Republican Party

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Why Rising Diversity Might Not Help Democrats as Much as They Hope

      by

      Voters of color make up an increasing percentage of the United States electorate, but that trend isn’t hurting Republicans as much as conservatives fear.The Census Bureau released two important sets of data last week that have big implications for American politics — and that challenge some prevailing assumptions for both Democrats and Republicans.The first set of data lays out long-term demographic trends widely thought to favor Democrats: Hispanics, Asian-Americans and multiracial voters grew as a share of the electorate over the last two presidential races, and white voters — who historically tend to back the G.O.P. — fell to 71 percent in 2020 from 73 percent in 2016.The other data set tells a second story. Population growth continues to accelerate in the South and the West, so much so that some Republican-leaning states in those regions are gaining more Electoral College votes. The states won by President Biden will be worth 303 electoral votes, down from 306 electoral votes in 2020. The Democratic disadvantage in the Electoral College just got worse again.These demographic and population shifts are powerfully clarifying about electoral politics in America: The increasing racial diversity among voters isn’t doing quite as much to help Democrats as liberals hope, or to hurt Republicans as much as conservatives fear.The expanding Democratic disadvantage in the Electoral College underscores how the growing diversity of the nation may not aid Democrats enough to win in places they most need help. Just as often, population growth is concentrated in red states — like Texas and Florida — where the Democrats don’t win nonwhite voters by the overwhelming margins necessary to overcome the state’s Republican advantage.As for the Republicans, the widely held assumption that the party will struggle as white voters decline as a percentage of the electorate may be more myth than reality. Contrary to what Tucker Carlson says repeatedly on Fox News about the rise of “white replacement theory” as a Democratic electoral strategy, the country’s growing racial diversity has not drastically upended the party’s chances. Instead, Republicans face a challenge they often take for granted: white voters.One way to think about this is to compare today’s electorate with that of the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were winning in landslides. Democrats, no doubt, have benefited from the increased racial diversity of the country since then: Mr. Biden would not have even come close to winning Georgia in November if its voters were as white they were back in the 1980s. Former President Donald J. Trump would have probably won re-election if he could have turned the demographic clock back to the ’80s and reduced the electoral clout of nonwhite voters. Today’s wave of Republican-backed laws restricting voting rights may be intended to do exactly that.In states like Georgia, where Democrats have needed demographic changes to win, the party has also needed significant improvement among white voters to get over the top.Audra Melton for The New York TimesYet even a return to the racial demographics of the 1980s wouldn’t do nearly as much to hurt Democrats as one might expect. Yes, the November result would have gone from an extremely close win for Mr. Biden to an extremely close win for Mr. Trump. But Mr. Biden would have won more electoral votes than Hillary Clinton did in 2016, even though nonwhite voters had doubled their share of the electorate from 1984 to when Mrs. Clinton sought the presidency. Remarkably, Mr. Biden’s fairly modest gains among white voters helped him as much as the last 30 to 40 years of demographic shifts did.Similarly, Mr. Bush or Mr. Reagan would have still prevailed if they had had to win an electorate that was 29 percent nonwhite, as opposed to the merely 13 to 15 percent nonwhite electorates they sought to persuade at the time.This is not the conventional story of recent electoral history. In the usual tale, the growing racial diversity of the electorate broke the Reagan and Bush majorities and allowed the Democrats to win the national popular vote in seven of the next eight presidential elections.And yet it is hard to find a single state where the increasing racial diversity of the electorate, even over an exceptionally long 30- or 40-year period, has been both necessary and sufficient for Democrats to flip a state from red to blue. Even in states where Democrats have needed demographic changes to win, like Georgia and Arizona, the party has also needed significant improvement among white voters to get over the top.One reason demographic change has failed to transform electoral politics is that the increased diversity of the electorate has come not mainly from Black voters but from Hispanic, Asian-American and multiracial voters. Those groups back Democrats, but not always by overwhelmingly large margins.In 2020, Democrats probably won around 60 to 65 percent of voters across these demographic groups. These are substantial margins, but they are small enough that even decades of demographic shifts wind up costing the Republicans only a couple of percentage points.The new census data’s finding that the percentage of non-Hispanic white voters in the country’s electorate dropped by about two percentage points from 2016 to 2020 might seem like a lot. But with Hispanic, Asian-American and multiracial voters representing the entirety of the increase, while the Black share of the electorate was flat, the growing nonwhite share of the electorate cost Mr. Trump only about half a percentage point over a four-year period.Another factor is the electoral map. The American electoral system rewards flipping states from red to blue, but many Democratic gains among nonwhite voters have been concentrated in the major cities of big and often noncompetitive states. By contrast, many traditional swing states across the northern tier, like Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, have had relatively little demographic change.The ability of Democrats to flip red states has been hampered by another pattern: the tendency for Republicans to fare relatively well among nonwhite voters in red states.It’s often said that Latino voters aren’t a monolith, and that’s certainly true. While Hispanic voters back Democrats by overwhelming margins in blue states like New York and Illinois, Republicans are often far more competitive among Latinos and members of other non-Black minority groups in red states — including those Democrats now hope to flip like Texas or Florida.Texas and Florida really would be blue if Latinos voted like their counterparts in New York or Illinois. But instead, Latino population growth has not quite had a strong pro-Democratic punch in the states where the party hoped to land a knockout blow.At the same time, white voters are easy to overlook as a source of Democratic gains, give that these voters still support Republicans by a comfortable margin. But Democrats probably improved from 39 to 43 percent among white voters from 1988 to 2020. It’s a significant shift, and perhaps even enough to cover the entirety of Mr. Bush’s margin of victory in the 1988 election, without any demographic change whatsoever.President Biden won seven states, including Wisconsin, while losing among their white voters.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesIt’s a little easier to see the significance of Democratic gains among white voters at the state level. According to AP/Votecast data, Mr. Biden won white voters in states worth 211 electoral votes. Democrats like Jimmy Carter in 1976, Michael Dukakis in 1988 or John Kerry in 2004 probably didn’t win white voters in states worth much more than 60 electoral votes, based on exit poll and other survey data.Mr. Biden even won white voters in many of the states where the growing diversity of the electorate is thought to be the main source of new Democratic strength, including California and Colorado. And he also won white voters in many big, diverse states across the North where Republicans used to win and where nonwhite demographic change might otherwise be considered the decisive source of Democratic strength, like Illinois, New Jersey, Connecticut and Maryland, which voted almost entirely Republican at the presidential level throughout the 1980s.According to the AP/Votecast data, Mr. Biden won seven states — Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Virginia, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia — while losing among white voters. In these crucial states, Democratic strength among nonwhite voters was essential to Mr. Biden’s victory.But of these states, there are really only three where Mr. Biden clearly prevailed by the margin of the increased racial diversity of the electorate over the last few decades: Arizona, Nevada and Georgia. He did not need to win any of these states to capture the presidency, but he would not have done so without long-term increases in both nonwhite voting power and Democratic strength among white voters.The story is quite different in the Northern battleground states. White voters still represent more than 80 percent of the electorate in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to the new census data. The nonwhite population in these states is predominantly Black; their share of the population has been fairly steady over the last few decades. But Mr. Biden won these states so narrowly that the relatively modest demographic shifts of the last few decades were necessary for him to prevail in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.It’s just hard to call it a Great Replacement if Mr. Trump could have won in 2020 if only he had done as well among white voters as he did in 2016. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      In South Texas, Hispanic Republicans Try to Cement the Party’s Gains

