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  • Special counsel received documents from Giuliani team that tried to find fraud after 2020 election | CNN Politics

    Special counsel received documents from Giuliani team that tried to find fraud after 2020 election | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Among the materials turned over to special counsel Jack Smith about supposed fraud in the 2020 election are documents that touch on many of the debunked conspiracies and unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud peddled by former Donald Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.

    The documents had been withheld by former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, who claimed they were privileged, only to be handed over to Smith on Sunday at what appears to be the late stages of the federal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

    The files include affidavits claiming there were widespread “irregularities,” shoddy statistical analyses supposedly revealing “fraudulent activities,” and opposition research about a senior employee from Dominion Voting Systems that are central to civil litigation and a federal criminal probe stemming from a voting systems breach in Colorado.

    The documents turned over by Kerik also connect him and other members of the Trump legal team to the efforts to smear a Dominion Voting Systems executive – efforts that are now the subject of both civil litigation and the Colorado state criminal investigation.

    The tranche includes a 29-page dossier on the executive, Eric Coomer, detailing his anti-Trump rhetoric on social media, as well as his background working for the voting machine company. The header of the document describes it as written by a lawyer in North Carolina for the “Hon. Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Trump Legal Team, and Other Associated Attorneys Combatting Election Fraud, 2020 Presidential Election.”

    Coomer has brought a defamation lawsuit against the Trump campaign, Giuliani and others who promoted claims that he was connected to a plot to rig the 2020 election.

    The documents turned over by Kerik also include a 105-page report from after the 2020 election compiled by the Trump campaign and Giuliani that contained the campaign’s unfounded allegations of fraud, including witness statements and false allegations of over-votes and illegal votes.

    They also include communications between investigators hired by Giuliani – including Kerik – about the debunked report about irregularities in Antrim County, Michigan, that Trump was repeatedly told was bogus but continued to tout up to and on January 6, 2021.

    One example is a memo titled “Briefing materials for Senate members” sent by Katherine Friess – a former Trump lawyer – to Kerik, Steve Bannon and an email address known to belong to Giuliani on January 4, 2021.

    For months, Kerik had tried to shield some of the documents from investigators in Congress and the Justice Department, citing privilege. Then, in recent weeks, Kerik gave the documents to Trump’s 2024 campaign to review. After that review, the campaign declined to assert privilege, according to Kerik’s lawyer, Tim Parlatore, who then turned over the documents to the Smith’s office on Sunday.

    “I have shared all of these documents, appropriately 600MB, mostly pdfs, with the Special Counsel and look forward to sitting down with them in about two weeks to discuss,” Parlatore said.

    That interview with federal investigators in Smith’s office has now been set for early August.

    This tranche of documents turned over to Smith further illustrates the scope of unproven fraud claims that were being circulated to high-level Trump allies at the time.

    One of the research documents turned over by Kerik was a report on so-called U-Voters, a theory that there is “an army of phantom voters,” who have accumulated on the voter rolls over the last several years, “who can be deployed at will.”

    The report was referenced in late December 2020 letters sent to the Justice Department and to then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell by Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a top promoter of Trump’s election reversal gambits who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2022. The letter to McConnell, signed by other Pennsylvania Republicans as well, asked him to dispute the election’s certification.

    The Kerik documents also include several versions of a research memo purporting to analyze the Pennsylvania election and claiming to find an “indication” of fraud. The Trump team’s focus on Pennsylvania, and how its bogus claims of fraud there affected election officials in the state, has been the subject of scrutiny by Smith.

    In addition, the internal communications handed over by Kerik suggest Trump’s team attempted to seize on an earlier Government Accountability Office report about the Department of Homeland Security’s cyber arm to undercut what Trump was told – and embraced – during a February 2020 Oval Office meeting about election security.

    They include the GAO report and what appears to be a memo highlighting the fact that “DHS Critical Infrastructure and Security Agency (CISA) failed to fully execute multiple strategies to secure the 2020 Presidential elections.”

    The memo seeks to counter CISA’s public statement that the election was “the most secure in American history,” based on security programs officials presented to Trump during the February 2020 briefing. Trump had seemed to embrace the programs in early 2020, to the point of suggesting the agencies hold a press conference so he could take credit for their work, CNN reported Monday.

    This headline and story have been updated with additional reporting.

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  • Why are far-right parties on the march across Europe? | CNN

    Why are far-right parties on the march across Europe? | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    While the Anglosphere was wracked by a burst of populism in 2016, most European countries proved remarkably resilient. Long-held grievances in the United Kingdom and United States fueled Brexit and took Donald Trump to the White House, but Europe – seeming at times to look aghast across the Channel and Atlantic – appeared largely immune. Brussels had fretted about a “Brexit domino effect.” In reality, the opposite came to be.

    In the five years from 2016, French centrism spurted out a new political party led by Emmanuel Macron that quelled the National Front. Angela Merkel’s resignation passed without populist fanfare and delivered a moderate successor. Mario Draghi, the technocrat par excellence, slid seamlessly from the European Central Bank to Italy’s premiership. Spain even went left.

    There were outliers: Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Poland and Viktor Orban in Hungary continued to shape their nations in their populist parties’ image. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) surged to third place in the 2017 federal elections. The billionaire tycoon Andrej Babis gained power that same year – but told CNN at the time he was more like the Czech Michael Bloomberg than the Czech Donald Trump. The story of that period was the so-called populist “wave” cresting early, and not sweeping much away. Voters in European nations largely toed the line.

    Today, there is not that same cohesion. The far right is on the march across the continent. Italy’s government under Giorgia Meloni is further to the right than at any point since the rule of Mussolini. The AfD recently won a district council election for the first time, with more victories expected to follow. In France, the perma-threat of a Marine Le Pen presidency grows with every protest against Macron’s government, whether over police violence or pension reform. Far-right parties are propping up coalitions in Finland and Sweden. Neo-Nazi groups are growing in Austria.

    And in Spain, the center-left coalition looks set to crumble after elections this weekend, paving the way for the far-right Vox party to enter government for the first time as part of a coalition.

    Why did Europe largely avoid the sort of populism that took root in the US and UK in 2016? And why are populist parties now steadily marching into the mainstream across the continent?

    It is often said that majoritarian electoral systems – as in the US and UK – help to shut extreme views out, while proportional systems – more common in Europe – welcome them in. Proportional systems give a louder legislative voice to parties like the AfD and Vox; winner-takes-all systems keep them quiet.

    For example, the UK Independence Party (UKIP), despite winning more than 12% of the vote, secured only one seat in Parliament in the 2015 general election. Thanks to the UK’s first-past-the-post system, while there was significant support for UKIP’s anti-European Union, anti-immigration platform, it was not concentrated enough in any single constituency to deliver many seats. Nigel Farage, the former leader of UKIP, ran in seven elections but never won a seat – a supposed benefit of majoritarian systems.

    But it’s not that simple. Afraid of losing voters to UKIP (and other far-right parties), the governing Conservatives ended up adopting many of its positions. First, holding a referendum on Brexit – then pursuing a hardline form of it. Middle-of-the-road Conservatives found they had to make room in their party for more extreme views, or face losing electoral ground to parties that championed them. The system that was meant to shut extremists out of the building ended up welcoming in their ideas. Farage saw many of his policies implemented without having to win a seat.

    By contrast, despite often having extremist parties in the building, almost all mainstream European parties would simply refuse to consider them as potential coalition partners, under the principle of the “cordon sanitaire.” For instance, when the then-National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen (father of Marine) unexpectedly defeated the Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin in the 2002 French Presidential election, the Socialists swung their weight behind the center-right candidate Jacques Chirac, delivering him a landslide in the second-round runoff. Despite their ideological differences, the mainstream parties simply refused to cooperate with extremists.

    Now, that dynamic has been reversed. Extremist parties that were once excluded from governing coalitions are increasingly propping them up, and the membrane separating the far and center right is proving increasingly permeable.

    In Finland, Petteri Orpo – largely seen as dependable and level-headed – only replaced Sanna Marin as Prime Minister in April after allying with the nationalist Finns Party. The party’s Vilhelm Junnila lasted barely a month as finance minister before resigning after allegations he had joked about Nazism at a far-right event in 2019. Swedish Prime Minister Ulif Kristersson relies on the votes of the increasingly Euroskeptic, anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats.

    One peculiar feature of this new dynamic is how the far right and center right increasingly use each other’s language. Mainstream center-right parties, fearful of losing votes to more extreme groups, have increasingly begun to adopt their policies. In the Netherlands, Mark Rutte’s run as the second-longest serving leader in Europe ended this month after his new, hardline stance on asylum seekers proved too extreme for his more moderate coalition partners, causing his government to collapse.

    Marine Le Pen, leader of the French far-right party Rassemblement National (National Rally), has begun to use more moderate language of late.

    Conversely, far-right parties have attempted to sanitize some of their rhetoric, hoping to appear a more credible electoral prospect. After the fatal police shooting of an unarmed teenager, which sparked huge protests in France, Marine Le Pen’s response was markedly restrained.

    Philippe Marlier, a professor of French politics at University College London, told CNN that rather than seizing on traditional far-right rallying calls of “riots, ethnic minorities, rebelling against public authorities,” Le Pen’s “low-key” response was tempered “to appeal to a much broader audience than typical far-right voters.” This is part of a “long-term strategy of coming across no longer as a far-right politician, but as someone who eventually – in four years’ time – could be seen as a credible replacement for Macron.”

    Italy’s Meloni provided the model for this. When Lega leader Matteo Salvini, a long-term admirer of Vladimir Putin, planned a trip to visit the Russian President in June last year, Meloni took the opposite stance, restating her support for Ukraine and pledging to uphold sanctions against Russia if she was elected, as she then was in September. Using more moderate rhetoric is reaping electoral success for far-right politicians across the continent.

    Similarly, Germany’s AfD has begun to speak more seriously about economic policy, echoing traditional conservative values of fiscal prudence. While its flirtation with anti-vax politics may have cost it votes in the 2021 election, it has since enjoyed success in the east of the country, arguing that the government’s commitment to climate policies and supporting Ukraine’s war effort are placing overly burdensome costs on the German taxpayer. These moves suggest far-right parties, while not abandoning their extremist positions, are learning to speak the language of the mainstream to great effect.

    Co-leaders of the AfD Tino Chrupalla, left center, and Alice Weidel, right center, at the party's 10th anniversary celebration on February 6, 2023.

    All this is to say that the “supply side” of populism warrants as much attention as its “demand side.” It matters not just what voters want to buy, but what – and how – parties are selling. A bottom-up theory of populism suggests that dramatic shifts in public opinion create irresistible “waves” of support that mainstream parties are unable to resist. But, as the American political scientist Larry Bartels points out, there is also a top-down theory: Rather than an unexpected “wave,” there has long been a “reservoir” of populist sentiment in Europe. What matters is how politicians draw on it.

    The “demand side” often attributes the rise of populism to economic grievances and a cultural backlash. Financial crises, like that of 2008-2009, or big social shifts, like the European migrant crisis of 2015, are said to provide fertile ground for the seeds of populism to take root. Often the two factors can complement each other: The AfD, for instance, was founded during the Eurozone crisis in opposition to the common currency, but gained more support after adopting anti-Islamic policies following Germany’s welcoming of migrants mostly from the Middle East.

    The early 2020s, then, may seem to provide ground more fertile than the previous decade for these sorts of sentiments to grow. The continent has seen the return of inflation and the soaring cost of living; the end of quantitative easing and rising interest rates; increased tax burdens as government balance sheets recover from the Covid-19 pandemic and look to fund net-zero policies and increased defense spending. Recent opinion polls show the issue of immigration is also increasing in salience, as migrants continue to turn up on Europe’s shores.

    And yet, recent Eurobarometer polling shows that the public’s perception of the European economy is less bleak than we might expect – and far better than during previous crises. Negative perceptions of Europe’s economy rocketed after the financial crisis, and rose again after the start of the pandemic, but are now net positive. Similarly, trust in the European Union has been on an upward trend since 2015, and trust in national governments has remained broadly constant, but improved since the financial crisis.

    Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on a run near his Oxfordshire home on June 15, 2023.

    And so the recent successes of far-right parties cannot be explained by dramatic shifts in public opinion. Europe has weathered financial and migrant crises before, which did not translate into widespread support for populism.

    Instead, what we are seeing is a different sort of populism to the one that wracked the US and UK in 2016: A populism fueled by the collapse of the cordon sanitaire between mainstream conservatives and the far right, and one which may have learned the lessons of its short-lived predecessors.

    The defenestration of Boris Johnson and legal travails of Donald Trump perhaps offered the comforting conclusion that populism will inevitably implode: Its policy failures will be too great, the personal foibles of its leaders too unbearable, crass – and potentially criminal.

    But, on the continent, there is a newer, smarter brand of populism taking root. Whereas the UK has been content to break international law in pursuit of Brexit and its crackdown on asylum seekers, populist leaders in Europe are taking greater care not to renege on their international commitments. Many are content to wage culture wars at home, while remaining reliable partners abroad.

    Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni speaks with her Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orban at the NATO summit in Vilnius on July 12, 2023.

    Orban, then Kaczynski, provided the model for this. Meloni, since, has taken quickly to the craft: Remaining responsible on the continental stage while coldly implementing far-right policies on the domestic one. This weekend, Spain may also set out on this path. After Rutte’s resignation, the Netherlands may too.

    A lot depends on the ability of mainstream parties – particularly on the left – to build tents big enough to accommodate their differences, rather than compromising with far-right parties to prop up their coalitions. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has managed this since 2018, though with dwindling success. His ability – or otherwise – to do so again this weekend may serve as a harbinger of the continent’s future.

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  • Mexico’s president is on the attack. It’s political ‘gold’ for his rival | CNN

    Mexico’s president is on the attack. It’s political ‘gold’ for his rival | CNN

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    Mexico City
    CNN
     — 

    An extraordinary campaign by the Mexican president to undermine a leading opposition contender for the country’s 2024 presidential election has drawn an official rebuke from the federal election authority and criticism that he is damaging the democratic process.

    It also appears to be having an unintended effect: delivering a much-needed boost to the coalition aiming to unseat his party.

    New polling this week from a Mexican newspaper showed Xóchitl Gálvez, a freshman senator vying for the ticket of Frente Amplio por México, an alliance of three parties, within striking distance of the front-runners from the leftist president’s party — a significant development in a race that had widely been seen as leaning in the president’s party’s favor.

    Gálvez’s remarkable ascent comes as President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has levied a near-daily stream of attacks against her.

    In regular news conferences this month, López Obrador has called her a “wimp,” “puppet,” and “employee of the oligarchy,” questioned her upbringing in poverty, and, last week, released the private financial information of her business.

    Gálvez has proven so adept at turning the attention into momentum that commentators joke the president has become her campaign manager.

    “AMLO is obsessed with Senator Gálvez,” Enrique Quintana, the general editorial director for the business newspaper El Financiero, wrote in a recent column, using a nickname for the president. “In a few weeks, he made her the most mentioned opposition candidate and considered by many to be the favorite.”

    “This is gold for her,” political analyst Carlos Bravo Regidor told Americas Quarterly.

    The immensely popular López Obrador is barred under Mexican law from seeking re-election after completing his six-year term. Crowded primaries began this summer to determine his successor, with both the opposition coalition and Morena, the president’s party, set to select their candidates in September. The general election will take place next June.

    Despite disastrous pandemic policies that ranked Mexico among the countries with the highest Covid-19 death rates and mostly unchecked cartel violence, López Obrador has enjoyed some of the highest favorability ratings of any world leader. The eventual Morena flagbearer – among the candidates are the recent mayor of Mexico City, referred to as his “political daughter and his former foreign secretary – has been viewed as his likely successor.

    With a compelling personal story and a tendency for headline-grabbing stunts — she once dressed as a T. rex on the senate floor to protest a controversial electoral reform, a proposal from political “dinosaurs” — Gálvez brought immediate energy and a media frenzy with her entrance into an opposition contest that had as yet failed to resonate with the public.

    In a series of press interviews and viral social media posts, the senator, who represents the conservative PAN party but has staked out a number of progressive policy positions, has fought back with characteristic candor, framing the president as reckless and machista.

    Her standing has jumped in the polls. In a new survey released this week by El Financiero, Gálvez’s support within the coalition primary increased by nine percent from two weeks ago, putting her six points ahead of her closest contender, the president of the lower house of Congress. In hypothetical match-ups against the three leading Morena candidates, she trails by five to 12 points.

    “He wants to undermine me psychologically, to make me fold, to put me in a corner,” she told CNN en Español’s Conclusiones program on Monday. “I’m a very badass woman. I’m a very daring woman. I’m a brave and forward-thinking woman. So this is just the beginning.”

    López Obrador’s commentary has drawn the scrutiny of the National Electoral Institute, an independent agency. Last week, a complaints commission within the body said that López Obrador’s remarks “may violate the principles of impartiality, neutrality, and equity” and ordered him to stop making “comments, opinions, or statements on electoral issues.”

    On Thursday, the panel again agreed to order López Obrador to revise a number of offending comments.

    However it dismissed a complaint from Gálvez that the president had violated laws against gender-based political violence.

    Electoral neutrality laws in Mexico date back to the 1990s, when lawmakers passed sweeping reforms in response to decades of single-party rule that allowed outgoing president’s virtually unchallenged abilities to select their political heirs.

    The reforms established mechanisms to set the time periods during which campaigns could take place, regulated campaign finance, and limited how government officials can use public funds for political communication.

    “By using the mañanera, which involves spending public resources, the executive’s social communication is being appropriated to attack a possible candidate,” said Arturo Ramos Sobarzo, the director of the Center for Investigation and Legal Informatics at Mexico City’s Escuela Libre de Derecho, referring to the president’s daily news conferences.

    In the days since the ruling against him, López Obrador has moved between open disregard, winking half-measures, and begrudging obedience.

    After contending that he was not bound by the order because his office had not been formally notified of it, López Obrador shared a document online that purported to contain information about government contracts that Gálvez’s technological services company had received. López Obrador has sought to tie the candidate to the country’s historic ruling elite with the claims, which she has denied.

    Gálvez has called the release of information an illegal invasion of her privacy and said she would file a complaint with the authorities.

    Such brazen actions against a political rival are without precedent in recent Mexican elections, legal experts say, but the tact is familiar for a president who has relished upending norms and targeting his perceived enemies.

    In a widely condemned episode last year, López Obrador publicized the salary of a prominent journalist — apparently pulled from privileged government filings — after the reporter published an investigation into one of the president’s sons.

    López Obrador has also pushed a legislative package that aims to diminish the election agency’s autonomy and its ability to punish politicians for breaking election laws, though key pieces of the measure have been struck down by the Supreme Court.

    With his disregard for the electoral ruling, López Obrador is “putting at risk what we Mexicans have built as our democratic foundations,” said Ildefonso Guajardo Villarreal, the opposition coalition’s director for international liaisons.

    “We need the attention of international public opinion and pro-democracy organizations that will begin to take note of what we are beginning to face in Mexico in this election,” he said.

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  • Democratic worries bubble up over Cornel West’s Green Party run as Biden campaign takes hands-off approach | CNN Politics

    Democratic worries bubble up over Cornel West’s Green Party run as Biden campaign takes hands-off approach | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Cornel West’s candidacy on the Green Party line confuses some of his longtime political allies and friends – while also alarming top Democrats and Black leaders as a potential ticking time bomb for President Joe Biden in next year’s election.

    The political philosopher and proud agitator is tapping into his semi-celebrity to attack Biden from the left – where the president has never been fully embraced – and describing his administrations as a mere “postponement of fascism.” And as concerns over Black voter enthusiasm bubble among Democratic operatives, West is also making a deliberately race-based argument, accusing the Democratic establishment of treating the electorate like “a plantation where you got ownership status in terms of which way you vote.”

    Most top Democrats remain skeptical West will raise enough money to mount an extensive operation – he jumped from the little-known People’s Party to the Greens after a rocky rollout – and are following the Biden campaign’s lead of deliberately not engaging with him.

    But his decision to run on a ballot line which Democrats blame for spoiling both the 2000 and 2016 elections, when Green presidential nominees drew enough votes to help give Republicans key states in the Electoral College, has made his candidacy a running source of angst and, increasingly, a topic of private conversations among multiple Democratic leaders nationally and in battleground states

    And while many political insiders have been buzzing about the group No Labels trying to get on the ballot in many states with a presidential candidate, the Greens are already there in 16 – and in 2016, got up to 44, including the most competitive states.

    “This is going to sneak up on people,” said David Axelrod, a former Barack Obama adviser who also serves as a CNN political commentator. “I don’t know why alarm bells aren’t going off now, and they should be at a steady drumbeat from now until the election.”

    There are no sirens blaring, but top Democrats in swing states have taken notice.

    “We should be concerned. I don’t think time’s necessarily on our side. The longer these things hang out there, the worse it tends to get,” said Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, who acknowledged that the conversation about West has, so far, been more among insiders than voters. “We should try to deal with it rather quickly if we can.”

    For now, Biden advisers remain hopeful that the president’s record and voters’ memories of 2016, when Jill Stein’s campaign won tens of thousands of votes in battleground states Hillary Clinton lost, will keep supporters from straying to West. It’s an approach much like the one being taken by Michigan Democratic chair Lavora Barnes, who told CNN, “I don’t think Cornel West or the Green Party is something we need to worry about, but it’s absolutely something we need to keep an eye on.”

    Barnes has been already begun to talk about what she’s seeing, telling CNN that she recently met with her Black caucus chair about strategies to head off West by stepping up talk about the Biden administration’s accomplishments for Black voters.

    Personal affection and respect for West, a giant of the American left and pioneering political theorist, has led many to try to avoid discussing their dismay over his run.

    At the top of that list, to the frustration of several top Biden supporters who discussed their feelings with CNN: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose two presidential campaigns prominently featured West as a speaker at his rallies and included the professor as part of his traveling inner circle.

    Sanders declined multiple requests to discuss West’s campaign, only telling CNN that he did not speak to the candidate before launching. He shut down questions when asked directly about some of West’s comments about Biden.

    “Dr. West is one of the most pure, good, and honest souls I have ever encountered,” said Ari Rabin-Havt, a Sanders confidant and one of his deputy campaign managers in 2020. “That can lead someone, even one of the most brilliant minds on the planet, to make incredibly wrong political choices.”

    Multiple sources in leadership roles at several new progressive establishment groups told CNN they were surprised by West’s candidacy and their silence has been intentional. Even media outlets and leftist commentators who have held him in high regard for decades are urging West to reconsider and, in some notable cases, run as a Democrat in a primary challenge to Biden. Multiple top former Sanders aides told CNN they opposed the Green Party run and don’t understand what he is trying to accomplish through it.

    The most the senator himself has discussed the run was back in April, saying, “People will do what they want to do.”

    West was one of the early boosters of the modern Democratic Socialists of America in the early 1980s and later served as an honorary chair. But even two prominent members, asking for anonymity to speak critically about a man they admire, questioned West’s timing and reading of the political moment.

    “He’s missing the mark in two ways: He’s either a threat to bringing the GOP back (as a spoiler) or, if you don’t care about that, he’s not doing the right gestures and organizational discipline” to appeal to far-left groups, one of the influential DSA members said.

    Some high-profile Sanders supporters, though, are moving West’s way.

    Nina Turner, a national co-chair of Sanders 2020 campaign who has remained a consistent Biden critic, described West’s run as a “moral calling,” though she is not currently working with the campaign in any formal capacity.

    Another ally from the Sanders’ team, Ben Cohen, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, told CNN he had not spoken to West since the campaign began and that he had “no idea” about his friend’s plans but would donate to the campaign. He said he would “see how things are panning out” when the election nears before deciding how to vote.

