Politics

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Democratic Gov. Tim Walz and Republican challenger Scott Jensen held get-out-the-vote rallies at the state Capitol on Friday as they launched their final sprints to Election Day.

Both campaigns brought in the chairs of their national parties — Ronna McDaniel of the Republican National Committee and Jaime Harrison of the Democratic National Committee — as they sought to fire up their core supporters to get their friends and neighbors to vote.

Turnout will be critical not only in the governor’s race but in some other hard-fought statewide contests, plus a pair of congressional races in southern Minnesota and a couple dozen legislative races that will determine control of the state House and Senate.

Walz’ rally kicked off a bus tour of southern Minnesota with Attorney General Keith Ellison, Secretary of State Steve Simon and State Auditor Julie Blaha to Mankato, Austin, Rochester and Winona. Jensen had meetings after his rally with business leaders and owners in Minneapolis, capped by an evening appearance on public television’s “Almanac” show. Both campaigns planned stops Saturday in the Twin Cities suburbs, a crucial battleground for wooing swing voters.

“Knock the doors, call the people, get your members out there, talk to your brother-in-law who drives you friggin’ crazy about this stuff, but tell them to make the vote for the right things,” Walz told his heavily union crowd of around 200 people.

Walz also appealed for unity in a state where political divisions have deepened in recent years, as they have across the country.

“I’m not giving up on this idea of One Minnesota,” Walz said, echoing his campaign theme from four years ago. “I’m not giving up that we can work together to solve problems. I’m not giving up that differences do not divide us and make us enemies. I’m not giving up on this belief.”

Harrison told reporters he didn’t come to Minnesota because he was afraid of the Democrats’ chances on Tuesday. He said he came to stand up for his friends including Ellison.

The Jensen campaign framed its rally as a tribute to veterans, and the crowd of roughly 100 in the Capitol rotunda included many wearing American Legion hats, caps and jackets indicating where they served and a few in fatigues. Jensen thanked them for their service.

“It’s not just about service, it’s about willingness to lead when leaders are called for,” Jensen said. “And I think leaders are called for now more than ever.”

McDaniel told the crowd that they looked great and well rested, but added, “In the next four days I want you to work so hard that you look like crap.”

Afterward, she told reporters, “The fact that I’m coming back to Minnesota four days out from an election means that there’s an opportunity to pick up this governorship if people get out and vote.”

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JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Bill Sheffield, a former Alaska governor whose term in office was roiled by an impeachment proceeding, has died. He was 94.

A statement provided by friends of Sheffield said he died Friday at his home in Anchorage.

John Pugh, a friend who was the state health commissioner under Sheffield and among those who spent time with him before his death, said Sheffield regularly talked about ways to move Alaska forward. He “had all kinds of ideas, even in the last few months as he was really declining, on economic development in Alaska,” Pugh said.

Sheffield, who was governor from 1982 to 1986, was accused of steering a lease for state office space to a political ally and lying about it. He was not indicted by a grand jury but the panel recommended the Legislature consider impeachment. The state Senate decided there was not enough evidence to impeach.

Sheffield told The Associated Press in 1986 he believed his willingness to make hard choices in a state budget crisis cost him a second term.

Sheffield lost the Democratic party primary that year to Steve Cowper, who went on to be elected governor.

“I probably made some mistakes, but when you want to get things done and you came out of the private sector like I did, you’re going to run into the bureaucracy,″ Sheffield said after the primary loss.

″I didn’t run for governor just to be governor. I did it to do things. There’s a lot of things we need to do in this state and we don’t need to wait forever to get them done,” he said.

Sheffield, a successful hotelier, sold that business in 1987, according to his obituary. He went on to leadership positions with the Alaska Railroad Corp. and the Port of Anchorage.

Former Gov. Sean Parnell, a Republican, in a statement said Sheffield “always envisioned big possibilities for Alaskans and Alaska. He personally lived and experienced the Great Land’s promise: building Alaska businesses, serving in public office and helping others into public office. He dreamed big about Alaska infrastructure and held friends close.”

Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski on social media said Sheffield contributed much to the state. “Bill was a warm and caring person who will be deeply missed but his friendship will not be forgotten,” she said.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican, also offered condolences.

Pugh said Sheffield was caring and believed in mentoring young people. One of Sheffield’s directives to members of his administration was to “get out and find out what the needs are and address the needs of the people,” Pugh said.

