Politics

SHREVEPORT, La. (AP) — Voters in Louisiana’s third-largest city have elected a Republican mayor for the first time in 28 years.

Tom Arceneaux, 71, won a runoff election Saturday to become the next mayor of Shreveport. He defeated Louisiana state Sen. Greg Tarver, a Black Democrat, in a city where roughly 55% of registered voters are African American.

Arceneaux and Tarver were the top two finishers in the November mayoral election, but neither won a majority of the vote, the Shreveport Times reported. That forced them into a monthlong runoff campaign.

A restorer of historic homes who served on the Shreveport City Council in the 1980s, Arceneaux got a major boost during the runoff when he was endorsed by outgoing Shreveport Mayor Adrian Perkins and the city’s two previous mayors. All three of them are Black Democrats.

“You know, we have tonight looked beyond historical barriers and distinctions,” Arceneaux told supporters in a victory speech Saturday. ”We have a new future in the city of Shreveport, it will look different from what it did in the past.”

Perkins said he was backing Arceneaux because he questioned Tarver’s honesty and integrity, the Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reported. Former Mayor Ollie Tyler said Tarver had cast votes in the state Senate that were harmful to Shreveport, a city of 184,000 people.

In a concession speech, Tarver pledged to work with Arceneaux in helping Shreveport move forward, KSLA-TV reported.

“Anything that I can do or my family can do to help Tom run this city, we will support him all the way,” Tarver said.

Shreveport elected its last Republican mayor, Bo Williams, in 1994. He served a single term and left office in 1998.

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INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch formally started her 2024 campaign for governor on Monday and said she would not shy away from Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb’s record despite discontent among many conservatives over his COVID-19 policies and other actions.

Crouch, who was Holcomb’s running mate in 2016 and 2020, is joining U.S. Sen. Mike Braun in what could become an expensive fight for the Republican nomination in hopes of extending the GOP’s 20-year-hold on the governor’s office. Holcomb cannot seek reelection because of term limits.

Crouch announced her campaign in an online video message released just hours ahead of Braun’s campaign kickoff luncheon with supporters at a downtown Indianapolis steakhouse. Braun filed paperwork on Nov. 30 with state election officials allowing him to raise money for the governor’s race, a move that will forego him seeking another Senate term when that seat also goes up for election in 2024.

Braun, 68, was a little-known wealthy businessman before fueling his successful 2018 Senate campaign with more than $11 million in personal loans. He presented himself as a political outsider, defeating Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly.

Crouch, 70, said her campaign to become Indiana’s first female governor would highlight her decade as a local government official in Evansville before joining the state Legislature in 2005. She then served three years as state auditor and became lieutenant governor in early 2017.

“I think if you put me on a stage with the other announced candidates, the differences are obvious,” Crouch told The Associated Press ahead of her announcement. “But when you look at the resumes, there is no candidate that has the local, state, legislative and executive experience that I have. There is no candidate that knows better how government works and how it can work better for people.”

Crouch has already raised more than $2.5 million for her campaign and Fort Wayne businessman Eric Doden, who was a state economic development official for then-Gov. Mike Pence, has raised a similar amount since he kicked off a campaign last year for the Republican nomination.

Crouch has been a loyal administration member under Holcomb and appeared at his side during several of his near-daily news conferences during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Holcomb easily won reelection in 2020, but frustration among conservatives over COVID-19 business restrictions and a statewide mask mandate boosted a Libertarian candidate to 11% of the vote. Holcomb further angered conservatives — and drew a public denouncement from Braun — with his veto in March of a GOP-backed bill banning transgender females from competing in Indiana girls sports teams.

Crouch said Indiana’s economy and state finances had continued to improve during Holcomb’s time as governor.

“We have accomplished a great deal and I’m proud of that record, not just over the past six years, but over the past 17 years being a part of turning this state around,” Crouch said.

During Crouch’s announcement video, supporters donned her signature red-rimmed eyeglasses. Crouch emphasized common conservative stances, such as saying she would “make sure it’s parents and nobody else who’s in charge of what’s being taught to your children.” She also called for enforcing criminal laws “to the fullest” and decried “our country’s wide open southern border” as the source of illicit fentanyl blamed for many overdose deaths.

State campaign filings show no other Republicans are actively raising money for the 2024 governor’s race, but that doesn’t mean the GOP field is set.

Republican U.S. Rep. Trey Hollingsworth alluded to a possible run for a different office when decided to not seek reelection this year — and some Republicans are hoping that former Gov. Mitch Daniels will seek a Statehouse return after he steps down as Purdue University’s president at the end of December.

U.S. Rep. Jim Banks, who unsuccessfully sought a top House Republican position last month, and U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz have both said they are considering seeking the GOP nomination for Braun’s Senate seat.

Discussions of possible 2024 statewide Democratic candidates have centered on Donnelly, who is now President Joe Biden’s ambassador to the Vatican, and former state schools superintendent Jennifer McCormick, who won election as a Republican in 2016 but has since switched parties after disputes with GOP Statehouse leaders over education policies.

