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      The Flip

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      Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicWhen Georgia flipped blue in the 2020 election, it gave Democrats new hope for the future. Credit for that success goes to Stacey Abrams and the playbook she developed for the state. It cemented her role as a national celebrity, in politics and pop culture. But, unsurprisingly, that celebrity has also made her a target of Republicans, who say she’s a losing candidate. On today’s episode: the Stacey Abrams playbook, and why the Georgia governor’s race means more to Democrats than a single elected office.Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesOn today’s episodeStacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia.Maya King, a politics reporter at The New York Times covering the South.About ‘The Run-Up’First launched in August 2016, three months before the election of Donald Trump, “The Run-Up” is back. The host, Astead Herndon, will grapple with the big ideas animating the 2022 midterm election cycle — and explore how we got to this fraught moment in American politics.Elections are about more than who wins and who loses. New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      Raphael Warnock Is a Study in Restraint in a Georgia Senate Race Rife With Controversy

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      ATLANTA — A stream of jaw-dropping allegations have saturated the Georgia Senate race for months. Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate, has been accused of having children he did not publicly acknowledge, lying to his own campaign about them, misrepresenting his professional success and, last week, paying for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion despite his public opposition to the procedure. He denies it all.It’s a pileup that might embolden any opponent to unleash. But when asked last week about the latest hit to Mr. Walker, Senator Raphael Warnock, his Democratic rival, held back.“We have seen some disturbing things. We’ve seen a disturbing pattern,” he said during a news conference on Friday, avoiding any predictions about how the claims against the Republican could affect his standing with voters. “It raises real questions about who’s actually ready to represent the people of Georgia in the United States Senate.”Mr. Warnock, a pastor known for enlivening audiences on the stump and from the pulpit, has plenty of reasons to practice restraint these days. Despite the state’s Democratic shift in 2020, his victory in November could hinge on winning over moderate, even conservative-leaning voters who are tired of the Trump-era drama. For Mr. Warnock, that means casting Mr. Walker, a Trump-endorsed first-time candidate and former football star, as unqualified on account of his tumultuous personal history.While he still spends time ginning up support among his Democratic supporters, whose turnout he will badly need on Election Day, Mr. Warnock has also campaigned extensively in deep-red parts of the state. He keeps his message to those groups broad, focusing on kitchen-table issues like health care and improving infrastructure. He is more likely to bring up the Republicans he has worked with in the Senate — Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Tommy Tuberville — than he is to mention President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris or Senator Chuck Schumer.“He has taken very seriously the idea that he represents the whole state,” said Jason Carter, a close Warnock ally who ran for governor in 2014. “That has an impact on how you carry yourself.”Mr. Warnock, center right, at an Artists for Warnock meet-and-greet in Atlanta last month. While allegations against his political rival pile up, he has saved his harshest attacks for campaign ads. Nicole Craine for The New York TimesWhile the headlines about Mr. Walker have been harsh, it is not at all clear that they will sink his Senate ambitions. Christian conservatives along with the Republican establishment in Georgia and Washington have stuck by him. Recent polls suggest the race remains close, though most show Mr. Warnock with a slight lead. A poll conducted by the University of Georgia and several state news outlets released Wednesday found that the senator led Mr. Walker by three points, with support from about 46 percent of likely voters. A candidate must clear 50 percent to win, and many Georgians are bracing for the race to go a runoff. A debate between the contenders on Friday night could also change its course.One question hanging over that debate is whether Mr. Warnock himself will directly go on the attack. Until now, he has largely saved the vitriol for the airwaves. His campaign has run a barrage of highly personal negative advertising and Democratic-aligned groups are spending a combined $36 million on an anti-Walker push. The ads highlight accusations from Mr. Walker’s son of domestic abuse and an episode in which Mr. Walker held a gun to the temple of his ex-wife, Cindy Grossman, and threatened to kill her. Mr. Walker has not denied the domestic violence allegations, saying that his behavior was a consequence of his struggles with mental illness at the time.On the campaign trail, both candidates’ strategies sit in stark contrast.While Mr. Walker often meanders in speeches, this week relaying a lesson about gratitude through the story of a bull jumping a fence, Mr. Warnock peppers his practiced stump speeches with calls to expand Medicaid. While national Republican figures like Rick Scott and Tom Cotton have come to Georgia to bolster the candidacy of their party’s nominee, Mr. Warnock still campaigns solo.