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      Florida, a ‘Microcosm of the Country’

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      The Times’s Miami bureau chief, Patricia Mazzei, shares what it’s like to cover hurricanes and elections, sometimes in the same day.The day before Hurricane Ian touched down in Florida, cars in bumper-to-bumper traffic lined State Road 60, headed southeast, away from Tampa to avoid the storm. Patricia Mazzei, The Times’s Miami bureau chief since 2017, was in one of the few vehicles driving on the other side of the road, toward Tampa.“It’s a very strange feeling,” Ms. Mazzei, who worked at The Miami Herald for a decade before joining The Times, said of driving toward a storm, which she sometimes has to do for her work. “It’s always that way, but it doesn’t stop being weird.”Ms. Mazzei and a team of journalists covered the hurricane and its aftermath from the ground in Tampa and the Fort Myers area. The devastation was the latest headline-grabbing event for a state that has recently been at the forefront of the news cycle, with the F.B.I.’s seizure of documents from former President Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and the flights arranged by Gov. Ron DeSantis that transported migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard.In a video call, Ms. Mazzei discussed the often frenetic pace of news in the state and how she keeps track of it all. This interview has been edited.Hurricane Ian has dominated both local and national news coverage in recent weeks. How do you approach the different facets of hurricane coverage?The Aftermath of Hurricane IanThe Victims: The storm, Florida’s deadliest since 1935, has been linked to the deaths of at least 119 people in the state. Many were at least 60, and dozens died by drowning.A Housing Crisis: As the extent of the damage from Ian comes into focus, many in Florida are uncertain of their next chapter, fearing they may become homeless.Uncertain Future: Older people displaced by Hurricane Ian are confronting a wrenching situation: At their age, remaking the lives they loved so much in Florida may not be possible.Lack of Insurance: In the Florida counties hit hardest by Ian, less than 20 percent of homes had flood insurance, new data show. Experts say that will make rebuilding harder.There is so much news in this region that it is more manageable to think of it in pieces. Sometimes you feel as if you’re in the middle of the vortex: How many articles have been written this week? How many different topics have come up? Because we’re coming at it from a news lens, most things are not necessarily related. There’s stuff happening in court. There are natural disasters. There are these things that aren’t related — they just happen to happen at the same time.You always know in an election year that the fall — when storm season and election season overlap — is going to be very busy. You’re hoping there’s no storm, but you have to pivot depending on any given moment. In 2018, we were covering the midterms, and Hurricane Michael hit the Panhandle. It’s 2022 and we’re covering the midterms, and Hurricane Ian hits southwest Florida.What audience are you thinking about in your report?Florida is a microcosm of the country, generally speaking. There’s a lot of interest from people in other places about this state because they have connections to it, either through family or work or vacation. You want the people who are represented in the stories, in the communities that you are in, to feel represented. And you want people nationally and internationally who maybe have never been in a hurricane to understand what it means.You want it to be informational, not just for the locals. It’s a balancing job, trying to let people who might not be in southwest Florida understand the geography of this place.Is there a specific moment of surprise or immediacy that you remember from any of these bigger news events?We were reporting a story following up on the migrants who were sent to Martha’s Vineyard by the state of Florida when Hurricane Ian took aim. I had to send my outline and my notes for my part of the story to my colleagues and then just be like, I can’t do this anymore. I’ve got to find gas, I have to get supplies. I’ve got to move out west. It sort of encapsulated the whiplash, and the fact that you have to be flexible and lean on your colleagues.Is that whiplash unsettling?It’s what we do. The lead-up to storms is stressful in a different way than actually covering them. There’s a lot of waiting and a lot of anxiety. You have to be worried about flash flooding. You’re not going to have connectivity, so how are you going to let people know to be safe? There’s a lot of worrying and planning. And then once the storm hits, you have to try to get a sense of the scope of the destruction by just going one foot at a time, one town at a time, to see how it looks.It’s stressful on both ends. But the more you do it, the more it becomes something that you know how to plan for. It helps to get experience and have a plan going into the next one.Do you think the hurricane is attached as a news story to the political news cycle?We have to wonder how the election is going to look in southwest Florida because it is the base of the Republican Party. The governor wants to keep things as normal as possible, but hurricanes sometimes require special accommodations for people to vote afterward. The long-term effects — in this case, long term is a month to the election — we’re going to have to see how one thing ends up affecting the other. More

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      The ‘Sleeping Giant’ That May Decide the Midterms

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      The choices made by Latino voters on Nov. 8 will be crucial to the outcome in a disproportionate share of Senate battleground states, like Arizona (31.5 percent of the population), Nevada (28.9), Florida (25.8), Colorado (21.7), Georgia (9.6) and North Carolina (9.5).According to most analysts, there is no question that a majority of Hispanic voters will continue to support Democratic candidates. The question going into the coming election is how large that margin will be.In terms of the battle for control of the House, three Hispanic-majority congressional districts in South Texas — the 15th, 28th and 34th — have become proving grounds for Republican candidates challenging decades of Democratic dominance. In a special election in the 34th district in June, the Republican candidate, Mayra Flores, prevailed.Two weeks ago, The Texas Tribune reported that:Since Labor Day, outside G.O.P. groups have blasted the Democratic nominees on multiple fronts, criticizing them all as weak on border issues and then zeroing in on candidate-specific