Politics

ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia appeals court ruling on Monday means that counties can offer early voting this coming Saturday in the U.S. Senate runoff election between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker.

The Court of Appeals declined a request by the state to stay a lower court’s ruling that said state law allows early voting that day.

Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had told county election officials that early voting could not be held that day because state law says it is illegal on a Saturday if there is a holiday on the Thursday or Friday preceding it.

Warnock’s campaign, along with the Democratic Party of Georgia and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, sued last week to challenge that guidance.

Thursday is Thanksgiving, and Friday is a state holiday. The Saturday following those two holidays is the only possibility for Saturday voting before next month’s Senate runoff election between Warnock and Walker.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox on Friday issued an order siding with the Warnock campaign and the Democratic groups. He found that the law cited by the state regarding Saturday voting after a holiday does not apply to a runoff election.

Lawyers for the state filed an appeal on Monday with the Georgia Court of Appeals. They asked the court to immediately stay the lower court ruling.

They argued in a court filing that the ruling was erroneous for procedural reasons but also that Cox was wrong to consider the runoff a separate type of election rather than a continuation of the general election.

In a one-sentence order Monday, the Georgia Court of Appeals declined to stay the lower court ruling.

It’s not clear how many counties will open polling places for voting on Saturday.

Warnock and Walker, a former football player, were forced into a Dec. 6 runoff because neither won a majority in the midterm election this month.

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.

source

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — Two Philadelphia developers want to build a $3 billion housing, office and retail project on the site of a historic former airport in Atlantic City, the latest proposal for one of the largest tracts of buildable land near the ocean on the U.S. East Coast.

But the proposal by Tower Investments and Post Brothers unveiled on Monday faces competition from a previously announced, auto-centric project endorsed by Atlantic City’s mayor, who says developer DEEM Enterprises is about to sign a memorandum of understanding regarding the project “imminently.”

The state of New Jersey has the final say on what, if anything, will be built on the site of the former Bader Field, which used to house an air facility that was the first in the world to be called an “airport.” Bart Blatstein, CEO of Tower, called Monday for “an open, transparent process” to seek developers for the site.

The plan unveiled Monday is called Casa Mar, a water-intensive development inspired by the canals of Amsterdam.

Blatstein owns the Showboat Hotel and other properties in Atlantic City. Post Brothers has built 8,000 apartments and 700,000 square feet (about 65,000 square meters) of office and retail space in and around Philadelphia since 2006.

Blatstein called the proposal “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Atlantic City.”

“It’s going to be modeled on the canals of Amsterdam, with canals cut through the property,” Blatstein told The Associated Press. “It came from embracing the water and realizing we can create a lot more waterfront property.”

It would include 10,000 units of multifamily housing, 400,000 square feet of retail and office space, and 20 acres (eight hectares) set aside for walking trails and public recreational space.

The proposal is the latest in a string of plans for the 143-acre site, which is owned by the city but controlled by the state under a 2016 takeover law giving state government power over most of Atlantic City’s major decisions.

It follows one unveiled in February by DEEM Enterprises, a company based in both Los Angeles and Atlantic City.

That $2.7 billion recreational, residential and retail project aimed at car lovers would include a 2.44-mile (4-kilometer) auto course on which car lovers can drive their high-end automobiles; about 2,000 units of housing in various price ranges; a retail promenade, and other auto-themed attractions. Mayor Marty Small endorsed it in February, and renewed his backing on Monday.

“A (memorandum of understanding) between the city and the developer is imminent,” Small said. “It’s close. I appreciate Bart and his partners’ belief in Atlantic City, which sends a good signal.”

Dan Gallagher, one of DEEM’s partners, confirmed that his company expects to sign an agreement with the city in the near future.

“We are aware of (Blatstein’s proposal) and we’re moving forward,” Gallagher said. “We’ve been active for over two years, making public presentations, we’ve been before the city council, we’ve been to the state. We have a lot of time and money in the due diligence for this.”

Bader Field, which closed in September 2006 after 96 years of aviation use, gave the world the term “airport” when a local reporter used the word in a 1919 article.

In 1910, it was the scene of the first attempt to cross the Atlantic Ocean by air, 17 years before Charles Lindbergh would succeed. Walter Wellmann lifted off in the dirigible “America,” only to ditch it off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, when a storm hit shortly afterward.

Entertainers bound for Boardwalk ballrooms, business travelers and even U.S. presidents regularly flew in and out of Bader Field, but it remained the domain of small planes and private pilots; bigger jets landed at Atlantic City International Airport about 9 miles (15 kilometers) away.

Bader Field is where the Civil Air Patrol was founded shortly before the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. But a series of fatal plane crashes soured city officials on its use.

The city tried several times to sell the land, setting a $1 billion minimum price in 2008 but expecting at least $1.5 billion for one of the largest parcels of developable land near the ocean on the U.S. East Coast.

The thought was that at least three new casinos could be built there. Pennsylvania-based casino company Penn National offered $800 million, but the city held out for more, and a deal never happened.

