Politics

WASHINGTON (AP) — With control of the House still hanging in the balance, Speaker Nancy Pelosi stayed mum Sunday on her future plans but said congressional colleagues are urging her to seek another term as Democratic leader following a strong showing in the midterm elections.

Appearing in Sunday news shows, Pelosi said Democrats are “still alive” in their fight to win the chamber and that she will make a decision on whether to run for House leadership in the next couple weeks.

“People are campaigning and that’s a beautiful thing. And I’m not asking anyone for anything,” she said, referring to House Democratic leadership elections set for Nov. 30. “My members are asking me to consider doing that. But, again, let’s just get through the (midterm) election.”

“A great deal is at stake, because we will be in a presidential election,” Pelosi said.

Over the weekend, Democrats clinched control of the Senate following Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s victory in Nevada. But in the House, a majority remains unsettled with neither party having yet reached the 218 seats needed to control the 435-member chamber. As of Sunday, Republicans had 211 seats compared with 204 for the Democrats, with 20 races still to be called by The Associated Press.

Some races can take days or even weeks to call.

Pelosi, D-Calif., declined to predict whether her party will retain control of the House, saying she was “disappointed” with four Democratic losses in New York, including by Congressional Campaign Chairman Sean Patrick Maloney, which ultimately could make the difference.

“Nonetheless, we still think we have a chance to win this,” she said. “Nobody would have ever expected that we would be this close. Well, we expected it.”

On the GOP side, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy is seeking to become House speaker if his party prevails, but the disappointing showing in the midterms has created turmoil for leaders and calls for a new direction. Former President Donald Trump’s effect on the 2022 races is also being hotly debated as he prepares to announce another run.

Pelosi on Sunday said she believed that President Joe Biden should run for a second term, citing his legislative accomplishments such as the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act as well as the creation of millions of jobs under his watch.

“He has been a great president and he has a great record to run on,” she said.

The 82-year-old Pelosi, who has led Democrats in the House since 2003 and is the first female speaker, had struck a deal with House members to serve for two more terms as leader — or four years — after Democrats won control of the chamber in 2018. But she hasn’t announced her plans, nor have her top two deputies, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C. There has been some pressure from younger House members to pass the torch to new leaders.

Pelosi’s decision also comes after her husband was attacked late last month in the couple’s San Francisco home, suffering a skull fracture and other injuries. The intruder, 42-year-old David DePape, demanded “Where is Nancy?” before striking Paul Pelosi with a hammer. She was in Washington at the time.

Pelosi said Sunday that her husband’s recovery will be a “long haul, but he’s doing well,” though the trauma of the attack was “intensified” by Republicans’ “ridiculous, disrespectful attitude.” Top Republicans, including Trump, had downplayed the attack and spread misinformation about it.

“It wasn’t just the attack. It was the Republican reaction to it, which was disgraceful,” she said.

Pelosi said her decision on whether to run again for House leadership will be “about family” but “also my colleagues,” citing a need to move forward “in a very unified way” going into a new Congress and the 2024 campaign season. She stressed the opportunities for Democrats that lie ahead.

“Who would have thought two months ago that this red wave would turn into a little tiny trickle, if that at all?” she said. “But we never believed that. We believed.”

“There are all kinds of ways to exert influence,” Pelosi added. “Speaker has awesome power, but I will always have influence.”

Pelosi spoke on CNN’s “State of the Union” and ABC’s “This Week.”

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Check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the 2022 midterm elections.

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

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SEATTLE (AP) — Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez has been elected to the U.S. House from southwestern Washington, capturing a district that has long eluded her party.

She defeated Donald Trump-backed Republican Joe Kent to prevail in the 3rd District.

The incumbent, long-time Republican U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, lost in the primary. She was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Gluesenkamp Perez — who co-owns an auto shop with her husband just across the Columbia River in Portland, Oregon — said that as a small business owner who lives in a rural part of the district, she is more in line with voters.

She supports abortion access and policies to counter climate change, but also is a gun owner who said she opposes an assault rifle ban, though she does support raising the age of purchase for such guns to 21.

“I am not your typical Democrat,” she has told voters.

Kent, a former Green Beret who is a regular on conservative cable and podcasts, has called for the impeachment of President Joe Biden and an investigation into the 2020 election. He’s also railed against COVID shutdowns and vaccine mandates and has called to defund the FBI after the search on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home for classified documents.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Blake Masters wasn’t posting the numbers of votes he needed in Election Day ballots as they were counted and released by officials in Arizona’s biggest county.

