Politics

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Democrat John Fetterman and Republican Mehmet Oz will meet Tuesday for one of the most highly anticipated debates of the midterm elections as they wage a fierce contest for a U.S. Senate seat from Pennsylvania that could decide control of the chamber and the future of President Joe Biden’s agenda.

Much of the focus is on Fetterman, who has spent the past several months fending off an escalating series of attacks from Oz about his health and fitness for office. Fetterman, who is Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, had a stroke in May, a health scare that was so severe he said he “almost died.”

But he has insisted he is prepared for the demands of the Senate. Since his stroke, Fetterman has struggled at times to speak clearly in public events. Independent experts consulted by The Associated Press, however, said he appears to be recovering remarkably well. He will use closed-captioning during the debate to help him process the words he hears.

Still, Tuesday’s debate could prove to be a decisive moment in a race that represents the best chance for Democrats to flip a Republican-held Senate seat this year. It will provide an opportunity for Fetterman to prove that he has the stamina for the job and shift the focus to Oz, who Fetterman has argued is a carpetbagger from New Jersey with no understanding of the state. Oz, meanwhile, will have a high-profile chance to unite Republicans and appeal to moderates who could decide the race.

“The debate looms very large, bigger than usual for a Senate debate,” said Republican activist Charles Gerow, a veteran of two decades of Sunday TV political talk shows.

The high-stakes debate — the first and only in the contest — comes just two weeks before Election Day in what polls say is a close race to replace retiring two-term Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey. It’s the only major statewide debate happening this year in Pennsylvania since Democrat Josh Shapiro and Republican Doug Mastriano couldn’t reach an agreement on terms for a gubernatorial debate.

Fetterman has grown as a national brand thanks in part to his extraordinary height, tattoos and unapologetic progressive stances. But the 53-year-old Pennsylvania Democrat’s health has emerged as a central issue over the election’s final weeks, even as candidates elsewhere clash over issues like abortion, crime and inflation.

Oz, trailing in the polls, had pushed for more than a half-dozen debates, suggesting that Fetterman’s unwillingness to agree to more than one is because the stroke had debilitated him. Fetterman has insisted that one debate is typical — two is more customary — and that Oz’s focus on debates was a cynical ploy to lie about his stroke recovery.

Meanwhile, Fetterman’s lead in polls has shrunk as Oz’s Republican allies poured tens of millions of dollars into a perennial battleground state that Biden won by just 1 percentage point in 2020.

Fetterman’s allies fear that the 60-minute live televised debate may represent a no-win situation for the Democrat, even if the typical audience for a Senate debate is quite small. Much of the attention will likely focus on how Fetterman — who is blunt and plainspoken — can communicate in a high-pressure situation.

His campaign has acknowledged the built-in disadvantage of putting Fetterman on stage with Oz, a longtime TV personality who hosted “The Dr. Oz Show” weekdays for 13 seasons after getting his start as a regular guest on Oprah Winfrey’s show in 2004.

“This was always going to be an away game for John Fetterman,” said Mustafa Rashed, a Democratic political consultant based in Philadelphia.

The debate host declined to allow an AP photographer access to the event, and the AP declined to accept handout photos.

Fetterman’s stroke happened just days before his resounding victory in the Democratic primary. Recovery kept him out of the public eye for much of the summer, though the campaign said he was meeting with aides, taking long daily walks, driving and doing household errands.

Oz, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, barely survived his own primary, beating Republican rival David McCormick by 951 votes out of more than 1.3 million cast after a dayslong recount.

Fetterman has rebuffed calls to release medical records or let reporters question his doctors, but last week he released a note from his primary care physician, who wrote that Fetterman is recovering well, shows no cognitive effects and “can work full duty in public office.”

Fetterman acknowledges that he continues to stumble over the occasional word and that a common condition of his stroke — called auditory processing disorder — means that his brain’s language network cannot quickly and accurately turn sound into meaning. That requires him to use closed-captioning during interviews and at the debate.