___

This story corrects the name of the company to Tower Investments.

___

Follow Wayne Parry on Twitter at www.twitter.com/WayneParryAC

source

PHOENIX (AP) — A second Republican-controlled Arizona county on Monday delayed certifying the results of this month’s election as a protest against voting issues in Maricopa County that some GOP officials have blamed for their losses in top races including the contest for governor.

The delay came as Maricopa, the state’s most populous county, finished counting the last remaining ballots and the state attorney general demanded that officials there explain Election Day problems some voters experienced.

Arizona voters elected a Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, and gave Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly a full six-year term in office. But the race for attorney general was heading to a mandatory recount once the election is certified by all 15 counties and the secretary of state. Democrat Kris Mayes ended up ahead of Republican Abraham Hamadeh by just 510 votes on Monday after Maricopa County counted about 1,200 remaining ballots. Nearly 2.6 million Arizonans voted.

The split vote by the board of supervisors in Mohave County in northwest Arizona came with an explicit vow to certify the election on the Nov. 28 deadline. Members called it a political statement to show how upset they were with the issues in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and about 60% of the the state’s voters.

The all-Republican boards of two other counties, Pinal and La Paz, voted with little fanfare Monday to certify their election results.

Mohave became the second state county to delay certification, following Cochise in Arizona’s southeast. The board there made its decision Friday without a promise to certify the results by the deadline for doing so, despite setting a meeting to consider it. Instead the two Republicans who constitute a majority on the board demanded that the secretary of state prove their vote-counting machines were legally certified.

The state elections director told them they were, but the two board members sided instead with claims put forward by a trio of men who alleged the certifications had lapsed.

On Monday, state Elections Director Kori Lorick provided the county board with certifications for the vote-counting machines from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Lorick also warned the board that the state would sue if they did not certify on time.

County boards do not have the legal right to either change the results provided by their elections officials or refuse to certify them. And Lorick wrote that if the certification is not received by the secretary of state by Dec. 5, all the Cochise County votes will go uncounted.

That would give a boost to Democrats up and down the ballot in tight state races, since some Republican candidates got as much as 60% of the vote in the county.

Maricopa County had problems at about 30% of its vote centers Nov. 8 when tabulators were unable to read some ballots.

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 were told to place them in a secure box to be tabulated later by more robust machines at county elections headquarters.

Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich wants an explanation of how the printer problems happened before Maricopa County does its certification on Nov. 28. The head of his Elections Integrity Unit also wants to know how some of the uncounted ballots were mixed up at the polling sites and an explanation for issues experienced by voters who left to go to another vote center with operating tabulators.

“Arizonans deserve a full report and accounting of the myriad problems that occurred in relation to Maricopa County administration of the 2022 general election,” the head of the unit, Jennifer Wright, wrote.

Maricopa County board Chair Bill Gates said the county will respond “with transparency as we have done throughout this election.”

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.

In Mohave County, the board and the chair of the county Republican Party praised their elections director. But Jeanne Kentch joined GOP state chair Kelli Ward in saying Republicans were disenfranchised because of issues in Maricopa County.

“Mohave County voters, their votes have been diluted,” Kentch said. “Their votes have been worth less than they were prior to this vote due to the mismanagement and the disfunction of the Maricopa County elections department.”

The vote to delay the Mohave County vote canvass was not unanimous, although all five board members are Republicans. Member Jean Bishop called the decision “kind of ludicrous.”

“We’re not Maricopa County, we’re Mohave County,” she said. “Our vote is solid.”

The county board did the same after the 2020 election as former President Donald Trump pushed concerns about his loss in Arizona and pointed to Maricopa County as the source of his defeat. The board eventually accepted the results, however.

“This is 2020 redux,” board member Hildy Angius said. “If we don’t certify today, we’re just making a statement of solidarity.”

Ron Gould, a former state lawmaker, agreed that it was only a message.

“It is purely a political statement,” Gould said. “But it’s the only way that we can make that statement.”

___

Associated Press writer Anita Snow in Phoenix contributed to this report.

source

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Pennsylvania woman linked to the far-right “Groyper” extremist movement was convicted Monday of several federal charges after prosecutors said she was part of a group that stormed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Riley June Williams was found guilty of six federal counts, including civil disorder. But the jury deadlocked on two other charges, including “aiding and abetting the theft” of a laptop that was stolen from Pelosi’s office suite during the insurrection. The jury also failed to reach a unanimous verdict on whether Williams obstructed an official proceeding.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ordered Williams be taken into custody after the jury delivered its verdict.

Williams joined a mob’s attack on the Capitol after attending the “Stop the Steal” rally, where then-President Donald Trump addressed thousands of supporters earlier that day. Entering Pelosi’s office, she found a laptop on a table and told another rioter, “Dude, put on gloves,” before someone with a black gloved hand removed the computer, according to prosecutors.