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Attacks by Doug Mastriano, the G.O.P. nominee, on the Jewish school where Josh Shapiro, the Democratic candidate, sends his children have set off an outcry about antisemitic signaling.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but some conservative Christians have learned to tolerate the behavior of those who advance their cause.When asked if he would welcome a visit from any national Democrats, Mr. Warnock dodges the question.“I’m focused not on who I’m campaigning with but who I’m campaigning for,” Mr. Warnock said during a recent news conference. “The people of Georgia hired me.”Republicans have tied him to his party anyway. “Raphael Warnock, who campaigned with his puppies two years ago, has proven to be simply a lap dog for Joe Biden,” Mr. Cotton said on Tuesday to the crowd of more than 100 Walker supporters. “Herschel Walker will be a champion for the people of Georgia.”Black Radio United for the Vote held an event at Clark Atlanta University last week where Mr. Warnock spoke. He rarely deviates from practiced answers to reporters’ questions.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMr. Walker, too, has painted the senator as ultraprogressive and a champion of Mr. Biden’s policies. During a recent campaign stop in Smarr, Ga., Mr. Walker condemned Mr. Warnock’s support of the Inflation Reduction Act, calling the White House ceremony marking its passage over the summer a “party in Washington.”“And as you’re looking at this, the split screen is the stock market is crashing,” Mr. Walker said to rousing applause. “What we’ve done right now is put the wrong person in Washington making the deals for us.”Mr. Warnock has had to contend with personal challenges of his own, including a legal dispute with his ex-wife, Ouleye Ndoye, this spring. She sued him to change the terms of their child custody agreement after her move to a different state and asked to increase his monthly child support payments to reflect his higher salary since he became a senator.During his first campaign in 2020, after an argument between the two, Ms. Ndoye said Mr. Warnock ran over her foot. The police did not find any physical damage to Ms. Ndoye’s foot, and Mr. Warnock was not charged. The incident has since been turned into an attack ad from a PAC affiliated with Mr. Walker, in which Ms. Ndoye calls Mr. Warnock “a great actor.”Mr. Warnock’s campaign declined to comment on the claim, and Ms. Ndoye did not respond to a request for one.Even when speaking to those most likely to support him, Mr. Warnock delivers his message carefully. At a recent Women for Warnock event in the event space of a West Atlanta community center, African American seniors said “amen” and cheered after nearly every point he made, vowing to vote early, bring friends to the polls and adorn their yards with Warnock signs as they hugged and took selfies with the senator. Some were members of Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he is senior pastor.Afterward, when asked during a news conference whether he had a message to voters who were nervous about Mr. Walker’s past but frustrated with Democrats’ policies, he said simply “I’m working for Georgia” and turned to a point about his effort to cap prescription drug costs.Mr. Warnock rarely holds one-on-one interviews or deviates from practiced answers to reporters’ questions.He has also focused his message to voters on his work with Republicans in Washington. In stump speeches and news conferences, Mr. Warnock mentions a provision in the bipartisan infrastructure bill that he and Mr. Cruz wrote to authorize funds that would connect a portion of the Interstate 14 highway to link Texas and Georgia. He also talks up legislation he co-sponsored with Mr. Rubio to address the high maternal mortality rates in both of their states.Senator Tommy Tuberville, a Republican, and Mr. Warnock last year. Mr. Warnock has made bipartisan credentials a major part of his campaign message.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesBut Mr. Warnock’s cozying up to Republicans can come with risks. Mr. Warnock mentioned his partnership with Mr. Tuberville in a recent advertisement. But after Mr. Tuberville made racist comments in a speech at a Trump rally over the weekend, Mr. Warnock was asked on a liberal podcast to respond and labeled the comments “deeply disappointing.”