There are a series of new twists and turns in the race to replace Anna Eshoo in Congress.
While a recount continues to find out who will run against Sam Liccardo in November, there are new allegations of campaign finance violations and uncounted ballots. This all comes as many political watchers around the country are waiting to see if Evan Low or Joe Simitian — or both — will face Liccardo in the November runoff.
Max Zarzana, the president of the Government Attorney’s Association, said Friday he filed a new complaint with the Federal Election Commission. He is accusing Liccardo of violating campaign finance law.
“In an apparent attempt to skirt contribution limits and avoid negative public attention by personally calling for a recount, Mr. Liccardo and the other respondents appear to have orchestrated a scheme to use a newly formed super PAC to illegally pay for a recount,” Zarzana said in a statement.
It is not clear yet if the FEC will respond or investigate the complaint.
“This complaint is the definition of frivolous,” said Jonathan Padilla, the tech CEO and former Liccardo staffer. “It’s based on nothing but conjecture and wishful thinking.”
Padilla also posted on X that 20 ballots “were improperly excluded from the count.”
An update from last week recount request:
After only a few hours of our attorneys and those from the three main campaigns reviewing excluded ballots in Santa Clara County, it seems open and shut that 20 legal ballots were improperly excluded from the count. Again, this is only…
Voting officials said there are also a number of challenges from the campaign attorneys.
The registrar adding some of the ballots in question are provisional — cast by people who registered the day of the election.
“No, they were not improperly excluded,” said Steve Goltiao, Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters spokesman. “The processes that we have in place are to make sure that every vote counts. Where the observers have their reasons for challenging these things and we’re trying to determine whether or not these are valid challenges.”
While all this is happening, Eshoo issued a statement on Friday calling for financial transparency in the recount.
After learning the recently formed super PAC “Count the Vote” is paying for the recount, Eshoo said “What I do not have confidence in is where the money deposited in this super PAC is coming from. Is it one generous donor? Are there several donors? And if so, how much have they contributed? Are they special interests? And if so, what’s their financial interest in our congressional district?”
NBC Bay Area asked Liccardo’s campaign directly if the former San Jose mayor believes voters have the right to know who is paying for the recount. His campaign manager responded “Yes.”
When asked if they know who is financially backing the super PAC paying for the recount, they said “No.”
Meanwhile, Padilla said the super PAC will disclose its donor by July 15 in accordance with the FEC rules.
The recount is expected to conclude by next Friday.
The three-way race for California’s 16th Congressional District is heating up again because of two late requests for a recount.
Another high-profile politician has just announced that he’s running for San Francisco mayor.
San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin told NBC Bay Area on Wednesday that he plans to run for mayor and will make the formal announcement in the coming days.
Peskin hinted at a possible run for months now. This includes his recent interview with NBC Bay Area’s senior investigative reporter Bigad Shaban.
Peskin enters an already crowded field, which includes current mayor London Breed, nonprofit executive Daniel Lurie, San Francisco Supervisor Ahsha Safai and former San Francisco Mayor Mark Farrell.
A spokesperson for Breed’s re-election campaign released the following statement on Wednesday evening:
“Aaron Peskin is synonymous with intimidation, obstruction, and dysfunction: literally the triple crown of moving San Francisco backwards.
He is the person most-responsible for creating a city of haves and have nots, by limiting the amount of housing that gets built and freezing out young people from owning a home.
He’s also a hypocrite — he masquerades as a progressive while owning hundreds of thousands of dollars in Amazon, CVS, and Bank of America stock and owning millions of dollars of property across town.
If you could go into a laboratory and construct an individual designed to single-handedly destroy all progress in San Francisco, he would be it. He’s the Terminator. Aaron Peskin occupying the Mayor’s Office would mean ‘hasta la vista, baby’ for our local economy, our housing, and our city’s future.”
A spokesperson for Lurie’s campaign also released the following statement on Peskin entering the mayor’s race:
“The years of petty squabbles between Aaron Peskin, Mark Farrell, and London Breed make for good political theater, but it’s a distraction from the fact that they’re all molded by a system that rewards corruption and protects insiders at the expense of everyday San Franciscans.
The chattering class will rush to cover this as a fight between moderates and progressives — but that completely misses the point. Daniel Lurie’s campaign of accountable leadership and new ideas stands in stark contrast to the gang of City Hall insiders who have failed to get the job done. The people who got us into this mess are not equipped to get us out of it.”
New Jersey’s one-of-a-kind method of drawing primary ballots has prompted some apparent skepticism from a federal judge.
U.S. District Court Judge Zahid Quraishi held a hearing Monday as he considers a lawsuit claiming the system favors preferred candidates of establishment party leaders and gives them a more prominent position on the primary ballot.
The lawsuit was filed by Democratic Rep. Andy Kim and others seeking to stop the state’s so-called county line system of primary ballot design. It’s unclear when the judge will rule.
New Jersey’s one-of-a-kind method of drawing primary ballots prompted some apparent skepticism from a federal judge Monday as he considered a legal challenge claiming the system favors preferred candidates of establishment party leaders.
The hearing Monday in federal court in Trenton unfolded a day after the state attorney general said he considered the longstanding system unconstitutional.
The lawsuit was filed by Democratic Rep. Andy Kim and others seeking to stop the state’s so-called county line system of primary ballot design. The outcome could determine whether that ballot design is carried into a contentious June 4 Democratic Senate primary pitting Kim against first lady Tammy Murphy.
Unique in the country, New Jersey brackets candidates together who run on the same party slogan, often with those who get the county political party backing in prime position.
Kim appeared in U.S. District Court and testified Monday.