Williams later bragged online that she stole Pelosi’s gavel, laptop and hard drives and that she “gave the electronic devices, or attempted to give them, to unspecified Russian individuals,” prosecutors said in a June 2022 court filing.

“To date, neither the laptop nor the gavel has been recovered,” they added.

A witness described as a former romantic partner of Williams told the FBI that she intended to send the stolen laptop or hard drive to a friend in Russia who planned to sell it to Russia’s foreign intelligence service. But the witness said Williams kept the device or destroyed it when the transfer fell through, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit.

Williams, a resident of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was arrested less than two weeks after the riot. She was charged with theft of government property, assaulting police and obstructing the joint session of Congress for certifying the Electoral College vote. Williams also faced misdemeanor charges, including disorderly or disruptive conduct.

Williams denied stealing the laptop when the FBI questioned her. She claimed her ex-boyfriend “made up” the allegation, prosecutors said.

Before she left the Capitol, Williams joined other rioters in pushing against police officers trying to clear the building’s Rotunda. Police body camera captured the confrontation, as Williams encouraged other rioters to “keep pushing,” and “push, push, push.”

Williams was wearing a shirt bearing the message, “I’m with groyper,” when she entered the Capitol. The term “groyper” refers to followers of “America First” movement leader Nick Fuentes, who has used his online platform to spew antisemitic and white supremacist rhetoric.

Other followers of Fuentes have been charged with Jan. 6-related crimes, including former UCLA student Christian Secor, 24, of Costa Mesa, California. Secor, who was waving an “America First” flag when he entered the Capitol, was sentenced last month to three years and six months in prison.

Williams’ online footprint also included material associated with “accelerationism,” a violent ideology that asserts “Western governments are corrupt and unsalvageable, and therefore the best thing a person can do is accelerate their collapse by sowing social chaos and generating political conflict,” prosecutors said.

In December 2020, Williams attended at least two rallies protesting the outcome of the presidential election. Both rallies featured speeches by Fuentes.

“Her admiration of Nick Fuentes, self-identification as a ‘Groyper,’ belief in Accelerationism, and support for violence all circumstantially show the mixed motives behind her actions on January 6: she not only specifically sought to block Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote, but also to undermine and obstruct the government more generally,” prosecutors wrote.

Before her trial, Williams’ attorneys questioned the relevance of her political activities and ideology.

“There is no evidence linking her beliefs and actions prior to January 6 with her actions that day,” they wrote. “There is a legitimate risk that jurors will judge Ms. Williams merely for the unpopular and extreme ideologies she has embraced in the past, rather than for the actual crimes with which she is charged.”

source

ATLANTA (AP) — Former President Barack Obama, reprising his battleground blitz ahead of the midterm elections, will campaign again for Sen. Raphael Warnock as the Georgia Democrat tries to withstand a strong challenge from Republican Herschel Walker before their Dec. 6 runoff.

Obama’s return trip to Georgia is scheduled for Dec. 1, the eve of the final day of early in-person voting that has proven critical to Democrats in recent years, including Warnock’s runoff special election victory nearly two years ago. Obama first appeared with Warnock in late October during the general election early voting period.

Warnock led Walker by about 36,000 votes in the general election but fell short of a majority, triggering a runoff under Georgia law.

Obama is the only significant national Democrat to campaign in person for Warnock, who has spent much of his reelection bid aiming for independent voters and even moderate Republicans, in addition to Democrats’ core supporters. Republicans, in turn, have sought to frame the race more as a national referendum on the two parties, tying Warnock to President Joe Biden and generationally high inflation.

Democrats managed to defend their Senate majority, already securing 50 seats — along with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote — and managing to limit Republicans to a threadbare majority in the House. But Georgia remains a key seat because a 51st senator would give Democrats an outright majority, including on Senate committees, while giving the caucus insurance against defections.

Warnock and other Democrats around the country embraced Obama as well-positioned to carry the party’s banner because he remains intensely popular among the Democratic base and is still well-regarded among independents.

Trying to capitalize on that standing before the general election, Obama took on the GOP framing of voters’ midterm choice, arguing that Republicans were offering no real solutions to inflation that the former president stressed is a global phenomenon, not something that Biden and Democrats in Washington created. Obama also called Republicans a threat to democracy, pointing to many GOP leaders’ continued support for former President Donald Trump and his false claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent.

In Georgia specifically, Obama hammered Walker, a celebrity athlete turned politician, as woefully unprepared for the Senate, an argument Warnock is pressing both in his campaign speeches and in paid advertising.

Walker has welcomed a parade of national Republican figures, including multiple visits from Sens. Rick Scott of Florida, the GOP’s Senate campaign chairman, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. But he has not appeared with Trump, despite their long-running friendship and the former president encouraging Walker to run and then endorsing him.

Most early in-person voting for the runoff is expected to occur from Nov. 28 through Dec. 2, the week prior to the runoff Election Day. Some counties plan to open early voting sites as early as Tuesday, but many counties said they couldn’t manage that in the days ahead of Thanksgiving. A state judge last week granted Democrats’ request to allow early voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, though state officials have appealed. It’s not clear how many local elections offices would be able to mobilize to stand up early sites on the holiday weekend even if they are allowed to do so.

