(WED 8/24/22)
Florida: And so, a former Republican governor challenges incumbent Republican governor and presumed 2024 challenger to Donald J. Trump for the GOP presidential nomination Ron DeSantis. Rep. Charlie Crist (pictured), now a Democrat from Florida’s 13thDistrict, won his party’s gubernatorial primary Tuesday, 59.8% to agriculture commissioner Nikki Fried’s 35.3% (per Ballotpedia). Fried is the only Democrat holding a statewide office in Florida, which now counts more registered Republican voters.
Rep. Val Demings easily won the Democratic Party’s primary, with 84% of the vote, to take on incumbent Republican Sen. Marco Rubio for his seat in the November 8 midterms.
New York: Rep. Jerrold Nadler easily beat Rep. Carolyn Maloney, 56.3% to 24.2%, for the state’s redrawn U.S. House 12thDistrict, which pitted two 30-year incumbents for the seat covering the East Side of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. Challenger Suraj Patel took 18.3% of the Democratic primary vote.
A special election to replace former Democratic Rep. Antonio Delgado for his 19th District congressional district seat is seen as a bellwether for the midterms in general. If so, count it as good news for Democrats, with Pat Ryan taking 51.1% to Republican Marc Molinaro’s 48.8% -- decisive, though hardly commanding in a district that encompasses the mid-Hudson Valley and New York Catskills region, which NBC News' Steve Kornacki describes as a "classic swing district." Ryan will serve the remainder of Delgado’s term, to January 3. Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul selected Delgado as her lieutenant governor after replacing former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
In the Democratic race for the House 10th District seat, 17th District incumbent Mondaire Jones came in third with 18.2%. Daniel Goldman, with 25.7%, edged out Yuh-Line Niou at 23.7% for the win.
Oklahoma: U.S. Rep. Markwayne Mullin, who represents the 2nd congressional district, won the Republican Party’s runoff for a special election in November to replace Republican Sen. James Inhoffe, who is retiring with four years left in his term. Mullin will face the winner of the Democratic runoff, cybersecurity professional Madison Horn.
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On the 31st Anniversary of Ukraine's independence ... The White House has announced a new $2.98-billion "security package" for Ukraine in its fight for sovereignty against Russia's invasion. The package is for weapons and assistance as provided by the Ukrainian Security Assistance Initiative, Politico reports.
--TL
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Primaries Tuesday (TUE 8/23/22)
Florida: In the Democratic gubernatorial primary to challenge 2024 GOP presidential candidate and incumbent Gov. Ron DeSantis, progressive candidate Nikki Fried, commissioner of agricultural and consumer services, has been gaining in the polls against moderate Democratic Rep. Charlie Crist. Fried since 2019 has been the state’s commissioner of agriculture and consumer services. Crist was Florida’s Republican governor from 2007 to 2011, and since 2017 has served as the state’s Democratic representative for the 13th District. Crist has been considered the stronger candidate to take on populist cultural warrior DeSantis, though Fried has been hammering Crist on his prior history regarding abortion rights when he was a Republican, according to NPR’s Morning Edition.
In the race for U.S. Senate, Rep. Val Demings (10th District) is very likely to beat three other Democrats to take on incumbent Republican Marco Rubio November 8. Like Crist, Demmings, a former police officer, is currently serving her second term in the House of Representatives.
New York: Redistricting has forced Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler of the 10th District to compete with Rep. Carolyn Maloney for Maloney’s 12th District seat. Both are powerful representatives, with Maloney chairing the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and Nadler chairing its Judiciary Committee.
Oklahoma: Both major parties have runoffs Tuesday for the November midterm to replace Republican Sen. James Inhoffe, 87, who is retiring next January with four years left on his current term. In the Republican runoff, it’s Markwayne Mullin v. T.W. Shannon while on the Democratic side it’s Jason Bollinger v. Madison Horn to replace the conservative five-term senator (per Ballotpedia).
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Up for discussion … Donald J. Trump is suing the U.S. Justice Department over its FBI search of Mar-a-Lago for White House documents. The former president’s attorneys argue the government provided no reason for its search of Trump’s Florida residence and that the search raised questions about Fourth Amendment rights, Newsweek explains. ... Meanwhile ... The New York Times reports that Trump had taken more than 300 classified documents with him to Mar-a-Lago. Federal officials “became alarmed” after the National Archives found more than 150 sensitive papers among the first batch received from the former president in January. … A federal judge has given Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) attorneys to Wednesday to provide a list of questions they think a grand jury can and cannot ask a sitting senator, Yahoo! News reports. Graham’s testimony before the Fulton County, Georgia grand jury investigating Trump’s alleged attempt to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results was temporarily halted by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has to next Monday to respond to Graham’s list of questions. … Dr. Anthony Fauci has announced his retirement in December, after 38 years as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He also serves as chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation and as chief medical advisor to President Biden.
--Todd Lassa
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