Elections, Governors

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      The Virginia G.O.P. Voted on Its Future. The Losers Reject the Results.

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Virginia G.O.P. Voted on Its Future. The Losers Reject the Results.In a sign of the Trump era’s lingering alternate realities, Republicans in the struggling state party are refusing to move forward with a new system for choosing nominees.State Senator Amanda Chase, a Trump loyalist who has recently been required to sit in a plexiglass box during Senate sessions after refusing to wear a mask, is one of the top Republican candidates for governor in Virginia.Credit…Ryan M. Kelly/Associated PressFeb. 19, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETARLINGTON, Va. — The Republican Party of Virginia has voted four times since December to nominate its candidates for this year’s statewide races at a convention instead of in a primary election. But in a sign of the Trumpian times of denial and dispute in the G.O.P., nearly half of the party’s top officials are still trying to reverse the results.The refusal of these Republicans to admit that they have lost, or to agree on a set of nominating rules, has fractured a state party already in upheaval: Republicans haven’t won a statewide election since 2009, and they now find themselves with legislative minorities for the first time in a generation. Even the broken windows at the state party’s Richmond headquarters haven’t been fixed for months.Just a month after former President Donald J. Trump left office, Virginia’s drama is the first state-level boomerang of his legacy. State Republicans have internalized the lesson that there is no benefit to accepting results they don’t like, and the result is a paralyzed party unable to set the date, location and rules for how and when it will pick its 2021 nominees for statewide office, including the race for governor.The intraparty dispute has scrambled longstanding political alliances and left Virginia Republicans in the awkward position of defending stances that were once anathema to a party that has been redefined by the Trump era.“It’s very much about not accepting the results and trying to change the rules and game the election,” said former Representative Tom Davis, a moderate Republican who won seven terms in Congress from a Northern Virginia district. “The reality now is even when Republicans pull together, they have a hard time winning, and when they’re divided, they have no shot of winning.”The party’s decision on Dec. 5 to hold a May 1 convention rather than a June 8 primary was widely seen as an effort to stop Amanda Chase, a firebrand state senator who calls herself “Trump in heels,” from claiming the party’s nomination for governor.While Ms. Chase or other candidates could win the nomination with as little as 30 percent of the vote in a field with three other major candidates and several lesser contenders, a party convention would require a nominee to win support from at least 50 percent of delegates.Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat who cannot serve consecutive terms, has prohibited most large gatherings in Virginia.Credit…Steve Helber/Associated PressBut with the coronavirus pandemic raging and Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat who under Virginia law cannot serve consecutive terms, having for now prohibited most gatherings of more than 10 people, there was little chance Republicans could conduct an in-person convention of several thousand people. Changing the party’s rules to conduct a so-called unassembled convention at dozens of sites across Virginia requires approval of three-fourths of the State Central Committee’s members — a threshold so far impossible to meet because those holding out for a primary have refused to compromise.“The fact that there’s a minority faction who lost that are standing in the way of a safe convention to try to get the primary that they couldn’t win fairly — that says a lot about them,” said Patti Lyman, the Republican national committeewoman for Virginia. “All their arguments can be boiled down to: We lost, and we don’t like it.”Some proponents of a convention are arguing in favor of ranked-choice voting, a system that has been pushed elsewhere by progressives. Those making the case for a primary argue that it makes it easier for voters to participate. The dispute threatens to undercut Republicans’ already-uphill fight in this year’s elections and prolong Democratic control of the state.The party’s squabble centers on a crowded group of Republican contenders for governor that includes one candidate each from the G.O.P.’s Trump and establishment wings, along with two wealthy wild cards. The major candidates include Ms. Chase; Kirk Cox, a former State House speaker, who is the favorite of the party’s elected state legislators; Pete Snyder, a millionaire technology executive who lost a bid for the lieutenant governor nomination at a party convention in 2013; and Glenn Youngkin, an even wealthier former chief executive in private equity who is a newcomer to politics.In past intramural skirmishes, conservative Virginia Republicans have pushed for conventions to give a larger voice to the most hard-line party activists. In 2013, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II won the nomination for governor at a convention after his social conservative allies boxed out more moderate candidates who preferred a primary.But the current disagreement has more to do with derailing Ms. Chase and Mr. Youngkin, who threatened to blanket the state with tens of millions of dollars of television advertising ahead of any primary.Allies of Mr. Snyder have pushed for a convention by arguing that Mr. Youngkin would buy the election if it went to a primary.“I’m going to run hard and win the Republican nomination regardless of the method of nomination,” Mr. Snyder said. “It’s time for the Virginia G.O.P. to decide the rules.”There is little establishment support for Ms. Chase, who last month was censured by her State Senate colleagues and stripped of committee assignments after she called the rioters at the Capitol “patriots.” She has recently been required to sit in a plexiglass box after refusing to wear a mask during Senate sessions. Ms. Chase has called it her “square of freedom.”Mr. Cox, for his part, prefers a primary but has written two letters to State Central Committee members emphasizing his official neutrality in the primary-versus-convention debate.“They need to resolve it as quickly as possible,” Mr. Cox said. “We need to know the process. But I’ve been very adamant about not weighing in.”Kirk Cox, a former State House speaker, and Delegate Todd Gilbert at the State Capitol in Richmond, Va.Credit…Bob Brown/Richmond Times-Dispatch, via Associated PressVirginia Republicans face a Feb. 23 deadline to inform state elections officials whether they intend to hold a primary. The state G.O.P. chairman, Rich Anderson, warned in a Jan. 25 letter to committee members that an in-person convention would be impossible and that an unassembled convention could not proceed if supporters of a primary refused to budge from their no-convention stance.If neither side shifts, wrote Mr. Anderson, who through an aide declined an interview request, the party’s nominees for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general will be chosen by the 72-member State Central Committee, “which will take on the perception of party bosses huddled in a smoke-filled back room.”The inability to organize a nominating contest has brought ridicule to a disorganized party aiming to win a statewide election for the first time in 12 years. John Fredericks, a radio talk show host who was the Virginia state chairman for Mr. Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, has organized bingo games to mock the party’s marathon Zoom meetings, which have each lasted four to eight hours.“To be four months away from the nomination and not have a process is terribly embarrassing and shows an unwillingness to compromise for the good of the party,” said former Gov. Bob McDonnell, the last Virginia Republican to win a statewide election. “Every passing day hurts whoever our eventual nominee is for myriad reasons.”Sixteen minutes after The New York Times emailed State Central Committee members asking questions about the Republicans’ internal nomination battle, the party’s general counsel, Chris Marston, who is also Mr. Snyder’s campaign compliance lawyer, emailed committee members asking them not to speak to reporters.Mr. Marston’s stated reason for avoiding media scrutiny is a lawsuit Ms. Chase filed in federal court challenging the party’s decision to hold a convention. But courts have long given political parties wide latitude to set and enforce their own rules for choosing nominees. Few outside Ms. Chase’s immediate circle of supporters believe her lawsuit, which has a hearing scheduled on Friday, will succeed.Ms. Chase, who was still arguing with less than a week left in Mr. Trump’s presidency that he could yet be inaugurated for a second term, said Thursday that she “doesn’t trust conventions,” which she said unfairly limit voting access for members of the military and others who can’t make it to an in-person site.“If we’re going to win as Republicans, we need to include more of the electorate who vote Republican instead of less,” she said. “Stop creating so many obstacles for people who would normally vote.”Ms. Chase this week won support for her primary push from Mr. Youngkin. During an interview with a Charlottesville radio station on Tuesday, Mr. Youngkin, whose supporters want a primary, said it was “not fair” that the party had created uncertainty for the candidates in its nominating process.“Boy, can I sympathize with Senator Chase on her frustration,” he said. “Here we are on February the 16th, we have an election in November, and we don’t even have a plan to select our candidate. I mean, this is absolutely amazing to me.”As Republicans across the country struggle with how much Mr. Trump should influence the direction of the party and whom it nominates for key races in 2022 and eventually for president in 2024, Virginia’s Republicans remain mired in their procedural fight.Those pushing for a primary say they won’t give up.Thomas Turner, a State Central Committee member who is chairman of the Young Republicans of Virginia, said he was hearing regularly from grass-roots Republicans who were dismayed with the decision to hold a convention and looking for him to keep trying to overturn it.“I am still wanting a primary because I do believe that is the best way to pick a candidate,” Mr. Turner said. “I will fight for that until the end.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Tom Perez on Democrats’ Mistakes and Why Iowa Shouldn’t Go First