___

Associated Press reporter Darlene Superville contributed from Washington.

source

Today in History

Today is Sunday, Nov. 20, the 324th day of 2022. There are 41 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Nov. 20, 1947, Britain’s future queen, Princess Elizabeth, married Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, at Westminster Abbey.

On this date:

In 1789, New Jersey became the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights.

In 1945, 22 former Nazi officials went on trial before an international war crimes tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany. (Almost a year later, the International Military Tribune sentenced 12 of the defendants to death; seven received prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life; three were acquitted.)

In 1952, President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower announced his selection of John Foster Dulles to be his secretary of state.

In 1967, the U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Clock at the Commerce Department ticked past 200 million.

In 1969, the Nixon administration announced a halt to residential use of the pesticide DDT as part of a total phaseout. A group of American Indian activists began a 19-month occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.

In 1985, the first version of Microsoft’s Windows operating system, Windows 1.0, was officially released.

In 1992, fire seriously damaged Windsor Castle, the favorite weekend home of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II.

In 1998, forty-six states embraced a $206 billion settlement with cigarette makers over health costs for treating sick smokers.

In 2000, lawyers for Al Gore and George W. Bush battled before the Florida Supreme Court over whether the presidential election recount should be allowed to continue.

In 2003, Michael Jackson was booked on suspicion of child molestation in Santa Barbara, California. (Jackson was later acquitted at trial.) Record producer Phil Spector was charged with murder in the shooting death of an actor, Lana Clarkson, at his home in Alhambra (al-HAM’-bruh), California. (Spector’s first trial ended with a hung jury in 2007; he was convicted of second-degree murder in 2009 and sentenced to 19 years to life in prison. He died in January 2021.)

In 2015, Jonathan Pollard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst, was released from prison after 30 years behind bars for spying for Israel. (After five years of parole, Pollard moved to Israel in December 2020.)

In 2020, Georgia’s Republican governor and its top elections official certified results showing Democrat Joe Biden won the state’s presidential vote over President Donald Trump; the margin was less than 0.5%, allowing the Trump campaign to ask for a recount. A recount of the presidential election in Wisconsin’s two most heavily Democratic counties began with the Trump campaign seeking unsuccessfully to discard tens of thousands of absentee ballots.

Ten years ago: Former boxing champion Hector “Macho” Camacho was shot while sitting in a car in his hometown of Bayamon, Puerto Rico. (Camacho died four days later after doctors removed him from life support.) “Elmo” puppeteer Kevin Clash resigned from “Sesame Street” amid allegations of sexually abusing underage boys, which Clash denied. Jack Taylor, a guard for the Grinnell College basketball team, shattered the NCAA scoring record with a 138-point performance as the Division III school beat Faith Baptist Bible, 179-104.

Five years ago: President Donald Trump announced that he was designating North Korea, which he called a “murderous regime,” as a state sponsor of terror. CBS News suspended Charlie Rose, and PBS stopped distribution of his nightly interview show, after a Washington Post report carried accusations of sexual misconduct from eight women.

One year ago: Police and witnesses said about 80 people, some wearing ski masks and wielding crowbars, ransacked a high-end department store in the San Francisco Bay Area, assaulting employees and stealing merchandise before fleeing in cars waiting outside. Tens of thousands of protesters, many from far-right groups, marched through Vienna after the Austrian government announced a nationwide lockdown to contain skyrocketing coronavirus infections; demonstrations against virus restrictions also took place in Switzerland, Croatia, Italy and Northern Ireland.

Today’s Birthdays: Actor Estelle Parsons is 95. Comedian Dick Smothers is 84. President Joe Biden is 80. Singer Norman Greenbaum is 80. Actor Veronica Hamel is 79. Broadcast journalist Judy Woodruff is 76. Singer Joe Walsh is 75. Actor Richard Masur is 74. Opera singer Barbara Hendricks is 74. Former national security adviser John Bolton is 74. Actor Bo Derek is 66. Former NFL player Mark Gastineau is 66. Reggae musician Jimmy Brown (UB40) is 65. Actor Sean Young is 63. Pianist Jim Brickman is 61. Actor Ming-Na is 59. Actor Ned Vaughn is 58. Rapper Mike D (The Beastie Boys) is 57. Rapper Sen Dog (Cypress Hill) is 57. Actor Callie Thorne is 53. Actor Sabrina Lloyd is 52. Actor Joel McHale is 51. Actor Marisa Ryan is 48. Country singer Dierks (duhkrs) Bentley is 47. Actor Joshua Gomez is 47. Actor Laura Harris is 46. Olympic gold medal gymnast Dominique Dawes is 46. Country singer Josh Turner is 45. Actor Nadine Velazquez (veh-LAHZ’-kehz) is 44. Actor Jacob Pitts is 43. Actor Andrea Riseborough is 41. Actor Jeremy Jordan is 38. Actor Dan Byrd is 37. Actor Ashley Fink is 36. Rock musician Jared Followill (Kings of Leon) is 36. Actor Jaina Lee Ortiz is 36. Actor Cody Linley is 33. Pop musician Michael Clifford (5 Seconds to Summer) is 27.

