Politics

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia Republican state lawmaker Moore Capito, the son of U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, announced Tuesday he’s running for governor in 2024.

Capito, 40, a Charleston-area lawyer, has represented Kanawha County in the West Virginia House of Delegates since 2016. He serves as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

In a video announcing his campaign for governor, Moore said he wants to reduce taxes, improve student achievement in schools and invest in business development and energy infrastructure in the state.

“Moore knows that Joe Biden’s War on Energy is a War on West Virginia,” a press release reads. “To beat back Biden and the Left, we need a fighter who is battle tested and understands the stakes.”

“Governor Capito will mean great news for West Virginia’s economy, and bad news for Biden’s leftwing agenda.”

Captio said one goal is to put reading and math specialists in every elementary and middle school in West Virginia, which ranked well below the U.S. average in the most recent countrywide assessment of reading and mathematics among fourth and eighth graders.

He also criticized President Joe Biden on his “refusal to strengthen security” on the Southern Border.

West Virginia has experienced the most per capita opioid-related overdose deaths out of any state in the nation.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, a Republican who held office since 2017, has said publicly multiple times in recent months that he is considering a run for U.S. Senate, although he has yet to make a formal announcement.

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ATLANTA (AP) — The South Carolina Supreme Court says former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows must testify before a special grand jury that’s investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies illegally tried to influence the 2020 election in Georgia.

The state high court on Tuesday affirmed a lower court ruling last month ordering Meadows to appear before the panel. The former Republican congressman is the latest Trump associate to lose a legal fight over a summons to testify.

The South Carolina Supreme Court opinion says the justices reviewed Meadows’ arguments and found them to be “manifestly without merit.”

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who’s leading the investigation, has said Meadows is an important witness. Because he doesn’t live in Georgia, she had to use a process that involved getting a judge in South Carolina, where Meadows lives, to order him to travel to Atlanta to testify.

Meadows had originally been ordered to testify Wednesday. It was not immediately clear whether that would be rescheduled.

In a petition seeking his testimony, Willis wrote that Meadows attended a Dec. 21, 2020, meeting at the White House with Trump and others “to discuss allegations of voter fraud and certification of Electoral College votes from Georgia and other states.”

The next day, Willis wrote, Meadows made a “surprise visit” to Cobb County, just outside Atlanta, where an audit of signatures on absentee ballot envelopes was being conducted. He asked to observe the audit but wasn’t allowed to because it wasn’t open to the public, the petition says.

Meadows also sent emails to Justice Department officials after the election alleging voter fraud in Georgia and elsewhere and requesting investigations, Willis wrote. And he took part in a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, during which Trump suggested that Raffensperger, the state’s top elections official and a Republican, could “find” enough votes to overturn the president’s narrow loss in the state.

An attorney for Meadows had argued that executive privilege and other rights shield him from testifying. He previously invoked that privilege in a fight against subpoenas issued by the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Meadows has been fighting investigations into the violent 2021 insurrection since last year and has so far avoided having to testify about his role and his knowledge of the former president’s actions. He turned over thousands of texts to the House Jan. 6 committee before eventually refusing to do an interview.

The House held Meadows in contempt of Congress for defying the subpoena, but the Justice Department declined to prosecute.

Special grand juries in Georgia cannot issue indictments. Instead, they can gather evidence and compel testimony and then can recommend further action, including criminal charges, in a final report. It is ultimately up to the district attorney to decide whether to seek an indictment from a regular grand jury.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate passed bipartisan legislation Tuesday to protect ‘same-sex marriages.’

The bill, which would ensure that same-sex and interracial marriages are enshrined in federal law, was approved 61-36 on Tuesday, including support from 12 Republicans. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the legislation was “a long time coming” and part of America’s “difficult but inexorable march towards greater equality.”

Democrats are moving quickly to ram through controversial legislation, while the party still holds the majority in both chambers of Congress. The legislation now moves to the House for a final vote.

Passage came after the Senate rejected three Republican amendments to protect the rights of religious institutions and others to still oppose such marriages. Supporters of the legislation argued those amendments were unnecessary.

Most Republicans oppose the legislation, saying it is unnecessary and citing concerns about religious liberty. And some conservative groups stepped up opposition in recent weeks, lobbying Republican supporters to switch their votes.