His contest against the first lady came about after U.S. Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez was indicted on federal bribery charges last September, prompting Kim to declare his candidacy a day later. Murphy, a first-time candidate and the spouse of Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, joined the contest in November.
Menendez hasn’t announced his plans, but many Democrats have abandoned him, calling for his resignation. He’s pleaded not guilty and vowed to fight the charges.
Meanwhile, shortly after Murphy’s entrance to the race party leaders in several populous counties including Bergen and Essex backed the first lady in a signal that she would get the county line.
Tammy Murphy has said she’s competing in the system that’s in place in the state. Kim began calling for the end of the system, which has been reviled by a number of influential progressive groups in the state.
U.S. District Court Judge Zahid Quraishi set aside Monday to decide whether to grant an emergency injunction to end the county line system. March 25 is the filing deadline for the primary, and he told defendants’ attorneys in court that he wouldn’t take too much time “so you can force the court to be able to say, ‘It’s too late, Judge’.”
It’s unclear when he would rule on the matter, but he gave attorneys until later in the week to address the attorney general’s statement.
At times, he sounded skeptical of the attorneys for the defendants — most of the state’s county clerks whose job it is to design and implement ballots.
He responded tersely to a defendant’s attorney who argued that the current system had been in place for 100 years.
“The argument that because this is how we’ve always done it is how it should be done is not going to work in this court,” he said.
At one point, when an attorney for the defendants said political parties have a right to associate and endorse their candidates, Quraishi responded with a question.
“Why does it have to be they also control the ballot,” he asked.
The attorney, William Tambussi, responded that the law allows for slogans, which is how parties identify themselves, on the ballot.
Kim, a three-term congressman, watched hours of testimony and cross-examination of an elections expert his attorneys brought as a witness before taking the stand himself.
He said that while first considering a run for office in 2018, he was told of the importance of getting the county line and that it was “seen as very much determinative of if I would be successful.”
But Kim had reservations about the system, he said, pointing out that he did not always know all the candidates he was bracketed with on the ballot.
“I felt like I had no choice (but) to participate,” he said.
The defendants had argued there isn’t enough time to overhaul the ballots in time for the primary, and their attorneys cast the elections expert Kim’s attorney’s put forward as a witness as lacking knowledge and experience in New Jersey.
A day before the testimony, Attorney General Matt Platkin lobbed what one defendant’s attorney called a “litigation grenade” into the case, submitting a letter to the judge concluding that the state’s primary ballot system was “unconstitutional” and that he wouldn’t defend it.
Quraishi seemed irked by the letter, saying that he wasn’t sure he should consider it. He added that the attorney general could simply have said he wasn’t going to intervene in the case.
“He’s lobbing his opinion from the cheap seats,” the judge said. “He’s not here today.”
The attorney general’s office declined to comment beyond Platkin’s letter.
Outside the courthouse, a couple of dozen protesters carried signs reading “abolish the line” and chanted: “This is what democracy looks like.”
HOUSTON – Voters in Harris County had cast their ballot in the primary elections on March 5, 2024.
Residents will select their preferred candidates for various local offices, as well as to weigh in on the Presidential primary. From county commissioners to district judges, the primary elections will determine the nominees who will vie for these positions in the general election.
In Harris County, the Democratic primary has 119 races, and the Republican primary has 122. But the races you see on your ballot will depend on two things – where you’re registered, and which party you choose to vote in.
In Texas, voters are allowed to participate in the primary and runoff elections of only one party, or alternatively, they can choose to engage in the convention of a third party.
The polls opened at 7 a.m. and closed at 7 p.m. on Election Day.
Click here to see the full list of Texas counties that have vote centers.
Track national, statewide and local vote totals in the dropdown menu below:
Los Angeles has long been America’s most car-centric city, but now a movement is underway to change the way Los Angeles moves.
NBC4 News projects that Los Angeles voters approved Measure HLA, an initiative that would require the city to redesign streets to be safer for pedestrian and bicyclists while holding city officials accountable.
What would Measure HLA do?
Measure HLA, also referred to as Healthy Streets LA, would require the city of LA to implement Mobility Plan 2035, which was adopted a decade ago to encourage the creation of more bike lanes and wider sidewalks but hasn’t yielded a lot of results.
The ballot measure would mandate the city to implement Mobility Plan projects, such as adding protected bike lanes whenever the city improves roadways.
Measure HLA would require the city to implement a street modification as laid out in the Mobility Plan whenever there’s an improvement to at least one-eight mile stretch of a road or sidewalk,
Proponents of the initiative say ballot measure would force city officials to make sure streets are repaved for buses, pedestrians and bicyclists.
“Today in Los Angeles, in general, most people only feel safe driving a car, and even that isn’t that safe because car crashes have a huge toll,” said Michael Schneider, the founder of advocacy group Streets for All. “It’s about giving Angelinos options.”
Proponents also argue that Measure HLA would keep pedestrians and public transit users safe as the city of LA had more traffic deaths than homicides in 2023.
Why opponents want voters to say “no” to Measure HLA
Opposition to the ballot measure was led by the Los Angeles City Firefighters union, which argues reconfigured streets with fewer traffic lanes will hamper 911 responses.
“There is an issue with public safety it will delay the response time for the members that I represent,” Freddy Escobar, President, United Firefighters of Los Angeles
The union also cited a report by Matt Szabo, the City Administrative Officer to argue Measure HLA would be costly to the city, requiring $3.1 billion unfunded liability.
“You would be adding a mandate without the funds to achieve that,” Szabo said during a city council meeting on Feb. 16.
Proponents of Measure HLA said Szabo’s estimations were overblown.