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTom Perez on Democrats’ Mistakes and Why Iowa Shouldn’t Go FirstIn an interview, the former D.N.C. chairman discussed a possible bid for Maryland governor and said Iowa and New Hampshire starting the presidential nominating process was “unacceptable.”Former D.N.C. chairman Tom Perez  is considering a bid for Maryland governor.Credit…Justin T. Gellerson for The New York TimesFeb. 14, 2021, 8:56 a.m. ETFor the past four years, Tom Perez had perhaps the most thankless job in American politics: chairman of the Democratic National Committee.During that time Mr. Perez, the first Latino to lead the committee, oversaw the rebuilding of the party apparatus from an indebted hollowed-out mess after years of neglect during the Obama administration to a cash-flush organization with more than twice as many employees as it had when he took over in February 2017.But Mr. Perez, who was urged to seek the party chairmanship by former President Barack Obama after serving under him as labor secretary, hardly had a smooth tenure. He faced internal dissent in 2018 for stripping superdelegates of their voting power in presidential contests and took public and private fire throughout 2019 from more than half of the party’s two dozen presidential candidates, who bellyached about, among other things, standards that Mr. Perez had set to qualify for debates.Mr. Perez spoke with The New York Times on Thursday about his experience running the party, the results of last year’s elections and his future political plans. His final day working for the party committee was Friday. The interview has been lightly edited and condensed.Do you think that the D.N.C. should have devoted more attention and resources to down-ballot contests given the results in state legislative and congressional races?The thing about this election cycle that is really regrettable is that we had record turnout. And we should be celebrating that on a bipartisan basis, because we did really well. We won the presidency. We have the House. We have the Senate. And Republicans won in a number of critical races. That’s undeniable. They won a number of Senate seats. They won a number of congressional seats. And they won because a lot of their people turned out. And instead, what Donald Trump and the far right chose to do is to invest in this fiction that there was some sort of massive voter fraud, which is inaccurate.The reality is we won a series of really important races. And they won a number of down-ballot races. Those are the facts of 2020. And that’s why we’re absolutely drilling down deeper to answer the question of how did we do well for Mark Kelly and Joe Biden in Arizona and not so well in some of the State House and State Senate races. Really important question. It certainly wasn’t for lack of investment. And that’s why we’re looking to understand what else do we have to do.Why was Latino support for Democrats so much softer in 2020 after four years of Trump than it was in 2016 and elections before that?Do we need to do more with Latino voters? Absolutely. And I am very committed to that. We did more than the party has ever done. But again, every cycle, we need to build on what we did before. And that’s exactly what we will do. The misinformation campaigns in South Florida were very real. And they involved both domestic and foreign actors.And the appeals to socialism in South Florida were more successful. They made those same socialism arguments in Arizona. But they fell flat. And they fell flat, in no small measure, because we had a really aggressive and longstanding organizing infrastructure in Arizona that enabled us to counteract that.Will the 2022 and 2024 elections be a referendum on President Biden’s handling of the pandemic and the economy?What voters are going to ask themselves is the same question they always ask. “Am I better off than I was two years ago? Am I seeing results that are improving my life?” As they are able to return to normalcy, whatever normalcy is going to look like post-Covid, I think that they will appreciate that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris led during this crisis.Should Iowa and New Hampshire keep going first in the presidential nominating process?That will be up to the D.N.C.’s Rules and Bylaws Committee.I’m aware. But what does the private citizen Tom Perez think?A diverse state or states need to be first. The difference between going first and going third is really important. We know the importance of momentum in Democratic primaries.I’ll try one more time. Could you make a case for defending Iowa and New Hampshire going first?The status quo is clearly unacceptable. To simply say, “Let’s just continue doing this because this is how we’ve always done it,” well, Iowa started going as an early caucus state, I believe, in 1972. The world has changed a lot since 1972 to 2020 and 2024. And so the notion that we need to do it because this is how we’ve always done it is a woefully insufficient justification for going first again.This is the Democratic Party of 2020. It’s different from the Democratic Party in how we were in 1972. And we need to reflect that change. And so I am confident that the status quo is not going to survive.How far down the road are you in thinking about running for governor of Maryland?I’m seriously considering a run for governor in Maryland.We need a governor who can really build strong relationships with the Biden administration, will build strong relationships with every one of the jurisdictions in Maryland.Marylanders are just like everybody else. We want an end to this pandemic. We want to put kids back to school. We want to put people back to work. The pandemic has disproportionately touched women and communities of color in Maryland. And I’ve had the fortune of working in local government, and with the nonprofit faith communities and state government there.So I’m currently listening. I’m on a listening tour in Maryland. And I think we need leadership, really, with a bold vision of inclusion and opportunity because ZIP code should never determine destiny in any community across America.Has Larry Hogan been a good governor for Maryland?I appreciate the fact that Larry Hogan has said critical things about Donald Trump. I appreciate that. What we really need, I think, in Maryland is leaders who will sweat the details of governance. The pandemic rollout, the vaccination process has been nothing less than chaotic in Maryland. We’ve had an unemployment insurance crisis, people waiting months and months to get their unemployment benefits. That’s just a failure of leadership at a state level.I didn’t hear a yes or no on Hogan.I applaud that he tried to get some tests from South Korea. But then it turned out that the tests didn’t work. And he covered it up. And there’s always going to be moments where mistakes are made. And good leaders fess up to those mistakes. But he tried to sweep it under the rug.Again, it’s great to see a governor who criticizes Donald Trump. But we need governors who do a hell of a lot more than just criticize.What would you be doing differently to accelerate vaccine distribution and reopen schools faster?I would be on the phone every day with county executives making sure: “What do you need? What do you not have? What do you have? What can we do?” I would be relentlessly reaching out to our colleagues in the federal government to say: “Here’s what we need. Here’s what’s going on.” I would have a war room set up and, again, every single day, say: “You value what you measure. You measure what you value. What are we doing?”Donald Trump is partly to blame for this. He was a disaster. But you look at other states — other states have been able to work around that and are doing better. Our vaccination rates do not compare well. We’re the richest state in the United States — Maryland — but we have way too many people who are on the outside looking in.You said good leaders admit their mistakes. What were the biggest mistakes you made at the D.N.C.?I wish that we could have won more elections. And so I’m looking back at what we did and some of the races we didn’t win. I was really frustrated in January and early February of 2017, because Donald Trump was in power and he was issuing all sorts of executive actions that were turning life upside down for so many people. That was in the middle of the D.N.C. race because the election wasn’t set until the end of February. So we got a late start. And I think that was a mistake.It was frustrating to see Feb. 27, a month into the administration, and I’m just showing up at work for the first time. So I think we have to be very mindful. And if there are periods of time in the future where we’re in a similar situation, where we’ve lost the White House, we better make sure we start early because I had to play a lot of catch-up. And that was a mistake.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Stacey Abrams and Lauren Groh-Wargo: How to Turn Your Red State Blue