“Marriage is the exclusive, lifelong, conjugal union between one man and one woman, and any departure from that design hurts the indispensable goal of having every child raised in a stable home by the mom and dad who conceived him,” the Heritage Foundation’s Roger Severino, vice president of domestic policy, wrote in a recent blog post arguing against the bill.

In an effort to win the 10 Republican votes necessary to overcome a filibuster in the 50-50 Senate, Democrats delayed consideration until after the midterm elections, hoping that would relieve political pressure on GOP senators who might be wavering.

Eventual support from 12 Republicans gave Democrats the votes they needed.

Along with Tillis, Maine Sen. Susan Collins and Ohio Sen. Rob Portman supported the bill early on and have lobbied their GOP colleagues to support it. Also voting for the legislation were Republican Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina, Todd Young of Indiana, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Mitt Romney of Utah, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan of Alaska.

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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania elections officials said Tuesday “a handful” of counties have not fully reported results from this month’s election, at least in part because organized efforts to seek recounts are pending in court.

The Department of State declined to say how many of the state’s 67 counties failed to meet the deadline for certification — the end of the day Monday.

“We continue to work with a handful of counties to obtain their full certification results,” agency spokesperson Amy Gulli said in an email. “It’s a fluid situation as our team is actively receiving new information from counties all the time. When the secretary officially certifies any of the results, we will notify the media and the public via press release.”

Challenges organized or supported by Republican and other conservative groups are being pursued weeks after the election without evidence emerging of problems that might change the results and after counties have completed post-election checks to verify the vote tallies are accurate.

The Department of State needs certified election results from all counties so it can compile the official results that acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman will produce, including for the high-profile contests for governor won by Attorney General Josh Shapiro and for U.S. Senate won by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, both Democrats.

There is no deadline for Chapman’s certification, but terms in the state Legislature start next month and the results of federal elections such as U.S. Senate and House are normally sent to Congress in mid-December, the agency said.

The state election agency said Monday that counties are required to certify election returns unless there is a “legally valid and properly filed recount petition.” In those cases, the Department of State said, counties are supposed to certify races that are not implicated in the recount effort.

The recounts are not being pursued because races were close enough to trigger automatic recounts or by losing candidates who would have to pay for them.

In Berks County, the local Republican Committee and 94 voters sought recounts in more than two dozen precincts last week. Clay Breece, the Berks GOP chairman, has said his group fielded reports that electronic machines were switching votes but is not claiming the election was stolen.

Berks County government spokesperson Stephanie Weaver said the allegations involve 30 of the county’s 202 precincts.

“As far as where those petitions are, we are still waiting for them to be assigned to a judge and a court hearing to be scheduled,” Weaver said Tuesday.

Challenges in Westmoreland County held up certification in five of its 307 precincts, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported, over allegations voting machines were inaccurate and claims poll workers had mishandled mail-in ballots from people attempting to vote in person.

Three voters in Blair County sought a hand count of votes from the contests for governor and U.S. Senate from a single precinct in Altoona. During a hearing on Monday, the county’s lawyer argued the challengers needed to seek recounts for the entire county because those two offices were on the ballot in all of Blair’s precincts.

“If they do not bring forth allegations of particularized fraud or error — meaning not just general mistake, but this is a fraud, this is the specific error — if they are not going to specify that, then every precinct is required to be opened,” Blair County elections lawyer Nathan Karn said in a phone interview Tuesday. He said the deadline to seek such a countywide recount has passed.

The three voters’ lawyer, Thomas Forr, said a volunteer with the Audit the Vote PA organization paid $102 in court fees, the Altoona Mirror reported. A message seeking comment was left for Forr.

Audit the Vote PA head Toni Shuppe declined comment, saying in an email that her group would not “engage with propaganda media sources.” The judge in that matter has not ruled whether to dismiss the petition or order a recount.

In Luzerne County, where paper shortages caused Election Day ballot problems, the election board deadlocked Monday on whether to report official vote tallies to the state but it appears that vote will occur on Wednesday. Allegheny County’s Board of Elections voted Monday to certify their election results at 1,311 polling places but opted not to vote to certify results from 12 polling places where recount petitions had been filed.

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PHOENIX (AP) — Six Arizona counties must decide Monday whether to certify 2022 election results amid pressure from some Republicans not to officially approve a vote count that had Democrats winning for U.S. Senate, governor and other statewide races.

Election results have largely been certified without issue in jurisdictions across the country. That’s not been the case in Arizona, which was a focal point for efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the the 2020 election and push false narratives of fraud.