“Not only is this rhetoric inappropriate. Quite frankly, it’s dangerous,” he said, calling for Mr. Tuberville to apologize.Mr. Warnock’s bipartisan message is meant to appeal to a broad swath of voters, his proponents say, giving Georgians a reason to vote for him — and not merely against Mr. Walker.“He is walking a fine line. And it’s not just because he’s trying to distance himself from President Biden,” said Derrick Jackson, a Metro Atlanta state representative and vice chairman of the General Assembly’s Black caucus. “He’s talking about voting for something, instead of voting against something. And there’s an art to that.”Monica Davis, a 62-year-old retiree from Johns Creek, an Atlanta suburb, is among those Mr. Warnock would like to win over. A self-described Republican, she said she planned to vote for Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, but was struggling with whether to vote for Mr. Walker.“I believe he’s a candidate because he is a sports hero. I think there are a lot more qualified candidates,” she said, adding that she was “disappointed in the Republican Party that chose him.” She remained unsure of Mr. Warnock.“I might just not vote on that particular category,” she said. More

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      Groups Saturate TV With Negative Ads About Warnock and Walker

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      ATLANTA — Democratic and Republican groups in Georgia are spending millions of dollars on highly personal negative advertising in the final weeks of the race between Senator Raphael Warnock and his challenger, Herschel Walker, disparaging the candidates by drawing more attention to their pasts.Days before the candidates are set to meet on a debate stage, groups aligned with each party are flooding the airwaves with a pair of ads that underline accusations of domestic violence against Mr. Walker, a Republican, and marital disputes involving Mr. Warnock, a Democrat. Their messages are shaping the final few weeks of campaigning in one of the country’s most closely watched races that could determine control of the Senate, and at times one of the most hostile.The advertising back-and-forth follows more than a week of negative headlines focused largely on Mr. Walker. After The Daily Beast first reported that Mr. Walker paid for a woman’s abortion, The New York Times confirmed the report and learned that the woman had ended their relationship after she refused to have a second abortion despite Mr. Walker’s urging.Now, as Democrats spend big to elevate those claims, Republicans are hitting back to paint Mr. Warnock as a candidate also plagued by scandal.A PAC supporting Mr. Walker, 34N22, is spending $1.5 million on an advertisement that shows footage from a police body camera after a 2020 incident between Mr. Warnock and his ex-wife, Ouleye Ndoye, who claims in the video and ensuing police report that he ran over her foot. Paramedics on the scene were unable to locate evidence of physical injury to Ms. Ndoye’s foot. Mr. Warnock was not charged with a crime.“I just can’t believe he would run me over,” she says through tears. “I’ve tried to keep the way that he acts under wraps for a long time, and today he crossed the line. So that is what is going on here, and he is a great actor. He is phenomenal at putting on a really good show.”The Democratic-aligned groups Georgia Honor and Senate Majority PAC are spending a combined $36 million to dominate the airwaves with anti-Walker advertising, including an advertisement that takes lines from a tweet that Mr. Walker’s son Christian Walker posted after the initial reports about his father’s paying for the abortion. In it, he accused Mr. Walker of domestic abuse against him and his mother, Cindy Grossman.A voice-over on the ad repeats the accusation as similar text flashes on the screen: “He threatened to kill us and had us move six times in six months running from his violence.” The ad also shows pictures of a police report that outlines an episode in which Mr. Walker arrived at Ms. Grossman’s home with a gun.“Six moves in six months running from Herschel Walker’s violence,” the voice-over says again against footage of an empty apartment and moving boxes.Mr. Walker and Mr. Warnock will debate in Savannah, Ga., on Friday. Early voting in Georgia begins on Monday. 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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      Evangelicals Find a Way Forward With Herschel Walker

