Politics

Today in History

Today is Monday, Dec. 5, the 339th day of 2022. There are 26 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Dec. 5, 2013, Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid leader who became South Africa’s first Black president, died at age 95.

On this date:

In 1791, composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in Vienna, Austria, at age 35.

In 1792, George Washington was reelected president; John Adams was reelected vice president.

In 1848, President James K. Polk triggered the Gold Rush of ’49 by confirming that gold had been discovered in California.

In 1932, German physicist Albert Einstein was granted a visa, making it possible for him to travel to the United States.

In 1933, national Prohibition came to an end as Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, repealing the 18th Amendment.

In 1952, the Great Smog of London descended on the British capital; the unusually thick fog, which contained toxic pollutants, lasted five days and was blamed for causing thousands of deaths.

In 1955, the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merged to form the AFL-CIO under its first president, George Meany.

In 1994, Republicans chose Newt Gingrich to be the first GOP speaker of the House in four decades.

on of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merged to form the AFL-CIO under its first president, George Meany.

In 2009, a jury in Perugia, Italy convicted American student Amanda Knox and her former Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito (rah-fy-EHL’-ay soh-LEH’-chee-toh), of murdering Knox’s British roommate, Meredith Kercher, and sentenced them to long prison terms. (After a series of back-and-forth rulings, Knox and Sollecito were definitively acquitted in 2015 by Italy’s highest court.)

In 2018, former President George H.W. Bush was mourned at a memorial service at Washington National Cathedral attended by President Donald Trump and former Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter along with their spouses; former president George W. Bush was among the speakers, eulogizing his dad as “the brightest of a thousand points of light.”

In 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that she had asked the relevant House committee chairs to begin drawing up articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, saying his actions left them “no choice” but to act swiftly; in response, Trump tweeted that Democrats had “gone crazy.” (Trump would be impeached by the House on charges of obstruction and abuse of power, but the Senate voted to acquit in the first of two Trump impeachment trials.)

In 2020, at a Georgia rally where he urged supporters to turn out for a pair of Republican Senate candidates in a January runoff election, President Donald Trump spread baseless allegations of misconduct in the November voting in Georgia and beyond. Hours before the rally, according to officials with knowledge of the call, Trump asked Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp to order a special legislative session to give him the state’s electoral votes, even though Joe Biden had won the majority of the vote; Kemp refused to do so.

Ten years ago: Port clerks ended an eight-day strike at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach after winning guarantees against the outsourcing of jobs. Jazz composer and pianist Dave Brubeck died in Norwalk, Connecticut, a day before he would have turned 92.

Five years ago: Democratic congressman John Conyers of Michigan resigned from Congress after a nearly 53-year career, becoming the first Capitol Hill politician to lose his job amid the sexual misconduct allegations sweeping through the nation’s workplaces. In a bitterly contested runoff election, Atlanta voters narrowly chose Keisha Lance Bottoms as the city’s next mayor; a result that would be upheld after a recount requested by rival Mary Norwood. The International Olympic Committee barred Russia and its sports leaders from the upcoming Winter Olympics in South Korea after concluding that members of the Russian government concocted a doping scheme at the 2014 Sochi Games; some Russians would be able to compete as “Olympic Athletes from Russia.”

One year ago: Bob Dole, who overcame disabling war wounds to become a sharp-tongued Senate leader from Kansas, a Republican presidential candidate and then a symbol and celebrant of his dwindling generation of World War II veterans, died at 98. U.S. health officials said that while the omicron variant of the coronavirus was rapidly spreading throughout the country, early indications suggested it could be less dangerous than the delta variant, which continued to drive a surge of hospitalizations. Buck O’Neil, a champion of Black ballplayers during a monumental, eight-decade career on and off the field, joined Minnie Miñoso, Gil Hodges and three others in being elected to the baseball Hall of Fame by veterans committees.

Today’s Birthdays: Author Calvin Trillin is 87. Actor Jeroen Krabbe (yeh-ROHN’ krah-BAY’) is 78. Opera singer Jose Carreras is 76. Musician and singer Jim Messina is 75. College Football Hall of Famer and former NFL quarterback Jim Plunkett is 75. World Golf Hall of Famer Lanny Wadkins is 73. Actor Morgan Brittany is 71. Actor Brian Backer is 66. Pro and College Football Hall of Famer Art Monk is 65. Country singer Ty England is 59. Rock singer-musician John Rzeznik (REZ’-nihk) (The Goo Goo Dolls) is 57. Country singer Gary Allan is 55. Comedian-actor Margaret Cho is 54. Writer-director Morgan J. Freeman is 53. Actor Alex Kapp Horner is 53. Actor Kali Rocha is 51. Rock musician Regina Zernay (Cowboy Mouth) is 50. Actor Paula Patton is 47. Actor Amy Acker is 46. Actor Nick Stahl is 43. Actor Adan Canto is 41. R&B singer Keri Hilson is 40. Actor Gabriel Luna is 40. Actor Frankie Muniz is 37. Actor Ross Bagley is 34. MLB outfielder Christian Yelich is 31.

