OK-05: Democrats outnumber Republicans in primary.

FL-GOV: Gwen Graham warns that abortion will be illegal in Florida if another Republican wins.

UT-04: Mia Love Holds Slim Lead Over Salt Lake County Mayor

Rep. Mia Love had a slight edge on her Democratic opponent for Utah's 4th District seat, Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams, in a new poll.

Registered voters in the district favored Love, a Republican seeking her third term, by 6 percentage points over McAdams, 45 percent to 39 percent, according to the Salt Lake Tribune-Hinckley Institute of Politics poll released Wednesday. Eight percent said they preferred someone else — even though no one else is on the ballot in November — and 8 percent remained undecided.

The survey has a margin of error of 5 percentage points.

“Of the major races in the state, this continues to be the one that is the closest,” Jason Perry, director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah, told the Salt Lake Tribune.

The results of the survey confirm the internal numbers Love’s campaign has gathered, her campaign’s polling consultant, Scott Riding of Y2 Analytics, told the Tribune.

There has been little movement in head-to-head polls between McAdams and Love since they won their primaries.

“Voters are pretty busy now" with summer vacations and other personal business, Riding said. “Usually, undecided voters in the race start to tune in about Labor Day.”

If McAdams has any shot at unseating Love, history indicates he’ll need to do well among independents in the district.

Voters in the poll who are unaffiliated with either party favored McAdams over Love by nearly a 2-1 margin, 53 percent to 27 percent.

“The mayor has done a really good job of reaching across party lines to get things done. That resonates well with unaffiliated voters, and that’s why he leads by a 2-1 margin with that group,” Andrew Roberts, McAdams’ campaign manager, told the Tribune.



https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/poll-mia-love-holds-slim-lead-salt-lake-city-mayor

NJ-07: Malinowski Neck-and-Neck With Lance in Internal Poll

A new poll by New Jersey Democrat Tom Malinowski showed him narrowly leading five-term Republican Rep. Leonard Lance in the 7th District.

Malinowski, the former assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor, led the incumbent, 47 percent to 45 percent, in the survey obtained first by Roll Call. Seven percent of likely voters were undecided.

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research surveyed 500 likely general election voters from June 20-25. The margin of error was plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.

Asked about the longer-than-normal six days the poll was in the field, the campaign said it was "to ensure a representative sample."

Malinowski easily won the Democratic nod earlier this month to take on Lance in the only contested Garden State district that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016. Voters in the 7th backed Clinton by 1 point, while re-electing Lance by 11 points.

Malinowski ended the pre-primary reporting period with $782,000 in the bank to Lance’s $900,000.


https://www.rollcall.com/news/malinowski-neck-and-neck-with-lance-in-internal-poll-of-new-jerseys-7th-district

IL-GOV: Organized labor readies scorched-earth assault on Rauner

CHICAGO — The blockbuster Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court decision handed down Wednesday is already shaping Bruce Rauner’s legacy as Illinois governor. But it also threatens to end his political career.

From the time Rauner first announced he would pursue the 2015 case that could financially cripple public sector unions — he was ultimately removed as a plaintiff by a judge for lack of standing — organized labor here has been on high alert.

Now, in the wake of the high court ruling stemming from that policy, Illinois unions — public and private — are committed to doing whatever it takes to send Rauner packing in November. And they say they’re more unified and strategically coordinated than ever.

Unions already stepped up political fundraising efforts and in anticipation of an unfavorable ruling, worked to increase recruitment and lock down membership, which stands at more than 628,000 in the Illinois public sector alone.

But this week, they delivered a far more strategic blow: helping to secure the candidacy of a viable third party gubernatorial candidate who will challenge Rauner from the right in November.


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/story/2018/06/27/bruce-rauner-janus-supreme-court-680624

Mayor of a Pittsburgh suburb asked police to hose down protesters with water cannons

(CNN) A Pennsylvania mayor is apologizing for posting Facebook images urging police to "bring the hoses" against protesters and blast them with water cannons, evoking images of the civil rights era.

Karen Peconi is the mayor of Arnold, a suburb of Pittsburgh.

Her posts surfaced Monday with messages urging officers to hose down protesters, along with a historic 1963 image of water cannons being used against demonstrators in Alabama, according to CNN affiliate WTAE.

