{"id":21696,"date":"2026-04-21T21:22:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T21:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/tuesdays-campaign-round-up-4-21-26-trump-johnson-make-eleventh-hour-pitch-in-virginia\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T21:22:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T21:22:15","slug":"tuesdays-campaign-round-up-4-21-26-trump-johnson-make-eleventh-hour-pitch-in-virginia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/tuesdays-campaign-round-up-4-21-26-trump-johnson-make-eleventh-hour-pitch-in-virginia\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday\u2019s Campaign Round-Up, 4.21.26: Trump, Johnson make eleventh-hour pitch in Virginia"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.<\/p>\n

* Ahead of Virginia’s vote on a redistricting ballot measure, Donald Trump hasn’t said much about it, but the president and House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana made an eleventh-hour pitch to supporters in the commonwealth with a Monday night telerally call<\/a>. The morning after, Trump used his social media platform to direct Virginians<\/a> to “save your country.”<\/p>\n

* In California, the Democratic gubernatorial field is finally starting to shrink: On the heels of former Rep. Eric Swalwell’s departure, Betty Yee, a former state controller, announced Monday that she’s also suspending her campaign<\/a> after struggling to raise enough money to remain competitive.<\/p>\n

* Risa Lombardo used to sell MAGA merchandise and was a Republican Party official until very recently. Now, she’s a Green Party gubernatorial candidate in Arizona<\/a> as part of an apparent attempt to fool progressive voters in the state and divide the left in the 2026 race.<\/p>\n

* Indiana Republicans approved a voter-ID law, but it prohibits the use of student identification cards. This week, a federal appeals court allowed the partisan policy to remain in effect<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* There’s been talk for months that Ohio’s gubernatorial race will be competitive, and there’s fresh evidence to bolster the point: The latest poll conducted by Bowling Green State University found Republican Vivek Ramaswamy barely leading<\/a> Dr. Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee, 48% to 47%.<\/p>\n

* Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s lengthy career in public office is nearing its end, but the Democratic governor isn’t exiting the arena altogether: Walz this week launched a new political action committee<\/a>called Small Town PAC, as part of a broader effort to recruit and support Democratic candidates running in rural areas.<\/p>\n

* And in Wyoming, there was talk that Republican Gov. Mark Gordon was prepared to challenge the state’s term-limits law, but the governor announced late last week that he will instead step down<\/a> at the end of his second term, which ends in early January.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country. * Ahead of Virginia’s vote on a redistricting ballot measure, Donald Trump hasn’t said much about it, but the president and House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana made an eleventh-hour pitch to supporters in the commonwealth with a Monday night telerally call. The morning after, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}