Politics

NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump is renewing attention to his long history of turning a blind eye to bigotry after dining with a Holocaust-denying white nationalist and the rapper formerly known as Kanye West just days into his third campaign for the White House.

Trump had dinner Tuesday at his Mar-a-Lago club with West, who is now known as Ye, as well as Nick Fuentes, a far-right activist who has used his online platform to spew antisemitic and white nationalist rhetoric.

Ye, who says he, too, is running for president in 2024, has made his own series of antisemitic comments in recent weeks, leading to his suspension from social media platforms, his talent agency dropping him and companies like Adidas cutting ties with him. The sportswear manufacturer has also launched an investigation into his conduct.

In a statement from the White House, spokesman Andrew Bates said: “Bigotry, hate, and antisemitism have absolutely no place in America — including at Mar-A-Lago. Holocaust denial is repugnant and dangerous, and it must be forcefully condemned.”

Trump, in a series of statements Friday, said he had “never met and knew nothing about” Fuentes before he arrived with Ye at his club. But Trump also did not acknowledge Fuentes’ long history of racist and antisemitic remarks, nor did he denounce either man’s defamatory statements.

Trump wrote of Ye on his social media platform that “we got along great, he expressed no anti-Semitism, & I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on ‘Tucker Carlson.’” He added, “Why wouldn’t I agree to meet?”

The former president has a long history of failing to unequivocally condemn hate speech. During his 2016 campaign, Trump waffled when asked to denounce the KKK after he was endorsed by the group’s former leader, saying in a televised interview that he didn’t “know anything about David Duke.” In 2017, in the aftermath of the deadly white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump was widely criticized for saying there was “blame on both sides” for the violence. And his rallies frequently feature inflammatory rhetoric from figures like U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who spoke earlier this year at a far-right conference organized by Fuentes.

The latest episode, coming just one week after Trump launched his third run for the Republican nomination, also underscored how loosely controlled access to the former president remained, particularly without a traditional campaign operation in place.

Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club came under intense scrutiny amid revelations that Trump was storing hundreds of documents with classified markings there — sparking a federal investigation. But the club — and the people it gave access to Trump — had long been a source of consternation among former White House aides.

Mar-a-Lago is not only Trump’s home, but also a private club and event space. Paid members and their guests dine alongside him and often mingle with him; members of the public can book weddings, fundraisers and other events, and Trump often drops by.

Ye first shared details of the dinner in a video he posted to his Twitter account Thursday. Ye said he had traveled to Florida to ask Trump to be his 2024 running mate, and that the meeting had grown heated, with Trump “perturbed” by his request and Ye angered by Trump’s criticism of his estranged wife, Kim Kardashian.

“When Trump started basically screaming at me at the table telling me I was gonna lose. I mean, has that ever worked for anyone in history, telling Ye that I’m going to lose?” Ye asked in the video. “You’re talking to Ye!”

Ye also said Trump was “really impressed with Nick Fuentes,” whom he described as “actually a loyalist” and said he’d asked Trump, “Why when you had the chance did you not free the January 6th-ers?” referring to the defendants who were alleged to have participated in the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump released a series of statements Friday trying to explain the circumstances of the meeting.

“Kanye West very much wanted to visit Mar-a-Lago. Our dinner meeting was intended to be Kanye and me only, but he arrived with a guest whom I had never met and knew nothing about,” Trump said in his first statement released by his campaign.

Not long after, Trump took to his social media network to say that Ye and “three of his friends, whom I knew nothing about” had “unexpectedly showed up” at his club.

“We had dinner on Tuesday evening with many members present on the back patio. The dinner was quick and uneventful. They then left for the airport,” he wrote.

Hours later he again posted, saying he had told Ye that he “should definitely not run for President,” and that “any voters you may have should vote for TRUMP.”

“Anyway, we got along great, he expressed no anti-Semitism, & I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on ‘Tucker Carlson.’” he added. “Why wouldn’t I agree to meet? Also, I didn’t know Nick Fuentes.”

Fuentes, meanwhile, said after the trip that, while he couldn’t rule out that Trump had heard of him, “I don’t think he knew that I was me at the dinner.”

“I didn’t mean for my statements and my whole background to sort of become a public relations problem for the president,” he added on his show.

The meeting drew immediate criticism from Trump critics as well as some supporters, including David Friedman, who served as Trump’s ambassador to Israel.

“To my friend Donald Trump, you are better than this. Even a social visit from an antisemite like Kanye West and human scum like Nick Fuentes is unacceptable,” Friedman wrote in a tweet. “I urge you to throw those bums out, disavow them and relegate them to the dustbin of history where they belong.”

On Saturday, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a potential 2024 rival, also denounced antisemitism, without directly referencing the dinner or the president under whom he served.

“Anti-Semitism is a cancer,” Pompeo wrote, adding: “We stand with the Jewish people in the fight against the world’s oldest bigotry.”

Biden, asked about the Trump dinner meeting while vacationing in Nantucket, Massachusetts, replied, “You don’t want to hear what I think.”

