Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.

* In case Republicans weren’t already worried about South Carolina’s U.S. Senate race, Annie Andrews, the Democratic nominee, has received endorsements from two former South Carolina governors — including one Republican.

Two former Governors of South Carolina – one from each party – have endorsed Democrat Annie Andrews who is running against Sen. Darline Graham R-SC

— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree.bsky.social) 2026-10-26T17:57:34.529Z

With a week remaining before Election Day, former Republican Gov. David Beasley and former Democratic Gov. Jim Hodges star in a video endorsement in which they throw their support behind the pediatrician taking on appointed incumbent Sen. Darline Graham.

Beasley, a former chair of the Republican Governors Association, said in the ad that “Annie understands that leadership isn’t about making people angrier. Well, it’s about making things better.”

* As MS NOW reported, election officials in Alaska filed a motion Monday night asking a federal judge to “immediately” dismiss the lawsuit brought by the Justice Department that seeks to block the results of the state’s U.S. Senate race should incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan lose, claiming it has “no legal basis.”

On a related note, while the DOJ case is predicated on the idea that voters will be confused by the appearance of two Dan Sullivans on the same ballot — despite the fact that the same ballot clearly identifies one of them as the “Republican incumbent” — it’s worth noting that there were also two Dan Sullivans on Alaska’s ballot in 2014, and the state’s electorate managed just fine.

* In Maine’s U.S. Senate race, the latest Marist poll found Democrat Troy Jackson with a narrow advantage over incumbent Republican Susan Collins, 49% to 47%.

* A relatively new super PAC called Building the Future, which represents the data center industry, initially launched an ad hoping to boost Graham in South Carolina, and now it’s spending more than $1.5 million in support of Republican Ty Masterson’s gubernatorial candidacy in Kansas.

* Donald Trump headlined a rally in Mississippi on Monday night, where the president said, “I’m here because Cindy is doing great,” referring to Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. Of course, that didn’t make a lot of sense: If the incumbent were “doing great,” there’s no reason Trump would have traveled to Mississippi to help her campaign.

* In Pennsylvania’s four most competitive U.S. House races, the latest polling from The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena University found Democrats with modest leads in three of the contests. The fourth race is Republican Rep. Scott Perry’s rematch against Janelle Stelson, a Democrat and former news broadcaster, and the poll found them tied at 48% each.

* And in one of Iowa’s most competitive congressional districts, the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with the House Republican leadership, is airing an attack ad alleging that Democratic nominee Sarah Trone Garriott is “dangerous” when it comes to children. What the ad neglects to mention is that the critic who makes the claim previously pleaded guilty to charges related to child endangerment.

The post Tuesday’s Campaign Round-Up, 10.27.26: Annie Andrews picks up key GOP endorsement appeared first on MS NOW.

To a degree without modern precedent, White House Cabinet secretaries have spent recent months on the campaign trail, serving as pieces on an electoral chessboard to be moved around to the benefit of the Republican Party — despite ethics laws that are supposed to keep some distance between these powerful officials and partisan political activities.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. isn’t the only offender in the Trump administration, although he has arguably been the most ambitious, making all kinds of appearances with vulnerable GOP incumbents and even trying to orchestrate partisan strategies to give Republican lawmakers a boost.

To that end, Kennedy appeared at a partisan campaign event in Michigan on Monday, against a backdrop of several key contests up and down the ballot, most notably a highly competitive U.S. Senate race that may very well determine which party controls the chamber in the next Congress.

That Kennedy was critical of the Democratic nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, wasn’t too surprising, since this was one of the principal reasons the event was organized. What was notable, however, was how Kennedy targeted the Senate hopeful.

After briefly claiming to have some expertise about the Muslim Brotherhood — the conspiratorial secretary is an environmental lawyer by trade and has no meaningful background in studying transnational religious organizations — Kennedy shared his perspective on “Arab Muslims.”

RFK: "There's five hundred million Arabs in the world. And yet they don't produce science. They don't win the Nobel Prize. They don't win the Fields Prize. They don't win the Wolf Prize. They don't produce literature."

— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) 2026-10-27T00:55:48.501Z

“There’s 500 million Arabs in the world,” he declared. “And yet they don’t produce science. They don’t win the Nobel Prize. They don’t win the Fields Prize. They don’t win the Wolf Prize. They don’t produce literature.”

In context, I think the point Kennedy was trying to make had something to do with criticizing the Muslim Brotherhood, which is itself a pointless observation, since El-Sayed has already denounced the organization and denied any ties to it. But instead of focusing on one group, the health secretary ended up trashing the accomplishments of a half-billion people.

For the record, whether the anti-science activist understands this or not, his criticisms were plainly inaccurate: Plenty of Arab Muslims have received those honors, and plenty of Arab Muslim authors have published works of literature. (In fact, Muslim authors such as Abdulrazak Gurnah and Naguib Mahfouz have won the Nobel Prize in literature.)

What’s more, as Kennedy ought to know, the United States is currently at war in the Middle East, and there are U.S. troops stationed in allied nations in the region. For a White House Cabinet secretary to declare that Arab Muslims are somehow inferior in the fields of science and literature isn’t wrong, it’s wrong on a geopolitical scale.

But there’s also the broader electoral context. As Donald Trump leans into Islamophobic rhetoric in the midterm cycle’s closing days, and the closing message of the president’s party relies heavily on overt and unapologetic bigotry, Kennedy traveled to the state with the largest percentage of Muslims to question the contributions of 500 million people.

Many Muslim voters also took an enormous risk two years ago, moving toward the Republican Party. Now, as many of those same voters feel used and betrayed by the party, if GOP officials are counting on them to remain a part of the Republican coalition, they’re likely to be disappointed.

The post RFK Jr., on the campaign trail in Michigan, trashes the accomplishments of ‘Arab Muslims’ appeared first on MS NOW.

When Barack Obama returned to the campaign trail in Michigan over the weekend, the former Democratic president took aim at his Republican successor on a variety of fronts, but he seemed especially interested in mocking Donald Trump’s misplaced priorities.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he seems very focused on home renovations. He should be on HGTV,” Obama said. “The guy’s building a ballroom that’s bigger than the White House. He’s paved over the Rose Garden, put a helicopter pad on the South Lawn.

“And there’s gold everywhere. What’s up with the gold? He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. Just gold everywhere.”

“He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened up a Cheesecake Factory” — Obama

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-10-24T19:12:37.597Z

The comments drew hearty laughter, probably because Obama was right: Trump really is fixated more on remodeling, renovations and interior design than on his weighty responsibilities. That preference has gone poorly, because Trump’s presidency is failing and because the Republican’s gaudy taste has turned the Oval Office into a showcase for gold curios.

If the incumbent president were capable of thinking strategically, he would have taken this opportunity to push a constructive message that reflected the concerns of the American mainstream and proved Obama wrong. Trump instead spent Monday doing the opposite.

Before departing for Mississippi, for example, the Republican held a seven-minute Q&A with members of the White House press corps, and he spent more than half of it whining in response to Obama’s ridicule.

Soon after, the president headlined a rally in support of struggling GOP Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, where he spent another six minutes whining in response to the joke.

The pushback was itself foolish. To hear Trump tell it, Obama is “a stupid person” and “a lousy president” who “doesn’t like” companies like the Cheesecake Factory. The Republican also said he had spent “peanuts” on White House renovations, which seemed like an odd way to characterize roughly $1 billion in investments.

Just as notably, Trump wants Americans to know he’s worked tirelessly with the world’s “finest artisans” to overhaul the presidential mansion and make it “beautiful.” (He didn’t comment on Obama’s reference to Saddam Hussein, about whom Trump has said positive things in the recent past.)

So as Obama poked fun at his successor’s fixation on vanity projects and his failure to focus on what really matters, triggered Trump thought it would be good to fixate on his renovations in the most vainglorious way — and to prove Obama right.

The post Triggered by Cheesecake Factory joke, Trump inadvertently helps prove Obama’s point appeared first on MS NOW.

