January 6th will take center stage in tonight’s primary election: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the political deskis an evening newsletter from the NBC News political team that brings you the latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.

In today’s issue, we preview tonight’s two primaries related to the January 6th riot at the Capitol. Plus, national political correspondent Steve Kornacki analyzes whether there could be a surge in split voting this fall.

Sign up here to receive this newsletter in your inbox every weekday.

January 6th will take center stage in tonight’s primary.

Written by Bridget Bowman, Ben Kamisar, and Adam Wollner

Today is primary election day in four states, and the Jan. 6 attacks are at the center of two major election races.

In Maryland, a former police officer defended the Capitol from a mob on the day Donald Trump’s electoral loss to Joe Biden was certified. West Virginia has a former state lawmaker who joined the mob and served prison time as a result.

Have a news tip? please tell us

Maryland 3rd District: Harry Dunn, a 15-year veteran of the Capitol Police, is running in a crowded Democratic primary for an open seat in the House of Representatives.

After the Jan. 6 riot, he became one of the most prominent figures representing the hundreds of police officers who risked their lives to protect the Capitol. He gave emotional testimony during a televised Congressional hearing investigating the attack, became a fixture on cable news, and wrote a book about the ordeal and his own life.

Dunn is currently competing against several experienced state legislators for the seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Rep. Paul Servanes. Dunn is a top fundraiser in the Democratic field, spending more than $2 million on ads, including one highlighting his actions on January 6, according to AdImpact. .

Meanwhile, United Democracy Project, a super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, spent more than $3.5 million on ads supporting state Sen. Sarah Elfreth. One of her colleagues, state Sen. Clarence Lamb, is also running.

West Virginia District 1: Dunn, one of the rioters who tried to protect the Capitol on Jan. 6, is challenging Republican Rep. Carol Miller in the primary.

Former state Rep. Derrick Evans was convicted of a felony for storming the Capitol and sentenced to three months in prison. He touted his actions on January 6 in a television ad, saying he “stands alongside President Trump in peaceful and patriotic protest of a stolen election” and calling himself a “political prisoner.” He claimed to have been taken hostage. (Evans pled guilty to a felony charge of insurrection in March 2022.)

Miller, who has been on the airwaves more than Evans, noted that Evans has run as a Democrat in the past. Miller also aired an ad in which Trump praised her, even though Trump did not endorse her in the primary. If Evans upsets Miller, she would become the second lawmaker to lose a primary this election cycle.

Neither district is competitive in the general election, so if Dunn and Evans win their respective primaries, they will likely serve together in Congress.

Read more about tonight’s primary elections in Maryland, Nebraska, North Carolina and West Virginia →

Will we see more split voting in 2024?

Written by Steve Kornacki

Maryland’s Democratic Party today is selecting a candidate to challenge former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan in the open Senate seat. Polling for the general election has been scant and sporadic so far, but an average of four polls conducted since March shows that Mr. Hogan is ahead of his potential Democratic opponents, Rep. David Tron and Prince. Both are leading George County Executive Angela Alsobrooks.

View this graphic on nbcnews.com

However, the general expectation is that this early Hogan strength will be gone in November. This is a presidential election year, and the idea is that Maryland will be a bolt out of the blue, creating a powerful partisan tide that even a popular figure like Hogan won’t be able to overcome.

Recent history certainly confirms this. Ticket installments have been on the decline for a long time, and even more so during the Trump era. In the 2016 and 2020 elections, a total of one Senate election was held, and the winner was the party opposing the presidential candidate running the state.

View this graphic on nbcnews.com

The only divisive result in 2020 was Maine, where Republican Sen. Susan Collins won by 9 points, even though Biden himself led the state by 9 points. did. To win Maryland, which Biden won by 33 points in 2020, Hogan will need to: Attracting far more split-vote voters than even Mr. Collins was able to attract.

Anecdotally, there are also two recent Senate races that mirror the fundamental dynamics of this year’s Maryland contest. In Massachusetts in 1996, Republican Governor Bill Weld, who had just won re-election by a 42-point margin, challenged Democratic Senator John Kerry. But Weld was doomed, as Bill Clinton won the state by a landslide 33 points, the leading Democratic candidate.

Similarly, Linda Lingle, the only Republican to win two terms as Hawaii’s governor, sought to use her popularity to run for the Senate in 2012. But Barack Obama’s overwhelming 43-point victory in the state was too much for Lingle to overcome.

But this week’s New York Times-Siena poll offered a glimmer of hope for Hogan and all Senate candidates requiring split votes.

Four of the states surveyed – Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – are important not only in determining the outcome of the presidential election, but also in the fight for control of the Senate. Each of these seats is currently held by Democrats, and Democratic Senate candidates have an advantage in all four states, even though Trump leads in three of those states.

View this graphic on nbcnews.com

At the very least, this raises the possibility of an increase in split voting this fall, which could result in many states siding with the opposing party’s presidential and Senate candidates.

To be sure, Hogan will require a level of split-ticket voting in Maryland that far exceeds what these polls show. Furthermore, two Democratic incumbents, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, will be running in red states. And Democratic strength in these Senate polls may be illusory. After all, not a single Democratic candidate has surpassed 50%. If they fail to further expand their support, they could all be captured as voters face a final decision.

But the idea of ​​a new split vote makes some sense. Opinion polls show widespread public dissatisfaction with presidential candidates of both parties, but it’s crazy to think that an unusually large number of voters don’t feel attached to a particular party as they vote. Or?

Michael Cohen details his role in President Trump’s repeated lies about hush money payments

by Adam Rees, Jillian Frankel, Gary Grumbach, Dale Gregorian

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former longtime lawyer, returned to the witness stand on Tuesday and told jurors that Trump’s former longtime lawyer, Trump, about paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels late in the 2016 campaign. He said he repeatedly lied to protect his wife.

Mr. Cohen claimed that he was the only person who paid Mr. Daniels $130,000 to protect his boss, “to protect his message and to demonstrate continued loyalty.” In fact, he told the jury that everything he did was done “at the direction of Donald J. Trump.”

Prosecutors allege that President Trump falsified business records related to these payments by classifying them as legal services under a retainer agreement. Mr. Cohen testified Monday that no such maintenance contract existed in New York City.

President Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, began his cross-examination in a fiery manner this afternoon, telling Cohen that although the two have never met, Cohen had said on TikTok that Trump was “crying.” He said he called him “Little Man.”

“Sounds like something I would say,” Cohen replied. Asked if he called Trump a “dictator idiot,” Cohen gave a similar answer.

Continue reading from day 17 of the Trump trial →

That’s all from the political desk for now. If you have any feedback, whether you like it or not, please email us at: politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com

And if you’re a fan, please share it with everyone.they can sign up here.