    While Biden has consistently registered strong support among Black voters, strategists looking ahead to 2024 are already worried about what those trends may mean for Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin – all of which are critical to the president’s reelection hopes – if Black voters don’t show up for Biden in force. (Though there are fewer Black voters in Arizona, it’s also a state with a long history of left-leaning voters going Green, and where Biden edged out Trump by a little under 13,000 votes.)

    Sensing that Black voter engagement will be a problem for them, the Congressional Black Caucus this week already launched a new PAC to fund a wider array of efforts to make the case into 2024. Davis said that will be part of the work he is looking to do, too, citing Black unemployment at the lower rate on record, the high rate of creation for new Black-owned businesses and investments in local projects like bus rapid transit in Pittsburgh and new water lines.

    Asked about West’s candidacy, New York Rep. Greg Meeks – the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus PAC – said he is confident the support will be there, citing other elements of Biden’s record, including money to take lead out of pipes, reduced insulin costs and low-cost broadband

    “In this election, we’re going to take our case directly to Black voters to ensure our community is not bamboozled by perennial distractions,” Meeks said.

    Billy Honor, the director of organizing for the New Georgia Project Action Fund, told CNN his group is also planning a campaign to highlight Democrats’ accomplishments, since Biden, despite enjoying a trusted brand with older Black voters, “is not popular in Atlanta.”

    “West has the potential because he is – whether people like it or not, it’s the consequence of having such a long life in public service and in the public eye – he is the most famous Black intellectual of our generation,” Honor said. “There’s W.E.B. Du Bois and then there’s Cornel West.”

    That public esteem and name recognition, along with a progressive agenda aligned with many organizers and activists, Honor said, could also add to West’s appeal with younger voters.

    The Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee declined comment on West.

    West still has to secure the Green nomination, but he insists he will not be a spoiler next November. He disputed that Jill Stein was when she ran on the Green line in 2016 and won more votes than the margin of difference in several states, including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, saying those people otherwise wouldn’t have voted at all.

    But Democrats remain traumatized by that and many still blame Stein – also accusing her of being another pawn of Vladimir Putin’s attack on the 2016 elections, by virtue of her attendance at a state-owned “Russia Today” party in Moscow in 2015 and Russian troll farm activity boosting her campaign.

    Stein, who is now working as the West campaign’s “interim coordinator” to help build out his team and fortify relationships with other Greens, told CNN in an interview that Democratic backlash to West’s candidacy hardly warranted a mention in their early discussions.

    Faiz Shakir, Sanders’ campaign manager in 2020, who said news of West’s campaign announcement “hit me completely out of the blue,” voiced a concern that is shared by many leaders on the left: “I just hope and pray that he’s not being taken advantage of and not being exploited by others for ulterior motives.”

    West bristled at such suggestions.

    “When people say, ‘Well, the Green Party’s using West,’ I mean, I don’t look at it that way. I think that we’re all in this movement together,” West added. “We’re trying to do the best that we can to bring some kind of light on the suffering and to bring some kind of vision and organization to try to minimize the suffering.”

    Andrew Wilkes, a pastor in Brooklyn, said his longtime friend and ally’s aim was simple.

    “At the heart of it,” he said, “is the desire to make sure you have a truly representative and equitable democracy.”

    The first Black student ever to get a PhD in philosophy from Princeton University, West will be on sabbatical after finishing the spring semester teaching at the Union Theological Seminary.

    But he’s been a force in politics directly since his best-selling 1993 book “Race Matters,” still frequently cited by younger movement progressives as one of the texts that drew them into left-wing politics.

    “What makes Dr. Cornel West so formidable is that he does have a relationship across generations,” Turner said. “Because of what’s he’s done in the classroom with four walls – and the classroom with no walls.”

    In 2000, he campaigned for Ralph Nader, the Green Party nominee that year. In 2008, he backed Obama, though some Black leaders and older Black voters have never forgiven West for turning into one of the harshest critics of the first Black president.

    He says he was just doing what he had always promised in pushing Obama to go harder on Wall Street and in tackling poverty.

    “It looked like I was turning on him,” West added. “No, no. I was turning toward the people and he was the one that turned away from the people, poor and working people.”

    After supporting Sanders in 2020, West endorsed and even stumped for Biden as part of what he described as an “antifascist coalition” arrayed against Trump.

    But he told CNN he could not bring himself to pull the lever for Biden.

    “Once I got in there, I thought about mass incarceration, the Crime Bill, thought about the invasion, occupation of Iraq. Those are crimes against humanity, for me,” West said, explaining that because Sanders had asked him not to use his name as a write-in, he “ended up not being able to vote for anybody.”

    West’s view of Biden has only grown dimmer.

    “Biden will only be a caretaker government against fascism,” West said. “You don’t fight fascism by simply supporting postponement administrations.”

    Jeff Weaver, who ran Sanders’ 2016 campaign before becoming a senior adviser four years later, suggested that Biden’s relationships on the left were more durable than many pundits realize.

    Weaver said the “respect” with which Biden has treated progressives – coupled with the threat of Trump looming – “goes a long way.”

    West still harbors complaints about how he feels Sanders was not treated fairly by the Democratic Party. And though he did not dispute the assessment that Biden has worked collaboratively with progressives, he argued that the partnership was unbalanced.

    “When we talk about a coalition, this is not a jazz band where everybody’s got equal voices,” West said. “Not at all. This is one that is hierarchical.”

    West doesn’t yet have a campaign website with a list of specific policy prescriptions, though he has been fiercely critical of NATO and the Biden administration’s decision to send cluster bombs to Ukraine.

    In a tweet accompanying his campaign launch video last month, West indicated that his campaign’s message would mirror his past work and rhetoric – ending poverty and mass incarceration, pushing for guaranteed housing, health care, education and living wages.

    Despite frequent appearances in the media since launching, West still has not held a proper, in-person campaign rally.

    That will change toward the end of the summer, he said, when he plans to do a “symbolic kickoff” in Mississippi for an event marking the anniversary of the murder of Emmett Till in 1955. West says the family invited him, and he decided to make that his first public event as a candidate.

    In the run-up to that more traditional launch, West said, he hopes to build his currently bare bones campaign up and raise the money to pay for it.

    “We are wrestling with it,” he said, “day-by-day.”

    CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated Andrew Wilkes’ relationship with Cornel West. The two are longtime allies and friends.

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  • Rishi Sunak suffers two election losses as British voters reject ailing Conservative government | CNN

    Rishi Sunak suffers two election losses as British voters reject ailing Conservative government | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Britain’s beleaguered Prime Minister Rishi Sunak suffered a damaging political blow on Friday as voters rejected his party in two parliamentary elections it could ordinarily have expected to win.

    The Conservatives lost to the resurgent Labour Party in Selby and Ainsty, a region in the north of England where the Sunak’s party had enjoyed a commanding majority.

    A second seat, Somerton and Frome, was won by the Liberal Democrats, a centrist party.

    The Conservatives just managed to hold on to a third seat in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, the constituency held by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson until his resignation from parliament last month, although Labour significantly grew its share of the vote.

    But that was little comfort for Sunak – the overall results suggest Sunak’s government is on course for an electoral defeat at the next general election, expected next year.

    Thursday’s three by-elections were a tough mid-term test yet for Sunak, who took power after Liz Truss’s shambolic six-week premiership last fall.

    Sunak has struggled to reverse the Conservatives’ plummeting fortunes in the nine months he has held office; a series of scandals, a stuttering economy and a decline in Britain’s public services have left his party deeply unpopular.

    In Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Labour was hoping to claim the seat Boris Johnson had held for eight years. Conservative Party candidate Steve Tuckwell won 45.16% of the vote there.

    Johnson quit in anger after a committee of fellow lawmakers found that he had lied to Parliament over “Partygate,” the scandal of lockdown-era parties in his government that tanked his popularity and contributed to his political downfall.

    But in Selby, in the north of England, Labour overturned a huge deficit to win the seat with 46% of the votes.

    The two seats were viewed as the kind of regions that Labour needs to be targeting if it is to have a hope of claiming a parliamentary majority at the next election.

    Both those votes were triggered after a committee of lawmakers found Johnson lied to Parliament, in a damning and unprecedented verdict against a former Prime Minister. Johnson was set to be suspended from Parliament for 90 days, but avoided that penalty by resigning instead.

    Nigel Adams, the former Conservative lawmaker for Selby and a close ally of Johnson’s, quit hours later in an apparent move of solidarity.

    Adding to the Conservatives’ woes was a thumping loss in Somerton and Frome, an affluent area in south-west England, to the Liberal Democrats which won nearly 55% of votes. The centrist party has been picking up former Conservative support in the so-called “Blue Wall,” a well-off portion of southern England that typically opposed Brexit.

    While the Conservatives took some comfort from the result in Uxbridge, the swing against Sunak’s party in all three seats indicate a resurgent Labour party would take power in a national vote.

    By law, a general election must take place by January 2025. Most observers think Sunak will call it in the fall of 2024, if not before, to avoid trying to persuade voters to cast their ballots in the middle of winter.

    Time is running out for him to reverse Sunak’s fortunes. A cost of living crisis, creaking public services, stubbornly high inflation and an endless list of Tory scandals have turned opinion firmly against his party – which has been in power for 13 years – and intensified calls by buoyant opposition parties for an early general election.

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  • What reset? DeSantis defiant while campaign braces for reality of his struggles | CNN Politics

    What reset? DeSantis defiant while campaign braces for reality of his struggles | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday evening stepped in front of a suburban South Carolina crowd eager to hear the Republican presidential candidate respond to a weekend of hand wringing over his early performance and headlines about staff cuts and financial troubles.

    “Are you ready to help me send Joe Biden to his basement in Delaware?” DeSantis began, tossing out a line that has kicked off most of his speeches in some form since he formally announced his presidential candidacy in May.

    For all the talk of a DeSantis “reset” in recent days – including privately from those close to the Republican’s political operation – there’s little coming from the candidate himself that would suggest change is afoot. DeSantis’ remarks Monday in Tega Cay, South Carolina, were a near carbon copy of the speech he has delivered at campaign stops for weeks. The next morning, he unveiled another priority targeting “wokeness” in society, this time aimed at the military.

    Later in the day, a prime opportunity for the governor to kickstart a reboot – a highly anticipated interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday, his first sit down outside of conservative media – was overshadowed by the latest developments in Donald Trump’s legal saga. Instead of stepping out against the former president to signal a new phase in his campaign, DeSantis remained deferential, saving his criticism for federal investigators and not the actions of his top rival for the 2024 Republican nomination. Any admonishment for Trump was shrouded in subtlety.

    “If I’m the nominee, we’ll be able to focus on President Biden’s failures, and I’ll be able to articulate a positive vision for the future,” DeSantis told Tapper. “I don’t think it serves us good to have a presidential election focused on what happened four years ago.”

    The unflappable outward appearances of its candidate belies a campaign in flux. His team has started cutting expenses less than two months after launching, a sign of a political operation that perhaps expanded too quickly out of the gate. Over the weekend, a spokesperson for DeSantis’ campaign confirmed to CNN it let go of some staffers, after Politico reported that “fewer than 10 staffers” in event planning were cut on Thursday. The large security presence that previously guarded DeSantis events – often administered by a handful of burly men who checked every guest with handheld metal detectors and surveyed their personal effects – was noticeably absent from his South Carolina campaign stops this week.

    The trimming comes even as DeSantis raised $20 million in the first six weeks after jumping into the GOP primary – a strong showing at first glance that nevertheless fell short of lofty goals set in the run-up to his campaign. Other worrying markers include a reliance on large donations, which can suggest underwhelming grassroots support. Additionally, about $3 million of his haul came in the form of donations that cannot be spent until a general election.

    His campaign has also burned through cash at a high rate. Over six weeks, DeSantis had spent $686,000 on travel including expenses for private jets, according to campaign finance records, and his payroll topped $1 million.

