Tag: voters and voting

Barnes seeks to rebut crime attacks headed into final Senate debate with Johnson in Wisconsin | CNN Politics

[ad_1]

CNN
—

Mandela Barnes, the Democrat taking on Republican Sen. Ron Johnson in Wisconsin’s Senate race, on Thursday faces what could be his last clear shot at rebutting the avalanche of GOP attacks on crime and police funding that have taken a months-long toll on his campaign.

Barnes and Johnson are set to meet for their second and final debate Thursday night – hours after the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol holds a hearing that is expected to function as its closing argument ahead of the November midterm elections.

Barnes is highlighting Johnson’s actions on that day, seeking to cast him as an unreliable and hypocritical messenger on what it means to support police officers. Johnson, who played a role in trying to push “fake electors” for then-President Donald Trump before the start of the congressional certification of the 2020 electoral votes, has repeatedly downplayed the attack on the Capitol, saying it was not an “armed insurrection,” including as recently as earlier this month.

Johnson and Republican outside spending groups have hammered Barnes, the Wisconsin lieutenant governor, throughout the fall in television advertisements, at events and in their first debate on crime – echoing a theme the GOP has made a core component of its closing message in Senate races across the map. Those attacks have coincided with Johnson rebounding from a summer slump in the polls less than four weeks from Election Day.

During a campaign event Tuesday in Milwaukee where the Wisconsin Fraternal Order of Police and the West Allis Professional Police Association endorsed the two-term Republican senator, Johnson said that Barnes has shown “far greater sympathy for the criminal or criminals versus law enforcement or the victims.” He pointed to Barnes’ history of statements in support of decreasing or redirecting police funding.

“The dispiriting nature of attempting to cut or use the code words of ‘reallocate,’ ‘over bloated budgets,’ – my opponent says that it pains him to see a fully funded police budget. I mean, that type of rhetoric,” Johnson said, “Those types of policies are very dispiriting for police.”

Barnes, who says he does not support defunding the police, is attempting to shift the debate over crime away from his previous comments by targeting Johnson’s actions around the attack on the Capitol after President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

Ahead of Thursday’s debate, Barnes plans to hold a virtual news conference with retired Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who served on the National Security Council and emerged as a star witness against Trump during the his first impeachment. Barnes’ campaign said the event would serve to “hold Ron Johnson accountable for his attempt to send a fake slate of electors to the Vice President.”

Johnson’s role in trying to put forward the slate of electors who had not been certified by any state legislature was uncovered in June by the House select committee investigating the events around the insurrection. “I was aware that we got this package and that somebody wanted us to deliver it, so we reached out to Pence’s office,” Johnson told CNN at the time.

In his first debate with Barnes, Johnson said he did not know what he was being asked to hand Pence.

“I had no idea when I got a call from the lawyers for the president of the United States to deliver something to the vice president, did I have a staffer who could help out with that – I had no idea what it was,” Johnson said. “I wasn’t even involved. I had no knowledge of an alternate state of electors.”

His comment was part of perhaps the most memorable clash in their first debate last week. Barnes said that Johnson didn’t have any concern for the “140 officers that were injured in the January 6 insurrection.”

“One officer was stabbed with a metal stake. Another crushed between a revolving door. Another hit in the head with a fire extinguisher,” Barnes said. “Let’s talk about the 140 officers that he left behind because of an insurrection that he supported.”

Johnson said of the insurrection that he “immediately and forcefully and have repeatedly condemned it and condemned it strongly.”

Barnes consistently led polls of the Senate race over the summer. But that edge has evaporated, more recent polls show – a change that has coincided with Republicans spending millions on TV ads focused on crime.

A Marquette University Law School poll of Wisconsin released Wednesday showed movement among likely voters toward Johnson. The Republican led Barnes by 6 percentage points, 52% to 46%, among likely voters, the poll found. That’s a jump in Johnson’s favor from the neck-and-neck race the same poll found, with Johnson at 49% to Barnes’ 48%, in September.

The poll’s results among likely voters are significantly more favorable to the GOP than are its results among all registered voters, suggesting substantial uncertainty hinging on Democrats’ ability to turn out less motivated supporters. By contrast, in Marquette’s latest results among all registered voters, Barnes and Johnson are tied at 47% in the Senate race.

Other recent polls of the race have found likely voters deadlocked. In a CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday, Johnson took 50% to Barnes’ 49% among likely voters.

The Marquette poll found that inflation is a top issue in Wisconsin, with 68% of registered voters saying they are very concerned about it. Smaller majorities are also very concerned about public schools (60%), gun violence (60%), abortion policy (56%), crime (56%) and an “accurate vote count” (52%).

But it’s crime that Republican strategists say has been central to Johnson’s rebound in the race.

The attacks have taken place against the backdrop of rising violent crime figures, including a 70% increase in Wisconsin’s homicide rate from 2019 to 2021, according to the state’s Department of Justice. Republicans have also highlighted those convicted of violent crimes who have been paroled by the Wisconsin Parole Commission, an independent agency whose chairperson is appointed by the governor.

“They don’t have an answer,” Brian Schimming, a Republican strategist in Wisconsin, said of Barnes’ campaign. “With Mandela Barnes, it’s not just one thing. It’s not anecdotal. There are three, four, five issues there that are not playing with an electorate that’s pretty concerned about crime right now, and not just if they’re in Milwaukee.”

In the month of September, 61% of the nearly $9 million that Johnson and GOP groups spent on TV ads in the Wisconsin Senate race was behind ads focused on crime, according to data from the firm AdImpact.

That share has dropped to 30% so far in October, but nine of the 14 ads that Republican groups have aired so far have been focused on crime.

It has forced Democrats to respond. Barnes and Democratic groups have focused 40% of their TV ad spending so far in October on crime, with ads rebutting the GOP groups.

The Republican attacks have focused on Barnes’ efforts as a state lawmaker to end cash bail, as well as a 2020 interview with PBS Wisconsin – weeks after the police killing of George Floyd in neighboring Minnesota – in which Barnes suggested that funding should be redirected from police budgets to other social services.

“We need to invest more in neighborhood services and programming for our residents, for our communities on the front end,” he said then. “Where will that money come from? Well, it can come from over-bloated budgets in police departments.”

He did, however, also stress in that same interview that he did not want police budgets completely done away with, saying, “The more money we invest in opportunity for people, the less money we have to spend on prisons.”

One Johnson campaign ad shows video of Barnes saying that “reducing prison population is now sexy.” A narrator in the ad highlights Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration’s efforts to reduce the state’s prison population and says: “That’s not sexy. It’s terrifying. And as a mother, I don’t want Mandela Barnes anywhere near the Senate, from defunding our police to releasing predators.”

Another Johnson spot features the sheriffs of Ozaukee and Waukesha counties, both huge sources of Republican votes in the Milwaukee suburbs.

“Barnes wants to defund our police,” Waukesha County Sheriff Eric Severson says in the ad.

“Mandela Barnes’ policies are a threat to your family,” Ozaukee County Sheriff Jim Johnson says.

Barnes’ campaign has responded with ads of its own, including one in which Barnes says of GOP ads claiming he supports defunding the police, “That’s a lie.”

“Mandela doesn’t want to defund the police,” a retired Racine Police Department sergeant says in another Barnes spot. “He’s very supportive of law enforcement and I know his objective is to make every community in the state of Wisconsin better.”

[ad_2]

Source link

October 13, 2022
Locks, laws and bullet-resistant shields: Election officials boost security as midterms draw closer | CNN Politics

[ad_1]

CNN
—

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.”

[ad_2]

Source link

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

[ad_1]

CNN
—

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.”

[ad_2]

Source link

October 9, 2022
Election denier Kari Lake has a real shot of winning a swing state governorship | CNN Politics

[ad_1]

CNN
—

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.

