Tag: political candidates

Shooting outside NY GOP governor nominee’s home sharpens debate over crime and guns | CNN Politics

CNN
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A shooting that wounded two teenagers on the property of Rep. Lee Zeldin, the Republican nominee for governor of New York, was a disturbing development in a campaign that has seen him hammer Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul over public safety and a controversial bail reform law enacted more than three years ago.

The random incident Sunday afternoon outside his Long Island house – his two 16-year-old daughters were inside, terrified but uninjured – provided Zeldin with an opportunity, however personally unwelcome, to sharpen his message on an issue for which concerns cross party lines and potential solutions have often defied typical partisan divides.

“This is day after day after day,” Zeldin told Fox News on Monday. “And there are a lot of parents, there are a lot of families, dealing with this reality of rising crime in New York. For us, fortunately, my daughters knew exactly how to respond. But listen, they were just sitting there at the kitchen table doing homework and bullets started going off all around them.”

An ally of former President Donald Trump, Zeldin has mostly run a one-issue campaign focused on crime and his criticism of the 2019 Democratic-led enactment of a bail reform law that made it more difficult for judges to keep some suspects behind bars. The law has been amended twice, but Republicans and some Democrats have pushed for more substantial revisions. While the backlash is real, Zeldin’s ability to parlay it into a winning message remains in doubt. He has struggled to break through with voters in deep-blue New York and Hochul has used his opposition to new gun restrictions to undermine his “soft on crime” attacks.

Zeldin entered the general election at a clear disadvantage. There are more than twice as many registered Democrats in New York as Republicans, whose party has been hollowed out by a generation of cascading defeats. The last GOP victory in a statewide election came in 2002, when Gov. George Pataki won his third term in office. Hochul, nominally an incumbent after replacing disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo following his resignation last year amid a sexual harassment scandal, has distanced herself from her predecessor, but not the state’s Democratic donor apparatus, and has trounced Zeldin in fundraising.

Zeldin has employed familiar GOP attacks against Hochul over the economy and inflation, but like other Republicans around the country, he sees an opening on the criminal justice front. Last November, months after he entered the GOP primary, Republicans won a pair of district attorney races in the New York City suburbs. In Nassau County, the incumbent Democratic executive was also unseated by a Republican. The backlash to bail reform played a central role in GOP messaging in those races.

Zeldin has followed that roadmap. Perhaps, some critics suggest, too closely for a candidate whose path to an upset win requires a strong performance in the suburbs and upstate, but also a significant dent in the blue wall of New York City.

For her part, Hochul has largely focused her broadsides against Zeldin on his ties to Trump and his opposition to abortion rights. (Zeldin has said he would not seek to change state law guaranteeing access to the procedure.) When pressed on the bail reform law, Hochul has pointed to the amendments passed by the legislature.

Zeldin’s efforts to make hay over the controversy has been hamstrung by cash woes. Short on money, he turned to Trump for a fundraiser in early September. The event netted Zeldin’s campaign a reported $1.5 million but underscored a fundamental conundrum – Trump, and his wing of the Republican Party, are crucial drivers of campaign funds, but close public ties to them can be self-defeating in a state the former President lost by 23 points in 2020.

“I don’t think Zeldin is in an impossible situation. In fact, I think he’s going to do better than expected,” said Kenneth Sherrill, a professor emeritus of political science at Hunter College. “But the campaign has been totally negative, hasn’t presented any positive reasons for supporting him. He says nothing about his record in prior offices. He says nothing about issues other than to attack. At some point, he has to explain why he’s a desirable alternative to Hochul.”

Zeldin has found an unwilling ally of sorts in New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who, though he endorsed Hochul, has pilloried the state’s bail reform law and demanded lawmakers hold a special session in Albany to further restrict rules over pretrial detention. His ask was rejected.

But Zeldin and Adams break sharply on gun violence, with the mayor – along with Hochul – pushing for stricter regulations on firearms. Zeldin criticized a new round of gun control measures passed in Albany and signed by Hochul this past summer that sought to circumvent a recent Supreme Court decision striking down some restrictions on concealed carry outside the home.

“I think we need to separate a law-abiding New Yorker who wants to safely and securely carry a firearm for, solely, their self-defense and the criminals who want to carry firearms illegally and commit offense after offense after offense, harming others, and then because of the system in New York, they end up back on the street,” Zeldin told Fox News in an interview from early July.

A federal court last week blocked enforcement of large chunks of the law. The ruling is being appealed by the state attorney general’s office.

Early Sunday evening, Hochul tweeted a conciliatory note in response to the incident involving Zeldin’s family.

“I’ve been briefed on the shooting outside of Congressman Zeldin’s home. As we await more details, I’m relieved to hear the Zeldin family is safe and grateful for law enforcement’s quick response,” Hochul said from her campaign’s Twitter account.

The shooting marked the second time Zeldin has been thrust into the headlines by an act of violence. The first came over the summer, when a man wielding a sharp object accosted him onstage at a campaign event near Rochester. Zeldin was not hurt, and the alleged attacker was promptly subdued and arrested.

Asked about the shooting on Monday, Hochul reiterated to reporters that her office had “sent our message right away” that the state police would be made available if desired to aid in the investigation.

“It’s a reminder, we all have to work together to get guns off the streets,” she added. “And so I will continue, as I’ve been on this journey as governor, to do everything we can to ensure that our streets are safe. That is one of my highest priorities.”

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October 11, 2022
Locks, laws and bullet-resistant shields: Election officials boost security as midterms draw closer | CNN Politics

CNN
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In Douglasville, Georgia – just west of Atlanta – a new buzzer-entry system secures the doors of the Douglas County election office. And elections director Milton Kidd said he now varies the times and the routes he uses to travel to work – all to evade the attention of election conspiracy theorists who have targeted the office.

In Madison, Wisconsin, where a top election official faced death threats in the aftermath of the 2020 election, officials have redesigned the city clerk’s office, adding cameras, locking doors and covering the windows with white paper, said city attorney Michael Haas. In addition, a new city ordinance establishes a fine of up to $1,000 for disorderly conduct directed at election officials.

In Colorado, meanwhile, a new state law – the Vote Without Fear Act – prohibits carrying firearms at polling places or within 100 feet of a ballot drop box. And in Tallahassee, Florida, officials have added Kevlar and bullet-resistant acrylic shields to the Leon County elections office, said Mark Earley, who runs elections in the county.

With Election Day less than a month away – and early voting already happening in some states – the officials charged with administering the midterms are racing to boost security for their staff, polling places and voters, as baseless conspiracy theories about fraud continue to swirl around the 2020 election and the one now underway.

As CNN recently reported, the concerns about threats and harassment are so great that federal officials are now offering de-escalation training to local and state officials to help avert violence at the polls.

“We certainly are in territory that we have not navigated in the past,” said Tina Barton, a former election official in Michigan who sits on the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections. It’s a bipartisan group of election experts and law enforcement officials, working to prevent threats against voters and election officials.

“I’m sad about the fact that it took a scenario like this for us to have to look at all of these things and say, ‘How do we keep ourselves safe?’” she added of the threats that started after the 2020 election. “But we’re seeing unprecedented threats and harassment.”

Barton said election officials are deploying a bevy of tactics to secure the elections – from installing cameras and lighting at drop boxes to adding GPS and other tracking devices to ballot bags to monitor their movement on Election Day.

Election officials in North Carolina last week issued what they described as their “most comprehensive” guidance to local elections officials for maintaining order at polling places this fall. It reinforces that it’s a crime to interfere with voter or election workers. The North Carolina State Board of Elections has also developed a guide for local law enforcement to help officers identify and respond to voter intimidation.

In Leon County, Florida, Earley said his staff has received active-shooter training as part of their preparations in recent election cycles. But he said it has taken on “more significance since January 6,” referring to the 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

The extra steps to secure the building and protect the staff, Earley said, have sprung from worries about “people buying into myths and disinformation and feeling it’s their patriotic duty to take action.”

“In today’s world, that action, unfortunately, oftentimes comes with firearms,” he added.

In Oregon, meanwhile, the secretary of state’s office is urging local election officials to install signs outside ballot boxes that spell out voters’ rights and warn that voter intimidation violates the law – following social media references to activists targeting the boxes, said Ben Morris, a spokesman for the office.

The state mails a ballot to every voter, which Oregonians return either by mail or by depositing into drop boxes. About 200 drop boxes are used around the state.

In neighboring Washington state, officials in the Seattle area found and removed some 11 signs that had been posted by an “election integrity” activist and that warned that drop boxes were “under surveillance” ahead of the August 2 primary. King County officials called the signs an example of voter intimidation.

(Amber Krabach, the activist who erected the signs, has sued King County and state officials in federal court, arguing that removing the signs violated her First Amendment right to free speech.)

King County election officials are not aware of any security issues with their 76 ballot drop boxes right now, said Kendall Hodson, the county election office’s chief of staff, but “given what happened in the primary, we are keeping our eyes peeled for any unusual behavior.”

Back in Douglas County, Georgia – a community of roughly 145,000 people that backed President Joe Biden in 2020 – Kidd said he’s dismayed and discouraged by what he and his staff have endured.

Activists have trailed workers and photographed their license plates. In the 2020 election, people claiming election fraud dug through the trash at one polling location, found destroyed sample ballots and accused officials of throwing out votes, he said.

And this year, he’s had several companies refuse to rent the trucks to the county that it needs to transport equipment to precincts.

“In this climate, any business that’s associated with elections becomes a target,” he said. (Kidd has secured the trucks but said he doesn’t want to name the supplier for fear of further trouble.)

Kidd, who has worked in the county’s election system for seven years, said he’s lost much of his once-stable workforce of temporary poll workers as a result of all the harassment and stress.

“We’re able do things at the precinct” to protect workers, he said. “But we’re not able to go home with you. We’re not able to be with you in the grocery store.”

“The level of depression, the level of anxiety that is now present in election administration is ridiculous,” he added. “And I don’t know, personally myself, how much longer I am going to do this.”

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October 10, 2022
Trump’s visit to small Nevada town highlights importance of rural voters to state Republicans | CNN Politics

CNN
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When former President Donald Trump touched down in Minden, Nevada, on Saturday to campaign for a slate of Republican candidates, he landed in a town of just under 3,500 people – about 0.1% of the state’s population.

It’s a tiny stop for the former President, who rode stronger-than-expected turnout in rural stretches of the country like Minden to the White House in 2016. But it highlights just how important rural counties are to Nevada Republicans such as Senate nominee Adam Laxalt and gubernatorial hopeful Joe Lombardo in the critical midterm elections.

“We believe that rural Nevada is the key to turning our state back,” Laxalt said during a stop late last year in Winnemucca, a mining town of under 8,000 people in northern Humboldt County.

Nevada, which Trump lost twice, represents one of the biggest tests for Democratic power in the 2022 midterms. The party holds all but one statewide office in Nevada, and Democratic presidential nominees have carried the state in every election since 2008, buoyed by the strength of the late Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid’s so-called Reid Machine. But those Democratic margins have been declining and after closures around the coronavirus pandemic dramatically affected Nevada’s tourism-centric economy, Republicans see a strong chance to make gains in the state, hanging their hopes on Lombardo’s bid to unseat Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak and Laxalt’s challenge to Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto.

A CNN poll released on Thursday found no clear leader in either race: Laxalt and Lombardo had the support of 48% of likely voters compared with 46% for Cortez Masto and Sisolak.

The same poll was littered with warning signs for Democrats. Forty-four percent of registered Nevada voters said the country would be better off if Republicans are in control of Congress, compared with 35% who said it wouldn’t be. More Republican voters in Nevada said they were extremely motivated to vote – 62% versus 52% for Democrats. And 41% of voters said the economy was the most important issue in the midterms, something Republicans have used to hammer Democrats.

Nevada has been home to one of the most dramatic and politically important urban-rural divides in recent years. And that split could prove even more pivotal in November, given the tightness of the Senate and gubernatorial contests.

Rural voters make up a tiny fraction of Nevada’s electorate, with the state’s major urban centers – Clark County, home to Las Vegas, and Washoe County, home to Reno – making up nearly 90% of Nevada’s population of some 3.1 million. According to a study by Iowa State University, Nevada’s rural population fell from nearly 20% of the state in 1970 to less than 6% in 2010.

The urbanization of Nevada has long allowed Democratic candidates in the state to run on one strategy: Run up the vote total around Las Vegas, win narrowly or at least stay competitive in the Reno area and lose big in rural Nevada. Cortez Masto, the first Latina elected to the Senate, followed this strategy in 2016 when she lost every Nevada county, except Clark, but still won a first term by over 2 points.