    With his poll numbers stalled and less money available than anticipated, it is expected that DeSantis will refocus his campaign efforts on Iowa, which is increasingly viewed within his political orbit as a must-win state for the Florida governor. DeSantis visited Iowa earlier this month for a multi-county tour and to speak to the state’s influential evangelical voters at an event Trump notably skipped. His super PAC this week began airing a new ad highlighting the former president’s recent jabs at popular Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds that included a fake replica of Trump’s voice generated through controversial new AI technology.

    “We’re just going to keep building that momentum,” DeSantis said. “It’s a state-by-state process and doing well in those states makes a huge difference by the time you get to South Carolina.”

    DeSantis has expressed confidence in the strategy that has gotten him this far, which, for now, leaves him well ahead of the rest of the field but firmly behind Trump. This weekend, DeSantis will travel to Utah, where he is expected to meet with Republican state lawmakers, a group that has become key to his efforts to build local support. His top fundraisers will also meet in Park City, Utah, for a previously scheduled summit that has gained new urgency amid concerns some GOP donors are considering other candidates.

    Talking to reporters Tuesday after submitting paperwork to qualify for South Carolina’s primary ballot, DeSantis characterized his campaign’s spending as “investments” to win early nominating states and dismissed suggestions of financial trouble.

    “You hear some of these narratives and you’re like, good lord, how do you spin?” DeSantis said moments after handing in paperwork to officially qualify for the ballot in South Carolina. “In the second quarter, we were a candidate for about five and a half weeks, our campaign raised $20.1 million dollars. Joe Biden is the sitting president of the United States. In his campaign committee, not the DNC, he raised $19.9 (million), Donald Trump raised $17.7 million and Trump spent more than we did.”

    The remarks echoed frustrations among his supporters with the narrative emerging about DeSantis given his enviable financial position. In addition to his campaign’s haul, a supportive super PAC, Never Back Down, announced it had raised $130 million since launching in March, about $83 million of which was transferred from DeSantis’ former state political committee.

    But they also acknowledge DeSantis has run a campaign that is far from perfect, beginning with the technical woes that plagued his planned candidacy announcement on Twitter. And he has faced new headwinds, including from Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, which is no longer featuring the Republican leader with fawning coverage as it has for much of the past two years. With Fox News no longer fully friendly, his campaign has lately warmed to more mainstream national outlets that DeSantis had previously marginalized and denigrated over the years.

    Some supporters have also bemoaned DeSantis’ hard pivot right and high-profile battles with Disney for turning off Republican donors who might otherwise be sympathetic to his insurgent campaign against Trump.

    DeSantis, though, has shrugged off these concerns. Speaking to Tapper on Tuesday, he pointed to his 19-point victory last fall in a one-time swing state as evidence that his agenda can appeal to voters in swing states who may determine the outcome of the GOP primary and the presidential election.

    “Our bread and butter were people like suburban moms,” he said. “We’re leading a big movement for parents’ rights, to have the parents be involved in education, school choice, get the indoctrination outta schools.”

    Republican voters attending his events appear receptive to his message. Lu Aiken, a member of Republican Women Rising in South Carolina, said she was undecided but DeSantis was at the top of her list.

    “I’m all for youth,” she told CNN outside of DeSantis’ Tega Cay event. “I think we’ve had too many old presidents. I’m sorry, I’m ready for a young president, and I’m old. But still, I think it’s time for somebody young and energetic. I worked real hard to get Trump elected last time, and I feel like he kind of let us down by talking so much and some of the things he did.”

    Still, even his supporters are aware of the challenge DeSantis faces trying to overcome an unconventional front runner in Trump.

    “The only thing going against Ron is that he’s not Trump,” Jonathan Sievers, a real estate agent from Weddington, South Carolina, said while waiting to hear DeSantis speak on Monday. “So, I think a lot more Trump supporters would be on his train if Trump wasn’t in the race.”

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  • Trump bets, again, on legal troubles yielding big donations | CNN Politics

    Trump bets, again, on legal troubles yielding big donations | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump followed a predictable pattern this week.

    The former president announced Tuesday a new set of legal troubles, this time a letter from special counsel Jack Smith that said he is the target of a criminal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election. By day’s end, he was asking his supporters for campaign donations to help him fend off what he called “another vicious act of Election Interference on behalf of the Deep State.”

    Recent disclosures with the Federal Election Commission underscore how much these criminal cases – and Trump’s fundraising around them – have boosted his campaign finances as he mounts a third White House bid.

    A CNN analysis of itemized donations – those larger than $200 – to Trump’s campaign shows his day-by-day contributions over the first six months of this year spiked following the indictment news. In the first half of March, for instance, Trump’s principal campaign committee reported taking in an average of less than $80,000 a day in itemized contributions, according to the analysis

    But roughly $4 million landed in his campaign coffers into the days surrounding his March 30 indictment by a Manhattan grand jury in connection with an alleged hush-money scheme and his April 4 arraignment in the case. He pleaded not guilty.

    (The CNN analysis looked at contributions larger than $200 because that’s a threshold for candidates to disclose details about contributions, including the date they were received.)

    Political donations soared again in June when US Justice Department filed criminal charges against Trump, alleging he mishandled classified documents he retained after leaving the White House and obstructed the government’s efforts to get them back. He, again, pleaded not guilty.

    Trump’s campaign made multiple pleas for money around the federal case. Hours after pleading not guilty in a Miami courtroom, Trump sent an email to his supporters, calling the Biden administration “corrupt” and claiming that the charges amounted to interference with his campaign.

    In another fundraising pitch that day, Trump sought to cast the charges against him as an attack on his supporters, writing, “They’re not coming after me, they’re coming after YOU – I’m just standing in their way.”

    The indictments “match perfectly with that his messaging is: ‘The system is rigged against me and it’s rigged against you,’ ” said Doug Heye, a Republican strategist and former Republican National Committee communications director. “These are flashpoints that speak to that.”

    And the flood of financial support around his legal woes, Heye added, underscores that “the base has never left Trump.”

    “It’s one of the reasons that so many Republicans have been so hesitant to go after Trump, especially those running against him,” he said.

    Asked about the most recent fundraising solicitation, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in an email: “Americans are sick and tired of a weaponized Justice department, under the direction of Crooked Joe Biden, using these witch-hunts to go after his main political opponent, President Trump.”

    The donations also stand to help Trump directly as his legal troubles mount. Currently, 10% of the money Trump raises through his main political funding vehicle – the Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee – goes to a leadership PAC, Save America, that has paid his legal expenses in the past.

    Details on Save America’s spending in the first half of this year will be disclosed to election regulators and the public later this month.

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  • Burgum announces he has met fundraising requirement for first GOP presidential primary debate | CNN Politics

    Burgum announces he has met fundraising requirement for first GOP presidential primary debate | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum said Wednesday that he’s reached the 40,000 unique donors threshold to qualify for the Republican presidential primary debate stage in August.

    The GOP governor, a wealthy former software executive who’s been self-funding his campaign, has been offering $20 gift cards to 50,000 donors to try and reach the minimum needed to appear on the debate stage.

    “Well, we passed the 40,000 mark today. We’ve got more gift cards to give out. We’re going to keep on going,” he told CNN’s Manu Raju on “Inside Politics.”

    The governor said that he has received donations from all 50 states. He did not have a number of how gift cards his campaign gave out to donors.

    He pushed back against criticism that he’s buying his way onto the debate stage, saying, “I think that’s funny actually.”

    “We know that the people who donate to us now may continue to donate cause what they see they’re going to like, and they’re going to continue to support us. This is about a smart strategy, it’s about an entrepreneur with a business attitude,” he added.

    Still, Burgum has yet to reach the polling threshold needed to secure his spot on the debate stage.

    To meet the Republican National Committee’s polling requirement for inclusion in the first primary debate next month, candidates must receive 1% or more in three national polls or in two national polls and two state polls. Burgum has hit 1% in one state poll and no national polls.

    Burgum was also asked about former President Donald Trump’s potential third indictment as part of the criminal investigation into the efforts to overturn the 2020 election and whether he holds Trump responsible for any of the violence that occurred on January 6, 2021.

    “I think this is why we have a judicial system and everybody in America is innocent until proven guilty. But as I said, when you’ve got the leading opponent being attacked by the people sitting in power, of course people are going to feel like the whole thing is politicized. It’s something the courts have to sort out,” he said.

    He would not say whether he’d support Trump as the Republican nominee if Trump is convicted of crime.

    “I’m running for president to be the nominee, so you’re asking me to speculate. As governor of a sitting state when people ask me about hypotheticals, out 12 months and 18 months out, I never comment on those because I have to deal with the real solutions and the real problems going on right now. We’re running a campaign. We expect to be the nominee and when we are the nominee, there won’t be the distractions,” he said.

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  • Manchin refuses to rule out third party presidential campaign, says ‘if I get in a race, I’m going to win’ | CNN Politics

    Manchin refuses to rule out third party presidential campaign, says ‘if I get in a race, I’m going to win’ | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin on Monday defended his flirtation with a third-party presidential campaign, telling voters at a No Labels forum at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire that he had no plans to play “spoiler” in the 2024 election.

    “I’ve never been in any race I’ve ever spoiled. I’ve been in races to win,” Manchin said. “And if I get in a race, I’m going to win.”

    Sitting beside former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, a Republican, Manchin railed against withering bipartisanship in Washington, DC, saying the “business model” of the two major parties “is better if you’re divided.” Huntsman offered a similar critique, as the men complimented one another’s work and blamed the “extremes” of the Republican and Democratic parties on Capitol Hill for holding up popular legislation.

    “We’re here,” Manchin told a supportive audience, “to make sure the American people have an option.”

    Manchin largely demurred when faced with direct questions about his future plans. He is up for reelection to the Senate in 2024. When asked about a potential pivot to running on a No Labels ticket for the White House, Manchin said people were “putting the cart ahead of the horse” and that the group was only aiming “to make sure the American people have an option.”

    “I have no idea what Joe’s gonna do,” Huntsman said. Both men told reporters afterward any talk of a Manchin-Huntsman ticket was premature and a distraction.

    Manchin, in an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “The Source” Monday night, also would not say whether he planned to run for Senate for another term: “I haven’t made any decision, nor will I make a decision until the end of the year.”

    The West Virginia Democrat told Collins he believes President Joe Biden has “been pushed too far left,” but “has the strength to fight back.”

    Before Manchin and Huntsman stepped onstage before a crowd of a few hundred people, No Labels founding chairman Joe Lieberman, the former US senator from Connecticut and 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee, and national co-chairs Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. and former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, touted the group’s “Common Sense” policy manifesto and warned that a rematch next year between Biden and former President Donald Trump could lead them to launching a candidate of their own.

    McCrory described No Labels’ efforts to get on presidential ballot lines in states across the country as an “insurance policy” against that result, but said that the group’s “first goal is to influence the agenda of politicians who are coming to New Hampshire and other states during this primary season.”

    He also warned Democrats and Republicans against trying to keep No Labels off the ballot.

    “Sadly, we have some operatives out of Washington, DC, who want to just keep the status quo as it is who are trying to stop our efforts,” McCrory said. “But I’m telling you right now, it won’t work.”

    He also set Super Tuesday as the date when the group would take stock and make a decision about running a presidential ticket.

    “We will present a president and vice president candidate on a No Labels ticket if Biden and Trump are on track to win their parties’ nominations,” McCrory said. “We plan to do that. But only if we see we have an opportunity to win.”

    Before the event began, New Hampshire Democratic Party chair Ray Buckley denounced the group, claiming it was a front for right-wing interests hoping to “pave the way for another four years of scandal and division with Donald Trump.”

    “Granite Staters aren’t stupid,” Buckley said, “and they won’t be fooled by some out of state dark money group. Whatever they do, New Hampshire will be blue once again in 2024.”

    A new bipartisan super PAC, called “Citizens to Save Our Republic,” also announced its plans on Monday to push back against any third-party campaign, noting a recent poll that showed a No Labels candidate effectively swinging the election from Biden to Trump.

    “In normal times, we would have no problem with this No Labels effort,” the group, which is being launched by operatives from both parties, said in a statement. “But these are not normal times. As conservative Judge Michael Luttig told the January 6 committee, our democracy hangs on a ‘knife’s edge.’”