The Republican challenger was significantly outpacing Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly only in a small number of vote batches coming in from Maricopa County; in nearly all other cases, Kelly had a slight or substantial edge.

That’s what led AP to call the race for Kelly after Maricopa County released another batch of 80,000 votes late Friday.

There were some Republican activists in Arizona who advocated that voters intentionally wait until Election Day itself to drop off their ballots. Some of this push was based on theories that fraudsters could manipulate voting systems and rig results for Democrats, once they had seen how many GOP votes had been returned early.

Experts had also warned that such a last-minute crush of ballots could end up creating delays that can ultimately be used by a bad actor to undermine confidence in the election. There were some hang ups this year. About a quarter of voting centers in Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous, had a printing problem Tuesday, in which marks weren’t showing up correctly when voters showed up to print out their ballots. Officials said the problem was addressed within hours and everyone was able to vote.

Arizona has a long political history of voting Republican, but changing demographics have made the state friendlier to Democrats.

With Kelly’s victory, the Senate remained evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, with two races — in Nevada and Georgia — yet to be decided.

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PHOENIX (AP) — There was no powder in an envelope that was opened at the Phoenix campaign headquarters of Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, police said.

Phoenix police spokesperson Donna Rossi said Friday that “the state lab tested the items turned over to them,” The Arizona Republic reported. The lab “determined there was no substance inside.”

Phoenix police and fire officials said they were called to the building around 2 a.m. Sunday, on a report of an envelope containing suspicious white powder.

Police said at the time there were no reports of injuries or illness, though Lake’s campaign had said the staff member who opened the envelope was under medical supervision.

The Lake campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Republic.

The gubernatorial race between Lake and Democrat Katie Hobbs in the crucial battleground state remained too early to call as of Saturday morning. It often takes days to know the results of key races in Arizona.

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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Utah Democrats’ decision to back an independent rather than nominate a member of their own party to take on Republican Mike Lee transformed the state’s U.S. Senate race from foregone conclusion to closely watched slugfest.

Independent Evan McMullin, an anti-Trump former Republican best known for his longshot 2016 presidential bid, attracted millions in outside spending in his campaign against Lee. He forced the second-term Republican to engage with voters more than in prior elections and emphasize an independent streak and willingness to buck leaders of his own party.

Ultimately, though, it wasn’t even close. Lee is on his way to a double-digit win.

That’s spurring a debate: Did Democrats’ strategy create a blueprint to make Republicans campaign hard, compete for moderates and expend resources in future races? Or does the sizeable loss prove that Republicans’ vice grip is impenetrable in the short term, no matter the strategy?

The answers could contain lessons for both red and blue states unaccustomed to competitive elections.

Some Democrats say supporting McMullin was worth it — it shifted the political conversation, made the race competitive and forced Lee to spend almost double what he spent in his 2016 campaign. But other Democrats say the strategy hurt down-ballot candidates who didn’t have a strong top-of-the-ticket contender to help boost them.

“Building my bench in that sense is going to be so much harder. How do I convince candidates, going forward, that the Democratic Party will support them?” said Katie Adams-Anderton, Democratic Party chair in Utah’s second largest county.

Utah is among the fastest growing states, and Democrats hope they will be able to compete as the electorate becomes younger and more urban. Yet Republicans currently hold both Senate seats and all four congressional seats, occupy every statewide office, and this week expanded their supermajorities in the Legislature.

Four years after running for U.S. Senate herself, Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson supported Democrats’ decision to back McMullin. She credits it with making Lee sweat. Though McMullin lost, she said, coalescing behind an independent benefited voters by making the race competitive. She hopes putting Lee on his heels will influence how he governs and votes in the U.S. Senate.

“This was a unique moment, and I actually do think we’ve lost an opportunity by not electing Evan to help break up some of the hardened partisanship,” she said, noting that whether backing an independent was a good strategy depended largely on circumstances.

Votes remain to be counted, but Lee is on track to defeat McMullin by double digits. That’s a narrower margin than his 41 percentage-point victory in 2016 over grocery store clerk Misty Snow but wider than McMullin’s team anticipated.

McMullin won 100,000 more votes than Utah Democrats’ four congressional candidates did collectively, but preliminary results don’t suggest his campaigning against the two-party system energized voters enough to substantially buoy turnout.

