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      Outcry as Republican Nikki Haley says Raphael Warnock should be ‘deported’

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      Outcry as Republican Nikki Haley says Raphael Warnock should be ‘deported’Comments from former South Carolina governor and UN envoy, seen as a potential 2024 candidate, draw widespread criticism The former US ambassador to the United Nations and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley told Republicans at a rally for Herschel Walker the Democrat in the Georgia US Senate race, the Rev Raphael Warnock, should be “deported”.“I am the daughter of Indian immigrants,” Haley said in Hiram, Georgia, on Sunday. “They came here legally, they put in the time, they put in the price, they are offended by what’s happening on [the southern US] border.Midterms live: Biden and Trump hit campaign trail as 41 million US voters cast early ballots in crucial electionsRead more“Legal immigrants are more patriotic than the leftists these days. They knew they worked to come into America, and they love America. They want the laws followed in America, so the only person we need to make sure we deport is Warnock.”Haley is widely seen as a potential candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, a seemingly imminent declaration from Donald Trump notwithstanding. Her comment drew widespread criticism.Cornell William Brooks, a Harvard professor and pastor, wrote: “Were it not for civil rights laws Black folks died for, Nikki Haley’s family might not be in America.“Were it not for a HBCU [historically Black college and university] giving her father his first job in the US, Haley wouldn’t be in a position to insult Georgia’s first Black senator. Warnock’s history makes her story possible.”Heath Mayo, an anti-Trump conservative, said: “Nikki Haley calling to deport Raphael Warnock perfectly captures how those that should’ve been serious and talented leaders were really just weak toadies ready to say anything for applause. This entire generation of GOP ‘leaders’ failed their test and let the country down.”Walker and Warnock are locked in a tight race that could decide control of the Senate, currently split 50-50 and controlled by the vote of the vice-president, Kamala Harris. On Monday, the polling website FiveThirtyEight.com put Warnock one point ahead.Haley also said Walker was “a good person who has been put through the ringer and has had everything but the kitchen sink thrown at him”.Walker, a former college and NFL football star, has been shown to have made numerous false claims about his business career and personal life. Two women have said he pressured them to have abortions, allegations he denies while campaigning on a stringently anti-abortion platform.Warnock, a pastor at a church once home to the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, won his Senate seat in January 2021, defeating the Republican Kelly Loeffler in a run-off. That victory and Jon Ossoff’s win over David Perdue for the other Georgia seat gave Democrats their precarious control of the chamber.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsGeorgiaDemocratsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Democrat Tim Ryan is running against his own party – it could help him win

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      Democrat Tim Ryan is running against his own party – it could help him winIn an increasingly red state, Ohio Senate hopeful Ryan blames Democrats as much as Republicans for failing the working class Tim Ryan stood in the middle of the electrical workers union hall, facing the signs declaring he puts “Workers First”, and prepared to call for a revolution of sorts.But this was Dayton, Ohio, where patriotism and religion are largely unquestioned even if political loyalties are fluid. So first came the national anthem and then the prayers.After that, the Democrat congressman and candidate for the US Senate laid into his targets.Ryan made a fleeting reference to his Republican opponent, JD Vance, with a derisive remark about the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy – a controversial account of growing up amid poverty and drug addiction – suddenly growing a beard to look more like the working-class Ohio voters he hopes will elect him.After that, the Democrat had little to say about Vance as he turned his guns on another target.Ryan does not have the enthusiastic support of his party’s leadership in Washington even though the outcome of his race could decide control of the Senate. But then Ryan is not an enthusiast for the Democratic national leadership or his party’s record over recent decades.Ohio saw more than one-quarter of its manufacturing jobs shipped off to Mexico under the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) signed by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, in the 1990s and later to China after it joined the World Trade Organization.At the union hall rally in Dayton, a city that has lost about a third of its population over the past 40 years as jobs disappeared, Ryan was cheered when he said Democrats were as much to blame as Republicans.US midterms 2022: the key racesRead more“You’ve seen a broken economic system where both parties have sold out to the corporate interests that shift our jobs down to the southern part of this country, then to Mexico, then to China. There is no economic freedom if there’s no jobs here in the United States,” he told the crowd.Ryan returned to the theme later in speaking about “people who’ve been on the other side of globalisation and automation and bad trade deals that, quite frankly, both parties passed that devastated communities like ours”.In 2016, Donald Trump tapped into anger about the loss of jobs and its impact on communities with a promise to stop the closure of a major General Motors car plant in Lordstown, Ohio, which employed more than 10,000 workers at its peak. He told a rally in a neighbouring city he would bring back jobs to the region: “Don’t move. Don’t sell your house.”That promise helped deliver north-eastern Ohio to Trump and flip a state that twice voted to put Barack Obama into the White House. In 2019, the Lordstown plant shut anyway, adding to the woes of a city that had already lost its hospital. It was not alone. Few places Trump promised to revive saw him deliver.That has opened the door for Ryan to say the Republicans don’t have any real interest in helping working Americans because they really represent the corporations that employ them. But many of those workers long ago decided that the Democrats aren’t serving their interests either.White voters without college degrees accounted for 42% of voters in the 2020 presidential election across the US. The proportion is even higher in Ohio where more than 80% of the population is white and only about one in five people of voting age graduated from university.In the Clinton years, Democrats took around half of that vote nationally. Now the Republicans have an advantage of nearly two to one while Democrats lead among the college educated.Ryan implicitly acknowledged that many of those who traditionally voted Democrat no longer saw the party as representing their interests, and told the rally that has led to some of its strategists wanting to write off the working-class vote.