      by

      Credit…June ParkSkip to contentSkip to site indexOpinionStacey Abrams and Lauren Groh-Wargo: How to Turn Your Red State BlueIt may take 10 years. Do it anyway.Credit…June ParkSupported byContinue reading the main storyStacey Abrams and Ms. Abrams was the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia in 2018. Ms. Groh-Wargo was her campaign manager. They opened Fair Fight Action in late 2018.Feb. 11, 2021We met and became political partners a decade ago, uniting in a bid to stave off Democratic obsolescence and rebuild a party that would increase the clout of regular, struggling Georgians. Our mission was clear: organize people, help realize gains in their lives, win local races to build statewide competitiveness and hold power accountable.But the challenge was how to do that in a state where many allies had retreated into glum predictions of defeat, where our opponents reveled in shellacking Democrats at the polls and in the Statehouse.That’s not all we had to contend with. There was also a 2010 census undercount of people of color, a looming Republican gerrymander of legislative maps and a new Democratic president midway into his first term confronting a holdover crisis from the previous Republican administration. Though little in modern American history compares with the malice and ineptitude of the botched pandemic response or the attempted insurrection at the Capitol, the dynamic of a potentially inaccurate census and imminent partisan redistricting is the same story facing Democrats in 2021 as it was in 2011. State leaders and activists we know across the country who face total or partial Republican control are wondering which path they should take in their own states now — and deep into the next decade.Georgians deserved better, so we devised and began executing a 10-year plan to transform Georgia into a battleground state. As the world knows, President Biden won Georgia’s 16 electoral votes in November, and the January runoff elections for two Senate seats secured full congressional control for the Democratic Party. Yet the result wasn’t a miracle or truly a surprise, at least not to us. Years of planning, testing, innovating, sustained investment and organizing yielded the record-breaking results we knew they could and should. The lessons we learned can help other states looking to chart a more competitive future for Democrats and progressives, particularly those in the Sun Belt, where demographic change will precede electoral opportunity.We realize that many people are thinking about Stacey’s political future, but right now we intend to talk about the unglamorous, tedious, sometimes technical, often contentious work that creates a battleground state. When fully embraced, this work delivers wins — whether or not Donald Trump is on the ballot — as the growth Georgia Democrats have seen in cycle after cycle shows. Even in tough election years, we have witnessed the power of civic engagement on policy issues and increases in Democratic performance. This combination of improvements has also resulted in steady gains in local races and state legislative races, along with the continued narrowing of the statewide loss margin in election after election that finally flipped the state in 2020 and 2021.The task is hard, the progress can feel slow, and winning sometimes means losing better. In 2012, for example, we prevented the Republicans from gaining a supermajority in the Georgia House of Representatives, which would have allowed them to pass virtually any bill they wanted. We won four seats they had drawn for themselves, and in 2014 we maintained those gains — just holding our ground was a victory.The steps toward victory are straightforward: understand your weaknesses, organize with your allies, shore up your political infrastructure and focus on the long game. Georgia’s transformation is worth celebrating, and how it came to be is a long and complicated story, which required more than simply energizing a new coterie of voters. What Georgia Democrats and progressives accomplished here — and what is happening in Arizona and North Carolina — can be exported to the rest of the Sun Belt and the Midwest, but only if we understand how we got here.Understand why you’re losing.To know how to win, we first had to understand why a century of Democratic Party dominance in Georgia had been erased. For most of the 20th century, Georgia Democrats had existed in a strained alliance of rural conservatives, urban liberals and suburbanites, all unconvinced that voting Republican would serve their ends. After serving as the incubator of the Gingrich revolution in the early 1990s, Georgia turned sharply to the right. When Democrats lost U.S. Senate seats in 2002 and 2004, as well as the governorship in 2002, it showed that former conservative Democrats had fully turned Republican. The Democratic Party lost its grip on power. By 2010, Democrats were losing every statewide race, and in 2012 the State Senate fell to a Republican supermajority. Clearly, Democrats had to change tactics. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Why Pennsylvania Republican Leaders Are All-In for Trump More Than Ever

