Midterm campaign updates: GOP's Cheney endorses Ohio Democrat Tim Ryan for Senate

Fourteen members of Nevada GOP Senate nominee Adam Laxalt's family said in a letter Wednesday that they were endorsing his opponent, Democratic incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto.

"Catherine has consistently demonstrated a fierce loyalty to her home state of Nevada," the three-page letter states. "She has always put Nevada first – even when it meant working against her own party's policies."

The letter, obtained by The Nevada Independent, does not mention Laxalt by name or his Senate campaign. Some of his family members previously opposed him in a 2018 column during his gubernatorial campaign

The new endorsement for Cortez Masto comes just days after Laxalt attended an event with former President Donald Trump in Minden, Nevada, where both Laxalt and Trump jabbed at the senator.

"Between surging inflation, rising violent crime, the effects of an open border and record-high gas prices, Nevadans are fed up with Cortez Masto being a 95% rubber-stamp vote for Joe Biden," Laxalt said then.

However, some of his relatives seem to have a different opinion, writing in the letter: "We staunchly believe that Catherine is well equipped with her own 'Nevada grit' – a quality that she will take forward in representation of our home state for six more years across the halls of Congress."

In a statement, Cortez Masto campaign spokesperson Sigalle Reshef said: "The Laxalt family joins a growing list of Cortez Masto endorsers that includes Democrats, Republican leaders from across the state, and Nevada law enforcement, and she appreciates their support in this race."

Laxalt fired back on Twitter, saying most of the relatives "are Democrats ... They think that Nevada & our country are heading in the right direction. I believe Nevadans don't agree."

-- ABC News' Abby Cruz

It's an obvious enough point that former President Donald Trump broke and then rewrote the traditional rules of politics in ways that are still being felt inside of both major parties.

What's becoming more apparent is the extent to which different Republican candidates are taking different lessons of the Trump era and applying them to their unique circumstances. They're testing intraparty loyalties and assumptions along the way, much like Trump himself.

Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker is in defiance-and-denial mode as he digs in on a scandal that puts him at odds with the mother of one of his children as well as one of his sons.

"Yes, she's lying. Yeah, she's lying. Yes, she's lying," Walker told ABC News' Linsey Davis on Tuesday, referring to the woman who claims he paid for her to get an abortion in 2009 and whom, he now acknowledges, is the mother of one of his children.

Trump's approach toward the news is a lesson internalized by a range of GOP campaigns -- manifesting itself in part with candidates like Pennsylvania's Doug Mastriano who echo his periodic media hostility by largely, if not entirely, avoiding interviews with mainstream outlets.

Read more https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/gop-candidates-read-pages-trumps-playbook-note/story?id=91347486here.

-- ABC News’ Rick Klein

Former Vice President Mike Pence joined Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey in Phoenix on Tuesday to formally endorse Donald Trump-backed GOP Senate nominee Blake Masters.

At a school choice forum with conservative political action committee Club for Growth, with less than a month until the midterm elections, Pence offered Masters his total endorsement, calling Masters a "proven conservative" and "one of the brightest stars in the Republican Party."

Masters’ contest against incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat, is one of the razor-thin races that may determine which party controls the upper chamber next session.

"It is a special privilege to me to come here to the Grand Canyon to tell the people of this state that Arizona and America need Blake Masters and a Republican majority in the United States Senate," Pence said.

“Blake Masters may be the difference between a Democrat majority in the Senate and a Republican majority," he continued. "Blake Masters could well be the deciding vote of whether or not Republicans will have a majority to stop the runaway spending agenda, open borders, inflation-driving policies that are beset this country and are hurting families here in Arizona."

Masters originally launched his candidacy with the support of Trump-aligned billionaire Peter Thiel but has since received funding from groups like the Senate Leadership Fund, a Mitch McConnell-adjacent PAC. Trump endorsed Masters on June 22 and has not shied away from inflammatory remarks pointed at McConnell.

(Masters, for his part, has alternately distanced himself from and embraced Trump's false claim of 2020 election fraud.)

Pence’s support for Trump-backed Masters comes after he’d deviated from his former boss during the Republican primaries by endorsing a number of candidates who were competing with the former president’s selections. In Arizona, Pence supported, and even traveled to campaign ahead of the race, for Republican Karrin Taylor Robson in the Arizona governor’s race. He pitted himself against Trump, whose choice was the current GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake.

-- ABC News' Libby Cathey

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump loomed large in the first, and likely only, Senate debate in the battleground state of North Carolina between Democrat Cheri Beasley and Republican Rep. Ted Budd.

During the hour-long debate, Beasley tried to distance herself from Biden while Budd embraced his endorsement from Trump, saying he is an “America first candidate.”

"It's wrong to align me with anybody unless I specifically say what my positions are, and I'm glad to talk about my positions because my positions really do support people here in North Carolina,” Beasley said when asked if she would appear with members of the Biden administration and if she wanted Biden to campaign with her.

Budd, asked if Trump's endorsement would hurt him with unaffiliated voters, emphasized that Trump won North Carolina twice and named some of the successes of the Trump administration.

Budd embraced his endorsement from Trump while also saying that Beasley was running away from any connection to Biden. But both candidates deflected when asked if Trump and Biden should run again in 2024.

The economy and abortion were top issues for voters as Beasley had to fend off attacks from Budd trying to connect her to the policies of the Biden administration. Meanwhile, Budd was pressed on his anti-abortion stance and his support of Sen. Lindsey Graham’s national abortion ban bill.

Budd was asked several times if he would support a total ban with no exception, to which he did not answer.

Beasley took advantage of the question to expand on her legal background as a former chief justice of the state.

"I know having been a former judge and chief justice that women have a constitutionally protected right to make this decision for themselves with their physician free from government interference,” she said.

- ABC News’ Hannah Demissie