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A nonprofit group that became a point of controversy for distributing hundreds of millions of dollars in election grants during the 2020 presidential campaign is releasing a fresh round of money to local election offices, including in states where Republican lawmakers tried to ban the practice.

The Chicago-based Center for Tech and Civic Life has released only general details about how much money each office will receive or what it will fund.

It has said 10 county and municipal election offices will be part of the first group to receive grant money under the center’s U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, which has $80 million to hand out over the next five years, with few restrictions.

Conservatives took aim at the center during the last presidential race after it gave local election offices around the country more than $350 million, almost all of it donated by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Opponents termed the grants “Zuckerbucks” and claimed they were an attempt by the billionaire to tip the vote in favor of Democrats, although there was no evidence to support that.

Much of the earlier money went to election offices in urban areas that have traditionally supported Democrats, but the center pointed out that it gave funding to every office that requested it – nearly 2,500 in all. The center previously said the current round of grant funding will not include money from Zuckerberg.

The center did not initially disclose the amounts each jurisdiction would be eligible to receive, but it posted a range of figures two weeks after the initial announcement in response to questions from The Associated Press.

Grant amounts will vary based on the size of each jurisdiction, from $50,000 for those with fewer than 5,000 registered voters to $3 million for those with more than 1 million voters. The first offices will receive grants over a two-year period leading up to the 2024 presidential election, said Tiana Epps-Johnson, the center’s executive director.

The money comes with almost no restrictions on how it can be spent. Election officials said they hope to use the grants for everything from improving websites to recruiting poll workers and building larger, more secure office spaces.

The center’s hesitancy to disclose details about its renewed efforts has drawn criticism from the same conservative groups that opposed its work in 2020.

“It seems like this entire process will occur behind the scenes with no guardrails or transparency, furthering the concerns of voters over undue influence on the conduct of elections,” said Hayden Dublois, a researcher at the conservative Foundation for Government Accountability.

The center’s grants will not fund offices in any of the more than 20 states where Republicans enacted laws since 2020 that ban private funding for elections, but it will go to offices in some states where Democratic governors vetoed bans passed by Republican-controlled legislatures. That includes Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

Dublois said he was skeptical of the list of jurisdictions the center chose to support. The center declined to provide specific details about how it selected members of the alliance.

“It seems most of the targets for the alliance are geared towards blue states, with some Democratic strongholds in swing states included, as well,” he said, voicing concerns that increased funding could boost Democratic turnout.

Five of the selected jurisdictions lean Republican, but they make up only a fraction of the total population in the more Democratic jurisdictions.

The initial election offices selected are: Contra Costa and Shasta counties in California; Greenwich, Connecticut; Kane and Macoupin counties in Illinois; Ottawa County, Michigan; Clark County, Nevada; Brunswick and Forsyth counties in North Carolina; and Madison, Wisconsin.

In Wisconsin, a perennial political battleground where former President Donald Trump has sought to decertify the results of the 2020 presidential election, Republican lawmakers tried to work around Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ veto power this spring by proposing an amendment to the state constitution that would ban private funding for elections. The proposal passed the Legislature but would need a second consecutive approval in 2023 before it could be put to a statewide vote.

Madison Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick said he saw joining the alliance as a way to stay current on how other election officials are operating. He said his office will consider accepting grants and wasn’t worried about the city’s involvement drawing backlash.

“ The issue has gone to the courts, and the courts have repeatedly said there was nothing wrong with the grants,” he said.

Top Wisconsin Republicans said they believe the program has partisan aims.

“This is just liberals telling other liberals they are doing a good job,” said Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, the state’s top Republican. “Cities like Madison and Milwaukee continue to try to find ways to only engage with and turn out certain voters.”

The center and participating election officials have stressed that the alliance’s work is nonpartisan, but the lack of publicly available details about how they selected the offices and how the money will be used has fed conservatives’ concerns.

“Our citizens should have peace of mind that the outcomes of elections are not affected by the flow of private money into election administration,” said Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Tyler August, Vos’ second in command who sponsored the proposed amendment to ban election grants.

In Michigan, more than 460 election offices accepted grants from the center in 2020. The state now has constitutional protections for private grants thanks to a voting-related ballot initiative voters passed in November.

Opponents such as Jamie Roe of Secure MI Vote criticize what they see as special interest groups trying to influence elections. The group pushed unsuccessfully for private funding to be outlawed.

“The elected officials and the clerks in Michigan need to know that they’re going to be held accountable,” Roe said. “They should be very careful about what sort of agreements they enter into with special interests.”

Two recipients stand out: deeply Republican Shasta County in the rural, far northern part of California and Democratic-leaning Clark County in Nevada. Both have been on the front lines of election conspiracies.

Clark County, home to nearly three-quarters of registered voters in the presidential battleground state, has been the target of false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged to favor Democrats. County spokesperson Dan Kulin said the county’s handling of mail ballots likely contributed to its selection. It’s the only jurisdiction in the alliance with enough registered voters to be eligible for up to $3 million in grants.