[ad_2]

Source link

October 6, 2022
The 10 Senate seats most likely to flip in 2022 | CNN Politics

[ad_1]

CNN
—

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)

Demetrius Freeman/Pool/Getty Images

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

Erin Scott/Getty Images

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)

TING SHEN/AFP/POOL/Getty Images

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

DREW ANGERER/AFP/POOL/Getty Images

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

DEMETRIUS FREEMAN/AFP/POOL/Getty Images

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.

[ad_2]

Source link

October 4, 2022
Federal judge rules against Abrams-founded voting rights group in Georgia | CNN Politics

[ad_1]

CNN
—

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.

[ad_2]

Source link

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

[ad_1]

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.

[ad_2]

Source link

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

[ad_1]

CNN
—

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.

[ad_2]

Source link

October 1, 2022
Government shutdown averted as Biden signs funding bill | CNN Politics

[ad_1]

CNN
—

The House of Representatives voted on Friday to approve a stopgap bill to fund the government through December 16, averting a shutdown just hours ahead of a midnight deadline when funding was set to expire.

President Joe Biden signed the bill Friday afternoon. The Senate passed the measure on a bipartisan basis on Thursday.

Lawmakers had expressed confidence there wouldn’t be a shutdown, but it is typical of Congress in recent years to run right up against funding deadlines.

In part, that’s because the opposing parties find it easier to reach last-minute deals to stave off a shutdown under tight time pressure.

This time around, neither party wanted to be blamed for a shutdown – especially so close to the consequential November midterm elections where control of Congress is at stake and as Democrats and Republicans are both trying to make their case to voters that they should be in the majority. Lawmakers up for reelection are also eager to finish up work on Capitol Hill so they can return to their home states to campaign.

In addition to money to keep government agencies afloat, the short-term funding measure provides around $12 billion for Ukraine as it continues to counter Russia’s invasion of the country, and requires the Pentagon to report on how US dollars have been spent there. The aid to Ukraine is a bipartisan priority.

The continuing resolution also extends an expiring FDA user fee program for five years.

The $12 billion in additional funding for Ukraine provides money for the US to continue sending weapons to replenish US stocks that have been sent to the country over the past seven months during the ongoing conflict.

In order to continue providing Ukraine with weapons to counter Russia’s offensive, the bill allocates an additional $3 billion for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. This pot of money allows the US to procure and purchase weapons from industry and send them to the country, instead of drawing directly from US stockpiles of weapons.

The bill also authorizes an additional $3.7 billion in presidential drawdown authority funding, which allows the US to send weapons directly from US stockpiles, and $1.5 billion is included to “replenish US stocks of equipment” provided to Ukraine, a fact sheet from Senate Democrats about the bill states.

The bill designates $4.5 billion for the “economic support fund” to provide “support to maintain the operation of Ukraine’s national government,” the fact sheet states.

The US has provided Ukraine with significant economic and military support since Russia’s invasion of the country began in February, committing more than $16.2 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, since the Russian invasion began in February, a Department of Defense release stated on Wednesday.

This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

[ad_2]

Source link

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

[ad_1]

CNN
—

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.”

[ad_2]

Source link

October 1, 2022
Draft GOP autopsy of 2022 midterms urges candidates to stop ‘rehashing old grievances’ | CNN Politics

[ad_1]

CNN
—

A draft Republican autopsy report on the party’s worse-than-expected showing in the 2022 midterm elections urges GOP candidates to move past complaints about how the 2020 and 2022 elections were run – a clear criticism of former President Donald Trump, who continues to falsely claim his loss was a result of widespread voter fraud.

The report does not mention Trump, the leading contender for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination, by name.

But it takes direct aim at his grievances over the 2020 presidential election and false claims of widespread voter fraud in 2022.

Voters’ distaste for relitigating those elections, the draft report states, is among “the obvious lessons of the 2022 election cycle.”

“The Republican candidates in 2022 who delivered results and had a vision for the future did much, much better than those stuck in the past and rehashing old grievances,” the draft report says.

CNN obtained a portion of the draft report, which was expected to be circulated this week at a Republican National Committee meeting in Oklahoma City – however, a source familiar with the presentation said it was likely to be scuttled following reports of its contents.

The draft report was first reported by The Washington Post.

Some GOP officials bristled at the upbeat nature of the report – and the notable lack of Trump mentions – which was commissioned before the former president widened his lead in 2024 primary polling.

The report urges Republican candidates to offer an “aspirational message” that contrasts with President Joe Biden on issues such as taxes, school choice and border security, and to move past complaints about previous elections.

“America has always been a nation focused on the future. The American people want to move forward and rarely, if ever, are concerned about what happened in the past. The balance of survey data makes it clear that voters are done with the 2020 and 2022 elections. They have no patience for endless conversations relitigating previous elections from Democrats and Republicans,” the draft report states. “Those who don’t heed that lesson from 2022 will be more likely to lose in 2024 and successive cycles.”

The draft report describes “election integrity” as critical, but it also urges Republican campaigns to focus on tactics that Trump and some 2022 candidates eschewed, including mail-in voting.

“Republican campaigns must push our supporters to vote early in person or by mail. Republicans cannot continue to give Democrats a head start,” the draft report says.

Trump and a slew of Trump-backed Republican candidates who lost in 2022 – including Arizona gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake and Senate candidate Blake Masters and Pennsylvania GOP nominee for governor Doug Mastriano – had campaigned on claims of voter fraud. Lake has still not conceded the Arizona governor’s race.

“Republicans have only won the popular vote once in the last eight presidential elections. Clearly, something is not working for us,” the draft report says.

It also describes the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn Roe v. Wade’s federal protections of abortion rights as politically damaging in the midterm elections.

“It is true: We underestimated the impact of Dobbs, and we failed to defend our position on the sanctity of life even though more Americans agree with us than with Democrats,” the draft report says. “Democrats will continue to engage on this issue, so we must learn our lesson.”

[ad_2]

Source link

April 12, 2021
Biden vs. Trump: The 2024 race a historic number of Americans don’t want | CNN Politics

[ad_1]

CNN
—

The 2024 presidential primaries are in full swing. President Joe Biden is the overhelming favorite for the Democratic nomination. Former President Donald Trump remains the clear front-runner for the Republican nod.

This puts a lot of Americans in a position they don’t want to be in: A historically large share of them do not like either man at this point.

A CNN/SSRS poll from earlier this month found that more Americans viewed neither Biden nor Trump favorably than those who held favorable views of either man. A plurality (36%) viewed neither candidate favorably, while 33% had a favorable view of Trump and 32% for Biden. Constraining ourselves to registered voters, 31% viewed neither Biden nor Trump favorably.

When you zoom in on those who were unfavorably inclined toward Biden and Trump (i.e., putting aside those who were unsure or were neutral), 22% of adults and 21% of registered voters had an unfavorable view of both men.

To put that in perspective, consider the end of the 2016 presidential election. That race (between Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton) is the benchmark election for candidate unlikability. It is the only one on record in which both candidates were disliked by more Americans than liked on Election Day.

The final pre-election CNN poll of that campaign found that 16% of registered voters held an unfavorable view of both Trump and Clinton. When you add in those who were neutral or didn’t have an opinion, 19% viewed neither nominee favorably.

If the numbers we’re seeing now in CNN polling continue through the election, more Americans will dislike both major party nominees for president than ever before.

Usually, most Americans like at least one of the candidates running for president. That has been the norm for most of polling history.

Just 5% of voters said they had an unfavorable view of both Biden and Trump in the final 2020 CNN poll. An even smaller 3% of voters said they had an unfavorable view of Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney in the final CNN poll of the 2012 campaign.

It’s worth noting, of course, that we’re still well more than a year out from the 2024 election. Things can change.

But frequently, they change for the worse as more negative ads fly.