President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump sailed through Super Tuesday primaries Tuesday, racking up enough delegates — in contests held in 16 states and American Samoa — to all but mathematically secure an encore of their 2020 election fight, according to NBC News.
For more than a year, polls have shown Americans anticipating a sequel with the kind of eagerness typically reserved for a drug-free colonoscopy. But Republicans show little interest in stripping their standard from Trump’s hands, and Biden, like most modern incumbents, faces no serious competition for his party’s nod.
“The 2024 nominations may have unknowingly been locked up since November 2020,” Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist, said.
“With a former president and an incumbent president, both parties have dug in and are gearing up for a rematch which looks to be vicious, vindictive and possibly vile,” he said, noting that the winner would not be eligible to run in 2028. That “will ultimately lead to the oldest ever inaugurated president, who will serve out their lame duck term.”
Before Super Tuesday, Haley won only one primary contest — in Washington, D.C., which had one of Trump’s weakest showings in 2016. On Tuesday, Trump piled up wins in races across the country: California, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Maine, Alabama, Massachusetts, Colorado and Minnesota.
NBC News called Vermont for Haley, leaving the tally of states at 12 for Trump and one for her.
Addressing supporters at his Mar-a-Lago club, Trump ignored Haley entirely as he laid out general election themes: blaming Biden for wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, inflation and illegal immigration.
“He’s the worst president in the history of our country,” Trump asserted. “Nov. 5 is going to go down as the single most important day in our history. … Right now our country is known as a joke.”
Biden chose not to speak publicly, releasing a statement that similarly pointed to the stakes of the November election.
“Tonight’s results leave the American people with a clear choice: Are we going to keep moving forward or will we allow Donald Trump to drag us backwards into the chaos, division, and darkness that defined his term in office?” Biden said in the statement.
He noted that wages are rising faster than inflation, took credit for the addition of 15 million jobs during his term and alluded to his lowering of prices for certain prescription drugs.
“If Donald Trump returns to the White House, all of this progress is at risk,” he said.
NBC News exit polls in Virginia and North Carolina showed Trump running up the score against Haley among self-identified conservatives, evangelicals and white voters who did not graduate from college — winning three-quarters or more of each of those groups in Virginia and more than 80 percent of them in North Carolina.
In what has become a familiar pattern, Haley fared better with self-identified moderates, who gave her 66 percent of their votes in Virginia and 62 percent in North Carolina. Her success with that smaller set of Republicans has raised questions about whether Trump can keep them in the GOP camp for the general election.
Neither Trump nor Biden can afford to lose many of their own party’s voters in November, and there are reasons for Democrats to worry about the president’s position even as Biden swept the primary map Tuesday with wins in California, Iowa, Virginia, North Carolina, Vermont, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Maine, Arkansas, Texas, Alabama, Colorado and Minnesota. (The one contest he lost was the small caucus in American Samoa.)
Recent polls show a tight race between Trump and Biden in the national popular vote. But given Biden’s narrow electoral-vote margin in 2020 — he won by about 43,000 votes spread over three states, even though he led Trump by 4.5 percentage points in popular votes — some Democrats worry that his advantage has disappeared.
Their fears were underscored last week when Bloomberg News and the Morning Consult released a battery of swing state polls showing Trump ahead of Biden in each of the key battlegrounds that are expected to collectively determine the winner.
“Biden starts in a clear deficit in nearly every battleground state and nationally,” said Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist who has worked on multiple presidential campaigns.
“Here is the brutal reality: The strategy Biden and Democrats have deployed to weaken Trump is simply not working, and it’s clear there needs to be real course correction both in terms of the message and the strategy,” Kofinis said. “Betting on a Trump implosion is not a strategy, and [Trump primary rival] Nikki Haley is going to find that out.”
The race to the White House gets the most attention in every election cycle – but each party’s race to controlling the Senate could be just as consequential as whoever wins the presidency.
There are signs Biden wants to alter his trajectory. He recently moved Jennifer O’Malley Dillon from her perch as a deputy chief of staff in the White House to his campaign. She has not reclaimed her 2020 title — “campaign manager” — but Democrats say they expect her to bring a steadying hand and the confidence of the president to the operation. Biden’s longtime political right hand, Mike Donilon, has also decamped from the White House to the campaign.
“Super Tuesday will help solidify the choice facing voters in November between Donald Trump’s dangerous chaos and Joe Biden’s fight for freedom, democracy and our fundamental rights as Americans,” Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said before the results were in Tuesday. “Donald Trump is running a campaign of revenge and retribution, to protect himself and enrich his wealthy friends. President Biden is running to finish the job and build on his work lowering prescription drug prices, protecting reproductive rights, and creating good paying jobs in an economy that works for middle class families.”
Some strategists in both parties have been surprised by Trump’s political resilience. Twice impeached by the House, Trump has been indicted in four separate cases in federal and state courts since leaving office and recently lost a civil judgment against his business that figures to cost him nearly half a billion dollars.
But his legal troubles made him demonstrably more popular with Republican voters as he portrayed himself as a victim of persecution by prosecution. A field of Republican challengers that included Haley, two-term Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and others decompensated amid a GOP rally around its two-time nominee.
Trump entered Tuesday with a 276-to-43 lead over Haley, his lone remaining rival, in NBC News’ count of delegates to this summer’s Republican National Convention. With 865 delegates available — more than a third of the overall number headed to the convention — Trump will end the night short of the 1,215-delegate threshold that constitutes a majority. But he is expected to draw close enough that many Republicans view Haley as an afterthought.
The Trump campaign, which is set to hold a large fundraising event Wednesday in Washington featuring GOP congressional leaders and headlined by Donald Trump Jr., has been pressing Republicans to bring the primary to a close for several weeks.