      by

      Conservative Hispanic leaders, especially women, are ascendant in the Rio Grande Valley, where Republicans are trying to forge lasting bonds with voters who swung sharply to the right in 2020.McALLEN, Texas — The front door of the Hidalgo County Republican Party’s office is covered with photographs of high-profile politicians in the party: Gov. Greg Abbott, Senator John Cornyn and former President Donald J. Trump. Nearly all of them are white men.Step inside, and you’ll see a bulletin board with pictures of local Republican leaders: Adrienne Pena-Garza, Hilda Garza DeShazo, Mayra Flores. Nearly all of them are Hispanic women.Hispanic Republicans, especially women, have become something of political rock stars in South Texas after voters in the Rio Grande Valley shocked leaders in both parties in November by swinging sharply toward the G.O.P. Here in McAllen, one of the region’s largest cities, Mr. Trump received nearly double the number of votes he did four years earlier; in the Rio Grande Valley over all, President Biden won by just 15 percentage points, a steep slide from Hillary Clinton’s 39-point margin in 2016.That conservative surge — and the liberal decline — has buoyed the Republican Party’s hopes about its ability to draw Hispanic voters into what has long been an overwhelmingly white political coalition and to challenge Democrats in heavily Latino regions across the country. Now party officials, including Mr. Abbott, the governor, have flocked to the Rio Grande Valley in a kind of pilgrimage, eager to meet the people who helped Republicans rapidly gain ground in a longtime Democratic stronghold.One of those people, Ms. Pena-Garza, the chair of the Hidalgo County Republican Party, grew up the daughter of a Democratic state legislator. As was common for most Hispanic families in the area, she said, voting for Democrats was a given. But after her father switched parties in 2010, Ms. Pena-Garza soon followed, arguing that Democrats had veered too far to the left, particularly on issues like abortion and gun control.“Politics down here did scare me because you didn’t go against the grain,” she said. “If someone’s going to tell you: ‘Oh, you’re brown, you have to be Democrat,’ or ‘Oh, you’re female, you have to be a Democrat’ — well, who are you to tell me who I should vote for and who I shouldn’t?”Ms. Pena-Garza said she was called a coconut — brown on the outside, white on the inside — and a self-hating Latino, labels that have begun to recede only in recent years as she meets more Hispanic Republicans who, like her, embrace policies that they view as helping small business owners and supporting their religious beliefs.Now, she says, the political choice is a point of pride.“You can’t shame me or bully me into voting for a party just because that’s the way it’s always been,” she said.Monica De La Cruz-Hernandez, a Republican, is running against Representative Vicente Gonzalez, the Democrat who represents McAllen, in 2022.Verónica G. Cárdenas for The New York TimesOne of the lingering questions of the 2020 election is just what drove this region — and other heavily Hispanic areas of the country — toward Republicans. The shift appeared to be particularly acute among women who call themselves conservative, according to a post-mortem analysis by Equis Labs, a Democratic-aligned research firm that studies Latino voters.Conversations with voters and activists in Hidalgo County suggested that there is not one answer but many: Women who staunchly oppose abortion voted for the first time; wives of Border Patrol agents felt convinced the Trump administration was firmly on their side; mothers picked up on the enthusiasm for Republicans from friends they knew through church or their children’s school.For many voters in the region, there is a profound sense of cynicism — a feeling that things will not change no matter who is charge. The border, after all, has been the site of a humanitarian crisis under both Democrats and Republicans. Nearly everyone here knows both undocumented immigrants and Border Patrol agents, occasionally even within the same family. And for many here, law enforcement remains one of the easiest paths to the middle class, and Republicans have portrayed national Democrats as hostile toward the police.Both Republicans and Democrats are likely this year to start funneling far more money into the region, where enthusiasm for the G.O.P. in 2020 was not limited to Mr. Trump. For the first time in recent history, a Republican came close to defeating the Democratic incumbent in Texas’ 15th Congressional District, which includes most of Hidalgo County and runs north of McAllen up to San Antonio.In next year’s race for the seat, the Republican candidate, Monica De La Cruz-Hernandez, is again challenging Representative Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat — but they may be competing on different political terrain if the district’s “bacon strip” shape is altered in redistricting later this year.At the local Lincoln Reagan Republican dinner in March, Mr. Abbott rallied support for Ms. De La Cruz-Hernandez and encouraged other women like her to come into the G.O.P. fold, speaking in glowing terms about their political potential and saying he had “never been as impressed” with the leadership of a county party.“I’ve never been onstage with so many accomplished, articulate Latinas as I have been tonight with this group of ladies,” he told an enthusiastic crowd. “This is amazing. If I were the Democrats, I would be very afraid right now, because there is a storm coming, a storm that is going to win Hidalgo County. I wanted to be here in person, wanted to say thank you.”“You will knock that damn door down,” Mr. Abbott added. “You will shape and reshape politics in the Lone Star State.”Jessica Villarreal said she had no desire to be politically active while she served in the Army, but now considers herself a faithful Republican and is considering a run for elected office.Verónica G. Cárdenas for The New York TimesLike many of her supporters, Ms. De La Cruz-Hernandez first registered as a Democrat, largely, she said, so she could vote in local primary elections.“That was just what you do,” she said. She added that while she could not recall ever having voted for a Democrat for president, she had hesitated to voice her political views publicly, fearing that it could hurt her insurance business. “But I never understood the Democratic values or message being one for me,” she said. “And I am convinced that people here have conservative values. That is really who the majority is.”During her last campaign, Ms. De La Cruz-Hernandez relied heavily on local efforts, drawing little attention from the national Republican Party in a race she lost by just three points. Now she is focusing early on building support from donors in Washington. Already, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has named Mr. Gonzalez a “Frontline” member, an indication that it views him as one of the most endangered House Democrats. And in March, the National Republican Congressional Committee put Mr. Gonzalez on its 2022 “Exit List” and began airing ads against him.In an interview, Mr. Gonzalez primarily attributed the closeness of his race last year to the lack of Democratic in-person campaigning amid the coronavirus pandemic, and the high turnout to the particular phenomenon of Mr. Trump, rather than a long-term shift.“For the Republicans to think that there is some dramatic change, that they should pour attention and money into this district, I think they will be sadly mistaken,” he said. “But I am taking nothing for granted.”People waved signs supporting former President Donald J. Trump in McAllen last month.Verónica G. Cárdenas for The New York TimesLike other Democrats along the Texas border, Mr. Gonzalez has tried to distance himself from national Democrats; this year he asked Mr. Biden to rescind an executive order to temporarily stop new fracking on federal lands. Last month, he traveled to the border with the Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan congressional group, and he has urged top Biden administration officials to come to the region.“We’re conservative Democrats down here,” he said. “We support a lot of international trade, we’re an agricultural community, we’re Catholic, we work in the oil fields, we’re avid gun collectors.”He added: “I think that’s pretty distinguishable from the rest of the Democratic Party. We can’t just assume that all Hispanics are going to stick with Democrats.”Mr. Gonzalez also attributed the shift toward Republicans in his district in part to misinformation, particularly on YouTube and other forms of social media. And some first-time Republican voters appeared to be swayed by false conspiracy theories.Elisa Rivera, 40, said she had voted for Mrs. Clinton in 2016, but did not understand the fierce reaction against Mr. Trump.“I was following along the family tradition, my dad is a hard-core Democrat, my father was really for unions, and I thought the Democrats defended the union,” Ms. Rivera said, before adding: “But then I started to research myself and found out the Democrats are supporting witchcraft and child trafficking and things like that, things that get censored because they get labeled conspiracy theory.”Other right-leaning Hispanic voters described a simple ideological shift.Mayra Rivera said her politics do not fit in a neat box.Verónica G. Cárdenas for The New York TimesAs a child, Mayra Rivera, 42, worked in the fields with her parents, who arrived in the United States through the bracero program, which brought farmworkers to the country from Mexico. When her family struggled financially, she would walk door to door selling cupcakes. The first few times she voted, Ms. Rivera cast her ballot for Democrats. Even now, she said, her politics do not fit in a neat box.“My family doesn’t come from money, I have friends who are undocumented, I support medical cannabis,” she said. “But I definitely think Democrats are pushing free everything, giving the message that there’s no value in your hard work, and that’s not something I can believe in.”Like Ms. Rivera, Jessica Villarreal, 33, was only an occasional voter, and she had no desire to be politically active while she served in the Army. But now she considers herself a faithful Republican and is considering a run for elected office.“There are more of us who realize our beliefs are Republican, no matter what we’ve been told in the past,” Ms. Villarreal said. “I am a believer in God and the American dream, and I believe the Republican Party represents that.” More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Why Kristi Noem Is Rising Quickly as a Republican Prospect for 2024