source

WASHINGTON (AP) — Trailing badly in his Arizona Senate race as votes poured in, Republican Blake Masters went on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program and assigned blame to one person: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“You know what else is incompetent, Tucker? The establishment. The people who control the purse strings,” Masters said before accusing the long-serving GOP leader and the super PAC aligned with him of not spending enough on TV advertising. “Had he chosen to spend money in Arizona, this race would be over. We’d be celebrating a Senate majority right now.”

Masters not only lost his race against Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly. He trailed every other Republican running for statewide office in Arizona. But there’s another problem Masters didn’t acknowledge: He failed to raise significant money on his own.

He was hardly alone.

As both parties sift through the results of Democrats’ stronger-than-expected showing in the midterm elections, Republicans are engaged in a round of finger-pointing, including a failed attempt by Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who led the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, to challenge McConnell for his leadership post.

But the recriminations obscure a much deeper dilemma for the party. Many of their nominees — a significant number of whom were first-time candidates who adopted far-right positions — failed to raise the money needed to mount competitive campaigns. That forced party leaders, particularly in the Senate, to make hard choices and triage resources to races where they thought they had the best chance at winning, often paying exorbitant rates to TV stations that, by law, would have been required to sell the same advertising time to candidates for far less.

The lackluster fundraising allowed Democrats to get their message out to voters early and unchallenged, while GOP contenders lacked the resources to do the same.

“This has become an existential and systemic problem for our party and it’s something that needs to get addressed if we hope to be competitive,” said Steven Law, a former McConnell chief of staff who now leads Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC that spent at least $232 million on advertising to elect Republicans to the Senate this year.

“Our (donors) have grown increasingly alarmed that they are being put in the position of subsidizing weak fundraising performances by candidates in critical races. And something has got to give. It’s just not sustainable,” Law said.

In key Senate and House battlegrounds, Democratic candidates outraised their Republican counterparts by a factor of nearly 2-to-1, according to an Associated Press analysis of campaign finance data.

Consider the handful of races that helped Democrats retain their Senate majority.

In Arizona, Masters was outraised nearly 8-to-1 by Kelly, who poured at least $32 million into TV advertising from August until Election Day, records show. Masters spent a little over $3 million on advertising during the same period after Senate Leadership Fund pulled out of the race

Meanwhile, in Nevada, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto raised $52.8 million compared to Republican Adam Laxalt’s $15.5 million. And in Pennsylvania, Democratic Sen.-elect John Fetterman took in $16 million more than his GOP opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz. That’s despite the celebrity TV doctor lending $22 million to his campaign, records show.

Similar disparities emerged in crucial House races, including in Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia, helping to limit House Republicans to a surprisingly narrow majority.

When it came to purchasing TV ad time, Democrats’ fundraising advantage yielded considerable upside. Ad sellers are required, by law, to offer candidates the cheapest rate. That same advantage doesn’t apply to super PACs, which Republican candidates relied on to close their fundraising gap — often at a premium.

In Las Vegas, for example, a candidate could buy a unit of TV advertising for $598, according to advertising figures provided to the AP. That same segment cost a super PAC $4,500. In North Carolina’s Raleigh-Durham media market, a $342 spot cost a super PAC $1,270. And a $580 candidate segment in the Philadelphia area cost a super PAC nearly $2,000, the advertising figures show.

Republicans also found themselves playing defense in states that weren’t ultimately competitive.

J.D. Vance, who won his Ohio Senate race by more than 6 percentage points, was outraised nearly 4-to-1 by Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan. To shore him up, Senate Leadership Fund poured $28 million into the state. The group’s advertising ultimately accounted for about 70% of all Republican media spending from August until Election Day.

A similar situation played out in North Carolina, where the McConnell-aligned super PAC was responsible for 82% of the Republican advertising spending during the same period. GOP Rep. Ted Budd won by over 3% of the vote.

But money woes weren’t the only complicating factor.

Donald Trump elevated a series of untested, first-time candidates. They included Masters, Vance and former NFL star Herschel Walker, whose complicated backstory includes threats of violence against his ex-wife, false claims of business success and allegations that he twice pressured a girlfriend to get an abortion, which Walker denies. Then there was Oz, who moved to Pennsylvania to seek the seat and also secured Trump’s endorsement, but was pilloried by Democrats as an out-of-touch carpetbagger.

The former president gave them his endorsement, but he was parsimonious when it came to sharing some of the more than $100 million he’s amassed in a committee designed to help other candidates. He ended up spending about $15 million on ads across five Senate races, records show.

Meanwhile, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, led by Scott, often worked at cross-purposes with McConnell’s political operation.