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LANSING, Mich. (AP) — The Republicans who lost their races for Michigan’s top three statewide offices after promoting falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election are not planning to go quietly.

Two of the candidates who denied President Joe Biden’s victory in the state have announced plans to run for the position that leads the state GOP, while the third has said she is considering a challenge for the top post.

That is raising concerns within the party after it suffered a drubbing in Michigan, a perennial political battleground that is poised to play a pivotal role in the 2024 presidential race. Their attempts to gain control of the party apparatus also show how far-right conservatives are trying to maintain their grip on the party’s grassroots at a time the GOP nationally is wrestling with its direction after lackluster midterm results.

Kristina Karamo, a community college professor who lost her race for secretary of state after mounting a campaign filled with election conspiracies, used the same kind of charged language she had throughout her campaign in announcing her intention to run for Michigan party chair.

In a statement posted this week to social media, she said the state Republican Party had begun operating as “mini-gangs instead of soldiers fighting for freedom,” and that the state was on “the precipice of tyranny, which voting alone will not be able to overcome.”

Instead of being afraid of attacks, she wrote, “we must strike fear in the heart of the enemy at the gate.”

The race for Michigan GOP chair, which will be decided at a February party convention, comes after Democrats took control of all levels of power for the first time since the 1980s. Democrats won control of both houses of the Legislature and defeated Republicans by significant margins for governor, attorney general and secretary of state.

Many state and national Republicans have expressed concern that similar defeats could become commonplace without a course correction within the state Republican Party.

“It’s hard to think of a state where Republicans lost more than in Michigan,” said Stu Sandler, a national Republican consultant. The state party wasn’t the traditional partner it had been in the past, he said, in part due to a chair he described as not very active.

“The chair could be very important, particularly, because they have no statewide elected official or prominent Republican as a voice, and that’s something that chair could be under the right circumstances,” Sandler said.

In addition to Karamo, attorney general candidate Matthew DePerno has announced he will seek the position. Republican Tudor Dixon, who lost the governor’s race by 11 percentage points to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, said she also is considering running.

All three candidates were endorsed by former President Donald Trump and echoed his false claims of a stolen election — although Dixon pivoted away from her earlier statements after she won the Republican primary for governor.

“This race is unique because it’s the fruition of a very long battle between grassroots elements and the so-called establishment,” said John Sellek, a Republican consultant in Michigan. “For the first time, this race is a choice between multiple MAGA candidates, meaning the grassroots may have finally taken over.”

A state party memo written days after the Nov. 8 election, and shared on social media by Dixon, blamed the grassroots takeover for the Republicans’ midterm losses. Michigan GOP chief of staff Paul Cordes wrote that the party struggled due to a lack of “high quality, substantive candidates and well-funded campaigns.”

“Over the course of this cycle, the Michigan Republican Party operated within the political reality that President Trump was popular amongst our grassroots and a motivating factor for his supporters, but provided challenges on a statewide ballot, especially with independents and women in the midterm election,” Cordes wrote.

The memo also pointed to an abortion rights ballot proposal, which passed overwhelmingly, as one reason for the Democrats’ sweep. Candidates in the state also ran in new districts drawn by an independent citizens commission that had been created previously by votes, instead of the heavily gerrymandered districts that had been drawn by Republican lawmakers.

Dixon said in response that the memo was a “perfect example of what is wrong” with the party and that there is “an issue of leadership.”

Current chair Ron Weiser has said he will not seek reelection, while co-chair Meshawn Maddock has not announced whether she will run. Michigan Republican Party spokesperson Gustavo Portela said the party would have no further comment about the chair competition.

Similar to party conventions last spring, where delegates nominated DePerno and Karamo, the chair position will be chosen by county precinct delegates during the Feb. 18 convention. Jason Roe, a GOP consultant and county delegate, expects the delegates attending the convention to once again be grassroots activists that favor Trump-backed candidates.

“There is no way on God’s earth that the donors of the state would entrust a DePerno or Karamo with the resources needed to regain power,” said Roe. “There will have to be something done outside the traditional structure.”