    For more than a decade, the No Labels movement has promoted bipartisanship over political extremes in Washington. The group, which registers as a non-profit and declines to disclose its donors, plans to raise $70 million for a candidate-in-waiting.

    The group, in its 2024 debut, unveiled what it called a “Common Sense” policy book – aiming to find middle ground on controversial issues from abortion rights to guns to immigration, putting forward an agenda that sounds downright utopian in today’s deeply divided Washington.

    What Manchin and other leaders of the No Labels group describe as a unity ticket, many Democrats simply call a spoiler – by siphoning just enough votes from Biden to help Trump win back the White House.

    Former Democratic Rep. Joe Cunningham of South Carolina, a national co-chair of the group, pushed back on that assertion in an interview on Monday.

    “We don’t intend to be a spoiler,” Cunningham told CNN. “If we got in it, we would be in it to win it. It’s that simple.”

    No Labels has secured ballot access in Arizona, Alaska, Oregon, Utah and Colorado, aides say, with a goal of reaching 20 states by the end of the year.

    “Folks are looking at a rematch of Trump v. Biden,” Cunningham said. “It’s a rematch no one really wants. Two thirds of Americans don’t want to see it.”

    While third party efforts have shown little promise in modern American history, deep displeasure with Trump and Biden have shined a brighter light on the prospects this year. Mindful of an enthusiasm shortfall facing Biden, Democrats are increasingly sounding the alarm, haunted by Ross Perot’s independent bid in 1992 and Green Party runs from Ralph Nader in 2000 and Jill Stein in 2016. Cornel West, the leftist professor and political theorist, launched a third-party run in June and is now competing for the Green Party’s nomination in 2024.

    This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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  • Ohio secretary of state enters GOP Senate primary to challenge Democrat Sherrod Brown | CNN Politics

    Ohio secretary of state enters GOP Senate primary to challenge Democrat Sherrod Brown | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose on Monday formally entered the state’s Republican primary to take on Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown next year.

    “It’s official: I’m running,” LaRose said on Twitter. “I’m on a mission to give back to the state that has given me so much. To continue to serve the country I love and fight to protect the values we share. That’s why I’m running to serve as your next United States senator.”

    The Buckeye State, which backed former President Donald Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections, has become increasingly conservative over the past decade. Brown, a progressive with a populist streak, is vying for a fourth term but is considered one of the cycle’s most vulnerable incumbents.

    Ohio Republicans are now preparing for an expensive and potentially nasty primary, much like the contest in 2022 that ultimately sent J.D. Vance to the Senate, ahead of an even more costly general election campaign. Two unsuccessful candidates from that 2022 primary – state Sen. Matt Dolan, whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians, and Cleveland businessman Bernie Moreno – announced challenges to Brown earlier this year. Both are sitting on vast sums of personal wealth, while LaRose is expected to be a prolific fundraiser.

    LaRose, who is currently serving a second term as Ohio’s top elections officer, is a decorated Iraq War veteran and previously spent eight years in the state Senate. After narrowly winning the secretary of state office in 2018, he was reelected last year by 20 points.

    This story is breaking and will be updated.

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  • Manchin’s New Hampshire trip will leave Democrats shivering | CNN Politics

    Manchin’s New Hampshire trip will leave Democrats shivering | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin will be back driving Democrats to distraction Monday by appearing in New Hampshire with a group whose exploration of a third-party presidential ticket is stoking fears they could hand the White House to Donald Trump.

    The moderate Democratic senator will take part in a town hall hosted by the group No Labels to help launch a new “common sense” platform on immigration, health care, gun control, the economy and other issues that it believes are being ignored by what it views as two ideological and increasingly extreme main parties.

    Manchin – who’s facing reelection to the Senate next year but has not yet said whether he’ll run – will be in his familiar political sweet spot, staking out ground to the right of his party and attracting a political spotlight he uses to maximize his influence. Last year, for instance, Manchin’s initial refusal to back a massive climate, tax and social safety net planned forced President Joe Biden to scale back and renegotiate a huge piece of his domestic agenda.

    The West Virginia Democrat’s model has served him well with repeated statewide wins in one of the most conservative pro-Trump states in the nation. But he has Democrats doubly nervous – about how any presidential bid could roil Biden’s reelection and how a decision not to seek reelection himself would hand Republicans a Senate seat in 2024.

    Manchin told CNN’s Manu Raju last week that his appearance in the Granite State has nothing to do with any third-party presidential run but is merely about advancing a “dialogue for common sense.” But the senator – who has built a power base by keeping people guessing – added, “I’ve never ruled out anything or ruled in anything,” and he dodged a question about whether an independent ticket could hurt Biden in November 2024.

    No Labels says it is considering a third-party unity ticket with one Republican and one Democrat in November 2024 and will make a final decision next year based on whether its “insurance plan” has a viable chance of victory.

    For now, Manchin’s noncommittal answers are worrying some of his Democratic colleagues. Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, who represents a swing state Biden won by a sliver of just over 10,000 votes in 2020, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that he has raised the issue of potential third-party candidacies with Manchin.

    “I don’t think No Labels is a political party,” Kelly said. “I mean, this is a few individuals putting dark money behind an organization. And that’s not what our democracy should be about. It should not be about a few rich people,” Kelly said. “I’m obviously concerned about what’s going on here in Arizona and across the country.”

    CNN has reached out to No Labels, a registered non-profit that does not disclose its donors. The group has blasted previous efforts to dispute its right to participate in the political process as undemocratic.

    Democrats are also concerned about a planned third-party run by former Harvard professor and public intellectual Cornel West, who supported independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders during his 2016 and 2020 Democratic presidential campaigns. Even if West were to take just a few thousand votes from Biden – for instance, in the key swing state of Georgia – he could still compromise the president’s hopes of victory.

    But West, who is running for the Green Party’s nomination, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Thursday that it was “simply not true” that he could tip the election to Trump, should the ex-president become the GOP nominee. And he accused Democrats of failing to speak up for poor and working people and warned Biden was “leading us toward a Third World War,” in an apparent reference to US support for Ukraine’s attempt to repel Russia’s invasion.

    Doubts about the current 80-year-old president are also fodder for Robert Kennedy Jr.’s bid for the Democratic nomination. He has a history of repeating unfounded conspiracy theories about child vaccines or that man-made chemicals could be making children gay or transgender. Kennedy this weekend became embroiled in new controversy after falsely stating that “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese” people are “most immune” to Covid-19.

    Growing speculation about a potential third-party challenge in 2024 – despite the futile history of most previous such efforts – is being fueled by public dissatisfaction with the options. Polls show that both Biden and Trump, the front-runner for the GOP nomination, are unpopular. In fact, a rematch between the two is the one race many voters don’t want to see. Anger at the political establishments in both parties – a defining factor of the politics of the first 20 years of the 21st century – is one reason why some political experts believe that there may be substantial running room for a third-party ticket this cycle, even if the obstacles for success are immense.

    The fresh intrigue over the 2024 election also comes as the pace of the campaign heats up. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has failed to meet expectations so far as the main GOP challenger to Trump, polling in second in most national polls but still well behind the former president. DeSantis is showing the classic signs of a pivot. His campaign has shed staffers (a spokesman told CNN the number was fewer than 10), and he’s venturing out of his safe zone of only engaging conservative media. On Tuesday, he will join CNN’s Jake Tapper for an exclusive interview after a campaign event in South Carolina.

    But Trump is upping his efforts to knock his former protege out of the race, even as he deals with the overhang of two criminal indictments. The ex-president claimed on Saturday he was “totally dominating” DeSantis in Florida polls and it was time for his rival to “get home.” Trump’s fundraising lead is cementing his front-runner status following new campaign finance data. An impressive $72 million haul by Biden and the Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, is not yet assuaging all of the Democratic concerns about the president’s reelection prospects.

    No Labels is laying out its platform in a new “Common Sense” booklet that Manchin and Utah’s former Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman will promote in a town hall at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. The platform contains multiple ideas splitting the difference between the Democratic and Republican position on key issues with bipartisan stances anchored to the political center ground.

    On immigration, for instance, the group calls for tighter border controls, a reform of asylum procedures and a path to citizenship for Dreamers, or undocumented migrants brought to the United States as children. On guns, the group wants to uphold the right to bear arms but calls for dangerous weapons to be kept out of the hands of “dangerous people,” including with universal background checks and by closing loopholes that make it easier to buy weapons at gun shows. No Labels also wants better community policing and crackdowns on crime.

    Given the gridlock, anger and dysfunction in Washington, it’s hard to argue that the current political system is working. But many of these solutions are familiar, having been tried by presidents in either party or groups of cross-party senators. Their failure to make it into law both encapsulates the rationale behind a third-party bid to smash Washington’s political deadlock, but also explains the institutional and political barriers to an independent president ever being elected or effective.

    “We think there is an opening today, and if it looks like this a year from now, there could be an opening,” said Ryan Clancy, the chief strategist for No Labels, in an interview with CNN’s Michael Smerconish in May. “To nominate a ticket, we’ve got to clear two pretty high bars, which is the major party nominees need to continue to be really unpopular, but a unity ticket needs to have an outright path to victory.”

    No Labels says it would draw supporters equally from Republicans and Democrats and argues that previous third-party candidacies – for instance, by Green Party nominee Jill Stein, consumer advocate Ralph Nader and Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson – were unsuccessful because voters didn’t believe they could win. (Some Democrats accused Nader in 2000 and Stein in 2016 of siphoning away votes from Democratic nominees Al Gore and Hillary Clinton and opening the way for the GOP to claim the White House).

    The center-left think tank Third Way is warning that a No Labels candidate could be especially dangerous for Biden in the key states that will decide the election. It is highlighting research showing that in 2020, Biden won six of seven states where the margin of victory was three points or less. It argues, therefore, that 79 electoral votes are potentially at risk for Biden from the involvement of a third-party challenger.

    Such a challenger would also need to win states where Biden won big, and at least some conservative bastions. And given that Trump’s deeply loyal voters are unlikely to desert him, a third-party candidate seems more likely to pull from the same pool of anti-Trump Republicans and moderate and independent voters Biden is targeting with a campaign rooted in his warnings against the threat to democracy from Trump’s “Make America Great Again” populism.

    An analysis by CNN’s Harry Enten shows that voters who don’t have a favorable view of either Biden or Trump are more likely to side with the current president in the end. In an average of the past three Quinnipiac University polls, Biden leads Trump by 7 points among those who don’t have a favorable view of either man. A third name on the ballot could complicate this equation.

    There is also the question of whether No Labels – with its condemnation of “two major political parties dominated by angry and extremist voices driven by ideology and identity politics” – is drawing a false equivalency between Republicans and Democrats. Trump, for example, sought to overturn a democratic election in 2020 to stay in power, while Biden has enacted rare bipartisan legislation including over gun safety and infrastructure.

    Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is hoping to thwart Trump’s bid for a third consecutive GOP nomination, warned Sunday that a third-party candidacy could play directly into the former president’s hands. “There are only two people who will get elected president of the United States in November of ’24 – the Republican nominee for president and the Democratic nominee for president,” Christie said on ABC News’ “This Week.”

    “They think they know who they (are) going to hurt. They want to hurt Donald Trump if he’s the nominee. But. … you never quite know who you’re going to hurt in that process.”

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  • DeSantis fundraising slowed after initial campaign launch, filing shows | CNN Politics

    DeSantis fundraising slowed after initial campaign launch, filing shows | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis is relying on larger donors to fuel his campaign and saw the pace of contributions slow after his initial announcement, a new report detailing his fundraising for the quarter ended June 30 shows.

    His campaign also confirmed to CNN on Saturday that it had recently let some staffers go.

    “Defeating Joe Biden and the $72 million behind him will require a nimble and candidate driven campaign, and we are building a movement to go the distance,” DeSantis’ campaign spokesperson Andrew Romeo said in a statement.