Independents have won Senate races in Vermont and Maine, yet in deeply red states like Utah, party politics remain entrenched and important to voters.

To put together a fragile coalition of Democrats, Republicans and independents, McMullin focused closely on threats to democracy. Rather than campaign on traditional midterm election issues, he attacked Lee’s November 2020 text messages to Trump’s White House chief of staff about ways to challenge President Joe Biden’s victory.

Both Lee and Democrats skeptical of his candidacy criticized McMullin for being unclear on issues such as abortion or infrastructure spending.

“You say you want to put country over party. I respect that,” Lee said at an October debate, addressing McMullin. “But parties are an important proxy for ideas. You see, because it’s ideas more than parties that tell the people how you will vote.”

Kael Weston, the Democrat Senate candidate who lost the party’s backing when it lined up behind McMullin, acknowledged it would have been difficult for a Democrat to defeat Lee. But he said McMullin’s focus came at the expense of local concerns, such as water or the closure of rural post offices. Focusing on those kinds of issues is the path to making elections competitive in red states, not becoming “Republican lite,” he said.

Though outside spending from Democratic-donor funded PACs and conservative groups like Club for Growth reflect how the race was more competitive than usual, Weston said, McMullin’s attempts to distance himself from Biden and Democrats hurt Democrats who were lower on the ballot.

“If all you see for three months is, Joe Biden is evil and Democrat is a four-letter word, that has an effect,” he said, noting the anti-McMullin television ads might have hurt Democratic candidates for statehouse seats.

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Today in History

Today is Saturday, Nov. 12, the 316th day of 2022. There are 49 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Nov. 12, 1927, Josef Stalin became the undisputed ruler of the Soviet Union as Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party.

On this date:

In 1920, baseball got its first “czar” as Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was elected commissioner of the American and National Leagues.

In 1936, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened as President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressed a telegraph key in Washington, D.C., giving the green light to traffic.

In 1942, the World War II naval Battle of Guadalcanal began. (The Allies ended up winning a major victory over Japanese forces.)

In 1948, former Japanese premier Hideki Tojo and several other World War II Japanese leaders were sentenced to death by a war crimes tribunal.

In 1970, the Bhola cyclone struck East Pakistan; it’s believed that as many as a half million people were killed.

In 1975, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas retired because of failing health, ending a record 36-year term.

In 1982, Yuri V. Andropov (ahn-DROH’-pawf) was elected to succeed the late Leonid I. Brezhnev as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee.

In 1996, a Saudi Boeing 747 jetliner collided shortly after takeoff from New Delhi, India, with a Kazak Ilyushin (il-YOO’-shin)-76 cargo plane, killing 349 people.

In 2001, American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300 headed to the Dominican Republic, crashed after takeoff from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 260 people on board and five people on the ground.

In 2009, Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan (nih-DAHL’ mah-LEEK’ hah-SAHN’) was charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder in the Fort Hood, Texas, shooting rampage. (Hasan was later convicted and sentenced to death; no execution date has been set.)

In 2019, Venice saw its worst flooding in more than 50 years, with the water reaching 6.14 feet above average sea level; damage was estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

In 2020, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a broad coalition of top government and industry officials, rejected President Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud, saying that the election was “the most secure in American history“ and that there was “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised.”

Ten years ago: The United States was re-elected to another three-year term on the U.N. Human Rights Council in the only contested election for the organization’s top human rights body.

Five years ago: President Donald Trump said he believed U.S. intelligence agencies, which concluded that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, but that he also believed that Russia’s Vladimir Putin felt that Russia did not interfere. Trump exchanged taunts with North Korea’s leader, tweeting, “Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me ‘old,’ when I would NEVER call him ‘short and fat?‘”

One year ago: Steve Bannon, a longtime ally to former President Donald Trump, was indicted on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress after he defied a subpoena from the House committee investigating the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. (Bannon would be convicted and sentenced to four months in prison.) The government directed nursing homes to open their doors wide to visitors, easing many remaining pandemic restrictions while urging residents, families and facility staff to keep their guard up against coronavirus outbreaks. A judge in Los Angeles ended the conservatorship that had controlled the life and money of pop star Britney Spears for nearly 14 years.