With over two months remaining before the convention, some in the party still hope a candidate will emerge that can unite both the grassroots and establishment sides of the party.

Former U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, who served as an ambassador to the Netherlands from 2018 to 2021, said during a recent interview that he’s considering running. State Sen. Tom Barrett, who lost the 7th Congressional District race to Democrat Elissa Slotkin, also has been pushed by Republicans to seek the position, according to spokesman Jason Roe.

DePerno said he believes he can unite both sides of the party. In an interview Friday, he said the party needs to be rebuilt to “bring together the grassroots activists with the legacy donor class.”

“The legacy donors, although they didn’t want to publicly support candidates that they thought were associated with Donald Trump, they did support me at least through third party PACs,” DePerno said.

The former tax lawyer rose to prominence in the party by pushing Trump’s lies of a stolen election in the state following the 2020 presidential election. A special prosecutor is currently reviewing whether to criminally charge DePerno and others for attempting to gain access to voting machines after that election.

Lavora Barnes, chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, said the “biggest gift the Republicans can continue to give us” is infighting within the state party and nominating candidates who are ”crazy and right of crazy.”

“Looking at this group of folks who are interested in running for chair, I think we might see a little bit of the same in terms of the kind of candidates that these folks would support,” Barnes said. “And I think that will help us hold the legislature going forward.”

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Joey Cappelletti 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.

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When members of the small Pennsylvania chapter of Secular Democrats of America log on for their monthly meetings, they’re not there for a virtual happy hour.

“We don’t sit around at our meetings patting ourselves on the back for not believing in God together,” said David Brown, a founder from the Philadelphia suburb of Ardmore.

The group, mostly consisting of atheists and agnostics, mobilizes to knock on doors and make phone calls on behalf of Democratic candidates “who are pro-science, pro-democracy, whether or not they are actually self-identified secular people,” he said. “We are trying to keep church and state separate. That encompasses LGBTQIA+, COVID science, bodily autonomy and reproductive rights.”

Brown describes his group as “small but mighty,” yet they’re riding a big wave.

Voters with no religious affiliation supported Democratic candidates and abortion rights by staggering percentages in the 2022 midterm elections.

And they’re voting in large numbers. In 2022, some 22% of voters claimed no religious affiliation, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 94,000 voters nationwide. They contributed to voting coalitions that gave Democrats victories in battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona.

The unaffiliated — often nicknamed the “nones” — voted for Democratic House candidates nationwide over Republicans by more than a 2-1 margin (65% to 31%), according to VoteCast. That echoes the 2020 president election, when Democrat Joe Biden took 72% of voters with no religious affiliation, while Republican Donald Trump took 25%, according to VoteCast.

For all the talk of the overwhelmingly Republican voting by white evangelical Christians in recent elections, the unaffiliated are making their presence felt.

Among all U.S. adults, 29% are nones — those who identify as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” — according a 2021 report by the Pew Research Center. That’s up 10 percentage points from a decade earlier, according to Pew. And the younger the adults, the more likely they are to be unaffiliated, according to a 2019 Pew analysis, further signaling the growing clout of the nones.

“People talk about how engaged white evangelicals are, but you don’t know the half of it,” said Ryan Burge, a professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University who focuses on the interaction of religious and political behavior.

Atheists and agnostics form only a subset of nones and are less numerous than evangelicals. But they are more likely than evangelicals to make a campaign donation, attend a political meeting or join a protest, Burge said, citing the Harvard-affiliated Cooperative Election Study.

“When you consider how involved they are in political activity, you realize how important they are at the ballot box,” he said.

The nones equaled Catholics at 22% of the electorate, though they were barely half the figure for Protestants and other Christians (43%), according to VoteCast. Other religious groups totaled 13%, including 3% Jewish and 1% Muslim.

Separately, 30% of voters identified as born again or evangelical Christians.

In several bellwether races this year, the secular vote made its impact felt, according to AP VoteCast.

__About four in five people with no religious affiliation voted against abortion restrictions in referendums in Michigan and Kentucky.

__Between two-thirds and three-quarters of nones supported Democratic candidates in statewide races in Arizona and Wisconsin.

__About four in five people with no religion voted for Josh Shapiro and John Fetterman, the Democrats elected Pennsylvania’s newest governor and senator, respectively.

While Shapiro openly speaks about his Jewish values motivating his public service, Fetterman has not incorporated any discernible religious tradition in his public statements. He often frames issues in ethical terms— such as promoting criminal justice reform and raising the minimum wage, even calling abortion rights “sacred” — without reference to a religious tradition.