“Republican voters have delivered resounding wins for President Trump … and this race is over,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said. “Our focus is now on Joe Biden and the general election.”
The biggest delegate purses for both parties were in California and Texas, which Trump and Biden won handily. Biden still faces nominal opposition from Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who has failed to gain traction — or win any delegates — in early states on the calendar. NBC News’ tracker showed Biden with 206 delegates going into Tuesday and more than 1,000 by the end of the night.
Biden was denied two delegates last month in Michigan. They were won by a ballot line for “uncommitted” that progressive voters used to register displeasure with his support for Israel in the war in the Middle East. With NBC News projecting a victory for Jason Palmer in American Samoa — with six delegates in the balance — Biden figured to lose a handful more Tuesday night.
Like his recent predecessors, including Trump, Biden has found the presidency to be a drag on his popularity. A February Gallup survey found his approval rating at 38 percent. He hasn’t been above 50 percent in Gallup polling since June 2021.
Trump’s approval rating fell to 34 percent in his final month in the Oval Office as he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election and his supporters stormed the Capitol to try to stop the certification of Biden’s victory. Trump’s approval never topped 49 percent in Gallup polling.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley won her first GOP presidential nominating contest Sunday, notching a victory in the Washington, D.C., primary, according to NBC News — a win her campaign hopes will spark some momentum ahead of next week’s Super Tuesday contests.
Haley, who won the district primary over former President Donald Trump, has for weeks pledged to stay in the race through Super Tuesday, when 15 states and American Samoa will hold nominating contests. Trump is dominating in nearly all of those states in most public polling and is expected to extend his commanding delegate lead.
Haley took 63% of the GOP primary vote to 33% for Trump. Just over 2,000 D.C. Republicans cast ballots. Because Haley got more than half of the vote, she came away with the district’s 19 delegates.
Washington’s moderate set of Republicans, many of whom work in politics or government, are seen as vastly different than those in other early states like South Carolina and Iowa, which set up a scenario where Haley had her first legitimate chance of notching a victory. Trump got just 14% of the vote in Washington’s 2016 primary.
And expectations for turnout were also low, which opened up the door to a different scenario than every other contest so far because the margins were expected to be thin.
“It could be anywhere between 2,000 and 6,000 voters,” district GOP chair Patrick Mara predicted in an interview with NBC News last week. “So, quite frankly there is an opportunity here for anyone to win. It just depends on voter turnout and what the campaigns are doing.”
In 2016, the GOP primary was won by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio when roughly 2,800 votes were cast. Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, who became the party’s 2012 nominee, won the contest that year, when 5,200 votes were cast, and in 2008, roughly 6,200 votes were cast in a contest won by eventual Republican nominee John McCain.
The race to the White House gets the most attention in every election cycle – but each party’s race to controlling the Senate could be just as consequential as whoever wins the presidency.
Mara said the campaigns for both Haley and Trump were sending text messages and doing phone calls to inspire turnout ahead of the primary, even having some volunteers go door-to-door.
The primary is run by the local Republican Party rather than the state, which is common in other nominating contests, with just one polling location at the Madison Hotel.
“It’s run by the party, which is a different experience and we pay for it,” he said. “So, it means that Washington Republicans had to be motivated to come to downtown D.C to a hotel to vote.”
He said Trump’s dominance in early primary states and the perception that the Republican nominating process also impacted low turnout.
“The average Washington Republican is politically astute and more media-savvy, they have seen coverage telling people the race is over,” Mara said.
This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley won her first GOP presidential nominating contest Sunday, notching a victory in the Washington, D.C., primary, according to NBC News — a win her campaign hopes will spark some momentum ahead of next week’s Super Tuesday contests.
Haley, who won the district primary over former President Donald Trump, has for weeks pledged to stay in the race through Super Tuesday, when 15 states and American Samoa will hold nominating contests. Trump is dominating in nearly all of those states in most public polling and is expected to extend his commanding delegate lead.
Haley took 63% of the GOP primary vote to 33% for Trump. Just over 2,000 D.C. Republicans cast ballots. Because Haley got more than half of the vote, she came away with the district’s 19 delegates.
Washington’s moderate set of Republicans, many of whom work in politics or government, are seen as vastly different than those in other early states like South Carolina and Iowa, which set up a scenario where Haley had her first legitimate chance of notching a victory. Trump got just 14% of the vote in Washington’s 2016 primary.
And expectations for turnout were also low, which opened up the door to a different scenario than every other contest so far because the margins were expected to be thin.
“It could be anywhere between 2,000 and 6,000 voters,” district GOP chair Patrick Mara predicted in an interview with NBC News last week. “So, quite frankly there is an opportunity here for anyone to win. It just depends on voter turnout and what the campaigns are doing.”
In 2016, the GOP primary was won by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio when roughly 2,800 votes were cast. Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, who became the party’s 2012 nominee, won the contest that year, when 5,200 votes were cast, and in 2008, roughly 6,200 votes were cast in a contest won by eventual Republican nominee John McCain.
The race to the White House gets the most attention in every election cycle – but each party’s race to controlling the Senate could be just as consequential as whoever wins the presidency.
Mara said the campaigns for both Haley and Trump were sending text messages and doing phone calls to inspire turnout ahead of the primary, even having some volunteers go door-to-door.
The primary is run by the local Republican Party rather than the state, which is common in other nominating contests, with just one polling location at the Madison Hotel.
“It’s run by the party, which is a different experience and we pay for it,” he said. “So, it means that Washington Republicans had to be motivated to come to downtown D.C to a hotel to vote.”
He said Trump’s dominance in early primary states and the perception that the Republican nominating process also impacted low turnout.