Today’s Birthdays: Singer Brian Hyland is 79. Actor-playwright Wallace Shawn is 79. Rock musician Booker T. Jones (Booker T. & the MGs) is 78. Sportscaster Al Michaels is 78. Singer-songwriter Neil Young is 77. Rock musician Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser (Blue Oyster Cult) is 75. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., is 73. Country/gospel singer Barbara Fairchild is 72. Actor Megan Mullally is 64. Actor Vincent Irizarry is 63. Olympic gold medal gymnast Nadia Comaneci (koh-muh-NEECH’) is 61. Rock musician David Ellefson is 58. Retired MLB All-Star Sammy Sosa is 54. Figure skater Tonya Harding is 52. Actor Rebecca Wisocky is 51. Actor Radha Mitchell is 49. Actor Lourdes Benedicto is 48. Actor Tamala Jones is 48. Singer Tevin Campbell is 46. Actor Ashley Williams is 44. Actor Cote de Pablo is 43. Actor Ryan Gosling is 42. Contemporary Christian musician Chris Huffman is 42. Actor Anne Hathaway is 40. Pop singer Omarion is 38. NBA All-Star Russell Westbrook is 34. Folk-rock musician Griffin Goldsmith (Dawes) is 32. Actor Macey Cruthird is 30.

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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The crowd at South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster’s election night party chanted along with the Republican incumbent as he closed his victory speech with a Tim McGraw lyric: “I like it, I love it, I want some more of it.”

It was a fitting tune for the South Carolina Republican Party, which got more than just “some” of it in a cycle when its GOP counterparts across the country failed to generate the wins typically seen during a midterm election under an opposing party’s president. McMaster won reelection by nearly 18 points, double the margin in his last go-around and the largest victory in a South Carolina gubernatorial race since 1990.

But the substantial success came down ballot. Republicans netted seven more state House seats– including five districts represented by African American Democrats in a surprising result, even after redistricting — to gain a supermajority in the lower chamber for the first time since at least Reconstruction.

Election night was “better here in South Carolina, certainly, than other places around the country,” Drew McKissick, the state GOP chairman, told reporters on Wednesday. “In South Carolina, the ‘Red Wave’ came and swept in along the coast and went all the way to the upstate, proving, yet again, what we already know, that South Carolina is a solid Republican state.”

Tuesday’s results cemented the state GOP’s gains over the last decade in rural areas, according to Matt Moore, who served as South Carolina Republican Party chair from 2013 to 2017. House districts covering rural counties like Jasper and Hampton, Greenwood and McCormick, Sumter and Clarendon, and parts of Charleston and Colleton all flipped to Republicans. Meanwhile, Democrats picked up one seat in suburban Richland County.

Republicans have been growing their legislative majority for a generation now. When Moore was party chair, he said a total of 80 House Republicans felt out of reach. That there could be as many as 88 House Republicans next term is “stunning” to him.

White, rural South Carolina has become less and less competitive, said Vincent Sheheen, a former state Senator who ran twice as the Democratic gubernatorial nominee.

“You’re seeing that the suburbs are more competitive,” Sheheen said. “But you also saw traditional Democratic strongholds crumble in the rural areas.”

McKissick partially attributed his party’s success this year to the state GOP’s largest door-knocking campaign for a midterm election. He also said strong candidates at the top in McMaster and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott helped “build a straight-ticket machine all around the state.”

South Carolina is one of six states that allows voters to choose all of their party’s candidates straight down the ticket with a single ballot selection. The system had long benefited Democrats until 2016, when McKissick said South Carolina Republicans outpaced the opposition in straight-ticket voting for the first time. This year, 62% of the roughly 1 million straight-ticket ballots cast in South Carolina were Republican, according to McKissick.

Republicans’ straight-party votes alone set them up to quickly outpace all votes cast for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Joe Cunningham.

“South Carolina Republicans are supporting the team more than Republicans in other states,” Moore said. “The reason is good candidates. Republicans lost nationally where bad candidates underperformed.”

Straight-ticket voting — along with gerrymandering — decreases competitiveness and contributes to lower turnout, according to Joshua Meyer-Gutbrod, a political science professor at the University of South Carolina.

Roughly 60% of South Carolina state House candidates ran unopposed, including 55 Republicans and 17 Democrats. That figure is higher than the national average for uncompetitive races, which is about 40%, according to Meyer-Gutbrod. No Democrat ran in statewide elections for Treasurer, Attorney General, Comptroller General or Commissioner of Agriculture.

Lawmakers also gerrymandered competition out of some state House races, Meyer-Gutbrod said, benefitting not only the Republican majority but incumbents from both major parties.