Fetterman’s campaign did not return a request for comment.

The secular population is a diverse group, Pew reported in 2021. Two-thirds identify as “nothing in particular” — a group that is alienated from politics as well as religion, Burge said.

But atheists and agnostics, though only a third of the nones, punch above their weight, given their heavy involvement in politics.

The twin trends of a growing secular cohort among Democrats and the increased religiosity of Republicans are not coincidental.

Several prominent Republican candidates and their supporters have promoted Christian nationalism, which fuses an American and Christian sense of identity, mission and symbols.

That prompts a reaction by many secular voters, Burge said: “At least among white people, it’s become clear the Democratic Party has become the party for the non-religious people.”

Yet it’s not their party alone. The Democratic coalition draws heavily from religious groups — Black Protestants, liberal Jews, Catholics of color. The Black church tradition, in particular, has a highly devout base in support of moderate and progressive policies.

“I think the Democrats have the biggest problem in the world because they have to keep atheists and Black Protestants happy at the same time,” Burge said.

Tensions surfaced in 2019 when the Democratic National Committee passed a resolution praising the religiously unaffiliated in language that some saw as overstating their clout and denigrating religious values.

Differences between secular and religious Democrats showed up in VoteCast. Majorities of Democratic voters across all religious affiliations say abortion should be legal at least most of the time, but 6 in 10 Democratic voters unaffiliated with a religion say it should always be legal, compared with about 4 in 10 Democratic voters affiliated with Christian traditions. In general, 69% of Democratic voters unaffiliated with a religion identify as liberal, compared with 46% of Christians who voted for Democrats.

But growing secular constituency doesn’t worry Bishop William Barber, a leader in one of the nation’s most prominent faith-based progressive movements.

“Jesus didn’t worry about it, so why would I?” said Barber, president of Repairers of the Breach, which calls for moral advocacy by faith and other leaders on behalf of the poor, immigrants and other marginalized communities. “Jesus said the one who is not against me is for me.”

“We have a lot of people who claim they’re agnostic or atheist, and they will come to our rallies,” said Barber, who is also co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign. “They will say, ‘I don’t necessarily believe in God, but I believe in right. I believe in love. I do believe in justice.’”

Brown, of the Secular Democrats group in Pennsylvania, said he had no problem supporting Democratic candidates like Shapiro, who talked openly about his Jewish values on the campaign trail. His opponent, Republican Doug Mastriano, incorporated Christian nationalist themes and imagery in his campaign.

“While on the one hand I am frustrated that politicians feel the need to justify their doing the right thing by religious affiliation, I also appreciate that this was a calculated decision to appeal to religious voters,” Brown said. “I have no problem with it because I feel it was in the service of defeating a Christian nationalist candidate on the other side.”

In fact, Brown even traveled to Georgia in late November to campaign door-to-door for an ordained minister — Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, the Democrat in a runoff election. And for the same reason — despite religious differences, he sees Warnock as sharing many of the values of secular voters.

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AP polling director Emily Swanson contributed from Washington.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump faced rebuke Sunday from officials in both parties after calling for the “termination” of parts of the Constitution over his lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

Trump, who announced last month that he is running again for president, made the claim over the weekend on his Truth Social media platform.

“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” he wrote. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

Incoming House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday described Trump’s statement as strange and extreme and said Republicans will have to make a choice whether to continue embracing Trump’s anti-democratic views.

“Republicans are going to have to work out their issues with the former president and decide whether they’re going to break from him and return to some semblance of reasonableness or continue to lean in to the extremism, not just of Trump, but Trumpism,” Jeffries said.

Trump, who is the first to be impeached twice and whose term ended with his supporters violently storming the Capitol in a deadly bid to halt the peaceful transition of power on Jan. 6, 2021, faces a escalating criminal investigations, including several that could lead to indictments. They include the probe into classified documents seized by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago, and ongoing state and federal inquiries related to efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Asked about Trump’s comments Sunday, Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said he “vehemently” disagrees and “absolutely” condemns the remarks, saying they should be a factor as Republicans decide who should lead their party in 2024.

“There is a political process that has to go forward before anybody is a frontrunner or anybody is even the candidate for the party,” he said. “I believe that people certainly are going to take into consideration a statement like this as they evaluate a candidate.”

Rep.-elect Mike Lawler, R-New York, also objected to the remarks, saying it was time to stop focusing on the “grievances of prior elections.”

“The Constitution is set for a reason, to protect the rights of every American,” Lawler said. “I think the former president would be well-advised to focus on the future, if he is going to run for president again.”