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JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Republican Sarah Palin re-emerged in Alaska politics over a decade after resigning as governor with hopes of winning the state’s U.S. House seat. She had a lot going for her: unbeatable name recognition, the backing of former President Donald Trump in a state he carried twice, an unrivaled ability to attract national media attention.

But she struggled to catch fire with voters, some of whom were put off by her 2009 resignation, and ran what critics saw as a lackluster campaign against a Republican endorsed by state party leaders and a breakout Democrat who pitched herself as a regular Alaskan and ran on a platform of “fish, family and freedom.”

Palin lost two elections for the House seat Republican Don Young held for 49 years before his death in March — an August special ballot to determine who would serve the remainder of his term and the Nov. 8 general election for a full two-year term. Results of the Nov. 8 election were announced Wednesday. Both ranked-choice votes were won by Democrat Mary Peltola, who is Yup’ik and with her win in the special election became the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress.

Peltola, a former state lawmaker, avoided the sniping between Palin and Republican Nick Begich, who cast the former governor as a quitter and self-promoter. Palin suggested that Begich, who entered the race last fall, months before Palin, and is from a family of prominent Democrats, was a “plant” siphoning votes from her. The two nonetheless encouraged a “rank the red” strategy ahead of this month’s election in hopes of recapturing the seat for the GOP. The general election also included a Libertarian who lagged far behind.

Jim Lottsfeldt, a political consultant affiliated with a super PAC that supported Peltola, said the elections to many looked like “easy layups” for Republicans.

Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, could have “run away” with them but didn’t seem focused, he said. He cited as missteps Palin’s trips outside Alaska, including one to New York days before the general election, and “goofy” events at home, including one put on by a political action committee that was sparsely attended and featured a James Brown tribute performer.

With the losses, Lottsfeldt said, the one-time conservative sensation becomes “sort of old news.”

Republican strategist Brad Todd said Palin “had a lot of the characteristics that President Trump had before President Trump came along. And now there are plenty of imitators of President Trump.” He said that poses a challenge for someone like Palin, who has “a lot more company in her lane than she had 12, 14 years ago.”

“One challenge, and President Trump will have this challenge as well, is if you’re going to be the sort of like mercenary sent to fight big battles, you need to win,” Todd said.

But he said the “anti-elite vernacular” common in the Republican party comes naturally to Palin, and two election losses won’t “stop her from being a very powerful surrogate for some people if she wants to.”

Palin has pledged support since the election for an effort aimed at repealing a system approved by Alaska voters in 2020 that replaced party primaries with open primaries and instituted ranked-choice voting in general elections. This year’s elections were the first held under the system, which Palin began railing against before the first votes were cast.

Art Mathias, a leader of the repeal effort, said Palin has a “huge audience” and will be “invaluable” in efforts to advance it.

Palin told reporters on Election Day she wasn’t sure what she would be doing in two years if she lost but said “my heart is in service to Alaskans.” She also said she wanted to talk with members of Congress about what she could do, even outside elected office, “to help ensure that Americans can trust what’s going on in government.”

The comments were similar to those she made in 2009 when she resigned as governor. Palin attributed her decision to step down to public records requests and ethics complaints that she said had become distractions.

Palin, a former mayor of her hometown Wasilla, made a splash in conservative politics after bursting onto the national stage in 2008 with her folksy demeanor and zingy one-liners. She wrote books, hit the speaking circuit, appeared on reality television programs, spent time as a Fox News contributor and formed a political action committee that has since disbanded.

While she largely stayed out of Alaska politics after leaving the governor’s office, Palin was an early supporter of Trump’s 2016 run and made headlines this year with an unsuccessful lawsuit against The New York Times.

In a June interview she bristled at critics suggestions she had left Alaska behind, saying she lives in the state, has raised her kids here and is “so Alaskan” she had recently hit a moose while driving.

Palin has been making videos through Cameo, a site where people can pay for personalized messages from celebrities. Hers are advertised at $199.

Palin revived her 2008 mantra, “Drill, baby, drill,” during the House race in calling for more oil production, and while she and Peltola were friendly, Palin argued the ranked voting system had “produced the travesty of sending a Democrat to Congress to represent Alaska, one of the reddest states in the country.”

Andrew Halcro, a former Republican state lawmaker who ran for governor against Palin and was among the 48 candidates in the House special primary in June, said he doesn’t think Palin “really understood and recognized the high percentage of voters who just don’t like her.” Palin didn’t take steps to win them over or to attract Begich supporters, he added.

Begich was the second candidate eliminated in the general election after the Libertarian. When Begich’s 64,392 votes were transferred in the ranked choice voting tabulation process, just over 43,000 went to Palin but about 21,500 of his voters didn’t pick a second choice or gave their vote to Peltola, who defeated Palin with 55% of the vote.

But Halcro said he doesn’t see Palin disappearing from the stage.

“My question is, when have people like Palin or Trump ever walked away after they’ve lost? … They’ve just ratcheted up their rhetoric,” he said.

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Before Election Day, anxiety mounted over potential chaos at the polls.