In recent years, that strategy paid even greater dividends as Washoe County, the second largest in the state, has tilted toward Democrats. Democratic presidential candidates have carried Washoe County in the last four presidential elections, while Sisolak and the state’s junior senator, Jacky Rosen, both won the county in 2018.

That has put more pressure on Nevada Republicans to not only close the gap in Clark and Washoe counties but to also boost as much turnout as possible in rural areas.

Whether that “rural first” strategy can even lead to wins any more is an open question, according to David Damore, a political science professor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

“It’s a huge part of the Republican playbook, but every year it is smaller and smaller,” he said of GOP attempts to turn out rural voters. “It’s all about cutting the margin in Clark. What has happened is, even though Trump did that last time, Washoe is becoming more liberal. … It is a little bit of a whack-a-mole game for Republicans.”

Laxalt knows the pressure he faces firsthand. When he successfully ran for state attorney general in 2014, he became the only statewide candidate in recent decades to lose both Clark and Washoe counties but win the election when he narrowly defeated Democrat Ross Miller.

Laxalt did what a statewide Republican candidate needed do in Nevada in that race: He kept the margins down in Clark and Washoe – losing the former by less than 6 points and the latter by 1 point – and posted strong margins across the rest of the state.

Laxalt also knows it’s not a perfect strategy. Nevada’s increased urbanization has put a strain on that rural-focused strategy as evidenced by Laxalt’s 4-point loss to Sisolak in 2018. In that race, Laxalt once again lost both Clark and Washoe, but this time by wider margins, including losing the Las Vegas area by nearly 14 points.

Laxalt, on multiple tours through rural Nevada during his Senate campaign, has stressed the area’s importance to his success. At the same time, he’s had to walk a fine line between raising false claims about the validity of the 2020 election, including Republican concerns about vote-counting in Clark County, and the need to boost rural turnout. Laxalt has done so by raising baseless questions about Clark County elections while stressing to rural voters that their votes matter.

“In the end of the day, rural Nevada can provide 75,000-vote cushions, so rural Nevada still matters,” he told an audience in Fallon in late 2021. “Rural Nevada is discouraged. They think Vegas is all that matters. Not true. The vote block out of rural Nevada still makes a huge difference.”

Brian Freimuth, a spokesman for Laxalt, said in a statement that the Republican’s effort “is the most well-traveled campaign in the state” and has “hosted events in every rural county, dozens of rural meet & greets, a cattle drive, and events with ranchers and farmers.”

“Rural Nevadans know that Adam’s record on water rights, the second amendment, sage grouse, and fighting federal overreach make him the best candidate in this race,” said Freimuth.

Cortez Masto, arguably the most vulnerable Democratic Senate incumbent in the country, has focused much of her campaign on tying Laxalt to Trump. Laxalt, who was a co-chair of Trump’s 2020 campaign in Nevada, was central to filing election lawsuits seeking to overturn the presidential result in the state, which Biden won by 2 points. Those lawsuits did not change the election result.

Cortez Masto has also looked to cut into Laxalt’s advantage in rural areas.

A former state attorney general herself, she embarked on a rural tour of Nevada in August, campaigning in communities such as Ely, Elko, Winnemucca and Fallon – all with populations of less than 20,000 people.

“When I became your US senator, it was just as important to me to get out and talk to Nevadans, because here’s the deal: To me, it is about all of us succeeding and that rising tide lifting all of us,” she said in Ely. “At the end of the day, your party affiliation, your background is about making sure your families are successful, your businesses are successful, we’re all in this together.”

Cortez Masto has been endorsed by several rural Republican leaders, such as former Winnemucca Mayor Di An Putnam and Ely Mayor Nathan Robertson, who said in a statement that the incumbent will “continue working hard in the Senate to champion issues important to all rural Nevadans.”

In response to a question from CNN about Trump rallying with Laxalt in rural Nevada, Cortez Masto spokesman Josh Marcus-Blank said, “No one did more to overturn the 2020 election for Donald Trump than Adam Laxalt, and he is once again being rewarded.”

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October 9, 2022
Dwayne Johnson says running for president is ‘off the table’ | CNN

CNN
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Many were hoping Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson could be a potential rock for America, but instead, the beloved actor and businessman intends to be a rock for his daughters.

A bid for president is “off the table,” Johnson told Tracey Smith with CBS News Sunday Morning.

“I love our country and everyone in it,” the WWE legend said in the interview. “I also love being a daddy. And that’s the most important thing to me is being a daddy. Number one, especially during this time, this critical time in my daughters’ lives.”

The Rock is a father of three: Jasmine Lia, 6 and Tiana Gia, 4 with his wife Lauren Hashian, and Simone Alexandra, 21 from a previous marriage.

“I know what it was like to be on the road and be so busy that I was absent for a lot of years,” he lamented.

Admired the world over, one poll from 2021 found 58% of Americans would have liked to see Johnson as the next president of the United States. In the same poll, 58% said they would support actor Matthew McConaughey.

Last year, the 50-year-old produced and starred in two major films, “Jungle Cruise” and “Red Notice,” debuted his sitcom “Young Rock,” saw his company Teremana Tequila have unprecedented growth, and became the most followed American man on Instagram.

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October 8, 2022
Prosecutors argue Graham should have to testify before grand jury in Georgia 2020 investigation | CNN Politics

CNN
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The Fulton County district attorney’s office is pushing back on Sen. Lindsey Graham’s ongoing efforts to quash a grand jury subpoena, saying his testimony is “essential” and could reveal more information about efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.

Graham, a South Carolina Republican, is asking the 11th Circuit US Court of Appeals to put on hold a lower federal court order that Graham must testify to the grand jury, with the questions limited in scope.

The litigation over the subpoena has been on-going for months, with Graham initially moving to quash the motion in July. Prosecutors say that, after three failed attempts to quash his subpoena, Graham is repeating the same arguments. They are asking for the matter to be remanded back to a Fulton County Superior Court, which oversees the grand jury investigation.

“The Senator’s position, which would allow him to dictate when and where he will be immune from questioning or liability, renders him precisely the sort of unaccountable ‘super-citizen’ which the United States Supreme Court has taken care to avoid,” the Fulton County district attorney’s office said in the court filing with the 11th Circuit on Friday.

Graham’s attorneys argue that the lower court ruling did not offer enough protection from being questioned about his role as a US senator.

They say that his calls to Georgia officials after the election were legislative activity directly related to his committee responsibilities as the then-chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and that his actions should be protected by the US Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause.

Atlanta-based federal Judge Leigh Martin May, who denied Graham’s motion to quash his subpoena this summer, wrote in her decision that there were “considerable areas of inquiry” that were not legislative in nature that he should have to testify about.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is leading the investigation into 2020 election interference, wrote in previous court filings that she wants to question the senator about his phone calls to election officials.

Willis is particularly interested in a call Graham made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger when – according to Raffensperger – Graham hinted that Raffensperger should discard some Georgia ballots during the state’s audit.

Fulton County prosecutors on Friday said Graham’s claim that the call was intended to inform his vote on certifying the 2020 election amounts to “litigation-prompted hindsight” and “a product of lawyering, not legislating.”

Graham has repeatedly denied accusations of applying any pressure to Georgia officials. Even if he were to lose this appeal, he signaled he would take the case to the Supreme Court.

“I’ll go as far as I need to take it,” Graham told CNN last month. “I’m committed to standing up for the institution as I see it.”

The 11th Circuit will rule on Graham’s emergency motion. The appeals court has set Tuesday as deadline for his legal team to file an opening brief on the merits of the appeal.

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October 8, 2022
Black residents in 2 Florida neighborhoods raise questions about hurricane relief efforts and say they’ve been left out | CNN

CNN
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Latronia Latson said she feels like she has been neglected in the recovery efforts from Hurricane Ian.

Latson, who lives in the Dunbar neighborhood in Fort Myers, Florida, said she can’t get to a relief center to get bottled water and other necessities being distributed because she doesn’t have transportation; the bus system is not running in her neighborhood. Her stove and microwave also mysteriously stopped working after the hurricane, despite power being restored.

Latson said the more affluent, predominately White communities seem to be getting prioritized in the storm recovery.

“They need to make it convenient for those that don’t have transportation,” said Latson, who is disabled. “We just don’t get the same service (as people in other parts of town).”

Latson is among the residents and community leaders in Florida who say the poor, majority Black neighborhoods of Dunbar and River Park in Naples are forgotten as rescue and relief teams descend on the areas hit by Hurricane Ian last week.

The residents say they were among the last to get their power restored and shelters and relief centers are being set up too far away for people who don’t have access to vehicles.

Officials in Fort Myers did not immediately provide a response to these concerns when contacted by CNN.

The city of Naples released a statement on Thursday outlining its efforts to assist the River Park community since the storm. The statement said officials opened a comfort center at the River Park Community Center on Sept. 29 that provided access to phone charging, air conditioning, water, ice and restrooms. Additionally the city said staff members visited River Park to speak with residents, developed a plan for debris removal, transported residents to shelters and partnered with local groups to serve and deliver hot meals, water and clothing to the community.

Yet Black residents’ complaints and questions about the warnings and response lay bare the racial disparities in natural disaster recovery each time a major storm affects part of the country. Several studies found that the Federal Emergency Management Agency provides less aid to people of color facing disaster relief compared to White people. Poor communities and communities of color are also often built in locations that are more physically vulnerable to extreme weather events and have less investment in their infrastructure, experts say.

Vice President Kamala Harris acknowledged the inequity when she spoke last week at the National Committee Women’s Leadership Forum.

“It is our lowest-income communities and our communities of color that are most impacted by these extreme conditions and impacted by issues that are not of their own making,” Harris said. “And so we have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity.”

Deanne Criswell, FEMA administrator, agreed that there are barriers to receiving federal resources. Criswell said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” earlier this week that her office is working to create more equitable access to FEMA’s disaster relief programs.

“One of our focus areas since I’ve been in office is to make sure that we’re removing those barriers,” Criswell said. “So these people that need our help the most are going to be able to access the help that we offer.”

Black activists and residents in Florida are pleading for more help from officials.

Vincent Keeys, president of the Collier County NAACP, said residents in River Park were already more vulnerable because it is a coastal community. The city of Naples, Keeys said, has worked to gentrify the area in recent years but has not built a sea wall that could provide more protection during hurricanes.

Some residents complained that they never even received a notification to evacuate their homes ahead of the storm, Keeys said.

The timing of evacuation orders has been a point of contention for Florida officials since the storm. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said officials in Lee County, where Dunbar sits, acted appropriately when they issued their first mandatory evacuations less than 24 hours before Hurricane Ian made landfall on the state, and a day after several neighboring counties issued their orders. Lee County officials have faced mounting questions about why the first mandatory evacuations weren’t ordered until a day before Ian’s landfall – despite an emergency plan that suggests evacuations should have happened earlier.

The city of Naples said in its statement Thursday that it issued mandatory evacuation notices to residents via email, the CodeRed system, social media and a press release sent to media outlets.

In River Park, many homes suffered 4 to 6 feet of flooding, downed trees and structural damage. Keeys said there are no shelters in close proximity to the neighborhood, leaving residents with nowhere to go if their homes are uninhabitable.

“Please, you cannot put our people in a flood prone situation and expect them to survive,” Keeys said. “At least, if humanly possible, help us improve, plan and make things better for human beings.”

Sharda Williams, of River Park, said she never received an evacuation order but people in nearby communities were told to leave. “No one came to our neighborhood and told us to get out,” Williams said. “Not one person.”

Now Williams said all she can do is “sit and wait until the help comes through.”

“You try and do what you can and that’s why, you know, we’re all pitching together and trying to help each other with what we can,” she said.

Curtis Williams (no relation to Sharda), another River Park resident, was also frustrated he didn’t get an evacuation order.

“Not one city employee, police or whatever, came through the neighborhood before the flood water and said there was a mandatory evacuation, not one,” he said. “They could have easily rode down here with a bullhorn, before the storm, and say ‘you people need to vacate.’ They didn’t do that.”

However, Naples said in its statement that the city’s first responders were trapped and its fire station was flooded. As a result, the North Collier Fire Rescue (NCFR) team responded to the River Park community with the high water vehicle. NCFR drove three vehicle loads of residents to high ground, which was at the Coastland Center Mall. Numerous people in the area were trapped and the city said its goal was to get everyone to safety and high ground.

More than 100 miles away in Dunbar, one pastor said while the Black community hasn’t received much support from officials, residents are leaning on each other to get through the recovery.

“We are trying to give some moral support, you know, with our neighbors and friends,” said Pastor Nicles Emile of Galilee Baptist Church. “We are working on helping our neighbors as much as we can and I can say that whatever we have and share with them.”