Trump’s comments came after Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, said he would reveal how Twitter engaged in “free speech suppression” leading up to the 2020 election. But files released Friday, which focused on the tech company’s confused response to a story about Biden’s son Hunter, do not show Democrats trying to limit the story.

The White House on Saturday assailed Trump, saying: “You cannot only love America when you win.”

“The American Constitution is a sacrosanct document that for over 200 years has guaranteed that freedom and the rule of law prevail in our great country,” spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement. “Attacking the Constitution and all it stands for is anathema to the soul of our nation.”

Jeffries appeared on ABC’s “This Week,” Turner spoke on CBS’ “Face the Nation” and Lawler was on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

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VANCOUVER, Wash. (AP) — Republican Joe Kent’s campaign said Friday it intends to request a machine ballot recount of the counties within southwest Washington state’s 3rd Congressional District.

“We believe the election workers did their best to ensure a fair election and count the ballots accurately,” his campaign said in a statement. “But given the close margin between the two campaigns, technical issues with the signature verifications software, and the obligation we have to our supporter to ensure certainty about the outcome, we believe a second tabulation is in order.”

The Kent campaign did not respond to a request to clarify its concern about signature verification software, The Columbian reported.

The secretary of state’s office reported that Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez won the race with 50.14% of the vote to Kent’s 49.31%. The margin of 2,629 votes — or 0.83% — avoided an automatic recount, which only happens if the difference in totals is less than 0.5% and is also less than 2,000 votes.

The Associated Press has called the race for Gluesenkamp Perez.

Kent can officially submit the recount request to the secretary of state office within two days of when it verifies the election results, which will occur around Dec. 8. He must provide a security deposit close to $48,000, accounting for the machine recount fee of 15 cents per ballot.

Derrick Nunnally, the secretary of state office’s deputy director of external affairs, said that an approximate time frame for a machine recount won’t be known until the process begins.

Multiple factors, including the machines, staffing and the daily county recounts will determine how long it will take. The 3rd District encompasses Clark, Cowlitz, Lewis, Pacific, Skamania and Wahkiakum counties, and a small portion of Thurston County.

In Clark County — which accounts for 64.12% of total ballots cast districtwide — a machine recount would take five to seven business days, according to the Clark County Elections Office.

The 3rd District, which narrowly voted for Trump in 2020, had been represented for over a decade by Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler. But she failed to make it through the state’s top two primary after her vote to impeach Trump for his role in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Gluesenkamp Perez — who co-owns an auto shop with her husband just across the Columbia River in Portland, Oregon — said that as a small business owner who lives in a rural part of the district, she was more aligned with voters than Kent, who repeatedly had to explain his connections to right-wing extremists.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is being warned about the potentially dire consequences of a case next week involving a Christian graphic artist who objects to designing wedding websites for same-sex couples.

Rule against her and the justices will force artists — from painters and photographers to writers and musicians — to do work that is against their faith, conservative groups say.

Rule for the designer and the justices will expose not only same-sex couples to discrimination, liberal groups claim.

Both sides have described for the court what lawyers sometimes call “a parade of horribles” that could result if the ruling doesn’t go their way.

The case marks the second time in five years that the Supreme Court has confronted the issue of a business owner who says their religion prevents them from creating works for a homosexual wedding. This time, most experts expect that the court now dominated 6-3 by conservatives and particularly sympathetic to religious plaintiffs will side with Lorie Smith, the Denver-area designer in the case.

Smith is represented by attorneys at the Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom. “I think it’s disingenuous and false to say that a win for Lorie in this case would take us back to those times where people … were denied access to essential goods and services based on who they were,” said ADF attorney Kellie Fiedorek, adding, “A win for Lorie here would never permit such conduct, like some of the hypotheticals that they’re raising.”

Smith’s case follows that of Colorado baker Jack Phillips, who objected to creating a wedding cake for a homosexual couple. The couple sued, but the case ended with a limited decision. Phillips’ lawyer, Kristen Waggoner, is back before the high court Monday arguing for Smith.

Smith wants to begin offering wedding websites, but she says her Christian faith prevents her from creating websites celebrating same-sex marriages. That could get her in trouble with state law. Colorado, like most other states, has a public accommodation law that says if Smith offers wedding websites to the public, she must provide them to all customers. Businesses that violate the law can be fined, among other things.

Smith, for her part, says Colorado’s law violates the Constitution’s First Amendment by forcing her to express a message with which she disagrees.

Among Smith’s other opponents are the Biden administration and 20 mostly Democratic-leaning states including California, New York and Pennsylvania. The states told the court in one of 75 legal briefs filed by outside groups in the case that accepting Smith’s arguments would allow for widespread discrimination.