Election officials warned about poll watchers who had been steeped in conspiracy theories falsely claiming that then-President Donald Trump did not actually lose the 2020 election. Democrats and voting rights groups worried about the effects of new election laws, in some Republican-controlled states, that President Joe Biden decried as “Jim Crow 2.0.” Law enforcement agencies were monitoring possible threats at the polls.

Yet Election Day, and the weeks of early voting before it, went fairly smoothly. There were some reports of unruly poll watchers disrupting voting, but they were scattered. Groups of armed vigilantes began watching over a handful of ballot drop boxes in Arizona until a judge ordered them to stay far away to ensure they would not intimidate voters. And while it might take months to figure out their full impact, GOP-backed voting laws enacted after the 2020 election did not appear to cause major disruptions the way they did during the March primary in Texas.

“The entire ecosystem in a lot of ways has become more resilient in the aftermath of 2020,” said Amber McReynolds, a former Denver elections director who advises a number of voting rights organizations. “There’s been a lot of effort on ensuring things went well.”

Even though some voting experts’ worst fears didn’t materialize, some voters still experienced the types of routine foul-ups that happen on a small scale in every election. Many of those fell disproportionately on Black and Hispanic voters.

“Things went better than expected,” said Amir Badat of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. “But we have to say that with a caveat: Our expectations are low.”

Badat said his organization recorded long lines at various polling places from South Carolina to Texas.

There were particular problems in Harris County, Texas, which includes Houston. Shortages of paper ballots and at least one polling location opening late led to long lines and triggered an investigation of the predominantly Democratic county by the state’s Republican authorities.

The investigation is partly a reflection of how certain voting snafus on Election Day are increasingly falling on Republican voters, who have been discouraged from using mailed ballots or using early in-person voting by Trump and his allies. But it’s a very different problem from what Texas had during its March primary.

Then, a controversial new voting law that increased the requirements on mail ballots led to about 13% of all such ballots being rejected, much higher compared with other elections. It was an ominous sign for a wave of new laws, passed after Trump’s loss to Biden and false claims about mail voting, but there have been no problems of that scale reported for the general election.

Texas changed the design of its mail ballots, which solved many of the problems voters had putting identifying information in the proper place. Other states that added regulations on voting didn’t appear to have widespread problems, though voting rights groups and analysts say it will take weeks of combing through data to find out the laws’ impacts.

The Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law is compiling data to determine whether new voting laws in states such as Georgia contributed to a drop in turnout among Black and Hispanic voters.

Preliminary figures show turnout was lower this year than in the last midterm election four years ago in Florida, Georgia, Iowa and Texas — four states that passed significant voting restrictions since the 2020 election — although there could be a number of reasons why.

“It’s difficult to judge, empirically, the kind of effect these laws have on turnout because so many factors go into turnout,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles law school. “You also have plenty of exaggeration on the Democratic side that any kind of change in voting laws are going to cause some major effect on the election, which has been proven not to be the case.”

In Georgia, for example, Republicans made it more complicated to apply for mailed ballots after the 2020 election — among other things, requiring voters to include their driver’s license number or some other form of identification rather than a signature. That may be one reason why early in-person voting soared in popularity in the state this year, and turnout there dipped only slightly from 2018.

Jason Snead, executive director of the conservative Honest Elections Project, which advocates for tighter voting laws, said the fairly robust turnout in the midterm elections shows that fears of the new voting regulations were overblown.

“We are on the back end of an election that was supposed to be the end of democracy, and it very much was not,” Snead said.

Poll watchers were a significant concern of voting rights groups and election officials heading into Election Day. The representatives of the two major political parties are a key part of any secure election process, credentialed observers who can object to perceived violations of rules.

But this year, groups aligned with conspiracy theorists who challenged Biden’s 2020 victory recruited poll watchers heavily, and some states reported that aggressive volunteers caused disruptions during the primary. But there were fewer issues in November.

In North Carolina, where several counties had reported problems with poll watchers in the May primary, the state elections board reported 21 incidents of misbehavior at the polls in the general election, most during the early, in-person voting period and by members of campaigns rather than poll watchers. The observers were responsible for eight of the incidents.

Voting experts were pleasantly surprised there weren’t more problems with poll watchers, marking the second general election in a row when a feared threat of aggressive Republican observers did not materialize.

“This seems to be an increase over 2020. Is it a small increase? Yes,” said Michael McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida. “It’s still a dry run for 2024, and we can’t quite let down our guard.”

One of the main organizers of the poll watcher effort was Cleta Mitchell, a veteran Republican election lawyer who joined Trump on a Jan. 2, 2020, call to Georgia’s top election official when the president asked that the state “find” enough votes to declare him the winner. Mitchell then launched an organization to train volunteers who wanted to keep an eye on election officials, which was seen as the driver of the poll watcher surge.

Mitchell said the relatively quiet election is vindication that groups like hers were simply concerned with election integrity rather than causing disruptions.

“Every training conducted by those of us doing such training included instruction about behavior, and that they must be ‘Peaceful, Lawful, Honest,’” Mitchell wrote in the conservative online publication The Federalist. “Yet, without evidence, the closer we got to Election Day, the more hysterical the headlines became, warning of violence at the polls resulting from too many observers watching the process. It didn’t happen.”