“When I hear people at the national level say things like we have to invest in races where states have an increasing rate of college graduates, that’s where we need to campaign, whoa,” he said. “We’re going to teach the Democratic party that the working-class folks, whether they’re white or black or brown men or women or gay or straight, we are the backbone of this party.”It’s a theme that appears to be resonating with some Ohio voters. While Republicans are well ahead in most of the other statewide races, Ryan is within shouting distance of Vance.“Tim Ryan has been a really strong candidate,” said Lee Hannah, a professor of political science at Wright State University, named after the Wright brothers who invented the first aeroplane in their Dayton bicycle shop.“In some ways he agrees with Trump’s criticisms of the the policies that cost jobs but Ryan would say that Trump didn’t make good on that promise and he has better ideas.”Hannah said that Ryan has also been effective at reclaiming ground from Trump that used to belong to the Democrats while Republicans portray the party as in the grip of a “woke” cultural agenda.“The Democrats have been playing defence on being just the party of identity politics, which I think is unfair but it’s been an effective caricature. Tim Ryan has tried to push against that and talk about more of these issues that he thinks will resonate with working-class voters,” he said.The Democratic congressman also has the advantage of running against Vance.‘It’s humiliating’: US voters struggle with hunger ahead of midtermsRead moreHannah said that the Republican is a relative unknown as a politician despite his national profile as a bestselling author about his hard upbringing in Middletown, Ohio.But the bigger problem may be the scepticism engendered by Vance deriding Donald Trump early in his presidency as a “fraud” and a “moral disaster” and then dramatically becoming a fervent supporter in order to win his endorsement in the Senate primaries. That paid off after Trump’s backing moved Vance from down the field to victory. But it has had consequences both with ardent supporters of the former president who dislike the earlier disloyalty and swing voters put off by Trump.“Vance is really trying to thread this needle where he was this Never Trump Republican back in ‘16 and now he is very much a full-throated Trump supporter. That has led to questions about his authenticity which is probably hurting him,” said Hannah.“Vance really is in a tough spot. I still would say he’s the odds on favourite to win but what’s difficult is that he needs to embrace this Trump base to make sure he has enough support but at the same time that can be really off-putting to folks who were really energised in 2020 to come out and vote against Trump.”Some opinion polls suggest that some Ohioans may be splitting their votes to support the popular sitting Republican governor, Mike DeWine, while also voting for Ryan, or at least against Vance.For all that, Trump remains popular in Ohio, with an approval rating of about 55%, while President Biden’s is well below the national average at just 35% which does not help Ryan.The mood in the union hall was sympathetic to the Democratic candidate if not always toward his party.Ryan, whose father is a Republican, is counting on working Ohioans trusting that it is he, and not Vance, who will fight for their jobs. Michael Gross, president of the local electrical union workers branch, thought that could carry him over the line.“We’re seeing somebody from a part of the state that has particularly been abandoned by manufacturing and big corporations that have left the state and left the country. I think he’s able to transfer that message that he’s here to fight for us, for the people of this state, for working-class families,” he said.But Gross, like others in the hall, struggled to explain why so many union members voted for Trump and Republicans and how to bring them back to the broader Democrat party.“I wish I knew the answer. We tell our members we really haven’t made any gains and then the one percenters have. So it’s really, it’s frustrating,” he said.Kim McCarthy, the chair of the Greene County Democratic party which covers part of Dayton and neighbouring towns, was sceptical that her party’s national leadership will change.“They represent those same interests as Republicans. The Democrats get contributions from the same corporations as Republicans. There’s very little someone like Tim Ryan can do. I’m sure his intentions are good but it’s a broken system that does not allow for people who want to represent people and not buy into the interests of money,” said McCarthy, an accountant.“The Democratic party has huge issues. For me to run as county chair and do this is because I feel that the Democratic party’s future lies at the county level. We’re the grassroots, we are where the people are. We are not in DC. It’s ridiculous. People at the grassroots, at the ground level, we have to push it up because they’re not representing us.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022DemocratsOhioUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Biden and Obama make last-ditch effort as Democrats’ mood darkens

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      Biden and Obama make last-ditch effort as Democrats’ mood darkens The president has remained outwardly optimistic about Democrats’ prospects in Tuesday’s midterm elections, but the party is now struggling as polls tightenThe lights dimmed, the music throbbed and cellphone lights danced across the arena. Then a DJ welcomed to the stage the president of the United States, Joe Biden, flanked by the former president Barack Obama and Pennsylvania’s nominees for Senate and governor. An ecstatic crowd of thousands roared to their feet.With days left until the midterm elections, the presidents were in Philadelphia to mobilize Democrats in a pivotal swing state that could determine Congress’ balance of power. But the event also had the feel of a political homecoming for Biden, joined by his former running mate in the state where he was born at the end of a volatile campaign season.Unregulated, unrestrained: era of the online political ad comes to midtermsRead more“It’s good to be home,” Biden thundered above the cheering. “It’s good to be with family.”The president has remained outwardly optimistic about his party’s prospects in Tuesday’s elections, and the Democrats’ electric reception at Temple University’s Liacouras Center on Saturday no doubt gave him even more reason for hope. But nationally, Democrats’ mood had darkened.After a summertime peak, the party in power is now struggling to overcome historical headwinds and widespread economic discontent. Public polls have tightened in recent weeks. Democrats are now on the defensive in places they thought were safe, like New York and Washington. And Biden’s low approval ratings