When you examine the polling at this point in the 2016 campaign, the current 2024 polling is even more ahistorical.

While Trump’s favorable rating among registered voters this month nearly equaled his favorable rating in CNN’s July 2015 poll (34%), Clinton’s stood at 44% in the 2015 survey. Her unfavorable rating was 49%. Biden’s favorable rating in CNN’s latest poll was 32% among adults and 35% among registered voters. His unfavorable figure was 56% among both groups.

Neither Trump nor Biden are anywhere near positive territory this cycle, and we’re not talking about one outlier poll.

The average of all polling so far indicates that both men have favorable ratings below 40% with unfavorable ratings into the mid-50s.

CNN’s May poll showed that 23% of voters didn’t hold a favorable view of either candidate. In each of Quinnipiac University’s last three polls among registered voters, somewhere between 22% and 28% of the electorate viewed neither candidate favorably. The average was 24%.

The closest anyone came to having a favorable rating above an unfavorable rating was Biden in Quinnipiac’s June poll. His favorable rating was 42% to an unfavorable rating of 54%.

So what happens if Biden and Trump continue to be this unpopular? Maybe primary voters decide they want to nominate someone else for president. But Biden doesn’t have a primary competitor with a favorable rating as close to his among Democrats. Trump’s most formidable challenger at this point, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, also has a net unfavorable rating among the general electorate.

If Biden and Trump make it to the general election with such low ratings, it could open the door for a third-party candidate. Ross Perot’s 1992 independent bid for the White House got major tailwinds early in that election cycle because both Democratic challenger Bill Clinton and Republican incumbent George H.W. Bush had low favorable ratings.

(Bill Clinton’s favorable rating in 1992 improved after winning his party nomination.)

Likewise, Hillary Clinton and Trump’s low favorable ratings in 2016 allowed the cumulative share of the vote outside the two major parties to eclipse 5% for the only time in the past 25 years.

The bottom line is that there may be repercussions if both parties put up such unpopular nominees. A number of voters may be unwilling to settle for a major-party candidate they dislike.

[ad_2]

Source link

April 12, 2021
Republican-controlled states target college students’ voting power ahead of high-stakes 2024 elections | CNN Politics

[ad_1]

CNN
—

Republican-controlled legislatures around the country have moved to erect new barriers to voting for high school and college students in what state lawmakers describe as an effort to clamp down on potential voter fraud. Critics call it a blatant attempt to suppress the youth vote as young people increasingly bolster Democratic candidates and liberal causes at the ballot box.

As turnout among young voters grows, new proposals that change photo ID requirements or impose other limits have emerged.

Laws enacted in Idaho this year, for instance, prohibit the use of student IDs to register to vote or cast ballots. A new law in Ohio, in effect for the first time in Tuesday’s primary elections, requires voters to present government-authorized photo ID at the polls, but student IDs are not included. Identification issued by universities has not traditionally been accepted to vote in the Buckeye State, but the new law eliminates the use of utility bills, bank statements and other documents that students have used before.

A proposal in Texas would eliminate all campus polling places in the state. Meanwhile, officials in Montana – where Democrat Jon Tester is seeking a fourth term in one of 2024’s highest-profile Senate contests – have appealed a court decision striking down additional document requirements for those using student IDs to vote.

And voting rights advocates say a longstanding statute in Georgia, which bars the use of student IDs from private universities, has made it more difficult for students at several schools – including Spelman and Morehouse, storied HBCUs in Atlanta – to participate in Georgia’s competitive US Senate and presidential elections.

“Republican legislatures … are pretty transparently trying to keep left-leaning groups from voting,” said Charlotte Hill, interim director of the Democracy Policy Initiative at UC-Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. Rather than trying to sway young voters, lawmakers seem willing “to shrink the eligible electorate,” she added.

Proponents say the changes are needed to protect against voter fraud and shore up public confidence in elections – battered by widespread, and false, claims of a stolen presidency in 2020. And they contend that the forms of identification provided by secondary schools and colleges vary too widely to serve as a reliable way to establish a voter’s identity and residency.

“They are issued by colleges, universities, public and private high schools, and some have address and pictures, while some do not,” Idaho state Sen. Scott Herndon, a Republican and one of the sponsors of the new law, said in an email to CNN.

During a legislative hearing earlier this year, Herndon said his goal was straightforward: “Make sure that people who are voting at the polls are who they say they are.”

The efforts to clamp down on student IDs and campus voting come against a backdrop of gains for Democrats among this demographic group. Exit polls analyzed by the Brookings Institution found that people ages 18 to 29 – especially young women – made a pronounced shift toward Democrats in last year’s midterm elections, helping to blunt an expected “red wave” for Republicans.

And voter registration among 18-24 year-olds increased in several states last year over 2018 levels – including Kansas and Michigan, where voters decided on ballot measures on abortion, following the US Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, according to data from Tufts University’s nonpartisan Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, or CIRCLE. CIRCLE conducts research into youth civic engagement.

An analysis by The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found that voting on college campuses soared in last month’s election for a state Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin. In that contest, the liberal candidate who prevailed, Janet Protasiewicz, had made protecting abortion rights a central feature of her campaign.

Among the voting wards in the city of Eau Claire, for instance, the highest turnout came from the ward that served several University of Wisconsin dorms – with nearly 900 votes cast, up from 150 in a Supreme Court race four years earlier, the paper found. Protasiewicz won 87% of those votes.

Prominent conservatives have spotlighted these voting trends.

“Young voters are the issue,” Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s former Republican governor, wrote in a widely noticed Twitter post following the state Supreme Court election. “It comes from years of radical indoctrination – on campus, in school, with social media, & throughout culture,” said Walker, who is president of Young America’s Foundation, which works to popularize conservative ideas among young people. “We have to counter it or conservatives will never win battleground states again.”

In an interview with CNN this week, Walker said his group is not seeking to change the ground rules for voting among younger Americans. But, he said, conservatives have been “overlooking ways to communicate to young people sooner than a month or two before the election.”

One longtime GOP lawyer has discussed ways to curtail youth voting.

The Washington Post, citing a PowerPoint presentation along with an audio recording of portions of the presentation obtained by liberal journalist Lauren Windsor, reported that GOP lawyer Cleta Mitchell recently urged Republicans to limit campus voting during a private gathering of Republican National Committee donors.

Mitchell, who tried to help former President Donald Trump overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, did not respond to a CNN interview request through a spokesperson for her current organization.

In Idaho, notably, the number of young people ages 18 and 19 registered to vote soared 81% between the week of the midterm elections in November 2018 and the same time period in November 2022 – the highest gain in the nation – according to data collected by CIRCLE.

One of the new laws in the state, which will take effect in January, drops student IDs from the list of accepted identification to vote. Now only these forms of ID can be used: a driver’s license or ID issued by the state’s transportation department, a US passport or identification with a photo issued by the US government, tribal identification or a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

Student IDs had been accepted for voting for more than a decade in the state.

State Rep. Tina Lambert, who authored the House version of the bill, declined a CNN interview request, citing a busy schedule.

But she said in an email that students should be able to navigate the new law. “Students of voting age are smart and able,” Lambert wrote. “They are able to get the ID needed to vote. Most of them have IDs already, that they use for all the other things that they need legal ID for.”

The law also has the support of Idaho Republican Secretary of State Phil McGrane, who told legislators this year that the change would help “maintain confidence in our elections” – although he said that he doesn’t know of any “instances of students trying to commit voter fraud.”

He also noted that student identification was rarely used. Just 104 of the nearly 600,000 voters who cast ballots in Idaho’s general election last year did so using student ID, McGrane said.

“Even if one person out there can only use a student ID to vote, that still matters. That’s still a vote,” said Saumya Sarin, a freshman at the College of Idaho in Caldwell, Idaho, and a volunteer with Babe Vote, a nonpartisan group that has worked to boost youth voter registration in the state. She testified against the proposal in the state legislature earlier this year.