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      The time had come for the Christian supporters of Herschel Walker to make a way where there seemed to be no way.It was the morning after the Republican senate candidate’s ex-girlfriend came forward to say he had paid for her to have an abortion, though he supports banning the procedure without exception. Dozens of people gathered in a fluorescent hall of First Baptist Atlanta, a prominent Southern Baptist church. Pastor Anthony George sat on a platform, with Mr. Walker at his right hand. The pastor recalled God’s protection of King David, the ancient Israelite king, and claimed similar promise for Mr. Walker. The candidate shared a testimony of how Jesus changed his life. The pastor invited people to the front to pray for him.They surrounded him and extended their hands toward the former football star. “This is the fight of his life, holy God,” the pastor prayed. “And we call forth your ministering angels to be his defenders.” The people clapped and gave shouts of amen.The scene, a private event revealed in videos shared on social media, reflected the evangelical language of sin and salvation, persecution and deliverance. It was a ritual of sanctification, the washing away of sin and declaration of a higher call.The Senate race in Georgia has become an explicit matchup of two increasingly divergent versions of American Christianity. Mr. Walker reflects the way conservative Christianity continues to be defined by its fusion with right-wing politics and tolerance for candidates who, whatever their personal failings or flaws, advance its power and cause. Mr. Walker has wielded his Christianity as an ultimate defense, at once denying the abortion allegations are true while also pointing to the mercy and forgiveness in Jesus as a divine backstop.Former President Donald J. Trump is backing Herschel Walker’s bid for U.S. Senate in Georgia.Audra Melton for The New York TimesSenator Raphael Warnock, his Democratic opponent, is a lifelong minister who leads the storied Ebenezer Baptist Church, home to the Christian social activism embodied in the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He has inherited the legacy of the Black civil rights tradition in the South, where faith focuses on not just individual salvation, but on communal efforts to challenge injustices like segregation.“We are witnessing two dimensions of Christian faith, both the justice dimension and the mercy dimension,” said the Rev. Dr. Robert M. Franklin Jr., professor in moral leadership at Candler School of Theology at Emory University.The loyalty to Mr. Walker reflects an approach conservative Christians successfully honed during the Trump era, overlooking the personal morality of candidates in exchange for political power to further their policy objectives. After some hesitation in 2016, white evangelicals supported Mr. Trump in high numbers after reports about his history of unwanted advances toward women and vulgar comments about them. They stood by Roy Moore, who ran a failed campaign for Senate in Alabama, after he was accused of sexual misconduct and assault by multiple women.Understand the Herschel Walker Abortion AllegationsCard 1 of 6The Daily Beast articles. More

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      Abrams denies accusation she refused to recognize Kemp as winner in 2018

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      Abrams denies accusation she refused to recognize Kemp as winner in 2018‘I acknowledged it repeatedly,’ says Georgia gubernatorial nominee who faces Kemp rematch, but insists voter suppression is an issue Democratic organizer Stacey Abrams on Sunday pushed back on the accusation that she refused to acknowledge Brian Kemp as the winner of Georgia’s 2018 gubernatorial election, the same politician she is once again competing with for the governor’s mansion.On Fox News Sunday, host Shannon Bream played a 2019 speech in which Abrams said “we won”, but Abrams said the clip was taken out of context.“I acknowledged that Brian Kemp won – I acknowledged it repeatedly in that speech,” she said. “I very clearly say I know I’m not the governor, but what I will not do is allow the lack of nuance in our conversations to dull and obfuscate the challenges faced by our citizens.”Abrams also pushed back on Bream’s claims that voter suppression is not a huge issue in Georgia after the Fox News host pointed to increased voter registration and a decision from a federal court earlier this month dismissing a challenge to the state’s new voting restrictions.“Voter suppression is not about turnout. It’s about the barriers and obstacles to access,” Abrams said. “Voter suppression is when there’s difficulty registering things on the road, being able to cast a ballot and having that ballot counted.”Abrams’s remarks came two days after she told the GOP-friendly Fox News digital that she would welcome both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on the campaign trail as she enters the final stretch of her bid to oust Kemp, a Republican.“Yes. We’ve reached out to – we’ve been in conversations with the Biden administration, and we look forward to having folks from the Biden administration, including the president himself if he can make it,” the former Georgia state house minority leader said.Biden, whose approval rating is at 42.5%, has focused more on fundraising in the lead-up to the midterm elections, and has not yet appeared much at political rallies with candidates. Abrams raised eyebrows earlier this year when she declined to attend a Biden speech in Atlanta focused on voting rights, an issue she has spent her career elevating.Abrams has consistently trailed Kemp in polling in the race ahead of next month’s election, which is one of the most closely watched in the US. The contest is a rematch from 2018, when Abrams lost to Kemp by 55,000 votes but said the race was tainted by voter suppression. It is also seen as the latest test of the influence of Georgia’s growing non-white and Democratic electorate.TopicsGeorgiaUS midterm elections 2022US politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Woman tells New York Times that Herschel Walker urged her to have second abortion