Arizona was long a GOP stronghold, but Democrats won most of the highest profile races over Republicans who aggressively promoted Trump’s 2020 election lies. Kari Lake, the GOP candidate for governor, and Mark Finchem, the candidate for secretary of state, have refused to acknowledge their losses. They blame Republican election officials in Maricopa County for a problem with some ballot printers.

Two Republican-controlled Arizona counties have voted not to certify, deferring a final decision until Monday, the last day it’s allowed under state law.

Republican supervisors in Mohave County said last week that they will sign off Monday but wanted to register a protest against against voting issues in Maricopa County. In Cochise County, GOP supervisors demanded that the secretary of state prove vote-counting machines were legally certified before they will approve the election results.

State Elections Director Kori Lorick has said the machines are properly certified for use in elections. She wrote in a letter last week that the state would sue to force Cochise County supervisors to certify, and if they continue to balk, would exclude the county’s numbers from the statewide canvass scheduled for Dec. 5. That move threatens to flip the victor in at least two close races — a U.S. House seat and state schools chief — from a Republican to a Democrat.

Lake has pointed to problems on Election Day in Maricopa County, where printers at some vote centers produced ballots with markings that were too light to be read by on-site tabulators. Lines backed up amid the confusion, and Lake says an unknown number of her supporters may have been dissuaded from voting as a result.

She filed a public records lawsuit last week, demanding the county produce documents shedding light on the issue before voting to certify the election on Monday. Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich has also demanded an explanation ahead of the vote.

County officials have repeatedly said that all the ballots were counted and that no one lost their ability to vote. Those with ballots that could not be read on site were told to place them in a secure box to be tabulated later by more robust machines at county elections headquarters.

The county said that about 17,000 Election Day ballots were involved and had to be counted later instead of at the polling place. Only 16% of the 1.56 million votes cast in Maricopa County were made in-person on Election Day. Those votes went overwhelmingly for Republicans.

The Republican National Committee and the GOP candidate for Arizona attorney general, Abraham Hamadeh, filed an election challenge in his race, which is slated for an automatic recount with Hamadeh trailing by 510 votes.

Kelli Ward, the state GOP chair, has urged supporters to push their county supervisors to delay a certification vote until after a scheduling hearing in the Hamadeh case, which is slated for Monday afternoon.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections

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NEW YORK (AP) — Democrats celebrating a successful effort to keep control of the U.S. Senate this year will soon confront a 2024 campaign that could prove more challenging.

The party enters the next cycle defending 23 seats, including two held by independents who caucus with Democrats. That’s compared with just 10 seats that Republicans hope to keep in their column.

Adding to the potential hurdles is that some 2024 contests are in states that have become increasingly hostile to Democrats, including Montana, Ohio and West Virginia. Other Democratic-held seats are in some of the same hotly contested states that were at the center of this year’s midterms, such as Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada. And while Democrats carried each of those races, they did so at great cost and with sometimes narrow margins. In Nevada, for instance, Democratic incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto won by less than 1 percentage point, or about 9,000 votes.

For now, both parties insist they’re laser focused on coming out on top in the Dec. 6 Senate runoff in Georgia. But Democrats who are on the ballot in 2024 know that they could face fierce headwinds and are studying the results of this year’s election, when the party outperformed expectations.

For Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Democrat facing her first reelection campaign, that means staying focused on kitchen table issues and touting legislation like the infrastructure law and gun violence legislation signed by President Joe Biden.

“We know that races are always close,” Rosen said in an interview. “We never take anything for granted.”

The dynamics of the next Senate campaign could be influenced by a variety of outside factors, particularly the presidential election and the attention it generates. Biden, who turned 80 this month, has said his “intention” is to run for reelection and that he will make a final decision early next year. Former President Donald Trump has already announced a third White House bid, and multiple other Republicans are lining up to launch campaigns. The eventual nominee in each party could have a profound impact on down-ballot races, including those for Senate.

But perhaps the biggest question for Senate Democrats seeking reelection will be who Republicans nominate as their opponents. The GOP lost several Senate elections this year, including those in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Nevada, after Trump-backed candidates struggled to raise money and connect with a broader, more moderate range of voters during the general election.

