Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* While the Democratic candidate in North Carolina’s state Supreme Court race appears to have narrowly won her race, the court’s current Republican justices issued an order blocking state officials from certifying the election results. The Democrat’s GOP rival is still trying to throw out 60,000 votes cast in November, which would presumably tip the scales in his favor.
* As President Joe Biden prepares to exit the White House, the retiring Democrat told USA Today that he still believes he would’ve won re-election if he’d stayed in the 2024 race.
* In California, former Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee, whose U.S. Senate bid fell short last year, has officially kicked off her bid to become Oakland’s next mayor.
* At his latest Mar-a-Lago news conference, Donald Trump claimed that “nobody even knows” the margin of his popular-vote victory. As it turns out, everyone knows: The Republican won by roughly 1.3 million votes, which works out to be roughly 1.5% of the overall total.
* Former Ohio Health Director Amy Acton, who gained public attention in 2020 informing the public about the Covid pandemic, kicked off a gubernatorial campaign this week. The physician and public health expert is running as a Democrat in the increasingly red state.
* Despite the recent findings of the House Ethics Committee, former Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz told The Tampa Bay Times that he’s “starting to think about” running for governor of Florida in 2026.
* In Georgia, as recently as two years ago, Geoff Duncan was the state’s Republican lieutenant governor. Now, the Georgia GOP’s State Executive Committee has approved a resolution that expelled Duncan from the Georgia Republican Party. The move comes on heels of the former lieutenant governor endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris’ Democratic presidential campaign.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com