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October 7, 2022
Kelly warns ‘wheels’ could ‘come off our democracy’ while Masters tries to tie him to Biden in Arizona Senate debate | CNN Politics

CNN
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While trying to distance himself from his own party, Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly warned during an hour-long debate on Thursday that the “wheels” could “come off our democracy” if candidates like his GOP opponent, Trump-backed Blake Masters, are elected in November.

But Masters aggressively pushed back on those attacks, portraying Kelly, who’s running for a full six-year term, as a rubber stamp for the Biden administration, while refusing to acknowledge that he has attempted to moderate his positions on abortion and the 2020 presidential election.

The Arizona Senate race is among the most competitive in the country, and with the chamber currently split 50-50, every race matters. But Kelly appears to have strengthened his position over the past two months as Masters has struggled to keep up with the Democrat’s fundraising prowess. A new CNN poll released Thursday found that 51% of likely voters are behind Kelly, with 45% backing Masters.

Masters – a venture capitalist and political novice who won the primary in large part because of former President Donald Trump’s endorsement and the financial backing of billionaire Peter Thiel (his former boss) – released a campaign video last year proclaiming that he believed Trump won the 2020 election. But after the primary, he removed language from his website that included the false claim that the election was stolen.

Masters attempted to maneuver around questions about the election during Thursday’s debate – just days before Trump, whose 2020 loss in Arizona set off a cascade of election denialism in the state, heads there to campaign for Masters and other Republicans.

When the moderator asked him whether President Joe Biden, who narrowly carried Arizona, is the “legitimately elected President of the United States,” Masters replied: “Joe Biden is absolutely the President. I mean, my gosh, have you seen the gas prices lately?”

“Legitimately elected?” the moderator interjected.

“I’m not trying to trick you,” Masters said. “He’s duly sworn and certified. He’s the legitimate president. He’s in the White House and unfortunately for all of us.”

When the moderator followed up by using Trump’s language, asking whether the election was “stolen” or “rigged in any way” through vote counting or election results, Masters replied: “Yeah, I haven’t seen evidence of that.”

But Kelly argued that Masters has espoused “conspiracies and lies that have no place in our democracy.”

“I’m worried about what’s going to happen here,” Kelly said. “This election in 2024. I mean, we could wind up in a situation where the wheels come off of our democracy, and it’s because of folks like like Blake Masters that are questioning the integrity of an election.”

Masters insisted that he does not want to get rid of mail-in voting as Kelly alleged. He said he believed military service members should be able to mail ballots back from overseas and said he’d be fine with other voters sending their ballots back by mail if they included a copy of their driver’s license.

Masters and Kelly repeatedly clashed over immigration, with Masters claiming Kelly supports “open borders” and Kelly rejecting those attacks as he insisted that he’s brought more resources to Arizona to deal with that issue.

When asked whether he had done enough to address immigration concerns, Kelly distanced himself from national Democrats.

“When I got to Washington, DC, one of the first things I realized was that Democrats don’t understand this issue. And Republicans just want to talk about it, complain about it, but actually not do anything about it. They just want to politicize that. We heard this tonight from my opponent Blake Masters.”

Masters charged that Biden and Kelly have put out “the welcome mat” to migrants. “We treat these people better than we treat our own US military service members. I find that shameful.”

Kelly said he’s pushed back on the Biden administration multiple times on immigration issues, including when the administration planned to end Title 42, the pandemic-era policy that allowed border patrol agents to send migrants back to their home countries.

“I’ve stood up to Democrats when they’re wrong on this issue … including the President.”

“When the President decided he was going to do something dumb on this, and change the rules,” Kelly said, “I told him he was wrong.”

Some of the sharpest exchanges were over abortion as the moderator and Libertarian candidate Marc Victor drew attention to the fact that Masters scrubbed some of the language about his anti-abortion stances from his website as he tried to pivot toward the general election.

Abortion rights have been a subject of fierce controversy in Arizona since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, because there are conflicting abortion laws in the state – leading to debate over which one should take precedence.

The state legislature passed a 15-week ban earlier this year that does not include exceptions for rape or incest, only medical emergencies. Masters has said he supports that plan, which was signed into law by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey.

But Arizona also had a pre-statehood law on the books banning nearly all abortions that was enjoined in 1973 after the Roe decision. A Pima County Superior Court judge recently ruled that it could go back into effect at the urging of the state’s GOP attorney general.

Kelly argued that Masters wants to make decisions for Arizona women and curtail their rights. “I think we all know guys like this,” said Kelly, also faulting Masters for supporting a national ban on abortion at 15 weeks that has been proposed by South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham.

“You know, guys that think they know better than everyone about everything,” Kelly continued.

“What I’m doing is I am protecting your constitutional rights,” he added.

When the moderator pressed Kelly to explain what limits he would support on abortion, Kelly said he supports the kind of framework contemplated by the Roe v. Wade decision where “late term abortion in this country only happens when there is a serious problem.”

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October 6, 2022
Opinion: Protecting parody is no joke | CNN

Editor’s Note: Nicole Hemmer is an associate professor of history and director of the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Center for the Study of the Presidency at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics” and the forthcoming “Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s.” She cohosts the history podcasts “Past Present” and “This Day in Esoteric Political History.” The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.

CNN
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“Americans can be put in jail for for poking fun at the government?”

The satirical newspaper The Onion issued a rollicking, tongue-in-cheek amicus brief this week, arguing that the Supreme Court should hear a case on parody, free speech and police harassment. In its brief, which opened the summary of its argument with the question quoted above, the publication sided with Anthony Novak, an Ohio man who was jailed and prosecuted by local police over a Facebook page that parodied their department.

Novak has sued the department for violating his civil rights, but the Sixth Circuit recently ruled that the police are protected under qualified immunity. Novak is now appealing to the Supreme Court.

Defending Novak, The Onion offered a robust defense of parody as a critically important form of political speech: “Parodists can take apart an authoritarian’s cult of personality, point out the rhetorical tricks that politicians use to mislead their constituents, and even undercut a government institution’s real-world attempts at propaganda.” To protect police officers who jail parodists – or to demand parodists “pop the balloon in advance” by slapping “parody” labels on their work – would neuter parody as a political tool, the brief argues.

Such a move would be particularly damaging to contemporary political discourse in the US. As The Onion notes, parody has been a form of political commentary for millennia.

But parody has also taken on special importance in the US in the past 30 years, as political entertainment has become a central means by which Americans understand and debate politics. As such, Americans have come to expect politics to come wrapped in parodies, punchlines and primetime pizazz – which has opened the door for satirists and comedians to become valuable political activists. To threaten to stymie parody is, as The Onion’s brief points out in its 23 pages, to fundamentally imperil Americans’ ability to engage political discourse writ large.

The brief’s argument deserves a fuller historical understanding of humor’s central position in the blend of politics and entertainment that has increasingly defined political life in the last few decades. That blend – particularly the move toward goofier, spoofier comedy bits – became more noticeable in during the 1968 election, when Richard Nixon, then a former vice president and Republican presidential candidate, popped up on the variety show “Laugh-In.” In the 1970s, comedian Chevy Chase portrayed President Gerald Ford on “Saturday Night Live.” But it was in the late 1980s and 1990s when Americans became accustomed to entertainment – especially comedy – as a primary mode of political expression.

In 1992, presidential candidates Bill Clinton and Ross Perot relied on cable programs and late-night television to project their authenticity; Clinton answered questions from an audience of hundreds of young people on MTV, while Perot announced his plan to run for president on “Larry King Live.” While these and other appearances were among the most visible signals that politics and entertainment were in a new relationship, a more enduring transformation was happening with new programming developments on radio and television (and to a lesser extent, print and Internet sources).

The conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh entered national syndication in 1988 – the same year that The Onion debuted as a print parody paper – mixing comedy bits with political news in a way that felt revolutionary for national radio. Millions of listeners flocked to his radio program, and then to his best-selling books and late-night television show, for the addictive quality of his jokey, parodic, right-wing approach to politics.

But it was on television that the real transformation was underway. Comedy Central, a scrappy startup cable network developed by Time-Life, debuted in 1991. It offered reruns of comedic movies, stand-up specials and a smattering of original programming. But in 1993, the channel found its voice with the show “Politically Incorrect With Bill Maher.”

Modeled after the popular PBS show “The McLaughlin Group,” the show parodied the roundtable politics shows that had become a staple of news programming. It featured a monologue by Maher followed by a panel that mixed actors, comedians, activists and politicians, all vying for the biggest laugh line.

Despite the channel’s tiny viewership, “Politically Incorrect” became a hit, mixing outrage, politics and comedy in a way few Americans had experienced before. The show was so popular that it was soon bought by ABC, where it would run after the news show “Nightline” until its cancellation in 2002.

After ABC poached “Politically Incorrect,” Comedy Central sought to recreate its combination of provocative parody-politics. It landed on “The Daily Show,” which hit its stride with Jon Stewart as its host, becoming one of the most important political shows on television in the 2000s.

In particular, liberals frustrated with the administration of George W. Bush but also dissatisfied with the programming offerings on cable news came to rely on Stewart not just for entertainment but for information. A Pew poll in 2004 found that as many as 21% of young people got campaign news from shows such as “The Daily Show” and “Saturday Night Live”: “For Americans under 30, these comedy shows are now mentioned almost as frequently as newspapers and evening network news programs as regular sources for election news.”

The same pattern repeated itself with “The Colbert Report,” which debuted in 2005 with former “The Daily Show” correspondent Stephen Colbert as its host. Stewart and Colbert identified as comedians, but their positions at the helm of political comedy shows eventually converted them into activists. Stewart became a passionate advocate for 9/11 first responders and veterans, repeatedly testifying before Congress on their behalf. Colbert used his popular show to shed light on the dangers of Super PACs, providing far-reaching education on a complex issue and eventually testifying – in character – before Congress.

Programs like “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” became sites not just of entertainment but education and activism (which is in part why they have so many imitators in conservative circles and in the podcast space). In the process, they became places where politics became palatable, while calling attention to profoundly important issues and even at times becoming political actors themselves.

In the years that followed, the parody approach to politics became a mainstay of entertainment and commentary in the US. Clips from John Oliver’s show “Last Week Tonight” (which airs on HBO, which shares a parent company with CNN) flitted around Twitter on a weekly basis, while Trevor Noah took over Stewart’s role at “The Daily Show” and “Daily Show” alum Samantha Bee launched her own show (which aired on TBS, which also shares a parent company with CNN). It’s worth noting that although Noah just announced his impending departure and Bee’s show was recently canceled, indicating that while late-night is certainly in transition, it’s unlikely to get uncoupled from politics any time soon.

As political podcasts proliferated, comedy and parody shows like Jon Lovett’s “Lovett or Leave It” and the conservative podcast “Ruthless” gained large followings. The Onion, meanwhile, has evolved into a touchstone for tragedy, covering every mass shooting with a new article headlined “‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.” (The Onion has also underscored the difficulty of parody in an era when politics has gone off the rails, a point it nailed beautifully in its amicus brief with the line, “Much more of this, and the front page of The Onion would be indistinguishable from The New York Times.”)

At times when politics are both absurd and dangerous, when members of Congress muse about Jewish space lasers starting forest fires and when a pillow salesman becomes the lead architect for election conspiracies, parody has an even more important role to play in puncturing authority and keeping people engaged – which is why The Onion’s amicus brief, though often jokey and unserious, is a vitally important appeal to the Supreme Court.

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October 6, 2022
Election denier Kari Lake has a real shot of winning a swing state governorship | CNN Politics

CNN
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One of the big questions heading into the 2022 cycle had been how Republican candidates would or not reflect the GOP base when it came to views of the 2020 election. Poll after poll has shown that a clear majority of Republicans falsely believe that President Joe Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that a lot of Republicans running for office believe this as well. But could any of of those candidates end up running states where elections tend to be close? For the most part, the answer is no. Most election deniers running for governor have only a small chance of winning or are from states former President Donald Trump easily won.

There is one big exception: GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake of Arizona. In the second-closest state of the 2020 presidential election, Lake is neck and neck with Democratic nominee Katie Hobbs.

Three polls out this past week, which were all well within the margin of error, illustrate the point well. A CBS News/YouGov poll had Lake and Hobbs tied at 49%. Fox’s poll put Hobbs at 44% to Lake’s 43%. Marist College had Lake at 46% and Hobbs at 45%.

These polls are representative of the average of all polling that has the candidates running basically even.

Lake is running considerably stronger than Blake Masters, the the state’s GOP nominee for US Senate. Masters trails his Democratic opponent, Sen. Mark Kelly, by more than 5 points in in the average of all polling.

You might be thinking that Masters is somehow more extreme than Lake. That’s not clear at all, at least when it comes to the 2020 election.