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhy Pennsylvania Republican Leaders Are All-In for Trump More Than EverPennsylvania G.O.P. leaders have made loyalty to the defeated ex-president the sole organizing principle of the party, and would-be candidates are jockeying to prove they fought the hardest for him.Representative Scott Perry in December with members of the House Freedom Caucus who were asking that Bill Barr, the attorney general, release findings of investigation into allegations of 2020 election fraud.Credit…Al Drago for The New York TimesJan. 28, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETAs a second impeachment trial for Donald J. Trump approaches next month, Republicans in states across the country are lining up behind the former president with unwavering support.Perhaps no state has demonstrated its fealty as tenaciously as Pennsylvania, where Republican officials have gone to extraordinary lengths to keep Trumpism at the center of their message as they bolster the president’s false claims of a “stolen” election.Eight of nine Republicans in Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation voted to throw out their state’s own electoral votes for President Biden on Jan. 6, just hours after a mob had stormed the Capitol.A majority of Republicans in the state legislature had endorsed that effort.And one House member from the state, Scott Perry, was instrumental in promoting a plan in which Mr. Trump would fire the acting attorney general in an effort to stay in office.In the weeks since the Nov. 3 election, Republicans in Pennsylvania have made loyalty to the defeated ex-president the sole organizing principle of the party, the latest chapter in a rightward populist march repeated across other states. As elsewhere, the Pennsylvania G.O.P. was once led by mainstream conservatives, but it is now defined almost exclusively by Trumpism. It faces major statewide races in 2022, for offices including governor and the Senate, with an electorate that just rejected Mr. Trump in favor of Mr. Biden.Far from engaging in self-examination, Pennsylvania Republicans are already jockeying ahead of the 2022 primaries to prove that they fought the hardest for Mr. Trump, who, in spite of the losses by his party in the White House, the Senate and the House, still exerts a strong grip over elected Republicans and grass-roots voters.As the Republican base has shifted — suburbanites leaning more Democratic, and rural white voters lining up behind Republicans over culture-war issues — G.O.P. leaders recognize the extent to which the former president unleashed waves of support for their party. In Pennsylvania, just as in some Midwestern states, a surge of new Republican voters with grievances about a changing America was triggered by Mr. Trump, and only Mr. Trump.Supporters of President Trump marched outside the Pennsylvania Capitol in December as state electors met to cast their Electoral College votes.Credit…Mark Makela for The New York Times“Donald Trump’s presidency and his popularity has been a big win for the Republican Party of Pennsylvania,” said Rob Gleason, a former chair of the state G.O.P. Even though numerous state and federal courts rejected the Trump campaign’s baseless claims of voter fraud, Mr. Gleason said the belief that the voting was rigged “lingers in the minds of a lot of people.”He predicted it would drive Republican turnout in upcoming races. He said he had met this week with a prosecutor who “feels the election was stolen” and was pondering a run for a statewide judgeship this year.Other Republicans are more skeptical that lock-step support of the former president is the best path forward in Pennsylvania, a critical battleground state that is likely to be up for grabs in the next several election cycles.“We have become, over four years, the party of Trump, and it has been one test after the other,” said Ryan Costello, a former G.O.P. House member from the Philadelphia suburbs who has been critical of Mr. Trump and is exploring a run for Senate. “It is not a sustainable growth strategy to double and triple and quadruple down on Trump when he gets divisive.”Despite Mr. Costello’s apprehension, most Republicans thought to be mulling runs for Senate or governor have made it clear that they are prepared to pass a Trump loyalty test.They include members of the Republican congressional delegation, hard-line members of the legislature, and even Donald Trump Jr. The president’s oldest son is the subject of persistent rumors that he will run for high office in the state — mostly because of his ties to Pennsylvania, where he went to prep school and college. The Trump family spent an enormous amount of time campaigning in Pennsylvania in 2020, and as it seeks its next political stage, the state remains a big one.The transformation of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania has been stark. Less than two decades ago, it was led by political centrists such as former Senator Arlen Specter and former Gov. Tom Ridge, who became the first secretary of homeland security.Now it is embodied by Mr. Perry, a member of the hard-line Freedom Caucus who won a fifth term in November for his Harrisburg-area seat. His Democratic opponent, Eugene DePasquale, said he lost the race “fair and square.” But he called the Republican congressman’s efforts on behalf of Mr. Trump in a scheme involving the Justice Department “a radical attempt to overthrow the election.”Demonstrators with a cut-out replica of former Mr. Trump outside the Pennsylvania Capitol this moth.Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York TimesMr. Perry, a purveyor of misinformation about the presidential election, acknowledged on Monday his role in introducing Mr. Trump to an official in the Justice Department. That official, Jeffrey Clark, was willing to abet Mr. Trump in pressing Georgia to invalidate its electoral votes for Mr. Biden.The plan never unfolded. But Mr. Perry, a retired National Guard general who dodged the new metal detectors in the Capitol, rejected calls by Democrats to resign.Just as resolute in their defense of Mr. Trump were the other Pennsylvania House Republicans who voted to reject the state’s electoral votes for Mr. Biden on Jan. 6. Representative Conor Lamb, a Democrat from western Pennsylvania, said on the House floor that his Republican colleagues should be “ashamed of themselves” for spreading lies that led to the breach of the Capitol. His impassioned speech nearly precipitated a fistfight.“The Trump people were putting out a message: ‘We better see you publicly fighting for us,’” Mr. Lamb said in an interview this week. “The 2022 midterm is shaping up to be choosing the candidate who loves Trump the most,” he said of G.O.P. primary contests.But he called that an opportunity for Democrats to talk about issues affecting people’s lives, such as the economy and the pandemic, while Republicans remain fixated on the 2020 election. “They’re making their main political argument at this point based on a fraud; they’re not making it based on real-world conditions,” he said. “The election was not stolen. Biden really beat Trump.”Mr. Lamb, who has won three races in districts that voted for Mr. Trump, has been mentioned as a contender for the open Senate seat. “I would say I will be thinking about it,” he said.Apart from the House delegation, much of the Trumpist takeover in Pennsylvania has occurred in the legislature, where Republicans held their majorities in both chambers in November (a result that the party fails to mention in its vehement claims of election fraud in the presidential race).In contrast to states such as Georgia and Arizona, where top Republican officials debunked disinformation from Mr. Trump and his allies, in Pennsylvania no senior Republicans in Harrisburg pushed back on false claims about election results, some of them created by lawmakers themselves or by Mr. Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani.A majority of Republicans in the General Assembly urged the state’s congressional delegation in December to reject the state’s 20 electoral votes for Mr. Biden after the results were legally certified. Such was the pressure from grass-roots Trump supporters that the majority leader of the State Senate, Kim Ward, said in an interview last month that if she refused to sign on to such an effort, “I’d get my house bombed tonight.”The full embrace of Mr. Trump’s lies about a “stolen” election followed months of Republican lawmakers’ echoing his dismissals of the coronavirus threat. Lawmakers who appeared at “ReOpen PA” rallies in Harrisburg in May, flouting masks and limits on crowd sizes, morphed into leading purveyors of disinformation about election fraud after Nov. 3.One state senator, Doug Mastriano, who is widely believed to be considering a run for governor, paid for buses and offered rides to the “Save America” protests in Washington on Jan. 6 that preceded the breach of the Capitol. Mr. Mastriano has said he left before events turned violent.State Senator Doug Mastriano with supporters of Mr. Trump outside the Pennsylvania Capitol in November.Credit…Julio Cortez/Associated PressAs the legislature convened its 2021 session, Republicans recommitted to a hard-line agenda. Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat, was removed by the Republican majority as president of the State Senate at a legislative session on Jan. 5. Mr. Fetterman had strenuously objected to Republicans’ refusal to seat a Democratic lawmaker whose narrow victory had been officially certified.Republicans in the State House are seeking to change how judges are elected to ensure a Republican majority on the State Supreme Court, after the current court, with a Democratic lean, ruled against claims in election fraud cases last year.Republican lawmakers have also plunged into a lengthy examination of the November election, even though no evidence of more than trivial fraud has surfaced, and courts rejected claims that election officials overstepped their legal mandates.Republicans announced 14 hearings in the House. Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, was grilled in the first one last week. Dismissing the series of hearings as a “charade,” she called on Republicans not to sow further distrust in the integrity of the state’s election, which drew a record 71 percent turnout despite a pandemic.“We need to stand together as Americans,” Ms. Boockvar said in an interview, “and tell the voters these were lies, that your votes counted, they were checked, they were audited, they were recounted many places, and the numbers added up and they were certified.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 88 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Knocking on Two Million Doors in Georgia