Several Republican groups in the state did not respond to phone calls and emails.

Shasta County has been roiled by far-right politics since the 2020 presidential election. Election workers have been followed while delivering ballots and monitored by trail cameras outside their office, The Los Angeles Times reported. County Clerk Cathy Darling Allen said she has feared for the safety of her staff. The Shasta County elections office received $95,000 from the center in 2020 and now is eligible for $1.5 million.

“The doubts about election administration that have been sown on social media particularly have been troubling and difficult to quash,” Darling Allen told the AP.

She said she hopes to present the county’s participation in the alliance early next year to the board of supervisors, where far-right candidates secured four of the five seats in November’s election.

One of the newly elected supervisors, Kevin Crye, said he had concerns about “who and how our electoral process can possibly be manipulated,” but declined to elaborate.

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Harm Venhuizen is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Venhuizen on Twitter.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Two months after becoming entangled in a racism scandal that shook public trust in Los Angeles government, disgraced City Councilman Kevin de Leon has refused calls to resign and is attempting to rehabilitate his reputation as he faces a politically uncertain future.

As of Monday, de Leon, a former state legislator, is the only council member still resisting calls from President Joe Biden to step down, while continuing to collect his annual salary of nearly $229,000 — among the most lucrative paydays for city council members in the nation.

Gil Cedillo, another councilman involved in the scandal over a leaked recording of racist insults emerged in October, had vanished from public view within days of its disclosure but refused to resign. His term expired Monday at 12:01 a.m., after he lost a reelection bid earlier this year.

Continuing fallout from the racism scandal is one challenge that will confront the city’s new mayor, Democrat Karen Bass, as she takes office Monday. Meanwhile, three other current or former Council members have been indicted or pleaded guilty to corruption charges.

Stripped of his ability to participate in council committees, facing widespread pressure to resign and after an extended absence from council meetings, de Leon has been maneuvering in public and private to emerge from political purgatory, despite being reviled by colleagues who say they cannot work with him.

His situation deteriorated Friday, when he scuffled with an activist who heckled him at a holiday toy giveaway that was partially captured on video and posted on Twitter. The confrontation left children at the event in tears.

Council President Paul Krekorian, who has called on de Leon to step down, said in a statement that the councilman, one of his staff members and a volunteer were attacked and he called it intolerable. The Los Angeles Times reported that activists said de Leon was the aggressor.

“This city has endured horrendous division and toxicity in recent months,” Krekorian said. “We need to reject hatred in all of its forms and we need to reject the atmosphere of intimidation, bullying and threats.”

De Leon appeared Friday at his first council meeting since mid-October, setting off a chaotic protest between competing factions in the audience. About a dozen protesters bellowed at de Leon to leave the ornate chamber, while his supporters chanted “Kevin, Kevin.”

Some council members walked out and police ejected two people, fearing they might fight.

“Leave, Kevin!,” one protester shouted at de Leon. “This is why these meetings need to be shut down.”

The scandal triggered the resignation in October of then-City Council President Nury Martinez and a powerful labor leader, Ron Herrera, along with calls from Biden and other elected officials for de Leon and others to resign.

The uproar stemmed from a leaked recording of crude, racist comments from a year-old meeting involving Martinez, Herrera, de Leon and Cedillo — all Latino Democrats — in which they plotted to expand their political power at the expense of Black voters during a realignment of district boundaries.

The once-a-decade redrawing of district lines can pit one group against another to gain political advantage in future elections.

The California Legislative Black Caucus has said the recording “reveals an appalling effort to decentralize Black voices during the critical redistricting process.” A long line of speakers at Council meetings that followed said it echoed the Jim Crow era and was a stark example of “anti-Blackness.”

De Leon has apologized repeatedly but said he will not resign. He argues that he wants to continue working on homelessness, fallout from the pandemic and the threat of evictions for renters in his district, which includes downtown Los Angeles and the heavily Latino Boyle Heights neighborhood.

There is no legal avenue for his colleagues to remove him — the council can only suspend a member when criminal charges are pending.

Krekorian, the council president, has said “the only way we can begin to heal as a city is for Mr. de Leon to take responsibility for his actions, accept the consequences and step down.”

While de Leon has largely stayed away from City Hall, he has continued to quietly conduct business, including attending holiday events and meeting officials on pending homeless projects and illegal dumping problems.

With his appearance at the council meeting Friday, it’s clear he is trying to gradually step back into the public sphere. Meanwhile, organizers behind an effort to recall him from office have been cleared to collect petition signatures needed to qualify the proposal for the ballot.

Council members also have received a spate of letters from people identifying as de Leon’s constituents, defending him and urging the council to let him resume his duties. They also asked the council to refrain from any additional punishment, which is being considered and could include restricting de Leon’s office funds.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is set to play host to dozens of African leaders in Washington this week as the White House looks to narrow a gaping trust gap with Africa — one that has grown wider over years of frustration about America’s commitment to the continent.

