Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.<\/p>\n

* In South Carolina’s gubernatorial race<\/strong>Donald Trump<\/a> endorsed Lt. Gov. Pam Evette last month. Last week, however, ahead of this week’s primary runoff election in the race, the president published an online item<\/a> telling voters that “you can’t go wrong” with either Evette or state Attorney General Alan Wilson.<\/p>\n

If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because Trump has done this before. Around this time two years ago, for example, he endorsed both Republicans<\/a> running in a congressional primary in Arizona. And two years before that, he endorsed two leading contenders<\/a> in a Senate primary in Missouri.<\/p>\n

Only the president can say for sure why he ended up endorsing Evette and Wilson in the South Carolina race, though it’s worth emphasizing for context that GOP primary voters have already ignored his direction into two gubernatorial primaries<\/a> this month, and it stands to reason that he hoped to avoid a third.<\/p>\n

* We’re one day away from a variety of notable races<\/strong>including but not limited to South Carolina’s gubernatorial race. There are also some congressional primaries in a handful of states<\/a>including Maryland, New York and Utah.<\/p>\n

* In took a while, but the ballots have been tallied under Maine’s ranked-choice system<\/strong>and we now know that Democrat Hannah Pingree, the former state House speaker, will face off against<\/a> Republican Bobby Charles, who worked at the State Department during the Bush-Cheney era.<\/p>\n

* As for Maine’s closely watched congressional race<\/strong>state Auditor Matt Dunlap won the Democratic nomination<\/a> in the battleground 2nd District, defeating state Sen. Joe Baldacci, who enjoyed the backing of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Dunlap will run in the fall against a familiar figure: former Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who had moved to Florida a few years ago, but who returned to run for Congress.<\/p>\n

* In California’s congressional special election<\/strong>two Democratic candidates — state Sen. Aisha Wahab and Melissa Hernandez, a Bay Area Rapid Transit director — have advanced<\/a> to an Aug. 18 special general election. The winner will fill the vacancy left by disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell, who resigned in April.<\/p>\n

* In a new commercial shared first with MS NOW<\/strong>Democrat James Talarico has launched his campaign’s first multimillion-dollar ad buy<\/a> in Texas’ gubernatorial race. In the 30-second spot,<\/a> Talarico focuses on affordability and the cost of living. The state lawmaker will face scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the fall.<\/p>\n

* And in New Jersey, Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr.<\/strong>who has been missing from Capitol Hill since early March, will reportedly return to work on June 30<\/a>according to a statement from his spokesperson. Neither Kean nor his office have offered any public information about why he has been away.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
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
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Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country. * In South Carolina’s gubernatorial raceDonald Trump endorsed Lt. Gov. Pam Evette last month. Last week, however, ahead of this week’s primary runoff election in the race, the president published an online item telling voters that “you can’t go wrong” with either Evette or state […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24660,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24659","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\/24659","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=24659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}