      by

      @media (pointer: coarse) {
      .nytslm_outerContainer {
      overflow-x: scroll;
      -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch;
      }
      }

      .nytslm_outerContainer {
      display: flex;
      align-items: center;
      /* Fixes IE */
      overflow-x: auto;
      box-shadow: -6px 0 white, 6px 0 white, 1px 3px 6px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.15);
      padding: 10px 1.25em 10px;
      transition: all 250ms;
      -ms-overflow-style: none;
      /* IE 10+ */
      scrollbar-width: none;
      /* Firefox */
      background: white;
      margin-bottom: 20px;
      z-index: 1000;
      }

      @media (min-width: 1024px) {
      .nytslm_outerContainer {
      margin-bottom: 0px;
      padding: 13px 1.25em 10px;
      }
      }

      .nytslm::-webkit-scrollbar {
      display: none;
      /* Safari and Chrome */
      }

      .nytslm_innerContainer {
      margin: unset;
      display: flex;
      align-items: center;
      }

      @media (min-width: 600px) {
      .nytslm_innerContainer {
      margin: auto;
      min-width: 600px;
      }
      }

      .nytslm_title {
      padding-right: 1em;
      border-right: 1px solid #ccc;
      }

      @media (min-width: 740px) {
      .nytslm_title {
      max-width: none;
      font-size: 1.0625rem;
      line-height: 1.25rem;
      }
      }

      .nytslm_spacer {
      width: 0;
      border-right: 1px solid #E2E2E2;
      height: 45px;
      margin: 0 1.4em;
      }

      .nytslm_list {
      font-family: nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;
      display: flex;
      width: auto;
      list-style: none;
      padding-left: 1em;
      flex-shrink: 0;
      align-items: baseline;
      justify-content: center;
      }

      .nytslm_li {
      margin-right: 1.4em;
      flex-shrink: 0;
      font-size: 0.8125rem;
      line-height: 0.8125rem;
      font-weight: 600;
      padding: 1em 0;
      }

      #nytslm .nytslm_li a {
      color: #121212;
      text-decoration: none;
      }

      #nytslm .nytsmenu_li_current,
      #nytslm .nytslm_li a:hover,
      #nytslm .nytslm_li a:active,
      #nytslm .nytslm_li a:focus {
      color: #121212;
      border-bottom: 2px solid #121212;
      padding-bottom: 2px;
      }

      .nytslm_li_live_loud:after {
      content: ‘LIVE’
      }

      .nytslm_li_live_loud {
      background-color: #d0021b;
      color: white;
      border-radius: 3px;
      padding: 4px 6px 2px 6px;
      margin-right: 2px;
      display: inline-block;
      letter-spacing: 0.03rem;
      font-weight: 700;
      }

      .nytslm_li_upcoming_loud {
      border: 1px solid #d0021b;
      color: #d0021b;
      border-radius: 3px;
      padding: 4px 6px 2px 6px;
      margin-right: 2px;
      display: inline-block;
      letter-spacing: 0.03rem;
      font-weight: 700;
      }

      .nytslm_li_upcoming_loud:before {
      content: ‘Upcoming’
      }

      .nytslm_li_loud a:hover,
      .nytslm_li_loud a:active,
      .nytslm_li_loud a:focus {
      border-bottom: 2px solid;
      padding-bottom: 2px;
      }