    Politico reported Saturday that “fewer than 10 staffers” in event planning were cut on Thursday. DeSantis’ latest FEC fiiling shows that about 90 people were on his campaign payroll during the second quarter. Two veterans of his political operation are also departing the campaign to work with an outside group that will focus on boosting his presidential bid.

    DeSantis’s camp has been working to reassure his benefactors that he has a path to the GOP nomination, even as he continues to trail former President Donald Trump in the polls.

    DeSantis, whose campaign posted a strong second-quarter haul of $20 million, saw his fundraising surge after launching his White House bid on May 24, but it quickly fell off in the weeks that followed, a CNN review shows. Among individuals giving more than $200, DeSantis raised more than $5 million in the opening days of his campaign – roughly 30% of the total he raised from those donors in the quarter.

    Candidates are only required to disclose details on contributions that exceed $200, including the date they were received.

    And DeSantis’ filing with federal regulators shows that a relatively small share – roughly 15% – of his individual contributions came in amounts of $200 or less. Donors who contribute in small amounts are valuable to campaigns because they can be tapped repeatedly for contributions before they hit donation limits. Robust small-dollar donations can also be a sign of grassroots momentum behind a campaign.

    About $3 million of the $20 million DeSantis reported raising in the second quarter cannot be touched in the battle for the 2024 GOP nomination because it is designated for the general election and cannot be used unless he becomes his party’s standard-bearer.

    Trump has traditionally relied on legions of grassroots donors to sustain his campaigns. Candidates still were filing their reports with the FEC on Saturday night as the midnight deadline to disclose their fundraising and spending details for the April to June period approached.

    The filings offer a snapshot of which Republican candidates are struggling to gain early traction with donors and those who have jumped to early leads.

    DeSantis has significant resources behind his campaign. A super PAC supporting his candidacy, Never Back Down, has previously announced taking in $130 million since it launched in March. But nearly two-thirds of that sum came from a state political committee tied to DeSantis’ 2022 reelection campaign in Florida, as CNN has previously reported.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Giuliani and election fraud promoters didn’t vet claims, new court documents show | CNN Politics

    Giuliani and election fraud promoters didn’t vet claims, new court documents show | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    New court filings in a defamation lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani show the promoters of the election fraud narrative after Donald Trump lost the presidency failed to do basic vetting of the claims they were touting – and didn’t see such vetting as necessary.

    For instance, in a December 2020 text cited in Tuesday’s filing, Trump lawyer Boris Epshteyn said that the president wanted simple examples of election fraud, which didn’t need to be proven.

    “Urgent POTUS request need best examples of ‘election fraud’ that we’ve alleged that’s super easy to explain,” Epshteyn wrote, according to evidence attached to the filing. “Doesn’t necessarily have to be proven, but does need to be easy to understand. Is there any sort of ‘greatest hits’ clearinghouse that anyone has for best examples?”

    The documents were among a trove of evidence presented by two Georgia election workers suing Giuliani, a former Trump lawyer, for allegedly smearing them after the 2020 election. They are now asking a federal court to hold Giuliani liable for possibly losing crucial evidence after he pulled out of settlement talks.

    Giuliani is feeling legal pressure related to his work for Trump to contest the election in 2020, after he sat for interviews with the special counsel’s criminal investigation in June and faces possible disbarment as an attorney. The evidence in the lawsuit from Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss of Georgia, who were at the center of Giuliani’s claims that vote-counting was fraudulent in the state, includes documents that could be pursued by criminal investigators as well.

    Freeman and Moss’s attorneys allege Giuliani never took necessary steps to preserve his electronic data after the election. They say Giuliani testified in a deposition that he had used multiple cell phones, email addresses and other communications applications after the election, but hadn’t looked thoroughly through those records in the course of the lawsuit. Instead, he said his phones had been “wiped out” after the FBI seized them in April 2021 as part of a separate criminal investigation.

    “Sanctions exist to remedy the precise situation here—a sophisticated party’s abuse of judicial process designed to avoid accountability, at enormous expense to the parties and this Court. Defendant Giuliani should know better. His conduct warrants severe sanctions,” Moss and Freeman’s attorneys wrote to the federal court on Tuesday night.

    Giuliani already was fined $90,000 to reimburse the Georgia workers’ attorneys for a previous dispute they had over evidence gathering.

    In recent days, Giuliani’s attorney approached Freeman and Moss’ lawyers to discuss an “agreement,” or at least a partial settlement, according to court filings. On Monday, however, Giuliani told them he couldn’t agree to “key principles” both sides had negotiated, keeping the lawsuit alive, according to the latest filing.

    In a statement, Giuliani adviser Ted Goodman said the plaintiffs are attempting to “embarrass” the former mayor.

    “The requests by these lawyers were deliberately overly burdensome, and sought information well beyond the scope of this case—including divorce records—in an effort to harass, intimidate and embarrass Mayor Rudy Giuliani,” Goodman said. “It’s part of a larger effort to smear and silence Mayor Giuliani for daring to ask questions, and for challenging the accepted narrative. They can’t take away the fact that Giuliani is objectively one of the most effective prosecutors in American history who took down the Mafia, cleaned up New York City and comforted the nation following 9/11.”

    The plaintiffs’ lawyers have deposed key players like Bernie Kerik, who was tasked with helping Giuliani to collect supposed fraud evidence; Christina Bobb, the then-OANN correspondent who moonlighted as a legal adviser to the Trump team; and Giuliani himself.

    In excerpts of a deposition Giuliani gave in the case, the former New York mayor says that he cannot recall running a criminal background check to firm up a claim he made that Freeman had an arrest record and a history of voter fraud.

    “You didn’t think it was important to do that before you accused them of having a criminal background?” the plaintiffs’ lawyer asked Giuliani, referring to his clients.

    “I just repeated what I was told,” Giuliani said.

    In the litigation, his attorneys have acknowledged that she had no such criminal record, but Giuliani said in the March 1 deposition that he had only in recent days asked Kerik to run a criminal background check on her.

    Giuliani was also questioned about a strategic plan – partially tweeted out by Kerik in late December 2020 – that laid out several claims of voter fraud across the country. According to evidence obtained by the plaintiffs described in the Giuliani deposition, Giuliani had noted that the communications plan needed “confirmation of arrest and evidence.”

    Giuliani testified that he believed that, before the allegations were handed to the White House, they should be confirmed. But Giuliani could not say for sure whether the uncorroborated version of the claims was ultimately shared with the White House.

    “This is so confusing, I don’t know what they told the White House,” Giuliani said in the deposition, adding that “I was not at the meeting, by design.”

    In the deposition excerpts, Giuliani goes to great lengths to distance himself from the so-called “Strategic Communications Plan of the Giuliani Presidential Legal Defense Team.” Kerik, meanwhile, testified in his deposition for the lawsuit that Giuliani was aware of the strategic communications plan, which was focused on getting allegations of election fraud in front of state legislators. According to Kerik, the plan and allegations were continually discussed over six weeks.

    The plaintiffs are also touting examples of when Giuliani, according to what they have collected, was made aware that some of the allegations he was making about supposed election fraud in Georgia were false.

    In one email they obtained that was sent to his assistant in December 2020, a Fox News reporter asked Giuliani for comment on statements by an investigator in the Georgia secretary of state’s office that debunked the claims Trump allies were making about the Georgia election workers.

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  • Youngkin launches efforts to get Republicans to vote early or by mail | CNN Politics

    Youngkin launches efforts to get Republicans to vote early or by mail | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Virginia’s Gov. Glenn Youngkin is encouraging Republicans to vote absentee by mail or early in-person ahead of his state’s pivotal legislative elections this year.

    Youngkin on Tuesday launched a new program, “Secure Your Vote Virginia,” aimed at cutting into Democrats’ mail-in voting advantage as Republican voters’ confidence in the voting method are low in part from former President Donald Trump’s claims that it’s rife with fraud.

    “Republicans got to stop sitting on the sidelines and allowing the Democrats to do a better job of voting early. I’m tired of us going into elections down thousands of votes,” Youngkin said on Fox News Tuesday morning.

    “And so, secureyourvotevirginia.com provides an easy way to make a plan, to make a plan to vote early, to get on the permanent absentee ballot, to vote early by mail or just make a plan to vote early. We got to get out the vote. These elections are critical.”

    The program is a partnership with Virginia’s state party, the Republican State Leadership Committee, the Virginia Senate Republican Caucus and the House Republican Campaign Committee.

    In a press release, Rich Anderson, the chair of the Republican Party of Virginia, said that “this data-driven effort to get Republicans to vote early is how we win in November.”

    “We have a clear mission: get in front of as many voters as we can to assure them voting absentee by mail or early in person is easy, secure, and necessary,” Anderson said in a statement.

    Virginia holds off-cycle elections that are sometimes viewed as a bellwether for the following year’s contests. All of Virginia’s House of Delegates and Senate seats are up for grabs this November and Republicans hope to hold the House and flip the Senate, which has stalled parts of Youngkin’s legislative agenda.

    The governor has repeatedly said in interviews that he’s focused on Virginia when asked if he’s considering a 2024 presidential bid.

    Asked at an event back in May if he’d be “getting out on the presidential campaign trail later this year,” Youngkin had said, “No. I’m going to be working in Virginia this year.”

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  • Why Trump’s Republican rivals should focus on New Hampshire, not Iowa | CNN Politics

    Why Trump’s Republican rivals should focus on New Hampshire, not Iowa | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump continues to be the clear favorite to win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

    Most of his rivals – from South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott to former Vice President Mike Pence – have a game plan to slow down the Trump train: Compete hard in the first-in-the-nation Iowa Republican caucuses, now scheduled for January 15.

    The idea makes sense on its face. These candidates have to beat Trump somewhere, so why not do it in the first contest where they can potentially change the narrative.

    There are just a few problems with this proposition. First, a Trump loss in Iowa is by no means a guarantee of anything for the non-Trump Republicans based on history. Second, the polling suggests the voters among whom Trump is most vulnerable are more plentiful in the state with the second-in-the-nation contest: New Hampshire.

    Republican presidential candidates are currently flocking to Iowa as they have every four to eight years in modern memory. They go to fairs, eat corn and pizza, and ask Iowans for their vote.

    Many hope to upend the national front-runner at the Iowa caucuses, as Mike Huckabee (2008), Rick Santorum (2012) and Ted Cruz (2016) have done before.

    All those candidates, however, then proceeded to lose the New Hampshire primary and the party nomination.

    Iowa, it turns out, has not been very good at picking Republican nominees for president. In primary seasons since 1980 that didn’t feature a GOP incumbent, the Iowa winner went on to win the nomination two times. Both times, that candidate had been the national front-runner prior to his Iowa win (Bob Dole in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2000). Five other Iowa winners did not become the nominee.

    One reason Iowa hasn’t done nearly as well at predicting nominees is that socially conservative candidates often appeal to the state’s religious conservative base. Religious conservatives tend to have an outsize influence in the Hawkeye State compared with other states.

    New Hampshire has had a significantly better track record. Republican primary voters there have picked the eventual nominee in five out of seven elections since 1980 without an incumbent GOP president. This includes the last three primary seasons without an incumbent, while Iowa, at the same time, has gone 0 for 3.

    Of course, 2024 could end up being like 1996 or 2000, when Iowa went with the eventual nominee while New Hampshire did not. We have a limited historical sample size.

    That said, there are also a few characteristics about New Hampshire Republicans that indicate they may be more open to a Trump challenger than Iowa Republicans this time around.

    We have seen, for example, ideology play a major role in how Republicans view Trump. Polling has consistently shown the former president to be far weaker in the center of the GOP political spectrum than he has been on the right – which is a change from 2016 when Trump was weakest among “very conservative” voters.

    Trump’s national polling lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in last month’s Quinnipiac poll, for example, dropped from 41 points among the very conservative to 31 points among those who were somewhat conservative to 14 points among moderate and liberal potential Republican primary voters.

