• NJ-Sen: Former Rep. Tom Malinowski announced Wednesday that he would support Rep. Andy Kim in the June 4 Democratic primary rather than run himself. On the Republican side, Melinda Ciattarelli, who is the estranged wife of 2021 gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli, also announced she would stay out of the race.
• MO-Gov: The Republican firm Remington Research, working once again for the political tip-sheet Missouri Scout, is out with the first poll we've seen from anyone since the fall, and it continues to find Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft leading in the Aug. 6 GOP primary for Missouri's open governorship.
Ashcroft outpaces Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe 34-20, as state Sen. Bill Eigel takes 4% and a 42% plurality remain undecided. That's only a small shift from Ashcroft's 32-15 advantage in Remington's September survey, while Eigel remains similarly situated with 5%. Despite trailing in these polls, though, Kehoe ended 2023 with a large financial advantage over the frontrunner.
• CO-04: House Minority Leader Mike Lynch announced Wednesday that he was stepping down as head of the GOP caucus following two attempts to oust him earlier in the week.
"I would like this to serve as a message to my fellow members to be careful and not get behind the wheel when impaired," said Lynch, whose position deteriorated days after the Associated Press revealed that he'd been arrested in 2022 both on "suspicion of drunken driving and possessing a firearm while intoxicated," and that he's still serving prohibition after pleading guilty to a count of "driving while ability impaired."
But Lynch, who is competing in the busy June 25 primary to replace retiring GOP Rep. Ken Buck, wasn't so humble just two days prior. "The media were upset they didn't know about it a year and a half ago, so they took it to me," he told a conservative radio host Monday, describing the AP's report as a "hit job."
• FL-01: ABC's Will Steakin reports that the House Ethics Committee has "ramp[ed] up" its investigation into GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz, which it reopened in July, by speaking to new witnesses over the last several weeks. The committee initially deferred its inquiry after the Justice Department began its own 2021 investigation into Gaetz over alleged sex trafficking of a minor and other accusations, but that investigation ended in February without charges for the congressman.
Steakin says that, in addition to asking about "possible lobbying violations," the committee is contacting people involved in the DOJ's inquiry. Gaetz has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.
• NC-06: The Raleigh News & Observer's Under the Dome newsletter reports that the radical anti-tax Club for Growth has launched an opening $370,000 ad buy against former GOP Rep. Mark Walker, a development that comes the same week it endorsed his intra-party rival Bo Hines in the March 5 primary.
The spot begins by trashing Walker's failed 2022 Senate bid and abortive 2024 gubernatorial campaign, with the narrator continuing, "Now, Walker's begging for his old job. The job he didn't do." The ad goes after the former congressman for missing votes and then wanting to return to the House, then dismisses Walker as "a panhandler in pinstripes." It does not mention Hines or Donald Trump's endorsed candidate, lobbyist Addison McDowell.
• NE-01: State Sen. Carol Blood, who was the Democrats' nominee for governor in 2022, announced this week that she would take on GOP Rep. Mike Flood in a constituency that includes Lincoln and rural eastern Nebraska. Donald Trump carried the district 54-43, while analyst Drew Savicki says that Blood lost it 56-41 when she squared off against now-Gov. Jim Pillen in 2022.
Flood won this seat in a June 2022 special election by outpacing another Democratic member of Nebraska's unique unicameral legislature, Patty Pansing Brooks, by a surprisingly modest 53-47 margin. (Bizarrely, the special was held under the district lines drawn after the 2020 census even though the winner would fill out the remainder of the term that scandal-ridden Rep. Jeff Fortenberry had won under the old map.) Flood, though, won a rematch with Pansing Brooks by a convincing 58-42 spread that November.