In the lead-up to the three-day U.S-Africa Leaders Summit that begins Tuesday, Biden administration officials played down their increasing concern about the clout of China and Russia in Africa, which is home to more than 1.3 billion people. Instead, administration officials tried to put the focus on their efforts to improve cooperation with African leaders.

“This summit is an opportunity to deepen the many partnerships we have on the African continent,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said when asked about the shadow that China and Russia cast on the meetings. “We will focus on our efforts to strengthen these partnerships across a wide range of sectors spanning from businesses to health to peace and security, but our focus will be on Africa next week.”

To that end, White House officials said that “major deliverables and initiatives” — diplomatic speak for big announcements — will be peppered throughout the meetings. The White House previewed one major summit announcement on Friday, saying that Biden would use the gathering to declare his support for adding the African Union as a permanent member of the Group of 20 nations.

The summit will be the biggest international gathering in Washington since before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Local officials are warning residents to brace for road blocks and intensified security as 49 invited heads of states and leaders — and Biden — whiz around the city.

Talks are expected to center on the coronavirus, climate change, the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Africa, trade and more, according to White House officials. Biden is set to deliver remarks at a U.S.-Africa business forum, hold small group meetings with leaders, host a leaders’ dinner at the White House and take part in other sessions with leaders during the gathering.

Biden has spent much of his first two years in office trying to assuage doubters on the international stage about American leadership after four years of Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy. With this summit — a follow-up to the first such gathering held eight years ago by President Barack Obama — Biden has an opportunity to assuage concerns in Africa about whether the U.S. is serious about tending to the relationship.

Biden’s effort to draw African nations closer to the U.S. comes at a complicated moment, as his administration has made plain that it believes that Chinese and Russian activity in Africa is a serious concern to U.S. and African interests.

In its sub-Saharan Africa strategy unveiled in August, the Biden administration warned that China, which has pumped billions into African energy, infrastructure and other projects, sees the region as an arena where Beijing can “challenge the rules-based international order, advance its own narrow commercial and geopolitical interests, undermine transparency and openness.”

The administration also argues that Russia, the preeminent arms dealer in Africa, views the continent as a permissive environment for Kremlin-connected oligarchs and private military companies to focus on fomenting instability for their own strategic and financial benefit.

Still, administration officials are emphasizing that concerns about China and Russia will not be central to the talks.

“The United States prioritizes our relationship with Africa for the sake of our mutual interests and our partnership in dealing with global challenges,” Molly Phee, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, told reporters before the summit. “We are very conscious, again, of the Cold War history, we’re conscious, again, of the deleterious impact of colonialism on Africa, and we studiously seek to avoid repeating some of the mistakes of those earlier eras.”

The administration has been disappointed that much of the continent has declined to follow the U.S. in condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but Biden is not expected to dwell on differences publicly.

The president is expected to participate with leaders in a session on promoting food security and food systems resilience. Africa has been disproportionately impacted by the global rise in food prices that has been caused in part by the drop in shipments from major grain exporter Ukraine.

“One of the unique aspects of this summit is the collateral damage that the Russian war has inflicted on Africa in terms of food supply and the diversion of development assistance to Ukraine. The opportunity costs of the invasion have been very high in Africa,” said John Stremlau, a visiting professor of international relations at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

Four countries that were suspended from the African Union — Guinea, Sudan, Mali and Burkina Faso— were not invited to the summit because coups in those nations led to unconstitutional changes in power. The White House also did not invite the East African nation of Eritrea; Washington does not have full diplomatic relations with the country.

Biden’s decision to invite several leaders to the summit who have questionable records on human rights and democracy is looming large ahead of the gathering.

Equatorial Guinea was invited despite the State Department stating that it held “serious doubts” about last month’s election in the tiny Central African nation. Opposition parties “made credible allegations of significant election-related irregularities, including documented instances of fraud, intimidation, and coercion,” according to the department. Election officials reported that President Teodoro Obiang’s ruling party won nearly 95% of the vote.

Zimbabwe, which has faced years of U.S. and Western sanctions over poor governance, human rights abuses and widespread corruption, also was invited.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who seized power from longtime ruler Robert Mugabe in 2017, has sought to cast himself as a reformer, but local and international human rights campaigners accuse him of repression that is just as bad or even worse than Mugabe’s.

Although Mnangagwa enjoys cozy relations with China and Russia, as did Mugabe, he has also sought to make friends with the U.S. and other Western countries in an effort to bolster his legitimacy.

In a national address that he delivered in November in a new Chinese-gifted multimillion-dollar parliament building, Mnangagwa held out the invitation to the U.S.-Africa summit as a sign of his administration’s success. He said the southern African country welcomed the invitation, but he also called for the “unconditional” removal of sanctions that he blames for Zimbabwe’s debilitating economic woes.

“Emphasis remains on dialogue,” Mnangagwa said.