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      Woman tells New York Times that Herschel Walker urged her to have second abortionThe Republican candidate for a Georgia US Senate seat has insisted that he does not know the woman’s identity Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate for a Georgia US Senate seat, has maintained he does not know the identity of a woman who claims that in 2009 she terminated a pregnancy that was the result of her and Walker’s relationship.But on Friday, the woman at the center of a political storm that threatens to undo the former Dallas Cowboys running back’s campaign told the New York Times that Walker urged her to terminate a second pregnancy two years later and that their relationship ended when she declined.Republicans throw support behind Herschel Walker after abortion denialRead moreThe woman, a former girlfriend whom Walker has referred to as “some alleged woman”, said the Senate hopeful backed by former president Donald Trump had scarcely been involved in their son’s life other than child support and gifts.But she offered a perspective on a candidate who has appealed to the state’s social conservatives as an opponent of abortion – even in cases of rape and incest.“As a father, he’s done nothing,” she told the Times, insisting on anonymity to protect her son. “He does exactly what the courts say, and that’s it.“He has to be held responsible, just like the rest of us. And if you’re going to run for office, you need to own your life.”She provided the paper with a $575 receipt from an Atlanta women’s clinic where the 2009 procedure was performed, as well as a check deposit slip showing a copy of a $700 check she claims Walker gave her as reimbursement.But Walker said Thursday on conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt’s show: “I know this is untrue. I know it’s untrue. I know nothing about any woman having an abortion.”Walker’s wife, Julie Blanchard, disclosed to the Daily Beast on Friday that she had been in touch with the woman who had told her it was “cruel” that Walker “continues to claim he doesn’t know me or the abortion he paid for”.“He brought all of this on himself when he decided to get on a platform and denounce abortion and make a mockery of his children who have done NOTHING to deserve this,” the anonymous woman reportedly also said.Blanchard said that “this makes me incredibly sad”, adding that she “witnessed everyday Herschel pray for you and [your son] & everyone in our family”.She told the outlet that Walker calls and texts the 10-year-old child “regularly” and feels “sadness” when he gets no response – to which the woman replied, “Are you kidding me?”The woman has said that Walker has never missed any of his $3,500 monthly child-support payments, but the complex drama has nonetheless focused attention on the Republican candidate that his campaign did not want.Besides his opposition to abortion, he has four children with four different women after openly criticizing absentee dads in the Black community.Walker has disputed that he does not acknowledge his children. “I just chose not to use them as props to win a political campaign,” he said in June. “What parent would want their child involved in garbage, gutter politics like this?”But some criticism has come from close to home. “You’re not a ‘family man’ when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence,” Walker’s adult son and conservative social-media influencer Christian Walker said on Twitter.Herschel Walker responded with his own tweet: “I LOVE my son no matter what.”But the revelations have challenged Walker’s conservative political positions as he faces off with Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock for the US senate seat that could determine control of the evenly divided legislative body.A Fox News poll conducted after reports emerged last week that Walker had paid for the former girlfriend to have an abortion showed Warnock at 47% and Walker at 44%.Warnock’s campaign recently reported having $13.7m in cash on hand.Walker’s campaign said it has more than $7m. Walker campaign manager Scott Paradise said the candidate had his best fundraising days immediately after the abortion revelation, contained in a Daily Beast article on 3 October.Nonetheless, there’s apparently been an atmosphere of chaos in the Walker campaign since the bombshell Daily Beast report. Two days after the report, the campaign cut ties with its political director, Taylor Crowe, CNN reported, citing multiple sources.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022GeorgiaAbortionUS SenateUS politicsReuse this content More

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene: can Democrats unseat the far-right extremist?

