elections

South Carolina Democrat Archie Parnell physically abused his former wife in the 1970s, according to court documents unearthed by his campaign and obtained by The (Charleston) Post and Courier.

Parnell’s campaign manager and his finance manager have quit, according to a source close to the campaign.

Former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, who finished third in the West Virginia Republican Senate primary, plans to run for West Virginia Senate as a third-party candidate.

Blankenship announced on Monday he’d run as the Constitution Party nominee, Politico reported. He said he’s willing to challenge the state’s “sore loser” law that would prohibit him from running in the general election since he already lost a major party’s nomination.  

Disgraced former Rep. Blake Farenthold’s new employer is seeking the opinion of Texas’ attorney general about the legality of his hiring.

The Calhoun Port Authority is asking whether Farenthold’s hiring violated the Texas Open Meetings Act, the Victoria Advocate reported.

Georgia’s 6th District was in the news nonstop this time last year when the special election to fill former Republican Rep. Tom Price’s seat became the most expensive House race in history.

GOP nominee Karen Handel, the former Georgia secretary of state, ended up defeating big-spending Democrat Jon Ossoff by 4 points (with plenty of help from outside Republican groups). She is now running for her first full term.

Despite forecasts of a blue tsunami, it’s still not guaranteed that Democrats will win back the House majority. But the playing field of competitive House races is expanding and shifting to almost exclusively Republican territory.

After the latest round of changes, Inside Elections now has 68 Republican seats rated as vulnerable compared to just 10 vulnerable Democratic seats. And there are at least a couple dozen more GOP-held seats that could develop into competitive races in the months ahead.

Former FBI Director James Comey is a “proven liar” and Attorney General Jeff Sessions “didn’t step up” to shut down an “unjustifiable investigation.” Those were just two of the claims made Friday by Rudy Giuliani, one of President Donald Trump’s lawyers, as he continued an escalating effort to erode the legitimacy of the Justice Department’s Russia probe.

As Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his team continue their probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, possible coordination with the Trump-Pence campaign, and whether the president obstructed justice, Giuliani — joined by Trump and others — are executing a strategy intended to raise doubts about the necessity of the investigation, whether Mueller and the FBI are out to get Trump, and the special counsel’s tactics.

Even a casual observer of politics has probably heard of Amy McGrath. 

The retired Marine fighter pilot made a splash last year with an introductory video about the letters she wrote to members of Congress asking them to change the law so that women could fly in combat.

Rep. Dan Donovan, widely seen as the moderate in the primary against his predecessor, Michael Grimm, used his first television ad of the campaign to position himself as an ally in the House to President Donald Trump.

“I am working with Donald Trump to deport dangerous illegal aliens, build the wall, and end sanctuary cities,” Donovan, a New York Republican serving his first full term, says in the ad hitting the airwaves this week, Spectrum News 1 in New York reported.

The Republican primaries in Virginia have become a haven for schoolyard bully tactics as candidates unleash personal attacks on each other in ways and to a degree seldom seen in American politics.

One candidate blazing that trail is Senate hopeful and President Donald Trump’s former state campaign chairman Corey Stewart.

The family feud to replace former Rep. John Conyers Jr. took another turn Wednesday when the Michigan Democrat’s son failed to qualify for the ballot.

The Wayne County Clerk’s elections staff said John Conyers III, the former congressman’s son, was ineligible because he fell short of the number of valid signatures on his application to run, the Detroit News reported.