      by

      Ms. Noem, the governor of South Dakota, has defied coronavirus restrictions and eagerly projects a rugged Great Plainswoman image. Her moves have stirred both support and conflict in the G.O.P.PIERRE, S.D. — With Republicans hungry to cultivate their next generation of national leaders, it is not a Capitol Hill comer or a veteran battleground-state politician who is stirring interest by fusing Trumpism with a down-home conservatism spin. It is the first-term governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, a rancher who delights in sharing images of herself shooting pheasants and riding horses.Ms. Noem began drawing wider attention last year for cozying up to President Donald J. Trump — so much so that she inspired suspicion that she was angling to replace Mike Pence on the 2020 ticket — and hosting him at a July 4 Mount Rushmore event where she gave him a model of the monument with his face included. Her defiance of coronavirus restrictions and her eagerness to project a rugged Great Plainswoman image helped her come in second in a 2024 straw poll of far-right conservatives looking for candidates if Mr. Trump doesn’t run again.But her approach to politics has sometimes made for rocky relations with her base. Late last month, she got herself into a showdown with the Republican-controlled State Legislature over her veto of a bill barring transgender girls from school sports. And as some party leaders were pressing her to resolve that fight, she prompted eye-rolling at home by inserting herself in an unrelated skirmish — over Lil Nas X’s “Satan Shoes.”“We are in a fight for the soul of our nation,” she wrote on Twitter, picking a fight with the rapper over his endorsement of $1,000 sneakers featuring a pentagram and, ostensibly, a drop of blood.If Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is widely seen as the brash heir apparent to Mr. Trump, and senators like Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton are attempting to put a more ideological frame on Trumpism, Ms. Noem is trying to cement her place as the only female Trump ally echoing the former president’s trigger-the-left approach among the upper tiers of potential 2024 candidates.But her stumble on the trans bill planted some doubts among social conservatives, and her appearances on Fox News most weeks and her time spent at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago fund-raising site have prompted griping in South Dakota.At home, Ms. Noem’s apparent White House ambitions bother Republicans who want her focused on the state’s needs, even as some in the party relish the attention her rising profile is bringing to the tourism-dependent state.She’s now on her fourth chief of staff in just over two years and has an increasingly awkward relationship with John Thune, South Dakota’s senior senator, and has favored the national party circuit over building relationships in the turn-of-the-century State Capitol in Pierre.“Let’s focus on the state of South Dakota right now,” Rhonda Milstead, a Republican state representative, said in an interview between floor sessions on the so-called veto day. “And if you’re going to run for governor in 2022, let’s focus on our state. I voted for her when she ran because I believe she cared about the state of South Dakota, so let’s do it.”Ms. Noem’s approach is markedly different from the arc of other modern governors-turned-presidents, such as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Those politicians assiduously courted their states’ kingmakers, held up their legislative achievements as campaign calling cards and waited until they had been re-elected to the governor’s office before auditioning on the national stage.The question is whether that was then.As she steps up her already-busy travel schedule — she was the keynote speaker at the Kansas G.O.P.’s convention this month and will address Arkansas Republicans in June — Ms. Noem, 49, may represent the purest test of the potency of Trump-style pugilism.“It’s a contest about who can trigger the media and Democrats the most, and Noem is trying to get in that conversation,” said David Kochel, a Republican strategist and a veteran of presidential politics. “It’s, ‘Can I come up with something that’s going to inflame Rachel Maddow and raise awareness among conservatives because Fox will cover how much the left hates me?’”In the post-Trump party, a willingness to confront the news media and do battle with the left, preferably in viral-video snippets, is more compelling to activists than amassing a record of achievement or painstakingly building coalitions. Appearing at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, Ms. Noem received her loudest applause for saying that Dr. Anthony S. Fauci “is wrong a lot.”Former President Donald J. Trump speaking at a fund-raiser for Kristi Noem during her 2018 campaign for the governor’s office.Susan Walsh/Associated PressMoreover, with Republicans having lost the presidency and both chambers of Congress after struggling among female voters, many in the party want to elevate a woman to their ticket in 2024, when Vice President Kamala Harris is likely to be the Democratic nominee for president or vice president.“She is one of the strongest examples of a great Republican woman,” said Glynis Gilio, a law student, who waited with a few dozen other CPAC attendees for Ms. Noem’s autograph. “We really need that strong female conservatism to pack a punch.”Russell Olson, a former South Dakota lawmaker who was elected to the Legislature alongside Ms. Noem in 2006, said Ms. Noem is “a conservative woman and can talk without regurgitating talking points, so she rises to easy consideration in my book.”Mr. Olson, whom Ms. Noem reappointed to the State Game, Fish and Parks Commission, is not the only South Dakota Republican eager to remain on the governor’s good side. A number of party officials and donors did not want to speak on the record about Ms. Noem’s political prospects, many of them pointedly observing that it is a small state.The governor declined an interview and, in keeping with her public posture, had a spokesman email to archly ask if the story would be “about next year’s re-election campaign?”Other South Dakota Republicans are downright gleeful about the speculation — though not necessarily because they’re eager to see her become president. “Love her or hate her, she’s the best resource South Dakota has going for it right now,” said Lee Schoenbeck, the leader of the State Senate. “She’s got such a platform.”Despite the state’s high Covid death toll per capita, and the outbreak stemming from the Sturgis motorcycle rally that drew nearly 500,000 biker enthusiasts last fall, many Republicans in South Dakota believe that the governor’s opposition to shutdowns contributed to South Dakota’s lowest-in-the-country unemployment rate, kept tourists coming and made the state newly appealing to transplants.Whether Ms. Noem ultimately lands on the 2024 ticket or not, she has made a name for herself nationally by recreating South Dakota as a sort of red-state oasis for visitors, new residents and businesses.She won the governorship by just three and a half percentage points, a slim margin in a state that has not elected a Democratic governor since 1974. Her approval rating stood at just 39 percent at the end of 2019, according to a private Republican poll shared by a party official familiar with the results. By last June, three months into the virus outbreak, the same pollster found that 62 percent of the state’s voters approved of her performance.Ms. Noem had a relatively modest profile during four terms serving in Congress and in her first year as governor. By the end of 2020, however, she had gained the notice of Mr. Trump, who was egging her on to challenge Mr. Thune in his primary next year.She has disclaimed any interest in such a challenge. But her coziness with Mr. Trump and her hiring of the hard-charging Corey Lewandowski, the former president’s onetime campaign manager, has put a chill in her relationship with Mr. Thune, the second-ranking Senate Republican. Mr. Thune has been clear that he wants the G.O.P. to ease away from being a cult of personality and focus on ideas.John Thune of South Dakota, the Senate minority whip, has said he wants the Republican Party to focus on ideas rather than personalities.Amr Alfiky/The New York Times“Thune wants to move on and can’t with a Trump clone in own backyard,” said Drey Samuelson, the longtime top aide to former Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota.Ms. Noem plainly sees her opening as a Trump-of-the-prairie provocateur.In addition to her ubiquity on Fox News — one segment featured her escorting a network contributor on the state’s annual buffalo roundup — she has taken to Twitter with gusto. And not just to troll rappers.