continue to burden his party’s most vulnerable candidates, many of whom have sought to avoid the president.Not in Pennsylvania.On Saturday, Biden clasped hands with John Fetterman – the Democratic nominee for Senate locked in a narrow race that could decide control of the chamber – and Josh Shapiro, the party’s nominee for governor.Pennsylvania lies at the heart of Democrats’ efforts of staving off major losses in the House, as the president’s party traditionally does in midterm elections, and keeping their narrowest of majorities in the Senate.Biden declared the midterms “one of the most important elections in our lifetime”.Hanging in the balance, Biden charged, was the very American experiment that began in Philadelphia nearly two and a half centuries ago, now at risk of falling victim to the cynical forces seeking to undermine the nation’s system of government with lies and conspiracies. In impassioned bursts, he warned of the dangers of electing candidates who have denied the results of the 2020 election and who he says threaten the security of future ones.“This isn’t a referendum this year,” he said. “It’s a choice – a choice between two vastly different visions of America.”Making an equally dire case for the Republican party was Biden’s predecessor and political rival, Donald Trump, who addressed a crowd of thousands at an event in the Pittsburgh exurb of Latrobe.There he reprised familiar warnings of worsening crime, open borders and war on “your coal” – a jab at Biden’s comments from a day earlier pledging to shut down coal plants “all across America” that set off an unwelcome political firestorm within his own party. He also teased a long-anticipated third presidential run: “I promise you, in the very next – very, very, very short period of time, you’re going to be so happy.”Biden has said publicly he intends to run again in 2024 but has not made a formal announcement. His team have begun preparations for a possible re-election bid though his age and low approval ratings remain a concern for many Democrats.The convergence of three presidents in Pennsylvania on Saturday underscored the state’s importance as a battleground. In a potential 2024 rematch between Trump and Biden, Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes are once again likely to play a decisive role in determining the victor.Biden on Saturday reminded Pennsylvanians of that power. In 2008, the state helped elect the nation’s first Black president in 2008. In 2020, he said, Pennsylvania elected “a son from Scranton president” and helped make Trump not only a former president but a “defeated president”.Despite some fretting that Biden’s appearance in Philadelphia might do more harm than good for Democrats in tight races, Biden arrived as the native son.Though he built his political career in Delaware, Biden’s political identity is rooted in Pennsylvania. And on Saturday he proudly recalled that as a senator from Delaware he was often referred to as “Pennsylvania’s third senator”.He anchored his 2020 campaign in Philadelphia. As president, he has returned to Pennsylvania on as many as 20 occasions, including a trip to Scranton to tout his infrastructure plan at an electric trolly museum and, more recently, to deliver a primetime address in Philadelphia warning that Trump and his Republican followers “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic”.Biden touted his home state ties to make the case for electing Fetterman to the Senate, saying: “I know Pennsylvania well and John Fetterman is Pennsylvania.”Then he turned on Fetterman’s Republican opponent, the Trump-backed celebrity doctor, Mehmet Oz, casting him as a carpetbagger from neighboring New Jersey. “Look,” he said, “I lived in Pennsylvania longer than Oz has lived in Pennsylvania – and I moved away when I was 10 years old.”Tens of millions of Americans have already cast their ballots, though polls officially close on Tuesday and it could take days – or weeks in some cases – to know the final result of an election Biden said will “shape our country for decades to come”.In the final months of the midterm cycle, Biden has largely avoided states with the most competitive contests, like Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona, even though all of them helped elevate him to the White House. Instead, it has been Obama rallying Democrats in those battlegrounds – a role reversal from 2010 when Obama was the unpopular president and Biden, then his vice-president, was the party’s in-demand surrogate.Yet Biden has kept a frenetic pace on the campaign trail in the final days. On Tuesday, he traveled to Florida, a battleground where Democrats have seen their hopes fade in recent elections cycle, before heading to New Mexico, California and Illinois, Democratic strongholds with competitive midterm contests.On Sunday, Biden returned to New York, where the race for governor has narrowed in a worrying sign for Democrats’ fortunes elsewhere, and he will headline a rally the night before the election in Maryland.In his appearances, Biden has tried to rally supporters around his administration’s policy achievements, highlighting initiatives to lower the cost of prescription drugs, boost domestic manufacturing, combat climate change and forgive student loan debt while warning that Republican control of Congress would threaten social security and Medicare.The economy and inflation consistently rank as voters’ top concern this election, along with crime, abortion and threats to democracy. Democrats have sought to blunt Republicans’ advantage on the economy and crime by arguing that their opponents would pursue an extreme agenda on issues like abortion, guns and voting rights. They have pointed to the threats posed by election deniers loyal to Trump.“You see these guys standing there with rifles, outside polling places?” Biden said on Saturday. “Come on. Where the hell do you think you are?”For Democrats to remain competitive Tuesday, their task will be to rebuild the coalition responsible for Democratic victories during the Trump era. They must recapture support from a mix of college-educated suburban voters and Republican-leaning moderates while motivating Black voters and young people to turn out in strong numbers.Should they fall short, Biden has been blunt about the challenges of governing with Republican majorities. “If we lose the House and Senate,” he said in Chicago, “it’s going to be a horrible two years.”Taking the stage last on Saturday, in a slot typically reserved for the current president, Obama said he knew all too well what Democrats stood to lose if Biden no longer had majorities in Congress.Bernie Sanders hits the campaign trail with days left before US midtermsRead more“When I was president, I got my butt whooped in midterm elections,” Obama recalled of the 2010 elections. “Midterms are no joke.”He asked the audience to imagine what it might have been like if Democrats had kept control of Congress. They might have acted on immigration reform, gun safety and the climate crisis. Had they kept the Senate in 2014, he continued, the makeup of the supreme court might look very different. The audience groaned at the thought.History didn’t have to repeat itself, Obama said. Democrats didn’t have to imagine what Biden could accomplish with another majority in Congress.“The good news is, you have an outstanding president right now in the White House,” Obama said, ticking through Biden’s legislative accomplishments.“You’ve seen what he’s accomplished with the barest of margins,” he said. “If you vote, he can do even more. But it depends on you.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022DemocratsJoe BidenBarack ObamaPennsylvaniaUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Republicans and Democrats make last arguments as midterms loom