“The average Washington Republican is politically astute and more media-savvy, they have seen coverage telling people the race is over,” Mara said.
This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:
HOUSTON – Tuesday is election day for the March 5 primary elections in Texas.
If you are registered to vote, finding a place to vote is easy in Texas.
WHERE DO YOU VOTE ON ELECTION DAY?
More than 90 of the 254 counties in Texas currently have permission from the Secretary of State’s Office to use county-wide polling places on Election Day.
KPRC 2 called several counties and learned that most of them fall into that category.
Harris County, Fort Bend County, Galveston County, Brazoria County and Chambers County will have vote centers on Election Day. This means voters in those counties can go to any vote center in their county.
Montgomery County does not have vote centers. When we called the Montgomery County Elections Administrator’s Office, they confirmed that voters there must vote at their precinct assigned to them.
In Harris County, there will be more than 500 Vote Centers on Tuesday.
Los Angeles has long been America’s most car-centric city, but now a movement is underway to change the way Los Angeles moves.
When LA city residents head to the polls on Super Tuesday, they will have an option to vote on Measure HLA, an initiative that would require the city to redesign streets to be safer for pedestrian and bicyclists while holding city officials accountable.
What would Measure HLA do?
Measure HLA, also referred to as Healthy Streets LA, would require the city of LA to implement Mobility Plan 2035, which was adopted a decade ago to encourage the creation of more bike lanes and wider sidewalks but hasn’t yielded a lot of results.
The ballot measure would mandate the city to implement Mobility Plan projects, such as adding protected bike lanes whenever the city improves roadways.
If approved, Measure HLA would require the city to implement a street modification as laid out in the Mobility Plan whenever there’s an improvement to at least one-eight mile stretch of a road or sidewalk,
Proponents of the initiative say ballot measure would force city officials to make sure streets are repaved for buses, pedestrians and bicyclists.
“Today in Los Angeles, in general, most people only feel safe driving a car, and even that isn’t that safe because car crashes have a huge toll,” said Michael Schneider, the founder of advocacy group Streets for All. “It’s about giving Angelinos options.”
Proponents also argue that Measure HLA would keep pedestrians and public transit users safe as the city of LA had more traffic deaths than homicides in 2023.
Why opponents want voters to say “no” to Measure HLA
Opposition to the ballot measure is being led by the Los Angeles City Firefighters union, which argues reconfigured streets with fewer traffic lanes will hamper 911 responses.
“There is an issue with public safety it will delay the response time for the members that I represent,” Freddy Escobar, President, United Firefighters of Los Angeles
The union also cites a report by Matt Szabo, the City Administrative Officer to argue Measure HLA would be costly to the city, requiring $3.1 billion unfunded liability.
“You would be adding a mandate without the funds to achieve that,” Szabo said during a city council meeting on Feb. 16.
Proponents of Measure HLA say Szabo’s estimations are overblown.
Defeat for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is a blow in her home state. A total of 50 delegates were on the line in Saturday’s contest, which are split between the statewide winner and the winner of each congressional district. And Trump’s dominant performance in the exit polling and earliest results suggest he could pull off a clean sweep.
The NBC exit poll shows Trump and Haley fighting to a near-draw among Republican voters with college degrees: Trump 51%, Haley 47%. But it was a blowout among the bigger group of primary voters without degrees: Trump 75%, Haley 25%.
The former president now looks to be cruising to the party’s presidential nomination despite being criminally charged in four separate jurisdictions and subject to hundreds of millions of dollars in civil penalties. He could reach the necessary 1,215 delegates to clinch by mid-March, with a number of states holding de facto winner-take-all primaries on Super Tuesday (March 5) and more following after that.
For Haley, who served as governor of South Carolina before she became Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, the loss was particularly brutal. Trump’s victory could be the most lopsided in a contested South Carolina GOP primary since President George H.W. Bush defeated right-wing insurgent candidate Pat Buchanan, a former aide to multiple GOP presidents, by more than 40 points in 1992.
But Haley made clear that a loss in her home state on Saturday would not be pushing her out of the race any time soon, pledging to campaign through the Super Tuesday contests next month. Already, she’s planned a cross-country trip to those states set to begin on Sunday.
In a speech on Tuesday outlining why she planned to stay in the race regardless of results in the Palmetto State, Haley called Trump “a disaster” for the GOP who is “more unstable and unhinged” than when he first ran, adding she feels “no need to kiss the ring.”
“And I have no fear of Trump’s retribution,” she said. “I’m not looking for anything from him.”
Nikki Haley, born Nimrata “Nikki” Randhawa, is a South Carolina conservative who has a history of breaking the glass ceiling. Here’s what you need to know.
The former president now looks to be cruising to the party’s presidential nomination despite being criminally charged in four separate jurisdictions and subject to hundreds of millions of dollars in civil penalties. He could reach the necessary 1,215 delegates to clinch by mid-March, with a number of states holding de facto winner-take-all primaries on Super Tuesday (March 5) and more following after that.
For Haley, who served as governor of South Carolina before she became Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, the loss was particularly brutal. Trump’s victory could be the most lopsided in a contested South Carolina GOP primary since President George H.W. Bush defeated right-wing insurgent candidate Pat Buchanan, a former aide to multiple GOP presidents, by more than 40 points in 1992.
But Haley made clear that a loss in her home state on Saturday would not be pushing her out of the race any time soon, pledging to campaign through the Super Tuesday contests next month. Already, she’s planned a cross-country trip to those states set to begin on Sunday.
In a speech on Tuesday outlining why she planned to stay in the race regardless of results in the Palmetto State, Haley called Trump “a disaster” for the GOP who is “more unstable and unhinged” than when he first ran, adding she feels “no need to kiss the ring.”
