• PA-Sen: Politico's Ally Mutnick reports that the conservative Senate Leadership Fund has reserved $24 million for TV, digital, and radio commercials to support Republican Dave McCormick's bid against Democratic incumbent Bob Casey. The month-long ad campaign is set to begin Sept. 3.
• TX-Sen: UT Tyler finds Republican Sen. Ted Cruz posting a small 45-42 lead over Democrat Colin Allred, with Libertarian Ted Brown claiming another 5%. The sample favors Donald Trump 48-43 against President Joe Biden in a two-way match, and by a comparable 47-41 spread when other candidates are included.
While Democrats would love to take down Cruz, we don't have much data to indicate if he's vulnerable. The only other poll that's been released here over the last two months was an early June YouGov poll for UT Texas' flagship campus in Austin, and it showed Cruz defeating Allred 45-34.
However, there's one key difference between those two surveys. While UT Tyler identified each of the candidate's party affiliations for respondents, YouGov simply asked who they'd vote for between "Ted Cruz and Colin Allred." While omitting this information may seem like a small matter, many voters make decisions about which candidates to support based on their partisan affiliation.
As we've long written at Daily Kos Elections, pollsters should identify candidates to respondents by the party they’ll be identified with on the ballot as UT Tyler did. When a pollster doesn't include this, they're leaving out important information and failing to accurately mimic the way voters will make their choices when they actually cast their ballots.
Still, while Democrats are hoping this new poll is on target and Cruz is vulnerable in this longtime GOP stronghold, both national parties are still behaving like the key Senate battlegrounds are elsewhere. While major outside groups have spent or reserved millions to defend or flip Democratic-held seats, we have yet to see any such activity in Texas.
• NJ-Gov: Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer finally confirmed his interest in running for governor next year in separate interviews with Punchbowl News and the New Jersey Globe, though not everyone thinks he's just "thinking about it." Politico's Matt Friedman wrote earlier this month that Gottheimer and fellow Rep. Mikie Sherrill will each announce they're in after they're reelected in November even though they're already "all-but-running."
• Rhode Island: Candidate filing closed Wednesday for Rhode Island's Sept. 10 primary, but there won't be much action in any of the Ocean State's congressional races this year. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and his fellow Democrats, Reps. Gabe Amo and Seth Magaziner, each have nothing to worry about in their respective primaries, and Republicans aren't fielding serious opponents against any of them.
However, while anyone who wanted to run in the September primary had to file this week, they're still not assured a place on the ballot. The state requires candidates to turn in signatures by July 12: U.S. Senate hopefuls must collect at least 1,000 valid signatures, while candidates for the lower chamber need half that amount.
There are now only two states left where major party candidates can file for office this cycle: Delaware, which closes on July 9, and Louisiana, where qualifying concludes 10 days later.
• WA-03: Election conspiracy theorist Joe Kent has publicized an internal poll from Cygnal that shows the Republican tied 42-42 against Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in a general election rematch, though the memo did not include 2024 presidential numbers.
Kent unveiled these numbers shortly after the Northwest Progressive Institute released its own survey from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling that placed Kent ahead 46-45. PPP also found Donald Trump prevailing 50-45 in the 3rd District four years after he carried this southwestern Washington constituency by a similar 51-47 spread.
Kent still needs to get past Camas City Councilmember Leslie Lewallen, who is arguing she's the more electable Republican, in the Aug. 6 top-two primary, but Cygnal argues this won't be a problem. The internal shows Gluesenkamp Perez in first with 38% as Kent beats out Lewallen 34-6 for the second general election spot. This is the first poll we've seen of the top-two contest.
• MO-AG: Appointed Attorney General Andrew Bailey's backers at Liberty and Justice PAC have publicized an internal from Public Opinion Strategies that shows him fending off Trump attorney Will Scharf 52-19 in the expensive and ugly Aug. 6 GOP primary.
This release came shortly after Scharf's backers at the hardline Club for Growth showcased their own survey giving Bailey a 37-17 advantage that pollster WPA Intelligence argued could be overcome by launching certain attacks on the incumbent. That pitch seems to have worked because the Missouri Independent's Jason Hancock reports that the Concord Fund, which is part of Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo's powerful conservative network, has contributed another $2 million to the Club's Missouri affiliate to help Scharf.
Scharf, for his part, also agrees he's behind, though not by as much as these two polls show. An early June Remington Research Group poll placed Bailey ahead 24-18; a more recent RRG survey for a different client, the political tipsheet Missouri Scout, gave the attorney general a comparable 27-23 advantage.
While Liberty and Justice PAC, which is the main pro-Bailey PAC, has considerably less money available than its rivals at the Club, it still has enough to air ads attacking Scharf over his 2007 arrest for serving alcohol to underage college students. The narrator declares that, while Bailey was leading troops in Iraq, Scharf was charged that same day at Princeton University. The ad continues, "Andrew Bailey served his country with honor. Will Scharf threatened to sue the police who charged him."
The St. Louis Post Dispatch's Kurt Erickson, who first reported the story, says that the charges against Scharf were dropped several months later and no lawsuit was filed. The candidate himself argues, "I did absolutely nothing wrong and these municipal tickets were dismissed unconditionally as soon as they made it inside the courtroom."