On that issue, Lake – like Masters – is an election denier. Indeed, that’s what makes Lake so unique. There are other Republicans who are in a position to win the governorship of close 2020 states this year, and nearly all of them have either tried to have it both ways on the most recent presidential election (i.e. raising doubts about the legitimacy, but not saying it was stolen) or have accepted the 2020 results.

The other full-out election deniers running for governor in 2020 swing states this year are Tudor Dixon in Michigan and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania. Both trail their Democratic opponents – Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, respectively – by double digits in the average of polls. Mastriano is now running well behind the Republican nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, Mehmet Oz, despite Oz stumbling out of the gate after the primary. (Oz, who was endorsed by Trump in the primary, said he would have voted to certify the 2020 election result.)

In fact, 2020 election denial has been a hallmark of losing gubernatorial campaigns in swing or blue states. Blue-state Republicans Dan Cox in Maryland and Geoff Diehl in Massachusetts are getting blown out by their opponents in the polls, even though the current and departing governors of their respective states are Republicans.

You might be tempted to think that Lake has a chance because voters in the Grand Canyon State believe the 2020 election was stolen. That does not appear to be the case. An August Fox poll found that only 28% of voters were not at all confident that votes in the 2020 election were cast legitimately and counted fairly.

Additionally, the Marist poll showed that a mere 6% of voters are not at all confident that the 2022 election in Arizona will not be run fairly and accurately. Another 23% are not very confident; the vast majority (71%) are confident it will be.

So what is Lake’s secret? Part of it may be that her past as a television anchor is paying off. She seems to be doing a good enough job reaching voters in the middle of the electorate.

Lake needs merely to stay competitive with independents to win Arizona. Unlike many other battleground states, a plurality of Arizona voters are Republican. This means Democratic candidates usually need some mixture of winning more Republican voters than Republican candidates winning Democratic voters and winning independents by a wide margin. Put another way, Lake can win even if she loses independents and retains less of her base than Hobbs.

In the Marist poll, for example, Kelly holds a 17-point lead with independents. Hobbs is up just 2 points among them.

But Lake’s standing may have more to do with the fact that 2020 election denialism isn’t as much of an important factor to voters as we might think when it comes to voting in elections for state office. While just 18% of voters said in the CBS News poll that they wanted elected officials in Arizona to say Biden didn’t win in 2020, another 41% said it didn’t matter. This means the majority of Arizona voters (59%) don’t seem to mind or actually like it when someone running for office denies the reality of the 2020 election.

A further look at the numbers indicates that the GOP could easily win the secretary of state races in Arizona (Mark Finchem) and in next-door Nevada (Joe Marchant). The Republicans running for both those posts have denied the results of the 2020 election as they aim to become the chief election officers in their given states.

It’s also the case that Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson voted against certifying the 2020 election and is a slight favorite to win another term against Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes. Likewise, Nevada’s Adam Laxalt has raised questions about the 2020 election and played a leading role in post-election legal efforts to reverse Biden’s victory in the state. He’s in a tight race with Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto.

Neither of those GOP Senate candidates are vying to lead a swing state, though. And the name recognition for the aforementioned secretary of state candidates is significantly lower than it is for Lake.

Lake is quite competitive as an election denier, despite being well known and running for a real position of power when it comes to elections. If she and Finchem win, the two officials in charge of election certification in Arizona will be on the record denying the reality of the 2020 election.

That could be quite a big deal in two years’ time, if another close presidential election – like 2020’s between Biden and Trump – is on the line and Arizona is once again in the mix.

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October 6, 2022
What is Herschel Walker going to do now? | CNN Politics

CNN
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In the space of the last few days, the Georgia Senate race was buffeted by two massive stories.

First came a Daily Beast report that Walker had paid for a woman’s abortion after the two conceived a child while they were dating in 2009. CNN has not independently verified the allegations and Walker vehemently denied the report, insisting that it was a “defamatory lie.” Walker has been outspoken in his opposition to abortion throughout the campaign.

The Daily Beast subsequently reported on Wednesday that the anonymous woman who says she had an abortion paid for by Walker is also the mother of one of his children – and that she decided to share this after Walker’s denials of her original allegation. The Daily Beast reported that the woman provided proof that she is the mother of one of his children, but did not say how. CNN has not independently confirmed that detail and Walker has denied the latest report.

After the initial Daily Beast report, Walker’s son, Christian, a conservative online influencer, posted a series of tweets that said Walker was something short of a model father.

“I don’t care about someone who has a bad past and takes accountability,” Christian Walker wrote. “But how DARE YOU LIE and act as though you’re some ‘moral, Christian, upright man.”

Walker responded to his son this way: “I LOVE my son no matter what.” Christian Walker also posted a video on Twitter Tuesday morning in which he said he was done with his father’s “lies.”

Those twin developments of the initial allegations and his son’s comments create deep uncertainty in the race between Walker and Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, which is widely seen as one of the most important (and closest) Senate contests in the country.

So, what’s next?

That’s hard to tell – mostly because we live in a post-Donald Trump world.

Typically in situations like this, the candidate would do some sort of interview, usually with a friendly media outlet. That’s the route Walker took, sitting down for two interviews with Fox News since the story broke.

The candidate’s campaign now has to do several things at once:

1) Try to reassure donors and voters that this is all overblown, and that the campaign remains laser-focused on what they need to do to win.

2) Ensure that there are no other shoes to drop – and that Walker’s total denial on the abortion charge can be made to stick.

But, as if you needed a reminder, we are not in normal times.

Just weeks before the 2016 presidential election, an “Access Hollywood” tape emerged that showed Trump speaking in lewd and crude terms about women and bragging about sexual assault. There was talk – publicly and privately – among Republican leaders at the time about him dropping out of the race or entirely disowning his candidacy.

Neither happened. Trump dismissed the whole incident as “locker room talk” and went on to defeat Hillary Clinton. Which, even in retrospect, is a stunning turn of events.

The question is whether Trump fundamentally rewrote the rules of political scandals in 2016 or if he is simply the very rare exception to this still-existing rule.

Walker campaign manager Scott Paradise referenced the “Access Hollywood” episode in a speech to staff after the Walker news broke earlier this week. “Trump still made it to the White House,” Paradise said, a source familiar with the remarks told CNN. (Paradise, via Twitter, denied making that comparison.)

So far, Republicans are closing ranks around Walker.

“Herschel Walker is being slandered and maligned by the Fake News Media and, obviously, the Democrats,” Trump said in a statement Tuesday. “They are trying to destroy a man who has true greatness in his future, just as he had athletic greatness in his past.”

“Full speed ahead in Georgia,” said Steven Law, the president of Senate Leadership Fund, a major GOP super PAC focused on Senate races.

The Republican support for Walker is, in some ways, forced upon the party. There are now less than five weeks left in the midterm election and dumping him as their candidate at this point – or distancing themselves from him – would almost certainly cost them a seat they badly need for the majority. It’s realpolitik at its finest.

Of course, if more allegations come to light or if Walker looks so damaged that he can’t win, history suggests that the support he currently enjoys could erode quickly.

The controversy surrounding Walker functions as a very interesting test case for how scandals will be handled by campaigns and processed by voters in the post-Trump era. Can Walker just keep campaigning as though nothing has changed? Or does he need a full plan to ensure he remains a viable candidate?

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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October 5, 2022
The most important Senate race in the country | CNN Politics

CNN
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The Senate playing field has narrowed in recent weeks, with both parties focusing heavily on Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania as the three races most likely to decide which party has the majority come January 2023.

Picking which race is most critical of those three is a tough task. But for my money, it’s in Pennsylvania, where Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Dr. Mehmet Oz are competing for the seat being vacated by retiring GOP Sen. Pat Toomey.

Why do I see Pennsylvania as the first among equals? A few reasons:

1) Pennsylvania could well be the biggest battleground of the 2024 presidential race – especially if Joe Biden and Donald Trump run again.

2) Oz is a candidate directly out of Trumpworld’s central casting. A longtime TV doctor and celebrity, he won the primary thanks to an endorsement from the former President. Now the question becomes whether Oz’s style of conservatism can sell in a general election.

3) Fetterman is an unapologetic liberal. Rather than hedge those positions or hide them in a general election, he’s leaned into them. That’s a blueprint liberals have long argued can be successful, even in a swing state like Pennsylvania. Fetterman’s candidacy is a test case for that theory.

4) Both national parties are heavily invested in this race – testing messaging for the inevitable fight to come in 2024.

What’s clear about the race is that Fetterman led by mid-to-high single digits for much of the spring and summer as Oz was battered in a primary that he narrowly won – and struggled to united Republicans even after he became the nominee.

But of late – thanks to a coordinated attack on Fetterman’s record on crime and lingering questions about his health following a stroke he suffered in the spring – Oz has crept back.

The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, a nonpartisan campaign tipsheet, shifted its rating of the race to “lean Democrat” roughly six weeks ago. But on Tuesday, the rating moved back to “toss up.”

Senate editor Jessica Taylor explained:

“In conversations with several GOP strategists and lawmakers – who a month and a half ago had begun to put the Keystone State in the loss column – this has emerged as a margin-of-error race that they once again see winnable. Republicans and Democrats alike admit the race has tightened and that Pennsylvania could be the tipping point state for the Senate majority.”

So, with exactly five weeks left in this campaign, we have a tie (or something close to it) in a critical swing state between two candidates who represent drastically different visions of what the future of the country should look like.

That seems pretty important to me.

The Point: The fight for Senate control now seems very likely to come down to just a handful of races that are nip and tuck right now. And none is more important than Pennsylvania.

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October 5, 2022
The 10 Senate seats most likely to flip in 2022 | CNN Politics

CNN
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The race for the Senate is in the eye of the beholder less than six weeks from Election Day, with ads about abortion, crime and inflation dominating the airwaves in key states as campaigns test the theory of the 2022 election.

The cycle started out as a referendum on President Joe Biden – an easy target for Republicans, who need a net gain of just one seat to flip the evenly divided chamber. Then the US Supreme Court’s late June decision overturning Roe v. Wade gave Democrats the opportunity to paint a contrast as Republicans struggled to explain their support for an abortion ruling that the majority of the country opposes. Former President Donald Trump’s omnipresence in the headlines gave Democrats another foil.

But the optimism some Democrats felt toward the end of the summer, on the heels of Biden’s legislative wins and the galvanizing high court decision, has been tempered slightly by the much anticipated tightening of some key races as political advertising ramps up on TV and voters tune in after Labor Day.

Republicans, who have midterm history on their side as the party out of the White House, have hammered Biden and Democrats for supporting policies they argue exacerbate inflation. Biden’s approval rating stands at 41% with 54% disapproving in the latest CNN Poll of Polls, which tracks the average of recent surveys. And with some prices inching back up after a brief hiatus, the economy and inflation – which Americans across the country identify as their top concern in multiple polls – are likely to play a crucial role in deciding voters’ preferences.

But there’s been a steady increase in ads about crime too as the GOP returns to a familiar criticism, depicting Democrats as weak on public safety. Cops have been ubiquitous in TV ads this cycle – candidates from both sides of the aisle have found law enforcement officers to testify on camera to their pro-police credentials. Democratic ads also feature women talking about the threat of a national abortion ban should the Senate fall into GOP hands, while Republicans have spent comparatively less trying to portray Democrats as the extremists on the topic.

While the issue sets have fluctuated, the Senate map hasn’t changed. Republicans’ top pickup opportunities have always been Nevada, Georgia, Arizona and New Hampshire – all states that Biden carried in 2020. In two of those states, however, the GOP has significant problems, although the states themselves keep the races competitive. Arizona nominee Blake Masters is now without the support of the party’s major super PAC, which thinks its money can be better spent elsewhere, including in New Hampshire, where retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc is far from the nominee the national GOP had wanted. But this is the time of year when poor fundraising can really become evident since TV ad rates favor candidates and a super PAC gets much less bang for its buck.

The race for Senate control may come down to three states: Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania, all of which are rated as “Toss-up” races by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales. As Republicans look to flip the Senate, which Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has called a “50-50 proposition,” they’re trying to pick up the first two and hold on to the latter.

Senate Democrats’ path to holding their majority lies with defending their incumbents. Picking off a GOP-held seat like Pennsylvania – still the most likely to flip in CNN’s ranking – would help mitigate any losses. Wisconsin, where GOP Sen. Ron Johnson is vying for a third term, looks like Democrats’ next best pickup opportunity, but that race drops in the rankings this month as Republican attacks take a toll on the Democratic nominee in the polls.

These rankings are based on CNN’s reporting, fundraising and advertising data, and polling, as well as historical data about how states and candidates have performed. It will be updated one more time before Election Day.

