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Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* Though the official kickoff won’t be until next week, Republican Kari Lake has filed the paperwork for a U.S. Senate campaign in Arizona. The move comes the year after the election denier narrowly lost a gubernatorial race in the state.
* In the GOP presidential race, former Gov. Chris Christie and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy wanted to participate in an unofficial one-on-one debate tonight on Fox News. The Republican National Committee balked.
* Speaking of the former New Jersey governor, Politico reported that Christie’s political operation is “aggressively trying to persuade New Hampshire Democrats to switch parties to vote for the former New Jersey governor in the state’s first-in-the-nation Republican presidential primary.”
* In Michigan’s U.S. Senate race, James Craig, the former Detroit police chief, kicked off his Republican candidacy this week. The announcement comes the year after Craig also tried to run for governor, but his candidacy was derailed after he failed to collect enough valid signatures.
* In a sign of the times, after Republican Rep. Nancy Mace voted to end Kevin McCarthy’s bid as House speaker, the South Carolinian sent a fundraising appeal to her supporters.
* The Associated Press reported that Republican voters in Idaho and Missouri will now “have to attend caucuses to make their presidential picks next year after the two states’ GOP-led legislatures canceled their presidential primaries and then missed a deadline to reinstate them.”
* And in Utah, Republican Rep. John Curtis ended speculation about his political future, writing in a new op-ed that he’ll run for re-election to the House, instead of running for the open Senate seat.