Voting rights groups say they’re relieved their fears didn’t materialize, but they say threats to democracy remain on the horizon for 2024 — especially with Trump announcing that he’s running again. Wendy Weiser, a voting and elections expert at the Brennan Center, agreed that things overall went smoother than expected.

“By and large, sabotage didn’t happen,” Weiser said. “I don’t think that means we’re in the clear.”

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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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JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy has won reelection, becoming the first governor in the state since 1998 to win back-to-back terms.

Dunleavy received over 50% of the vote after final tallies were released Wednesday, and the race did not go to ranked choice voting.

Dunleavy said he was “relieved that it’s over and behind us and now we can focus on the next four years.”

He attributed the victory to effective communication he says he had with Alaska residents, a practice that started with the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We told the people of Alaska on the first press conference we had on that virus that we were going to communicate consistently, constantly, and we were going to be transparent in everything we reported to the people, and that became the norm,” Dunleavy said in a phone interview after the win.

“I think that strengthened the relationship between myself and the people of Alaska,” he said.

Dunleavy, who during his first term faced a recall effort, overcame challenges in the Nov. 8 election from former Gov. Bill Walker, an independent; Democrat Les Gara, a former state lawmaker; and Republican Charlie Pierce, a former borough mayor who rejected calls to suspend his campaign after he was sued in October by a woman who said he sexually harassed her.

Gara and his running mate, Jessica Cook, congratulated Dunleavy and Lt. Gov.-elect Nancy Dahlstrom.

“Both of us wish Mike and Nancy strength as they address daunting problems that face all of us, from struggling schools that impact student opportunity to silent but damaging crises, including the lack of affordable and accessible childcare, affordable housing, and a vastly inadequate mental health workforce that’s needed by children and adults living in crisis,” he said in a statement.

Dunleavy kept a low profile during the campaign, with Walker and Gara lamenting his decision to appear in just a handful of debates.

Dunleavy’s first term was marked early on by tensions with lawmakers in both parties and by a recall effort fueled by public anger over vetoes and budget cuts he had proposed. Recall backers abandoned their push last year, with the governor’s race looming.

Dunleavy touted as significant the dividend paid to residents this year from Alaska’s oil-wealth fund, which combined with a one-time energy relief payment of $662 totaled $3,284 per person. He said the money would provide relief to Alaskans amid high inflation and energy costs. Last year’s dividend was $1,114. There is a yearly application process and residency requirements to qualify for a dividend.

Walker said he thought the payout, approved by lawmakers earlier this year amid a spike in oil prices, benefited Dunleavy’s candidacy.

“It’s hard to argue with money being sent out,” he said in an interview after the election.

The amount available for dividends for years was determined by a formula. But Walker, while governor in 2016 and facing deficits, cut the amount of funds available for checks. The size since has been set by lawmakers, who have been using earnings from the oil-wealth fund, long used to pay dividends, to also help pay for government expenses and limiting what can be withdrawn each year from earnings.

Dunleavy for years pushed unsuccessfully for a dividend in line with the old formula. He later proposed dividing the annual withdrawal from earnings 50/50 between dividends and government expenses. This year’s dividend was in line with that approach.

Two public interest groups in September filed a complaint with the agency that enforces Alaska campaign finance rules, alleging improper coordination between Dunleavy’s campaign and a third-party group that supported Dunleavy’s reelection. The campaign denied any coordination. An investigation report was expected sometime after the election.

This year’s state elections were the first since a divided federal appeals court panel last year struck down certain contribution limits, including limits on what an individual can give to candidates.

Gara was especially critical of the decision and blamed the Dunleavy administration for not challenging the ruling. He said on social media that he would “be there to work on a voter initiative to put limits back on Alaska campaign donations, so your voices are not treated less importantly than the voices of outside donors.”

Dunleavy ran on a ticket with Dahlstrom, a former state lawmaker who led the state corrections department during much of Dunleavy’s first term. The lieutenant governor, among other responsibilities, oversees elections in Alaska.

Dunleavy’s new term begins the first Monday in December.

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Associated Press writer Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Alaska, contributed to this report.

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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Democrats hope to use their newfound political control in some states to guarantee that women have access to abortion, while some GOP strongholds may temper their efforts to deepen restrictions after poorer-than-expected results in the midterms.

Even after their gains this month, Democrats lack the power to codify abortion rights into federal law. That puts the abortion debate squarely on the states to navigate and rework the patchwork of laws that have been in place since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

There will still be a patchwork of policies: In Minnesota, Democrats are planning to add the right to abortion into state law. In the GOP stronghold of Florida, leaders are talking about more restrictions but haven’t settled on a plan. In Pennsylvania, pickups for Democrats mean they can likely stop Republicans from adding anti-abortion language to the state constitution, and in divided states such as Wisconsin, a legislative stalemate remains.

“The real uncertainty is how far states go” with abortion bans, said Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California, Davis, School of Law and an expert on the politics of reproduction. Post-midterms, some states might think twice before forging ahead with strict bans.

But, she said, some conservative lawmakers might say: “I don’t see a problem here. We’re fine. We won our elections and our voters want abortion bans.”