Sarlin, who turns 19 this week, said she presented a US passport last year when she voted for the first time, but she noted that she had “several friends off the top of my head” who don’t have the forms of identification now required in Idaho.

“I think the direction that the youth are going with their vote scares the people who are currently in power a little bit because it works against them,” she said.

Sarlin said she’s become active on voting issues to take a stand against state policies she opposes, including Idaho’s limits on gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth and abortions. Idaho has a near-total ban on abortions and last month made it a crime to help a pregnant minor obtain an abortion in another state without parental consent.

Babe Vote and the League of Women Voters of Idaho have filed a lawsuit in an effort to block the Idaho voter ID laws. The measures “were not driven by any legitimate or credible concerns about the ‘integrity’ of the state’s elections,” the groups argue in their civil complaint. “Instead, they are part of a broader effort to roll back voting rights, particularly for young voters by weaponizing imaginary threats to election integrity.”

A separate lawsuit, brought by March for Our Lives Idaho and the Idaho Alliance for Retired Americans, in federal court also seeks to block the new laws.

Not all proposals to restrict student voting have been successful to date.

A bill introduced in February by GOP state Rep. Carrie Isaac in Texas to prohibit polling places on college campuses has not yet made it out of committee. Another Isaac bill would ban voting on K-12 campuses.

She told CNN this week that the measures are needed because polling places are sites of raw emotions and high stress, and she doesn’t want that kind of environment in schools.

“I don’t think it’s smart to invite people that would not otherwise have business on campus on our campuses,” Isaac said. “In Texas, we have two weeks of early voting that people are coming in, that would not otherwise be there. And I think we should do anything and everything to make our campuses as safe as possible.”

She said she’s confident that college students can find ways to vote off-campus.

In Georgia, a state that will be a key battleground in the 2024 White House contest, student IDs are accepted as a form of voter identification, but only if they are issued by public colleges in the state. Seven out of the 10 Historically Black Colleges and Universities Georgia are private, making it more difficult for students who attend those universities to cast their ballots, voting rights advocates say.

Former state Sen. Cecil Staton, a Republican who sponsored the 2006 photo ID law, said the government can ensure consistent standards for student IDs at state schools. “We didn’t feel like we had that same ability with private schools,” he said.

Aylon Gipson – a Morehouse student from Alabama and a fellow with the voting rights group Campus Vote Project – said he has a lot of friends who have had problems at the polls as a result of Georgia’s law, especially underclassmen who don’t have a driver’s license.

“I’ve seen specific instances where students will call me and say, ‘Hey, I tried to go in and vote, but I got turned around at this polling station,’ or specifically our on-campus polling station, because they didn’t have an ID or they didn’t have a valid license to be able to vote with,” Gipson said. “I think it’s disenfranchising students who attend these HBCUs simply because of the fact that we’re private.”

And in Ohio, which will see a hotly contested US Senate race next year as Democrat Sherrod Brown seeks reelection in a state where the GOP controls the legislature and governor’s office, Tuesday’s primary election marks the first election with the new photo ID rules in place. Voting rights advocates say the new restrictions could spell problems for students who have moved to Ohio for college and are no longer allowed to provide dormitory, utility bills or other documents to establish their legal residency when voting.

Getting the form of ID now required in Ohio, such as a state driver’s license, will invalidate identification students may possess from their home state.

“It seems as if this specific group – out-of-state college students, who have every right to vote – have been targeted and singled out,” said Collin Marozzi, deputy policy director of the ACLU of Ohio.

Legislators, he said, are sending a “poor signal to these college students: ‘We want your money for our colleges. We want your money for our economy. But we don’t really want you to have a voice in the future of this state.’ “

Students in Ohio still can opt to vote absentee by mail if they don’t want to surrender their identification from the state where they used to live – provided they include the last four digits of their Social Security number on the application. (The law establishing new photo ID requirements also reduces the window to request and return absentee ballots.)

“For that college student, they make a decision: Am I a voter in Ohio or, say, in Pennsylvania?” said Rob Nichols, a spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican. “If you want to hang on to your Pennsylvania license, you can do so, vote absentee, give the last four digits of your Social, and you are on your merry way.”

[ad_2]

Source link

April 12, 2021
Ron DeSantis is campaigning on his record. Judges keep saying it’s unconstitutional | CNN Politics

[ad_1]

CNN
—

Gov. Ron DeSantis has toured the country calling Florida the place “where woke goes to die.” But it’s still alive at the company Sara Margulis runs.

At Honeyfund, a website for engaged couples to create gift registries that can pay for their honeymoons, Margulis’ Florida employees learn about privilege and institutional racism. Margulis, the CEO and co-founder, said the training makes her staff better suited to serve couples of any background. Planning for this fall’s employee retreat is underway, with a session scheduled on DEI – or diversity, equity and inclusion, a term DeSantis often rails against.

DeSantis tried to ban such employee training in 2022, when the Florida Republican championed what he called the Stop WOKE Act. But Honeyfund and others sued on the grounds that the law violated their free speech. A federal judge agreed and blocked it from going into effect. The DeSantis administration then appealed – one of many of the governor’s ongoing legal battles as he pursues the presidency.

“Companies aren’t ‘going woke’ out of allegiance to Democrats. Time after time, diversity has proven to be good for the bottom line,” Margulis said. “Valuing diversity means understanding it, understanding means training and training means having to deal with this law. We were really handed a chance to make a difference for other business owners by challenging it, and we took it.”

In his early outreach to Republican voters as a presidential candidate, DeSantis has portrayed himself as a fighter and, crucially, a winner in the cultural battles increasingly important to conservatives. If elected to the White House, he’ll take those fights to Washington, he has said.

“I will go on offense,” DeSantis said in Iowa last month. “I will lean into all the issues that matter.”

But back in Florida, the agenda at the centerpiece of his pitch remains unsettled. Still ongoing are more than a dozen legal battles testing the constitutionality of many of the victories DeSantis has touted on the campaign trail. Critics say DeSantis has built his governorship around enacting laws that appeal to his conservative base but that, as a Harvard-trained lawyer, he knows are unconstitutional and not likely to take effect.

In addition to halting parts of the Stop WOKE Act, judges have also intervened to freeze implementation of other DeSantis-led laws cracking down on protesters and Big Tech. The six-week abortion ban he signed this year – which he has called the “heartbeat bill” when speaking to conservative, and especially evangelical, audiences – won’t take effect unless the state Supreme Court determines that a privacy clause in Florida’s constitution doesn’t protect access to the procedure. Disney – the most famous of DeSantis’ political adversaries – has argued in court that the governor overstepped his power when he orchestrated a takeover of the entertainment giant’s special taxing district to punish the company for speaking out against his agenda. So did Andrew Warren, the twice-elected Tampa prosecutor whom DeSantis suspended last year in another act of political retaliation.

DeSantis has repeatedly predicted he will ultimately prevail in these challenges. Bryan Griffin, a spokesman for his campaign, called the lawsuits “the tactics of activists who seek to impose their will on people by judicial fiat.”

“These attempts to circumvent the will of the legislature are not indicative of anything beyond the failure of the left’s ideas at the ballot box,” Griffin said in a statement. “Governor DeSantis is a proven fighter who will bring the same temerity to the presidency.”

Recent weeks, though, have seen a handful of reminders that several pillars of his record remain fragile even as they figure prominently in his stump speeches.

On Friday, a federal judge blocked a new Florida law that gave the DeSantis administration the power to shut down bars or restaurants that admit children to certain “adult live performances,” widely seen as a crackdown on drag shows.