vulnerabilities. Democratic groups are countering in two of the races, though for now, it is Republicans who appear to be in a more offensive posture.Last week, Axios reported that in the 15th Congressional district, which is 81.9 percent Hispanic, national Democratic groups had begun to abandon its nominee as a lost cause:Texas Democrat Michelle Vallejo, a progressive running in a majority-Hispanic Rio Grande Valley district against Republican Monica de la Cruz, isn’t getting any Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee support in her Trump +3 district. House Majority PAC is planning to cancel the scheduled ad reservations for her at the end of the month, according to a source familiar with the group’s plans.Across a wide range of studies and exit poll data analyses, there is general agreement that President Donald Trump significantly improved his 2016 margin among Hispanic voters in 2020, although there is less agreement on how large his gain was, on the demographics of his new supporters, or on whether the movement was related to Trump himself, Trump-era Covid payments or to a secular trend.In their July 2022 paper “Reversion to the Mean, or their Version of the Dream? An Analysis of Latino Voting in 2020,” Bernard L. Fraga, Yamil R. Velez and Emily A. West, political scientists at Emory, Columbia and the University of Pittsburgh, write that there isan increasing alignment between issue positions and vote choice among Latinos. Moreover, we observe significant pro-Trump shifts among working-class Latinos and modest evidence of a pro-Trump shift among newly-engaged U.S.-born Latino children of immigrants and Catholic Latinos. The results point to a more durable Republican shift than currently assumed.That is, the more Hispanic voters subordinate traditional party and ethnic solidarity in favor of voting based on conservative or moderate policy preferences, the more likely that are to defect to the Republican Party.The authors caution, however, that nothing is fixed in stone:On the one hand, there is evidence that working-class Latino voters became more supportive of Trump in 2020, mirroring increases in educational polarization among the mass public. If similar processes are at play for Latinos — and if such polarization is not Trump-specific — then this could mean a durable change in partisan loyalties.On the other hand, they continue,Historical voting patterns among Latinos reveal natural ebbs and flows. Using exit poll data from 1984-2020, political scientist Alan Abramowitz finds that the pro-Democratic margin among Latinos ranges from +9 in 2004 to +51 in 1996, with an average margin of +35 points. Instead of reflecting a durable shift, 2020 could be a “reversion to the mean,” with 2016 serving as a recent high-water mark for the Democrats.In an email responding to my inquiry about future trends, Fraga wrote:My sense is that most of the Latinos who shifted to the Republican Party in 2020 have not returned to the Democratic Party. Many of these new Republican converts were ideologically conservative pre-2020, so Republicans didn’t have to shift their policy message very much to win them over.“Portrait of a Persuadable Latino” — an April 2021 study by the nonprofit Equis Research of Hispanic defections from the Democratic Party — found similar overall trends to those reported in the Fraga-Velez-West paper, but revealed slightly different demographic patterns.The Equis survey found that the largest percentage tilt toward Trump was among women, at plus 8 percent, compared with men, at 3 percent; among non-college Latinos, plus 6, compared with just 1 percent among the college educated; among Protestants, plus seven compared with plus 5 among Catholics and plus 15 percent among conservative Hispanics — compared with no tilt among liberals and a plus 4 percent tilt among moderates.Carlos Odio, co-founder and senior vice president at Equis Labs, a nonprofit committed “to massively increase civic participation among Latinos in this country,” emailed a response to my query about Hispanic voter trends:While Latinos shifted toward Republicans between 2016 and 2020, an 8-point swing toward Trump, we do not see evidence of a further decrease in Democratic support since Biden’s win. In most states, things do not look worse for Dems with Latinos than they did in the last election, nor do they look better.But, Odio pointedly cautioned,The political environment has the potential to lead to further erosion of Democratic support among Latinos. A meaningful share of Latino voters remain on the fence, having not firmly chosen a side in the election. These late breakers could move toward either party, or toward the couch, before the midterms are over.Odio sent me a September 2022 Equis report, “Latino Voters in Limbo — A Midterm Update,” which found thatYoung Latinos (18-34), Latino men, and self-identified conservatives are overrepresented among the 2020 Biden voters who today disapprove of the president’s job performance. Among the most likely to be undecided today are ideological holdouts: conservative and moderate Latinos who have held back from Republicans, despite seeming to share some characteristics with their G.O.P.-supporting white counterparts. Notably Republicans have not increased support among these Latinos in the last year in almost any state — likely because a large majority of conservative or moderate Latinos who don’t yet vote Republican believe Democrats “care more about people like them.”Today, the report continues, “what keeps many Latinos on the fence is again concerns about the economy and fears that Democrats don’t consistently prioritize the economy, handle it as decisively as business-obsessed Republicans, or value hard work.”A separate Equis study, “2020 Post-Mortem: The American Dream Voter,” found that a negative attitude toward socialism was a factor among Hispanics nationwide, especially among those who stress the importance of working hard to get ahead:There isn’t one overriding concern about “socialism”— but a package of complaints usually rises to the top around government control over people’s lives, raising taxes, and money going to ‘undeserving’ recipients. If a through line exists, it is a worry over people becoming “lazy and dependent on government’ by those who highly value hard work.”The American Dream Voter study found that the declining salience of immigration in 2020 compared with either 2016 or 2018, combined with the debate in 2020 over Covid lockdowns versus reopening the economy, diminished ethnic solidarity in 2020, allowing conservative Hispanics to shift their allegiance to the Republican Party:The economy unlocked a door: the issue landscape shifted to more favorable ground for Trump, opening a way for some Latinos who found it unacceptable to vote for him in 2016. The