Incumbent: Republican Pat Toomey (retiring)

Sarah Silbiger/Pool/Getty Images

The most consistent thing about CNN’s rankings, dating back to 2021, has been Pennsylvania’s spot in first place. But the race to replace retiring GOP Sen. Pat Toomey has tightened since the primaries in May, when Republican Mehmet Oz emerged badly bruised from a nasty intraparty contest. In a CNN Poll of Polls average of recent surveys in the state, Democrat John Fetterman, the state lieutenant governor, had the support of 50% of likely voters to Oz’s 45%. (The Poll of Polls is an average of the four most recent nonpartisan surveys of likely voters that meet CNN’s standards.) Fetterman is still overperforming Biden, who narrowly carried Pennsylvania in 2020. Fetterman’s favorability ratings are also consistently higher than Oz’s.

One potential trouble spot for the Democrat: More voters in a late September Franklin and Marshall College Poll viewed Oz has having policies that would improve voters’ economic circumstances, with the economy and inflation remaining the top concern for voters across a range of surveys. But nearly five months after the primary, the celebrity surgeon still seems to have residual issues with his base. A higher percentage of Democrats were backing Fetterman than Republicans were backing Oz in a recent Fox News survey, for example, with much of that attributable to lower support from GOP women than men. Fetterman supporters were also much more enthusiastic about their candidate than Oz supporters.

Republicans have been hammering Fetterman on crime, specifically his tenure on the state Board of Pardons: An ad from the Senate Leadership Fund features a Bucks County sheriff saying, “Protect your family. Don’t vote Fetterman.” But the lieutenant governor is also using sheriffs on camera to defend his record. And with suburban voters being a crucial demographic, Democratic advertising is also leaning into abortion, like this Senate Majority PAC ad that features a female doctor as narrator and plays Oz’s comments from during the primary about abortion being “murder.” Oz’s campaign has said that he supports exceptions for “the life of the mother, rape and incest” and that “he’d want to make sure that the federal government is not involved in interfering with the state’s decisions on the topic.”

Incumbent: Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto

CNN

Republicans have four main pickup opportunities – and right now, Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s seat looks like one of their best shots. Biden carried Nevada by a slightly larger margin than two of those other GOP-targeted states, but the Silver State’s large transient population adds a degree of uncertainty to this contest.

Republicans have tried to tie the first-term senator to Washington spending and inflation, which may be particularly resonant in a place where average gas prices are now back up to over $5 a gallon. Democrats are zeroing in on abortion rights and raising the threat that a GOP-controlled Senate could pass a national abortion ban. Former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt – the rare GOP nominee to have united McConnell and Trump early on – called the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling a “joke” before the Supreme Court overturned the decision in June. Democrats have been all too happy to use that comment against him, but Laxalt has tried to get around those attacks by saying he does not support a national ban and pointing out that the right to an abortion is settled law in Nevada.

Incumbent: Democrat Raphael Warnock

Megan Varner/Getty Images

The closer we get to Election Day, the more we need to talk about the Georgia Senate race going over the wire. If neither candidate receives a majority of the vote in November, the contest will go to a December runoff. There was no clear leader in a recent Marist poll that had Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, who’s running for a full six-year term, and Republican challenger Herschel Walker both under 50% among those who say they definitely plan to vote.

Warnock’s edge from earlier this cycle has narrowed, which bumps this seat up one spot on the rankings. The good news for Warnock is that he’s still overperforming Biden’s approval numbers in a state that the President flipped in 2020 by less than 12,000 votes. And so far, he seems to be keeping the Senate race closer than the gubernatorial contest, for which several polls have shown GOP Gov. Brian Kemp ahead. Warnock’s trying to project a bipartisan image that he thinks will help him hold on in what had until recently been a reliably red state. Standing waist-deep in peanuts in one recent ad, he touts his work with Alabama GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville to “eliminate the regulations,” never mentioning his own party. But Republicans have continued to try to tie the senator to his party – specifically for voting for measures in Washington that they claim have exacerbated inflation.

Democrats are hoping that enough Georgians won’t see voting for Walker as an option – even if they do back Kemp. Democrats have amped up their attacks on domestic violence allegations against the former football star and unflattering headlines about his business record. And all eyes will be on the mid-October debate to see how Walker, who has a history of making controversial and illogical comments, handles himself onstage against the more polished incumbent.

Incumbent: Republican Ron Johnson

Leigh VogelPool/Getty Images

Sen. Ron Johnson is the only Republican running for reelection in a state Biden won in 2020 – in fact, he broke his own term limits pledge to run a third time, saying he believed America was “in peril.” And although Johnson has had low approval numbers for much of the cycle, Democrats have underestimated him before. This contest moves down one spot on the ranking as Johnson’s race against Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes has tightened, putting the senator in a better position.

Barnes skated through the August primary after his biggest opponents dropped out of the race, but as the nominee, he’s faced an onslaught of attacks, especially on crime, using against him his past words about ending cash bail and redirecting some funding from police budgets to social services. Barnes has attempted to answer those attacks in his ads, like this one featuring a retired police sergeant who says he knows “Mandela doesn’t want to defund the police.”

A Marquette University Law School poll from early September showed no clear leader, with Johnson at 49% and Barnes at 48% among likely voters, which is a tightening from the 7-point edge Barnes enjoyed in the same poll’s August survey. Notably, independents were breaking slightly for Johnson after significantly favoring Barnes in the August survey. The effect of the GOP’s anti-Barnes advertising can likely be seen in the increasing percentage of registered voters in a late September Fox News survey who view the Democrat as “too extreme,” putting him on parity with Johnson on that question. Johnson supporters are also much more enthusiastic about their candidate.

Incumbent: Democrat Mark Kelly

Courtney Pedroza/Getty Images

Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, who’s running for a full six-year term after winning a 2020 special election, is still one of the most vulnerable Senate incumbents in a state that has only recently grown competitive on the federal level. But Republican nominee Blake Masters is nowhere close to rivaling Kelly in fundraising, and major GOP outside firepower is now gone. After canceling its September TV reservations in Arizona to redirect money to Ohio, the Senate Leadership Fund has cut its October spending too.

Other conservative groups are spending for Masters but still have work to do to hurt Kelly, a well-funded incumbent with a strong personal brand. Kelly led Masters 51% to 41% among registered voters in a September Marist poll, although that gap narrowed among those who said they definitely plan to vote. A Fox survey from a little later in the month similarly showed Kelly with a 5-point edge among those certain to vote, just within the margin of error.

Masters has attempted to moderate his abortion position since winning his August primary, buoyed by a Trump endorsement, but Kelly has continued to attack him on the issue. And a recent court decision allowing the enforcement of a 1901 state ban on nearly all abortions has given Democrats extra fodder to paint Republicans as a threat to women’s reproductive rights.

Incumbent: Republican Richard Burr (retiring)

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North Carolina slides up one spot on the rankings, trading places with New Hampshire. The open-seat race to replace retiring GOP Sen. Richard Burr hasn’t generated as much national buzz as other states given that Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat in the state since 2008.

But it has remained a tight contest with Democrat Cheri Beasley, who is bidding to become the state’s first Black senator, facing off against GOP Rep. Ted Budd, for whom Trump recently campaigned. Beasley lost reelection as state Supreme Court chief justice by only about 400 votes in 2020 when Trump narrowly carried the Tar Heel state. But Democrats hope that she’ll be able to boost turnout among rural Black voters who might not otherwise vote during a midterm election and that more moderate Republicans and independents will see Budd as too extreme. One of Beasley’s recent spots features a series of mostly White, gray-haired retired judges in suits endorsing her as “someone different” while attacking Budd as being a typical politician out for himself.

Budd is leaning into current inflation woes, specifically going after Biden in some ads that feature half-empty shopping carts, without even mentioning Beasley. Senate Leadership Fund is doing the work of trying to tie the Democrat to Washington – one recent spot almost makes her look like the incumbent in the race, superimposing her photo over an image of the US Capitol and displaying her face next to Biden’s. Both SLF and Budd are also targeting Beasley over her support for Democrats’ recently enacted health care, tax and climate bill. “Liberal politician Cheri Beasley is coming for you – and your wallet,” the narrator from one SLF ad intones, before later adding, “Beasley’s gonna knock on your door with an army of new IRS agents.” (The new law increases funding for the IRS, including for audits. But Democrats and the Trump-appointed IRS commissioner have said the intention is to go after wealthy tax cheats, not the middle class.)

Incumbent: Democrat Maggie Hassan

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A lot has been made of GOP candidate quality this cycle. But there are few states where the difference between the nominee Republicans have and the one they’d hoped to have has altered these rankings quite as much as New Hampshire.

Retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, who lost a 2020 GOP bid for the state’s other Senate seat, won last month’s Republican primary to take on first-term Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan. The problem for him, though, is that he doesn’t have much money to wage that fight. Bolduc had raised a total of $579,000 through August 24 compared with Hassan’s $31.4 million. Senate Leadership Fund is on air in New Hampshire to boost the GOP nominee – attacking Hassan for voting with Biden and her support of her party’s health care, tax and climate package. But because super PACs get much less favorable TV advertising rates than candidates, those millions won’t go anywhere near as far as Hassan’s dollars will.

A year ago, Republicans were still optimistic that Gov. Chris Sununu would run for Senate, giving them a popular abortion rights-supporting nominee in a state that’s trended blue in recent federal elections. Bolduc told WMUR after his primary win that he’d vote against a national abortion ban. But ads from Hassan and Senate Majority PAC have seized on his suggestion in the same interview that the senator should “get over” the abortion issue. Republicans recognize that abortion is a salient factor in a state Biden carried by 7 points, but they also argue that the election – as Bolduc said to WMUR – will be about the economy and that Hassan is an unpopular and out-of-touch incumbent.

Hassan led Bolduc 49% to 41% among likely voters in a Granite State Poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. The incumbent has consolidated Democratic support, but only 83% of Republicans said they were with Bolduc, the survey found. Still, some of those Republicans, like those who said they were undecided, could come home to the GOP nominee as the general election gets closer, which means Bolduc has room to grow. He’ll need more than just Republicans to break his way, however, which is one reason he quickly pivoted on the key issue of whether the 2020 election was stolen days after he won the primary.

Incumbent: Republican Rob Portman (retiring)

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Ohio – a state that twice voted for Trump by 8 points – isn’t supposed to be on this list at No. 8, above Florida, which backed the former President by much narrower margins. But it’s at No. 8 for the second month in a row. Republican nominee J.D. Vance’s poor fundraising has forced Senate Leadership Fund to redirect millions from other races to Ohio to shore him up and attack Rep. Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee who had the airwaves to himself all summer. The 10-term congressman has been working to distance himself from his party in most of his ads, frequently mentioning that he “voted with Trump on trade” and criticizing the “defund the police” movement. Vance is finally on the air, trying to poke some holes in Ryan’s image.

But polling still shows a tight race with no clear leader. Ryan had an edge with independents in a recent Siena College/Spectrum News poll, which also showed that Vance – Trump’s pick for the nomination – has more work to do to consolidate GOP support after an ugly May primary. Assuming he makes up that support and late undecided voters break his way, Vance will likely hold the advantage in the end given the Buckeye State’s solidifying red lean.

Incumbent: Republican Marco Rubio

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Democrats face an uphill battle against GOP Sen. Marco Rubio in an increasingly red-trending state, which Trump carried by about 3 points in 2020 – nearly tripling his margin from four years earlier.

Democratic Rep. Val Demings, who easily won the party’s nomination in August, is a strong candidate who has even outraised the GOP incumbent, but not by enough to seriously jeopardize his advantage. She’s leaning into her background as the former Orlando police chief – it features prominently in her advertising, in which she repeatedly rejects the idea of defunding the police. Still, Rubio has tried to tie her to the “radical left” in Washington to undercut her own law enforcement background.

Incumbent: Democrat Michael Bennet

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Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet is no stranger to tough races. In 2016, he only won reelection by 6 points against an underfunded GOP challenger whom the national party had abandoned. Given GOP fundraising challenges in some of their top races, the party hasn’t had the resources to seriously invest in the Centennial State this year.

But in his bid for a third full term, Bennet is up against a stronger challenger in businessman Joe O’Dea, who told CNN he disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. His wife and daughter star in his ads as he tries to cut a more moderate profile and vows not to vote the party line in Washington.

Bennet, however, is attacking O’Dea for voting for a failed 2020 state ballot measure to ban abortion after 22 weeks of pregnancy and arguing that whatever O’Dea says about supporting abortion rights, he’d give McConnell “the majority he needs” to pass a national abortion ban.

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October 4, 2022
Biden in Puerto Rico: ‘We’re going to make sure you get every single dollar promised’ | CNN Politics

CNN
—

President Joe Biden, first lady Jill Biden, and Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator Deanne Criswell are visiting Ponce, Puerto Rico, on Monday – weeks after Hurricane Fiona ravaged the US territory.

