Today's installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* Just one week after former Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) filed the paperwork to run against Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) next year, he's apparently changed his mind. The Georgia Republican, haunted by corruption allegations ahead of his defeat last month, announced this morning that he's decided not to run after all.
* On a related note, it's probably worth emphasizing that Perdue's written statement this morning echoed demonstrably false Trumpian claims about "illegal votes" and called on Georgia officials to "correct" non-existent problems with the state's systems of elections.
* The bad news for Congress is that Gallup's new national poll shows the institution with a 35% approval rating. The good news for Congress is that this reflects a significant jump since January, and 35% support is the highest in nearly 12 years.
* A Morning Consult poll released yesterday showed New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's (D) approval rating slipping a bit, from 63% to 57%, in the wake of the controversy related to hidden data on nursing-home deaths. That said, a year out from the governor's possible re-election bid, 57% isn't a bad position for an incumbent to be in.
* The Philadelphia Inquirer reported yesterday that 19,000 Pennsylvanians have left the Republican Party since Jan. 6, which may not sound like much, but it's "an unusually high rate of defections: Almost two-thirds of the voters who have switched parties this year left the GOP, compared with a third or less typically."
* After increasing its share of Black voters in the 2020 elections, the Republican Party is reportedly committed to spending $2 million on "Black Community Centers" in 2022 battleground states. McClatchy News' report on this added that the Trump campaign and the RNC "opened 'Black Voices' community centers in 15 cities with the RNC in the last election cycle."
* And after a few weeks of relative silence, Donald Trump will speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference this weekend, and then again at the Republican National Committee's spring donor retreat. The latter will be held in April in the former president's new hometown of Palm Beach, Fla.