Smith’s supporters, among them 20 mostly Republican-leaning states, say ruling against her has negative consequences, too. A lawyer for the CatholicVote.org education fund told the court that if the lower court ruling stands and Smith loses, “a Jewish choreographer will have to stage a dramatic Easter performance, a Catholic singer will be required to perform at a marriage of two divorcees, and a Muslim who operates an advertising agency will be unable to refuse to create a campaign for a liquor company.”

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SMYRNA, Ga. (AP) — The reception area of a metro Atlanta office suite is a veritable museum of Herschel Walker’s football success for the University of Georgia Bulldogs and the NFL. The office is part of the Atlanta Braves’ real estate development in the Major League Baseball franchise’s new suburban home.

This headquarters for Georgia’s Republican U.S. Senate nominee isn’t officially about athletics, of course. Yet the location and décor help show much professional sports and college loyalties explain political divides in this battleground state, where Walker is trying to unseat Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in a Tuesday runoff.

“Sports are a cultural identifier, and in the South, college fandom is a big part of that,” said David Mowery, a University of Georgia alumnus, avid Bulldogs supporter and now an Alabama-based political consultant who works with Republicans and Democrats. “Now our politics and campaigns are so much about identity,” Mowery said. “We see all these overlaps.”

Sports and politics have long intersected in America. But the flashpoints — racial segregation of college campuses and professional leagues, the use of Native American mascots and imagery, athletes protesting over civil rights, power struggles over taxpayer-funding for stadiums — are ever-present in Georgia.

For Republicans, whose coalition trends older, whiter and less urban than the general population, that means an open embrace of the Bulldogs and baseball’s Braves, each with fan bases that trend whiter and more suburban and rural. And it’s not just Walker, who carried the Bulldogs to the national championship in 1980 and won the Heisman Trophy two years later.

“Great politics, great place to campaign,” said Gov. Brian Kemp, a UGA alumnus, as he tailgated with supporters in Athens ahead of a Georgia game earlier this season.

The governor grew up in Athens and is close to the family of the late Bulldog Coach Vince Dooley. His wife, Marty, was a Georgia cheerleader in her student days, he reminded reporters as he previewed the Bulldogs’ 2022 prospects. The defending national champions, he said, “have got the players” but “got to stay humble.” (They won the Southeastern Conference Championship on Saturday.)

Kemp and Lt. Gov.-elect. Burt Jones, who also played for Georgia, join Walker in using red and black as their campaign colors. Attorney General Chris Carr, who won a second term in November, sometimes calls himself a “Double Dawg” — the honorific for someone with two UGA degrees.

Democrats’ coalition, meanwhile, is anchored by metropolitan areas and nonwhites, who now account for about 4 out of 10 Georgia voters. So, when politicians like Warnock bring sports into their campaigns, it’s to drop by an Atlanta sports bar during the recent World Cup soccer match between the U.S. and Iran.

Warnock will campaign Sunday in Athens. But on Saturday, when Walker was at the SEC Championship game, Warnock was in Augusta. The senator visited his alma mater, the historically Black Morehouse College, on Homecoming weekend this fall, but he notes, with a mix of seriousness and humor, a different focus and scale.

“You know how it is if you go … to an HBCU football game,” Warnock told a campaign event of HBCU fraternities and sororities. “It’s not just a game, it’s a fashion show and the Battle of the Bands.”

Jason Carter, Democrats’ 2014 nominee for governor, has explained Georgia politics by pointing to Atlanta’s professional soccer team and its demographically diverse fans. “Stacey needs the Atlanta United vote,” he’d say of Stacey Abrams, who lost to Kemp in 2018 and 2022.

Certainly, there are white soccer fans in Republican-leaning suburbs and Democrats, white and Black, who love the Bulldogs and Braves. One of Warnock’s top aides organized “Dawgs for Abrams” as a UGA undergraduate in 2018. Nonetheless, the partisan split in campaign styles dovetails with race and geography, even if it’s not explicit.

When Walker and Kemp chose campaign offices near each other in the Braves’ Cobb County development, Republicans described a straightforward decision to be near metro Atlanta’s northern suburbs so critical to their winning coalition. The Braves themselves had made the same calculation, leaving the city in 2017 after a half-century and explaining the surprise move by saying they’d be closer to most of their season-ticket holders. (Cobb County politicians also gave the team $400 million-plus in stadium financing, something Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed refused to do. Reed instead steered city money to refurbish a downtown arena for the NBA’s Hawks.)