In Puerto Rico, Biden received a briefing on the storm and met with individuals who have been impacted. He also announced $60 million in funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law to shore up levees and flood walls, and to create a new flood warning system to help residents better prepare for future storms.

“We have to ensure that when the next hurricane strikes, Puerto Rico is ready,” Biden said during his remarks at the Port of Ponce.

Biden hailed the people of Puerto Rico for their resilience and promised that as long as he’s president, the federal government is not leaving until “every single thing we can do is done.”

Hurricane Fiona, Biden said, has been an “all too familiar nightmare” for Puerto Ricans who survived Hurricane Maria in 2017.

“Through these disasters so many people have been displaced from their homes, lost their jobs and savings or suffered injuries – often unseen but many times seen – but somehow, the people of Puerto Rico keep getting back up with resilience and determination,” he remarked.

“You deserve every bit of help your country can give you. That’s what I’m determined to do and that’s what I promise you,” the President continued. “After Maria, Congress approved billions of dollars to Puerto Rico, much of it not having gotten here initially. We’re going to make sure you get every single dollar promised.”

The Ponce region experienced significant storm damage and power had been restored for 86% of residents there as of Sunday evening.

Biden also participated in a pull-aside meeting with families and community leaders impacted by the storm.

Biden’s trip to Puerto Rico comes five years to the day that then-President Donald Trump visited Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria, where he was snapped tossing paper towels into a crowd gathered at a chapel where emergency supplies were being distributed. Trump repeatedly praised the federal response to the storm, but in the wake of a series of deadly hurricanes in 2017, FEMA issued a report saying it was underprepared and could have better anticipated the severity of the damage.

Throughout his travels on Monday, Biden expressed how his administration was aiming to do better than previous federal response efforts on the island.

On Monday morning, Biden suggested that the island has not been well taken care of following previous storms, telling reporters: “I’m heading to Puerto Rico because they haven’t been taken very good care of. We’ve been trying like hell to catch up from the last hurricane. I want to see the state of affairs today and make sure we push everything we can.”

During his speech at the Port of Ponce, the President also told Puerto Ricans, “You have had to bear so much and more than need be and you haven’t gotten the help in a timely way.”

And Criswell, who accompanied Biden on the trip, acknowledged the challenges the federal government has faced in gaining the trust of Puerto Ricans after the Trump administration’s response to Hurricane Maria in 2017. She said aboard Air Force One en route to Puerto Rico that “there may have been some issues in the previous administration” and that the people of Puerto Rico “finally feel like this administration cares for them.”

Biden approved a major disaster declaration for Puerto Rico on September 21, a White House fact sheet said, and over 1,000 federal response workers were on the ground providing support with over 450 members of the Puerto Rico National Guard activated.

The Biden administration also approved a Jones Act waiver last week, opening up the potential for additional diesel to be shipped to Puerto Rico, following intense pressure on the White House. The Jones Act requires all goods ferried between US ports to be carried on ships built, owned and operated by Americans, but the Department of Homeland Security may grant a waiver when those vessels are not available to meet national defense requirements.

Biden has “been in regular contact” with Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi, the White House has said.

The President will also travel to Florida this Wednesday, where he will survey damage from Hurricane Ian.

This story and headline have been updated with additional updates.

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October 4, 2022
Trump defends ‘great woman’ Ginni Thomas after Jan. 6 testimony | CNN Politics

CNN
—

Former President Donald Trump praised the “courage and strength” of Ginni Thomas at a rally Saturday, days after the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas met with congressional investigators about her efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

In a four-and-a-half hour meeting with investigators on Thursday, Thomas discussed her marriage to the conservative justice, claiming in an opening statement obtained by CNN that she “did not speak with him at all about the details of my volunteer campaign activities.”

Thomas, who attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, 2021 landed on the radar of the House select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol after text message exchanges she had with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about election fraud claims surfaced during the ongoing congressional probe.

Thomas had “significant concerns about fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election. And, as she told the Committee, her minimal and mainstream activity focused on ensuring that reports of fraud and irregularities were investigated,” her attorney Mark Paoletta said after her closed-door testimony.

During a campaign appearance in Michigan, Trump claimed that Thomas told the House panel “she still believes the 2020 election was stolen,” commending her because “she didn’t wilt under pressure.”

“Do you know Ginni Thomas?” the former President polled the crowd. “She didn’t say, ‘Oh, well I’d like not to get involved. Of course, it was a wonderful election.’ It was a rigged and stolen election. She didn’t wait and sit around and say, ‘Well let me give you maybe a different answer than [what] I’ve been saying for the last two years.’”

“No, no,” Trump continued, “She didn’t wilt under pressure like so many others that are weak people and stupid people… She said what she thought, she said what she believed in.”

Thomas, who has previously criticized the House probe into January 6, has long been a prominent fixture in conservative activism – even becoming a persistent annoyance to some Trump White House officials as she tried to install friends and allies into senior administration roles throughout his presidency. She and her husband attended a private lunch with Trump and his wife Melania at the White House shortly after the 2018 midterms, though CNN has previously reported that her direct interactions with the former President were fairly limited beyond that meeting.

But on Saturday, Trump praised Thomas as “a great woman,” comparing her to countless former aides and allies who have admitted in their own depositions with the House panel that they themselves didn’t believe Trump’s claims about voter fraud following the 2020 election.

Thomas said she “never spoke” with her husband about “any of the legal challenges to the 2020 election,” addressing ethical questions that were raised in the wake a Supreme Court ruling last year on a January 6-related case. Thomas and Meadows texted repeatedly about overturning the election results.

Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the committee, said that Thomas did confirm during her testimony that she still believes the election was stolen, adding that “at this point we are glad she came in.”

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October 3, 2022
Federal judge rules against Abrams-founded voting rights group in Georgia | CNN Politics

CNN
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A federal judge ruled against a voting rights group founded by Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams Friday in a challenge to the state’s voting laws.

US District Judge Steve Jones ruled against “Fair Fight Action” on claims over Georgia’s “exact match” voter registration policy, absentee ballot cancellation practices and registration inaccuracies.

“Although Georgia’s election system is not perfect, the challenged practices violate neither the constitution nor the VRA (Voting Rights Act). As the Eleventh Circuit notes, federal courts are not “the arbiter[s] of disputes’ which arise in elections; it [is] not the federal court’s role to ‘oversee the administrative details of a local election,’” Jones wrote in the ruling.

Fair Fight filed the lawsuit just after the 2018 gubernatorial election and the case went to trial earlier this year. Fair Fight says this was the longest voting rights trial on the Eleventh Circuit.

“Despite the numerous and significant pro-voter developments that have already resulted from this case, we are nonetheless disappointed by the Court’s decision. In this moment of frustration, we also are here to remind the nation: Litigation is only one tool to fight against voter suppression,” Fair Fight Action Executive Director Cianti Stewart-Reid said in a statement.

“The Court’s ruling today is no doubt a significant loss for the voting rights community in Georgia and across the country. However, it does not undermine the tireless work that Fair Fight Action and our allies continue to undertake to support Georgia voters and mitigate the obstacles they face to make their voices heard at the ballot box.”

Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who is running for reelection, accused Abrams of trying to make money off the suit and cast doubt on the electoral process. Kemp defeated Abrams in the 2018 governor’s race.

“Stacey Abrams and her organization lost in court – on all counts. From day one, Abrams has used this lawsuit to line her pockets, sow distrust in our democratic institutions, and build her own celebrity,” Kemp said in a statement.

“Judge Jones’ ruling exposes this legal effort for what it really is: a tool wielded by a politician hoping to wrongfully weaponize the legal system to further her own political goals. In Georgia, it is easy to vote and hard to cheat – and I’m going to continue working to keep it that way.”

Abrams said she will work to expand the right to vote if elected governor.

“As governor, I will expand the right to vote. I will defend minority voters, not bemoan their increased power or grow ‘frustrated’ by their success. This case demonstrates that the 2022 election will be a referendum on how our state treats its most marginalized voices,” Abrams said in a tweet.

The ruling follows President Joe Biden’s narrow margin of victory in Georgia in the 2020 presidential election. Biden won the state by fewer than 12,000 votes out of some 5 million cast.

It also comes as Georgia prepares to vote in one of the marquee battles for the US Senate. Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock is running against former NFL star, Herschel Walker, a Republican, the outcome of which could determine which party controls the chamber next year.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger called the ruling a win for elections officials, saying the state’s elections have always been “safe, secure, and accessible.”

“Stolen election and voter suppression claims by Stacey Abrams were nothing but poll-tested rhetoric not supported by facts and evidence,” Raffensperger said in a statement.

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October 3, 2022
Brazilians vote in contentious election plagued by violence and fear | CNN

São Paulo, Brazil
CNN
—

Polls opened in Brazil on Sunday in a presidential election marred by an unprecedented climate of tension and violence.

While there are nearly a dozen candidates on the ballot, the race has been dominated by two frontrunners and polar opposites: right-wing incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro and leftist former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, leader of the Workers’ Party.

Both have been seen on the campaign trail flanked by security and police, even wearing bulletproof vests at times. Bolsonaro wore his as he kicked off his re-election bid last month in the city of Juiz de Fora, where he was stabbed in the stomach during his 2018 presidential campaign. Da Silva, who is commonly referred to as Lula, was seen also wearing a vest during an event in Rio de Janeiro, the same city where a homemade stink bomb was launched into a large crowd of his supporters back in July.

After voting alongside his wife Rosangela da Silva at a Sao Paulo school on Sunday, Lula told reporters: “We don’t want more discord, we want a country that lives in peace. This is the most important election. I am really happy.”

He also referenced the 2018 elections, where he had been unable to run – or vote – because of a corruption conviction, which was overturned last year.

“Four years ago I couldn’t vote because I had been the victim of a lie in this country. And four years later, I’m here, voting with the recognition of my total freedom and with the possibility of being president of the republic of this country again, to try to make this country return to normality,” Lula said.

Bolsonaro, who voted at a military facility in Rio de Janeiro told reporters that he had traveled to “practically every state in Brazil” over the 45 days of campaigning.

“The expectation is of victory today,” he said, later adding: “Clean elections, no problem at all.”

Voting began at 8 a.m. in Brasilia (7 a.m. ET) and concludes at 5 p.m. local (4 p.m. ET). More than 156 million Brazilians are eligible to vote.

In the Brazilian electoral system, a winning candidate must gain more than 50% of the vote. If no candidate crosses that threshold, a second round of voting between the two frontrunners will take place on October 30.

Voters are also electing new state governors, senators, federal and state deputies for the country’s 26 states and the federal district.

Bolsonaro, 67, is running for re-election under the conservative Liberal Party. He has campaigned to increase mining, privatize public companies and generate more sustainable energy to bring down energy prices. He has vowed to continue paying a R$ 600 (roughly US$110) monthly benefit known as Auxilio Brasil.

Often referred to as the “Trump of the Tropics,” Bolsonaro, who is supported by important evangelical leaders, is a highly polarizing figure. His government is known for its support for ruthless exploitation of land in the Amazon, leading to record deforestation figures. Environmentalists are warning that the future of the rainforest could be at stake in this election.

Bolsonaro has also been widely criticized for his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. More than 686,000 people in Brazil have died from the virus.

Lula, 76, who was president for two consecutive terms, from 2003 to 2011, has focused his campaign on getting Bolsonaro out of office and has highlighted his past achievements throughout his campaign.

He left office with a 90% approval rating in 2011, and is largely credited for lifting millions of Brazilians from extreme poverty through the “Bolsa Familia” welfare program.

His campaign has promised a new tax regime that will allow for higher public spending. He has vowed to end hunger in the country, which has returned during the Bolsonaro government. Lula also promises to work to reduce carbon emissions and deforestation in the Amazon.

Lula, however, is also no stranger to controversy. He was convicted for corruption and money laundering in 2017, on charges stemming from the wide-ranging “Operation Car Wash” investigation into the state-run oil company Petrobras. But after serving less than two years, a Supreme Court Justice annulled Lula’s conviction in March 2021, clearing the way for him to run for president for a sixth time.

Vote counting begins right after ballots, which are mostly electronic, close on Sunday.

Electoral authorities say they expect final results from the first round to be officially announced Sunday evening. In the last few elections, results were officially declared two to three hours after voting finished.

Observers will be watching closely to see if all candidates publicly accept the result.

Bolsonaro, who has been accused of firing up supporters with violent rhetoric, has sought to sow doubts about the result and said that the results should be considered suspicious if he doesn’t gain “at least 60%.”

On Saturday, he repeated claims that he will win in the first round of presidential elections “with a margin higher than 60%,” despite being 14 points behind in the most recent poll that day.

