elections

NORFOLK, Va. — At a recent town hall here in Virginia’s second most populous city, Rep. Robert C. Scott patiently took questions from more than two dozen residents waiting in line. The queue stretched to the very back of a high school auditorium with some standing for the entire portion of the two-hour public meeting.

Absent was the rancor that has dominated town halls across the country this year — mostly those held by congressional Republicans facing angry crowds, upset over changes the GOP wants to make to the 2010 health care law and expressing steadfast opposition to Donald Trump’s presidency.

Despite not being old enough to serve in Congress yet, Mateo Morelos Bedolla is running to challenge Republican Rep. Jeff Denham in California.

Constitutionally, a member of Congress must be 25 years of age to by the date of their election. Bedolla will turn 25 by Election Day, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Updated 12:32 p.m. | House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday joined a drumbeat from other Democrats, calling for the removal of Confederate statues from the U.S. Capitol.

“The halls of Congress are the very heart of our democracy. The statues in the Capitol should embody our highest ideals as Americans, expressing who we are and who we aspire to be as a nation,” the California Democrat said in a statement

President Donald Trump appeared Thursday to endorse Sen. Jeff Flake’s primary opponent, lashing out at the Arizona Republican senator who has become one of his most vocal critics.

Trump’s attack on Flake was his second Twitter strike of the morning on a GOP senator and followed a social media strike on South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham. The two broadsides on two moderate members of his own party’s Senate caucus illustrated anew how the president repeatedly courts the party’s conservative members who are more in line with his own political base.

Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who the congressman said denied that Russia was involved in sending him emails from the Democratic National Committee. 

WikiLeaks published emails from the Democratic National Committee, which led to the resignation of DNC Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. 

Matt McLaughlin hasn’t always been a fan of political ads. For a long time he thought most campaign videos were “horrible.”

But it was his distaste with the status quo that led the 31-year-old filmmaker to translate his storytelling techniques from consumer brand commercials to political campaigns.

North Dakota state Sen. Tom Campbell has decided to challenge Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp for her Senate seat, the state lawmaker confirmed Wednesday. 

Campbell said he made his decision after months of consideration and traveling the state.

Virginia Rep. Tom Garrett says he didn’t know who Jason Kessler was when the white nationalist leader met with him in his Capitol Hill office in March. 

Democrats aren’t buying it.

Two candidates who want to win the 2018 Republican Senate primary in Arizona have responded very differently to President Donald Trump’s comments following violence that broke out before a scheduled alt-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend.

On the one hand, incumbent Sen. Jeff Flake  has repeatedly launched veiled criticisms at Trump this week for his perceived soft response to the presence of neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville.

The Alabama Senate special election certainly isn’t a toss-up, but the possibility that former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore might become the Republican nominee creates the potential for a Democratic upset.

President Donald Trump’s polarizing persona is creating significant risk for congressional Republicans in next year’s midterm elections. But his decision to pluck Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions out of the Senate for his Cabinet created a special election this year that is turning out to be more adventurous than expected, considering Trump won the Yellowhammer State by 28 points less than a year ago.