“And I have no fear of Trump’s retribution,” she said. “I’m not looking for anything from him.”
Trump, who held one major event in the state during the final days of the contest, paid little attention to Haley in the run-up to Saturday’s vote, though at a rally earlier this month he questioned where Haley’s husband was, as he is deployed overseas with the military.
Haley and allies repeatedly targeted Trump for those comments over the last two weeks, doubling up criticism of Trump’s talk about Haley’s marriage with his comments at the same South Carolina event that he once told NATO allies he would “encourage” Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” if those allies did not increase their defense spending.
“Nikki has actually gone very far left, she’s very rude,” Trump said at his rally in Rock Hill on Friday, during which he only briefly referenced his rival. “Do you notice that? I don’t like to say that, but she’s very rude.”
Trump maintained wide polling leads in the public surveys released before Saturday’s contest. But Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., Haley’s lone congressional endorser, predicted ahead of Saturday that Haley would “outperform” those surveys.
“It’s not going to be 30 points,” he said. “We’ll see how this turns out, take this state-by-state. I admire her for doing this. All those who are asking her to get out, they’re not putting the work in.”
Haley and allies increasingly targeted independent and Democratic-leaning voters in the final days of the election, with any voter who did not vote in the Feb. 3 Democratic presidential primary here eligible to vote in Saturday’s contest. Turnout in the Democratic primary was just 130,000, a massive drop-off from recent election cycles.
Still, the deficit Haley faced versus Trump was too much for her to overcome. And with Trump’s win seemingly in the bag for weeks, Trump’s family members like daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who the former president has endorsed to serve as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, asked in Beaufort: “Why is she still in the race?”
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During an exchange with reporters following the event, Trump’s daughter-in-law suggested that Haley must only be staying in the race because she is hopeful that a criminal conviction will knock the former president out before Election Day.
“I can only assume, and I think what a lot of people only assume, is that you would only stay in if you were banking on possibly the least democratic and least American thing happening in this situation, which is that potentially one of these indictments takes Donald Trump out,” she said.
Meanwhile, the former president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., told NBC News in a question-and-answer session with reporters that Haley is only staying in the race “because she’s trying to hurt Trump” and that doing so will benefit her financially.
“It’s purely about the future payday,” he said. “And there’s literally no other excuse for it. And we all know that if we’re being intellectually honest.”
At her Georgetown rally on Thursday, Haley said she did not care how her presidential bid would impact her political future.
“First they wanted to say that I wanted to be vice president,” she said. “I think I pretty much proved that is not what I’m trying to do. Then they were talking about my political future. I don’t care about a political future. If I did, I would have been out by now.”
Haley supporters who spoke with NBC News said they wanted to see her push on, suggesting something beyond the results could impact the race.
“Regardless of how she fares in South Carolina, I would like to see her run the course,” said Liz Hood, a Haley backer from Beaufort. “Because from February 24 to November is a long time. And there are many things that can happen.”
“I’m glad she’s staying in,” added Bill Pittman, a Haley supporter from Beaufort. “And I think she’ll win but a lot can happen on both sides between now and Election Day. It is an eternity away in politics. I like the idea of her being in the mix, still in the hunt.”
The core problem Haley ran into in her home state was simple: Voters for the most part liked her, but most who voted on Saturday simply liked Trump even more.
“She was pretty good,” David, a Trump supporter from Georgetown, said of her time as governor. “I think she’s a great person. But I think the Democrat Party would eat her up, spit her out in the first week. I don’t think she can handle it.”
On Trump, he added, “I don’t like the man. But I think he is the only one that can bring us out of the hole we’re in.”
This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:
This is breaking news. Earlier coverage is below. This article will be updated.
Former President Donald Trump is looking to win his fourth straight primary state on Saturday over Nikki Haley in South Carolina, aiming to hand a home-state embarrassment to his last remaining major rival for the Republican nomination.
Trump went into the primary with a huge polling lead and the backing of the state’s top Republicans, including Sen. Tim Scott, a former rival in the race. Haley, who served as U.N. ambassador under Trump, has spent weeks crisscrossing the state that twice elected her governor warning that the dominant front-runner, who is 77 and faces four indictments, is too old and distracted to be president again.
In all but one primary since 1980, the Republican winner in South Carolina has gone on to be the party’s nominee. But Haley has repeatedly vowed to carry on if she loses her home state, even as Trump positions himself for a likely general election rematch against President Joe Biden.
Trump’s backers, including those who previously supported Haley during her time as governor, seemed confident that the former president would have a solid victory on Saturday.
“I did support her when she was governor. She’s done some good things,” Davis Paul, 36, said as he waited for Trump at a recent rally in Conway. “But I just don’t think she’s ready to tackle a candidate like Trump. I don’t think many people can.”
Trump has swept into the state for a handful of large rallies in between fundraisers and events in other states, including Michigan, which holds its GOP primary Tuesday.
He has drawn much larger crowds and campaigned with Gov. Henry McMaster, who succeeded Haley, and Scott, who was elevated to the Senate by Haley.
Speaking Friday in Rock Hill, Trump accused Haley of staying in the race to hurt him at the behest of Democratic donors.
“All she’s trying to do is inflict pain on us so they can win in November,” he said. “We’re not going to let that happen.”
In some of those rallies, Trump has made comments that handed Haley more fodder for her stump speeches, such as his Feb. 10 questioning of why her husband — currently on a South Carolina Army National Guard deployment to Africa — hadn’t been campaigning alongside her. Haley turned that point into an argument that the front-runner doesn’t respect servicemembers and their families, long a criticism that has followed Trump going back to his suggesting the late Sen. John McCain, a prisoner of war in Vietnam, wasn’t a hero because he was captured.