When asked on Sunday if he will accept the results of the election, Bolsonaro said, “If they are clean elections, no problem, may the best win.”

Both Bolsonaro and his conservative Liberal Party have claimed that Brazil’s electronic ballot system is susceptible to fraud – an entirely unfounded allegation that has drawn comparisons to the false election claims of former US President Donald Trump.

There have been no proven instances of voter fraud in the electronic ballot in Brazil.

The Supreme Electoral Court has also rejected claims of flaws in the system, as “false and untruthful, with no base in reality.”

Critics have warned that such talk could lead to outbreaks of violence or even refusal to accept the election result among some Brazilians – pointing to the January 6, 2021, riot incited by Trump after he lost the vote.

There have already been several reports of political discourse turning violent from supporters across the political spectrum.

Last weekend, police registered two fatal incidents in states on opposite ends of the country. In the northeastern state of Ceara, a man was stabbed to death in a bar after identifying himself as a Lula supporter, according to police. And authorities in southern Santa Catarina state say a man wearing a Bolsonaro T-shirt was also fatally stabbed during a violent discussion with a man whom witnesses identified as a Workers’ Party supporter.

Police say they are investigating both incidents, and that arrests have been made.

And in July, a member of Lula’s Worker’s Party, who was celebrating his 50th birthday with a politically-themed party was shot dead.

Just one day before, two explosives were thrown into a crowd at a Lula rally.

According to a Datafolha poll conducted in August, more than 67% of voters in Brazil are afraid of being “physically attacked” due to their political affiliations. And the country’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal has issued a ban on firearms within 100 meters (330 feet) of any polling station on election day.

The fear factor among voters could lead to a number of abstentions on Sunday, however, recent polling shows that there are fewer undecided Brazilians this year than in previous elections.

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October 2, 2022
Tudor Dixon seeks a culture war in campaign against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer | CNN Politics

CNN
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Tudor Dixon, the Republican taking on Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in November’s midterm election, is turning to tactics that have worked for other Republican winners in competitive governor’s races as she seeks to turn the race into a cultural battle over education, transgender athletes and more.

But her clash with a well-funded Democratic incumbent governor – one taking place in a state where a referendum that would enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution has emerged as a dominant issue – is showcasing the limits of those efforts at cultural appeals to the moderate, suburban voters who could decide the race’s outcome.

National Republicans have largely abandoned Dixon in the race’s closing weeks, leaving her outspent and floundering in one of the nation’s most important swing states.

Dixon sought to change the race’s trajectory on Saturday when former President Donald Trump traveled to Michigan for a rally in Warren with Dixon and other GOP candidates, including Matthew DePerno, who is challenging Attorney General Dana Nessel, and Kristina Karamo, who is taking on Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. Dixon, DePerno and Karamo have all parroted Trump’s lies about widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

Trump called Whitmer “one of the most radical, most sinister governors in America,” criticizing her support for abortion rights and Michigan’s pandemic-related lockdowns.

The former President, echoing Dixon’s focus on cultural issues and education, called Dixon “a national leader in the battle to protect our children by getting race and gender ideology out of the classroom.”

Trump’s attack on Whitmer as “sinister” is the latest in a series of rhetorical escalations by the former President. On Friday, he said on his social media website Truth Social that the top Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell, had a “death wish” after Congress approved stopgap funding to avert a government shutdown.

Dixon, meanwhile, spoke twice Saturday – once before Trump, and again when Trump invited her on stage. As she lambasted Whitmer, the crowd repeated a familiar Trump rally chant, this time directed at Whitmer rather than 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton: “Lock her up.”

“We’re not going to let our kids be radicalized. We’re not going to let our kids be sexualized. We’re not going to let our law enforcement be demonized. We’re not going to tell our businesses they can’t expand,” Dixon said.

Dixon, a conservative commentator and first-time candidate, emerged from a crowded primary after receiving the financial support of former Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos’ family. The Michigan GOP megadonors funded a super PAC bolstering Dixon’s campaign. And Trump waded into the race in the closing days of the primary with a Dixon endorsement that came after a handwritten letter from DeVos urged him to back Dixon, as reported by The New York Times.

“The Dixon campaign is seeking to get its name ID up and MAGA base fully engaged to close the polling gap and that is what they hope to gain from a Trump rally in Macomb County,” said John Sellek, a Republican public relations adviser and head of Harbor Strategic Public Affairs in Lansing.

However, she has struggled to raise money and gain traction since her August primary victory.

Democrats on Saturday said Dixon’s comments at the Trump rally were an effort to distract from issues on which her positions are unpopular – particularly abortion rights.

“Tonight, Michiganders saw a schoolyard bully on stage – not a leader,” Michigan Democratic Party chairwoman Lavora Barnes said in a statement. “Tudor Dixon hurled insults and rattled off a litany of grievances because she knows that her dangerous agenda to ban abortion and throw nurses in jail, dismantle public education, and slash funding for law enforcement is out-of-step.

“Michigan families deserve a real leader who will work with anyone to get things done, and Tudor Dixon has shown time and again she will continue to divide and pit people against each other if it means she and Betsy DeVos gain political power,” Barnes said.

Whitmer’s campaign and her supporters have dwarfed Dixon in television advertising spending – and Dixon’s campaign is currently off the air in Michigan, underscoring the reality that major Republican donors have shifted their focus to other races they view as more winnable.

Since the primary on August 2, Democrats have spent about $17.6 million on ads in the governor’s race, while Republicans have spent just $1.1 million, according to data from the firm AdImpact. And over the next month through election day, Democrats have $23.4 million booked while GOP has just $4.3 million booked.

Early voting is already underway in Michigan. And in the governor’s race, Whitmer is widely viewed as the favorite by nonpartisan analysts. The race is rated as one that “tilts Democratic” by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales. The Cook Political Report and University of Virginia Center for Politics director Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball rate it as “likely Democratic.”

“The battle has been fought on the Democrats’ terms with millions and millions of dollars, and there’s been essentially no effort to fight back,” Michigan-based Republican strategist John Yob said on the Michigan Information & Research Service Inc.’s “MIRS Monday” podcast this week. “On the Republican side, we’ve never faced this before. And, you know, it doesn’t look very good in terms of a way out unless some serious money gets on TV pretty quickly.”

The most dominant issue in the governor’s race has been abortion rights in the wake of the Supreme Court’s June decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Michigan’s Republican-led legislature has refused to change a 1931 law that would prohibit abortion in nearly all instances. Whitmer and other pro-abortion rights groups sued to block that law. And a Democratic-backed referendum that would amend Michigan’s constitution to guarantee abortion rights is on November’s ballot in the state.

Dixon, who opposes abortion except when necessary to protect the life of the mother, has struggled to redirect the race’s focus.

“You can vote for Gretchen Whitmer’s position without having to vote for Gretchen Whitmer again,” she told reporters last week, explaining that voters could support the referendum but oppose the incumbent governor.

In an effort to shift the contest’s focus, Dixon’s campaign has borrowed tactics from Republican governors who have won in battleground states in recent years.

For months, she has focused on parental control of schools’ curriculum, as well as school choice. It’s a message built on that of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, the Republican whose 2021 victory was an early harbinger of a potentially favorable political landscape for the GOP in this year’s midterm elections.

“That’s why Gov. Youngkin’s message resonated,” Dixon said in an August interview on Fox News alongside Youngkin, who was campaigning in Michigan.

“He said, ‘I’m listening to you. I want parents involved. And I’m going to bring you back into the schools,’” Dixon said. “That’s what people want to hear right now.”

In her latest move to redefine the race, Dixon this week proposed two policies aimed at the LGBTQ community and schools.

In Lansing on Tuesday, Dixon proposed a policy modeled after the controversial measure Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law earlier this year that critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

“This act will require school districts to ensure that their schools do not provide classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in grades K through three, or in any manner that has not age- or developmentally appropriate,” Dixon told reporters, blasting what she called “radical sex and gender instruction.”

Florida’s HB 1557, the Parental Rights in Education bill, passed earlier this year effectively bans teachers from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms for young students. LGBTQ advocates say the measure has led to further stigmatization of gay, lesbian and transgender children, causing more bullying and suicides within an already marginalized community.

Then, on Wednesday in Grand Rapids, she unveiled her proposal for a “Women’s Sports Fairness Act,” which would ban transgender girls from competing in sports with the gender they identify with.

“As a mother of four girls, nothing infuriates me more than the prospect of my daughters losing their friends and their teammates, losing opportunities in sports or otherwise, because some radically progressive politicians decided one day that they should have to compete against biological men,” she said. “Gretchen Whitmer has embraced the trans-supremacist ideology, which dictates that individuals who are born as men can be allowed to compete against our daughters.”

Whitmer’s campaign has largely ignored Dixon’s proposals, and did not respond to a request for comment on them. Instead, Whitmer has in recent days emphasized her economic message and her support for abortion rights.

Whitmer is leaning into policies enacted by Democrats in Washington in recent months, including the Inflation Reduction Act, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden in August.

Whitmer in September signed an executive directive capping insulin costs at $35 per month and out-of-pocket costs at $2,000 a year for Medicare recipients.

And last week, Whitmer announced that student loan borrowers will not be taxed on the debt relief that Biden had ordered.

What has dominated media coverage of the race in recent days, though, are a series of jokes Dixon has made about the 2020 kidnapping plot against Whitmer.

A federal jury in August convicted two men of conspiring to kidnap Whitmer at her vacation home in 2020. They were also convicted of one count of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction after prosecutors detailed their plans to blow up a bridge to prevent police from responding to the kidnapping of the governor. The men now face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

“The sad thing is that Gretchen will tie your hands, put a gun to your head, and ask if you’re ready to talk,” Dixon said at an event last week in Troy alongside Kellyanne Conway, a former Trump White House aide. “For someone so worried about being kidnapped, Gretchen Whitmer sure is good at taking business hostage and holding it for ransom.”

After her comment drew backlash, Dixon joked again about the kidnapping plot at a second event Friday, this time with Donald Trump Jr., the son of the former President.

She told a crowd that, at a stop with President Joe Biden at the Detroit Auto Show last week, Whitmer looked like she’d “rather be kidnapped by the FBI.”

“Yeah, the media is like, ‘Oh my gosh, she did it again,’” Dixon said, anticipating the reaction to her second reference of the day to the 2020 kidnapping plot.

As she told the crowd that her earlier remarks about the plot to kidnap Whitmer had been characterized as a joke, Dixon said: “I’m like, ‘No, that wasn’t a joke.’ If you were afraid of that, you should know what it is to have your life ripped away from you.”

Whitmer’s campaign and Democratic groups condemned Dixon’s remarks Friday.

“Threats of violence and dangerous rhetoric undermine our democracy and discourage good people on both sides of the aisle at every level from entering public service,” Whitmer campaign spokesperson Maeve Coyle said in a statement.

“Governor Whitmer has faced serious threats to her safety and her life, and she is grateful to the law enforcement and prosecutors for their tireless work,” Coyle said. “Threats of violence – whether to Governor Whitmer or to candidates and elected officials on the other side of the aisle – are no laughing matter, and the fact that Tudor Dixon thinks it’s a joke shows that she is absolutely unfit to serve in public office.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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October 1, 2022
Bolsonaro or Lula? As Brazil prepares to vote, here’s what to know | CNN

CNN
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Brazil’s hotly contested presidential election is less than 24 hours away, and for many Brazilians, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Two household names – former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and current leader Jair Bolsonaro – are battling to become the country’s next president. Depending on who ultimately wins, Latin America’s largest economy will likely either continue on Bolsonaro’s conservative, pro-business path, or else take a left turn under Lula.

In recent weeks, both candidates have ramped up efforts to woo voters. But this is an arduous task in a country where 85% of voters say they have already made up their minds, according to a Datafolha poll released Thursday.

For Lula, more votes could mean victory in the first round of voting, with no need for a runoff. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro needs to catch up, after slipping 14 points behind his rival in the same survey.

Brazilians will vote for their next president on Sunday, October 2, in the first round of the elections. On the same date, governors, senators, federal and state deputies for the country’s 26 states plus the federal district will also be chosen.

Voting is scheduled to start at 8 a.m. local time in Brasilia (7 a.m. ET) and concludes at 5 p.m. local (4 p.m. ET).

In the Brazilian electoral system, a winning candidate must gain more than 50% of the vote. If no candidate crosses that threshold, a second round of voting will be organized, in which the options will be narrowed down to the two frontrunners from the first round.

In Brazil, opinion polls always estimate candidates’ potential performance in the first round (competing against with all other candidates) and in the second round (with just two top candidates).

Over 156 million Brazilians are eligible to vote.