Another federal judge said Wednesday that Florida could not restrict transgender adults on Medicaid from receiving gender-affirming care. The same judge earlier this month had stepped in to allow three transgender children to receive puberty blockers while a lawsuit seeking to overturn a state ban on the treatment proceeds. In both rulings, the judge said there was “no rational basis” to prevent the care and declared “gender identity is real,” casting doubts on the future of the state’s prohibition.

DeSantis, as a presidential candidate, has seized on conservative concerns over such treatment, particularly for minors. His efforts to halt it – including signing a law that prohibits transgender children from receiving gender-affirming treatments and punish doctors who run afoul of it – are prominently featured in his stump speeches. Speaking to North Carolina Republicans after the ruling, the governor acknowledged the legal fight, but he assured the audience: “We are going to win.”

“It is mutilation, and it is wrong, and it has no place in our state,” he said.

DeSantis of late has also taken credit for the GOP’s narrow US House majority, noting the highly partisan map he pushed through his state legislature, which ultimately helped Republicans net four critical seats. But those suing Florida to invalidate the state’s congressional boundaries have new reason for optimism after the US Supreme Court ordered Alabama officials to redraw its map to allow an additional Black-majority district. The DeSantis map was similarly criticized as diminishing the power of minority voters in Florida.

“Many of the things coming from the governor are form over function,” said Cecile Scoon, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, one of plaintiffs in the redistricting lawsuit. “They want to get to a certain result, so they find a means to do it, whether it makes logic or legal sense or not.”

The US District Court for the Northern District of Florida has in particular stymied DeSantis’ agenda. Two judges on the bench, Mark Walker and Robert Hinkle, have repeatedly ruled against the governor, often punctuating their opinions with harsh and colorful repudiations.

Walker, in one ruling blocking parts of the Stop WOKE Act, compared Florida’s treatment of the First Amendment under DeSantis to the “Upside Down,” the nightmare alternative dimension from the Netflix series “Stranger Things.” In another lawsuit over the law, this one filed by college professors, Walker called the law “dystopian” and wrote that DeSantis and Florida Republicans had “declared the state has unfettered authority to muzzle its professors in the name of ‘freedom.’”

Hinkle, in January, chided DeSantis’ suspension of Warren as political, unconstitutional and executed with “not a hint of misconduct,” though he ultimately ruled he was powerless to intervene. Warren is appealing, though he suffered another defeat when the state Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a separate request to reinstate him.

Ruling this month against the state in the two cases dealing with transgender care prohibition, Hinkle called the law “an exercise in politics, not good medicine.”

“Nothing could have motivated this remarkable intrusion into parental prerogatives other than opposition to transgender status itself,” he wrote.

DeSantis has shrugged off these defeats as the work of left-leaning judges. President Barack Obama nominated Walker to his district court judgeship in 2012, and Hinkle was selected by President Bill Clinton in 1996. Neither nomination drew objection from Senate Republicans at the time.

When Walker ruled to block Florida’s anti-riot law – comparing it to past attempts to squash dissent from Civil Rights activists in the 1950s and 60s – DeSantis dismissed it as “a foreordained conclusion in front of that court.”

“We will win that on appeal,” DeSantis said. “I guarantee we’ll win that on appeal.”

That assurance came 21 months ago. In the meantime, the law has yet to take effect.

Dana Thompson Dorsey, a professor of education law, was among seven Florida college professors who sued to block the Stop WOKE Act over provisions that limited how she and her colleagues could talk about race and sex with students. She called Walker’s decision halting the law a “work of art.”

Since then, she has continued to teach critical race studies to her doctoral students at the University of South Florida, while DeSantis has taken his fight against the concept national. But despite winning injunctive relief, she remains troubled by the new environment for higher education under DeSantis.

“There is a lot at stake and it’s not just for those of us brave enough to be plaintiffs,” she said. “The idea of telling adults what they can and cannot learn is unfathomable. The students who become our future leaders will repeat our mistakes if they don’t understand the past.”

While legal challenges have prevented DeSantis from fully realizing his vision for Florida, the uncertainty has not always benefited opponents and the plaintiffs suing to block his agenda.

Abortions after 15 weeks have paused in most cases in Florida while providers await a ruling on the state’s ban. Andrew Warren remains out of office. Transgender care providers are in uncertain territory – Hinkle’s limited rulings provided relief but only for those who sued the state.

The League of Women Voters of Florida is taking the state to court over new restrictions on third-party voter registration. Fines for violating the law could cost as much as $250,000 a year and the organization has asked for a preliminary injunction to prevent its enforcement. In the meantime, the league decided it would no longer collect and turn in voter registration forms, pausing for now a practice that has been central to its civic outreach for more than 75 years.

“That’s a very sad and horrible result, but we cannot figure out a way to protect ourselves without that major change,” Scoon said.

DeSantis has also managed to maneuver when legal challenges have threatened to stymie his efforts, thanks to a closely aligned Republican-led legislature.

When a lawsuit accused the governor of breaking state law when he sent two planes carrying migrants from San Antonio, Texas, to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, lawmakers helped change the law to allow him to do so. His administration recently orchestrated the transport of migrants from El Paso, Texas, to California.

After several individuals arrested last year for voter fraud by DeSantis’ new election security force had their cases dismissed, lawmakers again tweaked the law to try to make it easier for the state to secure convictions.

DeSantis and Florida Republicans have signaled they intend to keep fighting in court, too. The budget DeSantis signed earlier this month included $16 million for legal battles underway and the ones to come.

“We will never surrender to the woke mob,” the governor recently told an audience in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are going to leave woke ideology in the dustbin of history where it belongs.”

[ad_2]

Source link

April 12, 2021
Trump again refuses to concede 2020 election while taking questions from New Hampshire GOP primary voters | CNN Politics

[ad_1]

CNN
—

Former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, once again refused to concede that he lost the 2020 election and repeated false claims about it being stolen at a CNN town hall in New Hampshire on Wednesday.

Taking questions from GOP primary voters at the town hall moderated by “CNN This Morning” anchor Kaitlan Collins, Trump remained defiant about the 2020 election as well as the myriad investigations into him – making clear that he’s sticking to the script he’s delivered over the past two years on conservative media.

The town hall at Saint Anselm College – his first appearance on CNN since 2016 – came as unprecedented legal clouds hang over him as he seeks to become only the second commander in chief ever elected to two nonconsecutive terms. New Hampshire, home to the first-in-the-nation GOP primary, is also home to many swing voters and is a state he lost in both 2016 and 2020 after winning the primaries.

The audience of Republicans and undeclared voters who plan to vote in the GOP primary cheered Trump throughout the evening, including when he attacked Tuesday’s jury verdict that found he sexually abused former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll. Trump mocked Carroll on Wednesday while downplaying the significance of the $5 million the jury awarded her for battery and defamation.

The former president said he would pardon “a large portion” of the rioters at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and even pulled out a printout of his own tweets from that day in an attempt to deflect blame as Collins pressed him on why he waited three hours before telling the rioters to leave the Capitol.

“I am inclined to pardon many of them,” Trump said Wednesday night.

When Collins pressed Trump on the Manhattan federal jury finding Trump sexually abused Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in 1996, Trump suggested it was helping his poll numbers.

When asked if the jury’s decision would deter women from voting for him, the former president said, “No, I don’t think so.”

Trump insulted Carroll, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and even Collins when she pressed him on a question about why he hadn’t returned classified documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago.

“It’s very simple – you’re a nasty person, I’ll tell you,” Trump said on stage.

Trump also took questions from New Hampshire voters on the economy and policy issues, such as abortion. The former president, who solidified the conservative majority on the Supreme Court that struck down Roe v. Wade, repeatedly declined to say whether he would sign a federal abortion ban if he won a second term.

Trump suggested Republicans should refuse to raise the debt limit if the White House does not agree to spending cuts.