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene: can Democrats unseat the far-right extremist?Georgia in focus: A Democratic challenger who raised $10.8m is facing an uphill battle against the Maga congresswoman In cowboy hat and square-toed boots, Marcus Flowers steps on to another porch, knocks on another front door and introduces himself as the Democrat trying to unseat congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. But Chip Freeman will take some persuading. He usually votes Republican and admires Greene’s “backbone”.“She puts her foot down and stands on a situation,” says Freeman, 51, a self-employed delivery man and handyman in suburban Rome, Georgia. “Not backbone because she’s accomplished anything but backbone because she’ll stand up face to face with people.”Flowers understands but is not ready to give up. “I’m not one that pulls punches either,” he says. “I’ll talk about what’s important. I’m standing on principle as well. The principle that we are a community and we’re better than the vision of those who have us be divided. There’s no us, and them, there’s only we here.”Freeman takes the candidate’s campaign leaflet and promises to read it. It is a micro victory for Flowers, a 47-year-old African American who, door by door, vote by vote, is attempting to turn back a tide that swept Georgia’s 14th congressional district two years ago.There is no better example of the rise of far-right conspiracy theory politics in the U.S. than Greene, a provocateur who has made racist, antisemitic and Islamophobic statements, signalled support for political violence – including the execution of Democrats – and promoted bizarre claims. One of them is that a Jewish-controlled space laser started a California wildfire.Despite it all, Greene, 48, looks set to retain her northwestern Georgia seat in the House of Representatives against Flowers next month. Her ascent here illustrates the Republican party’s drift to the right, the tendency of primary elections to reward the loudest, wealthiest and Trumpiest candidate and what happens when good men and women do nothing.What are the US midterm elections and who’s running?Read moreThe 14th district sprawls across 11 counties and is mostly blue collar. Three in four people are white and three in four voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Trump signs and Confederate flags can be spotted in rural areas. Despite a wild start to her career in the House of Representatives that saw her ejected from committees for spreading ugly conspiracy theories, many Republicans here intend to stick with Greene.Cookie Wozniak, 77, said: “She’s a fighter. I believe in her, I have a lot of respect for her. She’s a real bulldog and a true patriot. I worry about our country being so divisive and they’re using the race card on everything. People want to destroy our history.”Carla McFarland, 65, an air force veteran and retired nurse practitioner, added: “I have always been impressed from the first that I heard she was running. Nothing has changed my core belief in not only Marjorie Taylor Greene but the Maga [Make America great again] America First thought process.”The district’s biggest city, Rome (population 36,000), was founded in 1834 in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains and named after the Italian capital because it was also built on seven hills. The city played its part for the slave-owning south in the civil war; last year a statue of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest was removed to a local museum that still uses the outdated term “war between the states”.Rome has a pretty main street with Italian, Mexican, sushi and Thai restaurants, baby clothing boutiques, wine bars and a cinema built in 1929 to show the talkies. It is reminiscent of main streets all over small-town America – an ominous sign that what happened here can happen anywhere.The street also features a Republican campaign office in a former furniture shop. A sign in the window says: “Flood the polls! Marjorie Taylor Greene. Save America, stop communism!”But Rome did not produce Greene. She grew up near Atlanta and planned to run for election in the 6th congressional district in Atlanta’s northern suburbs, where her chances would have been slim. When Republican congressman Tom Graves suddenly announced his retirement, however, she switched to the ruby red 14th district in what critics saw as carpetbagging.For local party officials and voters, there should have warning signs flashing red. In 2017, Greene had posted a video praising the QAnon conspiracy movement, which baselessly asserts that Democrats are a cabal of Satan worshippers who traffic children for sex (last year she expressed