Perhaps most notably, Republicans’ embrace of the Braves came alongside controversies over Native American imagery in sports and a separate political tempest over Republicans’ 2021 overhaul of Georgia election laws.

Democrats, including Warnock, blasted the law as “Jim Crow 2.0,” claiming it made it harder for some Black voters to cast ballots. Georgia-based corporations Delta and Coca-Cola criticized the law. The Braves stayed out of the fray. But baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred moved the 2021 All-Star Game from Cobb County in response. Kemp blamed “woke” Democrats relentlessly, though Warnock and Abrams didn’t call for the change.

The two Democrats also haven’t said the Braves should change their name or abandon fans’ “Tomahawk Chop” at home games, but others, including the Biden White House, have said changes should be on the table.

“He need to come out and say, do he believe they should change the name. Well, I don’t,” Walker said in one Fox News appearance. When Warnock largely ignored the issue, a Walker aide tweeted that the senator “must be a Mets fan.”

Yet it’s unquestionably Walker’s football acclaim that forges a unique bond between a Black conservative and a multigenerational white political base.

“When I was in high school, Herschel Walker was the biggest name in town,” Republican National Committee member Ginger Howard said of the 1980 championship season. Now, she said, her young nephews say excitedly: “Ginger, you know Herschel!”

On Saturday, Zach Jacobs and Zach Adams, 23-year-olds from the Atlanta exurb of Woodstock, waited near Mercedes Benz-Stadium downtown to get a picture with Walker. Both voted for their football hero in the general election and said they will again Tuesday.

“He’s a man of the people, just connects with who Georgia is,” Jacobs said.

Walker has on occasion talked about being among the first generation of Black players at UGA, which was founded in 1785. Dooley, who endorsed Walker before the iconic coach died in October, first offered scholarships to Black athletes in 1971. Walker was 8 years old.

Warnock, born in 1969, was not a star athlete and matriculated at Morehouse, which opened its doors during post-Civil War Reconstruction, a founding legacy that Warnock’s fellow HBCU alumni say supersedes athletics.

“We have a motto, a program: ‘A Voteless People is a Hopeless People,’” Marcus Montgomery said of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity he shares with the senator.

Adams, a white UGA graduate, acknowledged Warnock’s deep Georgia roots. But, gesturing to the surrounding downtown Atlanta, he said, “Herschel is the man who can improve all of this, and the rest of Georgia.”

Walker’s runoff election night celebration will be nearby in downtown Atlanta, just a few blocks from Warnock’s party. It’s a shift from Walker’s and Kemp’s Nov. 8 affairs adjacent to the Braves’ stadium. But the former star running back isn’t necessarily breaking the mold. His venue this time: the College Football Hall of Fame.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Wrapping up leadership elections, House Democrats unanimously chose Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina for a new role Thursday, as the party whip relinquishes his current job and a younger generation of Democratic leaders takes charge in the new year.

The vote for Clyburn, who is the highest-ranking Black American in Congress and close to President Joe Biden, averted a potentially divisive internal party struggle after what had been a largely drama-free transition in the aftermath of the midterm elections. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her team are stepping aside after decades at the helm.

Ahead of voting, Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island, who is openly gay, withdrew his challenge to Clyburn. Cicilline won assurances from the Democratic leaders that LGBTQ voices would be represented at the leadership table.

Clyburn, a civil rights leader, said he plans to continue his work advocating “for the South, and for communities that have been left out of economic progress of previous generations.”

The two days of closed-door voting among Democrats to chose party leaders after the midterm elections were surprising for its brevity, especially compared to the dragged out process underway on the Republican side as GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy works to shore up support to become the House speaker in January.

Pelosi, D-Calif., and her team are stepping aside after Republicans won control of the House in the midterm elections. The parties have between now and the new year to sort out the new roles before the new Congress convenes in January.

On Wednesday, House Democrats elected Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York to become the new party leader, the first Black person to lead a major political party in the U.S. Congress.

Jeffries has said it will be a “blessing” to have Pelosi and the other leaders remain in Congress to offer counsel and guidance even as they are making way for the new generation.

Pelosi, Clyburn and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., are all in their 80s, and the new generation is decades younger.

Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., who was elected to become the caucus chairman, called Clyburn “the conscience of our caucus. All of us can benefit from his experience and his perspective as we work together.”

The challenge to Clyburn was a surprise, but Cicilline said he felt the need to act to ensure the Democratic leadership “fully reflect the diversity” of the caucus and of the country.

Antjuan Seawright, a political adviser to Clyburn, on Wednesday argued that Clyburn’s presence at the leadership table was crucial not only for representation from the South but also as a measure of continuity during a transition period.