“I say to the Republicans out there – congressmen, senators – if they don’t give you massive cuts, you’re going to have to do a default, and I don’t believe they’re going to do a default because I think the Democrats will absolutely cave, will absolutely cave because you don’t want to have that happen, but it’s better than what we’re doing right now because we’re spending money like drunken sailors,” Trump said.

When Collins asked him to clarify whether the US should default if the White House doesn’t agree to cuts, Trump said, “We might as well do it now than do it later.”

Trump pleaded not guilty last month to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Trump also faces potential legal peril in both Washington, DC – where a special counsel is leading a pair of investigations – and in Georgia, where the Fulton County district attorney plans to announce charges this summer from the investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the Peach State.

Still, the twice-impeached former president has repeatedly said that any charges will not stop him from running for president, dismissing all of the investigations as politically motivated witch hunts. That’s a view many GOP voters share, according to recent surveys. Nearly 70% of Republican primary voters in a recent NBC News poll said investigations into the former president “are politically motivated” and that “no other candidate is like him, we must support him.”

Trump was pressed on the investigation into his handling of classified documents and why he didn’t return all of the documents in his possession after receiving a subpoena. He responded by pointing out the classified documents found at the homes of others – including President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence. But they both returned the documents once they discovered they had them in their possession.

The FBI obtained a search warrant and retrieved more than 100 classified documents from Trump’s Florida resort in August 2022, which came after he had received a subpoena to return documents in June 2022 and after his attorney had asserted that all classified material in his possession had been returned.

Asked during the town hall whether he showed the classified documents to anyone at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said, “Not really.”

The former president would not say whether he wants Russia or Ukraine to win the war during Wednesday’s town hall, instead saying that he wants the war to end.

“I don’t think in terms of winning and losing. I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people,” he said.

When asked again whether or not the former president wants Ukraine to win, Trump did not answer directly, but instead claimed that he would be able to end the war in 24 hours.

“Russians and Ukrainians, I want them to stop dying,” Trump said. “And I’ll have that done in 24 hours.”

Trump said he thinks that “(Russian President Vladimir) Putin made a mistake” by invading Ukraine, but he stopped short of saying that Putin is a war criminal.

That’s something that “should be discussed later,” Trump said.

“If you say he’s a war criminal, it’s going to be a lot tougher to make a deal to make this thing stopped,” he said.

While a handful of rivals have entered the Republican presidential primary – and Trump’s biggest potential rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has not yet officially launched a bid – Trump has maintained a healthy lead in early GOP primary polling. In a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Sunday, 43% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents named Trump unprompted when asked who they would like to see the party nominate in 2024, compared with 20% naming DeSantis, and 2% or less naming any other candidate.

Trump’s participation in the town hall was indicative of a broader campaign strategy to try to expand his appeal beyond conservative media viewers, CNN’s Kristen Holmes reported earlier Wednesday. He’s surrounded himself with a more organized team and has been making smaller retail politics stops while scaling back larger rallies – signs of a more traditional campaign than his 2016 and 2020 operations. He lost that 2020 race by about 7 million votes, although he continues to falsely claim it was stolen from him – claims he stuck to on Wednesday night.

There have been warning signs for the GOP that the obsession with the 2020 election isn’t palatable beyond the base. Many of Trump’s handpicked candidates who embraced his election lies in swing states lost in last year’s midterm elections. And his advisers acknowledge he still has work to do to engage with Republican voters outside of his loyal base of supporters, multiple sources told CNN.

But that didn’t mean Trump was ready to acknowledge the reality that he lost the 2020 election. And if he becomes the GOP nominee in 2024, Trump said Wednesday he would not commit to accepting the results regardless of the outcome, saying that he would do so if he believes “it’s an honest election.”

“If I think it’s an honest election, I would be honored to,” he said.

This story has been updated with additional details from the town hall.

[ad_2]

Source link

April 12, 2021
House to vote on GOP border security bill | CNN Politics

[ad_1]

CNN
—

The House will vote Thursday on a sweeping GOP border security bill after Republican leaders worked to lock down votes and win over holdouts within their own party.

The GOP border bill is dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate and the White House has issued a veto threat. But the bill is expected to pass in the House and will serve as a messaging opportunity for the House Republican majority on one of their signature priorities. Final passage has been planned to coincide with the expiration of Title 42, a pandemic-era policy that allowed certain migrants to be turned away at the border.

The bill would restart construction of a border wall, increase funding for border agents and upgraded border technology, reinstate the “remain in Mexico” policy, place new restrictions on asylum seekers, and enhance requirements for E-verify, a database employers use to verify immigration status.

Republican leaders worked for months to negotiate the border and immigration package, a key piece of legislation for the GOP majority focused on an issue Republican lawmakers ran on in the midterms. But crafting immigration policy has proven complicated for House Republicans, exposing divisions within the GOP conference.

Thursday’s vote will take place after House GOP leaders agreed to make last-minute changes to the package amid concerns over various provisions from some of their members.

One issue had been over language that asks the secretary of homeland security to issue a report determining whether Mexican cartels are a “foreign terrorist organization.” Some Republicans pushed leadership to take it out of the bill, concerned it could create a new “credible fear” claim for asylum seekers.

On Wednesday, Florida Rep. Byron Donalds confirmed that leaders would be tweaking the bill to address members’ concern, including an amendment to change the foreign terrorist organization language.

There were also concerns over a provision in the bill to expand E-verify with some Republicans worried that without reworking the agricultural visa program, the provision could make it more difficult for rural farmers to find a pipeline of workers.

Rep. Dan Newhouse, in a tweet on Wednesday, said that leadership had committed to addressing concerns raised over E-verify in the package, and he said he would support the package as a result of those assurances.

The Biden administration’s veto threat against the legislation criticized the measure, saying, “this bill would make things worse, not better.”

The measure “does nothing to address the root causes of migration, reduces humanitarian protections, and restricts lawful pathways, which are critical alternatives to unlawful entry … because this bill does very little to actually increase border security while doing a great deal to trample on the nation’s core values and international obligations, it should be rejected,” the statement said.

[ad_2]

Source link

April 12, 2021
Koch network raises more than $70 million, launches new anti-Trump ads in early voting states | CNN Politics

[ad_1]

CNN
—

The influential network associated with conservative billionaire Charles Koch has collected more than $70 million for political races, the group announced Thursday, as it gears up to help shape the outcome of next year’s contests up and down the ballot and encourage Republican voters to bypass former President Donald Trump in the White House nomination fight.

Americans for Prosperity Action has pledged to back a single contender in the GOP presidential primary for the first time in its history. It has not yet announced whom it will support, but the group could dramatically reshape the Republican field by deploying its vast resources and standing army of conservative activists on behalf of a single candidate.

The sums raised by the group will help advance those efforts. The lion’s share of the total announced Thursday came from two organizations affiliated with Koch: $25 million from his Kansas-based industrial conglomerate Koch Industries, and another $25 million from Stand Together, a nonprofit he founded, AFP Action spokesman Bill Riggs confirmed.

The New York Times first reported the fundraising total.

The group is also launching new digital spots, shared first with CNN, that cast Trump as a candidate Republicans can’t risk supporting in 2024.

“Instead of making (President Joe) Biden answer for his reckless progressive agenda, Trump makes the debate about indictments, personal grievances and the election he lost,” one 30-second spot, titled “The Choice,” says.

The second, called “Unelectable,” describes Trump as a serial loser who caused Republicans to lose the House, Senate and the White House. “If Donald Trump is the GOP nominee, we could lose everything,” the narrator says.

The ads will run in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, officials said.

“President Trump continues to fight against the swampy D.C. insiders who would love nothing more than to have an establishment puppet they can control in the White House,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in an email. “No amount of dirty money from shady lobbyists and mysterious donors will ever stop the America First movement, and that’s why President Trump continues to dominate poll after poll — both nationally and statewide. We welcome this fight.”