Ethiopia received an invitation even though Biden late last last year announced he was cutting out the country from a U.S. trade program, known as the African Growth and Opportunity Act, over Ethiopia’s failure to end a war in the Tigray region that led to “gross violations” of human rights. A peace deal was signed last month, but implementation faces major challenges such as the continued presence of troops from neighboring Eritrea.

Analysts say that African leaders will be looking for Biden to make some major commitments during the summit, including announcing his first presidential visit to sub-Saharan Africa, efforts to bolster the continent’s economy through private sector investment and trade and more.

Perhaps most importantly, it could be an opportunity for Biden to demonstrate that Africa is more than a battleground in its economic and military competition with Beijing and Moscow.

“I do strongly believe that the United States is still seen as a superpower from the African perspective, but most African leaders do not want to align with its promotion of democracy,” said Abraham Kuol Nyuon, a political analyst and associate professor of political science at the University of Juba in South Sudan. “They need the support of America but not the system of America.”

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Mutsaka reported from Harare, Zimbabwe, and Magome from Johannesburg. Associated Press writers Cara Anna in Nairobi, Kenya, and Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona announced Friday she has registered as an independent, a renegade move that could bolster her political brand but won’t upend the Democrats’ narrow Senate majority. She says she will not caucus with Republicans.

Sinema, who faces reelection in 2024, has been a vibrant yet often unpredictable force in the Senate, tending toward the state’s independent streak and frustrating Democratic colleagues at times with her overtures to Republicans and opposition to Democratic priorities.

“I just don’t fit well into a traditional party system,” Sinema she said in an interview Friday.

In the interview, Sinema said she hasn’t decided whether she will run for reelection. But she said this was the time to be “true to myself and true to the values of the Arizonans I represent.”

“I don’t expect anything to change for me,” she said. “This will just be a further affirmation of my style of working across all the political boundaries with anyone to try and get something done.”

While unusual for a sitting senator to switch party affiliation, Sinema’s decision may well have more impact on her own political livelihood than the operations of the Senate. She plans to continue her committee positions through the Democrats. Her move comes just days after Democrats had expanded their majority to 51-49 for the new year, following the party’s runoff election win in Georgia.

In a statement, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sinema had informed him of her decision and asked to keep her committee assignments — effectively keeping her in the Democratic fold.

“Kyrsten is independent; that’s how she’s always been,” Schumer said. “I believe she’s a good and effective senator and am looking forward to a productive session in the new Democratic majority Senate.”

The Democrats “will maintain our new majority on committees, exercise our subpoena power and be able to clear nominees without discharge votes,” he said.

In case of tie votes, Vice President Kamala Harris will continue to provide the winning vote for Democrats.

Sinema, who has modeled her political approach on the maverick style of the late Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, will join a small but influential group of independent senators aligned with the Democrats — Sen. Angus King of Maine and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

At the White House, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre praised Sinema as a “key partner” in passing some of President Joe Biden’s priorities and said the switch “does not change the new Democratic majority control of the Senate. … We have every reason to expect that we will continue to work successfully with her.” Sinema informed the White House on Thursday afternoon about her plans to formally leave the Democratic Party, according to a person familiar with the discussion and granted anonymity to disclose a private conversation.

Sinema has been at the center of many deals brokered during this session of Congress — from a big, bipartisan infrastructure package Biden signed into law to the landmark bill approved this week to legally protect same-sex marriages.

The move to forgo a political party will scramble the Senate election landscape for 2024 as Democrats already face a tough path to maintaining Senate control. Her switch risks splitting the Democratic vote in Arizona between her and the eventual Democratic nominee, giving Republicans a solid opening.

A splintered ballot could help Republican recruiting efforts as they seek to perform better than their losses in the recent midterm elections. A weak GOP field contributed to Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly’s reelection in Arizona last month.

A political action committee, Primary Sinema, that is raising money to support a potential challenger, said the money it has already raised will now be used to back “a real Democrat” in 2024.

Abandoning the Democratic Party is a striking evolution for a politician who began her career as a Green Party member and antiwar activist known as a “Prada socialist.” The shift has been particularly vexing for progressive activists who now see her as one of their chief antagonists.

In a video explaining her decision, she said: “Showing up to work with the title of independent is a reflection of who I’ve always been.”

The first-term Sinema wrote Friday in The Arizona Republic that she came into office pledging “I would not demonize people I disagreed with, engage in name-calling, or get distracted by political drama. I promised I would never bend to party pressure.”

She wrote that her approach is “has upset partisans in both parties” but “has delivered lasting results for Arizona.”

Ahead of the 2024 elections, Sinema is likely to be matched against a well-funded primary challenger after angering much of the Democratic base by blocking or watering down progressive priorities such as a minimum wage increase and Biden’s big social spending initiatives.

Sinema’s most prominent potential primary challenger is Rep. Ruben Gallego, who has a long history of feuding with her.