The reversal of Roe, which enshrined the right to abortion nationwide, was broadly unpopular among voters. According to VoteCast, a survey of more than 94,000 voters conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago, about 6 in 10 say they are angry or dissatisfied by the decision, while about 4 in 10 were pleased. Among Democratic voters, about 6 in 10 say the ruling made them angry.

“Whatever people’s personal feelings are on abortion, they are very clear they don’t want the government and politicians monkeying around with their health care,” said Megan Peterson, executive director of Gender Justice, a Minnesota nonprofit that advocates for equal rights.

Minnesota doesn’t have any laws guaranteeing access to abortion, but abortion is protected under a 1995 state Supreme Court ruling that cites a woman’s right to privacy. After an election that will put Democrats in charge of both legislative chambers and the governor’s office for the first time in eight years, House Speaker Melissa Hortman said a priority when the session begins in January will be to codify abortion rights into state law.

In battleground Michigan, voters overwhelmingly approved an amendment that enshrines abortion rights in the state constitution and affirms a person’s right to make pregnancy-related decisions about abortion and other reproductive services without interference.

Nevertheless, one priority is to remove a 1931 law that criminalizes abortion from the books, said state Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks. Democrats took control of the House and Senate this month. When the new legislature is sworn in, it’ll be the first time since 1983 that the party had full control of the state government.

Brinks said Democrats want to eventually advance other legislation focused on reproductive rights.

“The people were very clear that they value their reproductive freedoms at a very high level and we want to make sure that we affirm that as well,” she said.

Elsewhere, a legislative stalemate could be on the horizon.

In Wisconsin, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers won reelection while Republicans increased their majorities in the state Legislature, but fell short of their goal of reaching a supermajority capable of overriding vetoes.

Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos renewed his call to pass a bill allowing for rape and incest exceptions and other changes to the 1849 law, to ensure that the state ban withstands court challenges. But Evers, voicing confidence in a court challenge, said he would veto any bill that keeps the ban in place.

“I don’t see a way to solve this legislatively,” Evers said.

Pennsylvania voters flipped about a dozen seats to Democrats in the state House, which could block Republican efforts to add anti-abortion language to the state constitution.

Nebraska Republicans want to ban abortion, but the GOP appears to have fallen short of securing the 33 seats it needs in the officially nonpartisan, one-house state Legislature to overcome filibusters. That could make it harder for them to ban abortion, even though they control the Legislature and hold every major statewide office.

Other GOP strongholds are seeing roadblocks to bans.

In Kansas, the Legislature retained its strong anti-abortion majorities, but abortion opponents are constrained by a 2019 state Supreme Court decision declaring access to abortion a “fundamental” right under the state constitution.

Voters in August decisively rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to overturn that decision. Abortion opponents instead are looking to other proposals.

Rep. Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican who is expected to become House speaker in January, said lawmakers may pursue a law requiring health providers to take all reasonable steps to save the life of an infant born alive, including after an attempted abortion.

“You have to do something that you think has a chance of passing muster,” Hawkins said.

Voters in Montana, where Republicans hold a super majority in the Legislature, rejected a similar ballot measure Nov. 8. Five days later, a lawmaker there requested a bill be drafted to “establish that an infant born alive is a person.” It has yet to be drafted, but another bill already drafted for next year calls for a ban on abortion at all stages of pregnancy.

Kentucky voters rejected a Republican-backed ballot measure aimed at denying any constitutional protections for abortion — highlighting an apparent gap between voter sentiment and expectations of the GOP-dominated Legislature, which imposed a near-total abortion ban.

“The people of Kentucky have spoken and their answer is no — no to extremist politicians banning abortion and making private medical decisions on their behalf,” said Amber Duke, interim executive director for the ACLU of Kentucky.

A judge in Georgia this week overturned a ban on abortion starting at about six weeks gestational age, ruling it violated the U.S. Constitution and U.S. Supreme Court precedent when it was enacted in 2019 because Roe was still in effect. But the judge left the door open for the Legislature to revisit the ban.

In Florida, which further cemented its GOP control, the issue was also murky. Florida passed a ban on abortion after 15 weeks with no exceptions for rape or incest during the 2022 legislative session.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis won by a landslide and the House and Senate went from firmly Republican to GOP supermajorities in each chamber. The governor and legislative leaders have all said they support new abortion restrictions, but no specific language has been proposed.

Christine Matthews, a pollster who has worked for Republicans, said even among conservative lawmakers, there could be more debates on how far restrictions should go, as there were this year in Indiana and West Virginia, where laws were passed banning abortion throughout pregnancy but with exceptions in cases of rape and incest.

“For the first time, some of these particularly male legislators were grappling with the fact that this is hard, not everything goes one way,” Matthews said. “People who support it as being between a woman and a doctor are like, ‘Yeah, no kidding.’”

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Mulvihill reported from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Also contributing were Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti in Lansing, Michigan; Amy Beth Hanson in Helena, Montana; Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska, and Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee, Florida.

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PHOENIX (AP) — Outgoing Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said Wednesday his Republican administration will ensure an orderly transition to Democrat Katie Hobbs, his first public statement on her victory.

