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    Biden could be left off general election ballot in Ohio, Republican official warns

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    The Ohio secretary of state has sent a letter to the Ohio Democratic party warning that Joe Biden could be left off the November election ballot in 2024 unless the Democratic National Convention meets earlier or statutory requirements in the state are changed or exempted.According to a letter sent from the Ohio secretary of state, Frank LaRose, a Republican, to Ohio Democratic party chair Liz Walters, the Democratic National Convention scheduled for 19 August where the party officially nominates its candidate for president is past the 7 August deadline to certify presidential candidates on the Ohio ballot.“I am left to conclude that the Democratic National Committee must either move up its nominating convention or the Ohio General Assembly must act by May 9, 2024 (90 days prior to a new law’s effective date) to create an exception to this statutory requirement,” the legal counsel for Ohio secretary of state Paul Disantis wrote in the letter, according to ABC News. The Ohio Democratic party has said they received the letter and are currently reviewing it. The Biden campaign expressed confidence that the president would be on the ballot for November in Ohio.The Ohio general assembly could pass an exemption waiver before 9 May, or the convention would have to be moved earlier which is unlikely given logistics and scheduling issues.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn 2020, the Republican and Democratic parties held their conventions after Ohio’s deadline and state lawmakers reduced the requirement of 90 days to 60 days before the election to be named on the ballot. More

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      Bernie Moreno says he fled socialism in Colombia for the US in 1971. What does history say?

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      Bernie Moreno, the Republican candidate for US Senate in Ohio who expected to mount a stern challenge to Sherrod Brown, the incumbent leftwing Democrat, says his family fled socialism when they came to the US from Colombia in 1971, when he was four years old.Though such statements formed a central part of Moreno’s campaign message on his way to securing the Republican nomination with support from Donald Trump, they do not withstand historical scrutiny.In an interview in 2020, about his success as a car dealer in Ohio, Moreno described himself as “somebody who moved to this country a long time ago to escape what happens in most South American countries, which is socialism and the absolute prison of those ideas”.In 2021, as Moreno moved into national politics with a first run for a Senate nomination, the Cleveland Plain Dealer said he “says he came to the United States as a child with his mother and siblings to flee socialism in their native Colombia. He believes that same ideology is rising in the United States, and he wants to fight back.”But when Moreno was born, on 14 February 1967, Colombia was nine years into the 16-year period of National Front government, in which conservative and liberal parties alternated being in power as a way to avoid violence between the two factions.Furthermore, the first leftwing Colombian government in modern times is the current one, headed by Gustavo Petro and in power since 2022.Colombia has long been home to leftwing guerrilla groups. As described by the US Congressional Research Service, when Moreno lived there, the country was home to “leftist, Marxist-inspired insurgencies … including the Farc, launched in 1964, and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN), which formed the following year”.Such groups, the CRS says, “conducted kidnappings, committed serious human rights violations, and carried out a campaign of terror that aimed to unseat the central government in Bogotá”.Moreno, however, has described an early childhood far removed from such worries.By his own description, his father was secretary of health under Misael Pastrana, a conservative and the last National Front president between 1970 and 1974.“We had a very, very, very, very incredible lifestyle in Colombia,” Moreno said in 2019, at a business event in Cleveland, adding that his mother moved the family to the US – initially against his father’s wishes – because she “didn’t want us to be raised as pampered indoor cats”.The move was “a jump”, Moreno said, “but it was this idea of no fear”.Contacted for comment on Wednesday, Moreno’s communications director, Reagan McCarthy, said: “No where in the [first] quote cited does Bernie say his family came to America because Colombia was a socialist country or that his family was escaping a socialist country at the time.“He very clearly was stating that many South American countries fell to socialism and his parents came to America to ensure their kids would grow up in a free society, out of fear that Colombia would eventually move towards socialism.”As indicated by McCarthy’s reference to “many South American countries [falling] to socialism”, Moreno has also spoken of a fear of being “surrounded” by socialist governments.In 2021, writing in the Toledo Blade, he said: “I was born in South America, surrounded by socialist ideology.”The same year, Moreno told the Landscape, a Cleveland podcast: “I think the [US is] going off [in] a very dangerous direction. It’s a direction I recognise. I grew up surrounded by socialist ideology, whether it’s Venezuela or Cuba [or] now Peru, and I know where this movie ends.”And in a campaign ad, also from 2021, Moreno said: “I came from a country surrounded by the ideology of radicals like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, who promised to give everyone all they needed and solve all their problems, just like [Vermont senator] Bernie Sanders and AOC [New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] are doing today.”Such claims also shake under scrutiny.Cuba has indeed been governed from the left since 1959, when Castro and the Communist party took power after a long fight. Castro was assisted by Guevara, a revolutionary from Argentina – who was killed in October 1967, when Moreno was eight months old.In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Moreno was a young child in Colombia, Venezuela was governed by Rafael Caldera, a Christian Democrat who moved to end conflict with leftwing guerrillas. Ecuador, which also borders Colombia, was also governed by a centrist at that time.Between 1968 and 1975, Peru was led by Juan Velasco Alvarado, a general who seized power in a coup d’état but governed from the political centre. The current president of Peru, Dina Boluarte, is a former member of a Marxist party now governing with the support of rightwingers.Between 1970 and 1973, Chile – more than a thousand miles south of Colombia – was governed by Salvador Allende, its first socialist president. He died on 11 September 1973 as the rightwing Chilean military led by Gen Augusto Pinochet attacked the presidential palace, in a coup backed by the CIA.After coming to the US in 1971, Moreno became a US citizen at 18. In her statement on Wednesday, McCarthy, the Moreno aide, accused the Guardian of failing to celebrate “what could potentially be the first South American-born senator”.The National Republican Senatorial Committee and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Brown declined to comment. More