AFP Action on Thursday also announced its first US House endorsements of the cycle, saying it will back Republican Reps. Juan Ciscomani of Arizona, Young Kim of California, Zach Nunn of Iowa and John James of Michigan, along with former GOP Rep. Yvette Herrell of New Mexico.

In addition to attempting to stir doubts about Trump among the GOP faithful, network officials have said part of their 2024 strategy is to bring more general election voters into the GOP primary process to alter the outcome of early contests.

Americans for Prosperity already has reached out to 1.4 million potential new Republican and swing voters in nearly a dozen states, officials said.

In a statement to CNN earlier this month, Americans for Prosperity CEO Emily Seidel said the group’s voter interactions have demonstrated to it that many Trump supporters are “receptive to arguments that he is a weak candidate, his focus on 2020 is a liability, and his lack of appeal with independent voters is a problem.”

“That tells us that many Republicans are ready to move on, they just need to see another candidate step up and show they can lead and win,” she added.

[ad_2]

Source link

April 12, 2021
Kentucky GOP governor primary tests Trump’s influence ahead of 2024 | CNN Politics

[ad_1]

CNN
—

Republicans in Kentucky will decide their nominee for governor on Tuesday in the party’s first major primary since last year’s midterm elections – and one with implications for the 2024 GOP presidential race and the battle for Senate control.

The race will test former President Donald Trump’s influence with GOP voters as he seeks a return to the White House. It will also weigh conservatives’ appetite for cultural fights over transgender rights, tough-on-crime messaging and more.

Three states are hosting governor’s races this year, with Kentucky’s likely to be the most competitive. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s bid for a second term could be an important bellwether for 2024, when his party is defending Senate seats in several other red states – West Virginia, Montana and Ohio.

Beshear, whose father was a two-term governor, defeated Republican Gov. Matt Bevin – an unpopular incumbent who had angered many in his own party – in 2019. He is considered a shoo-in to fend off two challengers in Tuesday’s Democratic primary.

The Republican contest, meanwhile, has been bitter. State Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a former staffer for Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, entered the race as the heavy favorite. But Kelly Craft, who served as Trump’s ambassador to Canada and then to the United Nations and is the wife of billionaire coal magnate Joe Craft, has pumped millions of dollars into television ads in the race.

Other GOP candidates include Ryan Quarles, the state agriculture commissioner who has focused his campaign on rural areas of the state, state auditor Mike Harmon, conservative activist Eric Deters and Somerset Mayor Alan Keck.

At the center of the conflict between the two front-runners, Cameron and Craft, is Trump.

The former president endorsed Cameron – who had a prime speaking slot at the 2020 Republican National Convention and has been viewed by many in the GOP as a rising star – in June 2022, even though Craft, who had worked in his administration, was still considering entering the race.

Cameron was elected Kentucky attorney general in 2019 – the first Republican to do so in more than 70 years. If he wins the primary and general elections this year, he would become the first Black Republican elected governor anywhere in the United States. (Two Black Republicans served as acting governor of Louisiana in the 1870s, during the Reconstruction era, but neither were elected.)

Craft has downplayed Trump’s endorsement of Cameron, noting that it came when she was not officially in the race.

Cameron, in a debate earlier this month, shot back by pointing out that Trump attended the Kentucky Derby alongside Craft last year – and, weeks later, endorsed Cameron.

“Kelly, you spent six months telling folks that you were going to get the Donald Trump endorsement. You had him at the Derby last year. And then I got the endorsement. And your team has been scrambling ever since,” Cameron said at the debate hosted by Kentucky Educational Television.

Craft has sought to latch Cameron to McConnell, portraying her opponent as a political insider who, she says in one ad, would “rather follow than lead.” She has also campaigned on a tough-on-crime message and lambasted Cameron for allowing the Justice Department to investigate Louisville’s police department after officers shot and killed Breonna Taylor, prompting national backlash, in 2020. In a TV ad, Craft’s campaign described the Justice Department as “woke” and its probe as a “big government takeover.”

“Letting big government push their diversity agenda while crime skyrocketed, they failed Kentucky’s law enforcement,” the ad’s narrator says.

Craft has also leaned into attacks on transgender rights while slamming what she calls “woke ideology” in schools.

“We will not have transgenders in our school system,” she said Monday during a telephone town hall – a remark that prompted criticism from pro-LGBTQ rights advocates in Kentucky.

For his part, Quarles has sought to win over voters who may be turned off by the ad battles between Cameron and Craft.

“It’s important that Republicans nominate a candidate who can unite the party,” he said in the early May debate. “There’s no problem with having disagreements on issues and policies and voting records, etc. But it’s important that if we’re going to defeat Andy Beshear, we need to nominate somebody who wants to help lift other people up and unite the party after May 16.”

Despite the attack ads and debate-stage barbs, GOP observers say differences on policy matters between the candidates are minimal.

“It’s more of a personality-driven campaign,” said Tyler Glick, a Republican public affairs consultant based in Louisville. “I don’t think it’s been so much fought out over the issues as just positioning their story and their approach.”

While the governor’s race is Kentucky’s marquee contest of 2023, Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams – who has won bipartisan praise for his work with Beshear and the GOP-led legislature to expand mail-in and early voting faces two primary opponents in his bid for a second term.

One opponent, information technology project manager Steve Knipper, who has lost two previous bids for the state’s chief elections role, has claimed without evidence that there was fraud in the 2019 governor’s race won by Beshear. Another contender is Allen Maricle, a former state lawmaker.

Adams said in an interview on KET this month that his rivals were pushing “crazy myths” about election fraud.

“The bottom line is our elections are more secure now than they’ve ever been,” he said.

Like the gubernatorial contest, the winner of the GOP primary for secretary of state only needs a plurality of the vote to land the nomination. Former state Rep. Buddy Wheatley is unopposed for the Democratic nomination.

[ad_2]

Source link

April 12, 2021
These are the big ideas Republicans are pushing for 2024 | CNN Politics

[ad_1]

A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.

CNN
—

Amend the Constitution! Touch the third rail! Think big and make things better!

This is the big ideas period of American politics – a time that occurs roughly every four years in the lead-up to a presidential election – when candidates push expansive proposals, usually short on specifics.

While the big ideas generally have little chance of becoming law, they speak to what the people who want to be president think will move primary voters.

With President Joe Biden currently a lock for the Democratic nomination, most of the intellectual action this year is among Republicans.

Below are some of the big ideas of the moment, which are usually unique to one or two candidates as opposed to positions that are standard for the party. I view these as distinct from the daily political issues – things like abortion rights, foreign policy, border security and gender rights, where there is a sliding scale of positions.

Nikki Haley: Biden ‘likely’ won’t make it to end of second term

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who is 51, wants to impose a “mental competency” test for older candidates over 75.

With both of the current leading candidates – Biden and former President Donald Trump – well beyond when most people would consider retirement, age is already a major issue this year.

It’s a smart way to tap into fears that Biden, in particular, has lost a step. But it’s hard to imagine it actually put into use. Who would administer this test? Who would assess the results? Why not all candidates?

The point of the democratic system is that voters should get to choose. This proposal would necessarily limit their choices.

On the other hand, age limits are not an entirely crazy idea. Corporations impose them on executives, for instance. Pilots have a mandatory retirement age of 65, although that could be raised in the near future to deal with a pilot shortage.

Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech founder, wants to raise the legal voting age to 25. It’s hard to imagine how this would work since the current voting age of 18 is guaranteed in the 26th Amendment.

Democrats like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have in recent years pushed to go in the opposite direction, arguing to lower the voting age to 16.

Ramaswamy says there would be exceptions to raising the voting age, such as for people who join the military or otherwise meet a “national service requirement.” Others could pass the same test given to naturalized immigrants.

“I want more civic engagement. My hypothesis is that when you attach greater value to the act, we will see more 18-to-25-year-olds actually vote than do now,” Ramaswamy told The Washington Post.

