Senate

● CO-Sen: On Thursday, former Colorado House Majority Leader Alice Madden announced that she was joining the Democratic primary to take on GOP Sen. Cory Gardner, making her the first prominent woman to enter this crowded contest.

Madden, who represented a state House seat in the Boulder area, served as majority leader from 2005 to 2009. After she left the legislature, she worked as a climate advisor to then-Gov. Bill Ritter and for the Obama administration's Department of Energy. Madden sought to return to elected office in 2016 when she ran for a statewide seat on the University of Colorado Board of Regents, but she lost to a GOP rival 51-49. She later took a job as executive director at the University of Colorado Boulder's environmental law center.

Gardner is the most vulnerable Senate Republican up in 2020, and several Democrats announced bids against him earlier this year. They include former diplomat Dan Baer; former state Sen. (and 2018 gubernatorial candidate) Mike Johnston; former state House Speaker (and 2014 congressional candidate) Andrew Romanoff; and former U.S. Attorney John Walsh. A number of other potential candidates are also considering (or are reportedly doing so), including state Sen. Kerry Donovan and Secretary of State Jena Griswold.

● NC-Sen: On Wednesday, wealthy businessman Garland Tucker confirmed that he would challenge North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis in the March GOP primary. Roll Call recently wrote that Tucker has the resources to self-fund a bid, but it's not clear how much he's willing or able to throw down.

Tucker wasted no time blasting Tillis for having "flip-flopped" this winter by publishing an op-ed in the Washington Post declaring that he would vote for a resolution rolling back Donald Trump's bogus emergency declaration three weeks before he voted against that very resolution. Tucker also declared that Tillis "also sponsored legislation with liberal Senator Cory Booker to protect the Robert Mueller investigation against President Trump."

Tillis' team, of course, is already trying to portray Tucker as the anti-Trump candidate. On Monday, after Tucker set up a campaign account but before he announced, Tillis' campaign immediately dusted off comments Tucker made in September 2016 where he stated that, despite being a lifelong Republican, he was adamantly opposed to Trump in the GOP primaries and reticent to support him in the general.

Tucker did say at the time that his fervent opposition to Hillary Clinton ultimately left him with no other choice than to back Trump, whom he still described as "a twice-divorced, self-acknowledged adulterer who has, in the course of this campaign, uttered some of the most unkind, disgusting comments ever made by any American politician." Tucker now says he's a strong supporter of Trump.

Of course, Tucker's new pro-Trump stance is hardly stopping Tillis' allies at the NRSC from labeling the challenger "a wealthy, out-of-touch liberal." The NRSC even focused some of its wrath on Tucker consultant Carter Wrenn, who was involved with producing Sen. Jesse Helms' infamously racist "Hands" ad during the 1990 election against black Democrat Harvey Gantt: The committee snipes that Tucker was "talked into this by a past-his-prime political consultant looking for a paycheck."

Tillis might also try to use Tucker's business background against him. Tucker founded a multi-million dollar investment firm, Triangle Capital Corporation, which was sold for almost $1 billion last year. However, that sale came just a few months after TCC's stock crashed, an event that the company's CEO blamed on Tucker and other former managers.

Gubernatorial

● KY-Gov: On Thursday, Attorney General Andy Beshear unveiled an endorsement from former Lt. Gov. Jerry Abramson in the May 21 Democratic primary. Abramson served two separate stints as mayor of Louisville for a total of 21 years, leading him to acquire the nickname "mayor for life." Abramson was the running mate of Andy Beshear's father, then-Gov. Steve Beshear, in 2011.

House

● CO-04: Inside Elections' Nathan Gonzales wrote earlier this week that GOP Rep. Ken Buck had told people at an April fundraiser he was considering retiring, and Buck's office isn't exactly denying the report.

Buck's communications director emailed Colorado Pols to say the story was "falsely reported information," adding, "Congressman Buck has no official plans to retire anytime soon nor in the foreseeable future." However, Gonzales never said Buck had plans, official or unofficial, to retire, merely that the congressman was telling people he might hang it up. Buck's team also never said that Buck would run again in 2020, only that he didn't plan to retire. Buck's eastern Colorado seat, which includes the Front Range and some of the Denver exurbs, backed Trump 57-34, and it should stay red no matter what the incumbent does.