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      Man Who Threatened to Kill Arizona Official Over Election Gets 2½ Years in Prison

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      Joshua Russell, 46, of Ohio, left threatening messages for Katie Hobbs in 2022, when she was Arizona’s secretary of state and successfully ran for governor.An Ohio man who threatened to kill Katie Hobbs in 2022 when she was secretary of state in Arizona and running to be governor was sentenced Monday to two and a half years in prison, prosecutors announced.The man, Joshua Russell, 46, of Ohio, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Arizona in August to one count of making an interstate threat, according to the Justice Department. He was indicted in December 2022 on charges that he had left several voice messages containing death threats with the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office during the midterm election season, in which Ms. Hobbs was elected governor.Ms. Hobbs, a Democrat, was secretary of state in Arizona and was the state’s top election official when Joe Biden’s 2020 victory there was certified. She was not named in court documents, but a letter filed in court last week on Mr. Russell’s behalf was addressed to her.In the letter, Mr. Russell apologized to Ms. Hobbs and said that he was being treated for anger and drug and alcohol abuse, which he cited as a factor in making the threats.“Social media and news reports (that I didn’t know if they were true or false) became another addiction for me, and only fueled my depression, anxiety and anger,” Mr. Russell wrote.The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday night, and Mr. Russell’s public defenders could not immediately be reached.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Former Ohio House Speaker Hit With 10 Additional Felony Charges

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      Larry Householder, already serving a 20-year federal prison sentence, was indicted on additional state felony charges on Monday in connection with a sprawling bribery scheme.A former speaker of the Ohio State House of Representatives, now serving a 20-year federal prison sentence, was indicted on 10 more state felony charges on Monday in connection with a sprawling bribery scheme that handed a $1.3 billion bailout to a major regional energy utility.The charges against the former speaker, Larry Householder, followed an inquiry by the Ohio Organized Crime Commission that also produced indictments last month of two former executives of the Akron-based utility, FirstEnergy Corporation.The two men — Chuck Jones, a former FirstEnergy chief executive officer, and Michael Dowling, a senior vice president — were charged with funneling $4.3 million in bribes to the former chairman of the Ohio Public Utility Commission, Sam Randazzo. They and Mr. Randazzo, who was also indicted, have pleaded not guilty to a total of 27 charges.The FirstEnergy case has been called the largest political scandal in Ohio history. Mr. Householder was convicted of accepting $60 million in bribes in exchange for shepherding into law a mammoth bailout of two unprofitable nuclear power plants owned by a subsidiary of the utility, as well as two coal-fired electric plants and solar energy projects.Mr. Householder, 64, is appealing his racketeering conviction, which took place in federal court last June. Among other things, the new state charges assert that he illegally tapped a campaign account to pay $750,000 in legal fees for his defense and that he failed to disclose loans, debts, legal fees and gifts from lobbyists in ethics statements required of members of the state legislature.The charges — three counts of theft, five counts of record-tampering and single counts of money laundering and telecommunications fraud — could permanently bar Mr. Householder from public office if convicted.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sherrod Brown Embarks on the Race of His Life