“This is how we do social distancing in South Dakota,” she wrote above a video of her shooting and downing a nearby pheasant, a clip that has drawn nearly seven million views.She also starred in a tourism commercial that aired nationally last year during the Covid surge. “We’re open for opportunity — and always will be,” Ms. Noem said as images of Mount Rushmore and galloping bison flashed on the screen.It’s difficult to overstate the importance of marketing to South Dakota.At the confluence of Midwest and West, and bifurcated by the Missouri River, the state has relied on tourism since the early part of the 20th century, when another ambitious governor, Peter Norbeck, relentlessly promoted the development of a granite monument in the Black Hills that could lure visitors to the region.Ms. Noem has shown a similar passion for making the state a destination, most memorably mixing tourism with politics by ensuring that fireworks could be displayed at Mount Rushmore to entice Mr. Trump there last year. South Dakota similarly trumpets its pheasant hunting, walleye fishing, and even more flagrant tourist pit stops, like Wall Drug and the Mitchell Corn Palace.“We don’t have a lot of industry in South Dakota, and we don’t have a lot of natural resources pumped out of the ground or mined, so when you have a state that’s basically ag and ranching, you need those out-of-state dollars,” said Ted Hustead, whose family owns Wall Drug, whose Western-themed collection of stores and restaurants is a major tourist attraction.That need is what put Ms. Noem in a vise over the transgender legislation.She initially said she would support the bill. But she reversed course after facing a backlash from South Dakota’s influential business community, which worried that the National Collegiate Athletic Association would pull moneymaking basketball tournaments out of the state.Ms. Noem was pressed about her change of mind by Tucker Carlson in a rare adversarial Fox News interview, and the flap fueled suspicions among social conservatives.“She says whatever she thinks she needs to say,” said Taffy Howard, a state lawmaker who has pressed Ms. Noem to disclose the details of state money she has been using for security on her frequent trips. “This was all about keeping her donors happy.”The House overrode Ms. Noem’s partial veto of the trans bill, but the State Senate declined to take action, dooming the legislation.Running for re-election with Mr. Trump’s support in a conservative state, Ms. Noem should be well-positioned next year. South Dakota, however, does have a history of spurning its politicians when their focus becomes more national than local.“Tom Daschles and George McGoverns are examples of what happens when you don’t pay attention at home — you got to make sure you’re balancing that well,” said Marty Jackley, a former state attorney general who lost to Ms. Noem in the primary election for governor, alluding to two of South Dakota’s most famous figures.Mr. Olson, Ms. Noem’s former colleague in the Legislature, said he nevertheless expected Ms. Noem to be a formidable candidate should she run for president. He learned his lesson, he said, after supporting her primary opponents when she ran for South Dakota’s lone House seat in 2010 and then for governor in 2018, and he was “not going to get the third strike.” More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      With 23 Candidates, Special Election in Texas Is Headed for Runoff

      by

      The front-runner was Susan Wright, who was endorsed by Donald J. Trump and is the widow of Representative Ron Wright, who died of Covid-19 in February.AUSTIN, Texas — Susan Wright, the Republican widow of a congressman who died of Covid-19, emerged on Saturday evening as the front-runner in a tight race to replace her husband in Washington.Still, Ms. Wright, whose husband, Ron Wright, died in February, could not avoid a runoff for the state’s Sixth Congressional District, which includes mostly rural areas in three Northern Texas counties and a sliver of the nation’s fourth-largest metropolitan region around Dallas, Fort Worth and Arlington.Ms. Wright, who was assisted by a last-minute endorsement from former President Donald J. Trump, captured about 19 percent of the vote, far below the 50 percent required to avoid a runoff. It appeared she was headed to another contest with Jake Ellzey, a fellow Republican. Jana Lynne Sanchez, a Democrat, followed closely behind in third place.The results disappointed Democrats, who had hoped to tap a reservoir of shifting demographics and Hispanic and African-American growth in a district where Mr. Trump won by only three percentage points in November.Ms. Sanchez, who ran a tight race against Mr. Wright in 2018, held an election gathering at her home in Fort Worth and vowed to keep fighting for progressive values. The Sixth District was once a Democratic stronghold, until Phil Gramm switched party affiliations in 1983, turning the district into a reliable bastion of Republican strength for decades.In February, Mr. Wright, who had lung cancer, died after he contracted the coronavirus. His wife was an early front-runner to replace him, but her chances of outright victory narrowed after the field grew to 23 candidates, including 11 Republicans, 10 Democrats, a Libertarian and an independent.The battle took a bizarre turn in the final days when Ms. Wright’s backers reported receiving anonymous robocalls that accused her of killing her husband. She immediately sought an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the local authorities.Saturday’s results signaled that Mr. Trump continued to have a hold on the Republican Party in Texas months after losing an election he falsely claimed had been stolen from him. Mr. Wright had been a vocal ally of Mr. Trump and a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.This is the second time that the widow of a member of Congress who died from Covid sought to keep her husband’s seat. Last month, Julia Letlow, a Republican from Louisiana, avoided a runoff when she secured the seat of her late husband, Luke Letlow, who died before having the chance to represent the district, which includes much of the central part of the historically red state.In municipal races elsewhere in Texas, the mayor of San Antonio, Ron Nirenberg, easily won a second term. And voters in Austin overwhelmingly favored ending a ban on public camping, a decisive victory for those seeking to keep homeless people from erecting tents in certain spots across the city. Homelessness is a contested issue in the state capital, with critics arguing that the referendum didn’t offer alternatives to people with no place to sleep. More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      G.O.P. Seeks to Empower Poll Watchers, Raising Intimidation Worries