In Nevada, the Republican field to challenge Rosen has not begun to shape up but is expected to attract several contenders. One name receiving attention is Sam Brown, a former U.S. Army captain who was awarded a Purple Heart after being severely wounded in Afghanistan. Brown ran for Senate this year and put up a strong challenge in the Republican primary before losing to Adam Laxalt, who lost in the general election to Cortez Masto.

Richard Hernandez, who was Brown’s campaign adviser, said, “He has committed to his supporters that he will never stop fighting for their issues, but he has not made any decisions as to whether that involves a future run for office.”

Also in the southwest, Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a centrist Democrat, will be up for reelection. The race, like other recent statewide contests in Arizona, is expected to be very competitive. But Sinema is likely to first face a well-funded primary challenger after angering much of the Democratic base by blocking or watering down progressive priorities like a minimum wage increase or Biden’s big social spending initiatives. She has not said whether she plans to run for reelection.

Sinema’s most prominent potential primary challenger is U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, who has a long history of feuding with Sinema. Gallego has not announced his plans for 2024 but has made it no secret that he’s thinking about challenging Sinema. He even raised money on the prospect he might oppose Sinema.

An independent expenditure group is also raising money, saying it will support grassroots organizations committed to defeating Sinema in a Democratic primary.

Republicans hope a bruising Democratic primary might give them an opening to win the seat after losing Senate races in Arizona in three consecutive elections.

Sinema is among a trio of moderate Senate Democrats who have sometimes used their leverage in an evenly divided chamber to block or blunt some of Biden’s plans and nominees. They will also be among the party’s most vulnerable incumbents in 2024.

The other two senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana, will be running as Democrats in states that Trump handily carried in 2020.

Manchin has already drawn a GOP challenger in U.S. Rep. Alex Mooney, who declared a week after winning reelection that he was setting his sights on higher office. Manchin has not yet said whether he’ll run for reelection.

Republicans see Tester, a three-term senator, as vulnerable, and the opportunity to run for the seat could draw a fierce primary contest between former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Rep. Matt Rosendale. Zinke, who won a House seat in this year’s midterm elections, said he will decide whether to run next year, and Rosendale declined to answer.

Tester has not announced if he will seek another term but has said he anticipates 2024 will be just as tough as his last race in 2018, when he beat Rosendale in a close contest.

In Pennsylvania, Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey has not said whether he intends to run for a fourth term. Casey easily won reelection in 2018, but Pennsylvania has been competitive for Republicans, including in this year’s Senate race won by Democrat John Fetterman.

One potential Republican challenger whose name has been floated in Pennsylvania is former hedge fund CEO David McCormick, who narrowly lost the Republican primary in this year’s race to celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz. McCormick advisers declined to comment on that prospect. Conservative activist Kathy Barnette, who finished a close third in the Republican primary, didn’t respond to messages about whether she’s considering a 2024 campaign.

Wisconsin, which saw Republican Sen. Ron Johnson narrowly win reelection this year, is also expected to have another competitive Senate race in two years.

Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin is widely expected to seek a third term but has not officially announced. There are no official Republican candidates, but U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher has been talked about as a possibility.

Gallagher brushed off a query about whether he was considering challenging Baldwin, saying in a statement that he was focused on tackling issues like inflation and the border over the next two years after having just won reelection.

“Any talk of the next election, especially since we just had an election, distracts from the serious work we need to do,” he said.

A number of high-profile Republican senators will also be up for reelection in 2024, including Ted Cruz of Texas, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rick Scott of Florida.

On the Democratic side, a number of the party’s former presidential candidates will face voters. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand have all said they plan to seek another term.

Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats and is one of the most influential progressives in Congress, has not said if he intends to run for reelection.

In Utah, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney will face his first Senate reelection bid — if he chooses to run. Romney remains popular with many residents in Utah but has faced backlash from his own party for being the only Republican who voted twice to remove Trump from office after his two impeachments by the House.

When asked if Romney planned to run for reelection, his spokesperson Arielle Mueller did not offer any detail on his plans, saying instead that the senator was focused on tackling “significant challenges facing the country.”

Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, a Republican who has been a Trump ally, is one of the GOP figures who has been seen as a potential 2024 Senate candidate in the state. Reyes’ longtime political consultant Alan Crooks wouldn’t say whether the attorney general will launch a campaign but argued he was getting pressure from within Utah and outside the state to have him run.

“He’s certainly set up to run, but it does not mean he’s considering it,” Crooks said.