socialism attack broke through: it created a space for defection,” according to the report’s authors. “Democrats retain some natural credibility with Latino voters but have lost ground on workers, work and the American Dream; they’re also open to attack for taking Hispanics for granted; Republicans have some openings but are still held back by their image as the uncaring party of big corporations.In 2016, the study continued,some Latinos who we might predict would vote Republican — based on their demographics, partisanship and ideology — were held back from supporting Trump by (a) opposition to his hard-line immigration positions and (b) the importance of their Hispanic identity. By the middle of 2020, neither views on immigration nor the role of Hispanic identity were showing a major effect on vote choice — they were no longer cleanly differentiating Trump voters from Democratic voters.In 2018, according to the study, “Trump lost even the conservatives on family separation. But family separation was not front-and-center by the end of the (2020) election. Reopening the economy — one of Trump’s most popular planks with Latino voters — was.”A 2021 Pew Research report found that Latinos view anti-Hispanic discrimination differently from anti-Black discrimination. Hispanic voters were asked whether “there was ‘too much,’ ‘about the right amount’ or ‘too little’ attention paid to race and racial issues” when it comes to Hispanics and then asked the same question about Black Americans.Just over half, 51 percent, of Latino respondents said, “too little” attention is paid to discrimination against Hispanics, 28 percent said, “about the right amount” and 19 percent said, “too much.” Conversely, 30 percent of Latino respondents said that in the case of Black Americans, “too little” attention is paid to discrimination, 23 percent said, “about the right amount” and 45 percent said, “too much.”The American Dream Voter survey Equis performed found that when Hispanics were asked “which concerns you more, Democrats embracing socialism/leftist policies or Republicans embracing fascist/anti-democratic policies,” 42 percent of Latinos said socialism/leftist policies and 38 percent said fascist/anti-democratic politics.Equis did find substantial Democratic advantages when Hispanics were asked which party is “better for Hispanics” (53-31), which “is the party of fairness and equality” (51-31) and which party “cares about people like you” (49-32). But the Democratic advantage shrank to statistical insignificance on key bread-and- butter issues: which party “values hard work” 42-40 and “which is the party of the American dream” 41-39, and a dead 42-42 heat on “which party is better for the American worker?”Last month, Pew Research released a survey that showed continuing Democratic strength among Hispanics, “Most Latinos Say Democrats Care About Them and Work Hard for Their Vote, Far Fewer Say So of G.O.P.”Pew found that over the past four years, Democrats experienced a modest gain in partisan identification among Hispanics over Republicans, going from 62-34 (+28) in 2018 to 63-32 (+31) in 2022.From March 2022 to August 2022, the share of Latinos identifying abortion as a “very important issue” shot up from 42 to 57 percent in response to the Supreme Court’s decision’s decision in Dobbs in June. Hispanics favor abortion rights by a 57-40 margin, slightly smaller than the split among all voters, 62-36, according to Pew.At the same time, the percentage of Latino respondents listing violent crime among the most important issues rose from 61 to 70 percent; support for gun control rose from 59 to 66 percent; and concern over voter suppression rose from 51 to 59 percent.Registered Latino voters split 53-26 in favor of voting for a generic Democratic congressional candidate over a generic Republican, according to Pew, but there were striking religious differences: Catholics, who make up 47 percent of the Hispanic electorate, favored a generic Democratic House candidate 59-26; evangelical Protestants, 24 percent of Hispanics, backed Republicans 50-32; Latinos with little or no religious affiliation, 23 percent, backed Democrats 60-17.Matt A. Barreto, a professor of political science and Chicana/o & Central American Studies at U.C.L.A, pointed to data in the Oct. 2 National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials weekly Latino voter poll:Indeed if you look at issues like access to abortion, student debt, immigrant rights and gun violence, there are no signs at all that Latinos are becoming more conservative. When asked about government policy, 70 to 80 percent of Latino voters give support to the Democratic Party policy agenda. Indeed for the fourth week in a row, the NALEO tracking poll shows that abortion rights are the number two most important issue to Latino voters in 2022 and issues such as mass shootings and lowering the costs of health care are top 5 issues as well.Trump’s 2020 gains reflected “a clear pattern that concern over the Covid economic slowdown helped Trump make temporary gains with Latino voters,” Barreto argued. “Because so many were negatively impacted by the slumping economy in 2020, Trump was able to convince at least some Latinos that he would reopen the economy faster.”Despite those improvements, Barreto contended, “the reality is that Trump’s gains in 2020 were not part of any pattern of realignment or ideological shift among Latinos. As the national economy continues to recover and improve, Biden favorability continues to recover among Latinos.”In September 2020. Ian F. Haney López, a law professor at the University of California- Berkeley, wrote an essay for The Times with Tory Gavito, president of Way to Win, a liberal advocacy group. They wrote that when they asked white, Black and Hispanic votershow “convincing” they found a dog-whistle message lifted from Republican talking points. The message condemned “illegal immigration from places overrun with drugs and criminal gangs “and called for “fully funding the police, so our communities are not threatened by people who refuse to follow our laws.” Almost three out of five white respondents judged the message convincing. More surprising, exactly the same percentage of African Americans agreed, as did an even higher percentage of Latinos.In other words, Haney López and Gavito wrote, “Mr. Trump’s competitiveness among Latinos is real.” Progressives, they continued,commonly categorize Latinos as people of color, no doubt partly because progressive Latinos see the group that way and encourage others to do so as well. Certainly, we both once took that perspective for granted. Yet in our survey, only one in four Hispanics saw the group as people of color. In contrast, the majority rejected this designation. They preferred to see Hispanics as a group integrating