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Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* In Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race, Democratic state Attorney General Josh Shapiro continues to pick up Republican support, including an endorsement from former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, who served in the Bush/Cheney administration. “Right now, we all have a responsibility to support candidates of whichever party who will stand up and defend our democracy,” Chertoff said. “Although I am a long-standing Republican, I am deeply troubled by Doug Mastriano’s embrace of dangerous extremism.”
* With two weeks remaining before New Hampshire’s primaries, a new UNH Granite State Poll showed retired Brigadier General Don Bolduc with a big lead over state Sen. Chuck Morse, 43% to 22%, in the race for the Republicans’ U.S. Senate nomination.
* On a related note, Democrats are once again intervening in a Republican primary, this time boosting Bob Burns, a pro-Trump Republican running on an anti-abortion platform, in New Hampshire’s 2nd congressional district. The GOP race is in two weeks, and the winner will face incumbent Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster.
* In Minnesota’s gubernatorial race, Republican nominee Scott Jensen is refusing to apologize for comparing Covid mask policies to the Nazis’ Kristallnacht. “We don’t need to talk about who gets to be the word policeman or who gets to be the metaphor policeman,” the GOP candidate argued yesterday.
* Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp will have to testify before the grand jury hearing evidence in an investigation of possible 2020 election interference, but a local judge agreed yesterday that the Republican can delay his testimony until after this fall’s elections.
* In Arizona, Kari Lake and Mark Finchem — the Republican nominees for governor and secretary of state, respectively — filed suit in the spring, hoping to ban the use of electronic voting machines in the 2022 elections. On Friday, a federal judge threw out the case.