That same night, Trump asserted that he would encourage countries like Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” against NATO member countries who failed to meet the transatlantic alliance’s defense spending targets. Haley has been holding out that moment as evidence that Trump is too volatile and “getting weak in the knees when it comes to Russia.”
After one of Haley’s events, Terry Sullivan, a U.S. Navy veteran who lives in Hopkins, said he had planned to support Trump but changed his mind after hearing Haley’s critique of his NATO comments.
“One country can say whatever it wants, but when you have an agreement, among other nations, we should join the agreements of other nations, not just off on our own,” Sullivan said. “After listening to Nikki, I think I’m a Nikki supporter now.”
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Haley has made an indirect appeal to Democrats who in large numbers sat out their own presidential primary earlier this month, adding into her stump speech a line that “anybody can vote in this primary as long as they didn’t vote in the Feb. 3 Democrat primary.”
Some of those voters have been showing up at her events, saying that although they planned to vote for Biden in the general election, they planned to cross over to the GOP primary on Saturday as a way to oppose Trump now.
In any other campaign cycle, a home state loss might be detrimental to a campaign. In 2016, Sen. Marco Rubio dropped out shortly after losing Florida in a blowout to Trump, after his campaign argued the political winds would shift in his favor once the campaign moved to his home state.
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And Haley’s campaign can’t name a state in which they feel she will be victorious over Trump. “The primary ends tonight and it is time to turn to the general election,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said Saturday.
But in a speech this past week in Greenville, Haley said she would stay in the campaign “until the last person votes,” arguing that those whose contests come after the early primaries and caucuses deserved the right to have a choice between candidates.
Haley also used that speech — which many had assumed was an announcement she was shuttering her campaign — to argue that she feels “no need to kiss the ring,” as others had, possibly with prospects of serving as Trump’s running mate in mind.
“I have no fear of Trump’s retribution,” Haley reiterated. “I’m not looking for anything from him. My own political future is of zero concern.”
___
Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Jill Colvin in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.
Four candidates vying for California’s open U.S. Senate seat will face off during a one-hour live televised debate on Tuesday. The debate — hosted by NBC Bay Area’s sister station, NBC4 Los Angeles — will be broadcast on NBC Bay Area and our streaming channels and digital platforms.
Democratic Congress members Adam Schiff, Barbara Lee, Katie Porter and Republican candidate and former professional baseball player Steve Garvey are set to participate in the debate on the Universal Studios Hollywood Lot.
The debate will be broadcast commercial-free.
NBC4 News Anchor Colleen Williams, NBC4 Chief Political Reporter Conan Nolan and Noticiero Telemundo 52 News Anchor Alejandra Ortíz will moderate the debate, which will cover a wide range of critical issues impacting the diverse state of California. It takes place just two weeks before the March 5 primary.
The debate will be held in partnership with Loyola Marymount University.
When and what time is the 2024 U.S. Senate debate?
The debate will take place on Tuesday, February 20. It begins at 6 p.m. Pacific Time, followed by post-debate analysis.
How to watch the debate live
Over the Air: The event will be broadcast on NBC Bay Area.
Connected TV: Streaming on NBC Bay Area News on Roku channel 4125, Samsung TV Plus channel 1035 and Amazon Fire TV, as well as the NBC Bay Area apps on Roku and Fire TV. Click here to see where else we’re streaming on connected televisions. A replay of the debate will air at 9 p.m.
Mobile Apps and Websites: The NBC Bay Area app for iOS and Android. You can also bookmark this page and watch it here live.
The four leading candidates to fill Dianne Feinstein’s seat in the U.S. Senate will debate for the last time on Feb. 20 before the primary. Conan Nolan reports for the NBC4 News on Feb. 7, 2024.
A new opinion poll sponsored by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce is a mixed bag for Mayor London Breed as she seeks reelection.
The new poll results were released during the Chamber of Commerce’s city beat breakfast in San Francisco Wednesday.
In Breed’s keynote address she said the city is rebounding, despite the negative headlines plaguing the city lately.
“Now, we are on the path to somewhere. Crime is dropping. Our population is growing. New ideas are being born,” she said.
The drop in crime she referred to comes from new data released by the San Francisco Police Department last month, showing crime dropped overall 7% last year.
But the Chamber of Commerce’s annual city beat survey took the pulse of 500 likely voters. Unfortunately, for Breed, 72% said the city is headed on the wrong track.
But looking at polling data over the last few years, Rodney Fong with the Chamber of Commerce said that fewer people surveyed shared that point of view this year.
“Traditionally, the sentiment is that San Francisco is not going in the right direction. However, this year we’re starting to see people are optimistic about San Francisco,” he said.
At the event, the Chamber of Commerce also released recent polling about what voters feel about several local issues affecting the city. That includes questions about three measures Breed put on the ballot.
53% support Proposition C, which would make it easier to convert office space to other uses.
While 61% support Prop E, which would loosen restrictions on police pursuits and allow access to surveillance cameras and drones. And 61 % like Prop F, which would require drug screening for people accepting cash assistance from the city.
“This is a really pivotal moment for the city and I think voters feel that as well. They want a clean city. They want a city where businesses can thrive,” Fong said.
There’s organized opposition against two of those measures.
The ACLU has come out against Prop E, saying it rolls back hard fought gains on police reforms.
Housing advocates warn Prop F could affect people’s ability to keep subsidized housing if they lose cash assistance after a positive drug test or refuse treatment.
President Joe Biden easily won Nevada’s Democratic presidential primary Tuesday night, NBC News projects, putting the president one step closer to formally securing his party’s nomination for a matchup against likely GOP nominee Donald Trump.