Ducey met with Hobbs in his office more than a week after her victory became clear and days after the last ballots were counted. However, defeated Republican Kari Lake has not conceded and has worked since the election to draw attention to voters who say they were affected by a problem with ballot printers at some polling places in Maricopa County.

“All of us have waited patiently for the democratic process to play out,” Ducey said in a statement. “The people of Arizona have spoken, their votes have been counted and we respect their decision.”

Ducey called to congratulate Hobbs the day after The Associated Press and other news outlets called the race, but he had not made a public statement about the outcome before Wednesday.

Ducey was co-chairman of the Republican Governors Association, which spent more than $10 million on television ads attacking Hobbs, but he was not an enthusiastic supporter of Lake. He endorsed her rival in the GOP primary and, though he endorsed the entire GOP ticket for the general election, he did not campaign with Lake.

Hobbs, currently secretary of state, has formed a transition team that is vetting potential staff and preparing for her to become the first Democrat to hold the state’s top office since Janet Napolitano stepped down to be U.S. Homeland Security secretary after the 2008 election.

The Ducey-Hobbs meeting came a day after 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.

That challenge, filed in Maricopa County Superior Court, alleges a variety of problems affected the outcome of the extremely tight race. It says some ballots were counted that should not have been while others were rejected when they should have been counted. It alleges election workers made mistakes in duplicating ballots that could not be read by electronic tabulators and in determining the intent of voters when ballots were ambiguous.

The suit also claims some voters in Maricopa County were denied an opportunity to vote because of a widely publicized problem at some vote centers where printers produced ballots with markings that were too light to be read by on-site tabulators. Some voters experiencing problems left without voting and didn’t check out with poll workers, so they were unable to vote elsewhere because the county’s computer system shows them as voting.

The suit says Hamadeh and the RNC are not “alleging any fraud, manipulation or other intentional wrongdoing that would impugn the outcomes of the November 8, 2022 general election.”

“The voters of Arizona demand answers and deserve transparency about the gross incompetence and mismanagement of the General Election by certain election officials,” Hamadeh said in a statement.

Democrat Kris Mayes will ask a judge to dismiss Hamadeh’s complaint, Mayes attorney Dan Barr said.

“Abe Hamadeh’s complaint is devoid of actual facts,” Barr said in a statement. “It does not plausibly allege that mistakes in the administration of the election actually occurred, and if they did occur, that they would have made any difference in the result.”

Election Day votes went overwhelmingly for Republicans, but Democrats dominated mail ballots.

Maricopa County officials have acknowledged that some voters were inconvenienced by issues with printers, which were resolved in the early afternoon of Election Day. Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates has said the problems were made worse by prominent Republicans who led their supporters to fear ballots would not be counted.

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JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Alaska Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has won reelection, defeating Donald Trump-endorsed GOP rival Kelly Tshibaka.

Murkowski beat Tshibaka in the Nov. 8 ranked choice election. The results were announced Wednesday, when elections officials tabulated the ranked choice results after neither candidate won more than 50% of first-choice votes. Murkowski wound up with 54% of the vote after ranked choice voting, picking up a majority of the votes cast for Democrat Pat Chesbro after she was eliminated.

“I am honored that Alaskans — of all regions, backgrounds and party affiliations — have once again granted me their confidence to continue working with them and on their behalf in the U.S. Senate,” Murkowski said in a statement. “I look forward to continuing the important work ahead of us.”

Tshibaka in a statement posted on her website congratulated Murkowski but took fault with ranked choice voting.

“The new election system has been frustrating to many Alaskans, because it was indisputably designed as an incumbent-protection program, and it clearly worked as intended,” she said.

The race also included Republican Buzz Kelley, who suspended his campaign after the August primary and endorsed Tshibaka.

Murkowski was the only Senate Republican who voted to convict Trump at his impeachment trial last year who was on the ballot this year. Trump was not convicted. But her vote was a sore point for the former president, who vowed to campaign against her.

In 2020, before that year’s election and far before Tshibaka jumped into the Senate race, Trump announced plans to campaign against Murkowski after she criticized him: “Get any candidate ready, good or bad, I don’t care, I’m endorsing. If you have a pulse, I’m with you!”

He appeared at a rally in Anchorage in July for Tshibaka and Sarah Palin, whose run for Alaska’s lone U.S. House seat he endorsed. He more recently participated in a tele-rally for Tshibaka in late October. Tshibaka, who worked in federal inspectors general offices before leading the Alaska Department of Administration for two years, credited Trump with helping to raise her name recognition and give her candidacy a boost.

Meanwhile, Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy has won reelection, becoming the first governor in the state since 1998 to win back-to-back terms.

Dunleavy received over 50% of the vote after final tallies were released Wednesday, and the race did not go to ranked choice voting.

Dunleavy said he was “relieved that it’s over and behind us and now we can focus on the next four years.”

He attributed the victory to effective communication he says he had with Alaska residents, a practice that started with the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We told the people of Alaska on the first press conference we had on that virus that we were going to communicate consistently, constantly, and we were going to be transparent in everything we reported to the people, and that became the norm,” Dunleavy said in a phone interview after the win.