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Everything is bigger in Texas, and with a week to go until Election Day here, that holds true both for the amount of money being spent in the campaigns and for the political capital at stake for President Donald Trump.

The president made his third visit in the past month to the Lone Star State Tuesday with his endorsement power on the line. In the state’s primary, he helped oust incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn in favor of embattled state Attorney General Ken Paxton.

More than $1 billion in overall ad spending by both parties has already poured into Texas, and the critical race between Paxton and Democrat James Talarico, where well over half of that money has gone, is on track to become the most expensive Senate contest in U.S. history.

According to the latest polling average from MS NOW/FiftyPlusOne, Talarico has a slight edge over Paxton, 49.2% to 46.5%.

Trump’s trip back to Texas to stump for Paxton and other Republicans is another stop on his red state tour to turn out his base in the campaign’s closing days, with control of the House and Senate at stake.

On Tuesday he sought to energize those supporters, particularly young men, with two former college football stars beloved in the state, Johnny Manziel and Colt McCoy, along with two-time Super Bowl champion Danny Amendola, who joined him in Texas, according to a White House official. Axios was first to report the former football players joining Trump on the trail.

Trump made two stops, rallying first in the southern coast city of Corpus Christi followed by a visit to Lubbock in deeply conservative West Texas. Corpus Christi is located in Texas’ 34th Congressional District, which is one of a handful across the country that voted for Trump in the 2024 presidential election but elected a Democrat to the House.

At his first stop in Corpus Christi, Trump spent a considerable amount of time touting the acquisition of one million barrels of oil from Venezuela, calling it the “greatest oil victory in history.” He also doubled down on his proposal to make Venezuela the 51st state, saying that instead of voting for a president, “we’ll have an election for a governor” in Venezuela.

In a rare cameo, Secretary of State Marco Rubio took the stage briefly mid-speech as Trump repeated that he was going to “drop him off in Cuba.” The crowd chanted Rubio’s name as he was introduced by the president.

Paxton also spoke at the podium during pre-program and briefly joined Trump onstage during the president’s remarks.

A GOP strategist knowledgeable about Republicans’ thinking in the midterms who was given anonymity to talk freely about party strategy told MS NOW that the district is “one of the best offensive opportunities for us in the entire country in the House.” The competitiveness is evident in ad spending here: Republicans’ efforts to flip Democratic incumbent Vincent Gonzalez’ seat and Democrats’ attempts to defend it make it the most expensive House race in the state, according to data from ad tracking firm AdImpact.

As Trump travels from the southern coast to Lubbock, he’ll have company: Talarico is set to hold a community rally in town, just a few miles from where the president will be at about the same time.

“Lubbock is a chance for us to juice turnout in a red area,” the GOP strategist said, adding that bringing out “hardcore Trump supporters” from some of the reddest parts of red states to boost Republican votes in statewide elections has been a “theme” of many of Trump’s other rallies in the final stretch of the midterms.

“Texas is a state where the more people turn out, Dems don’t have the path to victory,” the strategist explained.

But as Trump urges his supporters to pretend he’s on the ballot in November, it remains to be seen whether his support will translate to a win for Paxton.

Paxton does have a clear financial advantage. It’s not from his own campaign fundraising, however, but instead from outside super PAC money that has poured in. Almost $560 million has been spent on advertisements in the Senate race, according to AdImpact, with Republicans’ spending making up nearly $400 million of that total.

One of Paxton’s biggest backers is SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Last month he dropped an eye-popping $158 million into a Senate GOP leadership-linked super PAC, to be directed to another group focused on boosting Paxton, making Musk the single biggest known GOP donor at the federal level this election cycle. That was after he gave $10 million to support Paxton in August.

Nour Longi contributed to this story.

The post Trump returns to Texas, turning to former football stars to motivate GOP base appeared first on MS NOW.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been giving troops a day off to vote, but those votes may not help Republicans as much as Hegseth would like.

The secretary is urging service members to cast their ballots as he ramps up efforts to turn out the vote ahead of November’s midterm elections.

