• UT-Gov, UT-Sen: Noble Predictive Insights, a firm that sometimes conducts polls for conservative clients, gives Gov. Spencer Cox a 55-42 lead over far-right state Rep. Phil Lyman in Tuesday's GOP primary, a double-digit advantage that's still considerably closer than what the few other public polls have found. A mid-April survey from NPI found Cox demolishing his opponent 51-4, while an early June poll from HarrisX had the governor ahead 62-25.
The Senate portion of NPI's newest poll is less surprising, and it finds Rep. John Curtis outpacing Riverton Mayor Trent Staggs 48-28 in the GOP primary to succeed retiring incumbent Mitt Romney; HarrisX gave Curtis a similar 34-16 advantage earlier this month.
Staggs, who has Donald Trump's endorsement, has argued that it's time to "replace Joe Biden’s favorite Republican with Donald Trump’s favorite Republican in Utah," but as we detail in our primary preview, major donors are dedicating relatively little money to make this happen.
• MO-Gov, MO-AG: A pair of surveys from the GOP firm Remington Research Group conducted for different clients during opposite ends of June each find Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft with only a single-digit advantage in the Aug. 6 GOP primary for governor of Missouri, a contest where RRG previously showed Ashcroft as the clear frontrunner.
RRG's survey from June 5-6 for Will Scharf, a Trump lawyer who is running for attorney general, gives Ashcroft a 29-21 lead against Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, with state Sen. Bill Eigel taking another 8%. (We discuss Scharf's race later in this item.) The firm's June 19-20 poll for the local tip-sheet Missouri Scout, by contrast, gives Ashcroft just a slender 31-29 edge over the lieutenant governor, with Eigel similarly situated with 9%.
The secretary of state has spent the primary looking like a strong contender to claim the office that his father, John Ashcroft, held before he served in the U.S. Senate and as George W. Bush's first attorney general, but Kehoe has constantly enjoyed one key advantage. Kehoe and his joint fundraising committee have brought in by far the most cash in the GOP primary to replace termed-out incumbent Mike Parson.
Kehoe's side got still more help recently when conservative megadonor Rex Sinquefield invested another $1 million into his allied PAC. (Sinquefield, as a 2014 Politico profile detailed, is devoted to advancing three "idiosyncratic passions: promoting chess, dismantling the traditional public school system and eliminating income taxes.") Updated reports are due July 15, and they'll tell us if Ashcroft remains well behind financially as he tries to defend his longheld frontrunner status.
Both of RRG's new polls, by contrast, show Scharf with a single-digit deficit in the GOP primary against his fellow hardliner, appointed Attorney General Andrew Bailey, with a huge portion of uncommitted voters. The earlier poll for Scharf, which Politico first publicized on Monday, puts the incumbent in the lead 24-18, while the more recent numbers for the Missouri Scout have Bailey up 27-23. The polls respectively find 58% and 50% undecided.
An early June WPA Intelligence poll for the pro-Scharf Club for Growth had the attorney general ahead by a much larger 37-17 spread, though the Club argued that, with the right attacks, the challenger's well-funded allies could change the trajectory of the contest.
Scharf's side, as we recently wrote, has a massive cash edge thanks in large part to powerful national conservative Leonard Leo and his network. But while Bailey has Sinquefield and some other well-heeled allies in his corner, the $250,000 that the Sinquefield Cup's namesake recently contributed to his allied PAC is dwarfed by what Scharf's backers have at their disposal.
• MO-01: Rep. Cori Bush is using one of her first TV ads for the Aug. 6 Democratic primary to try to make AIPAC's heavy spending for St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell into a liability for him. "Donald Trump and [Sen.] Josh Hawley's donors are bankrolling Wesley Bell," declares Bush's narrator. "These ads are paid for by Republican billionaires attacking our congresswoman and our home."
Bush's ally, New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman, has been trying the same argument ahead of his renomination battle on Tuesday, and we're about to get a good read on how effective this line of attack is.
• WA-03: The Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, working on behalf of the Northwest Progressive Institute, shows far-right Republican Joe Kent edging out freshman Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez 46-45 in a potential general election rematch. The sample favors Donald Trump 50-45, which is similar to his 51-47 victory here four years ago.
The release for this poll, which is the first we've seen here, did not include numbers testing another Republican, Camas City Councilmember Leslie Lewallen, in either an Aug. 6 top-two primary or a hypothetical general election against the incumbent. Lewallen, though, is still hoping that bad memories of Kent's 2022 loss to Gluesenkamp Perez—a 50.1-49.3 upset that helped Democrats win every House seat that touches the Pacific Ocean—will convince voters to give her a look.
Lewallen uses her new TV ad to argue that Gluesenkamp Perez, who is one of the most prominent centrists in the Democratic caucus, is bringing "chaos" to southwest Washington, but "Joe Kent can't stop her." Lewallen continues of her intra-party rival, "He had his chance, he lost. I can, and I will."