● NC-09: Union County Commissioner Stoney Rushing tells the National Journal's Ally Mutnick he won't request a runoff if he takes second place against state Sen. Dan Bishop in next week's GOP primary. North Carolina requires primary candidates win at least 30% of the vote to win the nomination outright, but Rushing says he believes it's best for him to immediately drop out and support Bishop if the senator places first. If there's no runoff, the GOP nominee would face Democrat Dan McCready in a Sept. 10 general election. If a runoff is needed, it would happen on that same date in September, with the general election to take place on Nov. 5.

This could also just be a face-saving move by Rushing: According to the limited polling we've seen, Bishop has a real chance to exceed 30% next week, while Rushing is well ahead of the numerous remaining candidates but still a distant second. Bishop's allies at the Club for Growth just came out with a late April poll from the GOP firm WPA Intelligence that finds Bishop in first with precisely 30%, while Rushing leads former Mecklenburg County Commissioner Matthew Ridenhour 19-6 for second. A previously unreleased WPA poll from early April had Bishop leading Ridenhour 22-18, with Ridenhour stuck at 6%. A recent survey from the Democratic firm PPP was similar, also finding Bishop in the lead with 31%, with Rushing ahead of Ridenhour 17-9.

● NM-03, NM-Sen: On Thursday, former CIA agent Valerie Plame announced that she would seek the Democratic nomination to succeed Rep. Ben Ray Luján, who is leaving New Mexico's 3rd Congressional District to run for the Senate. In March, Plame had initially expressed interest in the Senate race, but she soon turned her attention to this open and reliably blue northern New Mexico House seat.

Plame was at the center of a national firestorm that lasted for years during the presidency of George W. Bush after conservative columnist Robert Novak revealed in print that she was a covert agent. Plame and her supporters argued that Bush administration officials leaked her name to Novak to punish her then-husband, diplomat Joe Wilson, for an op-ed he wrote concluding that "some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

The affair eventually led to the 2007 conviction of Scooter Libby, a former chief of staff for then-Vice President Dick Cheney, for obstruction of justice and perjury in the investigation into who revealed Plame's identity.

Plame has occasionally attracted attention since the end of the Bush administration—some good, and some not. In 2010, a movie was released adapting Plame's memoir that starred Academy Award-nominated actress Naomi Watts, garnering mostly positive reviews.

But in 2017, Plame got scorched when she tweeted out a story titled "America's Jews are driving America's wars." Plame later deleted her message and said she had "skimmed this piece, zeroed in on the neocon criticism, and shared it without seeing and considering the rest," even though the headline wasn't exactly subtle. Plame also was back in the news last year when Trump pardoned Libby.

With Plame's entry, we could be headed toward a crowded Democratic field for New Mexico's 3rd District, a 52-37 Clinton seat that's home to Santa Fe. Attorney Teresa Leger de Fernandez and state Rep. Joseph Sanchez are already in, while First Judicial District Attorney Marco Serna has formed an exploratory committee. A number of other local politicians have also expressed interest in this race.

● NY-15: It's sometimes tough to believe, but New York City Councilor Ruben Diaz Sr. can always get even worse. Diaz, a very conservative Bronx Democrat who is seeking New York's safely blue 15th Congressional District, attended a mandatory City Council sensitivity-training session on Wednesday—yeah, you can already tell this is gonna be a doozy—only to make it very clear how little he wanted to be there and exactly what he thinks about reporting sexual harassment.

The New York Daily News' Anna Sanders writes that the councilmembers were presented with a hypothetical scenario in which they were "asked what they should do if they overheard a chief of staff making sexually inappropriate comments in an elevator" that "visibly upset" a female staffer. There are correct responses, there are incorrect responses, and then there's Diaz's response: According to multiple city councilmembers present, Diaz interrupted the presentation to scream, "I'm not gonna rat my people out! This place is full of rats!"