He said he sees the impeachment proceedings as a footnote in Sheffield’s public service career. He noted accomplishments during Sheffield’s term, including the completion of efforts for the state to take over the Alaska Railroad and support of the Red Dog Mine.

Sheffield is survived by his longtime companion, Cheri McGuire.

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LOXAHATCHEE, Fla. (AP) — A South Florida woman was arrested Friday on charges that she voted in Florida and Alaska during the same election cycle over several years.

Cheryl Ann Leslie, 55, of Loxahatchee, was charged with two counts of felony fraud, according to Palm Beach County jail records.

Leslie, who is registered as a Democrat, voted in both the 2020 federal and state primary elections in Florida and Alaska, according to a Florida Department of Law Enforcement news release. Leslie’s Alaska votes were submitted by absentee ballot, and her Florida votes were submitted early and in person in Palm Beach County, officials said.

Leslie, who works with a senior care facility in Loxahatchee, told investigators that her work as a physician assistant required extensive travel between multiple states.

The Florida Secretary of State’s Office of Election Crimes and Security initially discovered Leslie’s multi-state voting and shared it with FDLE’s Election Crime Unit, officials said. Investigators said they found a pattern of double voting as Leslie also voted in both states in 2014, 2016 and 2018.

Leslie was being held on $1,000 bail. Jail records didn’t list an attorney.

Four people from the Republican stronghold of The Villages retirement community were arrested late last year and early this year on voter fraud charges. Two were registered as Republicans, and two had no party affiliation listed, according to state voting records. Three of them have since pleaded guilty to casting more than one ballot and been sentenced to diversion programs that would allow them to avoid prison time. The fourth awaits trial.

During the last legislative session, Republican lawmakers passed an election police bill pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential 2024 GOP presidential candidate, who cited as justification unspecified cases of fraud. DeSantis echoed many talking points on voting problems that have gained traction in the GOP after former President Donald Trump’s false claims that his reelection was stolen from him.

In August, DeSantis announced the arrests of 20 convicted felons accused of voting illegally in the 2020 election. But voting advocates have said the fact that the defendants were able to successfully register with their local election officials gave them a false sense of eligibility, so the cases were unfair.

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PHOENIX (AP) — Nicole Leonardi initially thought a new newspaper had arrived in her mailbox this week. But a closer look at the “Arizona Catholic Tribune” revealed a different story.

While it had all the attributes of a traditional print newspaper, including a tagline that read “Real data. Real value. Real news,” the pledge did not match the content.

Leonardi, a Democrat living in Tempe, Arizona, who is not Catholic, quickly realized the paper was fake, a partisan conservative publication with content critical of local Democratic candidates. The paper is also not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, which has disavowed it.

“I thought it was a real paper so I pulled it out,” Leonardi said. “It’s only when you dig in a bit when you realize that it’s fully pushing right-wing talking points.”

The Phoenix area was not the only region where papers with the “real news” tagline recently showed up. Similar publications reportedly arrived in mailboxes in cities in Iowa and Illinois.

The Arizona Catholic Tribune’s Facebook page identifies its owner as Franklin Archer, which is part of a multi-state network of partisan online and print publications posing as local media outlets, according to Priyanjana Bengani, a senior research fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.

“We’ve been here before. They did this in Wisconsin before the 2020 election. They did this in Kansas before the referendum in August about abortion,” Bengani said. “I think the number of physical papers we’ve seen this election cycle is more than what we saw in the 2020 cycle.”

Bengani has traced the networks back to Brian Timpone, who describes himself as a “media executive” on a LinkedIn profile, and Bradley Cameron, a strategy consultant. Cameron, Timpone, the Arizona Catholic Tribune, and several companies that are part of the extended network of publications did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.

As part of her research for the Tow Center, Bengani has identified more than 1,200 news sites that are part of the network.

In a series of research reports, Bengani has asserted the websites emerged ahead of the 2020 election and that the outlets use the appearance of journalistic neutrality to amplify partisan messaging.

“It’s a really complicated network. There are lots of different entities that are registered in different states,” Bengani said. She noted that print editions of another publication that is part of the network, the Grand Canyon Times, have been “showing up in Arizona for a couple of months now.”