      .nytslm_li_updated {
      color: #777;
      }

      #masthead-bar-one {
      display: none;
      }

      .electionNavbar__logoSvg {
      width: 80px;
      align-self: center;
      display: flex;
      }

      @media(min-width: 600px) {
      .electionNavbar__logoSvg {
      width: 100px;
      }
      }

      .nytslm_notification {
      border-left: 1px solid #ccc;
      font-family: nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;
      padding-left: 1em;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_label {
      color: #D0021B;
      text-transform: uppercase;
      font-weight: 700;
      font-size: 0.6875rem;
      margin-bottom: 0.2em;
      letter-spacing: 0.02em;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_link {
      font-weight: 600;
      color: #121212;
      display: flex;
      align-items: center;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_headline {
      font-size: 0.875rem;
      line-height: 1.0625rem;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_image_wrapper {
      position: relative;
      max-width: 75px;
      margin-left: 10px;
      flex-shrink: 0;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_image {
      max-width: 100%;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_image_live_bug {
      position: absolute;
      text-transform: uppercase;
      bottom: 7px;
      left: 2px;

      font-size: 0.5rem;
      background-color: #d0021b;
      color: white;
      border-radius: 3px;
      padding: 4px 4px 2px 4px;
      font-weight: 700;
      margin-right: 2px;
      letter-spacing: 0.03rem;
      }

      /* No hover state on in app */
      .Hybrid .nytslm_li a:hover,
      .Hybrid .nytslm_li_loud a:hover {
      border-bottom: none;
      padding-bottom: 0;
      }

      .Hybrid #TOP_BANNER_REGION {
      display: none;
      }

      .nytslm_st0 {
      fill: #f4564a;
      }

      .nytslm_st1 {
      fill: #ffffff;
      }

      .nytslm_st2 {
      fill: #2b8ad8;
      }

      Electoral College Results

      Election Disinformation

      Full Results

      Biden Transition Updates

      “),e+=””+b+””,e+=””,d&&(e+=””,e+=””,e+=”Live”,e+=””),e+=””,e}function getVariant(){var a=window.NYTD&&window.NYTD.Abra&&window.NYTD.Abra.getAbraSync&&window.NYTD.Abra.getAbraSync(“STYLN_elections_notifications”);// Only actually have control situation in prd and stg
      return[“www.nytimes.com”,”www.stg.nytimes.com”].includes(window.location.hostname)||(a=”STYLN_elections_notifications”),a||”0_control”}function reportData(){if(window.dataLayer){var a;try{a=dataLayer.find(function(a){return!!a.user}).user}catch(a){}var b={abtest:{test:”styln-elections-notifications”,variant:getVariant()},module:{name:”styln-elections-notifications”,label:getVariant(),region:”TOP_BANNER”},user:a};window.dataLayer.push(Object.assign({},b,{event:”ab-alloc”})),window.dataLayer.push(Object.assign({},b,{event:”ab-expose”})),window.dataLayer.push(Object.assign({},b,{event:”impression”}))}}function insertNotification(a,b){// Bail here if the user is in control
      if(reportData(),”0_control”!==getVariant()){// Remove menu bar items or previous notification
      var c=document.querySelector(“.nytslm_innerContainer”);if(c&&1 30 * 60 * 1000) return restoreMenuIfNecessary();
      // Do not update DOM if the content won’t change
      if(currentNotificationContents!==a.text&&window.localStorage.getItem(“stylnelecs”)!==a.timestamp)// Do not show if user has interacted with this link
      // if (Cookie.get(‘stylnelecs’) === data.timestamp) return;
      {expireLocalStorage(“stylnelecs”),currentNotificationContents=a.text;// Construct URL for tracking
      var b=a.link.split(“#”),c=b[0]+”?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-elections-notifications&variant=1_election_notifications&region=TOP_BANNER&context=Menu#”+b[1],d=formatNotification(c,a.text,a.kicker,a.image);insertNotification(d,function(){var b=document.querySelector(“.nytslm_notification_link”);return b?void(b.onclick=function(){window.localStorage.setItem(“stylnelecs”,a.timestamp)}):null})}})}(function(){navigator.userAgent.includes(“nytios”)||navigator.userAgent.includes(“nyt_android”)||window.stylnelecsHasLoaded||(// setInterval(getUpdate, 5000);
      window.stylnelecsHasLoaded=!0)})(),function(){try{if(navigator.userAgent.includes(“nytios”)||navigator.userAgent.includes(“nyt_android”)){var a=document.getElementsByClassName(“nytslm_title”)[0];a.style.pointerEvents=”none”}}catch(a){}}(); More

    • 125 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Terry McAuliffe Faces All-Black Democratic Primary in Virginia Governor’s Race

