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Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* Among the biggest critics of Donald Trump’s newest abortion position was his own former vice president: Mike Pence issued a statement yesterday calling Trump’s latest announcement a “slap in the face” to millions of the former president’s supporters.
* As if Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign weren’t already controversial, the conspiracy theorist’s state director in New York told a group of Republican voters last week that her “number one priority“ was defeating President Joe Biden. Rita Palma also encouraged the audience to travel to Pennsylvania — not to campaign for Kennedy, but to volunteer in support of Trump’s candidacy. A Kennedy spokesperson soon after downplayed Palma’s role in the campaign.
* In Wisconsin, Republican Senate hopeful Eric Hovde appeared to suggest in a recent interview that ballots cast by elderly voters in nursing homes should necessarily be considered suspect. “Well, if you’re in a nursing home, you only have a five, six-month life expectancy,” the GOP candidate said. “Almost nobody in a nursing home is in a point to vote.”
* Speaking of the Badger State, Democrats are looking at Wisconsin’s state legislature with a sense of optimism now that district lines have been redrawn, and as The New York Times reported, the States Project announced this week that it would “include Wisconsin in its eight-figure 2024 budget and spend an additional $1 million there.”
* In Nevada, the Republican National Committee had a variety of outreach centers targeting minority communities. According to new reporting from The Nevada Independent, those centers have now been shuttered.
* At a town-hall event in Georgia district yesterday, right-wing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene told local voters, “[O]ur Republican house majority has failed completely, and I have had enough of it.”
* And as Sen. Tim Scott continues to audition for his party’s vice presidential nomination, the South Carolina Republican is now helping lead a new media project intended to help move Black voters away from President Joe Biden and toward the GOP.