The Arizona Catholic Tribune that landed in mailboxes this week features a front page story asserting that Democrat Arizona Representatives Tom O’Halleran and Greg Stanton voted to “keep school ‘gender services’ secret from parents,” as well as a teaser claiming that Arizona public school teachers are being encouraged to promote a “child sexualization” reading genre. Such content aligns with Republicans’ efforts to use anti-transgender rhetoric as a wedge issue. Other parts of the paper focus on abortion and one section gave Arizona elected officials grades with their photos, awarding the Republicans As and the Democrats Fs.

A different page features a story devoted to Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s false claim that her Democratic opponent Katie Hobbs voted to ban the Pledge of Allegiance and national anthem from schools.

A spokesperson for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix said in an email that the church is “in no way affiliated or supportive of the ‘Arizona Catholic Tribune’ publication.”

“The Catholic organization and ministries in the Diocese of Phoenix do not engage in partisan politics and do not endorse candidates or parties during any election,” said Brett Meister, the diocese spokesperson.

But experts say the paper is clearly designed to suggest otherwise.

“It seems to be pretty brazen,” said Matthew Jensen, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma who focuses on online misinformation. “The format of the media, the implied endorsement, all of these things, it seems like they are meant to signal an authoritative source.”

Paul Bentz, a Republican pollster who lives in Goodyear, a suburb of Phoenix, said he found a copy of the Arizona Catholic Tribune in his mail Monday. Bentz, who is not Catholic, said political mailers formatted like tabloids are not new in Arizona, though this fake paper is “rhetorically over the top” and does not feature any disclaimer. The publication was likely meant to energize Republican voters and keep moderates from voting for Democrats, he said.

“This one probably went over the line and was a little too blatant in their appeal to conservative voters and it’s drawn the ire of the Catholic Church,” he said. “The tone and tenor of this does not appear to be about increasing turnout but solidifying the base and negating anyone who may be tempted to vote for their opponents.”

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Associated Press writer Sophia Tulp in New York contributed to this report.

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In the battle for Democrats to keep their majority in Congress and Republicans to gain wins in congressional and gubernatorial races, the 2022 midterms will showcase which party is able to extend its reach past the states it currently controls.

Hotly contested U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races in perpetual swing states like Pennsylvania have dominated the news cycle, from social media jabs back and forth between candidates Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat, and Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz to Oz spending more than $20 million of his own money on his race.

Historic races in Vermont and North Carolina could smash the glass ceiling and elect the leader of Vermont’s state Senate, Becca Balint, as its first woman in Congress and former North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley as the state’s first Black senator. She would be the only Black woman in the Senate.

It’s not only critical leadership positions up for grabs in swing states like Georgia and Arizona, issues like vote-by-mail and abortion all have come to the forefront of this midterms cycle — the result of leftover residue from the 2020 election and subsequent denial of the election results perpetrated by former President Donald Trump, who continues to tighten his influence on the GOP.

Data compiled by AP statehouse reporters and race callers in the AP’s Decision Notes series breaks down how each state votes, when votes will be counted and what candidates and issues are on the ballot.

For a look at all 50 states and the election outlook there, find it here.

VOTE BY MAIL

The voting landscape has changed in the last two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While 2020 expanded the use of mail-in voting across the country, it caused slow vote tallying in states like Pennsylvania and Georgia. A new law in Pennsylvania allocated $45 million to counties to help them handle the task of counting mail-in ballots to avoid a protracted post-election count.

Last year, Georgia Republicans mandated an ID for absentee voting, after a surge in mail ballots helped secure victories for Democrats in the presidential contest and twin U.S. Senate runoffs.

In the Maryland primary, state law blocked mail-in ballots from being counted until two days after Election Day. But the state’s highest court has since ruled that counties can start counting mail-ins before Election Day in the general election to avoid delays.

ABORTION ON THE BALLOT

California, Michigan and Vermont are all considering questions that would amend their state constitutions to establish some form of a right to abortion.

The Decision Notes explain that if voters chose to amend the Michigan state constitution, a 91-year-old state law banning abortion in all instances except to save the life of the mother would no longer be enforceable. A record number of people — over 750,000 — signed petitions to put the measure on the ballot after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

RACES TO KEEP AN EYE ON

Control of the Senate and House could go directly through Arizona as Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly attempts to win a full term after securing the last two years of the late Sen. John McCain’s seat in 2018. He faces a tough challenge from Trump-backed Republican Blake Masters.