into the American mainstream, one not overly bound by racial constraints but instead able to get ahead through hard work.I asked Haney López about the current political and partisan state of play among Hispanic voters going into the 2022 election. He emailed me his reply:As with white voters, the most important predictors of support for Republicans track racial resentment as well as anxiety over racial status. Rather than an ideological sorting, we are witnessing a racial sorting among Latinos — not in terms of anything so simple as skin color, but rather, in terms of those who seek a higher status for themselves by more closely identifying on racial grounds with the white mainstream, versus those who give less priority to race, or even see Latinos as a nonwhite racial group.Some Latinos, Haney López continued,are susceptible to Republican propaganda promoting social conflict and distrust. The greatest failure of the Democratic Party with respect to Latinos, and indeed the polity generally, is its failure to pursue policies and to stress stories that build social solidarity, especially across lines of race, class, and other wedge identities, including gender and sexual identity.Asked the same set of questions, Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, chancellor of the University of Massachusetts-Boston and a former dean of the U.C.L.A. Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, had a somewhat different take.By email, Suárez-Orozco wrote:I am unpersuaded by the claim that Hispanics are becoming more conservative. To be more precise, over time, they are becoming more American. The holy trinity of integration: language, marriage patterns, and connectivity to the labor market tell a powerful story. Over time, Hispanics mimic mainstream norms. They are learning English much faster than Italians did a century and a half ago, they are marrying outside their ethnicity at very significant rates, and their connectivity to the labor market is very muscular.To Suárez-Orozco, Latinos in the United States are primed to play an ever more significant role — in politics and everywhere else: “The dominant metaphor on Hispanics qua elections over the last half-century has been ‘the sleeping giant.’ When the sleeping giants wakes up: Alas, s/he is us.”The question is whether this sleeping giant will move to the right or to the left. The evidence points both ways — but this is not a contest the Democrats can afford lose.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      US midterms 2022: the key races

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      ExplainerUS midterms 2022: the key races Control of the Senate could hang on results in a handful of states while votes for governor and secretary of state could affect the conduct of future electionsArizona governor: Katie Hobbs (D) v Kari Lake (R)Hobbs is currently secretary of state in what used to be a Republican stronghold. Lake is a former TV news anchor who relishes sparring with the media and promoting Donald Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Victory for Lake – who has appeared with figures linked to QAnon on the campaign trail – would be a major boost for the former president and ominous for 2024.US midterms 2022: the key candidates who threaten democracyRead moreArizona secretary of state: Mark Finchem (R) v Adrian Fontes (D)Secretary of state elections have rarely made headlines in past midterms but this time they could be vital to the future of American democracy. The battle to become Arizona’s top election official pits Fontes, a lawyer and former marine, against Finchem, who falsely claims that voter fraud cost Trump the state in 2020 and who was at the US Capitol on January 6 2021.Arizona Senate: Mark Kelly (D) v Blake Masters (R)Kelly is a retired astronaut who became well known in the state when his wife, then-congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, was shot and critically injured at an event in Tucson in 2011. Masters, a 36-year-old venture capitalist and associate of mega-donor Peter Thiel, gained the Republican nomination with the help of Trump’s endorsement but has since toned down his language on abortion, gun control and immigration.Florida attorney general: Aramis Ayala (D) v Ashley Moody (R)Ayala is the first Black female state attorney in Florida history. Moody, the incumbent, is a former prosecutor and judge who recently joined 10 other Republican attorneys general in a legal brief that sided with Trump over the justice department regarding the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home. Like her predecessor Pam Bondi, Moody could be a powerful ally for Trump as the state’s top law enforcement official.Georgia governor: Stacey Abrams (D) v Brian Kemp (R)Abrams, a voting rights activist, is bidding to become the first Black female governor in American history. But she lost narrowly to Kemp in 2018 and opinion polls suggest she could suffer the same fate in 2022. Kemp now enjoys the advantages of incumbency and a strong state economy. He also has momentum after brushing aside a primary challenge from Trump-backed challenger David Perdue.Georgia Senate: Herschel Walker (R) v Raphael Warnock (D)Warnock’s victory in a January 2021 runoff was critical in giving Democrats’ control of the Senate. Now the pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist church – where Martin Luther King used to preach – faces Walker, a former football star with huge name recognition but scant experience (he recently suggested that China’s polluted air has replaced American air). Polls show a tight race between the men, both of whom are African American.Ohio Senate: Tim Ryan (D) v JD Vance (R)The quintessential duel for blue-collar voters. Ryan, a Democratic congressman, has run an energetic campaign, presented himself as an earthy moderate and accused Vance of leaving the state for San Francisco to make millions of dollars in Silicon Valley. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy, seen as a kind of Rosetta Stone for understanding the Trump phenomenon in 2016, used to be a Trump critic but has now gone full Maga.Pennsylvania governor: Doug Mastriano (R) v Josh Shapiro (D)Mastriano, a retired army colonel and far-right state senator, led protests against pandemic restrictions, supported efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat and appearing outside the US Capitol during the January 6 riot. Critics say that, as governor, he could tip a presidential election to Trump in 2024. Shapiro, the state’s attorney general, is running on a promise to defend democracy and voting rights.Pennsylvania Senate: John Fetterman (D) v Mehmet Oz (R)One of the most colourful duels on the ballot. Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, is 6ft 8in tall, recovering from a stroke that has affected his speech and hearing, and running aggressive ads that mock Oz for his lack of connections to the state. Oz, a heart surgeon and former host of the daytime TV show The Dr Oz Show, benefited from Trump’s endorsement in the primary but has since backed away from the former president’s claims of a stolen election.Wisconsin Senate: Mandela Barnes (D) v Ron Johnson (R)This is Democrats’ best chance of unseating an incumbent senator: Johnson is the only Republican running for re-election in a state that Biden won in 2020. First elected as a fiscal conservative, he has promoted bogus coronavirus treatments such as mouthwash, dismissed climate change as “bullshit” and sought to play down the January 6 insurrection. Barnes, currently lieutenant governor, is bidding to become the first Black senator in Wisconsin’s history.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022RepublicansDemocratsUS politicsArizonaFloridaGeorgiaexplainersReuse this content More