    New Hampshire GOP primary voters are usually more moderate than their counterparts in Iowa. In 2016, 40% of Iowa Republican caucusgoers described themselves as very conservative, according to the entrance polls before voting began. Only 26% of New Hampshire Republican primary voters identified the same way. The percentage who called themselves moderate or liberal in New Hampshire (29%) was nearly double that in Iowa (15%).

    Trump has also been weaker among demographic groups who make up a larger share of the New Hampshire Republican electorate.

    Income, which was not too much of a predictor of primary voting patterns in 2016, seems to be playing a bigger role this year.

    Our most recent CNN/SSRS poll found, for example, that Trump had a 27-point lead over DeSantis among potential Republican primary voters with a household income of less than $100,000. His advantage over DeSantis among those making $100,000 or more was a mere 3 points.

    Although the 2016 Iowa entrance poll did not ask about income, the 2020 general election exit poll did. Among self-identified Republicans in Iowa, 26% had a total family income of $100,000 or more. Among self-identified Republicans in New Hampshire, 48% of them did.

    (Note: Household and family income are somewhat different measures, but I’m merely demonstrating that New Hampshire Republicans are, on the whole, wealthier than Iowa Republicans.)

    Perhaps, it should come as no surprise that former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie seems to be the rare Republican basing his campaign in New Hampshire and not Iowa. Christie is by far the most anti-Trump candidate registering in the polls at all.

    His chance of winning the nomination is slight, but he seems to have the right idea.

    If Trump is going to get tripped up in the 2024 primary, the numbers suggest his opponents would be wiser to focus more on New Hampshire than on Iowa.

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  • Pence tries wooing Iowans, one Pizza Ranch slice at a time | CNN Politics

    Pence tries wooing Iowans, one Pizza Ranch slice at a time | CNN Politics

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    Sioux City, Iowa
    CNN
     — 

    In a crowded Pizza Ranch on Wednesday night, former Vice President Mike Pence found himself confronted about his role on January 6, 2021, by an Iowan who blamed him for President Joe Biden being elected president.

    “If it wasn’t for your vote, we would not have Joe Biden in the White House. … Do you ever second guess yourself?” Luann Bertrand asked.

    Pence, who was on the last stop of his day on a nearly weeklong Iowa swing, listened patiently to Bertrand’s question. “Let me be very respectful of the question,” the former vice president began, as he turned to explaining his role under the Constitution in certifying the 2020 US election results.

    The episode encapsulated Pence’s challenge as he runs for the 2024 GOP nomination against former President Donald Trump, who’d wanted him to overturn Biden’s victory and has convinced many of his followers, falsely, that Pence had the power to do so. But the exchange at this intimate campaign stop also revealed what the former vice president hopes will be his winning strategy in the first-in-the-nation caucus state – namely allowing Iowans to question him and see him up close and personal.

    For nearly five minutes, he directly answered Bertrand’s question, using the word “respect” and “deep affection” as he weaved in constitutional law and an admonishment of Trump, who’s the front-runner for the nomination.

    “I’m sorry, ma’am. But that’s actually what the Constitution says. No vice president in American history ever asserted the authority that you have been convinced that I had. But I want to tell you, with all due respect, I said before, I said when I announced, President Trump was wrong about my authority that day and he’s still wrong,” he said.

    When Pence finished his answer, the room of several dozen broke into applause.

    For the Pence campaign, visiting all of Iowa’s 99 counties isn’t just a campaign promise – it is central to carving a path for taking on the historic challenge of running against a president he once served.

    It may also be the best, and only, chance for a Pence campaign to take off.

    “If you want to win the Iowa caucus, it’s a 50-person Pizza Ranch meeting,” Chip Saltsman, national campaign chairman for the Pence campaign and veteran Republican consultant, told CNN.

    “Everybody that came here tonight, I guarantee the one thing they have in common – they’re all going to caucus. You’re looking for people that are willing to come out on a cold night, spend an hour and a half listening to everybody else talk, and then vote for your person.”

    “The way you build those relationships are in meetings of 50, not rallies of 5,000,” he said, referring to Trump, who has drawn large crowds in his 2024 bid for the White House.

    In the 2008 presidential campaign, Saltsman was the campaign manager for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, when he concocted what he calls the “Pizza Ranch strategy” – hitting the chain’s 71 locations throughout Iowa, which have private rooms and dining areas conducive to a small town’s biggest events.

    “We were at 1% [in the polls] when we announced,” said Saltsman, reflecting on the Huckabee campaign. “We worked really hard for about three months and then we went from 1% to asterisk. So we had to start back over. That’s when the Pizza Ranch strategy started.”

    With the Huckabee campaign lacking money and name recognition, Saltsman realized that “for the price of a pizza, you got the meeting room” of the town’s Pizza Ranch – and that Huckabee had an automatic crowd if he showed up around lunch or dinner. “It was more out of necessity than some deep strategy,” he said.

    The Huckabee team upscaled this plan to all 99 counties, focusing on finding the Iowa Republicans they needed to convince to caucus for their candidate. Huckabee came from behind to win the 2008 Iowa caucuses, although he ultimately fell well short of the nomination.

    Pence is deploying a similar strategy, focusing on intimate settings where he will spend two hours face-to-face with Iowans, even if the crowd is fewer than 100 people. The Pence team is betting on the multiplying effect of these one-on-one encounters – that the voter will feel a kinship with Pence and bring others to caucus for him.

    At an ice cream shop in Le Mars, Mavis Luther had just listened to Pence speak and answer questions for 90 minutes. The event was small enough that Luther could take a picture with Pence and chat with him. “It’s wonderful!” she exclaimed after she met him. “It’s the only way to have a chance to really know how they feel and answer questions at your level – of the community, country and our state.”

    Pence, a former Indiana governor and congressman, shares the Midwest sensibilities of Iowa, as well as the campaigning style the caucus state is accustomed to. At the July Fourth parade in Urbandale, Pence often broke into a run to greet people along the parade route.

    “I came to the conclusion over the last few years that I’m well known, but we’re not known well,” said Pence. “We’re going to be able to take our story, take our case, and take our whole record, and the story of our family, to the people of Iowa to great success.”

    Matt Thacker, who was watching the parade in his lawn chair, had this to say about Pence’s handshake-to-handshake campaigning – “it matters.”

    “The personal touch is very important,” Thacker said. “I think it makes a lot of difference. And recognizing the country isn’t the coasts. It’s the heartland.”

    Bertrand, the woman in the Sioux City Pizza Ranch, walked away from the event open to Pence, but unconvinced by the facts he laid out about January 6.

    “I believe he’s a good man,” Bertrand told CNN. “I love the fact that he is strengthened by his faith. But I really do feel like he altered history.”

    Bertrand said she would consider supporting Pence in the caucuses. “But,” she said, “he has that one hiccup.”

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  • How Ron DeSantis gained a fan base among some suburban women far from Florida | CNN Politics

    How Ron DeSantis gained a fan base among some suburban women far from Florida | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Like many Americans, when Vanessa Steinkamp was stuck inside early in the Covid-19 pandemic, she logged into Twitter to talk to the outside world. The teacher and mother of three schoolchildren in Dallas was worried that closed classrooms would hurt kids, particularly the most vulnerable students who needed the special resources that schools provide. Calling for children to go back to in-person learning earned her a lot of backlash, but she also befriended likeminded moms.

    When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pressed public schools to reopen in the summer of 2020, he became their hero.

    These women built an informal network of overlapping chatgroups across several states, many of them outside Florida. They had a mix of political views, from liberal to conservative, and were brought together by frustrations with a Covid response that they felt left opening schools a low priority.

    College-educated and affluent, the mothers are the kinds of voters seen as critical to both political parties in swing districts and states, and one of the voting groups among whom former President Donald Trump and Republicans underperformed in both 2020 and 2022.

    They’re the kinds of voters DeSantis hopes can drive him to victory in a general election if he can overcome Trump to secure the GOP nomination – and appealing to them is a key part of his case in the primary.

    One of Steinkamp’s first Twitter friends was Jennifer Sey, then an executive at Levi’s. In 2022, Sey said the company pressured her to stop tweeting about opening schools and playgrounds, and when she refused, she said, she was pushed out of her job as brand president. Levi’s disputed her account, telling The New York Times it supported Sey’s advocacy on schools but her comments “went far beyond calling for schools to reopen, and frequently used her platform to criticize public health guidelines and denounce elected officials and government scientists.”

    Gov. Ron DeSantis launched his presidential campaign in May.

    Another Twitter friend was so infuriated when she saw a local school board member’s campaign fliers in San Diego that touted the decision to keep schools closed that she called a real estate agent in Florida and eventually moved to Tampa. She did not want to use her name because she said she feared backlash at work, but she did send CNN photos of the fliers.

    Julie Hamill, a lawyer near Los Angeles, was a later addition to the group. She, too, was furious about the actions of her local public health department and school board. But her husband didn’t want to leave California, so last year Hamill ran for school board and won.

    I first spoke to Steinkamp in the spring of 2021 while reporting a story on how Covid had changed the real estate market in Texas. But it was her appreciation of the then first-term Florida governor that stuck with me.

    “If DeSantis were to run tomorrow, he would win,” she said then. “All he has to do is run on opening schools.”

    Her friends told CNN recently they’d felt the same way – they’d joked about “Daddy DeSantis” and “Freedom Daddy.” His early advocacy for open schools, Sey said, was “pretty heroic.”

    Their fangirl vibe was tongue-in-cheek, but also spoke to their situation. Hamill said: “We’re like desperate women who … had tried everything that we could do in our own power in our own communities, and we weren’t getting anywhere.”

    DeSantis pressured school districts to open in August 2020, earlier than most places in the US. But many European countries opened schools in April and May of 2020. “Children don’t generally infect adults,” a health official in Finland said in May 2020, explaining his country’s decision to reopen schools. (At the time, there was conflicting research on the role kids played in spreading the virus.) As CNN reported in January 2021, “in Europe, shutting schools is widely seen as a last resort.” Recent research has shown kids fell back in their learning during the pandemic. American fourth- and eighth-graders, for example, showed the largest declines in math scores since the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics began keeping track in 1990.

    DeSantis’ actions gained him a bigger national platform during the pandemic, which he’s used to launch his presidential bid. He’s campaigning on his Covid record, but also the idea that Florida is “where woke goes to die.”

    Jennifer Sey, who now calls herself a

    Steinkamp has been a Republican all her life, though she said she has never liked Trump. Sey, the former Levi’s executive, had been a leftist Democrat until her Covid experience, she said, but she’s also open to DeSantis’ “war on woke.” She told CNN, “I think, to some extent, he’s got a point. It’s a movement that demands conformity and sees every sort of problem the world faces through this lens of kind of hierarchical oppression.”

    Sey, who now says she’s a “disaffected leftist,” said, “My issue with woke capitalism, in particular, is that it’s hypocritical, and it’s a lie. … I would much rather companies focus on treat treating employees with fairness, paying them well, treating women well – not harassing them – than do these fake campaigns while the leaders take all the money for themselves and obscure their greed with woke washing.”

    Even so, Sey said, she thought DeSantis’ campaigning against wokeness was “a little bit” of a distraction from the policies that made her like him in the first place. She thought the governor’s fight with Disney was unnecessary. “There’s some truth to what he’s saying about woke ideology being corrosive and conformist and authoritarian in some ways. I just don’t think you should counter that with more authoritarianism,” she said.

    Julie Hamill won a seat on her local school board after disagreeing with public health policies during the pandemic.

    Hamill, the lawyer in LA, said she had voted for Barack Obama twice, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden for president. She is open to voting for DeSantis but is concerned about some of his policies.

    She said she considered herself socially liberal but suffered backlash when she called for schools to be open. “I was demonized for expressing these feelings. And meanwhile, Ron DeSantis in Florida is saying everything that I was desperately wanting to hear from my own elected representatives.”

    The women don’t always agree on politics: Steinkamp is against abortion, while Sey and Hamill are for women having the right to the procedure. But all three think Florida’s new ban on abortion after six weeks is a blot on their favorite governor’s record. “That’s dangerous,” Hamill said. “That’s something that I cannot get behind. And I don’t think that’s going to bode well for his presidential campaign. I think that that might be a real impediment to bringing in moderate women.”