The senator wrote that she was joining “the growing numbers of Arizonans who reject party politics by declaring my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington.”

Sinema bemoaned “the national parties’ rigid partisanship” and said “pressures in both parties pull leaders to the edges — allowing the loudest, most extreme voices to determine their respective parties’ priorities, and expecting the rest of us to fall in line.”

“In catering to the fringes, neither party has demonstrated much tolerance for diversity of thought. Bipartisan compromise is seen as a rarely acceptable last resort, rather than the best way to achieve lasting progress,” she wrote.

Along with West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, she has been one of two moderate Democrats in the 50-50 Senate, and her willingness to buck the rest of her party has at times limited the ambitions of Biden and Schumer.

Sinema is a staunch defender of the filibuster, a Senate rule effectively requiring 60 votes to pass most legislation in the 100-member Senate. Many Democrats, including Biden, say the filibuster leads to gridlock by giving a minority of lawmakers the ability to veto.

Last January, leaders of the Arizona Democratic Party voted to censure Sinema, citing “her failure to do whatever it takes to ensure the health of our democracy″ — namely her refusal to go along with fellow Democrats to alter the Senate rule so they could overcome Republican opposition to a voting rights bill.

While that rebuke was symbolic, it came only a few years since Sinema was heralded for bringing the Arizona Senate seat back into the Democratic fold for the first time in a generation. The move also previewed the persistent opposition that Sinema was likely face within her own party in 2024.

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Cooper reported from Phoenix. AP writer Seung Min Kim contributed to this story.

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PHOENIX (AP) — Less than three days after Democrats celebrated victory in the final Senate contest of the 2022 midterms, the challenges facing the party heading into the next campaign came into sharp relief.

The decision by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona to leave the Democratic Party on Friday raised the prospect of a tumultuous — and expensive — three-way race in one of the most politically competitive states in the U.S. It set off a scramble among potential Democratic and Republican candidates to assess whether they could win their party’s nomination.

And it prompted difficult questions about whether Democrats might financially and politically support Sinema over their own nominee if she decides to seek reelection in 2024 and is seen as having the best chance of keeping the seat out of GOP hands.

Ultimately, Sinema’s move was a sobering reminder that while Democrats won an outright majority in the Senate this week, their grip on the chamber is still tenuous, giving individual members notable sway over the congressional agenda. And it foreshadowed the even more difficult climate ahead as Democrats defend seats in seven states, including Arizona, that former President Donald Trump carried at least once.

In an interview, Sinema was largely dismissive of such considerations, saying she doesn’t fit into the traditional party system. She said she won’t caucus with Republicans, but declined to say whether she plans to seek a second term in the Senate. Her shift to becoming an independent, however, strongly suggests she’s at least trying to preserve the option.

“My decision is 100% based on what I think is right for me and for our state, and to ensure that I am able to continue delivering real results that make a difference in the lives of Arizonans,” Sinema said in the interview.

Her move completes a unique evolution that has both delighted and infuriated Democrats. She began her career two decades ago as a member of the Green Party. Running for the Senate as a Democrat in 2018, her victory thrilled the party and cemented Arizona’s status as a onetime Republican stronghold that was becoming more competitive.

But she’s steadily grown alienated from the party and has been a barrier to some of Democrats’ top priorities. She has appeared at points to take particular enjoyment in antagonizing the party’s progressive base, whose support will be needed to win a primary in 2024.

She now returns to the position in which she began her political career, as an outsider from both major parties.

“She had a choice: either a tough primary or a tough general, and she chose a tough general,” said Daniel Scarpinato, a Republican political consultant and former chief of staff to GOP Gov. Doug Ducey.

Sinema is taking a different route from Jeff Flake, the former Arizona Republican senator who also got crosswise with his party’s base and opted not to run rather than change his affiliation or enter a primary he would likely have lost. Sinema ultimately won Flake’s seat in 2018, but victory as an independent won’t be easy.

“It’s really hard to do, because all voters are trained at being partisan,” said Chuck Coughlin, a Phoenix-based political consultant who left the GOP after Trump took control of the party. She’ll need to convince a sizable number — perhaps a third — of the members of each party to vote for her and win the overwhelming majority of independents, he said.

The field of potential Sinema rivals began to take shape almost immediately. Both parties could face contested primaries, a dynamic that could help Sinema stay above the fray in a state where parties choose their nominees just three months before the general election.

U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, a progressive Democrat and longtime Sinema antagonist, strongly hinted that he’ll run but stopped short of announcing a bid. In an interview, he said that’s always been a decision he planned to make in 2023, but the timeline may have moved up.

“I always thought I could win,” Gallego said. “I think her potential run as an independent doesn’t change that calculus.”

Rep. Greg Stanton, a former Phoenix mayor, all but confirmed his own interest in the race when he tweeted a screenshot of a poll he’d commissioned for a primary challenge to Sinema.

Sinema’s party switch “isn’t about a post-partisan epiphany, it’s about political preservation,” he wrote.