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      Students protest Ben Sasse’s views on LGBTQ+ rights at University of Florida

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      Students protest Ben Sasse’s views on LGBTQ+ rights at University of FloridaLikely appointment of Republican Nebraska senator as president of the university sparks protests during his campus visit Less than a week after being revealed as the likely next president of the University of Florida (UF), the Republican senator Ben Sasse was met with protests when he appeared on campus in Gainesville on Monday.Ben Sasse, Republican who voted to convict Trump, to depart CongressRead more“Hey-hey, ho-ho, Ben Sasse has got to go,” protesters chanted, seeking to draw attention to the Nebraskan’s views on LGBTQ+ rights.According to the UF student newspaper, the Independent Florida Alligator, after Sasse left a student forum early, leaders of a crowd of around 300 called the senator “homophobic and racist in between yelling from the audience”. One protester called out “Get the fuck”, the crowd responding, “Out of our swamp!”Online footage showed the noisy scenes.A former president of Midland University in Nebraska, Sasse was elected in 2014. He emerged as a relatively independent voice in Republican ranks, criticising Donald Trump though usually voting with him. He voted to convict in Trump’s second impeachment trial.But in 2015, when the supreme court made same-sex marriage legal, Sasse called the ruling “a disappointment to Nebraskans who understand that marriage brings a wife and husband together so their children can have a mom and dad”.Under the heading “Nebraska values”, Sasse’s website says: “The family is the most basic unit of civilization, and the heart of our society. Senator Sasse supports the right to life, the sanctity of marriage, and the right of families to choose how to educate their children.”In Gainesville on Monday, Sasse first spoke to faculty members. The first question was about his opposition to same-sex marriage.He said: “I believe in the universal dignity and the immeasurable worth of every single person, all the tens of millions of Floridians, all … 56,000 students here, all 30,000 faculty and staff … we need to create a community of inclusion and respect and trust where people feel heard and appreciated and cherished.”Regarding Obergefell v Hodges, the 2015 ruling which made same-sex marriage legal, Sasse said: “There are definitely federal policy issues where I’ve had disputes before about which decisions courts should be making versus legislatures, but Obergefell, for example, is the law of the land and nothing about Obergefell is changing in the United States.”However, when the right to abortion was overturned earlier this year, Clarence Thomas, one of six conservatives on the supreme court, suggested same-sex marriage could also be reconsidered.Democrats responded by seeking to pass the Respect for Marriage Act. Sasse told reporters that Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, was “trying to divide America with culture wars”.“I think it’s just the same old bullshit,” he said. “She’s not an adult.”In Gainesville, as the young adults of UF protested, a staff forum featuring Sasse was moved online.The Sasse pick prompted the Republican governor of Nebraska, Pete Ricketts, to deny that he intended to appoint himself as Sasse’s Senate replacement. It also fed claims of growing Republican political interference in university affairs.There are no other named candidates for president. On Monday, the campus paper reported, one protester said: “I thought America was supposed to be a democracy. So why don’t we have a choice?”Alex Noon, president of the UF law school’s LGBTQ+ organization, told the Alligator: “It blows my mind that this is the sole person that they came up with. I could probably go downtown on a Thursday and find someone better.”RJ Della Salle, a gay student, said of Sasse: “We either have someone who’s a genuine homophobe as our president or we have a sleazy politician who just says what the people that he’s trying to get elected by want to hear.”TopicsFloridaLGBTQ+ rightsUS educationHigher educationUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      DeSantis stays off path of political controversies in hurricane aftermath

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      DeSantis stays off path of political controversies in hurricane aftermathRightwing governor known for aggressive, culture-war brand of populism gives softer demeanor after storm, destroying opponents’ hopes of toppling him If such a thing can be said following a devastating hurricane that took the lives of more than 100 people, caused tens of billions of dollars in damage, and changed the face of south-west Florida forever, Ron DeSantis has had a good storm.The rightwing Republican governor has become a near ever-present face on national television during the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, largely steering clear of the political controversies that have plagued him in recent weeks as he sought to bring a calm and reassuring face to a fast-moving tragedy.It was a previously unseen side of a politician better known for his aggressive, culture-war brand of populism that has elevated him as a rival in the Republican party to Donald Trump. It even earned some praise from Joe Biden, his Democratic bete noire who visited Fort Myers this week to tour hurricane damage.“I think he’s done a good job. We have very different political philosophies … but we worked hand in glove,” the president said of a man many expect to be challenging him for the White House in the 2024 presidential election.