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      Republicans and Democrats make last arguments as midterms loomDemocrats frame election as referendum on US democracy while Republicans say they will better address economic woes Political leaders from both sides of the aisle on Sunday made their closing arguments to voters two days before the hotly contested US midterm elections, with several top Democrats framing the election as a referendum on American democracy.Republicans, meanwhile, swung back by saying that they would better address Americans’ economic woes and repeatedly insisted their rivals were ill-equipped to help voters despite Democratic rhetoric that the GOP was to blame for the nation’s political divisiveness.Trump expected to announce 2024 campaign before end of NovemberRead more“The stakes are about economics,” Minnesota Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar said on CNN’s State of the Union. “Every country in the world has been through a hard time coming out of this pandemic.”“The question [that] voters have to ask is: who do you trust to have people on staff who see them, who’s going to stand up for them, social security and Medicare?”Klobuchar also warned that a shift right could spell danger for this country. She noted that numerous Republican candidates have sowed doubt over the 2020 elections – and said that Donald Trump’s shadow is “looming over” key states.“These candidates are throwing truth out the window – they’re shattering the rule of law and they’re laughing at political violence,” Klobuchar said. “If you’re a Democrat, independent, or moderate Republican, democracy is on the ballot and it is time to vote for democracy.”New Jersey Democratic senator Cory Booker voiced similar sentiments. “There’s a lot on the line and we have to remember after what we saw at January 6, Republican or Democrat, we should be electing people that believe in our democracy, that believe in our traditions, and that ultimately want to unite people and not divide them,” Booker said on ABC’s This Week.Referring in part to the attack on US House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, he added: “There’s a culture of contempt in this country. You’re seeing election workers getting increased threats. You’re seeing judges getting increased threats. Heck, you’re even seeing members of Congress – as we saw with what happened to Paul Pelosi.“Something has gone wrong in our country where rising political violence, rising threats are really threatening who we are as a people.”South Carolina Democratic congressman Jim Clyburn on Fox News Sunday defended prior comments that the climate in the US had similarities to Germany in the early 1930s. The House majority whip pointed to denying election results and establishing ways that state executives can overturn election results, as well as calling the press “the enemy of the people”.Clyburn insisted that he didn’t think people were in the wrong if they didn’t vote Democrat. Rather, wrongness involved voting for persons trying to sow skepticism about elections’ validity.“If they don’t vote against election deniers. If they don’t vote against liars, people who lie, know full well they’re lying, we all know they’re lying,” Clyburn said. “So if they’re lying, they’re denying, they’re trying to delete, they’re trying to nullify votes – vote against that foolishness.”During a pre-recorded interview that aired on ABC, Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, told voters that his party better represented their economic interests. Youngkin also hit cultural talking points, invoking the bogeyman of rising crime.“Americans are hurting right now and Republican gubernatorial candidates, because that’s who I’ve been spending a lot of time with, are offering commonsense solutions to these most critical issues,” Youngkin said. “Americans are sitting around their tables in the evening and they’re worried about inflation and they’re worried about crime and they’re worried about their schools and they’re worried about the border.“Republicans have clearcut commonsense solutions to all of these,” Youngkin also said, without detailing any of those purported solutions.Both sides’ intensely ideological politicking ahead of Tuesday speaks to a potentially watershed outcome for the nation’s future. The party in control of Congress often loses its majority during midterm elections. So a Republican majority at this point of Joe Biden’s presidency would not be shocking historically speaking.Any dramatic political shift in the current climate, however, could fan the flames of unrest and pessimism pervading a country that is increasingly divided over issues such as voting, gun control, race, reproductive freedom and LGBTQ+ rights.And, as political violence and conspiracy theories abound, Trump’s divisive politics might reign supreme once more, especially as he might soon declare his candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.Regardless of the midterm election’s outcome, it remains unclear whether politicians will be able to shepherd meaningful legislative solutions to these problems. Major legislation will probably require bipartisan cooperation, which seems unlikely in a bitterly partisan political climate.On NBC’s Meet The Press, host Chuck Todd asked Florida Republican senator Rick Scott: “What’s the first bill a Republican Congress sends to the president’s desk that you actually think he would sign?”Scott did little more than toe the party line, saying: “I think the issue we’ve got to deal with is inflation. We’ve got to figure out how to spend our money wisely, so we don’t continue this inflation. I think we’ve got to do whatever we can to get this crime rate down, so I think we have to look at that. We’ve got to secure the border.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsDemocratsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      The Guardian view on the US midterms: a tale of two contests