      by

      Republicans in several states are pushing bills to give poll watchers more autonomy. Alarmed election officials and voting rights activists say it’s a new attempt to target voters of color.HOUSTON — The red dot of a laser pointer circled downtown Houston on a map during a virtual training of poll watchers by the Harris County Republican Party. It highlighted densely populated, largely Black, Latino and Asian neighborhoods.“This is where the fraud is occurring,” a county Republican official said falsely in a leaked video of the training, which was held in March. A precinct chair in the northeastern, largely white suburbs of Houston, he said he was trying to recruit people from his area “to have the confidence and courage” to act as poll watchers in the circled areas in upcoming elections.A question at the bottom corner of the slide indicated just how many poll watchers the party wanted to mobilize: “Can we build a 10K Election Integrity Brigade?”As Republican lawmakers in major battleground states seek to make voting harder and more confusing through a web of new election laws, they are simultaneously making a concerted legislative push to grant more autonomy and access to partisan poll watchers — citizens trained by a campaign or a party and authorized by local election officials to observe the electoral process.This effort has alarmed election officials and voting rights activists alike: There is a long history of poll watchers being used to intimidate voters and harass election workers, often in ways that target Democratic-leaning communities of color and stoke fears that have the overall effect of voter suppression. During the 2020 election, President Donald J. Trump’s campaign repeatedly promoted its “army” of poll watchers as he publicly implored supporters to venture into heavily Black and Latino cities and hunt for voter fraud.Republicans have offered little evidence to justify a need for poll watchers to have expanded access and autonomy. As they have done for other election changes — including reduced early voting, stricter absentee ballot requirements and limits on drop boxes — they have grounded their reasoning in arguments that their voters want more secure elections. That desire was born in large part out of Mr. Trump’s repeated lies about last year’s presidential contest, which included complaints about insufficient poll watcher access.Now, with disputes over the rules governing voting now at a fever pitch, the rush to empower poll watchers threatens to inject further tension into elections.Both partisan and nonpartisan poll watching have been a key component of American elections for years, and Republicans and Democrats alike have routinely sent trained observers to the polls to monitor the process and report back on any worries. In recent decades, laws have often helped keep aggressive behavior at bay, preventing poll watchers from getting too close to voters or election officials, and maintaining a relatively low threshold for expelling anyone who misbehaves.But now Republican state lawmakers in 20 states have introduced at least 40 bills that would expand the powers of poll watchers, and 12 of those bills in six states are currently progressing through legislatures, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.In Texas, the Republican-controlled Legislature is advancing legislation that would allow them to photograph and video-record voters receiving assistance, as well as make it extremely difficult for election officials to order the removal of poll watchers.The video-recording measure has particularly alarmed voting rights groups, which argue that it could result in the unwanted identification of a voter in a video posted on social media, or allow isolated incidents to be used by partisan news outlets to craft a widespread narrative.“If you have a situation, for example, where people who are poll workers do not have the ability to throw out anybody at the polls who is being disruptive or anyone at the polls who is intimidating voters, that’s essentially authorizing voter intimidation,” said Jon Greenbaum, chief counsel for the nonpartisan Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.Republicans have been increasingly open in recent years about their intent to line up legions of supporters to monitor the polls. Following the lead of Mr. Trump, they have often framed the observational role in militaristic tones, amplifying their arguments of its necessity with false claims of widespread fraud. Just three years ago, the courts lifted a consent decree that for more than three decades had barred the Republican National Committee from taking an active role in poll watching; in 2020, the committee jumped back into the practice.In Florida, Republicans in the State Legislature passed a new election bill on Thursday that includes a provision allowing one partisan poll watcher per candidate on the ballot during the inspection of votes. The measure carries the potential to significantly overcrowd election officials. The bill also does not stipulate any distance that poll watchers must keep from election workers.In Michigan, a G.O.P. bill would allow challengers to sit close enough to read poll books, tabulators and other election records, and would let them challenge a voter’s eligibility if they had “a good reason.”The Republican drive to empower poll watchers adds to the mounting evidence that much of the party continues to view the 2020 election through the same lens as Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly argued that his losses in key states must have been because of fraud.President Donald J. Trump on the morning after the election. His campaign promoted an “army” of poll watchers.Doug Mills/The New York Times“It seems like the No. 1 goal of these laws is to perpetuate the Big Lie,” said Dale Ho, the director of the Voting Rights Project at the A.C.L.U. “So when you get these unfounded charges that there was fraud or cheating in the election and people say, ‘Well, that’s not detected,’ the purveyors of these lies say, ‘That’s because we weren’t able to observe.’”After the election last year, complaints