“With a transition in leadership, you have to have stability, you have to have continuity, and you have to have a sense of trust,” Seawright said. “His being there provides all those things, and also, as this next generation of leaders prepares to be able to fly the political plane, it’s so important that they have a very experienced pilot to help them fly the plane, just in case there’s a storm they may not have faced.”

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SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (AP) — Italian official Luciano Rossi has beaten incumbent president and Russian billionaire Vladimir Lisin to become the new head of the governing body for Olympic shooting.

Rossi beat Lisin to become president of the International Shooting Sport Federation on Wednesday in an unusually close and combative election for an Olympic federation.

In a statement announcing the result on Thursday, the ISSF did not provide a breakdown of the voting, but the German shooting federation said it was 136 to Rossi and 127 to Lisin.

“We are excited to see what the future holds for the ISSF under (Rossi’s) leadership,” the ISSF executive board said in a statement. “He looks forward to working with all of you to promote the sport of shooting and make it more accessible to people around the world.”

It was the second time Rossi stood against Lisin after losing by four votes for the then-vacant presidency in 2018.

Lisin resisted calls from some ISSF members to step aside as president following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Under Lisin, the ISSF joined most other Olympic sports by suspending shooters from Russia and its ally Belarus from competing in its events in March, shortly after the invasion began.

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More AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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MIAMI (AP) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis may need some help from the state Legislature if he proceeds with a highly anticipated bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

A “resign to run” law requires state officeholders to commit to leave their positions if they run for federal office. The measure, which has been on and off the books over the past several decades, was reinstated in 2018. But Republican leaders in the GOP-dominated Legislature have expressed openness to changing or rescinding the law when they gather again in March.

Florida House Speaker Paul Renner recently told reporters that it was a “great idea” to review the law. Senate President Kathleen Passidomo similarly said that changes to the resignation requirement would be a “good idea.”

“If an individual who is a Florida governor is running for president, I think he should be allowed to do it,” she said.

DeSantis is emerging as an early favorite of some Republican donors and activists who are seeking a conservative leader without the baggage associated with former President Donald Trump, who has already announced his 2024 White House bid. In an underwhelming year for Republicans in much of the U.S., many in the party are taking notice of DeSantis’ commanding reelection victory, including his strong performance in longtime Democratic strongholds around Miami.

The governor has dodged questions about his presidential aspirations, telling reporters last month to “chill out” about the subject. But during a debate before the November election, he pointedly declined to answer questions about whether he would serve out his full term. And he’s gained notice for his travel around the country on behalf of other GOP candidates and will release an autobiography next year.

Florida constitutional experts said there’s little ambiguity in the law, likely requiring some type of action by the Legislature.

“There is no ambiguity, no debate, no dispute,” said Bob Jarvis, a professor at Nova Southeastern University’s law school. “Under current law, DeSantis cannot run for president before first resigning as a governor.”

But given the Republican majorities in the Legislature, the law isn’t expected to pose a significant hurdle. The governor didn’t respond to a request for comment about whether he’s calling for a change.

There is precedent for changes to the Florida law to help clear a path for potential candidates for higher office. In 2007, the Republican-controlled Legislature changed the law to prevent problems for then-Gov. Charlie Crist, who was being considered as a possible running mate for Republican John McCain in 2008. Crist later became a Democrat and challenged DeSantis for reelection this year.

“You can make the argument that there is no reason to have this law. The voters all knew that there was a chance that (DeSantis) would not complete his term as governor and that he was at the very least considering a presidential run,” Jarvis said. “No voter could say I was duped into voting for someone.”

Only a handful of states have similar resign-to-run laws. Some say that while the law is clear about politicians having to resign if they seek federal office, it is vague about when they would need to do so. It states the resignation must be submitted at least 10 days before the first day of qualifying for the office.

“There is too much ambiguity,” said Jon McGowan, an attorney that specializes in business and state government law, adding that it is not clear if a candidate would be qualified when he runs for the Republican nomination or for the general election. McGowan says the motivation behind the law “is really about not having endless elections.”

“What we’ll see is they will create a new section so that candidates for president or vice president do not have to resign to run, and just if they win.”

A revision to the law is likely just one piece of a legislative agenda DeSantis would like to oversee next year as a launching pad to a presidential campaign. DeSantis calls his administration and election results a “blueprint” for Republican success.

Education and abortion bills are likely to be filed. Incoming Republican state legislative leaders have referred to a new law limiting instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in early grade school that DeSantis championed, hinting that additional similar legislation could follow.

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