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Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix; Sam Metz in Salt Lake City; and Kevin Freking in Washington contributed to this report.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections.

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WARNER ROBINS, Ga. (AP) — Ads with the candidates’ ex-wives. Cries of “liar” flying in both directions. Stories of a squalid apartment building and abortions under pressure. Questioning an opponent’s independence. His intellect. His mental stability. His religious faith.

The extended Senate campaign in Georgia between the Democratic incumbent, Raphael Warnock, and his Republican challenger, football legend Herschel Walker, has grown increasingly bitter as their Dec. 6 runoff nears. With Democrats already assured a Senate majority, it’s a striking contrast from two years ago, when the state’s twin runoffs were mostly about which party would control the chamber in Washington.

“Herschel Walker ain’t serious,” Warnock told supporters recently in central Georgia, saying that Walker “majors in lying” and fumbles the basics of public policy. “But the election is very serious. Don’t get those two things confused.”

Walker casts Warnock, the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, as a “hypocrite” and servile to President Joe Biden. Underscoring the insult, Walker calls the incumbent “Scooby-Doo,” complete with an impression of the cartoon hound’s gibberish.

The broadsides reflect the candidates’ furious push in the four weeks between the Nov. 8 general election and runoff to persuade their core supporters to cast another ballot. For Walker, it also means drawing more independents and moderates to his campaign after he underperformed a fellow Republican on the ticket, Gov. Brian Kemp, by 200,000 votes.

Warnock led Walker by 37,000 votes out of almost 4 million cast in the first round, but the senator fell short of the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff.

In many ways, the shift from his first runoff campaign is exactly what Warnock wanted: a straightforward choice between two candidates. Two years ago, then-President Donald Trump, fresh off his defeat, and Biden, then president-elect, made multiple Georgia trips to illuminate the national stakes of the races between Warnock and Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler and between Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Sen. David Perdue as control of the Senate hung in the balance.

Trump ended up alienating his own supporters and many moderates with his false claims of a rigged 2020 presidential election. Victories by Warnock and Ossoff put the Senate at a 50-50 split, with Democrats gaining control by virtue of Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote. Warnock also became Georgia’s first Black senator.

This year, with Warnock vying for a full six-year term after winning the 2021 special election, Democrats have already guaranteed control of the Senate by flipping a seat in Pennsylvania. A Warnock win would give Democrats an outright majority at 51-49, meaning that the parties would not have to negotiate a power-sharing agreement.

Warnock’s preferred emphasis for most of his reelection bid has been his deal-making in Washington and the personal values he brings to the job. It took until the campaign’s final stages — only after two women accused Walker, an opponent of abortion rights, of encouraging and paying for their abortions — for the senator to ratchet up his attacks, arguing Walker is “unprepared” and “unfit” for the job.

“My opponent lies about everything,” Warnock said in a recent campaign stop, ticking off a litany of Walker’s repeated falsehoods and exaggerations. “He said he was a police officer. He’s not. He said he worked for the FBI. He did not. Said he graduated from the University of Georgia. He did not. Said he was valedictorian of his class. He was not. … He said he had another business with 800 employees. It has eight.”

Walker, alternately, has relished the jousting since he won the GOP nomination in the spring.

“Herschel is a competitor. He’s very comfortable with the mano a mano,” said Scott Paradise, Walker’s campaign manager, noting the candidate’s athletic prowess as a football running back, kickboxer and Olympic bobsledder.

Indeed, Walker takes his attacks right to Warnock’s strengths as the pastor of the famous church where Martin Luther King Jr. once preached. Walker has criticized Warnock over an Atlanta apartment building, owned by a foundation of Warnock’s church, where residents have complained to The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative media outlet, of eviction notices and poor conditions.

“What he’s doing in this apartment building at Columbia Towers is not right,” Walker said recently at a suburban Atlanta campaign stop. “You shouldn’t put Jesus’ name on what you’re doing to people, and don’t put Martin Luther King name on it. … You’re not Jesus, and you’re not Dr. King.”

Warnock, who says no residents of Columbia Tower have been evicted, incorporates Walker’s attacks into the list of the challenger’s documented exaggerations and falsehoods. “What kind of a person lies on the church?” Warnock said in Macon. “This isn’t the first time people attacked Ebenezer Baptist Church. They attacked Martin Luther King Jr. I’m in good company.”