“And on things related to dealing with this crisis, we’ve been completely lockstep. There’s been no difference,” he added, acknowledging the partnership between the DeSantis administration and federal agencies.Biden’s affirmation on Wednesday, as the immediacy of Ian’s search and rescue missions began to evolve into a relief and recovery effort, came little more than a month before the 8 November midterms, in which DeSantis was already heavily favored to win a second term as Florida governor.To some analysts, it left opponents’ hopes of toppling him lying deep among the hurricane wreckage.“Biden essentially ended the intellectual argument for any swing or undecided voters to pick Charlie Crist over DeSantis. The 2022 race for Florida governor is officially over,” Peter Schorsch, publisher of Florida Politics, said in a withering assessment of the Democratic candidate’s chances.Other observers contrast DeSantis’s softer demeanor during the hurricane with the prickly, hardline disposition more familiar to viewers of Fox News, the governor’s preferred megaphone.“In a lot of ways [the hurricane] has been golden because it allowed him to step away from politics and to really exercise his crisis management skills, and to seem compassionate, two things that we don’t see a lot of,” said Susan MacManus, distinguished professor emeritus of political science at the University of Florida.“It was an opportunity to go to different parts of the state and exhibit compassion for the people living here, the workers and the circumstances. Floridians are so used to seeing his political side, but this was a golden opportunity to see his management and people skills side.”A debate between DeSantis and Crist, scheduled for 12 October, was postponed because of the hurricane, with no make-up date yet set. It adds up, MacManus believes, to an even steeper mountain to climb for Crist, himself a former Florida governor when he was a Republican.“Here’s Crist with barely enough money to run any ads because he expended a lot when he was in the primary, plus outside donors haven’t really been willing to put a lot of money into the Crist campaign,” she said.“The two things, the free exposure that DeSantis has, plus canceling or at least delaying the debate, make it very difficult for Crist to close the gap.“I’m an analyst for a television station on campus and even this week we’ve just gone 100% doing stories about hurricane recovery. It won’t be until next week where we really see it ramping up again, and that’s a very short amount of time with mail-in ballots already going out.”A Mason-Dixon poll taken before the 28 September storm already had Crist 11% behind, suggesting that messaging over abortion and the backlash to DeSantis’s political stunt shifting Venezuelan migrants from Texas to Massachusetts were gaining little traction with likely voters.“DeSantis is going to be Governor Hurricane for the next couple weeks,” pollster Brad Coker told NBC.“The disadvantage Crist has is two-fold: he’s completely out of the news and he never managed a hurricane, so he can’t stand up and point to what he did. Crist is totally, totally defanged.”Kevin Cate, a Democratic strategist and former Crist adviser, calculated that DeSantis had earned the equivalent of $110m in free television time from thousands of appearances nationally during the first week following the storm.In Florida, he said, that value was $16.5m, while the Republican also retains a blowout advantage in cash in hand, $110m to Crist’s $3.6m.Both campaigns have resumed television advertising after a brief hiatus during the storm, and Crist’s team claims that since the 23 August primary, the Democrat has received more in fundraising – $4.7m to $4.6m – than his opponent.Southwest Florida is a Republican stronghold, and the party has concerns over the impact of the hurricane could have on the election. Officials in Lee county say they met Thursday’s deadline for sending out mail-in ballots, but with thousands of homes damaged and residents displaced, they say there is no guarantee they will reach their intended recipients.DeSantis could be asked to sign an order allowing early voting sites to be used on polling day, NPR reports, although the governor appears to be reluctant.“I want to keep [the election] as normal as humanly possible. The more you depart, it creates problems,” he said at a press conference on Wednesday.TopicsRon DeSantisUS politicsFloridaHurricane IanfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Ben Sasse, Republican who voted to convict Trump, to depart Congress

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      Ben Sasse, Republican who voted to convict Trump, to depart CongressNebraska senator, to take top post at University of Florida, is latest GOP legislator to leave Capitol Hill after voting to impeach in 2021 Another Republican who stood up to Donald Trump is on his way out of Congress, with the news that the Nebraska senator Ben Sasse is set to become president of the University of Florida.What are the US midterm elections and who’s running?Read moreOf the 10 House Republicans and seven senators who voted to convict Trump at his second impeachment trial, for inciting the January 6 Capitol attack, only two congressmen and four senators are on course to return after the midterm elections.High-profile casualties include Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the House January 6 committee vice-chair who lost her primary to a Trump-backed challenger in August.Like Cheney, Sasse, 50, has been thought a possible contender for the Republican presidential nomination, a notional 2024 contest still dominated by Trump.The senator does not have to face voters again until 2026. But on Thursday Rahul Patel, a member of the University of Florida board of trustees, told the Tampa Bay Times the college needed “a visionary, an innovator and big thinker who would differentiate us from others – a leader who is transformational. The committee unanimously felt Ben Sasse is a transformational leader.”Sasse decried “Washington partisanship” and called Florida “the most interesting university in America right now”.A university president before he entered politics, at Midland in Nebraska, Sasse will in November be the sole candidate interviewed for the Florida position.If he resigns as a senator, the Nebraska governor – the Republican Pete Ricketts, or a likely Republican successor if Sasse resigns in January – will appoint a replacement.NBC News reported that Sasse’s move was the result of Republican rivalries. Quoting “a top Republican insider”, the outlet said the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, was behind the move, which was meant as one in the eye for Trump.Marc Caputo, a reporter, wrote: “In May, Trump said he regretted supporting Ben Sasse. Now, DeSantis’s man at UF has engineered Sasse’s hiring. ‘Everyone knows what this is about: Ron and Don,’ a top Republican insider