Arizona Republicans backed by Trump — and who back his unfounded claims that he lost because of election fraud — are hoping to snag the governor’s office, secretary of state and attorney general.

One of the most closely watched races in the country is in Nevada. Democrats are trying to hold onto Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s seat in her contest against Republican Adam Laxalt Another. Laxalt is a steadfast Trump ally and has embraced falsehoods about the 2020 election.

Georgia’s senate race between Sen. Raphael Warnock, who is trying to win a full six-year term, and Georgia football icon and Republican challenger Herschel Walker could also determine the outcome of the Senate party breakdown.

But Walker has been embroiled in a scandal when two womenalleged he encouraged and paid for their abortions. Walker has campaigned in absolute opposition to abortion, supporting one of the strictest statewide abortion bans in the country.

Trump’s backing of Walker and former Sen. David Perdue for governor against incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp is retribution for Kemp not going along with lies about the 2020 election being stolen.

North Carolina’s Republican three-term Rep. Ted Budd is one of many Trump-backed candidates this election cycle. Trump’s endorsement of Budd remains a crucial element of Budd’s strategy against Beasley, who has out-fundraised him and received an endorsement from former President Barack Obama.

Democratic-led Maryland will try to regain the governorship held by the departing Larry Hogan, who is only the second Republican in the state’s history to be reelected governor. The candidates for the governorship feature Democrat Wes Moore, who could be the state’s first Black governor against Trump-backed Republican Dan Cox.

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Follow reporter Nardos Haile on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nardoshaile

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PHOENIX (AP) — An official from a rural Arizona county who has been tapped to hand-count all the ballots from next week’s election was grilled in court Friday by lawyers representing a group of retirees suing to block the effort.

Cochise County Recorder David Stevens said he has plans to count four races on about 40,000 ballots using more than 250 volunteers he’s recruited from three political parties starting after voting ends Tuesday. The Republican vowed to follow the law on how the much smaller hand-count audits are normally done to check machine vote-counting equipment. But he acknowledged he’s bypassing the county elections director, who by law oversees the process and is responsible for holding the ballots.

And responding to questions from the lawyer for the Arizona Alliance of Retired Americans, Lalitha Madduri, Stevens said he planned to count an estimated 30,000 early ballots despite provisions in the law that limit early ballot hand-count audits to 1% or 5,000 ballots, whatever is less, and that they be randomly selected. That bars a full count of the early votes, she said.

“The board did authorize me to do it,” Stevens said. “The court will decide if it’s legal or not. But they did vote, it was a two-to-one vote, they voted for me to do this and a 100% count.”

The two Republican supervisors who voted to do the 100% hand-count rather than the small sample done in every other election were pushed to do so by people who believe former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims that fraud or counting problems with voting machines led to his loss in 2020. The lone Democrat on the board opposed the hand-count.

Pima County Superior Court Judge Casey F. McGinley, who is hearing the case in Bisbee after the local county court declared a conflict, is charged with deciding whether the detailed state law on hand-count audits allows the Cochise County board of supervisors to expand the count to all early ballots. Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who is running for governor, contends early ballots can’t all be counted under state law.

Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich, however, issued an informal opinion last week that said all the ballots can be hand-counted.

McGinley questioned Stevens about the normal recount rules and focused on a section of the election rules written by the secretary of state that allows counties to expand the hand-count at their discretion, which appears nowhere in the law. And he wondered how rules on acceptable margins of errors between hand-count audits would apply to a full recount.

Stevens said his view was that a full hand-count needs no margin and that whatever that count turned out to be would be the one that was officially certified. That runs counter to what the board discussed when it decided to do a full hand-count as a test of the official machine count.

Stephani Stephenson, who lives in the small Cochise County community of St. David and is the named plaintiff in the case, testified that what she called a rushed and abnormal process would potentially jeopardize her vote. She said she has faith in the current system.

“I know that people have worked years to come up with a process,” Stephenson said. “And then suddenly if my county is going down this other road, at this point, no, I do not trust that.”

McGinley was continuing to take testimony at mid-afternoon Friday and has not said when he might rule. Time is of the essence, because Stevens said he want to start hand-counts in about a week.

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CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — U.S. Rep. Chis Pappas accused his Republican challenger of treating politics as a performance without offering solutions to problems, while Karoline Leavitt accused the Democratic incumbent of being a partisan problem creator during their third and last debate on Thursday.

