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More than $3 million has poured into the race more than for some recent U.S. congressional races in Washington. The winner will determine whether Democrats or Republicans control Washingtons state Senate.

Seattle Times Olympia bureau

Democrat Manka Dhingra took a comfortable lead Tuesday evening over Republican Jinyoung Lee Englund in a key special Washington Senate election that will determine the balance of power in Olympia.

In the initial returns, Dhingra led with 50.5 percent of the vote in the 45th District race to fill a vacancy created last year by the death of Sen. Andy Hill, R-Redmond. Englund got about 42.5 percent.

The contest will decide whether the GOP keeps its one-seat majority in the state Senate. Democrats hold a slim majority in the state House, as well as the governorship.

Already, more than $3 million has poured into the race. Just last week, independent political committees reported spending $500,000 in the race most of it against Dhingra. The message I was getting at the doors and from the people in the community is that they were really upset about the ads, said Dhingra.

Democrats have coalesced around Dhingra, a senior deputy prosecuting attorney for King County. In that job, Dhingra supervises a regional mental-health court, a veterans court and a diversion program.

She has pledged to better fund education and raise new revenue through a tax on capital gains, rather than the property-tax shift that lawmakers approved this year to fund a court-ordered K-12 school funding plan. Dhingra has also talked about changing the culture in Olympia to avoid gridlock and address problems with more long-term solutions.

Republicans have rallied behind Englund, a former staffer for U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Spokane, and spokeswoman for the Bitcoin Foundation. Recently, Englund managed a team that developed a phone app to help the U.S. Marine Corps, in which her husband serves.

Englund has campaigned hard against the notion of a state income tax, which Dhingra also has said she opposes. Englund wants to ease traffic on I-405 by converting one of the HOV lanes into a general-purpose lane. And she has also pledged to cut car-tab fees that voters approved to fund Sound Transit 3.

Tuesday night, Englund described the race as, a choice between a candidate who will raise or create new taxes, and a candidate who wont.

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In high-profile state Senate race, Democrat Manka Dhingra leads Republican Jinyoung Englund - The Seattle Times

Miami Herald

Democrat challenging Curbelo lived in the district for 2 months Miami Herald Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell will challenge Republican Carlos Curbelo to represent voters living in a sprawling Miami-to-Key West district. She doesn't live in the district now, but history shows she has a handy fallback in the Florida Keys.

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Democrat challenging Curbelo lived in the district for 2 months - Miami Herald

Joe Scarborough might have just hit his breaking point. On Wednesday's Morning Joe, the host insisted on calling out the Trump administration's "lies," at one point going so far as to characterize the White House's denial of colluding with Fox News on the Seth Rich story as "a steaming pile of poo."

Co-host Mika Brzezinski began the conversation by bringing up a report that President Trump dictated Donald Trump Jr.'s misleading statement about a June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer. "The president said he was not involved in drafting a letter defending his son," said Brzezinski. "That is not true."

"Also known as, well, that's a lie," Scarborough said.

"The president said he got a congratulatory call from the Boy Scouts " Brzezinski went on, ignoring him.

"Yeah, that didn't happen either," Scarborough interjected.

"I'm not sure we can make fun of it," Brzezinski told Scarborough, who is also her fianc. "It's terrible. What would we say to our children about this?"

"I would say, 'I'm going to send you to your room and going to spank you,'" Scarborough said. Brzezinski answered that "some parents don't believe spanking does it," sparking Scarborough to dive into a story about how his father would hit him for talking back. Watch the bizarre exchange below. Jeva Lange

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Poll pitting an unnamed Democrat against an unnamed Republican sees liberals hit high-water mark - The Week Magazine

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top Democrat in the U.S. Senate called on President Donald Trump on Tuesday to block some Chinese investments in the United States to pressure China "to help rein in North Koreas threatening and destabilizing behavior."

In a letter to Trump, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer urged him to use his authority through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, to pressure Beijing by suspending approval of "all mergers and acquisitions in the U.S. by Chinese entities."

Schumer's request comes amid concern about North Korea, which fired a missile Friday that experts said was capable of hitting Los Angeles. Trump has repeatedly urged China to rein in its ally North Korea, and Schumer agreed.

"It is my assessment that China will not deter North Korea unless the United States exacts greater economic pressure on China," Schumer wrote to Trump, a Republican. "The U.S. must send a clear message to Chinas government."

Senator John Cornyn, a Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, was unconvinced that CFIUS was the right tool.

"Thats not specifically the purpose of CFIUS. CFIUS is a national security vehicle to try to make sure that high-tech investments by foreign countries dont steal our cutting-edge technology," Cornyn said outside his Senate office.