Nikki Haley calls for raising retirement age

Nikki Haley and former Vice President Mike Pence are among those pushing to change the age at which Americans can access retirement benefits.

While both Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are swearing up and down that they will protect these key parts of the social safety net, Haley and Pence are calling for a more honest discussion about the nation’s finances.

In their telling, raising the retirement age would only affect the youngest Americans – people in their 20s and younger, generations sure to live and work longer than their forebears.

But specifics are hard to come by, as CNN’s Jake Tapper found when he asked Haley at a CNN town hall in early June what retirement age she is proposing. She said more calculations are needed to come up with a specific retirement age for people currently in their 20s.

Meantime, she said, “we’re going to go tell them ‘Times have changed.’ I think (Trump and DeSantis are) not being honest with the American people.”

DeSantis did recently acknowledge in New Hampshire that Social Security is “going to look a little bit different” for younger generations.

Pence, at his own CNN town hall in early June, said raising the eligibility age for Social Security is one option to have the tough conversation about national spending, but not the only one.

“It also could include letting younger Americans invest a portion of their payroll taxes in a mutual fund, like the TSP (Thrift Savings Plan) program that 10 million federal employees are in today,” he said.

Trump slams 14th Amendment at rally

Both former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis want to revoke birthright citizenship, or the right of every person born in the US to be an American citizen.

They complain that even babies born to undocumented people become citizens. Birthright citizenship is guaranteed in the 14th Amendment, the key post-Civil War amendment that was meant to protect former slaves.

Trump has been teasing an end to birthright citizenship for years, but there is not currently a meaningful effort to change the Constitution.

Trump has pledged to sign an executive order. DeSantis has said he would lean on Congress and the court system. Actually changing the Constitution would be nearly impossible in today’s political environment.

Former President Donald Trump’s most outside-the-box ideas have a futuristic “Jetsons” feel.

He wants to build new “freedom cities” on federal land to reopen the American frontier and give people a chance at home ownership. He argues the plan could revitalize American manufacturing.

And he envisions freeing Americans from hellish commutes by looking to the skies, taking the initiative to innovate vertical-takeoff vehicles. CNN’s report on Trump’s proposals notes that technology is already underway by industry, but a long way from being available to consumers.

A government-planned city might seem like a strange proposal for a candidate whose party has long embraced free market ideals. But the idea of a planned city is not completely foreign – just look at Washington, DC.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to undo Trump’s greatest bipartisan achievement: The First Step Act, a criminal justice and sentencing reform law.

The product of intense bipartisan negotiations during Trump’s term in office, the law was hailed for rethinking harsh prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.

But the political landscape has changed since 2018, when Trump signed the law as president and DeSantis voted for it as a congressman. Now, DeSantis calls the law the “jailbreak bill.”

Both men want to impose the death penalty for drug offenders, an especially awkward pivot for Trump, who has bragged about his compassion in setting drug dealers like Alice Johnson free when he commuted her sentence. The case helped build support for the First Step Act. Her crime could have made her eligible for the death penalty under his new plan.

Trump still brags about the First Step Act, and repealing it would take help from Democrats in the Senate.

DeSantis, meanwhile, is moving to the right of Trump on crime and even vetoed a bipartisan criminal justice law in Florida that passed easily through the Republican-dominated legislature.

Pence also said in his CNN town hall he would “take a step back” from the First Step Act – though it is unclear what that means in practical terms.

[ad_2]

Source link

April 12, 2021
Ohio’s showdown over abortion rights intensifies as group files signatures for ballot measure | CNN Politics

[ad_1]

CNN
—

Ohio is poised to become the next major abortion battleground after groups seeking to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution on Wednesday submitted hundreds of thousands of petition signatures to the secretary of state’s office.

If certified, those 710,000 signatures – nearly 300,000 more than state law requires – would place the proposed amendment on ballots in November alongside municipal and school board elections across the state.

The statewide vote would come the year after two of Ohio’s neighboring states – deep-red Kentucky and the political battleground of Michigan – supported abortion rights in their own ballot measures.

It would position Ohio, traditionally a presidential swing state that has shifted in the GOP’s favor in recent years, as the latest test of voters’ attitudes ahead of a 2024 presidential election in which the debate over abortion rights could play a central role in both the Republican primary and the general election.

“We know that Ohioans, just like our neighbors in Michigan and Kentucky – when they have the opportunity to vote for abortion access, they will,” said Lauren Blauvelt, vice president of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio.

Abortion rights advocates on Wednesday said they were pulled into politics in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s decision last June to overturn Roe v. Wade’s long-standing federal abortion protections and return the issue to the states.

“I was never very political before all this started last year,” said Dr. Aziza Wahby, a Cleveland dermatologist who has become active over the last year with Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights, a group that was part of the effort to gather signatures. “This has made me pay more attention and I think it will do the same for others.”

The proposed amendment in Ohio would ensure “every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s reproductive decisions.” It could make Ohio the only state with a ballot measure on abortion rights this year.

Local officials have until July 20 to verify the signatures, with Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose having final approval to place the issue on this fall’s ballots by July 25.

Before the November election, though, is another key vote: an August 8 special election set by Ohio’s Republican-dominated legislature, in which voters will decide whether to raise the threshold for amending the state constitution from the current simple majority to 60%.

The debate over the constitutional amendment and the change to the amendment process has galvanized both sides of the abortion fight.

After filing U-Haul truckloads of petition signatures Wednesday, abortion rights advocates complained that the special election was slated for a moment when families will be wrapping up summer vacations and preparing for the start of school – a period when the state’s voters are not used to casting ballots.

“And they’re doing that on purpose because they know that their agenda is not the agenda of Ohioans,” said Kellie Copeland, the executive director of Pro-Choice Ohio.

Amy Fogel, who said she became awakened to politics during the Trump era and joined the grassroots group Red Wine and Blue, has spent months helping collect signatures for the citizen-led initiative for the November ballot. She said she was “absolutely heartbroken” when the August special election was approved by the Republican supermajority in the statehouse.

“It was just a blatant power grab to take away the majority vote of Ohioans,” Fogel said.

She said she and other volunteers would not be deterred by the new hurdle.

“We started out telling people to vote in November and now we have to tell them to make sure you plan an absentee ballot, vote early, or show up at the polls on August 8,” Fogel said. “You have to vote ‘No,’ to protect the Ohio constitution and majority vote in August and then ‘Yes,’ in November.”

It is confusing, she said, by design.

Amy Natoce, the press secretary for Protect Women Ohio, the coalition working to defeat the abortion rights ballot measure in November, dismissed suggestions that a special election in August was in any way undemocratic because of concerns over historically low voter turnout in the summer.

“There is no time like the present to protect Ohio’s constitution,” Natoce said in an interview. “Ohioans should be reminded of the fact that this is allowing them to determine how their constitution is amended. We’ve seen the other side saying one person, one vote, this takes away the people’s vote. Not at all.”

For the next month, both campaigns will be unfolding across Ohio – on “Issue 1,” to raise the threshold of support needed to change the constitution, and on the November ballot measure on abortion. From door-to-door canvassing to a multi-million dollar television ad campaign, both sides are intensifying their efforts ahead of the August and November elections.

“We’re going to continue in all 88 counties across Ohio,” Natoce said. “But we have to move ahead as if it will be on the ballot in November.”

Two former Republican governors, Bob Taft and John Kasich, have come out against the August 8 special election, saying such a consequential change to state law shouldn’t happen during a low-turnout summer election.

“I just think it’s a major mistake to approve or disapprove such a change at the lowest-turnout election that we have,” Taft said at a forum in Dayton last week. “This is a kind of change that really needs to be considered by all the people who go out and vote in a presidential election.”

[ad_2]

Source link

April 12, 2021