that poll watchers had not been given enough access, or that their accusations of improperly cast ballots had been ignored, fueled numerous lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign and its Republican allies, nearly all of which failed.In Texas, the leaked video of the Harris County Republican Party’s training, which was published by the voting rights group Common Cause, recalled a similar episode from the 2010 midterm elections.That year, a Tea Party-affiliated group in Houston known as the King Street Patriots sent poll watchers to downtown polling locations. The flood of the mostly white observers into Black neighborhoods caused friction, and resurfaced not-too-distant memories when racial intimidation at the polls was commonplace in the South.The King Street Patriots would eventually evolve into True the Vote, one of the major national organizations now seeking more voting restrictions. Last year, True the Vote joined several lawsuits alleging fraud in the election (all failed) and led countrywide drives to try to recruit more poll watchers.Access for poll watchers is considered sacred by Texas Republicans; in the Legislature, they cited the difficulty in finding observers for drive-through voting and 24-hour voting as one of their reasons for proposing to ban such balloting methods.“Both parties want to have poll watchers, need to have poll watchers present,” State Senator Bryan Hughes, a Republican who sponsored the chamber’s version of the bill, said in an interview last month. “That protects everyone.”While the antagonistic language from the Trump campaign about its poll watchers was already a flash point in November, Democrats and voting rights groups are worried that relaxed rules will lead to more reports of aggressive behavior.In 2020, there were at least 44 reports of inappropriate behavior by poll watchers in Harris County, according to county records obtained by The New York Times. At one polling site on the outskirts of Houston, Cindy Wilson, the nonpartisan election official in charge, reported two aggressive poll watchers who she said had bothered voters and repeatedly challenged the staff.“Two Poll watchers stood close to the black voters (less than 3 feet away) and engaged in what I describe as intimidating behavior,” Ms. Wilson wrote in an email to the Harris County clerk that was obtained by The Times through an open records request.Ms. Wilson said she was not sure which campaign or party the observers were representing.Of course, plenty of interactions with poll workers went smoothly. Merrilee C. Peterson, a poll watcher for a local Republican candidate, worked at a different site, the NRG Arena, and reported no tensions of note.“We still had some of the problems of not thinking we were allowed to get close enough to see,” she said. “But once the little kinks were worked out, quite frankly we worked very well with the poll workers.”In Florida, crowding was the chief concern of election officials.Testifying before state senators, Mark Earley, the vice president of the Florida Supervisors of Elections, said that “as an association, we are very concerned” about the number of poll watchers who would now be allowed to observe the process of duplicating a voter’s damaged or erroneously marked ballot. He said it presented “very grave security risks.”Mr. Earley was backed by at least one Republican, State Senator Jeff Brandes, who found the provision for poll watchers unnecessary and dangerous.“I don’t think we should have to install risers in the supervisor of elections offices or bars by which they can hang upside down in order to ensure that there is a transparent process,” Mr. Brandes said.A crowd that included many Michigan Republicans banged on the windows as workers counted absentee ballots in Detroit on Nov. 4. Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesBut perhaps no other state had a conflict involving poll watchers erupt onto cable news as Michigan did. On Election Day and the day after in November, Republican poll watchers grew increasingly obstructive at the TCF Center in Detroit, where absentee ballots were counted as it became clear that Mr. Trump was losing in the state.It began with a huddle of Republican observers around midday on Nov. 4, according to affidavits from Democratic poll watchers, nonpartisan observers and election officials.Soon after, the Republicans “began to fan out around the room,” wrote Dan McKernan, an election worker.Then they ramped up their objections, accusing workers of entering incorrect birth years or backdating ballots. In some cases, the poll watchers lodged blanket claims of wrongdoing.“The behavior in the room changed dramatically in the afternoon: The rage in the room from Republican challengers was nothing like I had ever experienced in my life,” wrote Anjanette Davenport Hatter, another election worker.Mr. McKernan wrote: “Republicans were challenging everything at the two tables I could see. When the ballot envelope was opened, they would say they couldn’t see it clearly. When the next envelope was opened, they made the same complaint. They were objecting to every single step down the line for no good reason.”The chaos provided some of the basis for Michigan officials to debate whether to certify the results, but a state board did so that month.Now, the Republican-controlled Legislature in Michigan is proposing to bar nonpartisan observers from acting as poll watchers, allowing only partisan challengers to do so.While widespread reports of intimidation never materialized last year, voting rights groups say the atmosphere after the election represents a dangerous shift in American elections.“It really hasn’t been like this for decades, generally speaking, even though there’s a long and storied history of it,” said Michael Waldman, a legal expert at the Brennan Center. Aggressive partisan poll watchers, he said, were “a longstanding barrier to voting in the United States, and it was also largely solved. And this risks bringing it back.” More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      With Florida Bill, Republicans Continue Unrelenting Push to Restrict Voting