tells me, echoing others.”As the only Republican who polls even close to Trump, DeSantis is widely thought to be planning a presidential run of his own.Ricketts, the Nebraska governor, is from the family behind the stockbroker TD Ameritrade and a former co-owner of the Chicago Cubs baseball team. He made headlines in June 2020, amid national protests for racial justice, when he apologised for calling Black leaders “you people”.The Ricketts family has ties to DeSantis. On Friday, in messages viewed by the Guardian, a Trump insider said the Sasse move was “about Ricketts money to DeSantis. This is what Pete wanted so he can appoint himself to the Senate.” In a statement, Ricketts said he learned about Sasse’s planned resignation on Thursday, “when he called to notify me”.He added: “If I choose to pursue the appointment, I will leave the appointment decision to the next governor and will follow the process established for all interested candidates. It is the honor of a lifetime to serve as the governor of Nebraska. It is the greatest job in the world, and it will remain my number one focus for the remainder of my term.”Sasse was elected to the Senate in 2014 and emerged as a critic of Trump and his effect on US politics when the billionaire ran for the White House two years later. Sasse called Trump a “megalomaniac strongman” and said he would not vote for him or his opponent, Hillary Clinton.Sasse’s wife, Melissa, said her husband had “a need for competition. Also he’s an idiot.”From 2017 to 2021, Sasse voted with Trump more than 85% of the time. He voted to acquit in Trump’s first impeachment trial, for blackmailing Ukraine for political dirt.Nevertheless, in November 2020 Sasse claimed: “I’ve never been on the Trump train.”In February 2021, Sasse said he voted to convict Trump over the Capitol attack because he had “promised to speak out when a president – even of my own party – exceeds his or her powers”. Such words earned him his share of Trumpian abuse, including a nickname, “Liddle Ben Sasse”.In 2018, Sasse wrote a book, Them, in which he lamented political polarisation. He wrote: “We are in a period of unprecedented upheaval. Community is collapsing, anxiety is building, and we’re distracting ourselves with artificial political hatreds. That can’t endure. And if it does, America won’t.”On Thursday, the Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin had a suggestion for what Sasse might do next.“Why not join Liz Cheney to campaign against GOP election liars/deniers. It might even impress his new employers. Otherwise his Senate career has been a total nothing burger.”TopicsRepublicansUS SenateUS CongressWashington DCFloridaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Hurricane Ian Poses Another Hurdle for Election Officials in Florida

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      In North Port, Fla., a tarpaulin covered the roof of a waterlogged county election office as the midterm elections entered the final stretch.Farther south along Florida’s Gulf Coast, where the brunt of Hurricane Ian was particularly deadly, officials in Lee County asked the governor to authorize the creation of “super polling” centers to serve displaced voters from precincts ravaged by the storm.And in the city of Sarasota, as the state’s deadline for mailing absentee ballots to voters loomed less than 72 hours away, the whoosh of dehumidifiers muffled the conversations of election workers.“I’m sitting in the middle of formerly wet ceiling tiles,” Ron Turner, supervisor of elections for Sarasota County, said in an interview on Monday afternoon.Still, Mr. Turner emphasized, “we’re lucky compared to our neighbors to the south.”Nearly a week after Hurricane Ian slammed into southwestern Florida, election officials for the counties in the storm’s path said that they were still assessing the damage to early voting sites and Election Day precincts but expected that many would not be available. Early voting begins on Oct. 24 in Florida.Those officials said that they still expected that counties would meet a Thursday deadline to mail absentee ballots.Election officials nationwide have been grappling with threats, misinformation and the pressure of handling higher numbers of mail-in ballots during the pandemic. Now, some in Florida also have to function with hurricane damage.The Aftermath of Hurricane IanThe Search for Survivors: In the wake of Hurricane Ian, a search-and-rescue team in Fort Myers Beach set out to knock on every door that was still standing on the battered Florida island.A Delayed Evacuation: Despite warnings from forecasters before Ian made landfall, officials in Lee County, Florida, delayed issuing an evacuation order. The delay may have contributed to catastrophic consequences that are still coming into focus.Ron DeSantis: The Florida governor, who as a congressman opposed aid to victims of Hurricane Sandy, is seeking relief from the Biden administration as his state confronts the devastation wrought by Ian.Lack of Insurance: In the Florida counties hit hardest by Ian, fewer than 20 percent of homes had flood insurance, new data show. Experts say that will make rebuilding even harder.“For many voters, their regular polling location will not be available,” Tommy Doyle, supervisor of elections in Lee County, said in a message posted on Monday on the county’s website.Hurricane Ian hit Florida on Sept. 28, one day before a seven-day window for counties to send mail-in ballots to domestic voters. The period ends on Thursday.Working to restore power to residences in Matlacha, Fla., on Monday.Callaghan O’Hare for The New York TimesAs of Tuesday afternoon, more than 400,000 utility customers in Florida still did not have power, with a vast majority concentrated in the southwestern part of the state, according to poweroutage.us, a tracking website.More than half were in Lee County, where the authorities said that at least 55 people had died since the storm made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane.Election officials in Lee County said that the loss of power and disruptions to cellphone service were hampering their damage assessments.“We want voters to be confident that we are working hard to ensure they can safely, securely and efficiently cast their ballots in the upcoming election,” Mr. Doyle said in his message.Gaby Aguirre, a spokeswoman for the Lee County Elections Office, said in an email on Tuesday that the county had requested an emergency order from Gov. Ron DeSantis granting it the ability to create “super polling” centers.A similar order was signed after Hurricane Michael in 2018, when the governor at the time, Rick Scott, who is now a U.S. senator, relaxed voting rules in eight counties along the Panhandle.Ms. Aguirre said on Tuesday that the vendor Lee County used for absentee ballots was “up and running” and “working diligently” to meet Thursday’s deadline to mail ballots.A spokesman for Mr. DeSantis on Monday referred questions about election preparations to Cord Byrd, Florida’s secretary of state, who said in a statement that he was still assessing the situation and that his primary concern was the well-being of residents.