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Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* Rep. Kai Kahele hasn’t yet finished his first term on Capitol Hill, but the Hawaii Democrat is reportedly set to give up his seat to run for governor. Kahele’s brief tenure has included unusual questions about his work as a pilot for Hawaiian Airlines, which he’s continued to do while in office.
* In Georgia’s Republican gubernatorial primary, a SurveyUSA poll conducted for the NBC affiliate in Atlanta found incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp with a big lead over former Sen. David Perdue, 56 percent to 31 percent.
* Former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, a leading Republican gubernatorial hopeful this year, is trying to give her candidacy a boost by embracing conspiracy theories about the 2020 race. “ I am focused exclusively on Wisconsin. And what I can tell you about Wisconsin, is that I feel like it was rigged,” she said this week.
* In a rare poll of Vermont’s open U.S. Senate race, the latest University of New Hampshire survey found Democratic Rep. Peter Welch with a big lead over former Republican prosecutor Christina Nolan, 62 percent to 27 percent.
* In West Virginia, where two incumbent GOP congressmen — Alex Mooney and David McKinley — are facing off in a primary, Donald Trump this week slammed McKinley as a “RINO,” which stands for “Republican In Name Only,” as part of a message intended to rally support for Mooney. Ironically, McKinley voted with the Trump White House more often than Mooney during the former president’s tenure.
* Rep. Mike Quigley was rumored to be eyeing Chicago’s mayoral race, but the Democratic congressman announced yesterday that he will run for re-election to Congress and won’t be a mayoral candidate.
* And in Pennsylvania, Teddy Daniels, who’s running a Republican campaign for lieutenant governor, was asked yesterday about attending a right-wing event last week where attendees were told that a “global satanic blood cult” would soon be exposed and that Adolf Hitler faked his death. Daniels told The Philadelphia Inquirer, “At least I’m not a communist.” Daniels was also ordered this week to stay away from his home “after his wife made claims of physical and mental abuse in obtaining a protective order.”