Bolsonaro and Lula are by far the candidates to watch. Though other candidates are also in the race, they’re polling with one-digit percentages and are unlikely to pose much competition.

Lula, 76, was Brazil’s President for two terms – from 2003 to 2006 and 2007 to 2011. A household name, he first came into the political scene in the 1970s as a leader of worker strikes which defied the military regime.

In 1980, he was one of the founders of the Workers’ Party (PT), which went on to become Brazil’s main left-wing political force. Lula’s presidential terms were marked by programs aimed at reducing poverty and inequality in the country but also rocked by revelations of a corruption scheme involving the payment of congressional representatives to support government proposals. Due to lack of evidence of his involvement, Lula himself was never included in the investigation of this scheme.

Lula’s campaign for the presidency now promises a new tax regime that will allow for higher public spending. He has vowed to end hunger in the country, which has returned during the Bolsonaro government. Lula also promises to work to reduce carbon emissions and deforestation in the Amazon.

Bolsonaro is a former army captain who was a federal deputy for 27 years before running for President in 2018. A marginal figure in politics during much of this time, he emerged in the mid-2010s as a leading figure of a more radically right-wing movement, which perceived the PT as its main enemy.

As a President, Bolsonaro has pursued a conservative agenda, supported by important evangelical leaders. His government also became known for its support for ruthless exploitation of land in the Amazon, leading to record deforestation figures. Environmentalists have warned that the future of the rainforest could be at stake in this election.

In his program, Bolsonaro promises to increase mining, privatize public companies and generate more sustainable energy to bring down energy prices. He has vowed to continue paying a R$600 (roughly US$110) monthly benefit known as Auxilio Brasil.

Vote counting begins right after ballots (mostly electronic) close on Sunday.

Brazil’s electoral authorities say they expect final results from the first round to be officially announced that evening, on October 2. They will be published on the electoral court’s website.

In the last few elections, results were officially declared two to three hours after voting finished. If the leading candidate does not manage to muster more than half of all valid votes, a second round will take place on October 30.

Observers will be watching closely to see if all candidates accept the vote result publicly. Bolsonaro, who has been accused of firing up supporters with violent rhetoric, has sought to sow doubts about the result and said that the results should be considered suspicious if he doesn’t gain “at least 60%.”

Both he and his conservative Liberal Party claimed that Brazil’s electronic ballot system is susceptible to fraud – an entirely unfounded allegation that has drawn comparisons to the false election claims of former US President Donald Trump.

There have been no proven instances of voter fraud in the electronic ballot in Brazil.

The Supreme Electoral Court has also rejected claims of flaws in the system, as “false and untruthful, with no base in reality.”

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October 1, 2022
Abbott and O’Rourke clash over gun restrictions in lone Texas gubernatorial debate | CNN Politics

CNN
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Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke clashed over gun restrictions in a debate Friday night, with O’Rourke claiming that Abbott blames “everybody else” for mass shootings while “misleading this state.”

“It’s been 18 weeks since their kids have been killed, and not a thing has changed in this state to make it any less likely that any other child will meet the same fate,” O’Rourke said in their debate at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg. “All we need is action, and the only person standing in our way is the governor of the state of Texas.”

Abbott was shown a video of a child in Uvalde asking why Texas will not raise the age minimum to buy assault-style rifles. He said he believes such a move would be “unconstitutional” under recent court rulings.

“We want to end school shootings, but we cannot do that by making false promises,” Abbott said.

Abbott also said he opposed “red flag” laws, saying that those laws “would deny lawful Texas gun owners their right to due process.”

O’Rourke, meanwhile, did not back away from comments that he made as a 2020 presidential candidate, in the wake of the racially motivated mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart in 2019, that he would seek to confiscate assault-style rifles such as AR-15s and AK-47s. But he said as governor, he would be “focused on what we can get done.”

He said that would include raising the age minimum to purchase such firearms to 21, implementing universal background checks and enacting “red flag” laws.

“This is the common ground,” he said, citing conversations with Republican and Democratic voters, as well as families of those slain in Uvalde.

Friday night’s showdown was the only scheduled debate between Abbott, the Republican seeking a third term as governor, and O’Rourke, the Democratic former El Paso congressman whose near-miss in a 2018 race against Sen. Ted Cruz electrified Texas Democrats.

Democrats have not won a gubernatorial race in Texas since Ann Richards was elected governor in 1990. The party also hasn’t won a statewide race in the Lone Star State since 1994 — Democrats’ longest statewide losing streak in the country.

Abbott, who is viewed as a potential 2024 presidential contender, has consistently led in the polls. A Quinnipiac University survey conducted September 22-26 found the governor with a 7-point edge over O’Rourke among likely voters, 53% to 46%.

The most recent campaign finance reports in mid-July showed O’Rourke keeping pace with Abbott’s fundraising, but the incumbent maintained a significant cash-on-hand edge with $46 million in the bank to his challenger’s $24 million.

On the campaign trail, O’Rourke has criticized Abbott’s opposition to abortion rights – the governor signed a so-called trigger law last year that went into effect in August and bans nearly all abortions in the state following the US Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. The Democrat has also criticized the Abbott administration’s management of the power grid during last year’s winter freeze and the governor’s rejection of gun restrictions in the wake of the Uvalde school shooting.

O’Rourke famously confronted Abbott and other officials at a news conference in Uvalde the day after the shooting, saying, “The time to stop the next shooting is right now and you are doing nothing.”

Abbott, meanwhile, has campaigned on tough border security policies, including busing migrants out of state to Democratic-run cities up North to protest the Biden administration’s immigration policies. He has also accused O’Rourke of seeking to undercut police funding, saying in an ad that O’Rourke wants to “defund and dismantle the police.” It was a reference to O’Rourke’s comments in 2020, in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, praising protesters for targeting “line items that have over militarized our police.” O’Rourke has said he does not support cutting funding for police in Texas.

“Look, I don’t think Greg Abbott wakes up wanting to see children shot in their schools or for the grid to fail, but it’s clear that he’s incapable or unwilling to make the changes necessary to prioritize the lives of our fellow Texans. That’s why it’s on all of us to make change at the ballot box,” O’Rourke said in his closing remarks.

In his closing, Abbott said: “I’m running for reelection to keep Texas No. 1 — to cut your property taxes, to secure the border, to keep dangerous criminals behind bars, and to keep deadly fentanyl off our streets.”

The two also sharply diverged on abortion rights, an issue that has moved to the center of the gubernatorial race after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Abbott signed into law a measure that restricts abortion except to save the life of the mother and in certain health emergencies.

O’Rourke said he would seek to return Texas to the abortion protections that existed under Roe v. Wade.

“This election is about reproductive freedom. If you care about this, you need to turn out and vote,” O’Rourke said. “I will fight to make sure that every woman in Texas can make her own decision about her own body, her own future, and her own health care.”

Abbott said O’Rourke’s position on abortion is “the most extreme,” casting O’Rourke as supporting the right to abortions up until birth.

“No one thinks that in the state of Texas,” O’Rourke shot back. “He’s saying this because he signed the most extreme abortion ban in America: No exception for rape, no exception for incest, it begins at conception, and it’s taking place in a state that is at the epicenter of a maternal mortality crisis, thanks to Greg Abbott — three times as deadly for Black women.”

Abbott was asked whether emergency contraception is a viable alternative for victims of rape and incest.

“It’s incumbent upon the state of Texas to make sure that it is readily available,” he said. “For those who are victims of sexual assault or survivors of sexual assault, the state of Texas pays for that, whether it be at a hospital, at a clinic, or someone that gets a prescription because of it.”

He also touted the state’s “alternative to abortion program,” including living assistance and baby supplies, for those victims.

Abbott touted reforms to the power grid after the deep freeze, pointing to record high temperatures this summer.

“Time and again, the power grid was able to keep up, and it’s because of the reforms that we were able to make. The power grid remains more resilient … than ever before,” he said.

But O’Rourke said the power failure was “part of a pattern” during Abbott’s almost eight years in office, and that the governor had been warned about the possibility.

“The grid is still not fixed,” O’Rourke said, pointing to higher energy bills, Toyota stopping its third shift in San Antonio “because it was drawing too much power,” and Texas residents receiving conservation notices over the summer.

“All Beto does is fear-monger on this issue, when in reality, the grid is more resilient and more reliable than it’s ever been,” Abbott responded.

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September 30, 2022
GOP congressional candidate Joe Kent’s ties to white nationalists include interview with Nazi sympathizer | CNN Politics

CNN
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Despite disavowing White nationalism last spring when one of its adherents endorsed him, a US House candidate in Washington subsequently gave a previously unreported interview in June to a Nazi sympathizer and White nationalist.

While Republican Joe Kent touted his support for prominent far-right figures like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Green and Paul Gosar and supported MAGA policies, he was speaking with Greyson Arnold, a Nazi sympathizer.

Kent’s exchange with Arnold is all the more notable because just weeks later Kent’s campaign worked to distance him from Arnold after photos surfaced of the pair together. A Kent campaign strategist told the Associated Press in July that the campaign did not do background checks on those who took selfies with the candidate.

Arnold has a well-documented history of making White nationalist, racist, antisemitic and pro-Nazi statements, including once calling Adolf Hitler “a complicated historical figure which many people misunderstand.”

In a statement to CNN, campaign spokesperson Matt Braynard said, “Joe Kent had no idea who that individual was when he encountered him on the street and Joe Kent has repeatedly condemned the statements that the individual is accused of making.”

Braynard added that the campaign screens all interview requests and that Arnold approached Kent on the street by what he assumed was a local journalist. “None of the questions gave Joe any indications that the individual had any racist or antisemitic views and, if he had, Joe would have cancelled the interview immediately,” said Braynard.

The campaign said that Arnold “is not in any way part of our campaign nor would we allow our campaign to be associated with someone who has that background. We also have no record of any contribution from that individual and if we had received one, we’d return it.”

Kent, a former Green Beret and gold star spouse endorsed by former President Donald Trump, ran in this summer’s primary against Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, one of ten Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in 2021.

In August, Kent advanced to November’s general election against Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez under the state’s top-two primary system after edging out Beutler, who placed third. Inside Elections recently redesignated the race as more competitive, moving it from “Safe Republican” to “Likely Republican.”

On a since-suspended Twitter account and active channel on Telegram called “Pure Politics,” Greyson, or “American Greyson” as he calls himself, has shared posts that called Nazi men the “pure race” and that the US should have sided with the Nazis during World War Two. Arnold has falsely claimed there were “Jewish plans to genocide the German people,” and in a post, he shared a quote that said the “Jewish led colored hordes of the Earth” were attempting to exterminate White people.

Arnold was pictured in multiple photographs with Kent at a fundraiser in April and has been canvassing for Republican candidates with Washington State Young Republicans, with one recent photo showing Arnold in a Joe Kent shirt according to photos on their public Instagram.

Speaking with Arnold, Kent praised Gosar’s stance on illegal and legal immigration in a friendly five-minute interview.

“Paul Gosar has been excellent, obviously immigration – border state down there. He took me down to the border, so I got a firsthand feel of all the crises we face there,” said Kent. “Representative Gosar also has some awesome legislation he’s proposed about getting rid of a lot of the legal immigration.”

Arnold was at the Capitol during the January 6, 2021, riot, posting a video of himself leaving the steps of the front of the building saying they were being “chased out by communists,” calling the riot “an American baptism,” as he said police were deploying tear gas. There is no indication he entered the building, and he has not been charged with any crime.

While Kent has tried to shift his campaign rhetoric toward the center – including by removing calls to adjudicate the 2020 election from his website sometime between June and July – his campaign has been bogged down by associations with white nationalists and extremists, whom Kent has repeatedly had to distance himself from.

Back in March 2022, Kent disavowed Nick Fuentes, a 24-year-old far-right white nationalist, after Fuentes endorsed Kent in the primary. Fuentes is the architect of the America First Political Action Conference, a white nationalist conference held annually that received intense backlash this year after Gosar appeared at the event and Greene attended it.

Kent said at the time that he was unfamiliar with Fuentes despite a brief call with him in spring 2021 about the candidate’s social media strategy. In April 2021, Kent tweeted in defense of Fuentes after he was banned from Twitter.

“Many are glad that their political rivals are targeted by the state & big tech, they hate Trump, @NickJFuentes & MAGA. This short side thinking has led to some of the greatest tragedies in human history. We must fight for all speech & fight the confluence of gov & big tech.”

He later said he stood by his comments but reiterated he did not want Fuentes’ endorsement because of Fuentes’ “focus on race/religion.”

Kent’s website also features an endorsement from Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers who was censured by the Republican-controlled Arizona senate after she gave a speech to the white nationalist conference calling for public hangings.

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September 30, 2022