The two candidates for New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District seat offered contrasting views on a range of issues, including rising costs and the economy, as well as abortion, during the WMUR-TV debate.

Pappas, who is seeking a third term, said he was proud to have worked on getting a record amount of money to New Hampshire families from the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. He said he is working on ways to modernize shipping and trucking regulations to “unkink supply chains,” to move more goods to market, strengthen the workforce and deal with the state’s housing shortage, which is contributing to inflation.

“Well, Congressman, everything you said sounds wonderful, but the truth is none of it has passed and none of it has worked,” Leavitt said. “Granite Staters are suffering.”

She accused Pappas of supporting trillions of dollars in spending she says contributed to inflation and attacking energy production in New Hampshire, which he said was “not true.”

“I support an all-of-the-above energy strategy and have supported legislation to pay down the deficit” that also provides tax credits for homes and businesses for energy efficiency programs, Pappas said.

Leavitt said if elected to Congress she would work to pass a balanced budget and slash spending for useless items over voting to raise the debt ceiling, which would allow the Treasury Department to honor financial commitments already made by Congress and the president.

Citing economists, Pappas called that a “totally reckless position, because not only would it jeopardize our own economic health here in the United States, it could lead to a global depression.”

“We need bipartisan conversations about how to lower the debt and deficit,” he said, adding “we shouldn’t be holding our economy, with the full faith and credit of the United States, hostage.”

Leavitt responded, “Our economy is hostage right now. The people of this district are hostage right now because of the economic policies that you supported.”

On the subject of abortion, Leavitt, who is pro-life, said she supports state legislatures making decisions on abortion regulations and would oppose a federal abortion ban.

Pappas, who supports the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would protect the right to access abortion care nationwide after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, said women in New Hampshire deserve a pro-choice vote in Congress.

“I want women and families in consultation with their doctors to decide this for themselves,” Pappas said.

“No, that’s not true,” Leavitt responded. “You want politicians in Washington, D.C., to make those decisions. … I support those closest to the people, closest to the voters,” in Concord, she said.

Pappas called her answer “really chilling,” adding, “I think government should get out of the way because they have no business deciding this issue for women and families.”

Both candidates were asked if they believe former President Donald Trump when he said the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Leavitt, who worked in the White House press office under Trump, had said during pre-primary debates she believed the 2020 election was stolen from the former president. On Thursday, she said that she believes there were irregularities in the 2020 election.

She spoke of Pappas’ support for a bill that would have created national automatic voter registration, allowed all voters to cast ballots by mail and weakened voter ID laws, among other measures.

“Donald Trump is wrong,” Pappas said. “The election was not stolen from him. Everyone knows that. And Karoline Leavitt continues to double-down on the big lie.”

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BOSTON (AP) — Ruby Brown beamed with excitement in a community college gymnasium as she waited for Vice President Kamala Harris to take the stage at a political rally for the Democratic ticket in Massachusetts

“As soon as her name was announced, I said I had to find a way to go,” said Brown, 58.

The midterms are just days away, with control of Congress and statehouses across the country up for grabs, but Brown and her friends were really hoping for a hint of what might happen a few years down the line.

“That’s why we’re here,” said Lisa Palmer-Glover, 56. “To see what’s next on the plate.”

The comments are just a glimpse of the expectations and special scrutiny that Harris faces as the first person of color and first woman to be vice president — and someone who campaigned for the top job before agreeing to be Joe Biden’s running mate.

The vice presidency is never an easy position, requiring ambitious politicians to contort themselves into the role of sidekick. And it’s been particularly difficult for Harris. She’s a groundbreaking leader, a former U.S. senator and California attorney general. But she struggled with a portfolio of vexing challenges and internal staff turmoil soon after taking office.

Allies say she’s found a degree of stability since then, and they describe the midterm elections as an opportunity to project her own voice on issues such as reproductive freedom, which became a centerpiece of her message after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to abortion this year.

Now, with Democrats facing the possibility of a sweeping defeat at the ballot box next week, the party is bracing for another round of introspection about its future — and by extension, Harris’ own.

It’s not a conversation the vice president’s inner circle wants to have as Biden lays the groundwork for a second term even as he approaches his 80th birthday.

“They intend to run, and they intend to run together,” said Laphonza Butler, who was as an adviser to Harris’ presidential campaign and now leads Emily’s List, a political organization that supports women who favor abortion rights. “So until there’s another question, that’s the answer.”