One unnamed witness says City Council Speaker Corey Johnson countered by telling Diaz that members have a "responsibility to protect people from sexual harassment," to which Diaz responded by arguing and talking over Johnson—and then some. Back in February, Diaz was stripped of his committee chairmanship after declaring the council was "controlled by the homosexual community" in a radio interview. At this week's sensitivity training, Diaz declared he'd been "bullied" as a result of his own comment. In response, Sanders writes that "several council members stormed out of the room and others made noise to purposely drown out his rant."

Diaz, who is a Pentecostal minister, told the paper that he believed the council "harassed" him because of his faith. Diaz also said that, despite what he'd reportedly hollered, sexual harassment must be reported. However, he quickly added that sometimes "sexual harassment is a compliment." He went on to ask the paper, "You are a woman? We are in an elevator … and they give you a compliment, like, wow, how nice you look—maybe you like it, I don't know." Diaz went on, "If you don't like it, and then you say something, then I know." He concluded his disquisition by going full Godwin, declaring of the council, "What they want is something really like the Gestapo."

Diaz has a very long and ugly history of homophobic commentary, but up until now, none of that has stopped him from repeatedly winning Democratic primaries in the Bronx. And as we've written before, it's very possible he'll pull off a win next year in the primary for the 15th Congressional District, a Bronx seat that gave Hillary Clinton 94% of the vote, if too many opponents split the non-Ruben Diaz vote.

● PA-16: GOP Rep. Mike Kelly fended off Democrat Ron DiNicola last year by just a 52-47 margin, so Team Blue will want to try to put this northwestern Pennsylvania seat in play once again. An unnamed Democratic strategist tells the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Tracie Mauriello that state Rep. Ryan Bizzarro is considering, and Bizzarro didn't rule anything out when asked. Mauriello also adds that Bizzarro said he "understands he is the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's top recruit for the 16th District." As for DiNicola, who also lost a tight race for a previous version of this seat in 1996, Mauriello says he hasn't said anything about his 2020 plans.

Pennsylvania's 16th District, which includes all of Erie County, shifted sharply from 52-47 Romney to 58-38 Trump. Things were considerably better last year for Team Blue, but it's still tough for Democrats to carry this seat unless they're romping to victory statewide. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf won re-election last year 58-41, and according to Bloomberg's Greg Giroux, he carried the seat by a narrow 49.5-48.8 margin. Democratic Sen. Bob Casey won a third term 56-43 and also turned in a tight performance in the 16th, losing 50-48.

Bizzarro, who was first elected to the state House in 2012, does have experience winning in a competitive seat, though not one as red as the 16th District. In 2016, he won re-election 60-40 even as his Erie County district was swinging from 52-46 Obama to 50-46 Trump, and he went unopposed last year.

P.S. Ryan Bizzarro is not the only state legislator with his surname we've written about this year: In February, Republican Gennaro Bizzarro improbably won a special election for a solidly blue state Senate seat in Connecticut. There is no word on whether the two Bizzarros are related.

● UT-04, UT-Gov: Freshman Democratic Rep. Ben McAdams has a tough task ahead of him as he defends his conservative seat in the Salt Lake City suburbs, but so far, no notable Republicans have entered the race against him.

State Sen. Dan McCay, who didn't rule out a bid last month, told Utah Policy's Bryan Schott that he's met with the NRCC, but McCay sounds like he's in no hurry to decide. He instead noted, "There are more than 500 days left until Election Day 2020" (shhh, no one tell him when the candidate filing deadline is), and predicted, "If I jump into the race, I'm confident I'll have the resources and support to be successful." The only other Republican we've heard express interest is state Rep. Kim Coleman, who also did so last month.

Schott also writes that the NRCC "may have reached out to Cedar Hills Mayor Jenney Rees," but there's no word on her interest. However, he adds that, while the NRCC tried to recruit Salt Lake County Councilwoman Aimee Winder Newton, she's turned them down. Winder Newton expressed interest in running for governor back in January, and while we haven't heard anything from her in months, Schott says she's still focusing on a possible bid to succeed GOP Gov. Gary Herbert.

Unnamed Republican sources also tell Schott that Utah County GOP Chair Stewart Peay, who unsuccessfully ran in the 2017 special for the state's neighboring 3rd District, has said no as well.