Still, asked whether he’s reconsidered his church’s stewardship of Columbia Towers, Warnock sidestepped: “I’ve already answered the question. I’m proud of what my church does to feed and house the hungry and the homeless every single week.”

Walker also accuses Warnock of “getting rich” as a senator, a nod to the pastor’s $7,500-a-month housing allowance from the church. The payments are not a violation of Senate ethics rules that limit senators’ outside income.

On at least one occasion during the runoff, Walker has suggested Warnock is a negligent father. Warnock told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution the comment “crossed a line.” Earlier in the campaign, Walker publicly acknowledged three of his children for the first time, doing so only after The Daily Beast reported on their existence. Warnock has not mentioned those children in any of his critiques of Walker.

Walker, meanwhile, has not taken reporters’ questions at an open campaign event since late October, when a second accuser came forward to say he had pressured her to have an abortion — a contradiction of his advocacy as a candidate for a national ban on all abortions. Walker has denied the women’s claims.

Both candidates’ former wives also loom in the campaign, though the two men avoid the topic themselves, leaving the discussion of their marriages mostly to paid advertising. In one ad, Warnock’s former wife tells Atlanta police that he ran over her foot. The Republican ad doesn’t note that a police report states that officers found no physical evidence supporting her claim. A Democratic ad features an interview with Walker’s first wife detailing that he threatened violence against her, circumstances Walker has confirmed in an autobiography.

Since the two men met for their lone debate Oct. 14, Warnock has hammered Walker for a lack of policy details and sometimes flubbing what policy he does discuss.

Warnock promotes his new federal legal provision capping insulin costs for Medicare recipients and notes Walker said diabetics could manage their health by “eating right,” a practice that isn’t enough for insulin-dependent diabetic patients.

“Maybe he ought to apply to be a dietician. I’m running for the United States Senate,” Warnock said in Macon.

He pounced when Walker declared the United States is “not ready” for climate action and should “keep having those gas-guzzling cars” that he said already have “good emissions” standards. Warnock added gleeful mockery when Walker recently introduced a tangent about vampires to a campaign speech.

“I mean, who says that kind of stuff?” Warnock asked supporters.

Warnock’s aides say that the personalized arguments help convince core Democrats that they should not sit out the runoff, while also swaying the potentially decisive middle of the electorate in the senator’s favor. “Herschel Walker continues to be bogged down by his pattern of lies and disturbing behavior, all of which led him to underperform” in the first round, said Quentin Fulks, Warnock’s campaign manager, in a statement.

From Walker’s camp, Paradise insisted that Republicans’ best argument remains Warnock’s alignment with Democrats on economic policy. Still, he acknowledges the campaign’s tone has darkened.

“We’re certainly going to continue to aggressively prosecute the case against Warnock,” he said, “and I suspect they’ll do the same.”

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections

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NEW YORK (AP) — Nearly six years into monitoring the content of conservative media outlets for his website and newsletter The Righting, Howard Polskin hasn’t lost the capacity for surprise.

Case in point: when Donald Trump announced his 2024 presidential candidacy, and many of his long-time media allies let fly with anger and insults. Two impeachments, two years of election denials and a U.S. Capitol riot didn’t have the impact of a disappointing showing by Republicans in the midterm elections.

“I didn’t expect the level of vitriol, there’s no question about it,” he said.

Trump’s inauguration in 2017 started Polskin on his journey. A New York-based former reporter and publicist for the likes of CNN and J.K. Rowling, Polskin was mystified at why his fellow Americans had elected Trump, and sought explanations.

He began studying outlets popular with conservatives and sending links to fellow left-leaning friends who wouldn’t think of clicking on the Washington Free Beacon, the Epoch Times, PJ Media or Chicks on the Right.

“I didn’t start it as a business,” he said. “I started it for myself.”

It has grown into a newsletter with subscribers that number nearly 10,000 and a website. Polskin, with a former Newsweek editor and freelance writers, does original reporting on people behind the outlets and coverage trends like the targeting of transgender rights and how powerful women of color are disparaged. He’s produced an “A-Z Guide to Right Wing Media” with 130 entries.

The Righting also follows which sites are gaining and losing popularity in an industry fully dominated by FoxNews.com.

Polskin is impatient for more people who are not enmeshed in conservative media to read what he’s compiling. He received an important endorsement when California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in September that he reads The Righting each morning.

Newsom told Politico that it gave him “a different appreciation and a different understanding of the ruthlessness of the right.”