“It leaves citizens looking at it thinking their vote isn’t going to count. There is very little chance to swing an election,” Meyer-Gutbrod said. “And the result is they just don’t turn out. Why invest that cost if the chances of you having an impact aren’t that prominent?”

Midterm turnout dropped among all South Carolina registered voters from 55% in 2018 to roughly 51% in 2022. Meanwhile, the state added over 241,000 registered voters amid population growth. The number of Democratic straight tickets dropped by nearly 160,000 compared to the totals four years ago.

Some South Carolina Democrats — inspired in 2020 by record fundraising totals for Jaime Harrison’s unsuccessful challenge to U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham — are now questioning how to move forward.

While Democrats might expect to lose in a conservative state like South Carolina, Mandy Powers Norrell said they shouldn’t expect turnout to drop. For Norrell, the 2018 Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, the reduction was “shocking.”

“We had fewer people actually show up to the polls by a lot. But we increased our registered voters by a quarter of a million,” she said. “That points to a problem with, I think, inspiring the base.”

State Rep. Jermaine Johnson said there was a lack of Democratic excitement, calling the mood “abysmal.” The Democratic lawmaker said the party wrongly expected abortion to be its “saving grace,” but liberal anger over the Supreme Court reversing its Roe v. Wade decision protecting rights to the procedure didn’t buoy turnout in South Carolina.

Johnson called on elected officials, state party leaders and county-level offices to build a “consolidated, team effort.” That process should start by engaging likely Democratic voters and those who have stopped voting on the local issues most important to them, Johnson said.

“If we don’t stop the bleeding and put a Band-Aid on this bleeding right now, we’re going to see much worse in two years when the (state) Senators come up for reelection,” Johnson said.

South Carolina Democrats face the challenge of convincing Black voters, a key part of their base, that the party can prioritize their interests while statewide candidates attract broad enough appeal to win, said Todd Shaw, a University of South Carolina professor of political science and African American studies. The state’s Black voters are “very pragmatic,” he said.

“For the most part, with some notable exceptions, the Deep South remains deep red,” Shaw said. “It’s a Catch-22: you’re in a deep red state and you’re in a weakened position and you haven’t yet built an effective coalition that you can convince that there’s a pathway to winning.”

Sheheen said boosting turnout requires showing voters that they will make a difference, pulling in swing voters and moderates. That was always going to be a tall task this year for the state’s Democrats, he said.

“All politics is national. And that is very true in this state,” Sheheen said. “The national trend gets exacerbated in this state. So if it’s a light Republican trend nationally, which it was this year — they were talking about a wave, it wasn’t a wave nationally but it was still a light Republican trend — then it is going to be more pronounced here.”

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

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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Republicans have claimed key victories in state Supreme Court races that will give them an advantage in major redistricting fights, while Democrats notched similarly significant wins with help from groups focused on defending abortion access.

The expensive fights over court control in several states in Tuesday’s election highlight just how partisan the formerly low-key judicial races have become. Observers say they’re a sign of what to expect as legal battles over abortion, voting rights and other issues are being fought at the state level.

“Nothing about this election suggests to me that we’re going to see these races quiet down anytime soon,” said Douglas Keith, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school, which tracks spending in judicial races.

About $97 million was spent on state Supreme Court elections during the 2019-2020 election cycle, according to the Brennan Center. Once this year’s numbers are tallied, spending records are expected to be shattered in some of the 25 states that had races targeted by groups on the right and the left.

One of the biggest players was the Republican State Leadership Committee, which focused heavily on the court races in North Carolina and Ohio.

“Republican wins in the Tarheel State and Buckeye State ensure that the redistricting fights ahead in those states within the next decade are ruled on by strong conservatives who will follow the Constitution and don’t believe it’s their role to draw maps from the bench,” said Dee Duncan, president of the committee’s Judicial Fairness Initiative.

North Carolina’s court flipped from a 4-3 Democrat majority to 5-2 Republican Tuesday night. The court in recent years has issued decisions favoring the Democratic majority in cases involving redistricting, criminal justice, education funding and voter ID laws.

At least $15 million was spent on those races, with more than $8 million from two super PACS — one on the left that focused primarily on abortion and one on the right that focused on crime. Despite the outside groups’ involvement, candidates ran on a similar platform of keeping personal politics out of the courtroom.

“Now, we’ll be watching to make sure that the justices sitting in those seats follow through on those promises,” said Ann Webb, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina.