But historically low voter turnout among active-duty military members and frustrations over the war with Iran may put a damper on Hegseth’s hopes for how the military will vote —- if its members vote at all.

Earlier this month, Hegseth ordered a one-day “stand down” to all commanders to give their troops a day to vote in the U.S. elections.

“Every warrior deserves an opportunity to cast his or her ballot and be confident that it will be counted. Keep our nation the land of the free and the home of the brave,” Hegseth said in a video on X. “Get registered and vote.”

Hegseth did not direct troops how to vote as he urged them to cast their ballots.

Military voters have largely been characterized as a constituency highly favorable to Republicans, but that isn’t necessarily the case, given how few service members actually cast ballots.

“Would he [Hegseth] do this if he thought that it was just about soldiers getting to vote and if he didn’t have some idea of which way they might go?” asked Jason Dempsey, an Army veteran and professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University who specializes in military demographics and civil-military relations. “He’s just not somebody who respects the normal processes and the independence of the military,” Dempsey said.

Support for Republicans might be lower than Hegseth hopes when low turnout combined with slim margins are taken into consideration.

“The key with the military is always, they come from the American public and so they bring the predispositions and proclivities towards politics that their fellow citizens do,” said Dempsey.

Dempsey says that demographics like race and gender are much more likely to influence a servicemember’s vote more than the fact that they are in the military, but he notes that senior officers have historically leaned toward voting Republican. Almost 20% of the military is Black, much higher than the American general population, and Dempsey notes that these servicemembers have been more likely to vote Democratic in the past.

This November’s elections come as service members are also raising a growing list of concerns about Hegseth’s and Trump’s leadership and directives, including the rise of Christian nationalism within the Pentagon, Trump’s use of the National Guard in cities across the U.S. and possibly illegal orders in military campaigns.

And as Trump and Hegseth continue to send troops to the Middle East on record-breaking deployments, the administration’s policies could become a motivating force for troops who might otherwise sit out the election.

“They want to follow leaders, and they want to do what they’re told, and they’re strong believers in defense and will go on deployments, but they just don’t believe that the leaders know what they’re doing,” said retired Navy Capt. Donald Inbody, author of “The Soldier Vote,” a history of how American service members gained the right to vote while serving away from home.

In March, the organization Blue Star Families reached out to about 200 military families and found that 81% reported elevated stress from the Middle East conflict, with 43% reporting “a great deal of stress,” driven by safety concerns, deployment changes and fear of escalation.

Hegseth’s stand-down day is another way to address a persistent challenge: getting troops to vote.

The nation’s 1.3 million active-duty military members have historically turned out to vote in lower numbers than civilians. Forty-three percent of active-duty service members cast a ballot in the 2024 general election, according to a report published by the Federal Voting Assistance Program. That’s compared with the 65% of all U.S. citizens who voted in 2024, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Plus, military service compounds a youth turnout problem.

Of about 1.32 million active-component members, 36.8% were under age 25, 60.3% were under 30, and 76.7% were under 35, according to Defense Health Agency data. Troops start from the baseline of young voters, a demographic with already low turnout.

The logistical challenges of casting an absentee ballot then push participation below what age alone would predict.

Experts say the timing of Hegseth’s stand-down directive leaves little time for service members to obtain, fill out and return their ballot in time for it to be counted.

Inbody said that service members needed to plan in advance to have their vote counted. Service members who didn’t request a ballot until the October stand-down face a tight round-trip by mail.

The Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act, which was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2009, requires states to send requested ballots for military and overseas voters by Sept. 19 — which was 45 days before the Nov. 3 election, Inbody said.

“You basically have to plan really far in advance to not only receive the ballot, but then also mail it in time to get it back,” Inbody said.

“The absentee ballot will probably get to them within a week. Then they need to fill the ballot out and get it back, and assume that maybe it takes two weeks for it to get back. So there, you’ve eaten up three weeks of your 45 days.”

The post Hegseth gave troops a day off to vote, but those votes may not break the way he hopes appeared first on MS NOW.