“We are considering all contingencies at the moment and will be in continual contact with supervisors of elections to evaluate the conditions of the affected counties moving forward,” Mr. Byrd said on Monday.In response to the hurricane, Mr. Byrd had issued an emergency order earlier that suspended the filing deadline for campaign finance reports until Friday.Mark S. Earley, the president of the statewide association of election supervisors, said in a statement on Monday that disruptions to in-person voting sites appeared to be a significant concern.“Voting machines, supplies and staff are all safe and sound, it appears,” said Mr. Earley, a top election official in Leon County, which was outside the hurricane’s direct path. “Some offices are still without power, but they are intact. That cannot be said for many of the other structures that are integral to in-person voting, such as early voting and Election Day polling sites. Thousands of voters, first responders and poll workers are displaced.”He added that he expected “at least a few counties” to be allowed to use the “super polling” centers in lieu of regular Election Day polling places.In Collier County, which is south of Lee County, Jennifer J. Edwards, the election supervisor, said in an interview on Monday that the county’s 11 early-voting locations and her office were unscathed.“It’s high and dry,” Ms. Edwards said, noting that the county was still assessing conditions at Election Day precincts.While some other counties were clambering to restore power so they could mail ballots by Thursday’s deadline, Collier County uses a vendor in the Orlando area, far north of hurricane-ravaged areas, that transported printed ballots to the U.S. Postal Service on Friday, Ms. Edwards said. Those ballots are expected to start being delivered this week, she said.Surveying the damage at a home in Naples in Collier County on Sunday.Callaghan O’Hare for The New York Times“If someone’s home has been destroyed and the U.S.P.S. is unable to deliver to that home, they will take the mail for that resident’s address back to the post office and keep it for 10 days,” Ms. Edwards said.Mr. Turner said that Sarasota County was expecting 120,000 ballots to be mailed on Tuesday to voters.“We faced challenges in the last few years in the pandemic,” he said. “We will get through this and make sure that the voters have an opportunity to make sure their voices are heard at the ballot box.”Mitch Smith More

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      Ex-US army medic allegedly lured migrants on to flights to Martha’s Vineyard

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      Ex-US army medic allegedly lured migrants on to flights to Martha’s VineyardPerla Huerta was reportedly sent to Texas from Florida to fill planes chartered by DeSantis, offering gift cards to asylum seekers A former US army combat medic and counterintelligence agent allegedly solicited asylum seekers to join flights out of Texas to Martha’s Vineyard that Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, chartered.Perla Huerta was sent to Texas from Tampa to fill the planes at the center of the trips, which many have argued could amount to illegal human trafficking, a person briefed on an investigation into the case told the New York Times.In September, dozens of asylum seekers were transported to Martha’s Vineyard, an affluent community in Massachusetts, and were promised cash assistance, help with housing and other resources if they traveled to the state. DeSantis claimed responsibility for the flights, portraying it as a protest against the Joe Biden White House’s immigration policy.The flights – one of which made a stop in Florida – departed from San Antonio and therefore have drawn scrutiny from the sheriff’s office there.Huerta was discharged from the US army in August after serving the military branch for two decades. A migrant told CNN that a woman named “Perla” offered him clothes, food, and money in exchange to help find other migrants, mostly from Venezuela, to board the flights to Massachusetts. She gave him $10 McDonald’s gift cards to be handed out to the asylum seekers who agreed to join the flights.Florida officials confirmed a payment to the airline charter company, Vertol Systems, for $615,000 on 8 September. The money comes from a state budget signed earlier this year giving DeSantis $12m for a program to deport migrants.Vertol Systems offers aviation maintenance and training services and performs work for the US government. The company has networked with Florida’s Republican power brokers over the years.The charter has contributed money to some of DeSantis’s top allies, including the Congress member Matt Gaetz and Florida’s public safety director in charge of immigration policy, Larry Keefe, according to NBC News.Attorneys representing the asylum seekers have filed a federal class-action lawsuit against DeSantis and others, contending that the plaintiffs were misled into thinking they would receive benefits upon arrival to Martha’s Vineyard.However, those benefits are only available for refugees, a specific status that the asylum seekers do not currently fall under.Some legal experts have deemed DeSantis’s acts as human trafficking or smuggling. The group Lawyers for Civil Rights labeled the move as an “appalling” political stunt.In the San Antonio area, the Bexar county sheriff, Javier Salazar, launched an investigation examining the flights that took off from there.Upon the asylum seekers’ arrival, aid group workers quickly gathered food as well as supplies and set up shelter. Island residents set up a church to house the migrants and provided translation services.The asylum seekers were also receiving clothing from community thrift shops, and people were increasingly calling to volunteer to help them and donate to them.Many of the asylum seekers ended up at a military base in Cape Cod with little knowledge of what would happen next.The flights are an escalation of Republican officials sending hundreds of asylum seekers to predominantly Democratic areas. The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, has sent more than 100 migrants from Colombia, Cuba, Guyana, Nicaragua, Panama and Venezuela by bus from Texas to the Washington DC home of Vice-President Kamala Harris.Abbot has also sent buses to New York City.TopicsUS immigrationUS politicsFloridaUS militaryTexasRon DeSantisMassachusettsnewsReuse this content More