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      Ohio will almost certainly go for Donald Trump this November. The Democratic senator will need to defy the gravity of the presidential contest to win a fourth term.Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, has always had the luxury of running for election in remarkably good years for his party. He won his seat in 2006, during the backlash to the Iraq War, won re-election in 2012, the last time a Democrat carried the state, and did so again in 2018, amid a national reckoning of Donald J. Trump’s presidency.His campaign in 2024 will be different, and most likely the toughest of his career, with a Republican Party determined to win his seat and a Democratic president hanging off him like one of his trademark rumpled suits. In an election year when control of the Senate relies on the Democratic Party’s ability to win every single competitive race, an enormous weight sits on the slumped shoulders of the famously disheveled 71-year-old.“I fight for Ohioans,” Mr. Brown said in an interview on Wednesday. “There’s a reason I win in a state that’s a little more Republican.”Mr. Brown’s tousled hair and gravelly voice have spoken to working-class voters since he was elected Ohio’s secretary of state in 1982. His arms may be clenched tightly around his chest, but he projects a casual confidence that he can win once again in firmly red Ohio, where he is the last Democrat holding statewide office.But beneath that image is trouble. On Monday, he had just received an endorsement from the 100,000-strong Ohio State Building and Construction Trades Council, when a retired bricklayer, Jeff King, pulled him aside in a weathered union hall in Dayton.Mr. Brown has had plenty of achievements to run on, Mr. King, who made the trip from his local in Cincinnati, told the senator. But, he asked, would workers in a blue-collar state that has twice handed Mr. Trump eight-percentage-point victories understand who should get the credit?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Bernie Moreno: the Trump-convert firebrand targeting Ohio Senate seat

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      Bernie Moreno won a convincing victory in the Republican Senate primary in Ohio on Tuesday night ensuring that the firebrand rightwinger goes up against the Democrat Sherrod Brown in the vital race.Moreno’s victory sees the Trump-backed politician become the party’s standard-bearer against Brown in a contest that could decide control of the US Senate.But it also cast light on a controversial Democratic strategy of supporting extremist Republican candidates in party nomination races out of a belief they are easier to beat in the general election – thus upping the odds of a Democratic win, but also running the risk that those extremists could actually get elected.At 57, Moreno is to his supporters the American Dream made flesh: a Colombia-born, Florida-raised car dealer turned powerful populist Republican voice.He is not, his lawyer insists, the author of a years-old post from his email account to the Adult Friend Finder website, seeking “young guys to have fun with” and “men for 1-on-1 sex”.That scandal broke in the last days of the Ohio Senate primary but did not derail Moreno, who before gaining Trump’s backing voiced pro-LGBTQ+ views. A former intern (and donor) said he wrote the website post as an “aborted prank”.Moreno may meanwhile have been boosted by an attack ad, backed by a group linked to Senate Democrats, that called him “too conservative for Ohio” and “too aligned” with Donald Trump.The idea was to present the incumbent Democratic senator, Sherrod Brown, with an opponent easily portrayable as too extreme for Ohio. Such tactics have worked elsewhere, even in Republican states and particularly when linked to threats to reproductive rights, a profitable issue for Democrats since the conservative-dominated US supreme court removed the federal right to abortion.Ohio, however, has trended sharply right since Trump entered politics and critics said Democrats were playing with fire.On Saturday, in Dayton, Trump staged a fiery rally. On Tuesday, Moreno scorched to victory, belying close poll results to beat Matt Dolan, a state senator backed by Mike DeWine, the Republican governor, and Frank LaRose, the sitting secretary of state.“We have an opportunity now,” Moreno said. “We have an opportunity to retire the old commie.”That was an appropriately Trumpian insult to Brown, a populist Democrat first elected in 2007 but now seen as vulnerable as Republicans seek to retake the Senate.Brown said: “The choice ahead of Ohio is clear: Bernie Moreno has spent his career and campaign putting himself first, and would do the same if elected. I’ll always work for Ohio.”Moreno said: “I want to thank President Trump for all he did for me, for this campaign, for his unwavering support, for his love of this country. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone who loves this country the way he does.”It was a predictable display of fealty to a presumptive Republican presidential nominee who faces 14 criminal charges arising from his attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020, culminating in the deadly January 6 attack on Congress.Trump also faces 40 criminal charges over retention of classified information and 34 over hush-money payments to an adult film star. In civil cases, Trump is struggling to pay one multimillion-dollar bond, having been found liable for fraud, after paying another arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.Like many Republicans, Moreno was once against Trump. In 2016, as Trump surged to the nomination, Moreno called him a “lunatic” and a “maniac”, bent on “a hostile takeover” of the party.Now, like almost all Republicans, Moreno says Trump should return to power.“It’s going to be a tough next seven months,” Moreno said on Tuesday. “But we’re going to win this race in November, we’re going to retake the United States Senate, we’re going to have President Trump in the White House, we’re going to get the ‘America First’ agenda done.”Aspects of that agenda Moreno has pushed on the campaign trail include providing “absolutely no more money for Ukraine, period” in its war with Russia and “restor[ing] the integrity of our elections”, a nod to Trump’s electoral fraud lie.But Moreno also presents a danger to Brown because he will campaign on similar, blue-collar issues.Before election day, Moreno defended Trump’s controversial prediction of a “bloodbath” if he loses to Biden in November, saying it was a reference to American industrial decline.“This is America First territory,” Moreno told the rightwing network Newsmax, appearing with JD Vance, Ohio’s other US senator and a Republican populist too.“Ohio knows, because … what’s happened in Lorain and Youngstown and Dayton and Cleveland and Columbus, once great, thriving cities, our industries have seen a bloodbath of disaster there so they understand … [Trump’s] comment, because they know what it’s like to have their dad, their grandfather lose their job that got shipped overseas. They’re not going to be fooled.”On Tuesday night, he covered similar territory.“People say I’ve lived the American dream,” Moreno said. “Started my tiny little car dealership with nothing. So, that’s not really, in my mind, what I view as the American Dream.”Singling out his father-in-law, he said: “Dennis went to high school in Hobart, Indiana … graduated from high school, reported to work at US Steel … Goes to work there, was able to buy a home, buy a car, raise three kids, send them to good schools in safe communities and he’s able now to retire debt free. That’s the American dream. That’s what’s under assault. And that’s where we’re gonna get back.”Commentators highlighted the battle to come.Citing Moreno’s remarks about an American Dream now out of reach for many, Matt Lewis, a conservative columnist, said: “If he campaigns like this for the next eight months, Sherrod Brown’s in trouble.”Rachel Bitecofer, a Democratic strategist, said: “Ohio, Maga extremist Bernie Moreno supports a national abortion ban. Pass it on.” More

