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Ivanka Trump Raises $4 Million for Her Father: Campaign Update

Biden Ad Targets Florida Grandparents: Campaign Update

Ivanka Trump raises $4 million at a virtual fundraiser for her father. Kanye West’s presidential bid got a boost from Republican consultants in Wisconsin. And the latest Iowa poll shows a tight presidential race.

There are 90 days until the election.

Other Developments:

Ivanka Trump Raises $4 Million for Her Father

A virtual fundraiser featuring Ivanka Trump brought in $4 million for her father’s re-election effort on Wednesday, according to a person familiar with the event.

The fundraiser for Trump Victory -- the joint fundraising committee that benefits the campaign, the Republican National Committee, and roughly two dozen state parties -- was attended by more than 70 donors. It also featured RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.

The person familiar said it was the first virtual fundraiser Ivanka Trump has participated in, even though she is the campaign’s second most in demand figure after President Donald Trump.

Ivanka Trump discussed her work on child care, paid leave, human trafficking and workforce development, the person said, adding that the president called in unexpectedly and spoke to participants. -- Jennifer Jacobs

Kanye West Got GOP Help in Wisconsin (5:43 p.m.)

Rapper Kanye West’s outsider presidential bid got some help in the battleground state of Wisconsin.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the nominating petitions to get him on the state ballot were dropped off by Lane Ruhland, former general counsel for the state GOP.

Several of the electors pledged to West are also Trump supporters or lower-level Republican activists, the paper said.

West announced a run for president on July 4, but missed deadlines in several states to get on the ballot. Wisconsin elections officials have not yet verified the signatures on his petitions, so it’s not yet clear if he will be on the ballot.

Representative Mark Pocan was one of several Democrats who criticized Republican involvement in West’s Wisconsin effort, calling it “cheating.”

Iowa Poll Shows Tight Race (1:02 p.m.)

Trump’s lead in Iowa is within the margin of error in the latest poll.

In a Monmouth University poll released Wednesday, 48% of registered voters backed President Donald Trump and 45% supported Biden. The survey of 401 registered voters in Iowa was conducted July 30 to Aug. 3 and has a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points.

The Hawkeye State has not been considered a battleground as it had been trending away from Democrats, though the Trump campaign has begun airing ads there and the Biden campaign recently reserved air time there through the fall.

The poll showed Biden with a small edge in the 13 counties with the closest margins in the 2016 election.

“Iowa looks to be more competitive than four years ago,” said Monmouth polling director Patrick Murray. “There is a lot of parity between Trump and Biden in both the strength of their support and the preferences of key demographic groups.”

Swing States Have Strict Vote-by-Mail Deadlines (12:04 p.m.)

All but one of six key battleground states likely to determine the election in November have strict deadlines to receive mail-in ballots, which could lead to high rejection rates.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, North Carolina is the only one of those states that accepts mail-in ballots if they are postmarked on Election Day, but received within three days.

The other swing states have deadlines based on when elections offices receive them:

  • Arizona and Florida: By 7 p.m. on Election Day
  • Michigan: Before polls close at 8 p.m. on Election Day
  • Wisconsin and Pennsylvania: By 8 p.m. on Election Day

Nearly one in four mail-in ballots that were rejected in 2016 missed the deadline, the second biggest reason for a rejection, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

Many Democrats are concerned that recent slowdowns at the U.S. Postal Service could lead to tens or even hundreds of thousands of votes being invalidated, especially since Democratic voters tend to send in mail-in ballots later than Republicans.

Attorneys for civil rights groups are suing to force states to adopt postmark deadlines -- in which ballots are accepted as long as they are postmarked or otherwise show they were mailed by Election Day.

Biden Will Not Travel to Milwaukee to Accept Nomination (11:27 a.m.)

Biden will not travel to Milwaukee this month to accept the Democratic nomination for president at the party convention due to concerns about the coronavirus, according to two people familiar with the travel plans.

Biden had been planning to attend the convention in person and deliver his acceptance speech, but the campaign recently scrapped those plans.

The Biden campaign declined to comment on his travel.

Trump Says He ‘Probably’ Will Give Convention Speech From White House (9:02 a.m.)

Trump said Wednesday he’ll “probably” give his speech accepting the Republican nomination for re-election from the White House, another in a long line of protocol breaks from the president.

In a call to Fox News, Trump said that giving a speech from the taxpayer-owned White House would be “the easiest alternative. I think it’s a beautiful alternative. I love the building. I’m there right now. I spend a lot of time here. A lot of people didn’t spend as much time, I spent a lot of time here, and I like it.”

He said that going anywhere else is a hassle “militarily and law-enforcement wise.”

Accepting a presidential nomination from the White House would break with decades-old norms about separating official government properties from politics.

The move also could lead to White House staffers violating the Hatch Act, a 1939 law that bars federal workers from engaging in political activities in government buildings.

The Republican convention plans have bounced from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Jacksonville, Florida, and back to Charlotte as the coronavirus spiked and the two governors approached the pandemic differently. Now the Republican National Committee plans to meet in Charlotte for one day to formally nominate Trump and then speeches will occur elsewhere the rest of the normal convention week.

Biden’s Latest Ad Targets Florida Grandparents (6:56 a.m.)

A new ad from the Biden campaign aims for a big demographic in Florida: grandparents.

The minute-long ad features a woman, identified only as Donna, who lives in The Villages, a heavily Republican area near Orlando.

“My husband and I have been gifted with two beautiful grandchildren,” the woman says. “And it’s been six months, and it’s way too long.”

She adds, “while I don’t blame Donald Trump for the virus, I blame him for his lack of action. And because of that, we’re sitting here Zooming or FaceTiming with our grandchildren instead of hugging and kissing them.”

The ad is slated to run in the Orlando and Tampa markets.

Party-Switchers Help Cement Republican, Democratic Trends

Since 2018, 9% of both Republicans and Democrats have switched parties, giving neither party a net advantage, according to a new survey.

But the poll from the Pew Research Center shows that those switches weren’t evenly distributed. Instead, they helped cement some new alignments on demographic lines.

More White voters without a college degree moved to the GOP, while more White college graduates became Democrats.

Among non-White voters, 10% of Democrats became Republicans over the last two years, but twice that percentage of Republicans became Democrats.

The survey was based on interviews with the same set of 11,077 registered voters five times over the last two years.

Trump Ad Encourages Floridians to Vote by Mail, While Still Attacking Vote by Mail

A new Facebook ad from the Trump campaign encourages Florida voters to cast absentee ballots while making false claims about vote-by-mail in other states.

In the minute-long ad, Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara argues that Florida’s system, in which voters must request an mail-in ballot, is more secure than states in which voters are automatically sent a ballot.

The Florida system “is very different and much more secure a process than when the Democrats mail everyone in a state a ballot, often resulting in ballots being mailed to abandoned addresses and, hmm, individuals not registered to vote,” she says.

The eight mostly Western states that will have all-mail elections in November do not send ballots to “everyone in a state,” but only to active registered voters, and only Vermont does not match the signature on the ballot envelope to one on file.

In Colorado, the switch to all-mail elections had bipartisan support, while Utah’s switch was led by Republicans. And research has found low rates of fraud in mail-in elections.

Coming Up:

Trump will meet with Arizona Governor Doug Ducey at 3 p.m.

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