Still, midterm campaigning for other Democrats is a chance for Harris, who recently turned 58, to nurture constituencies that supported her in the past and could again. Her travel has focused on young people, voters of color and women, including at historically black colleges and roundtable meetings on abortion.

In Boston on Wednesday, she rallied for a slate of all-female candidates, from governor down to auditor. And she told the crowd to “call your cousins who live in other states” to encourage them to vote for Democrats.

“Elections matter,” Harris said. “We got a lot done. And we still have more to do. And the stakes are high.”

Although Harris has a reputation for tying herself in linguistic knots, allies say she’s at her best when campaigning for others and — to borrow the rhetoric of the former district attorney’s failed presidential bid — prosecuting the case against Republicans.

With poll numbers that remain underwater, she’s steered clear of some of the tightest Senate campaigns in places like Arizona and Ohio. But her abortion advocacy has expanded her travels, taking her to Nevada and Wisconsin, where the president hasn’t campaigned.

She’s also chatted with social media influencers and called into radio shows in battleground states. She’s hosted more than a dozen fundraisers for the Democratic National Committee and visited Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, among other states.

Chris Lehane, a former Democratic strategist who worked for Vice President Al Gore, says the midterms are an opportunity to make a “political brand deposit.”

“You’re able to help folks who are running up and down the ticket. And they remember that,” he said.

Turnout among young voters tends to drop off in the midterms, with no presidential race to boost interest. So some of Harris’ work has focused on reaching them through social media personalities who have hundreds of thousands of followers.

“When you weigh in with your vote, you can get what you’re advocating for,” Harris told Hannah Bronfman, a health and wellness influencer. “But if you don’t vote, your voice won’t be heard.”

She also spoke with Keir Gaines, a therapist who creates online content about family relationships and mental health, to warn that “your auntie, your sister, your cousin, your daughter” are going to have less rights because of the Supreme Court’s abortion decision.

Harris can steer herself into rhetorical dead ends, causing her allies to cringe and her critics to try to turn them into viral videos. In September, she referred to the U.S. alliance with the “Republic of North Korea” after touring the Demilitarized Zone.

Nathan Barankin, who served as Harris’ chief of staff when she was a U.S. senator from California, said her gaffes are the result of being “someone who has been overly scripted, or someone who is very worried about deviating from a script that she didn’t create.”

“I would put her head to head with any of the best retail politicians, at least behind closed doors,” Barankin said. “What you see when she’s got 40 cameras pointed at her is usually not what she’s capable of.”

An October AP-NORC poll showed only about half of Democrats want Biden to seek a second term. But it’s not clear that voters are clamoring for Harris instead. When she ran for president, her campaign stalled before voting began, and now her favorable ratings lag behind Biden’s. That’s largely because she’s more unknown.

Only 37% of U.S. adults have a favorable view of Harris, according to the same survey. Another 49% view her unfavorably, while an additional 13% say they don’t know enough to say. Biden earns similar unfavorable ratings, but 45% say they have a favorable opinion of the president.

Young Americans in particular – those under 30 – are especially likely to say they don’t know enough to have an opinion of Harris.

A Saturday Night Live skit from last weekend envisioned a horror movie about Democrats’ chances in 2024 if Biden doesn’t run again. When a panicked voter suggests Harris as his successor, another one slaps him across the face. “Wake up!” she shouts.

Challenging Harris for the nomination, however, would be no easy task.

Rep. Jim Clyburn, a Democratic kingmaker in his home state of South Carolina, said over the summer that he would back Harris if Biden didn’t run. It was a noteworthy comment from a politician who helped secure Biden’s nomination by demonstrating his strength among black voters.

“Tell me who beats her in South Carolina?” said Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster.

Although being vice president can be a thankless task, no other job allows someone to take a dress rehearsal to be commander in chief. Her first foreign trip, to Guatemala and Mexico, was overshadowed by an awkward interview about migrant issues, when she tried to laugh off a question about visiting the U.S. southern border.

But she’s also made key appearances on the administration’s behalf, such as attending the Munich Security Conference shortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. She’s preparing for her third trip to Asia, with stops in Thailand and the Philippines, as the U.S. looks for ways to counter China in the region.

“She’s making me look good,” Biden said in Philadelphia last week. “And God love her. She’s more like my buddy and my sister, but I trust her with my life. I trust her completely.”