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      US primary elections: Biden and Trump notch wins with surprises in store down ballot

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      Donald Trump and Joe Biden swept up more delegates in Tuesday’s primary elections as they set their sights on a rematch in November.Trump and Biden picked up wins in Arizona, Illinois, Kansas and Ohio. Trump also won the Republican primary in Florida, where the Democrats are not holding a primary.In Ohio, Illinois and Florida, the former South Carolina governor and presidential candidate Nikki Haley still captured a sizable fraction of the Republican vote, despite no longer being in the race.The president and former president had already won enough delegates to capture their parties’ presidential nominations, and most of their challengers have dropped out. Trump’s last Republican challenger, his former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, ended her presidential campaign after Super Tuesday. Biden’s long-shot challenger, the Democratic congressman Dean Phillips, dropped out as well.With the presidential nominating contests clinched, the candidates were focusing on campaigning in swing states they will need to win the general election in November.In recent days, Biden visited Arizona and Nevada, where he is looking to shore up the support of young and Latino voters who could be key to his re-election. Biden is touting economic policies and attacking Trump on immigration and abortion as he seeks to win over wavering voters and waning enthusiasm among groups that backed him in 2020.Democrats seeking to register frustration with Biden over his handling of the war in Gaza are urging supporters to vote for the self-help guru Marianne Williamson in Arizona – as she, unlike Biden, has called for a permanent ceasefire. Pro-Palestinian protesters in Ohio, meanwhile, are urging supporters to “Leave It Blank”.Trump, meanwhile, has continued to court controversy on the campaign trail amid ongoing legal troubles. He claimed that Jewish people voting for Democrats “hate their religion” and Israel, in an interview on Monday – drawing outrage. As he criss-crosses the country to rally supports and raise funds, he has also increasingly made the January 6 attack on the Capitol a cornerstone of his campaign, saluting rioters as heroes.In Illinois, Ohio, Illinois and California, a few key down-ballot races have been hotly contested.OhioIn Ohio, Bernie Moreno, whom Trump endorsed, has won the Republican US Senate primary, and will face the Democratic incumbent, Sherrod Brown, in November, the AP projects. Moreno, a wealthy former car dealer who has never held an elected office, was leading in polls ahead of election day, edging out the state senator Matt Dolan and the secretary of state, Frank LaRose.Dolan, whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team, had the backing of establishment Republicans, including the governor, Mike DeWine.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMoreno’s candidacy had been weighed down by questions about his qualifications and lack of experience. Having espoused virulently anti-LGBTQ+ policies, he was also the subject of an Associated Press report that found his work email was used to create an account on an adult website seeking “men for 1-on-1 sex” in 2008. Moreno had denied the report.Republicans have targeted Brown’s seat as one they could flip in November – he is Ohio’s only statewide elected Democrat in a state that has moved dramatically to the right in recent years.IllinoisIn Illinois, the 82-year-old Democratic incumbent congressman Danny Davis will defend his seat in November after fighting off a progressive challenge, the AP projects. Davis was backed by the state’s governor, JB Pritzker, and the Chicago mayor, Brandon Johnson, but faced a tough challenge from the community organizer and gun-control advocate Kina Collins, a community organizer and gun control advocate.
      Biden v Trump: What’s in store for the US and the world?On Thursday 2 May, 8-9.15pm GMT, join Tania Branigan, David Smith, Mehdi Hasan and Tara Setmayer for the inside track on the people, the ideas and the events that might shape the US election campaign. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live More