“I think that strengthened the relationship between myself and the people of Alaska,” he said.

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Associated Press writer Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Alaska, contributed to this report.

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JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola has been elected to a full term in the House, months after the Alaska Democrat won a special election to the seat following the death earlier this year of longtime Republican Rep. Don Young.

Peltola defeated Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich, as well as Libertarian Chris Bye in the Nov. 8 election. Results of the ranked choice election were announced Wednesday. Palin and Begich also were candidates in the special election.

“It’s a two-year contract,” Peltola told the Anchorage Daily News after her victory — a 55%-45% margin over Palin in the final tabulation round — was announced. “I will be happy to work for Alaskans again, as long as they’ll have me.”

Peltola, who is Yup’ik, with her win in August became the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress and the first woman to hold Alaska’s House seat. The win also buoyed her fundraising, outpacing those of her rivals in the lead-up to this month’s election.

Messages were sent to Palin’s campaign Wednesday.

Begich congratulated Peltola in a statement, adding: “Our nation faces a number of challenges in the coming years, and our representatives will need wisdom and discernment as they work to put America on a more sound path. My message to Alaskans is to continue to be involved and engaged.”

Peltola embraced Young’s legacy as she sought the two-year term and was endorsed by his daughters, one of whom presented her with a bolo tie of Young’s at an Alaska Federation of Natives conference where Peltola was treated like a rock star. Young held the seat for 49 years.

“Now, I’m a real congressman for all Alaska,” she said. Young often referred to himself that way. Peltola has described his legacy as one of bipartisanship and building support for Alaska interests in Congress.

Peltola was a state lawmaker from the small rural hub community of Bethel for 10 years, ending in 2009. She surprised many with her fourth place finish in the June special primary, in which she emerged from a field of 48 candidates that included current state and local officeholders. That finish was enough to send her to the special election.

During the campaign, she cast herself as a coalition builder, emphasized a desire for more civility in politics and sought to stay out of the sniping between Palin and Begich. Peltola, who most recently worked for a commission whose goal is to rebuild salmon in Alaska’s Kuskokwim River, raised concerns with ocean productivity and cited a need to preserve struggling fisheries.

She also stressed her support of abortion rights.

During a speech in October, she talked about the need for unity and lamented what she said have become pervasive messages in politics “about hate and fear and self-pity. And yes, those resonate, those are compelling motivators. But they’re destructive, they’re acidic, they tear us down.”

She said her priorities for the new term included committee assignments and “working very hard on getting our inflation rates down, our shipping costs down, getting costs down for working families and all Alaskan households.”

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Associated Press writer Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Alaska, contributed to this report.

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ATLANTA (AP) — Casting his vote this month in one of the most politically competitive states in the U.S., Seung Lee happily backed Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s reelection. But when it came to the other top Republican on the ballot, Senate candidate Herschel Walker, he was uneasy.

Walker “doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” said Lee, a software tester in the Atlanta suburb of Decatur who ultimately backed Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock.

He was just one of hundreds of thousands of voters across the U.S. who split their tickets this year in critical contests for governors’ mansions and congressional seats.

Voters deciding to split their tickets or buck their party altogether may have helped Democrats mount a stronger-than-expected performance in the midterm elections. AP VoteCast, an extensive survey of this year’s electorate, underscores how voters were selective in their choices in spite of today’s starkly polarized political climate, often rewarding candidates seen as mainstream while rejecting those viewed as too extreme.

In Georgia, Kemp won more than 200,000 more votes than Walker, a former football star who faced difficulties throughout his campaign, including his exaggerations about his business record, accusations of violence toward his first wife and allegations from two former girlfriends that he paid for their abortions. His underwhelming vote count forced him into a runoff with Warnock.

While 7 in 10 Georgia voters for Kemp said they enthusiastically backed him, only about half of fellow Republican Walker’s voters said that, according to VoteCast. Among Walker supporters, about 4 in 10 said they backed him with reservations and about 1 in 10 said they were simply opposing the other candidates.

The dynamics were even clearer elsewhere.

In Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro won the governor’s race by a larger margin than John Fetterman in the Senate race, earning nearly 280,000 more votes. Fetterman, who experienced a stroke in May, battled concerns about his health in a tight race with Republican celebrity surgeon Mehmet Oz.

VoteCast showed 8% of voters in Pennsylvania split their tickets. Among voters identifying as Republicans, a notable 9% went for Democrat Fetterman, and even more — 18% — went for Shapiro.

Ticket splitting in this election was especially notable given that it has been less evident in recent cycles “as voters have become more polarized and more partisan,” said G. Terry Madonna, senior fellow in residence for political affairs at Millersville University of Pennsylvania.

VoteCast shows voters for Oz and Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for governor, were less enthusiastic than voters for Fetterman and Shapiro.

Shapiro’s voters outpaced fellow Democrat Fetterman’s in enthusiasm. Still, despite many voters lacking confidence in Fetterman’s health, VoteCast shows Pennsylvania voters were somewhat more concerned about Oz’s familiarity with the state.