People who are not fans don’t appreciate the breadth of the conservative media ecosystem, and how it has spread beyond radio and websites into podcasting, publishing and YouTube channels, Polskin said. The left doesn’t come anywhere close.

He’s not switched sides, but Polskin admits his work has pushed him more toward the political center. He’s grown to appreciate the talents of certain writers, like Townhall columnist Kurt Schlichter, a lawyer and former stand-up comic, and Ray Cardello, a blogger from New Hampshire.

“Prior to The Righting, I never went to these sites and it has opened my mind to a different way of thinking,” he said. “While I might not agree with it all the time, I get the underlying philosophy.”

He worries about the sites succeeding in painting Democrats as having views on the fringe and making them unpalatable to many Americans.

Scroll through some of the headlines Polskin has collected and you’ll find conventional conservative wisdom mixed with some that border on the bizarre: “Wokeness is the Acid Dissolving Christianity,” “Unvaccinated Women Shun Vaccinated Single Men,” “Climate Extremism is Making Americans Mentally Ill” and “DeSantis Flashes his Alpha-Dog Energy in Meeting with Diminished Biden.”

Pre-election newsletters contain an assortment of cold takes: “Bet the House on a GOP Landslide,” “Even Dems Now Realize Midterm Elections Will be a Bloodbath,” “All Signs Point to a Landslide for Liberty” and “Fetterman is Toast.”

“I might ridicule something, but I’m careful with that,” Polskin said. “I don’t want to get in a war with anyone. It would be time-consuming and distracting.”

For now, Polskin said The Righting is “a brand in search of a business.” A Ford Foundation grant he received in May provides the bulk of the funding, and Polskin is exploring ways to have readers donate. It has no advertising. Polskin isn’t opposed to that, although he did turn down an ad request from a gun manufacturer.

“I enjoy Howard quite a bit,” said Cardello, whose “Conservative View from New Hampshire” blog is often quoted in The Righting. “I know what side he comes from, but you can still have a civil conversation with him.”

That hasn’t always been the case with friends and even relatives since Cardello started putting his views online. He said he appreciates the exposure Polskin has given his writing to people of all points of view.

“Otherwise you’re just singing for the choir,” he said. “I put my work out there and if the only people who read it are conservatives … what have I really accomplished?”

But Cardello said he hasn’t gotten a great deal of feedback from people through The Righting. Two editors at prominent sites frequently quoted by Polskin didn’t return calls for comment.

Polskin said he saw real anger in the conservative press about the midterm election results and a need to blame someone. Trump was the most obvious choice.

He’s interested to see whether the break with Trump is permanent — and it is by no means unanimous. In one sign of softening, WND wrote that “Trump has promised to Make America Great Again — and he is probably the only person who can do it.”

And there’s always the tried-and-true target, as a headline in the Gateway Pundit illustrated: “Dems Steal Midterms as Communism Comes to America.”

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PHOENIX (AP) — Kari Lake, the defeated Republican candidate for Arizona governor, has filed a public records lawsuit demanding Maricopa County hand over a variety of documents related to the election.

Lake has refused to acknowledge that she lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs and has for weeks drawn attention to voters who said they experienced long lines and other difficulties while voting on Election Day in Arizona’s largest county.

Her lawyer, Tim LaSota, says in the suit filed Wednesday that the county has not fulfilled public records requests filed on Nov. 15 and 16. The requests seek 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.

Lake is also asking for information about counted and uncounted ballots that were accidentally mixed. County officials have acknowledged the problem occurred at a handful of vote centers but say it happens in most elections and can be reconciled.

Lake and her allies have bombarded Maricopa County with complaints about Election Day problems, which stem largely from a problem with printers at some vote centers that led them to print ballots with markings that were too light to be read by the on-site tabulators. All ballots were counted, but Lake says some of her supporters may have been unable to cast a ballot amid the chaos.

Lake wants the county to produce the records before certifying the election. The Board of Supervisors, controlled 4-1 by Republicans, votes to certify the election on Monday, the deadline under state law. Certification votes are also scheduled for Monday in five other counties, including two where Republican supervisors voted earlier to delay certifying the election.

The statewide canvass is scheduled for Dec. 5.

County officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates, a Republican, has said the county takes responsibility for the printer issue but blamed prominent Republicans including state GOP Chair Kelli Ward for exacerbating the problem by telling voters not to allow their ballots to be counted at the elections headquarters in downtown Phoenix.