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTerry McAuliffe Faces All-Black Democratic Primary in Virginia Governor’s RaceMr. McAuliffe, who was governor from 2014 to 2018, says he wants to take “Virginia to the next level and to lift up all Virginians.”Terry McAuliffe at a campaign rally for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Norfolk, Va., in March.Credit…Samuel Corum/EPA, via ShutterstockDec. 9, 2020, 12:57 p.m. ETTerry McAuliffe, the former governor of Virginia, on Wednesday entered the contest for his old job, simultaneously offering himself as both a trusted steward during an economic and public health crisis and someone prepared to fight against “the old way of doing things.”“I am running for governor again to think big and to be bold and to take the Commonwealth of Virginia to the next level and to lift up all Virginians,” Mr. McAuliffe said in a brief speech outside a public school in Richmond, the state capital.Mr. McAuliffe, 63, formally began his campaign surrounded by four senior elected officials, all of whom are Black. The setup was a nod both to the relationships he nurtured during his governorship from 2014 to 2018 and the complex nature of the state’s 2021 primary, in which three Black candidates have already announced their candidacies for the Democratic nomination.Mr. McAuliffe’s 2021 campaign has for months been an open secret in Virginia — at a March campaign rally, Joseph R. Biden Jr. called him “the once and future governor” — and Mr. McAuliffe’s allies have made the case that his coalition would look a lot like Mr. Biden’s, with core support from Black voters and suburbanites who sent Mr. Biden to the White House.“We need him to lift the Black community from the crippling pandemic, because he knows that it has hit the Black communities, Black communities and brown communities harder than anyone else,” L. Louise Lucas, the Virginia State Senate president, said while introducing Mr. McAuliffe on Wednesday. “We need his experience and tested leadership, tested leadership, tested leadership.”Virginia’s contest for governor will serve as a first test of the post-Trump Democratic coalition. For four years, culminating with the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, the party’s voters prioritized electability, choosing more moderate candidates who faced liberal firebrands in nearly all competitive races.Mr. McAuliffe is the fourth Democrat to enter the 2021 race for governor, joining three Black candidates who have been campaigning for months: Jennifer McClellan, a state senator; Jennifer Carroll Foy, who on Tuesday resigned her seat in the House of Delegates to campaign for governor full time; and Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax.But unlike in the presidential contest, in which Mr. Biden sold his electability against President Trump, whichever Democrat emerges from Virginia’s June primary will be a heavy favorite against the Republican challenger.Virginia has become increasingly Democratic since 2009, the last time Republicans won a statewide office. The party won control of the state legislature in 2019, and Mr. Biden carried the state by 10 percentage points last month.The Republican field already appears fractured, with Amanda Chase, a Republican state senator who models herself after Mr. Trump, announcing last weekend that she would run as an independent candidate rather than seek the Republican Party’s nomination at a state convention next year. Kirk Cox, a former speaker of the House of Delegates, is seeking the Republican nomination and Pete Snyder, a wealthy marketing executive, may also join the G.O.P. primary race soon.At the same time some Virginia liberals have pronounced themselves eager to elect Ms. McClellan or Ms. Carroll Foy, either of whom would be the nation’s first Black woman governor. Virginia has never elected a woman to be governor and has not elected a woman to statewide office since 1989.Ms. Carroll Foy, at 39 the youngest candidate in the field, was not shy about attacking Mr. McAuliffe as a creature of the past.“Career politicians like Terry McAuliffe are interested in maintaining the status quo,” she said in a statement Tuesday night. “But Virginians are calling for change. They want someone who understands their problems as I do because I’ve lived them. While I respect Terry McAuliffe’s service, he doesn’t understand the problems Virginians face. A former political party boss and multimillionaire, Terry McAuliffe is simply out of touch with everyday Virginians.”Ms. McClellan, while not attacking Mr. McAuliffe directly, cited her own “life experience” as evidence she would be the best governor in the field in a statement released Wednesday.Mr. McAuliffe said Wednesday that he would center his campaign on helping the state’s economy recover from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, pledging Virginia’s largest investment in public education and appealing to Black voters in the Democratic primary in June.Mr. McAuliffe campaigned alongside former President Bill Clinton in Charlottesville, Va., in 2013.Credit…Khue Bui for The New York TimesHe also leaned heavily on his past tenure as governor, citing fights with Republicans who at the time controlled Virginia’s General Assembly. In the same breath, Mr. McAuliffe promoted his record as governor and called for a new approach to running the state government.“The old Richmond approach just doesn’t work anymore,” he said. “Folks, it is time for a new Virginia way. I know that old way of thinking because I fought against it constantly as governor, time and time again.”Mr. McAuliffe is a longtime fixture in Democratic politics, both nationally and in Virginia. He is close enough to former President Bill Clinton that the two men speak daily, and he claims to make more than 100 phone calls every day. A former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Mr. McAuliffe has run for Virginia governor twice, losing a bitter 2009 primary before winning in 2013. He also weighed a 2020 presidential campaign but bowed out in April 2019 once it became clear that Mr. Biden would seek the Democratic Party’s nomination.He spent the rest of 2019 campaigning and fund-raising for Democrats running for Virginia state legislative seats, helping the party seize control of both the State Senate and House of Delegates for the first time in a generation.Virginia’s current governor, Ralph Northam, a Democrat, is forbidden by state law from seeking a second consecutive term. Mr. McAuliffe is vying to be the second Virginia governor since the Civil War to be elected twice, following Mills Godwin Jr., who was elected as a Democrat in 1965 and as a Republican in 1973.Virginia’s contests for governor, coming the year after presidential elections, have for decades been considered an opportunity for the party that just lost the White House to take control of a large state government. Mr. McAuliffe’s 2013 victory over the Republican Ken Cuccinelli is the only time since Mr. Godwin’s 1973 election that the party that held the presidency also won the Virginia governor’s mansion.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More