    With none of them living in Florida, the women have not had an opportunity to vote for DeSantis yet. And it’s too early to know if their Covid-era infatuation will become more.

    They all despair at the thought that the 2024 election will be a rematch between Biden and Trump. If those were her two choices, Steinkamp said, she’d go for a third option: “Jump in my swimming pool and drown myself.”

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  • Trump pressured Arizona governor after 2020 election to help overturn his defeat | CNN Politics

    Trump pressured Arizona governor after 2020 election to help overturn his defeat | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Following his defeat in the 2020 election, President Donald Trump spoke to Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey to discuss the results, a source familiar with the call told CNN.

    Publicly, Ducey said at the time that the two Republican leaders had spoken, though he did not describe what they had talked about. Behind closed doors, Ducey said that the former president was pressuring him to find fraud in the presidential election in Arizona that would help him overturn his loss in the state, a source with knowledge said. Trump narrowly lost Arizona to Joe Biden by less than 11,000 votes.

    There was no recording made of the call between Trump and Ducey, according to a source familiar with the matter.

    Trump also repeatedly pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, to help him find evidence of fraud and overturn the 2020 election results. Pence told the governor that if there was hard evidence of voter fraud to report it appropriately, one of the sources said.

    Pence rebukes Trump: ‘I had no right to overturn election’

    Pence spoke to Ducey multiple times about the election, though he did not pressure the governor as he was asked, sources familiar with the calls said.

    A spokesperson for Pence declined to comment.

    The Washington Post first reported on Trump pressuring Ducey on overturning the election results.

    Trump publicly attacked Ducey, a former ally, over the state’s certification of the results. As Ducey was certifying the election results in November 2020, Trump appeared to call the governor – with a “Hail to the Chief” ringtone heard playing on Ducey’s phone. Ducey did not take that call but later said he spoke with Trump, though he did not describe the specifics of the conversation.

    A spokesman for Ducey told CNN earlier this week that the former governor had not been contacted by the office of special counsel Jack Smith, who is investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 elections.

    Those efforts include outreach to various state officials, including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, whom Smith has interviewed. In January 2021, Trump told Raffensperger to “find” the votes he needed to win the state, a call that’s at the center of the Fulton County district attorney’s investigation into attempts to overturn the election in Georgia.

    The special counsel’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

    A Ducey spokesman said Saturday that the former governor “stands by his action to certify the election and considers the issue to be in the rear view mirror – it’s time to move on.”

    “This is nothing more than a ‘copy and paste’ of a compilation of articles from the past two years, disguised as something new and relying on shaky and questionable sourcing,” spokesman Daniel Scarpinato said in a statement. “Frankly, nothing here is new nor is it news to anyone following this issue the last two years. Governor Ducey defended the results of Arizona’s 2020 election, he certified the election, and he made it clear that the certification provided a trigger for credible complaints backed by evidence to be brought forward. None were ever brought forward.”

    Trump is currently seen as the front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination as he seeks a return to the White House.

    A Trump spokesperson said in a statement: “These witch-hunts are designed to interfere and meddle in the 2024 election in an attempt to prevent President Trump from returning to the White House to make this country great again. They will fail and President Trump will be re-elected.”

    Before his fallout with Trump, Ducey had been seen as a formidable candidate for Senate in 2022, but he ultimately ruled out a bid to challenge Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, who won reelection last year over a Trump-endorsed GOP nominee.

    Ducey, who was term-limited as governor last year, endorsed Karrin Taylor Robson, a former member of the Arizona Board of Regents, in the race to succeed him. However, Taylor Robson lost the primary to Trump’s pick, Kari Lake, a former television anchor who said she would not have certified Biden’s 2020 win had she been governor. Lake ended up losing the general election to Democrat Katie Hobbs and has continued to promote election falsehoods, including about her own race.

    Ducey, a former CEO of Cold Stone Creamery, served a term as Arizona treasurer before winning two elections for governor.

    He announced last month he would be leading Citizens for Free Enterprise, which describes itself as a “new national effort to promote and protect free enterprise.”

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Facebook urged to suspend strongman leader over video threatening violence | CNN Business

    Facebook urged to suspend strongman leader over video threatening violence | CNN Business

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    The oversight board for Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms on Thursday said Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen should be suspended from the social media site for six months for posting a video violating rules against violent threats.

    The board, which is funded by Meta but operates independently, said the company had been wrong not to remove the video after it was published in January.

    Meta, in a written statement, agreed to take down the video but said it would respond to the board’s recommendation to suspend Hun Sen after a review.

    Any suspension would silence the prime minister’s Facebook page less than a month before an election in Cambodia. Opposition and rights groups have said the poll will be a sham – accusations dismissed by the government.

    Hun Sen’s Facebook account appeared to go offline late on Thursday. The prime minister – one of the world’s longest-serving leaders after nearly four decades in power – had said on Wednesday that he was switching from Facebook to the messaging app Telegram to reach more people, without mentioning the video.

    A Meta spokesperson said the company had not suspended or removed his account.

    There was no immediate government comment on the case on Thursday.

    The decision is the latest in a series of rebukes by the oversight board over how the world’s biggest social media company handles contentious statements by political leaders and posts calling for violence around elections.

    The company’s election integrity efforts are in focus as the United States prepares for presidential elections next year.

    The board endorsed Meta’s 2021 banishment of former US President Donald Trump – the current frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination – after the deadly January 6 Capitol Hill riot, but criticized the indefinite nature of his suspension and urged more careful preparation for volatile political situations overall.

    Meta reinstated the former US president’s account earlier this year.

    The Cambodia case came after several users reported a January video where Hun Sen said those who accused his Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) of buying votes in a 2022 local election should file a legal case, or face a beating from CPP’s supporters.

    Meta determined at the time that the video fell afoul of its rules, but opted to leave it up under a “newsworthiness” exemption, reasoning that the public had an interest in hearing warnings of violence by their government, the ruling said.

    The board held that the video’s harms outweighed its news value.

    Cambodia’s government has denied targeting the opposition and says those subject to legal action are law breakers.

    Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said Hun Sen had finally been called out for inciting violence.

    “This kind of face-off between Big Tech and a dictator over human rights issues is long overdue,” he said in a statement.

    Last week, the board said Meta’s handling of calls for violence after the 2022 Brazilian election continued to raise concerns about the effectiveness of its election efforts.

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  • Ad wars heat up in the 2024 presidential race as spending nears $70 million | CNN Politics

    Ad wars heat up in the 2024 presidential race as spending nears $70 million | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump is dominating cable airwaves, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is betting on Iowa and South Carolina, and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is blanketing New Hampshire as candidates tailor their ad spending with the 2024 presidential race heating up.

    Spending data from AdImpact shows how the various White House contenders have different strategies for the early primary map, investing resources in the states and messages they hope can serve as launching pads to the nomination – spending nearly $70 million along the way.

    Allies of Trump, the front-runner for the GOP nomination, have taken a unique approach among the crowded field, devoting more than three-quarters of their ad spending dollars to national cable advertising campaign.

    MAGA Inc., the super PAC backing his campaign, has spent $15.7 million on national cable advertising out of a total of nearly $20 million in ad spending so far. The pro-Trump group has split the rest of its spending, a little more than $4 million, between Iowa and New Hampshire.

    Reflecting that strategy, in the last month, MAGA Inc. spent $1.6 million on an ad running in major media markets (Los Angeles, New York City, Washington, DC, and Philadelphia) which criticizes the former president’s indictment in the classified documents case. The super PAC has also kept ads attacking DeSantis in rotation in the early primary states.

    There are also hints at the strategy of DeSantis’ camp in the ad spending of a super PAC backing his campaign, Never Back Down. The group has spent a total of about $15.5 million on advertising so far, directing $4.3 million to Iowa and $3.7 million to South Carolina. On Tuesday, the group launched a new TV spot in Iowa proclaiming that DeSantis was “waging a war on woke and winning.”

    By contrast, the group has spent just $1.3 million in New Hampshire so far. Notably, Never Back Down has spent about $630,000 in Nevada, another early voting state, making it the only GOP group with a significant presence on the airwaves there. The group has also spent about $5 million on national cable advertising.

    South Carolina Sen Tim. Scott – another top advertiser in the early going of the White House race – has taken a traditional approach to ad budgeting, splitting his advertising between Iowa, where he’s spent about $3.5 million, and New Hampshire, where he’s spent about $2 million. In both states, he’s been a steady presence on the air, running ads that tout his “conservative values” and feature clips from the campaign trail.

    And the super PAC allied with Scott has followed a similar pattern, spending about $3.1 million in Iowa and $1.9 million in New Hampshire. Unlike the Trump and DeSantis super PACs, Scott and his camp have spent little on national advertising campaigns.

    Meanwhile, North Dakota’s Burgum has emerged as the top advertiser in New Hampshire so far, spending more than $2.1 million in the state as the independently wealthy candidate works to raise his profile among voters.

    Burgum has also spent $2 million advertising in Iowa. Excluding outside groups, only Scott has spent more on campaign advertising – and even including the super PACs, Burgum is the fifth biggest advertiser in the race so far.

    A look at who has spent money so far on 2024 ads

  • MAGA Inc.: $19,922,815
  • Never Back Down: $15,511,532
  • Scott for President $5,679,567
  • Trust in the Mission PAC $5,605,080
  • Burgum for President: $4,220,175
  • Perry Johnson for President: $2,119,553
  • Future Forward USA Action: $2,063,400
  • Biden Victory Fund: $2,022,898
  • Democratic National Committee/Biden: $1,636,147
  • Ramaswamy for President: $1,409,095
  • American Action Network: $1,219,358
  • Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee: $877,800
  • Binkley for President: $857,445
  • SOS America PAC: $827,280
  • Defending Democracy Together: $786,377
  • DeSantis for President: $763,910
  • Biden for President: $758,026
  • Trump for President: $682,998

Overall, since the start of 2023, all campaigns and outside groups have combined to spend nearly $70 million on advertising for the presidential race already. That amount is nearly double what had been spent at this point in the last presidential cycle – during a competitive Democratic primary – when all candidates and groups had spent about $35 million in the first six months of 2019.

This year, Trump’s super PAC, DeSantis’ super PAC, Scott and his super PAC, and Burgum account for over half that total, combining to spend just over $50 million.

Only two other candidates have spent more than $1 million on ads so far: Vivek Ramaswamy and Perry Johnson, both of whom are independently wealthy businessmen self-funding their campaigns.

And while candidates have taken different approaches to investing their resources, the traditional early voting states are continuing to draw the lion’s share of the ad dollars. Candidates and groups have spent about $17.4 million in Iowa, $10.9 million in New Hampshire, $3.9 million in South Carolina, and $830,000 in Nevada.

The ad wars are heating up as candidates in the crowded GOP field are scrambling to qualify for the first presidential debate in August.

Several long-shot Republican presidential candidates, with smaller budgets for TV advertising, have been appealing to donors online to help them make the debate stage after the Republican National Committee released the qualification requirements, which include both polling and fundraising thresholds.

As he seeks to nab the 40,000 individual donors required to be on stage, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson is up with Facebook ads that read, “I am running for President to bring out the best in America. From securing the border to creating a robust economy, I have the experience to deliver. Chip in $3, $5, or $10 today to help me get on the debate stage and move our nation forward.”

Ramaswamy – who is self-funding his campaign – is also urging supporters to help him qualify. “To secure a prime spot on the debate stage, we need solid polling numbers AND unique grassroots donors. Can you chip in just $1 today to help get to the debate stage?,” one of Ramaswamy’s ads says.

And Johnson, the wealthy Michigan businessman, is making similar appeals. “Even though I’m self-funding, the RNC is requiring that I get 40,000 donors to make the debate stage. Can you donate $1 NOW to ensure that I make the cut to share my plan to stop inflation and balance the budget?,” reads one of his ads.

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