Rep. Dean Phillips, the Minnesota Democrat running a longshot primary challenge against Biden, entered the race too late to get on the ballot in Nevada, making self-help author Marianne Williamson Biden’s best-known challenger in Tuesday’s contest.
Williamson is on track to finish far behind Biden, just as she did in the two previous contests in New Hampshire and South Carolina.
This is the first year Nevada Democrats are holding a primary instead of caucuses. The state made the change in order to comply with new Democratic National Committee rules, which also revamped the presidential nominating calendar for 2024.
Next up for Democrats, on Feb. 27, is Michigan, a newcomer to the pre-Super Tuesday window of early primaries and a critical general election swing state.
President Joe Biden easily won Nevada’s Democratic presidential primary Tuesday night, NBC News projects, putting the president one step closer to formally securing his party’s nomination for a matchup against likely GOP nominee Donald Trump.
Rep. Dean Phillips, the Minnesota Democrat running a longshot primary challenge against Biden, entered the race too late to get on the ballot in Nevada, making self-help author Marianne Williamson Biden’s best-known challenger in Tuesday’s contest.
Williamson is on track to finish far behind Biden, just as she did in the two previous contests in New Hampshire and South Carolina.
This is the first year Nevada Democrats are holding a primary instead of caucuses. The state made the change in order to comply with new Democratic National Committee rules, which also revamped the presidential nominating calendar for 2024.
Next up for Democrats, on Feb. 27, is Michigan, a newcomer to the pre-Super Tuesday window of early primaries and a critical general election swing state.
President Joe Biden easily won South Carolina’s Democratic primary on Saturday, NBC News projected, clinching a state he pushed to lead off his party’s nominating process after it revived his then-struggling White House bid four years ago.
Biden on Saturday defeated the other long-shot Democrats on South Carolina’s ballot, including Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips and author Marianne Williamson. His reelection campaign invested heavily in driving up turnout in what it saw as a test drive of its efforts to mobilize Black voters, a key Democratic bloc central to Biden’s chances in a likely November rematch against former President Donald Trump.
“In 2020, it was the voters of South Carolina who proved the pundits wrong, breathed new life into our campaign, and set us on the path to winning the presidency,” Biden said in a statement. “Now in 2024, the people of South Carolina have spoken again and I have no doubt that you have set us on the path to winning the Presidency again — and making Donald Trump a loser — again.”
His win comes after he led a Democratic National Committee effort to have South Carolina go first in the party’s primary, citing the state’s more racially diverse population compared to the traditional first-in-the-nation states of Iowa and New Hampshire, which are overwhelmingly white.
South Carolina is reliably Republican, but 26% of its residents are Black. In the 2020 general election, Black voters made up 11% of the national electorate, and 9 in 10 of them supported Biden, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of that election’s voters.
Biden pushed for a revamped primary calendar that will see Nevada go second, holding its primary on Tuesday. The new order also moves the Democratic primary in Michigan, a large and diverse swing state, to Feb. 27, before the expansive field of states voting on March 5, known as Super Tuesday.
New Hampshire rejected the DNC’s plan and held a leadoff primary last month anyway. Biden didn’t campaign and his name wasn’t on the ballot, but still won by a sizable margin after supporters mounted a write-in campaign on his behalf.
South Carolina, where Biden has long held deep relationships with supporters and donors, also played a pivotal role in his 2020 campaign, where a big win helped revive a flagging effort in other early-voting states and propelled him to the nomination.
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Biden was aided by South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, whose 2020 endorsement served as a long-awaited signal to the state’s Black voters that Biden would be the right candidate to advocate for their interests.
Clyburn said Saturday night that he believed New Hampshire’s delegates should be seated at the party’s convention this summer and that Democrats should avoid any further infighting.
Both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the first Black woman and Asian American to serve in the role, have consistently thanked the state’s Democrats for their support. Biden a week ago told attendees at a state party fundraiser that “you’re the reason I am president.” He also argued to an audience of hundreds of party faithful that they were “the reason Donald Trump is a loser. And you’re the reason we’re going to win and beat him again,” framing the likely general election matchup with the GOP’s current front-runner.
Earlier in the day, in South Carolina’s capital of Columbia, Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison said, “We all know that we, because of the color of this, we, our great grandparents, our grandparents, could not always vote here.” Harrison is a South Carolina native who is Black.
“For this president to say, ‘Jaime, for the entirety of your life, we have started this process in Iowa and New Hampshire, and now, we’re going to start it in South Carolina’ — no other president before ever decided to touch that issue,” he added. “But Joe Biden did, and I will always be grateful to the president for giving us a chance, for seeing us, and understanding how much we matter.”
Black voters interviewed during the recent early voting period listed a range of reasons for supporting Biden, from his administration’s defense of abortion rights to appointing Black jurists and other minorities to the federal courts. Some echoed Biden’s warnings that Trump would threaten democracy as he continues to push lies that the 2020 vote was stolen.
“We can’t live with a leader that will make this into a dictatorship. We can’t live in a place that is not a democracy. That will be a fall for America,” said LaJoia Broughton, a 42-year-old small business owner in Columbia. “So my vote is with Biden. It has been with Biden and will continue to be with Biden.”
Some voters said they were concerned about the 81-year-old Biden’s age, as many Americans have said they are in public polling. Trump is 77. Both men have had a series of public flubs that have fueled skepticism about their readiness.
“They’re as old as I am and to have these two guys be the only choices, that’s kind of difficult,” said Charles Trower, a 77-year-old from Blythewood, South Carolina. “But I would much rather have President Biden than even consider the other guy.”