      by

      Republican lawmakers are marching ahead to overhaul voting systems in states where they control the government, frustrating Democrats and even some G.O.P. election officials. Next up: Texas.The pleas from Florida election officials were direct and dire: Passing the state’s new voting bill would be a “grave security risk,” “unnecessary” and a “travesty.”The restrictions imposed by the new law, they warned, would make it harder to vote and hurt confidence in the balloting process.But their objections were brushed aside on Thursday night as the Legislature gave final passage to a bill that would limit voting by mail, curtail the use of drop boxes and prohibit actions to help people waiting in line to vote, among other restrictions, while imposing penalties on those who do not follow the rules. It was perhaps the clearest sign yet that Republicans are determined to march forward across state capitols to establish new restrictions on voting.The Republican effort puts added pressure on Democrats in Congress to find a way to pass federal voting laws, including a sweeping overhaul known as the For the People Act. But in Washington, just as in state capitols across the country, Republicans have remained united and steadfast against the Democratic efforts.Georgia Republicans in March enacted far-reaching new voting laws that limit ballot drop-boxes and forbid the distribution of food and water to voters waiting in line. Iowa has also imposed new limits, including reducing the period for early voting and in-person voting hours on Election Day.Next up is Texas, where Republicans in the legislature are trampling protestations from corporate titans like Dell Technologies and American Airlines and moving on a vast election bill that would be among the most severe in the nation. It would impose new restrictions on early voting, ban drive-through voting, threaten election officials with harsher penalties and greatly empower partisan poll watchers. The main bill passed a key committee in a late-night session on Thursday, and could head to a full floor vote in the House as early as next week.Bills to restrict voting have also been moving through Republican-led legislatures in Arizona and Michigan.Throughout the process, Republican legislators have been largely unmoved by opposition to new voting laws by Fortune 500 companies, major American sports leagues, Black faith leaders and elections administrators. Nor has the lack of popular support for many of the bills deterred them. Even as some of the more strident initial proposals have been watered down, there has rarely been a pause, even for a moment, in the drive to pass new legislation on voting.“I don’t think anybody was concerned about it,” Joe Gruters, a Florida state senator and the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, said of outside criticism.Tightening his state’s election laws, Mr. Gruters has said, is a top priority not just of Republican lawmakers but also of the party’s base. Though he characterized Florida’s election system as a national “gold standard” and said he wasn’t aware of any fraud in the 2020 election, Mr. Gruters said in a phone interview on Friday that his state’s voting could always be improved.“It’s just like when the Tampa Bay Bucs won the Super Bowl — they’re still making improvements and signing new players,” he said.Joe Gruters, a Florida state senator and the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, said tightening voting laws was a top priority for lawmakers and the party’s base.Wilfredo Lee/Associated PressA representative for Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Friday that he “is supportive” of the Florida bill, and he is widely expected to sign it. But state election officials were still protesting the measure on Friday morning, barely 12 hours after it had passed.The group representing Florida election supervisors issued a statement lamenting the new limits on voting by mail, saying the changes would make it “harder” to cast a mail ballot. “After days of debate, our hope is that the initial and unnecessary call for election reform will not detract from the confidence that was well-earned in 2020,” Craig Latimer, the head of the group, said in the statement.The unrelenting push by Republicans to roll back voting access has left Democrats exasperated. In an emotional floor speech before the final vote in Florida on Thursday night, State Representative Angela Nixon of Tampa both pleaded with her colleagues to vote against the bill and chastised those supporting it.“It’s very frustrating, and it’s super hard to be in this chamber, and to be cool with people and cordial with people who are making policies that are detrimental to our communities,” said Ms. Nixon, her voice shaking at times.The fixation on voting laws reflects how central the issue has become to the Republican Party, driven by a base that still adheres to former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Pledges to ensure voting integrity have become common in political ads and stump speeches, and opposition to the federal voting rights bills in Congress is universal among Republican members.A number of Republicans running for office in 2022 have begun campaigns with messaging that pushes the false narrative that the nation’s voting systems are flawed. They include Representative Ted Budd of North Carolina, who on Wednesday announced a Senate bid with a three-minute video in which he called for fair and secure elections, adopting Republicans’ rationale for revamping the voting laws.In a political era in which partisan primaries are often the only challenge a candidate faces, the party’s base has become a chief driver of legislative action. A CNN poll released on Friday found that while 97 percent of Democrats believed President Biden “legitimately won enough votes to win the presidency,” 70 percent of Republicans surveyed said he did not.And polling from Quinnipiac University in April found that a vast majority of Republicans — 78 percent — were opposed to expanding vote by mail, and 84 percent believed that voter fraud was a greater threat than voter suppression. (Numerous audits, court cases and reports have found no significant fraud in the 2020 election.)Republicans have been largely dismissive of the business community’s objections to new voting restrictions, part of a longer-running split between the parties and local chambers of commerce that began when corporations vocally opposed laws enacted by Republican-run states in the 2010s that sought to protect businesses from having to recognize same-sex marriage.An array of corporations also denounced the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and said they would not donate to Republican members of Congress who voted to overturn the election results. That threat didn’t sway most lawmakers from their fealty to Mr. Trump, and in the weeks since the attack, some companies have pulled back from that pledge.Indeed, some Republicans have turned public opposition from major businesses and outside entities into a political weapon; rather than seek to appease businesses, lawmakers have instead taunted them, castigating corporate activism and daring businesses to act.“Major League Baseball caved to fear and lies from liberal activists,” Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia announced the day after the decision by Major League Baseball to move its All-Star Game from Atlanta. Free and fair elections, he said, “are worth the threats.” He added, “They are worth the boycotts, as well as the lawsuits. I want to be clear: I will not be backing down from this fight.’’Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia said he would continue to defend the state’s new voting restrictions after Major League Baseball moved its All-Star Game from Atlanta this year.Brynn Anderson/Associated PressLt. Gov. Dan Patrick of Texas was just as firm. “Texans are fed up with corporations that don’t share our values trying to dictate public policy,” he said after American Airlines released a statement denouncing one of the voting bills in the state. “The majority of Texans support maintaining the integrity of our elections, which is why I made it a priority this legislative session.”Republicans not in thrall to Mr. Trump see the standoff with businesses as an ominous sign. “We say the party has gone full Trump, but what we mean is the party has gone full populist and nationalist,” said Michael Wood, an anti-Trump Republican running in Saturday’s 23-candidate special election to Congress in the Dallas suburbs. “We’ve turned away from our roots as a pro-business party, a pro-small business party, and that, if we don’t correct course, is going to be really bad for America.”Yet Republicans are also seizing on a potential political opportunity. The aftermath of the 2020 election, and Mr. Trump’s insistence that the vote was rigged, provided the party with the first major public support from its partisans to pursue new voting legislation, after the Supreme Court hollowed out the Voting Rights Act in 2013.Indeed, many of the laws being proposed and passed by Republicans would most likely have been challenged by the Justice Department under what was known as the preclearance provision in Section 5 of the act.“We saw something like this in 2010 after Obama got elected,” said Myrna Pérez, the director of the Voting Rights and Elections Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “But we had more of a pushback and were able to block or blunt many of those laws. Now there’s not the kind of guardrails that we had in the past, and voters are suffering because of it.”Michael Wood, left, a Republican congressional candidate in Texas, criticized his party for going “full populist and nationalist.”LM Otero/Associated PressMr. Wood, the Texas Republican running in Saturday’s special election, worries that this could drive away supporters.“It’s keeping Republicans from talking honestly to themselves about why we’re getting a smaller and smaller share of the vote in Texas,” he said. “We can either have that conversation, or keep screaming about quote unquote ‘election integrity’ and watch the state become progressively more Democratic.”That debate could well be decided soon when the Texas Legislature takes up its own voting bill.Patricia Mazzei contributed reporting. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Florida Voting Rights: Republican Bill Adds New Limits