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      The Guardian view on the US midterms: a tale of two contestsEditorialThese elections are key not just to what the president can achieve in the next two years but to the future of democracy When American voters go to the polls on Tuesday, they will be voting not only in a multitude of specific races, but in what feel like two separate elections. The first is a largely traditional version of the midterms: a referendum on the incumbent (helping to explain why Joe Biden has been keeping a relatively low profile, given his approval ratings) and on the economy. In a cost of living crisis, it may not be surprising that 92% of Republicans see the economy as very important, with predictable issues of crime and immigration following behind.But among Democrats, only 65% see the economy as very important – while 80% cite the future of democracy, 79% cite healthcare and 75% abortion. This is the second and very different contest. It is a “struggle for the very soul of America”, as Mr Biden warned on Wednesday, and a battle over people’s fundamental rights – to control their own bodies, and to have free and fair elections. The context is the storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021; the vicious attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband by a man who told police he had planned to kidnap the House speaker and break her kneecaps if she “lied” to him; and the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade. The latter led to a surge in registrations, and more than half of registered voters still say abortion will be very important in determining their choice. But Republican candidates who have realised the unpopularity of their extreme views are now muddying their message, as even some voters who define themselves as “pro-life” balk at total bans.The question is how much ground Democrats lose. Polls suggest Republicans will almost certainly take the House and are favoured to take the Senate. Whether they prove more accurate than in recent years is critical to an outcome which will help to determine everything from US support for Ukraine to the 2024 presidential race. A triumph for the Republicans will mean a hobbled administration, facing legislative stagnation, hostile committees and investigations on matters such as Hunter Biden’s business dealings.But this is also a defining moment in the defence of democracy. Thanks to Donald Trump’s lies, amplified by hard-right media outlets like Fox News, grassroots Republicans believe, entirely wrongly, that the 2020 election was unfair or outright stolen – a belief not dented even when his own officials testified to his defeat. The consequences have included political violence; the danger of more is clear. But this “big lie” is also playing out in midterm races.The electoral system is already warped by years of gerrymandering, as the growing gap between the Democrats’ share of the popular vote and actual political power demonstrates (though the House race appears fairer than in recent contests). Now it is under fresh threat from outright election deniers who question or reject Mr Trump’s defeat and won’t commit to accepting defeat themselves. If the former president runs in 2024 – as he says he “very, very, very probably” will do – key election officials may not resist his attempts to overturn his defeat as they did in 2020. In Arizona, all but one of the Republican candidates for Congress, governor, attorney general and secretary of state have questioned the 2020 result.The very act of casting a vote in the midterms may help to preserve or imperil democracy. But because very protracted counts will probably be followed by legal challenges and threats, winning means not just persuading voters, but ensuring that their choices are upheld. An increasingly polarised electorate may move even further apart. It is unsurprising that there are two contests when there are, increasingly, two different Americas, who cannot even agree on the facts, still less what they mean for the nation.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022OpinionUS politicsJoe BidenDonald TrumpDemocratsRepublicanseditorialsReuse this content More

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      Michigan’s top election official: ‘Every tactic tried in 2020 will be tried again’

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      InterviewMichigan’s top election official: ‘Every tactic tried in 2020 will be tried again’Sam Levine in New YorkUp for re-election as secretary of state herself, Jocelyn Benson expects more electoral interference in the looming midterms Jocelyn Benson can still rattle off all the important dates.There was 17 November 2020, when two canvassers in Michigan’s Wayne county nearly refused to certify the election results. There was 23 November, when the state board almost did the same thing. There was 5 December, when dozens of armed protesters gathered outside her home as she put up Christmas decorations with her family. And there was 6 January, when an armed mob laid siege to the US Capitol.The US is on a knife-edge. The enemy for Trump’s Republicans is democracy itself | Jonathan FreedlandRead moreTwo years later, Benson, a Democrat, is overseeing another high-stakes election in her state, a key battleground in the US. She’s also running for a second term as Michigan’s top election official – secretary of state – facing off against Kristina Karamo, a Republican who gained national attention for seeding doubt about the results of the 2020 race. There’s little doubt in Benson’s mind that there will be another attempt to overturn the will of the voters in her state.“We expect that every lever that was pulled, and every tactic that was tried in 2020, will be tried again in ’22, and will be tried again in ’24,” she said in an interview with the Guardian. “And so we go into this election cycle not only with the knowledge of those tactics, but with the expectation in fact that there will be more people in positions of authority or willing to endorse those tactics than there were in 2020.”Looking back at the 2020 election, Benson now sees two things she wishes she had done differently. First, the pandemic restricted the amount of in-person interaction Benson could have with voters, limiting her ability to answer questions. Second, she said, her office didn’t plan enough for the possibility of attempts to interfere in the vote-counting process.“We thought at that point that the 2020 election, and our work in it, would be done. Because our work was to make sure that the process went well and everything else would play out the way it always has,” she said. “We drastically underestimated the post-election challenges that we endured for the months following November 2020. And we won’t make that mistake again.”Michigan was at the forefront of Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Human error in a rural county helped feed conspiracy theories of a stolen vote. A chaotic scene at a central ballot-counting station in Detroit led to baseless allegations of malfeasance. All of that culminated in an enormous pressure campaign from Trump and his allies for local bipartisan boards of canvassers not to certify the election. Several reviews have affirmed Joe Biden’s victory in the state and there is no evidence of fraud.Republicans have spent the last two years focused on the state’s election infrastructure. Some officials on local canvassing boards who voted to certify the results of the 2020 election have been quietly replaced by Republicans. There has been a well-organized effort to recruit and train people who doubt the 2020 election results to work the polls, leading to increased concern about intimidation.That potential for violence on election day is one of the things that Benson is worried about as the midterms approach.