Malcolm Kenyatta, a Democratic state lawmaker who is campaigning for Fetterman after unsuccessfully challenging him in the primary, said Fetterman should talk about his priorities as a senator and be selective about which of Oz’s attacks to respond to.

Fetterman should “to the extent possible ignore the clown show that’s happening on the other side and, if he does that, I think that’s a win,” Kenyatta said.

___

Peoples reported from New York.

___

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

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

source

RENO, Nev. (AP) — A rural Nevada county’s plan to hand-count all paper ballots for the midterm elections is coming under renewed scrutiny just days before the tally is set to begin.

The sticking point: How the county will keep the ongoing vote totals from leaking publicly.

A ruling Friday from the Nevada Supreme Court allowed the hand count to move forward with several provisions, one of which was to ensure that the vote counting was not live-streamed and to figure out a way to ensure that election workers could keep the tallies secret.

Ballots cast early, either in-person or by mail, are typically counted by machine on Election Day, with results released only after polls close. Nye County, where conspiracy theories about voting machines have run rampant, wants a hand count in addition to the machine tally. The hand-count of mail-in ballots is set to start on Oct. 26, just under two weeks before Election Day to be certified by the state’s deadline.

In a letter to interim Nye County Clerk Mark Kampf over the weekend, Nevada Deputy Secretary of State for Elections Mark Wlaschin asked for a “written explanation as to how Nye County and you intend to comply with all of the provisions” of the ruling.

The Nevada Supreme Court ruled partially in favor of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit that challenged several aspects of the hand-count, including a livestream that Kampf said allows individuals to “become poll watchers at home.”

In Saturday’s letter, Wlaschin said he particularly needed to know how Nye County would ensure that observers do not prematurely learn the running results of any races. Nevada has nationally important races this year for U.S. Senate, governor and secretary of state.

Lawyers who represented Nye County responded Monday by saying only that the county “fully intends to comply” with the state Supreme Court’s Friday order.

Wlaschin did not immediately respond to a text message Monday afternoon asking if the county’s hand-count will still be permitted.

Recordings from the cameras that were originally meant to livestream the hand-count now will not be released until polls close, the county said in its response. As for the public hand-count, the county noted that they will be conducted in four to six different rooms, so viewers will not know the “totality of returns.”

Observers must sign a form saying they will not release any early results they hear. If they do release them, they could be charged with a gross misdemeanor.

“Unless we hear from you otherwise, we will assume that Nye County’s procedures for its parallel process as set forth above sufficiently comply with the Order,” Nye County’s counsel said in the Monday letter.

Hand-count tallies are done publicly for transparency, with observers in the room. Voting groups have said that raises the possibility that someone could release early results before most voters have even cast their ballot, which they have said could cause “manipulative release” and influence voter turnout.

Nye County’s hand-count of mail-in ballots is set to start Wednesday morning.

Under Nye County’s plan, hand-count teams of five will include a reader who announces each result, a verifier who looks over the reader’s shoulder and three talliers who write down the results. The talliers then compare their results before submitting them. They count ballots in batches of 50 in a public area.

In an email to The Associated Press, Kampf said he had 98 volunteers as of Monday morning.

Nye County is one of the first jurisdictions nationwide to act on election conspiracies related to mistrust in voting machines. In June’s primary, Nevada’s least populous county, Esmeralda, took more than seven hours to hand-count the results on 317 ballots cast to certify results.

Elsewhere in Nevada, Elko County’s board of commissioners signaled their support for hand-counting and paper ballots last week, although they will likely stick with machines this cycle because Election Day is so soon.

Hand-counting is mostly used in small townships across New England and rural Wisconsin. There are 658 jurisdictions in the continental U.S. that rely exclusively on hand-counting, with the vast majority having fewer than 2,000 registered voters, according to data from Verified Voting, a group that tracks voting equipment across states.

The most populous county in the continental U.S. to use only hand-counting is Owyhee County, Idaho, which had 6,315 registered voters in 2020. Nye County had over 33,000 registered voters.

It also will use machine tabulators for the Nov. 8 election. But the sheer number of ballots to be hand-counted raises questions about whether the county can meet the Nov. 17 deadline to certify results.

