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

* With three weeks remaining before Election Day, Republican officials are having to make tough decisions about which congressional races to abandon, in order to direct finite resources to contests where GOP candidates may still prevail. With this in mind, The New York Times reported that Republicans have now “essentially ceded three House districts the party currently holds.”

According to the report, the top Republican super PACs aligned with President Donald Trump and congressional Republican leadership are ending investments in support of two GOP incumbents — Republican Reps. Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey and Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa — because the party now believes they are likely to lose.

The third race the Times’ report refers to is the open-seat contest in Omaha, Nebraska, which is currently held by retiring Republican Rep. Don Bacon.

Just as notably, the same GOP entities were also spending money in the hopes of defeating two Democratic incumbents — Reps. Greg Landsman of Ohio and Kristen McDonald Rivet of Michigan — but the party is giving up on those contests too.

* In Georgia’s closely watched gubernatorial race, there was a debate on Monday night for the major-party nominees, but Republican nominee Rick Jackson decided not to show up for it. Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Democratic nominee, said of her opponent, “He’d rather hide behind his billions than explain to you his record of making billions off the taxpayers of Georgia.”

* In Montana’s U.S. Senate race, Shannon O’Brien resigned as chair of the Montana Democratic Party this week and threw her support behind independent candidate Seth Bodnar. For her part, Democratic nominee Alani Bankhead refuses to end her candidacy, even if it helps Republican Kurt Alme.

* In Maine’s closely watched U.S. Senate race, a Republican super PAC accidentally ran an attack ad for four days in Portland, Oregon, instead of Portland, Maine.

* In Ohio, Donald Trump held a rally in support of his party’s candidates on Monday night, which included some odd praise for Republican Sen. Jon Husted’s physique. “I don’t do this with men very often,” the president said. “I started examining his body, because I didn’t know he was a great athlete. And I looked and I watched up and down. I looked at his ass, and I looked at the whole, and then I looked at his hands.”

In related news, a super PAC tied to a Republican firm is sending out mailers on behalf of a socialist Senate candidate, as part of an apparent effort to divide the left and undermine support for former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown.

* And to the extent that anyone might have been inclined to believe far-right conspiracy theories about Democratic state Rep. James Talarico’s recent bout with the flu, the nonsense about the Texan has been thoroughly and definitively discredited.

The post Tuesday’s Campaign Round-Up, 10.13.26: Kean Jr. among those losing GOP financial backing appeared first on MS NOW.

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