Lehane used a baseball metaphor to describe Harris’ evolution in the role.

“You don’t get to the Major Leagues if you can’t hit a Major League fastball,” Lehane said. “Rookies need to adjust to curveballs and sliders and the pitches that separate the majors from the minors.”

Over the past year, Lehane said, Harris has shown she can do just that.

Cedric Richmond, who worked in the White House before becoming a senior adviser to the Democratic National Committee, used an unprintable word to describe the narrative that Harris initially flailed in the job.

“I think she had a good first year,” he said. “I think she was overly scrutinized by the press, and she was a first in so many ways.”

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Associated Press writer Hannah Fingerhut contributed to this report.

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SUFFOLK, Va. (AP) — In the closing days of her campaign, Rep. Elaine Luria stood on a wooden porch in a far-flung part of her newly drawn district, microphone in hand and a 7-year-old Black girl at her side, to make her final case for what is at stake in the midterm elections.

The Virginia Democrat, quoting the late Rep. Elijah Cummings, pointed toward the girl and said: “Our children are a window into the future that we will never see.” That future, Luria argued, will look much bleaker if her Republican challenger wins one of the most contested House races in the country.

In her first two congressional races, Luria, a former Navy commander, would more likely have been seen in settings with a military backdrop or theme. But this time she is in Suffolk, a new part of her district and one that has a Black population of 40% whose votes could well determine if she gets a third term.

“If Luria is going to have a chance at winning, she absolutely needs to win over Black voters,” said Rebecca Bromley-Trujillo, research director at the Wason Center at Christopher Newport University. “Even in our polling, we see that Black voters are more likely to say they’re undecided than white voters, and that suggests that there’s some vulnerability there for Luria and a need to reach out.”

Luria has gained a higher profile over the past year because of her seat on the House committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. But there is scant evidence it has helped her politically, and it may have even cut into her support.

Still, she also frames this race as a referendum on democracy itself. It is a country-over-party appeal that will be tested in a district that has among the nation’s highest concentrations of families with military connections.

“This is about a lot more than just Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District. It’s certainly about a lot more than getting Elaine Luria reelected,” she said to a predominantly Black crowd of constituents on Sunday. “It is truly about the future of our country and the direction we go. It’s about our democracy.”

Recent polling from the Wason Center showed that Luria and her opponent, Jen Kiggans, a state senator, are tied at 45% among likely voters, with 8% undecided. Kiggans declined to be interviewed for this story.

“Suffolk is really the key to winning this race and holding this seat,” Luria said in her closing remarks. “And this seat is the key to holding the majority in the House of Representatives.”

The 2nd Congressional District ranks No. 217 on the nonpartisan Cook Political Report’s partisan voting index, making it the median between the most Republican and most-Democratic House seats in the nation — effectively the country’s swingiest swing district.

The district, which first elected Luria in 2018, was redrawn recently to be more Republican. Donald Trump, a Republican, carried it in his successful 2016 presidential campaign, but in 2020, Joe Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate since 1964 to carry Virginia Beach, part of the district.

Luria’s moderate bearing and record would seem suited to the district, but Kiggans has emphasized economic issues and tried to tether Luria to Biden, and both are appealing to a broad cross section of voters for the first time.

“The year after redistricting is always interesting, slash challenging, because you do in some instances have to reintroduce yourself to new voters, to a new constituency,” said Susan Swecker, chair of the Virginia Democratic Party.

And that’s what Luria has been doing for the past year with the 40% of voters who are new in the sprawling district, including voters in Suffolk who face issues that are different from those in other parts. The 2nd District, in southeastern Virginia, continues to include Virginia Beach and curves from the Eastern Shore into Suffolk, Isle of Wight and other localities.

Luria’s campaign has fine-tuned its pitch to focus on access to abortion, military and veterans issues and what she calls the ongoing threat to American democracy. She has cited her service on the Jan. 6 committee as “the most important thing” she’s ever done professionally — more than the two decades she served in the Navy, including as a nuclear-trained surface warfare officer who commanded 400 crewmembers in the Persian Gulf.

“People said to me, ‘Elaine, you’re the only Democrat in a Republican district on this committee, what’s that going to mean? When you go back home, this might not be popular,’” Luria told volunteers at an event Oct. 29. “And I said it doesn’t matter. This is the right thing to do.”