Early on, Scott ruled out getting involved in primaries, which he saw as inappropriate meddling. McConnell’s allies, meanwhile, moved to fend off candidates they saw as poor general-election contenders, like Don Bolduc, a far-right conservative who lost his New Hampshire race last week by nearly 10 percentage points. McConnell forces also defended Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a GOP moderate, against a conservative challenger.

“Senate races are just different,” McConnell said in August. “Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.”

In response, Scott took a shot at McConnell without mentioning him by name, suggesting in an opinion article published in the Washington Examiner that any “trash-talking” of Republican candidates was an “act of cowardice” that was “treasonous to the conservative cause.”

But his committee also struggled after making a series of bad bets, including a costly investment to boost the committee’s online fundraising.

An internal document obtained by the AP, which was previously reported by The New York Times, shows the committee invested $23.3 million to build out their digital fundraising program between June and January of 2021. But the NRSC raised just $6.1 million during that time — a deficit. Then, as inflation soared, the stream of cash from online donors slowed to a trickle.

That prevented the NRSC from spending as much on TV ads as in years past, even as Scott made bullish predictions of picking up as many as five Senate seats. The digital fundraising effort was a boon, however, for consultants, who collected at least $31 million in payments, disclosures show.

Some Republican senators are now clamoring for an audit of the committee. In an at-times heated Senate GOP lunch at the Capitol last week, Maine Sen. Susan Collins questioned Scott’s management of the NRSC.

Scott’s aides dismissed suggestions of financial impropriety and instead have accused McConnell of undercutting the committee.

During a Senate GOP lunch in August, Scott asked senators for donations to the NRSC, which is now at least $20 million in debt. Then McConnell addressed the room and told the senators to instead prioritize giving to Senate Leadership Fund, according to two people familiar with the discussion; they requested anonymity to describe it.

The interaction was part of a broader pattern by McConnell to sabotage the NRSC, said committee spokesman Chris Hartline.

“There was a very clear implication to donors that they should not give to the NRSC,” Hartline said. “And the result is it hurt our ability to boost our candidates and get their message out.”

McConnell allies, however, believe it was Scott who was using his post to burnish his own image at the expense of the party, potentially working to set himself up for a presidential bid, according to senior Republicans strategists. They were not authorized to discuss the McConnell allies’ conclusions and did so on condition of anonymity.

The gambit failed, as did Scott’s challenge of McConnell’s leadership position last week.

Faced with the prospect of solidifying their majority with another seat during a December runoff election in Georgia, Democrats were happy to offer unsolicited guidance to Republicans.

“My advice is to keep on doing what they are doing,” said Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, who led Senate Democrats’ campaign arm this year.

source

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — An Oregon gun rights group and a county sheriff have filed a federal lawsuit challenging a voter-approved ballot measure that is one of the strictest gun control laws in the nation.

The Oregon Firearms Federation and Sherman County Sheriff Brad Lohrey filed the lawsuit Friday in U.S. District Court contending the measure scheduled to take effect Dec. 8 is unconstitutional because it violates the Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”

The lawsuit seeks to prevent the measure from taking effect.

Democratic Gov. Kate Brown and Democratic Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum are named as defendants in the lawsuit.

Oregon voters earlier this month approved the measure that requires residents to obtain a permit to purchase a gun, bans large-capacity magazines over 10 rounds except in some circumstances and creates a statewide firearms database.

The lawsuit states that many best-selling handguns and rifles come standard with magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.

“Millions of law-abiding Americans own firearms equipped with magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition,” the lawsuit states. “There is nothing unusual or novel about this technology.”

The ban on large-capacity magazines would not apply to current owners, law enforcement or the military.

To qualify for a permit under the measure, an applicant would need to complete an approved, in-person firearm safety course, pay a fee, provide personal information, submit to fingerprinting and photographing and pass a federal criminal background check. The permits would be processed by local police chiefs, county sheriffs or their designees.

Proponents of the measure say it would reduce suicides — which account for 82% of gun deaths in the state — mass shootings and other gun violence.

Opponents, including the left-wing Socialist Rifle Association, say it would infringe on constitutionally protected rights and could reduce gun access among marginalized communities and people of color if law enforcement agencies are the arbiters of the permitting process. They also say permitting fees and the cost of the firearms course could also be barriers to access.

source

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Democrats celebrated winning what was billed as North Carolina’s lone toss-up race for the U.S. House this month, as state Sen. Wiley Nickel’s narrow victory over Republican Bo Hines in the 13th Congressional District helped weaken any national GOP midterm wave.

Nickel’s win creates a 7-7 split in the state’s delegation, marking the best showing for state Democrats after a decade of trailing the GOP in an otherwise closely divided state. Trial judges drew the latest district boundaries after redistricting litigation successfully blocked maps passed by the Republican-controlled legislature that could have whittled Democrats down to four seats.

“We’re a 50-50 state — we should have a 7-to-7 delegation,” Nickel told The Associated Press this week during a break in his congressional orientation in Washington. “When we have fair maps, we get fair results that reflect the choice of the voters.”