“What January 6 taught us is that there is no bottom to how far someone will go, especially armed with misinformation to interfere with the fair and free elections of our country and of our state,” she said. “Because of that variable, because of that unknown and because of that potential, I am every day hopeful but concerned that people will show up to vote on election day and instead of finding a serene and even joyful experience, it will be a stressful one at best. Or that violence will erupt either during or after the election.”She’s also worried that some people, after a barrage of misinformation about election lies, may simply decide not to vote at all. “That breaks my heart,” she said. “I worry that the attacks that democracy has endured over these years, and the misinformation that has only escalated in toxicity, will ultimately lead many people to give up on politics altogether.”Even before she was a secretary of state, Benson recognized the enormous overlooked power these state officials have. She literally wrote a book on the topic: in 2010, long before secretaries of state were household names, she authored State Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process. More than a decade later, there’s more attention on secretaries of state than ever after an election in which their power over election rules came into clear focus.“I’ve been really gratified that there is increased attention on these positions. And then also similarly really dismayed to see people seeking to fill these roles who have no interest in protecting or serving or expanding democracy,” she said. “I’m deeply concerned about the actual harm that election deniers can do through these offices. And I’m just as concerned about the misinformation that they may validate and spread about their colleagues, about their systems, through these positions. And how that cumulatively will dismantle potentially from within.“And then all of that is just metastasized when you have someone like that in a battleground state. Like in Michigan. Or in Georgia. Where they’re going to get extra pressure, as Brad Raffensperger did in Georgia. And you know, what if they say, ‘yes, I will find those 11,000 votes’ next time?” she added, alluding to an infamous Trump call during the 2020 election.When Benson meets people on the campaign trail who still doubt the results of the last presidential election, she listens and tries to narrow down what the specific questions they have are. “I want every voter to have rightly placed faith in the system. Because they should,” she said. “I welcome the questions. I welcome the scrutiny. Because I have so much faith in the security of the elections.”But Benson also recognizes that there are some instances when, despite her position, she might not be able to get through to someone. “There are some cases in which someone else answering them, like a Republican state senator, Ed McBroom, may be more effective. They may be more likely to hear the answer from someone else. So if that happens, then you adjust accordingly,” she said.“I think ultimately if people are willing to listen to each other, and if people are willing to listen to the facts, we can get to a place, even not all the time, but sometimes, where folks understand or are willing to entertain the possibility that they have been misled,” she said.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022MichiganUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsUS elections 2020interviewsReuse this content More

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      Republicans appear better positioned than ever ahead of midterms

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      Republicans appear better positioned than ever ahead of midtermsHistory shows that the president’s party typically loses seats in midterm, and Democrats seem likely to follow that pattern With just a few days left before polls close in America’s crucial midterm elections, Republicans appear better positioned than ever to regain control of the House of Representatives and potentially the Senate as well.History shows that the president’s party typically loses seats in midterm elections, and despite some optimistic signs over the summer, Democrats now seem likely to follow that pattern on 8 November.How Republicans’ racist attack ads wiped out Democrat’s lead in WisconsinRead moreRepublicans’ prospects have grown brighter as more voters identify the economy as their top priority, after many Democrats spent the summer campaigning on the importance of abortion rights following the supreme court’s reversal of Roe v Wade in June.An ABC News/Ipsos poll taken last week showed that 49% of Americans named the economy or inflation as the most important issue determining their vote for Congress, compared to 14% who said the same of abortion.Surveys show Republicans enjoy an advantage with voters when it comes to economic concerns, and the party’s candidates have gained steam in the polls as Americans fret over rising prices and the possibility of a recession. Republicans now hold a 1.3-point advantage over Democrats on the generic congressional ballot, according to the FiveThirtyEight average. One survey from the Republican polling firm Cygnal found the party with a three-point lead on the generic ballot, representing a four-point swing in five weeks.“I expect the GOP to add another one to two points to their generic lead in the closing week,” Brent Buchanan, Cygnal’s president and founder, said. “It’s much better to be a Republican candidate right now than a Democratic one.”Given Democrats’ narrow majorities in both chambers of Congress, Republicans only need to flip a handful of House seats and a single Senate seat to regain control, and they are heavily favored to capture control of at least one if not both chambers.This week, the Cook Political Report moved another 10 House seats in Republicans’ direction, underscoring how Democrats have been forced to fight on an expanded map in the final weeks before election day. Congressional districts that Joe Biden won by double digits two years ago now appear to be in play, which has forced Democrats to defend seats previously considered to be safe. Republicans will also enjoy the benefits of a favorable round of redistricting following the 2020 census, which allowed the party to reconfigure the House map in a number of battleground states.On Wednesday, the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Super Pac supporting House Republicans, announced a $5.6m ad blitz in Democratic-held districts that had attracted little attention earlier in the campaign cycle. The CLF is spending $1.8m to try to unseat Congressman Sean Casten, whose seat was just moved from likely Democratic to lean Democratic by the Cook Political Report. Biden carried Casten’s district in the suburbs of Chicago by 11 points in 2020.