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      Primaries to Watch Today: Races in Ohio, California, Illinois and More

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      Five states will hold presidential primaries on Tuesday — Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Kansas and Ohio — the largest such set of contests since Super Tuesday three weeks ago.But with the presidential nominating contests already decisively clinched, neither of the presumptive nominees will make appearances in those states today. Instead, President Biden will travel to Nevada, a top fall battleground, visiting Reno and Las Vegas, while Dr. Jill Biden, the first lady, will campaign across New England. Former President Donald J. Trump campaigned in Ohio on Saturday.The attention today is on a handful of down-ballot races.Chief among them is the Republican primary for a competitive Senate seat in Ohio. Three Republicans are duking it out for the chance to run against Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat.Mr. Trump stumped for his preferred candidate, Bernie Moreno, a former car dealer from Cleveland, on Saturday but mentioned him only sparingly in his caustic, freewheeling speech at a rally in Vandalia in which he said that some migrants were “not people” and that the country would face a “blood bath” if he lost in the November election. Mr. Moreno will face off against Frank LaRose, the Ohio secretary of state, and Matt Dolan, a wealthy state senator, in the primary.In Illinois, a number of competitive House primaries could signal some of the contours of the fall election.In the 12th Congressional District, Mike Bost, the incumbent, is facing a Republican challenger to his right in Darren Bailey, who lost the governor’s race to J.B. Pritzker by a wide margin in 2022. Mr. Bailey is an ardent pro-Trump Republican, but Mr. Bost has Mr. Trump’s endorsement.Danny Davis, 82, is running to keep his seat in the Democratic primary for the Seventh Congressional District. He has two significant opponents: Chicago’s treasurer, Melissa Conyears-Ervin, and a youthful community organizer named Kina Collins. But the Democratic establishment in Illinois has rallied around Mr. Davis — who is a year older than Mr. Biden, making his age a sensitive issue for the primary.In the Fourth Congressional District, Representative Jesús “Chuy” García, a progressive Democrat, will face off against Raymond Lopez, a Chicago alderman, in a Democratic primary that has centered on immigration in Chicago. Mr. García, “a proud immigrant,” was one Democrat who criticized Mr. Biden when he referred to an undocumented migrant as “an illegal” in his State of the Union speech. Mr. Lopez is more conservative on immigration.In California, a special primary in the 20th Congressional District will be held to complete the term of former Representative Kevin McCarthy, a Republican who was ousted from his role as speaker of the House and resigned soon after. A separate primary was held on Super Tuesday for a full term in the seat starting January 2025, with two Republicans — Vince Fong and Mike Boudreaux — advancing to the general election in November. More

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      Severe Weather Tears Through Midwest

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      A storm, believed to be a tornado, ripped through a mobile home community in eastern Indiana. Ohio and Kentucky were also hit.Tornadoes were reported as storms tore through Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio on Thursday, according to news reports.Local officials believe a tornado hit a trailer park in Winchester, in eastern Indiana, according to 13 WTHR, an NBC News affiliate. However, meteorologists said they were still working to confirm that a tornado had touched down there.Tornadoes in the MidwestLocations of tornado sightings or damage reported by trained spotters. More