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Today in History

Today is Sunday, Nov. 27, the 331st day of 2022. There are 34 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Nov. 27, 1978, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone (mah-SKOH’-nee) and City Supervisor Harvey Milk, a gay-rights activist, were shot to death inside City Hall by former supervisor Dan White. (White served five years for manslaughter; he took his own life in October 1985.)

On this date:

In 1901, the U.S. Army War College was established in Washington, D.C.

In 1924, Macy’s first Thanksgiving Day parade — billed as a “Christmas Parade” — took place in New York.

In 1942, during World War II, the Vichy French navy scuttled its ships and submarines in Toulon (too-LOHN’) to keep them out of the hands of German troops.

In 1962, the first Boeing 727 was rolled out at the company’s Renton Plant near Seattle.

In 1970, Pope Paul VI, visiting the Philippines, was slightly wounded at the Manila airport by a dagger-wielding Bolivian painter disguised as a priest.

In 1973, the Senate voted 92-3 to confirm Gerald R. Ford as vice president, succeeding Spiro T. Agnew, who’d resigned.

In 1998, answering 81 questions put to him three weeks earlier, President Bill Clinton wrote the House Judiciary Committee that his testimony in the Monica Lewinsky affair was “not false and misleading.”

In 2000, a day after George W. Bush was certified the winner of Florida’s presidential vote, Al Gore laid out his case for letting the courts settle the nation’s long-count election.

In 2003, President George W. Bush flew to Iraq under extraordinary secrecy and security to spend Thanksgiving with U.S. troops and thank them for “defending the American people from danger.”

In 2008, Iraq’s parliament approved a pact requiring all U.S. troops to be out of the country by Jan. 1, 2012.

In 2015, a gunman attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, killing three people and injuring nine. (The prosecution of suspect Robert Dear stalled in state court, and then federal court, after he was repeatedly found mentally incompetent to stand trial.)

In 2020, President Donald Trump’s legal team suffered another defeat as a federal appeals court in Philadelphia roundly rejected the campaign’s latest effort to challenge Pennsylvania’s election results; Judge Stephanos Bibas, a Trump appointee, wrote that “calling an election unfair does not make it so.” Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the Iranian scientist who founded that country’s military nuclear program in the early 2000s, was killed in an attack on the outskirts of Tehran; Iran said Israel was responsible.

Ten years ago: U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice met privately with three Republican senators who had indicated they would block her possible nomination to be U.S. secretary of state; they said afterward that they were even more troubled by her initial explanation of the attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya. (The following month, Rice withdrew from consideration to be secretary of state.)

Five years ago: As he tried to bolster his support in the wake of a sexual harassment allegation, Minnesota Democratic Sen. Al Franken apologized to “everyone who has counted on me to be a champion for women.” Authorities ordered a mass evacuation of people from an expanded danger zone around an erupting volcano on the Indonesian island of Bali; the eruption had closed the island’s international airport, stranding tens of thousands of travelers. On Cyber Monday, the Echo Dot was the top-selling electronic item on Amazon, followed by the Fire TV.

One year ago: The new potentially more contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus popped up in more European countries, just days after being identified in South Africa, leaving governments around the world scrambling to stop the spread. Britain’s health secretary said two people had tested positive in England; both cases were related to travel from southern Africa.

Today’s Birthdays: Footwear designer Manolo Blahnik is 80. Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow is 71. TV host Bill Nye (“Bill Nye, the Science Guy”) is 67. Actor William Fichtner (FIHK’-nuhr) is 66. Caroline Kennedy is 65. Academy Award-winning screenwriter Callie Khouri is 65. Rock musician Charlie Burchill (Simple Minds) is 63. Actor Michael Rispoli is 62. Jazz composer/big band leader Maria Schneider is 62. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty is 62. Rock musician Charlie Benante (Anthrax) is 60. Rock musician Mike Bordin (Faith No More) is 60. Actor Fisher Stevens is 59. Actor Robin Givens is 58. Actor Michael Vartan is 54. Actor Elizabeth Marvel is 53. Rapper Skoob (DAS EFX) is 52. Actor Kirk Acevedo is 51. Rapper Twista is 50. Actor Jaleel White is 46. Actor Arjay Smith is 39. Actor Alison Pill is 37. Actor Lashana Lynch (TV: “Still Star-Crossed”) is 35.

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