey was conducted, however, before Donald Trump headlined a local rally for Balderson on Saturday night.
* In Texas’ U.S. Senate race, the latest Public Policy Polling survey shows incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz (R) with a four-point advantage over Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D), 46% to 42%. It’s the third poll in a week that found Cruz’s lead in the low-to-mid single digits.
* In Kansas’ gubernatorial race, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported that Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s (R) operation “employs three men identified as members of a white nationalist group by two political consultants who have worked with Republicans in Kansas.”
* Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) received a fake award from a non-existent Israeli outlet as part of Sacha Baron Cohen’s series on Showtime. ThinkProgress noted that Perry didn’t realize “he was duped” and treated the award as real.
* In the fight over Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination, Politico reports that America First Policies, a Trump-aligned advocacy group, is launching a new television ad campaign targeting vulnerable red-state Senate Democrats in Indiana, West Virginia, and North Dakota, urging them to support Trump’s nominee. Protect Our Care, a progressive pro-health-care outfit, is doing the opposite, airing anti-Kavanaugh ads in Maine, Alaska, and Nevada.
* And though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell isn’t up for re-election until 2020, the Kentucky Republican formally kicked off this campaign over the weekend.
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."