• MI-Sen: Americans for Prosperity tells the New York Post that it will spend $1.7 million on ads this month to aid former Rep. Mike Rogers, who is the favorite to win next week's Republican primary.
• DE-Gov: Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long’s team announced Wednesday that it was taking on a new campaign manager and parting ways with two senior staffers six weeks ahead of the Sept. 10 Democratic primary for governor, a move that comes after several bad days for the candidate.
State election officials last week released a report that concluded that Hall-Long violated state campaign finance law by failing to disclose nearly $300,000 that her campaign paid to her husband over the past several years to repay what they claimed were personal loans to the campaign. The news has led to several unwelcome headlines for Hall-Long, including a Delaware News Journal story titled, "Hall-Long plagued by calls to drop out."
What little polling there is has shown New Castle County Castle Executive Matt Meyer to be Hall-Long’s main primary rival, but supporters of a third candidate are hoping to change that. The National Resources Defense Council announced this week that it and allied groups were deploying $500,000 to support National Wildlife Federation leader Collin O'Mara. This effort includes an ad where several animals tout O'Mara as an environmental champion who has "stood up to big polluters to support pals like us."
• MI-08: Retiring Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee this week called out businessman Matt Collier for running a commercial ahead of next week's Democratic primary that involves the memory of Kildee's late uncle and immediate predecessor―a man the younger Kildee says that Collier once considered challenging as a Republican.
Collier, explains the Detroit News' Melissa Nann Burke, worked for then-Rep. Dale Kildee in the years before he won his sole term as mayor of Flint in 1987. Collier's spot features a photo of the two together as the on-screen text highlights how the candidate "served as Congressman Dale Kildee's District Director."
Dan Kildee, though, says that they weren't so friendly after Collier lost reelection in 1993. "I can't speak for my Uncle Dale," the congressman tells Burke, "But I know he was personally pretty decently disappointed and hurt when Matt made some indication back in the '90s that he was considering running against Dale as a Republican, given that Dale gave him this incredible opportunity to be his district director that put him in a position to run for mayor." Kildee, who led his uncle's campaigns back then, adds that he remembers a Flint Journal story from 1996 about Collier's interest in running.
Collier, who did not campaign as a Republican in 1996 or any other year, is the underdog in next week's Democratic primary for Michigan's 8th District, which is one of the most competitive House seats in the nation. The frontrunner is state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet, who has the support of Kildee, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and the DCCC. State Board of Education President Pamela Pugh is also on the ballot next week.
• NH-02: EMILYs List has publicized a mid-July internal poll from GQR that shows its endorsed candidate, former Biden administration official Maggie Goodlander, leading former Executive Councilor Colin Van Ostern 43-27 in the Sept. 10 Democratic primary. The last poll we saw in the race to succeed retiring Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster was a Public Policy Polling survey conducted around that same time for another pro-Goodlander group, Principled Veterans Fund, and it showed her winning 35-13.
Van Ostern's campaign, meanwhile, has highlighted that it only began running TV ads shortly after these polls were conducted, while Goodlander and her allies were on the air during the preceding weeks.