“Enthusiasm behind Republicans’ fight to win the House majority continues to grow every day,” said Dan Conston, the president of CLF. “All cycle we made it our priority to expand the map as far as possible and late breakers are giving us the opportunity to press even deeper in the final stretch.”Democrats’ Senate prospects appear similarly grim. As of this week, FiveThirtyEight gives Republicans the narrowest of advantages to take back the Senate, marking the first since July that Democrats were not favored to maintain control of the upper chamber. Democratic incumbents previously expected to hold on to their seats have watched their polling advantages vanish in the past month.One poll conducted by the Saint Anselm College Survey Center showed the Democratic senator Maggie Hassan trailing her Republican opponent, Don Bolduc, by one point, marking a seven-point swing in a month. On Thursday, Republican Herschel Walker also took the lead in the Georgia Senate race for the first time since June, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average. The Democratic senator Raphael Warnock has been unable to establish a clear lead in the race, despite recent accusations that Walker pressured two women into having abortions.Democrats contend that early voting data provides a reason for optimism about keeping the Senate, as more than 35 million Americans have already cast their ballots. In states such as Arizona and Pennsylvania, which could determine control of the Senate, Democrats make up a greater share of the early voting population than they did in 2018. But given Donald Trump’s attempts to raise baseless doubts about the legitimacy of voting by mail, more Republicans are expected to show up at the polls on election day, and that could erase Democrats’ early advantage.In a speech delivered near the Capitol on Wednesday, Biden sounded clear-eyed about his party’s midterm prospects. Expressing grave concern about the recent attack on the husband of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the rise in violent rhetoric among some Republican lawmakers, Biden urged Americans to consider the fate of their democracy as they head to cast their ballots.“This is no ordinary year. So I ask you to think long and hard about the moment we’re in,” Biden said. “In a typical year, we’re often not faced with questions of whether the vote we cast will preserve democracy or put us at risk. But this year, we are. This year, I hope you will make the future of our democracy an important part of your decision to vote and how you vote.”As of now, Biden’s pro-democracy message does not appear to be resonating with enough voters to avoid a Democratic rout on Tuesday. If current trends hold, a Republican wave could crash over the country next week.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      How Michigan Republicans’ campaign is a ‘direct attack on democracy’

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      How Michigan Republicans’ campaign is a ‘direct attack on democracy’ As the key swing state heads into the midterms, Republicans have launched a coordinated effort to pack the process of overseeing electionsChristopher Thomas spent 36 years as director of Michigan’s elections, overseeing the laborious but uncontentious running of presidential vote counts.Then came 2020. Within hours of the polls closing in the presidential race, roving bands of Donald Trump’s supporters were moving from table to table at one of Detroit’s principal counting centres, flinging around accusations of vote rigging as they challenged and intimidated poll workers in the key swing state.US midterms 2022: the key candidates who threaten democracyRead more“These folks rolled in as a result of social media telling them to get down there because everything was being stolen. So they all came in, pretty revved up. I’m not expecting that,” said Thomas.Several hundred descended on the convention centre where about 170,000 postal ballots were collated in the overwhelmingly Democratic city. Some yelled “stop the count”. Others taunted the vote counters. Groups of Trump supporters, locked out when the situation became too unruly, pounded on windows and doors.In the end, the count continued and Joe Biden overturned Trump’s slim victory in Michigan four years earlier, helping to push the then president out of the White House.But as Michigan heads into crucial midterm elections, and with the next presidential race swinging into view, both sides have learned lessons.The state’s Republicans have launched a coordinated effort to pack the process of overseeing elections with partisan poll monitors, while recruiting lawyers and sympathetic law enforcement officials ready to wade in to disputes, in what appears to be a strategy to create enough confusion and disagreement that unfavorable results are thrown into doubt. That potentially opens the way for the courts or, in the electoral college process for the presidential election, the Republican-controlled state legislature to intervene.All of this fits with the “precinct strategy” pushed by Steve Bannon, Trump’s former strategist who has been sentenced to four months in prison for contempt of Congress, to shoehorn grassroots Trump supporters into low-level positions across the country, such as election administration and on school boards, in order to take control “village by village … precinct by precinct”.Thomas, who retired as elections director in 2017 but continues to consult for the Detroit city clerk, is concerned.“I’m watching these efforts to enlist partisan poll workers with some scepticism,” he said.Michigan’s 83 elected county clerks oversee elections in their jurisdictions with some authority delegated to city and township election officials. They include Barb Byrum, a Democrat who has spent the past 10 years as Ingham county clerk after five years as a state legislator.“We really started seeing the attack on our elections over six years ago but it has really ramped up,” she said.“There’s a concerted effort by the Republicans to encourage individuals to be hired by local clerks to work the election but then also serve as spies basically for the Republican party. They have been encouraged to sneak cellphones into the absentee county boards and call select Republican attorneys during election day.”Byrum, who was once barred from speaking during an anti-abortion debate in the Michigan legislature for using the word “vasectomy”, said illicit cellphones, which are barred from the count, put the “secrecy of the ballot at risk”.Political parties also get to appoint challengers who can question whether a person is qualified to vote. Byrum said that opens another avenue for disruption if the challengers make bad faith interventions that create long lines in strongly Democratic areas and discourage people from voting.In June, Politico revealed video recordings of the Republican National Committee election integrity director for Michigan, Matthew Seifried, telling party activists that there was going to be “an army” of poll challengers at work in Detroit and beyond who would be kept in touch with legal teams ready to move in at any claim of irregularity.