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

* In South Carolina’s Republican Senate primary<\/strong>the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s younger sister, Darline Graham, is an appointed incumbent seeking a full term<\/a> with President Donald Trump’s blessing, but she hasn’t cleared the GOP field ahead of the state’s Aug. 11 special primary.<\/p>\n

Reps. Russell Fry<\/a> and Ralph Norman<\/a> have launched campaigns for the seat, and this week, a third high-profile contender threw his hat into the ring: Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford joined the race<\/a> Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n

Sanford brings one of the more unusual resumes of any politician in the country. He served a few terms in Congress in the late 1990s, before serving two terms as South Carolina’s governor — a tenure that included the infamous “Appalachian Trail<\/a>” sex scandal. The Republican nevertheless returned to Congress for six more years before losing in a GOP primary in which he was accused of being insufficiently loyal<\/a> to Trump.<\/p>\n

Sanford then lost an ill-fated 2020 presidential campaign, before launching a congressional comeback bid earlier this year, which only lasted a few weeks<\/a>. Now, evidently, the South Carolinian is launching yet another<\/em> comeback bid.<\/p>\n

* In Georgia<\/strong>a new bipartisan poll from AARP<\/a> found Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff with a relatively comfortable lead over Republican Rep. Mike Collins, 52% to 43%.<\/p>\n

* Speaking of the Peach State<\/strong>the same AARP poll found former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms with a smaller lead over Republican Rick Jackson, 48% to 46%, in Georgia’s gubernatorial race.<\/p>\n

* In Michigan’s closely watched U.S. Senate race<\/strong>former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers held a recent private call with supporters in which he said<\/a> his candidacy will be in “pretty good shape” if Democrats nominate former public health official Abdul El-Sayed in an Aug. 4 primary. “I think we’ll do well if he in fact is the nominee,” Rogers added.<\/p>\n

* In Florida’s gubernatorial race<\/strong>Republican Rep. Byron Donalds just received a major financial boost<\/a> from billionaire megadonor Ken Griffin, who’s investing $10 million in support of the congressman’s candidacy.<\/p>\n

* As if gubernatorial nominee Victor Marx weren’t already<\/strong> one of the nation’s most controversial statewide candidates, the Colorado Secretary of State’s office is now seeking penalties<\/a> against the candidate for accepting illegal campaign contributions.<\/p>\n

* And as MS NOW’s Jordan Rubin<\/strong> explained this week<\/a>“A new court ruling approving Tennessee’s congressional map that dilutes Black voting power is the latest example of how the Supreme Court<\/a>’s GOP-appointed majority is helping Republicans<\/a> win elections.”<\/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 Republican Senate primarythe late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s younger sister, Darline Graham, is an appointed incumbent seeking a full term with President Donald Trump’s blessing, but she hasn’t cleared the GOP field ahead of the state’s Aug. 11 special primary. Reps. Russell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26435","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\/26435","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=26435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}