In Ohio, Republicans maintained their 4-3 majority on the court, with two GOP justices fending off challenges and a sitting Republican winning her bid for chief justice. The state’s GOP governor, Mike DeWine, will appoint a justice to fill the resulting vacancy.

The results may expand the conservative bent of the court even further, with cases regarding the state’s six-week abortion ban and redistricting on the horizon. Republican Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, who did not seek reelection, has sided with court’s three Democrats on high profile cases.

But Democratic groups working to protect abortion rights ramped up efforts to defend seats after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and saw victories in several other parts of the country.

In Illinois, which is surrounded by states with abortion bans that took effect after Roe was overturned, groups pushing to retain the state’s Democrat court majority had warned a GOP takeover could result in similar threats to access.

“I don’t think there’s anyone who doesn’t think abortion was the critical issue in these races,” Terry Cosgrove, president and CEO of Personal PAC, an abortion rights group that spent nearly $3 million supporting the Democrats in the races.

In Michigan, Democrats maintained their 4-3 majority on the Supreme Court after incumbent justices from opposing parties who had split on a key abortion ruling won reelection. Michigan’s high court races are officially nonpartisan, though the state’s political parties nominate candidates.

Democratic-backed Justice Richard Bernstein, who voted with the court’s majority to put an abortion rights amendment on the ballot, won reelection along with Republican Justice Brian Zahra, who voted against it. Voters approved the measure Tuesday.

“The Michigan Supreme Court election was critical especially since we didn’t know what the status of (the abortion rights amendment) would be,” said Ashlea Phenicie, communications director for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan, which spent nearly $1 million on the races.

Kansas voters kept all six state Supreme Court justices who were on the ballot for separate yes-or-no votes on whether they remained on the bench another six years. The state’s most influential anti-abortion group, Kansans for Life, pushed to remove five of them, largely over the court’s 2019 decision declaring access to abortion a “fundamental” right under the Kansas Constitution.

Two of the six court members on the ballot were part of the 6-1 majority in that 2019 decision. Voters also retained the court’s most conservative member, the only dissenter in the 2019 abortion decision.

Republican bids for court seats failed in even some of the most conservative parts of the country.

Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Michelle Keller defeated Joseph Fischer, a Republican lawmaker who sponsored the state’s “trigger law” ending abortion following Roe’s reversal. Fischer also was the lead sponsor of an anti-abortion constitutional amendment that voters rejected Tuesday.

Supreme Court Justice Robin Wynne in Arkansas, which has had some of the most contentious judicial races over the years, fended off a challenge from District Judge Chris Carnahan, a former executive director of the state Republican Party.

Arkansas’ court seats are nonpartisan, but Carnahan had touted himself as a conservative and had the endorsement of the state GOP. A group formed by a Republican lawmaker ran TV ads calling Wynne, who served as a Democrat in the state Legislature in the 1980s, a liberal.

An unprecedented partisan pitch by Montana Republicans to install a party loyalist on that state’s Supreme Court also fell short, with Justice Ingrid Gustafson defeating challenger James Brown, who had the backing of Gov. Greg Gianforte and other top Republicans. The unusually expensive campaign came as the court is preparing to hear challenges over Montana’s abortion restrictions and voting access.

Gustafson called her win a sign that voters were more interested in experience than ideology.

“The people in Montana think our judiciary is doing a good job and it is a very, very small minority that has some sort of other agenda,” she said.

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Associated Press writers Hannah Schoenbaum in Raleigh, North Carolina; John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; Bruce Schreiner in Louisville, Kentucky; Ed White in Detroit, Michigan; and Amy Beth Hanson in Helena, Montana contributed to this report. ___ Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections. And check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterms.

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LAS VEGAS (AP) — Control of the U.S. Senate may come down to Nevada, where a slow ballot count entered its final act Saturday in the nail-biter contest between Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican challenger Adam Laxalt.

Saturday is the last day that mail ballots can arrive and be counted under the state’s new voting law. Election officials were hustling to get through a backlog of tens of thousands of ballots to determine the race’s winner.

The Nevada race took on added importance after Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly was declared the winner of his reelection campaign in Arizona on Friday night, giving his party 49 seats in the chamber. Republicans also have 49.

If Cortez Masto wins, Democrats would maintain their control of the Senate given Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote. If Laxalt wins, the Georgia Senate runoff next month would determine which party has the single-vote Senate edge.