"I'm posting this so the authorities everywhere sees (sic) this ... bring the hoses," Peconi wrote, according to the affiliate. "They don't care about jobs for PGH ... none of them work now. That's how they can do this at 7 a.m. Very sad."

Protesters have taken to the streets for days to demand justice in last week's killing of unarmed African-American teen Antwon Rose by a white police officer in East Pittsburgh.



https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/06/28/us/pittsburgh-suburb-mayor-water-cannons-protesters-trnd/index.html

AZ-06: Ethics Committee to Investigate Schweikert and Chief Over Finances

The House Ethics Committee has established an investigative subcommittee to discover whether Rep. David Schweikert and his chief of staff, Oliver Schwab, violated multiple campaign finance and official congressional funds laws.

Committee members unanimously voted to continue the investigation, which Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe of Texas will lead.

Reps. Rodney Davis, an Illinois Republican, and Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, will round out the investigative subcommittee.

chweikert told Fox News reporter Chad Pergram that he asked the committee for the probe. Some monies were mislabeled he said.

“This was a clerical screw-up,” he told Pergram. “It’s my fault. Our fault. We should have caught it.”


https://www.rollcall.com/news/policy/ethics-committee-to-investigate-schweikert-and-chief-over-finances

Larry Sabato: A Half-Dozen House Ratings Changes in Favor of Democrats

CA-45 (Mimi Walters): Leans Republican to Tossup

NJ-03 (McArthur): Likely Republican to Leans Republican

VA-07 (Open): Leans Republican to Tossup

VA-10 (Comstock): Tossup to Leans Democratic

VA-02 (Taylor): Leans Republican to Tossup



http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/17816/

Flake Won't Block Supreme Court Pick

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) told the Arizona Republic that he would not try to strong-arm the Trump administration on tariffs — or other issues — by withholding his support from a Supreme Court nominee.

Said Flake: “My goal here is not to block judges. My goal is to get a vote on tariffs, and I have all the leverage I need with circuit court nominees… I have all the leverage I need. I certainly wasn’t anticipating a Supreme Court vacancy, but it’s unaffected.”


https://politicalwire.com/2018/06/28/flake-wont-block-supreme-court-pick/

Florida Democrats field candidates for nearly every state legislative seat

Twenty-seven of 142 state Legislature races on this November’s ballot are already over and Democrats won 21.

Those races began and ended at noon Friday when only one candidate filed the required paperwork to run in 25 of 120 House elections, and in two of 22 Senate races, before the state’s qualifying deadline expired.

The remaining 115 legislative seats up for grabs in August primaries and November’s general election will feature at least two major-party candidates; 95 are for House representative, and 20 are for Senate seats.

In addition, a record 20 gubernatorial candidates formally filed for governor – eight Republicans, seven Democrats, a Reform Party candidate and four with no party affiliation – while seven people announced their intent to run for state agriculture commissioner and five looking to succeed Attorney General Pam Bondi.

During the 2018 legislative session, the GOP had a 23-16 Senate advantage, with one seat vacant, and a 76-41 House majority, with three seats vacant.

House Republicans' 2018 election goal is to regain the 80-seat veto-override super majority it lost in 2016.

But they face obstacles: Only six of 50 GOP incumbents seeking re-election are running unopposed, compared to 29 in 2016; and, of 20 House lawmakers being “term-limited” from the chamber at year’s end, 17 are Republicans.

A Democratic effort to field candidates to challenge in elections statewide also appears to have paid dividends.

According to the Florida Democratic Party, there are Democrat candidates challenging for all 20 Senate, and more than 100 House, seats on the ballot, unlike 2016 when nine GOP senators and 29 House representatives were elected without Democratic opposition.

The state’s Division of Elections confirms the trend, noting that while one-fifth of the Legislature’s 2018 elections are uncontested, that is significantly less than 55 of 120 House races that were uncontested in 2016.

There will be women candidates for 82 of about 175 state elected positions on November’s ballot, the Division of Elections also reported.


https://www.watchdog.org/florida/democrats-candidate-surge-could-stress-republican-control-of-legislature/article_410ebbc2-7960-11e8-a7e4-e31c26965769.html