regret and sought to distance herself from QAnon).A year later, in another video, she asserted that President Barack Obama was Muslim, suggested that the September 11, 2001 terror attacks were a hoax and sought to blame Hillary Clinton for the death of John F Kennedy Jr in a 1999 plane crash.Yet in a crowded Republican primary in which she was the only woman, Greene stood out and gained the most votes. She brought “all the authority, anger and everything of a metro Atlanta soccer mom”, recalled one local political observer, who did not wish to be named.Having become wealthy from a construction business and CrossFit gym, she was also able to outspend her rivals. Flowers, her Democratic challenger this time, recalled: “She ran against a field of guys who hadn’t really raised any money and couldn’t do the same things she was doing: just blanket the airwaves, put out a lot of mail. So I look at it as she bought the primary.”There was one more chance for Republicans to stop her. Greene faced a runoff against John Cowan, a neurosurgeon. While a handful of party leaders and conservative groups intervened to endorse Cowan, many remained neutral. Greene earned national support from members of the rightwing House Freedom Caucus, including congressman Jim Jordan, the group’s founder.Wendy Davis, 57, a political consultant and two-term city commissioner, said: “The runoff was basically who loves Trump more? Although the media and some people had dug into this QAnon mess that she was a part of, none of the other Republicans made that an issue in their primary. Nobody had said, ‘She’s a little out there’. Nobody had said, ‘What do you mean September 11 was a fake inside job?’.“Nobody challenged her on that and so she was able to win. If you’ve got eight people saying the same thing, who are you going to pick? You’re going to pick the person who says what you feel like is most authentically. She was very believable. Like I sleep with my dog, I think she sleeps with her gun. She gives you this feeling that gun is very important to her.”Greene won the runoff then beat her Democratic opponent, IT specialist Kevin Van Ausdal, who stopped campaigning early for “personal and family reasons”, by nearly 50 percentage points in the general election. In short, Davis contends, Greene represents the 14th district because of arbitrary circumstance rather than an abrupt outbreak of mass delusion among the electorate.“How we get here wasn’t because everybody around here went QAnon cuckoo. We got here because she loved Trump, she loved guns, she hated socialism, she hated abortion and that won that primary and it’s a Republican district.”Local Republican officials here are said to be privately dismayed by Greene’s antics since she took her seat in Congress, which have included calling for Joe Biden’s impeachment and prison visits to rioters arrested after the January 6 insurrection. Mirroring their national counterparts’ deference to Trump, however, they mostly remain silent in public.As for the people, some turn a blind eye or take little interest in politics. Others are appalled by Greene’s conduct and want to be rid of her.Julie Svardh, 49, an insurance agent, said: “I’m embarrassed to be from her district. She’s a national laughing stock. The things that she says, she doesn’t know basic words. She couples off with the worst people in Washington and is very annoying. She’s not bright and she’s a bully. She’s definitely not somebody you want representing where you live.”How did Greene get elected in the first place? Svardh replied: “People blindly supported Trump in this area and so anyone who supported that person just got lumped in. People didn’t read a lot or really look at the details and see what people stand for.”Like many districts all over the country, a significant chunk of voters here consume a diet of Fox News, the conservative cable network, and social media where conspiracy theories such as QAnon thrive. The daily Rome News-Tribune newspaper, which covers Floyd County, a market of about 100,000 people, now has about 7,000 print and 2,000 digital subscribers – a steep decline from its heyday.John Bailey, 49, its executive editor, shares Davis’s view that the district did not become a hotbed of extremism overnight. “Do you have that? Yes. Is that the minority? I think so. Do you have reasonable people who don’t consume good information? A lot. I’m not saying these are dumb people, I’m just saying their information consumption is habitually bad.