• WA-Gov: Sen. Patty Murray is the latest prominent Evergreen State Democrat to endorse Attorney General Bob Ferguson ahead of the Aug. 6 top-two primary. Ferguson already had the support of retiring Gov. Jay Inslee and Washington's other senator, Maria Cantwell.
• Louisiana: Republican Gov. Jeff Landry has signed a new bill to require partisan primary elections for elections for Congress, the state Supreme Court, the Public Service Commission, and the state's education board starting in 2026. Louisiana's unique all-party primary will still be used for most of the state's other races, including for the governorship and state legislature.
• NE-02: Businessman Dan Frei announced Tuesday that he would challenge Rep. Don Bacon, who represents a competitive House seat around Omaha, in Nebraska's May 14 Republican primary. Frei ran from the right against then-Rep. Lee Terry in the 2014 primary for a similar version of this seat and held the incumbent to a shockingly small 53-47 margin despite raising little money.
Some Republicans, writes the Nebraska Examiner, still blame Frei's campaign for Terry's subsequent loss to Democrat Brad Ashford in what was otherwise a great year for the GOP nationally. Bacon, who in turn unseated Ashford in 2016, faces a general election rematch against his 2022 foe, state Sen. Tony Vargas, so Democrats would love it if the incumbent were similarly weakened.
It would be difficult for Frei, however, to actually beat Bacon, especially since another candidate, Michael Connely, is also on the primary ballot. (Connely lives in the 3rd District, though House members aren't required to reside in the seat they want to represent.) And Bacon, who has a hostile relationship with Donald Trump, won renomination 77-23 last cycle against Steve Kuehl, an underfunded candidate who attracted attention late in the campaign after receiving a brief shoutout from Trump himself.
After bashing Bacon at a rally for failed gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster, Trump called out, "Good luck, Steve, whoever the hell you are." Most GOP voters, though, did not cast a ballot for "Steve, whoever the hell you are," and Bacon went on to narrowly beat Vargas 51-49 several months later.
• NJ-07: Former State Department official Jason Blazakis has publicized an internal poll from Public Policy Polling that shows him trailing Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. 41-33 in a hypothetical general election, while Working Families Party state director Sue Altman loses by a similar 43-35 spread. (Summit Councilman Greg Vartan, who is also competing in the June 4 Democratic primary, was not mentioned in the release.)
So why did Blazakis release these seemingly unfavorable numbers? As is typically the case with internal polls like these, the survey goes on to find both Blazakis and Altman, who begin with little name recognition, closing their respective deficits once voters hear positive information about them.
• OH-07: Former Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich has confirmed that he'll run as an independent against GOP Rep. Max Miller. Two Democrats, Doug Bugie and Matthew Diemer, are also seeking this suburban Cleveland constituency, which favored Donald Trump 54-45 in 2020.
• TX-26: Far-right media figure Brandon Gill picked up endorsements this week from Sen. Ted Cruz and several out-of-state hardliners, including Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and not-Speaker Jim Jordan of Ohio. Gill is the son-in-law of Dinesh D'Souza, the MAGA toady who is partially self-funding a pro-Gill super PAC called Right Texas.
Former Denton County Judge Scott Armey, meanwhile, has the support of two of the most prominent Texans from a very different political era: former Sen. Phil Gramm and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, who just happens to be his father. The Texas Tribune reports that the two men, who both retired ahead of the 2002 elections, will hold a fundraiser for the younger Armey. (There's no word if the theme will be "I love the early 2000s.")
Armey ran for a previous version of this safely red seat 22 years ago, but he lost the GOP runoff in an upset after his opponent, physician Michael Burgess, turned his connections to congressional insiders into a liability. (Burgess even sent out mailers accurately proclaiming, "My Dad is not Dick Armey.") Gill and Armey are competing in the busy March 5 primary to replace Burgess, who is now retiring.
• VA-07: 2022 Republican nominee Yesli Vega dispelled any talk she'd run again this year by instead endorsing Navy SEAL veteran Cameron Hamilton's campaign to replace Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who is retiring to prepare for next year's race for governor.
• PA-AG: The Pennsylvania Republican Party endorsed York County District Attorney Dave Sunday on Monday, prompting former Delaware County District Attorney Kat Copeland to end her campaign. But a third Republican, state Rep. Craig Williams, said he'd continue his bid against Sunday, whom he accused of running his office "like a progressive Democrat," through the April 23 primary.
Williams and Sunday, who already had the support of the Republican Attorneys General Association, are competing to replace appointed incumbent Michelle Henry, a Democrat who says she won't run for a full term. Five notable Democrats are facing off in a primary where, unlike on the GOP side, there's no obvious frontrunner. Pennsylvania Democrats gathered to hand out endorsements in key races last month, but none of the candidates for attorney general secured the two-thirds support necessary to earn official party backing.