"Im happy to work with Senator Schumer to figure out what his concerns are," added Cornyn, who has urged changes at CFIUS because of China. His worry, however, was not North Korea but that China would close the technology gap between the U.S. and Chinese militaries.

Led by the U.S. Department of Treasury, CFIUS reviews foreign acquisitions of U.S. companies on national security grounds and can take action on its own or refer cases to the president.

In an interview with Reuters Friday, the top U.S. counter-intelligence official suggested the Trump administration was already working on a plan to toughen CFIUS.

"Were making significant progress on that, working with both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue," said William Evanina, National Counterintelligence Executive, referring to the White House and Congress. "I think its going to look a lot different than it does now."

Evanina, whose office oversees U.S. government efforts to counter spying and industrial espionage, declined to be more specific but noted that Chinas direct investment in the United States quadrupled from 2015 to 2016, to $48 billion annually.

China's UN ambassador, on the other hand, has said that it was up to Washington and Pyongyang to work toward talks on North Korea's weapons programs.

"(The United States and North Korea) hold the primary responsibility to keep things moving, to start moving in the right direction, not China," China's U.N. Ambassador Liu Jieyi told reporters on Monday. "No matter how capable China is, China's efforts will not yield practical results."

While China worries about North Koreas nuclear and missile programs, and the U.S. reaction to them, its overriding concern, U.S. officials say, is to avoid a North Korean collapse, which could send millions of refugees fleeing toward China and lead to a reunified Korea allied with Washington.

Schumer's plan to prohibit CFIUS from approving Chinese deals would be technically legal but would stretch CFIUS' mandate, CFIUS experts said.

"What sounds like effectively a bar on Chinese investment that is being suggested is probably legal but quite different than the case-by-case process that CFIUS has used in the past," said Stephen Heifetz of the law firm Steptoe & Johnson LLP who represents clients before CFIUS. "The U.S. government should consider the potential for a Chinese response."

The task force this year faces what could well be a record number of deals, many of them controversial as Chinese firms scout U.S. targets as varied as hotels and film studios to hedge against a weaker yuan CNY=.

Additional reporting by Diane Bartz, Susan Cornwell and Warren Strobel; Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Bill Trott and James Dalgleish

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Top Senate Democrat urges Trump to block China deals over North Korea - Reuters

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has raised nearly $26 million for her party in 2017, a significant leap for a nonelection year, according to fundraising figures furnished by the California Democrat's political team.

Most of Pelosi's $25.9 million haul was directed to the coffers of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which will be leading the party's quest to take back the House in 2018. Pelosi has sent the group $24.7 million this year, as opposed to $14 million she raised for the committee in the same period two years ago, in the last congressional "off year."

Pelosi's efforts have come as she has faced mounting criticism from a handful of her fellow Democrats who criticized the party's inability to gain more than a handful of seats in last year's House elections -- a drumbeat that returned after Democrats didn't win a closely watched and heavily contested special election in Georgia in June.

In the immediate aftermath, Pelosi pointed to her prodigious fundraising as one reason for her continued service as the Democrats' top leader in the House. Her political operation counts $593.8 million in fundraising attributable to Pelosi since she entered the House leadership in 2002.

"My leadership is recognized by many around the country, and that is why I'm able to attract the [financial] support that I do, which is essential to our elections, sad to say," she said.

Pelosi racked up million-dollar-plus hauls at a trio of Speaker's Cabinet VIP events this year in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles -- part of a fundraising schedule that took her to 124 events in 22 cities. The total reflects more than $2 million raised from more than 115,000 small donors in response to committee email solicitations bearing Pelosi's signature.

Democratic National Committee fundraising this year has badly lagged behind that of the Republican National Committee. But in part because of Pelosi's efforts -- but also an unprecedented surge in grass-roots donations -- the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has kept pace with its GOP counterpart, the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Pelosi's $26 million falls behind the $33.1 million that House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., reported raising for his Team Ryan joint fundraising committee in the first half of the year, although it is not an exact apples-to-apples comparison, because Pelosi organizes her fundraising efforts differently.

Jorge Aguilar, the executive director of Pelosi's political operation, called the Democratic leader's haul "a direct reflection of voters' frustration with the destructive Trump-Ryan special-interests-only agenda that aims to rip away the health care of millions."

"It demonstrates the growing enthusiasm for House Democrats to retake the House," he said. "The American people are speaking loud and clear: They want a better deal than what Paul D. Ryan is offering."

A Section on 08/01/2017

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Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi raises $26M for party in 2017 - Arkansas Online