By
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* We should learn tonight whether Democrat Mary Peltola, an Indigenous Yup’ik fisheries manager and former state representative, has defeated former half-term Gov. Sarah Palin in Alaska’s congressional special election.
* Political reformers hoped to get a sweeping election reform proposition on Arizona’s statewide ballot this year, but the state Supreme Court agreed to throw out most of the nearly half-million petition signatures collected.
* In Georgia’s closely watched U.S. Senate race, the latest Emerson College poll found Republican Herschel Walker with a narrow lead over Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, 46% to 44%. Most other recent polling has shown the incumbent ahead.
* On a related note, the same Emerson poll showed incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp leading former Democratic state Sen. Stacey Abrams, 48% to 44%.
* On Capitol Hill, the House Democratic conference is poised to shrink by one member: With Rep. Charlie Crist winning the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, the lawmaker will reportedly resign from Congress today to focus full time on his statewide candidacy.
* In Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race, Republican Mehmet Oz proposed a debate next week, though his proposal included some “concessions,” including an offer to “pay for any additional medical personnel” Lt. Gov. John Fetterman might need to have on standby. Yesterday, the Democratic nominee rejected the offer, saying the GOP candidate’s campaign thinks “it is funny to mock” his recovery from a stroke.
* And in keeping with the national pattern, former Mayor Nan Whaley’s Democratic gubernatorial campaign in Ohio is slamming incumbent Republican Gov. Mike DeWine over his support for abortion restrictions. Of particular interest, Whaley’s new ad campaign focuses attention on a 10-year-old rape victim who was forced to flee the state to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.