But there’s a good chance Nickel’s Raleigh-area district and others will be dramatically altered for the 2024 elections, returning the advantage to Republicans.

A confluence of events opens the door for General Assembly Republicans to pass their preferred congressional map in 2023 and have it used the following year. A new GOP majority on the state Supreme Court likely will be more skeptical of legal challenges that allege excessive partisanship.

“Seven-seven does not reflect the will of the voters in North Carolina,” House Speaker Tim Moore told reporters the day after the election. “So it should be something different. I don’t know what that is. But at the end of the day … let’s trust the voters of this state.”

Republicans hold eight of the state’s 13 U.S. House districts through the year’s end. Population growth gave North Carolina a 14th seat with the November election.

GOP legislators vehemently opposed a split opinion by the state Supreme Court last winter that struck down a more favorable map for their party by declaring the state constitution prohibited partisan gerrymandering of boundaries.

State law required the judge-drawn map be used only for this year’s races. Republicans will continue to have majorities in the state House and Senate next year comfortable enough to pass their favored map. Redistricting plans are not subject to Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto stamp.

Most importantly, Republicans will have a 5-2 majority on the Supreme Court come January with victories by Trey Allen and Richard Dietz for seats currently held by registered Democrats.

The current 4-3 Democratic majority ruled that congressional and legislative maps approved by the General Assembly in November 2021 unlawfully gave Republicans outsized favoritism compared with Democrats. The three Republican justices who dissented wrote that the constitution doesn’t expressly bar or limit partisan advantage in mapmaking.

The arrival of two more GOP justices makes it more likely — but not assured — that the court would uphold a future congressional map by the legislature while rejecting last year’s landmark ruling that defined illegal partisan gerrymandering.

Senate leader Phil Berger said he expected the state would now move away from what he called the “judicial gerrymander” to “what would be, I think, a different drawing of the congressional maps.”

It’s too soon to say what the next congressional lines will look like. Plans approved by the legislature but never implemented would have positioned Republicans to win 10 of the state’s 14 congressional seats.

Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at Catawba College in Salisbury, said Nickel would be a likely target for Republican lawmakers to place in a more GOP-friendly district.

Democratic state Sen. Jeff Jackson, who won the newly created 14th District seat covering portions of Mecklenburg and Gaston counties, and 6th District Democratic Rep. Kathy Manning of Greensboro, who won her third term, are also vulnerable, Bitzer said.

It’s possible the state Supreme Court shift could be moot. Litigation involving the congressional map is before the U.S. Supreme Court and could result in state courts losing the ability to judge laws involving federal elections, including seat boundaries. Oral arguments are scheduled for next month in the case, in which lawyers for Berger and Moore argue the U.S. Constitution delegates “the Times, Places and Manner” of congressional elections solely to state legislatures.

“Even if they’re unsuccessful in the U.S. Supreme Court, they now have a state Supreme Court that is most likely to be deferential to whatever the legislature comes up with, excusing any precedent” reached by the state justices, Bitzer said.

An analysis by Bitzer of federal statewide contests in North Carolina since 2008 show Republican candidates winning nearly 51% of the cumulative votes compared with 47% for Democrats. But the idea that a political party should be assured of seats aligned with their percentage support at the ballot box over time was shunned by authors of the state Supreme Court’s prevailing and dissenting opinions last February.

Nickel said he’s not worrying himself about what a future map looks like.

“We’ve got a huge opportunity to make some real bipartisan accomplishments in the next Congress, so that’s really the focus,” Nickel said. “At some point, they will draw new maps, but I’m optimistic that when that happens, we’ll have a seat we can run in.”

___

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

source

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Memories of the tumultuous 2016 Republican primary hung over the Las Vegas ballroom this weekend during the first major gathering of the party’s potential contenders for the 2024 nomination.

No fewer than 10 White House prospects stepped onto the stage to pitch their plans to fix the nation — and their party. The details varied, but within most speeches was an extraordinary sense of defiance rarely seen since former President Donald Trump seized control of the Republican Party six years ago.

Their central message: Trump can and should be beaten.

Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, pledged in April that she wouldn’t challenge the former president if he ran again. But Saturday night, facing hundreds of cheering Republicans, she vowed to give “1,000%” to a White House bid if she decided to get in.

“I’ve never lost an election, and I’m not going to start now,” she said as the crowd roared.

But as the donors and activists who gathered for the Republican Jewish Coalition’s two-day leadership conference applauded, perhaps no one was cheering louder than Trump himself from his Florida estate.

Trump’s team believes, as do a growing number of anxious donors and Republican operatives, that the GOP’s emboldened 2024 class may already be unintentionally re-creating the conditions that enabled Trump’s success in 2016. That year, a crowded Republican field splintered the primary electorate and allowed Trump to become the party’s presidential nominee despite winning just 35% or less of the vote in each of the three opening primary contests.

In the earliest days of the 2024 season, the 2016 parallels are eerie.