Cortez Masto was only a few hundred votes behind Laxalt, with most of the remaining uncounted ballots in heavily Democratic Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. Democrats were confident those ballots would vault their candidate into the lead.

Laxalt has said he expects to maintain his advantage and be declared the victor. But on Saturday he acknowledged in a tweet that the calculus has changed because Cortez Masto had performed better than Republicans expected in Clark County ballots counted over the past few days.

“This has narrowed our victory window,” he tweeted, acknowledging the race comes down to the final Clark ballots.

“If they are GOP precincts or slightly DEM leaning then we can still win,” Laxalt tweeted. “If they continue to trend heavy DEM then she will overtake us.”

If the race remains too close to call after Saturday, a few thousand more ballots could be added to the totals early next week. Mail ballots with clerical errors can be “cured” by voters until the end of the day Monday, and then added to the totals. And a few thousand provisional ballots also remain, votes that election officials must double-check are legally countable by Tuesday before they can be tallied.

“We are doing everything in our power to move ballots forward just as quickly as we can,” Joe Gloria, the registrar in Clark County, said Friday.

An estimated 23,000 ballots remain to be counted in the county. Gloria said there were also 9,600 ballots being “cured” and 5,555 provisional ballots. Clark County accounts for three-quarters of Nevada’s population.

In another key race, Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak lost his reelection bid to his Republican challenger, sheriff Joe Lombardo, on Friday night.

Nevada, a closely divided swing state, is one of the most racially diverse in the nation, a working class state whose residents have been especially hard hit by inflation and other economic turmoil.

Roughly three-fourths of Nevada voters said the country is headed in the wrong direction, and about 5 in 10 called the economy the most important issue facing the country, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of 2,100 of the state’s voters.

Voters viewed the economy negatively, with VoteCast finding nearly 8 in 10 saying economic conditions are either not so good or poor. Only about 2 in 10 called the economy excellent or good. And about a third of voters said their families are falling behind financially.

But that didn’t necessarily translate into anger at President Joe Biden or his party. About half considered inflation the most important issue facing the U.S., but they were evenly split over whether they think higher prices are due to Biden’s policies or factors outside his control.

Nevada is also a famously live-and-let-live state, and Cortez Masto and other Democrats made preserving abortion rights a centerpiece of their campaigns. According to VoteCast, 7 in 10 wanted the procedure kept legal in all or most cases.

Republicans, however, relentlessly hammered the economic argument, contending it was time for a leadership change. They also sought to capitalize on lingering frustrations about pandemic shutdowns that devastated Las Vegas’ tourist-centric economy in 2020.

On Thursday morning, The Associated Press declared Republican Stavros Anthony the winner in the lieutenant governor race, while Republican Andy Mathews was elected state controller.

The state’s lone Republican congressman, Mark Amodei, easily won reelection in his mostly rural district in northern Nevada. The state’s three Las Vegas-area Democratic members of the House were also reelected.

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Associated Press writer Scott Sonner in Las Vegas 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. And check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterms.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — If Republicans win the House, where does that leave Ukraine?

It’s a question that is top of mind in Washington as the GOP draws closer to winning the majority in the U.S. House. Some fear the end of Democratic control in Congress — and the empowerment of “America First” conservatives — could ultimately result in the curtailment of American assistance as Ukraine battles Russia’s invasion.

Recent comments from Kevin McCarthy, who is in line for speaker if Republicans win the House, exacerbated those fears. He warned that Republicans wouldn’t support writing a “blank check” for Ukraine if they captured the majority.

But the hard-line rhetoric isn’t the end of the story. While Republican control of the House is likely to make sending tranches of military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine more difficult, support for the country runs deep in both parties.

Here is a look at the factors at play:

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WHAT THE U.S. HAS GIVEN SO FAR

Since the Russian invasion began in February, Congress has approved tens of billions in emergency security and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine. The Biden administration has also shipped billions worth of weapons and equipment from military inventories.

In September, lawmakers approved about $12.3 billion in Ukraine-related aid as part of a bill that finances the federal government through Dec. 16. The money included assistance for the Ukrainian military as well as money to help the country’s government provide basic services to its citizens.

That comes on top of more than $50 billion provided in two previous bills.

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STRONG BIPARTISAN SUPPORT

All along, financial support for Ukraine has garnered strong bipartisan support. In the Senate, GOP leader Mitch McConnell and Richard Shelby, the lead Republican on the powerful Appropriations Committee, were early and consistent voices in favor of Ukraine aid.