On the Republican side, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb is seriously considering a run, spokesman Corey Vale confirmed. Lamb is perhaps best known for holding a rifle and walking through the desert alongside conservative candidates in their border-security commercials.

Others mentioned as potential candidates include Kari Lake, Blake Masters, Jim Lamon and Karrin Taylor Robson, all Republicans who lost their bids for governor or Senate this year.

Ducey will likely get interest as well, particularly from national donors, though he’s consistently said he has no interest in being a senator.

Outside groups affiliated with the Democratic Party invested more than $33 million to help Sinema win in 2018. Whether they will spend at the same magnitude — or at all — on her behalf in 2024 is an open question. Officials at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Senate Majority PAC, a big-spending super PAC aligned with Senate Majority Leader Schumer, declined to comment.

But the $7.8 million Sinema reported holding in her campaign fund at the end of September is nowhere near enough to mount a competitive campaign as an independent. And she will likely struggle to raise money from Democratic donors who formerly supported her.

Even before Sinema announced she was leaving the Democratic Party, she was hardly a fundraising dynamo. Many in the LGBT community, including major Hollywood financiers who enthusiastically supported Sinema in 2018 as the first openly bisexual woman to run for Senate, have soured on her. Meanwhile, grassroots donors, who often mobilize en masse, chipping in small amounts online to boost their favorite politicians, have never shown much favor toward Sinema, records show.

Instead, Sinema – who likened accepting campaign cash to “bribery” during one of her first campaigns — has come to rely on the finance and business sector as a source of contributions. And she’s sown discord along the way.

Last year, as she single-handedly thwarted her party’s longtime goal of raising taxes on wealthy investors, she collected nearly $1 million from private equity professionals, hedge fund managers and venture capitalists whose taxes would have increased under the plan. Concessions she won from Democrats on drug pricing legislation helped make her a top recipient of pharmaceutical industry cash in 2021.

However, unless she draws support from wealthy donors who can pour in unlimited sums, the contributions she has taken in from business and industry figures alone won’t likely be enough to win in a pivotal battleground state in which Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly raised and spent roughly $90 million to secure his election to a full term in November’s midterms.

Some Democrats caution activists to stay calm despite their frustration with Sinema ahead of the 2024 campaign.

They note that even Blake Masters, who trailed all other statewide Republicans on the ballot in his losing Senate bid, received 46% of the vote. In a must-win state that’s a true tossup, Sinema may still be a more palatable option than surrendering the seat to Republicans following a messy three-way race, they argue.

One group that’s seemingly not upset about Sinema’s decision: the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

“We’re excited as ever to work with (Sinema) to advance good policies for Arizona job creators,” the state’s most influential business group said in a tweet.

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Associated Press writer Brian Slodysko in Washington contributed to this report.

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PHOENIX (AP) — Kari Lake, the Republican defeated in Arizona governor’s race, is formally challenging her loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs, asking a court to throw out certified election results from the state’s most populous county and either declare her the winner or rerun the governor’s election in that county.

The lawsuit filed late Friday by Lake centers on long lines and other difficulties that people experienced while voting on Election Day in Maricopa County. The challenge filed in Maricopa County Superior Court also alleges hundreds of thousands of ballots were illegally cast, but there’s no evidence that’s true.

Lake has refused to acknowledge that she lost to Hobbs by more than 17,000 votes.

The Donald Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate has bombarded Maricopa County with complaints, largely related to a problem with printers at some vote centers that led to ballots being printed with markings that were too light to be read by the on-site tabulators.

Lines backed up in some polling places, fueling Republican suspicions that some supporters were unable to cast a ballot, though there’s no evidence it affected the outcome. County officials say everyone was able to vote and all legal ballots were counted.

Lake sued Maricopa County officials and Hobbs in her current role as Arizona’s secretary of state.

Sophia Solis, a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office, said Lake’s lawsuit was being reviewed but had no other comment on the filing.

Jason Berry, a Maricopa County spokesperson, declined to comment on Lake’s request to throw out the county’s election results in the governor’s race. But he said the county “respects the election contest process and looks forward to sharing facts about the administration of the 2022 general election and our work to ensure every legal voter had an opportunity to cast their ballot.”

Hobbs in a post on her Twitter account called the lawsuit “Lake’s latest desperate attempt to undermine our democracy and throw out the will of the voters.” She posted a statement from her campaign manager that called the lawsuit a “sham” and said her camp remained focused on “getting ready to hit the ground running on Day One of Katie Hobbs’ administration.”

Lake’s lawsuit says Republicans were disproportionately affected by the problems in Maricopa County because they outvoted Democrats on Election Day 3-1. GOP leaders had urged their voters to wait until Election Day to vote.

In late November, Lake filed a public records lawsuit demanding Maricopa County hand over documents related to the election. She was seeking to identify voters who may have had trouble casting a ballot, such as people who checked in at more than one vote center or those who returned a mail ballot and also checked in at a polling place.