As then, Trump is viewed with suspicion within his party, his standing weakened considerably after several loyalists lost winnable races in this month’s midterm elections. And most of all, a parade of ambitious Republicans is lining up to take him on.

A small, but growing group of Republican operatives is warning Trump’s critics that the only way to defeat him is to rally behind a much smaller group of alternatives.

Eric Levine, a New York-based donor who attended the weekend gathering, called on his party to embrace no more than two or three candidates — and to move with real urgency.

“I don’t think we have the luxury of waiting,” said Levine, who has raised millions of dollars for Republicans in recent years and began speaking out against Trump only after the midterms. “If he becomes the Republican brand, the party is going to be destroyed.”

For now, at least, Trump’s rivals don’t appear to be heeding his warning.

The most popular alternative to Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, isn’t likely to enter the race until the late spring, his allies say. But in his keynote address Saturday night, he left little doubt that 2024 was on his mind.

“In times like these, there is no substitute for victory,” DeSantis said, citing over and over his overwhelming midterm success in Florida. “We’ve got a lot more to do, and I have only begun to fight.”

And in a series of interviews, several other would-be Republican candidates and their aides indicated they would likely wait until next spring or summer to enter the race should they decide to run. That’s even after Trump formally launched his 2024 campaign this past week.

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who isn’t ruling out a 2024 run, said Trump’s early announcement has created no sense of urgency; it simply highlighted his weakened political standing.

“I think all of us understand how little of a factor he’s going to be,” Sununu said in an interview. “He’s not scaring anybody out. Anyone who wants to run is going to run. It’ll be fun. It’ll be a wide-open race.”

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said it’s much too early to worry about winnowing the field.

“I think more voices, more potential choices,” said Hogan, who is openly weighing a 2024 bid after his term ends in January. “Trump needs to be tested. People need to go out there and be willing to stand up to him.”

Hogan continued: “I don’t think anyone’s going to listen to narrowing the field. Everybody’s going to say, ‘I should be the guy, I should be the guy, we should all be the guy.”

Christie, a failed 2016 presidential contender who then went on to lead Trump’s White House transition that year, said he ultimately expects seven or eight major candidates to enter the race, “which is manageable” compared with the 16 who ran against Trump in 2016.

“A lot of those people are fishing out of the Trump pond,” Christie said, suggesting that prospects such as DeSantis and Mike Pompeo are “MAGA guys” who would steal support from Trump’s base in a way that creates opportunities for others — like him.

Christie dismissed any talk of winnowing the field so soon.

“We should all rally behind someone? Okay, who? I don’t think there’s any obvious choice,” Christie said.

Trump advisers initially hoped that he might clear the field with his early announcement. They now believe a crowded field will help him by splitting the anti-Trump vote — just as was the case in 2016. Trump won the New Hampshire and South Carolina primary elections that year with just 35% and 32% of the vote, respectively. Seven others divided the overwhelming majority of the vote.

Trump’s team notes that his loyalists in key 2022 primary elections from Arizona to New Hampshire to Pennsylvania won their GOP nominations with between 30% and 40% of the vote — a base of support it believes continues to be his floor in the 2024 primary.

Former New Hampshire GOP Chair Jennifer Horn, who led the state party in 2016, said the growing number of likely 2024 candidates “should know better” this time around.

“They are feeding exactly the kind of environment that Trump needs to win,” Horn warned. “If past is prologue, we’ve all got reason to be concerned.”

And while there was evidence of Trump fatigue at the weekend conference, Trump received a warm reception when he appeared via teleconference on Saturday. The crowd cheered loudly when he noted his success in moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

But there was notable silence when he repeated his baseless claims about his 2020 election loss.

“The election was rigged. And it’s too bad it was, and Israel lost a lot,” Trump told the packed ballroom. “You better hope that a certain person wins the election in 2024.”

And with Trump already a declared candidate, some operatives worry it’s much later than his challengers think.

The first presidential primary debate could be just nine months away, using the 2016 presidential primary as a guide. By the summer of 2015, there were already 17 candidates in the race.

One of them was Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who is considering another run in 2024.

Speaking to reporters in Las Vegas, Cruz said Trump and his loyalists deserved some of the blame for the weaker-than-expected results in the midterms. “I’m frustrated when my party fields candidates with no realistic chance of success,” Cruz said.

But when asked about the 2024 presidential contest, Cruz said only there were several candidates “clearly positioning to run” against Trump. “I believe that voters can and should sort that out.”

Pompeo, Trump’s former secretary of state, who is among those positioning themselves to run, slapped at the former president repeatedly on stage this weekend without mentioning his name directly. Instead, Pompeo said conservatives deserve leaders “who fight for them, not ourselves or our own egos.”

And he acknowledged the looming 2024 primary.

“Who knows, the next time we’re together we could be on stage, multiple podiums,” Pompeo said. “Who knows who else might be there and what nicknames we’ll have?”

___

AP writer Jill Colvin in New York contributed.

source