In recent days, other Republicans including Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Rick Scott of Florida have insisted in interviews that their party’s support for the Ukrainians is resolute.

“I think we have to continue to do everything we can to support Ukraine, who wants to defend their freedom and stop Russia from continuing to expand,” Scott said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio and Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware also made a bipartisan show of support by visiting Ukraine just days before the election.

“I am confident that bipartisan robust American support for the fight of the Ukrainian people will continue in Congress,” Coons said. “The United States has long been a nation that fights for freedom, and this is the most important fight for freedom in the world today.”

The picture is similar in the House, where Ukrainian aid enjoys majority support. Even a letter published last month by the liberal flank of the party, asking the Biden administration to pursue diplomatic talks with Russia over the war, was quickly retracted after an outpouring of criticism from both parties.

President Joe Biden also attempted to ease concerns in a post-election briefing Wednesday, expressing hope that he would be able to continue his “bipartisan approach” to supporting Ukraine. He said he intends to invite congressional leaders from both parties to the White House later this month for a discussion about how to “advance the economic and national security priorities of the United States.”

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GROWING FAR-RIGHT OPPOSITION

Yet support for Ukraine is far from universal in the Republican Party.

Some lawmakers on the right, particularly those aligned with Donald Trump’s “America First” philosophy of foreign policy, say the United States cannot afford to give billions to Ukraine at a time of record-high inflation at home.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a member of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus, told a rally of Trump supporters in Iowa last week that, “under Republicans, not another penny will go to Ukraine.” In Ohio, Republican JD Vance, who just won the state’s Senate race, campaigned on ending financial support for the country, saying Congress has “got to stop the money spigot to Ukraine eventually.”

McCarthy seemed to be giving a nod to the Ukraine skeptics with his comments before the election.

“I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine,” McCarthy said in the pre-election interview. “They just won’t do it. … It’s not a free blank check.”

McCarthy later walked back those comments, telling CNN that he’s very supportive of Ukraine but thinks there should be “accountability going forward.”

Biden stressed that his administration has not granted every request from the Ukrainians, including their demand for a no-fly zone that would risk pulling America into the war.

“We’ve not given Ukraine a blank check,” Biden said. “There’s a lot of things that Ukraine wants we didn’t — we didn’t do.”

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FUTURE OF AID

Despite the escalating opposition from the right, there is little risk of Congress ending America’s financial and military support for Ukraine anytime soon.

Majorities in the House and Senate back the alliance with Ukraine, saying the cost is worth paying to defend a democratic ally and resist Russian expansion.

And most Americans who voted in the midterms were firmly behind the military and financial support for Ukraine, according to AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of more than 94,000 voters. About 4 in 10 said it was about right and 3 in 10 said it should be more active, while only about 3 in 10 wanted the U.S. to provide less to Ukraine.

Yet it’s clear that a Republican takeover of the House would make passing additional aid for Ukraine harder. McCarthy is likely to be under intense pressure from the right to take a hard line with the Biden administration, making it more difficult for him to work with Democrats.

With that reality in mind, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are eying the lame-duck session after the election as an opportunity to lock in billions of dollars in additional military assistance for Ukraine. That aid could be passed in an end-of-year government funding bill and ensure American support for months to come.

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VIEW FROM ABROAD

Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials are monitoring the midterm election results closely. One official on Wednesday acknowledged having stayed awake the night before, hitting refresh again and again on his phone to track the results.

But the country’s defense minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, said Wednesday that he did not anticipate American support would erode.

“I have repeatedly met with representatives of the Senate and Congress, and each time the delegations were bipartisan,” Resnikov said at a news conference. “I clearly understand that the support of the United States will remain bipartisan and bicameral, too.”

Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine’s trade and economic development minister, said Thursday that regardless of U.S. support, the country is intensifying efforts to run leaner on spending, even as Ukrainians fight for what they see as an “existential war.”

Svyrydenko said that while there had been no pressure from American officials for Ukraine to cut its need for foreign help, Ukrainian leaders know they have to do more to stabilize the economy itself even as they battle Russian forces.

Ukraine’s emphasis at the war’s outset had been rapidly marshaling military aid from its allies, “but we understand that one day we should rely very well on ourselves again,” she said.

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Associated Press writer Ellen Knickmeyer contributed to this report.

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