About 4 in 10 voters for Republican Mastriano said they supported him with reservations, and about 1 in 10 supported him in order to oppose other candidates. Overall, about two-thirds of Pennsylvania’s voters were concerned that Mastriano, who commissioned buses for people to attend the rally that preceded the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, had views that are “too extreme.” Only about 4 in 10 said that of Shapiro.

Mastriano “had a base among (former President Donald) Trump’s most loyal supporters, that’s why he got the nomination, but he could not expand that base,” Millersville University’s Madonna said. “Establishment Republicans also moved away from him.” Madonna suggested many were content to do so given some of Shapiro’s more moderate issue positions, including on fracking.

In Wisconsin and Michigan, incumbent Democratic governors overcame Republican challengers who were endorsed by Trump and repeated his denial of 2020’s outcome.

Sixty-three percent of Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ voters but only 47% of Republican Tim Michels’ supporters said they backed their candidate enthusiastically. About as many Michels voters said they supported him with reservations. By contrast, in the race for U.S. Senate, 54% of voters for victorious Republican incumbent Ron Johnson were enthusiastic about him.

Michels was a weaker candidate — “he had some liabilities,” said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School poll in Wisconsin. And in the Senate race, though Johnson won reelection over Democrat Mandela Barnes, the margin was narrower than his 2016 or 2010 victories.

“I think there’s a strong case here that the Democratic advantage in turnout boosted the governor’s race a little over two points from where it was four years ago, and also in the process tightened the Senate race to just that one point margin for Johnson,” Franklin said.

In Michigan, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was more enthusiastically supported than her Republican competitor Tudor Dixon. More were concerned that Dixon was “too extreme” in her political views than said that of Whitmer, 62% vs. 46%. About 1 in 10 Republican voters backed the Democrat.

Arizona stands out from the rest in measures of enthusiasm. Democrat Katie Hobbs defeated Republican Kari Lake in the race for governor despite Lake’s voters being more enthusiastic about the former television news anchor.

Forty-six percent of Hobbs supporters said they enthusiastically supported her, compared to 56% of Lake supporters. Forty-one percent of Hobbs voters backed her with reservations, while 12% were voting against the other candidates.

Lake, who more than once suggested to “ McCain Republicans” that they weren’t at home in her coalition, may have turned off the more moderate members of the party.

As in the other states, voters in Arizona were more likely to be concerned that Lake’s political views were “too extreme”, compared with Hobbs’, 59% vs. 51%. Eleven percent of voters who identified as Republicans backed Democrat Hobbs, including 25% of Republicans who identified as moderate or liberal.

“I think what you see is that this weird coalition has developed … we call it the pro-democracy coalition,” said Reed Galen, co-founder of The Lincoln Project, a GOP group that opposes Trump. “A combination of Democrats, independents and Republicans who move to the Democratic candidate, because that’s the person they see as most accessible.”

“But we shouldn’t underestimate how close a lot of these races were,” he added. “That’s why we call these things the game of small numbers.”

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Fingerhut reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Bill Barrow in Atlanta 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. Find more details about AP VoteCast’s methodology at https://www.ap.org/votecast.

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ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia counties will be allowed to hold early voting this Saturday in the U.S. Senate runoff election between Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker, under a Wednesday ruling from the state Supreme Court.

The court issued a unanimous, one-sentence ruling declining to review or stay a ruling by the state’s intermediate appellate court. Republicans had objected to the Saturday voting.

Warnock and Walker, the former University of Georgia and NFL football star, were forced into a Dec. 6 runoff because neither won a majority in the midterm election this month. Early in-person voting ends on Dec. 2, the Friday before Election Day, which means that Nov. 26 would be the only possible Saturday when early voting could be held.

At issue is a section of Georgia law that says early in-person voting is not allowed on a Saturday if the Thursday or Friday preceding it is a holiday. The state and Republican groups argued that means voting shouldn’t be allowed this Saturday, Nov. 26, because Thursday is Thanksgiving and Friday is a state holiday. Warnock’s campaign and Democratic groups argued that the prohibition applies only to primaries and general elections, not runoff elections.

Georgia’s 2021 election law compressed the time period between the general election and the runoff to four weeks, and Thanksgiving falls in the middle. Many Georgians will be offered only five weekdays of early in-person voting beginning Nov. 28.

Eighteen of the state’s 159 counties — including six of the 10 most populous — planned to offer voting on Saturday, interim Deputy Secretary of State Gabriel Sterling said on Twitter late Tuesday. Some counties plan to offer early voting Sunday, ahead of the required start Monday.

After initially saying in a television interview that voting would be allowed Nov. 26, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger then issued guidance to county election officials saying it is not allowed. Warnock’s campaign, along with the Democratic Party of Georgia and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee sued last week to challenge that guidance.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox issued an order Friday saying state law does not prohibit early voting this coming Saturday. The state appealed that ruling Monday and asked the Georgia Court of Appeals to stay the lower court ruling. The Court of Appeals issued a single-sentence order late Monday declining to stay the lower court’s order.

State officials accepted that ruling and said they would not pursue further appeals. But the Georgia Republican Party, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Republican National Committee, which had been allowed to join the case as intervenors, on Tuesday appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court.

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