      by

      The bill, which Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign, is the latest Republican effort to restrict voting after the 2020 election. It will make Florida the first major swing state won by Donald Trump to pass such a law.MIAMI — Republicans in the Florida Legislature passed an election overhaul bill on Thursday that is set to usher in a host of voting restrictions in one of the most critical battleground states in the country, adding to the national push by G.O.P. state lawmakers to reduce voting access.The bill makes Florida the first major swing state won by former President Donald J. Trump to pass significant voting limits and reflects Republicans’ determination to reshape electoral systems even in states where they have been ascendant. Mr. Trump carried the state last year by more than three percentage points, other Republicans also performed strongly, and the party raised new hopes of its ability to appeal to Latino voters.But Republicans in Florida argued that its elections needed to be more secure, despite the fact that voting unfolded smoothly in 2020 and arguments by Democrats and voting rights experts that some of the new measures would disproportionately affect voters of color. Now the state is on the verge of weakening key parts of an extensive voting infrastructure that was slowly constructed after the state’s chaotic 2000 election and was rapidly enlarged last year because of the coronavirus pandemic.The new bill would limit the use of drop boxes; add more identification requirements for those requesting absentee ballots; require voters to request an absentee ballot for each election, rather than receive them automatically through an absentee voting list; limit who could collect and drop off ballots; and further empower partisan observers during the ballot-counting process. The legislation would also expand a current rule that prohibits outside groups from providing items “with the intent to influence” voters within a 150-foot radius of a polling location.Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has indicated his support for the voting overhaul and is expected to sign it. The bill passed largely along a party-line vote in both chambers, 77 to 40 in the House and 23 to 17 in the Senate, though one Republican state senator, Jeff Brandes of St. Petersburg, voted against it.The legislation follows a similar law passed recently by Georgia, and comes as Texas, Arizona and other states led by Republicans pursue limits on access to the ballot. G.O.P. lawmakers have been fueled by a party base that has largely embraced Mr. Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud and a stolen 2020 election. In Florida, Republican legislators promoted the voting bill while providing little evidence of any problems with fraud, and despite their continued claims that the state’s 2020 election was the “gold standard” for the country.“There was no problem in Florida,” said Kara Gross, the legislative director and senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. “Everything worked as it should. The only reason they’re doing this is to make it harder to vote.”Once the bill is signed into law, Florida will become the first state to create new barriers to voting after businesses across the country embarked on a public pressure campaign to oppose such measures. Major corporations, after speaking out against voting bills in states like Georgia and Texas, remained largely muted on the Republican push in Florida.Hovering over Florida’s debate about the bill was the state’s strong and exceptionally popular tradition of voting by mail — and a recent sea change in which party benefited most from it.In the 2016 and 2018 elections, roughly a third of the state’s voters cast ballots through the mail. And in both years, more Republicans than Democrats voted by mail.But in 2020, more than 2.1 million Democrats cast mail ballots, compared with roughly 1.4 million Republicans, largely because of a Democratic push to vote remotely amid the pandemic and Mr. Trump’s false attacks on the practice. (The former president and his family, however, voted by mail in Florida in the June 2020 primary.)Florida has a popular tradition of voting by mail, a method that favored Republicans until 2020, when Democrats encouraged the practice during the pandemic.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesGiven that history in Florida, its bill will act as a unique test of the national Republican push to curtail voting access, especially absentee and mail voting. And the G.O.P. effort carries risks: Was the Democratic surge in mail balloting a sign of a new normal for the previously Republican-dominated voting method, or a blip caused by the extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic?The legislation has already become something of a political balancing act, as state Republicans try to appease a Trump-friendly base hungry for new voting limits while not harming the party’s turnout. In 2022, the state is poised to yet again become a marquee political battleground as Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican, and Mr. DeSantis seek re-election.Democrats in the Legislature seized on Republicans’ justification for the bill.“So what’s the problem that we’re trying to fix?” Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democratic representative from Orlando, asked rhetorically. “Oh, here’s the problem: Florida Democrats cast 600,000 more vote-by-mail ballots.”But Republicans defended the bill, saying that it was popular with “our constituents” and noting that voting options in Florida were still far more extensive than in other states. Florida will still have no-excuse absentee voting and will mandate at least eight days of early voting.“If the opposition says that we are creating barriers to voting, those barriers already exist in other states,” said Blaise Ingoglia, a Republican state representative from Hernando County who helped lead the push for the bill. “But we never hear a peep from the opposition about those laws.”Other Republican legislators echoed language used by Mr. Trump and his allies during their challenges to the 2020 election.“I believe that every legal vote should count,” said Travis Hutson, a Republican senator from Northeast Florida. “I believe one fraudulent vote is one too many. And I’m trying to protect the sanctity of our elections.”Data requested by lawmakers themselves suggested there was little need for the legislation. The Republican-led House Public Integrity and Elections Committee surveyed the state’s 67 election supervisors in February, asking them about past elections. Almost all of the supervisors responded and said that, over the past four years, they had reported very few instances of possible fraud — one of lawmakers’ stated reasons for pushing the legislation — and that most of their drop boxes were already monitored, through either physical or video surveillance, public records show.“It seems like the Legislature is ignoring — I would say deliberately ignoring — the facts that they have in their possession,” said Stephen F. Rosenthal of Miami, who is part of a group of Democratic lawyers that requested the records. The group also queried elected state prosecutors about voter fraud, finding a minuscule number of prosecuted cases.The supervisors’ answers to the House committee also revealed that election supervisors had received millions of dollars in grant funding from outside organizations in 2019 and 2020. That money will now be prohibited, with no obvious substitute for it in the future.Republicans, when pressed for details on any reported fraud that would prompt the need for the bill, often demurred.“I don’t know, but I’m sure it was going on,” Mr. Ingoglia responded to a question on the House floor about any reported instances of illegal ballot collection. “Just the fact that they weren’t caught doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s not happening.”The bill was not without criticism from notable Republicans inside and outside the Legislature. D. Alan Hays, a conservative Republican who had previously served in the State Senate for 12 years and is now the election supervisor in Lake County, told his former colleagues at a legislative hearing last month that their bill was a “travesty.”Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is expected to sign the bill into law, will face re-election in 2022.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThe new bill is likely to face legal challenges from Democrats; hours after Gov. Brian Kemp signed Georgia’s voting bill into law, a coalition of Democrats and civil rights groups filed a federal lawsuit challenging its legality.Democrats in the Florida Legislature focused heavily on the bill’s potential impact on communities of color.“Typically, in communities of color, households are very diverse,” said State Representative Bobby DuBose, the minority leader, taking issue with the restriction that says a person could collect only two absentee ballots from other voters to bring and drop off at a polling location. “And so, if the intent was to add two — and in many households, there are more than two — why the number two and why not expand beyond two if your intent was to open up the accessibility to voting?”Mr. Ingoglia said he believed allowing two ballots per person was sufficient, but Democrats disagreed, likening the rule to racially discriminatory laws of the past. Over and over, they framed the bill as a solution in search of a problem.One Democratic representative, Fentrice Driskell of Tampa, framed the debate as similar to the hunt for the chupacabra, the mythical, nightmarish mammal-gobbling and goat-blood-sucking beast.“Members, I’ve got no evidence for you on the chupacabra, and I got no evidence for you about ballot harvesting,” Ms. Driskell said. “But what I can tell you is this: that our system worked well in 2020, by all accounts, and everyone agreed. And that for so many reasons, we don’t need this bad bill.” More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Will Miami's Mayor Francis Suarez be Nikki Haley’s Vice Presidential Pick for 2024?

      by

      Big names in tech including Peter Thiel and Keith Rabois have moved to Miami in the past year. Mayor Francis Suarez is welcoming them with open arms in his zeal to transform Miami into the next tech hub. The sell? Sunshine, low taxes and a mayor who is always willing to take their calls (or, as Kara Swisher puts it, “pet them.”)In this conversation, Swisher presses Suarez on whether Miami — a city with rising sea levels and without an institution like Stanford in its back yard — can really become the next Silicon Valley. She also asks what he’s angling for in the long term. Suarez, a Republican, attracted national attention during the pandemic for his tensions with Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, and President Donald Trump.He’s now rumored to be a contender to be Nikki Haley’s running mate in the 2024 presidential race — speculation that he also welcomes with open arms. “I certainly was not shy about wanting to build a bond and a relationship with her,” he says. So, does Suarez want to be on a Republican ticket? His answer: “I wouldn’t say no.”Illustration by The New York Times; photograph by Pete Marovich for The New York TimesThoughts? Email us at sway@nytimes.com. Transcripts of each episode are available midday.Special thanks to Shannon Busta, Liriel Higa, Michelle Harris and Isvett Verde.“Sway” is produced by Nayeema Raza, Blakeney Schick, Heba Elorbany, Matt Kwong and Daphne Chen, and edited by Nayeema Raza and Paula Szuchman; fact-checking by Kate Sinclair; music and sound design by Isaac Jones; mixing by Erick Gomez. More