“We’re going to have more lawyers than we’ve ever recruited, because let’s be honest, that’s where it’s going to be fought, right?” he said.Politico also obtained recordings of the legal counsel to the Trump-aligned Amistad Project, Tim Griffin, discussing plans to mobilise sympathetic district attorneys to launch investigations into allegations of voter and counting irregularities.“Remember, guys, we’re trying to build out a nationwide district attorney network. Your local district attorney, as we always say, is more powerful than your congressman,” Griffin told activists. “They’re the ones that can seat a grand jury. They’re the ones that can start an investigation, issue subpoenas, make sure that records are retained, etc.”Last year, Michigan’s Republican party chose a Trump supporter, who said he would not have certified Biden’s election victory, to serve on the body that certifies elections in Detroit and its surrounding county. Robert Boyd said he regards the 2020 presidential election results as “inaccurate” because of events at the disrupted Detroit count.Boyd, who has blamed the 6 January 2021 storming of the Capitol on Black Lives Matter and antifa “agitators”, is one of two Republicans on the Wayne county board of canvassers alongside two Democrats. If they deadlock on whether to certify future elections, that could open the way for legal challenges to the result and the intervention of the state legislature. The Republican legislature has the authority to overturn the popular vote and appoint its own choice of delegates to the electoral college for the president, although it would be an unprecedented move that it declined to take in 2020.Still, Byrum said Republican attitudes had hardened and she saw a concerted effort to create disruption and disputes to open the way for legal and political intervention to challenge election results they don’t like.“I think this is a direct attack on our democracy because this is a concerted effort to undermine the integrity of our elections, and ultimately, attack our democracy,” she said.In response to the disruption, the state’s elections board has tightened regulations to prevent groups of poll monitors from roaming around from one counting table to another to prevent intimidation. Thomas said there are already regulations in place to prevent frivolous or repeated challenges against voters. They have rarely been used in the past.“We have certainly reorganised how we control the environment there compared to 2020 having never seen anything like that in the years before,” he said.Thomas took some comfort from the relatively smooth passing of August’s primary elections.“There’s one group, called Election Integrity Group, they can be a bit on the obnoxious side. But we can all tolerate a little bit of obnoxiousness. They didn’t interfere with the process,” he said.“Of course, the Republicans didn’t really have much at stake in the city of Detroit in the August primary. So we’ll see when stakes go up as we get to the general.”Justin Roebuck, the Republican county clerk and chief elections officer for Ottawa county, said the atmosphere was fraught, with his office still dealing with a flood of freedom of information requests looking for evidence of fraud in the presidential election.“Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen the level of disinformation that came out of the 2020 election cycle has really amplified and solidified in some ways. That misinformation has really taken root in a certain percentage of our population,” he said.“Folks are still asking to see all sorts of things like the voted ballots from the 2020 election. They’re asking to see the digital imaging of our software that was used to programme the 2020 election. They’re coming from all over the place, and not just voters here in my jurisdiction or in Michigan. They’re coming from around the country.”Roebuck, like clerks in other counties, has sought to reassure voters with greater transparency about how the counting process works and in the training of poll workers. He said that many of them are persuaded of the legitimacy of the vote once they see the system at work. But, like Thomas, he said there was a small hardcore intent on challenging any outcome they do not like.“There’s probably about a 10% portion of the population that has truly bought into the notion that our elections were stolen, and I’m not sure how successful I will be in convincing those folks because I have had a lot of those conversations where it’s just very difficult to get through to people with the facts,” he said.The democratic process is also under pressure from some local officials spreading false accusations that the elections they are overseeing may be rigged.Last year, Michigan’s bureau of elections stripped the Republican clerk of Adams township, Stephanie Scott, of her authority to run the municipal election after she refused to submit a vote tabulating machine for routine testing.“The county clerk’s office and now secretary of state are demanding I drop off my machine for unfettered access, and God only knows doing what to it,” she told the Bridge Michigan news site.“When you have the fox guarding the henhouse, somebody’s got to stand up and guard those hens.”The township supervisor, Mark Nichols, backed Scott, saying that voting machines “have been a tool to steal our elections” and 2020 was “the year of the lie” .The Michigan bureau of elections director, Jonathan Brater, wrote to Scott accusing her of making “numerous false statements” when she questioned the integrity of the vote at a township public meeting.“By communicating false or misleading information about elections in Michigan, you risk not only undermining confidence in democracy in your community, but also amplifying threats and intimidation of your fellow election officials across our state which, fueled by misinformation, continue unabated,” Brater told Scott.‘The Trump playbook’: Republicans hint they will deny election resultsRead moreBrater also had to warn local election officials to ignore a cease and desist letter from the Republican candidate for Michigan attorney general next month, Matthew DePerno, demanding they cancel planned voting machine maintenance because it could “destroy or alter” voting records he alleges are fraudulent. DePerno beat two Republican rivals after Trump backed him in the primary election.One Michigan county clerk hired a Trump supporter to recruit poll workers who was filmed urging people to storm the Capitol in Washington on 6 January 2021 and joined white nationalist Proud Boys rallies at the state legislature.All of this leaves Roebuck despairing of his own party: “Our voters deserve honesty. Sometimes it can be a political advantage for candidates to go down a different path to use talking points about election integrity or election misinformation, but I don’t think it’s an advantage to our society in the long term,” he said.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022MichiganUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsfeaturesReuse this content More