During the summer, a federal judge also rejected a request by Lake and Mark Finchem, the defeated Republican candidate for secretary of state, to require hand counting of all ballots during the November election.

The judge has since sanctioned lawyers representing Lake and Finchem, saying they “made false, misleading, and unsupported factual assertions” in their lawsuit. The lawyers told the court that their claims were “legally sound and supported by strong evidence.”

Hobbs in her role as secretary of state has petitioned a court to begin an automatic statewide recount required by law in three races decided by less than half a percentage point.

The race for attorney general was one of the closest contests in state history, with Democrat Kris Mayes leading Republican Abe Hamadeh by just 510 votes out of 2.5 million cast.

The races for superintendent of public instruction and a state legislative seat in the Phoenix suburbs will also be recounted, but the margins are much larger.

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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — The election for Louisiana’s obscure regulatory body typically receives little attention locally, but this year has caught the eye of national media outlets, celebrities, political action committees and public utility companies.

Lambert Boissiere III, who has comfortably held a seat on Louisiana’s Public Service Commission for 18 years, faces his toughest reelection Saturday in a runoff against newcomer Davante Lewis.

Environmentalists have increasingly focused on the commission, which regulates power companies and sets electric rates, in a state that has a front row seat to the effects of climate change. Louisiana has been riddled by destructive hurricanes making landfall more frequently, coastal areas have been eaten away by erosion, subsidence and rising sea levels and, most recently, the Mississippi River reaching record low water levels.

Additionally, Louisiana shares its southern border with the Gulf of Mexico and has tens of thousands of jobs tied to the oil and gas industry. In 2021, Louisiana ranked third among the top natural gas-producing states — accounting for nearly 10% of the United States’ natural gas production that year, behind only Texas and Pennsylvania.

For years, the commission has resisted calls to mandate that power companies get a certain share of their power from renewables, The Advocate reported. But activists are hopeful their stance will change.

The winner of the election will serve a six-year term representing a district that stretches from Baton Rouge to New Orleans on the five-member commission, which has regulatory jurisdiction over public utilities providing electric, water, wastewater, natural gas and certain telecommunications services in Louisiana.

Boissiere, 57, was first elected in 2005 and hopes to secure a fourth term. Lewis, a 30-year-old progressive policy advocate, says it is time for a “new generation of leaders.”

Both candidates are Democrats with corresponding priorities — including expanding Louisiana’s renewable energy. However, no matter the outcome of the runoff, Republicans will still represent a majority on the commission, 3-2.

Despite Lewis and Boissiere having similar views, major utility companies and outside political action committees have poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the race.

Keep the Lights On, an affiliate of the Environmental Defense Fund, has spent money in the hopes of unseating Boissiere. In addition, the incumbent received campaign contributions from utility companies that the commission regulates, including Entergy, Louisiana’s largest power company. While these types of contributions are legal in Louisiana, it has been heavily scrutinized.

In November’s primary, when there were five candidates, Boissiere received 43% of the vote — falling short of topping the 50% threshold needed to win outright. Lewis recieved 18%.

Louisiana’s election polls are open Saturday from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m.

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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Spending in Pennsylvania’s 2022 gubernatorial race blew past the record set eight years ago, topping $110 million largely because of Democrat Josh Shapiro’s powerhouse fundraising in a race that took on national significance.

That beat the $82 million spent in the 2014 election in Pennsylvania.

Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s two-term elected attorney general, won the Nov. 8 election and will be sworn in Jan. 17.

He reported spending more than $73 million in the race, including donations of cash, goods and services. That easily topped the 20-year-old mark for an individual of campaign of $42 million, set by Democrat Ed Rendell in 2002.

Campaign finance reports for the last two weeks of the campaign were due Thursday to the state elections office. Pennsylvania does not limit the amount of donations by an individual, although it prohibits donations by corporations.

Republicans spent another $37 million, mostly in a fractious primary won by state Sen. Doug Mastriano. That includes $13 million on a losing candidate spent by political action committees that are a conduit for campaign cash from billionaire investor Jeffrey Yass.

Mastriano reported spending just over $7 million.

Shapiro’s biggest donor was the Democratic Governors Association, giving at least $7.2 million.

Labor unions kicked in more than $11.5 million, while a wide variety of business people donated from sectors including health care, tech, insurance, law firms, real estate development and transportation.

A pair of wealthy Democratic Party donors from California gave seven figures: Jennifer Duda who gave $3 million and Karla Jurvetson who gave $1.5 million.

Philanthropist and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and tech entrepreneur Bill Harris Jr. each gave at least $1 million.

Among the several dozen people or families who each gave six figures were tech entrepreneur Reid Hoffman; Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker; Philadelphia Eagles’ owner Jeffrey Lurie; Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper; Fanatics founder Michael Rubin; filmmaker Steven Spielberg; billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros; and Erie Indemnity Co. chairman Thomas Hagen.

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Follow Marc Levy on Twitter: http://twitter.com/timelywriter

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