“I have friends who are intelligent people but their information consumption habits have been bad for a long time. They don’t intelligently consume media. Top that on decades of ‘those politicians don’t care about us’, top that on ‘the media is looking for an angle’.”Like Trump, Greene taps into white grievance, anger among the “left behind” and desire for an outsider to “drain the swamp” of Washington. Her lack of polish and frequent gaffes – in February she referred to “gazpacho police” when she meant “Gestapo” – merely add to supporters’ perception that she is “one of them” rather than a manufactured politician.Bailey added: “They’re very forgiving of gaffes and other things that they may not like because this person kind of speaks for them. The problem that you’re dealing with is rooted in apathy and rooted in this feeling of not being connected or not being important or not being represented.”Like Trump, Greene exploits a social media ecosystem in which outrageous behaviour aimed at “owning the libs” is rewarded, and breaking taboos offers her followers a vicarious thrill of transgression. This has enabled her to build a national profile and raise money way beyond what a freshman member of Congress could have managed in the pre-digital era. In a recent campaign ad, she is seen flying in a helicopter and shooting a wild hog in Texas while comparing the animals’ destruction of farmers’ crops to Democrats’ destructive policies.Peter Montgomery, a senior fellow at the non-profit group Right Wing Watch, said via email: “In the social media age, someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene can become a folk hero to, and raise money from, extremists from around the country. So she has a national constituency, not just a local one.”Greene remains a prominent Republican figure on Capitol Hill. When Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, last month unveiled a “Commitment to America” policy agenda at an event near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she could be seen sitting beyond his shoulder in the audience.It was a clue that Greene, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Paul Gosar of Arizona, all of whom would have been extreme fringe figures in the old Republican party, now find its centre of gravity moving towards them and could wield huge influence over McCarthy if he becomes House speaker. In a sense, they are all Trump’s children.Tara Setmayer, a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “It’s clear that there is a large contingent of voters in places like Georgia who feel who have felt ignored for a long time, who may have had political views that were not considered mainstream, that were now given a voice because of the extremist and unconventional viewpoints of Donald Trump.“He’s emboldened the underbelly of American politics. We cannot underestimate what the QAnon election-denying, rightwing extremist, white Christian nationalist wing of the Republican party has become and how many people subscribe to this. We should be very alarmed because what they stand for is antithetical to our constitutional and democratic norms and institutions.”Back on the campaign trail last week, Flowers, an army veteran and defence contractor who decided to run for office after the January 6 insurrection, was beating the streets of suburban Rome. Running against Greene has ensured a fundraising windfall of $10.8m from Democratic donors across the country who are disturbed by her rise. Even then, he remains a very long shot.He still has faith in the people of the 14th district: “I get why people think, ‘They voted her in office and that’s got to be who they are’. Why wouldn’t people think that? We did send her to Congress. That ain’t who we are. People were misled, misinformed.“The way she ran that campaign and didn’t have any pushback because no one else could afford to do the same things she did led some people to vote for her. A lot of those people come to me now and say, ‘I voted for her last time but she’s embarrassed us. I’m not voting for her again.’”Trump expected to launch dozens of TV ads boosting Republicans in key racesRead moreFlowers’ last house call of the day was to Jose Herran, 67, whose dogs barked loudly in a scrappy front garden and whose first question was sharp: “Do you believe in killing unborn babies?” But Flowers listened to him patiently and emphasized his career of service and religious faith while describing Greene as an absent voice who has left her own constituents in the lurch.By the end of the lengthy and meandering conversation, which Flowers described as a job interview, Herran had been won over. He told the candidate: “I’d give you the job. If you’re going to take care of veterans, that’s it for me.” Herran added: “You’ve got my vote. You talked me into it.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022GeorgiaUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More