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Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* The organizers behind a proposed abortion rights amendment in Michigan appeared to file more than enough legitimate petition signatures to qualify for the November ballot, but Republicans on the Board of Canvassers rejected the effort anyway. The matter is now headed to court.
* In Georgia’s U.S. Senate race, Democrats remain focused on Republican Herschel Walker’s history of violent episodes. “Herschel Walker has repeatedly threatened to kill his ex-wife,” a narrator tells voters in a new ad from Georgia Honor, a political organization closely affiliated with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and his Senate Majority PAC.
* After conservatives on the Wisconsin Supreme Court outlawed absentee ballot drop boxes and said that voters must return their own absentee ballot in person, a federal judge ruled yesterday that Wisconsin voters with disabilities can get help returning their ballots.
* Speaking of the Badger State, Tim Michels, Wisconsin’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, doesn’t just have a conservative worldview on social issues, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that he and his wife “donated $250,000 to anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion groups, representing about 15% of his total donations in 2020.”
* With time running out in New Hampshire’s Republican U.S. Senate primary, a new super PAC, called the White Mountain PAC, is reportedly investing $4 million in the race, hoping to boost state Sen. Chuck Morse over far-right retired Brigadier Gen. Don Bolduc. The entity was formed this week. Primary Day in New Hampshire is 12 days away.
* Speaking of money in politics, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and billionaire Peter Thiel apparently disagree on who should be financing Blake Masters' far-right Republican candidacy in Arizona.
* The latest Wall Street Journal poll found Democrats leading Republicans on the congressional generic ballot, 47% to 44%. As recently as March, the same poll found the GOP with a five-point advantage.
* On a related note, the latest Quinnipiac poll pointed in a very similar direction, showing Democrats leading Republicans, 47% to 43%, on which party should have a U.S. House majority. That’s a modest improvement for Democrats from July, when Quinnipiac found the party with a one-point lead over the GOP.