“And if that means I don’t get reelected,” she added, “that’s OK. Because I’m on the right side of history.”

Luria has invoked her service oath as a major reason she chose to be on the committee, which is a message that has connected with some in a district where the population overwhelmingly includes active-duty military, veterans and residents who work at the local shipyards.

But, according to the Wason Center polling, voters said economic concerns were driving their choices in the election, with nearly 40% considering it the most important issue, followed by abortion at 17% and threats to democracy at 14%.

Luria’s opponent, Kiggans, also a Navy veteran, has said the election won’t be decided by the Jan. 6 committee.

“I have never had a single voter, or person (whose) door I’ve knocked on, or civic league I’ve visited or event I’ve attended, I’ve never had a single person come up to me and say that this is the main issue they’re focused on,” Kiggans told The Associated Press in July. “On a daily basis, I hear over and over and over again about gas prices and grocery prices and grocery shortages and how much everything is costing them.”

But for a number of Black voters in the district, the issue of the economy is not the most important thing on the ballot.

“We understand that the economy is going to ebb and flow. But when we start dealing with overturning women’s rights, it takes us back to the issue of our civil rights,” said Ebony Wright, a Navy veteran and Black resident of Suffolk. “And so when we start scaling back, it’s scary. And then it makes us wonder what is next.” She said she will vote for Luria.

Her neighbor Selena Thornton, who is also a Black veteran, said the reality and history of the Suffolk area, miles away from where the Nat Turner slave rebellion took place in 1831 and near sundown areas, constantly remind her that she is not as far removed from her ancestors as some may believe. And she said that is why Luria is also her choice.

“If you want to know the Black vote, that it’s right there: There’s always going to be a fear of us moving backward instead of forward,” Wright said.

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Associated Press writer Sarah Rankin in Richmond, Va., 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 learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections.

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Why do election experts oppose hand-counting ballots?

It takes longer than counting with machines, it’s less reliable, and it’s a logistical nightmare for U.S. elections.

A growing number of Republican lawmakers have pushed for switching to hand-counts, an argument rooted in false conspiracy theories that voting systems were manipulated to steal the 2020 election.

Though there is no evidence of widespread fraud or tampering of machines in 2020, some jurisdictions have voted to scrap machines and pursue hand-counts instead this year.

Numerous studies — in voting and other fields such as banking and retail — have shown that people make far more errors counting than do machines, especially when reaching larger and larger numbers. They’re also vastly slower.

“Machine counting is generally twice as accurate as hand-counting and a much simpler and faster process,” said Stephen Ansolabehere, a professor of government at Harvard University who has conducted research on hand-counts.

In one study in New Hampshire, he found poll workers who counted ballots by hand were off by 8%. The error rate for machine counting runs about 0.5%, Ansolabehere said.

Just how long can hand-counting delay results? Depending on jurisdiction and staffing, it could be days, weeks or even months.

In Cobb County, Georgia, after the 2020 election, a hand tally ordered by the state for just presidential votes on about 397,00 ballots took hundreds of people five days. A county election official estimated it would have taken 100 days to count every race on each ballot using the same procedures.

Proponents of hand-counting often point to countries like France, which use it more or less successfully, but that’s because they have simpler elections with just one race at a time, Ansolabehere said.

In the U.S., ballots are far more complicated, sometimes containing dozens of local, state and federal races at a time.

Hand-counting of all ballots does happen in parts of the U.S. — in some small towns in the Northeast, for example — and it’s possible in small jurisdictions, said Gowri Ramachandran, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice. The Brennan Center objected to plans for an unprecedented hand-count of mail-in ballots in Nye County, Nevada, calling it a “violation of law and common practice.” The hand-count was suspended after a Nevada Supreme Court ruling in late October.

Hand tallies are also frequently used in post-election reviews, but that usually involves only a sample of ballots and is done without the time pressure of trying to report results quickly.

A recent Associated Press survey of major party secretary of state candidates in 24 states found that the vast majority opposed hand-counting ballots. Despite growing popularity of the error-prone process among some Republicans, 13 of 23 secretary of state candidates who responded said they opposed implementing a statewide hand-count of ballots instead of a machine count.

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The AP is answering your questions about elections in this series. Submit them at: FactCheck@AP.org.

What happens if a ballot is damaged or improperly marked?

How do states ensure dead people’s ballots aren’t counted?

Can noncitizens vote in U.S. elections?

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