Kampf was appointed county clerk after the long-time clerk resigned in July, a decision she made after election conspiracies, fueled by those repeating lies about former President Donald Trump’s loss in 2020, spread throughout the county. The board of commissioners voted unanimously to recommend doing away with voting machines and count all ballots by hand.

___

Stern 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. Follow Stern on Twitter @gabestern326.

___

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

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

source

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Gov. Ron DeSantis and Democratic challenger Charlie Crist head to the debate stage Monday night for what may be Crist’s best — and perhaps last — opportunity to change the trajectory of the Florida governor’s race.

DeSantis, a Republican firebrand with presidential aspirations, is leading many polls after focusing on divisive cultural issues throughout much of his last four years in office. Crist, a former Republican governor who most recently served as a Democratic congressman, is eager to stop DeSantis’ political rise.

The debate, which was postponed from earlier in the month because of Hurricane Ian, coincides with the start of early voting across much of the state. It is the first and only governor’s debate before the final votes are cast on Nov. 8.

The Florida governor’s race may not be the nation’s most competitive election this fall, but Monday’s debate is a rare moment for DeSantis to face questions outside the friendly conservative media circles he gravitates toward.

“He doesn’t like answering questions,” Crist said in an interview. “When he gets asked innocent, fair questions by journalists, he bristles. I don’t think it’s gonna take a whole lot to get to that boiling point for him. He’s a bully.”

DeSantis’ campaign did not respond to an interview request.

State GOP Chairman Joe Gruters suggested that one issue matters this fall more than all others: President Joe Biden.

“This election is a referendum on Biden, on his policies,” Gruters said. “All this other stuff is noise.” He said Floridians are struggling “to survive in this Biden economy.”

Meanwhile, Democrats have been trying to focus voters’ attention on DeSantis’ conservative record — especially the law he signed in April banning abortions at 15 weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape or incest.

DeSantis, 44, has also signed into law a measure banning critical race theory and LGBTQ issues from many Florida schools. He led efforts to eliminate the Disney Corp.’s special tax status for condemning his so-called Don’t Say Gay bill. And in recent weeks, he flew dozens of Venezuelan immigrants from Texas to a small island off the Massachusetts coast to call attention to illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border.

His critics are many, but DeSantis’ popularity has surged in Florida, and among Republicans across the nation, especially after he led the GOP’s resistance to the pandemic-related public health measures in 2020. He’s also benefited from a broader conservative shift in the state, a trend a decade in the making.

DeSantis has been largely focused in recent days on recovery efforts after Hurricane Ian, which left more than 100 people dead along the state’s southwest coast. While delivering a storm update over the weekend, he also promised to eliminate sales taxes on diapers, wipes and other baby-related items.

“We’re trying to help lessen the blow of what Washington has done,” DeSantis said, slapping at the Democrats who currently control Congress and the White House. “Obviously, we have an election coming up. You could see a change in leadership in the U.S. Congress potentially. Maybe the policies will change. We’ll see.”

Crist, 66, said he’s most focused on DeSantis’ abortion ban and the governor’s inability to reduce the cost of living in Florida under his watch, especially insurance costs.

“DeSantis is running for president and doesn’t seem to care about these kitchen-table issues in Florida,” Crist said.

The debate is scheduled for 7 p.m. at the Sunrise Theater in Fort Pierce and will be broadcast on local television stations across the state.

___

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

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

source

(Reuters) – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Monday temporarily blocked a judge’s order requiring Senator Lindsey Graham to testify to a grand jury in Georgia in a criminal investigation into whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies unlawfully tried to overturn 2020 election results in the state.

Thomas put the case on hold pending further action either from the justice or the full Supreme Court on a request by Graham, a Republican from South Carolina and Trump ally, to halt the order for testimony. Graham filed the emergency application to the Supreme Court on Friday after a federal appeals court denied his request to block the questioning.

Thomas acted in the case because he is designated by the court to handle emergency requests from a region that includes Georgia.

Graham has argued that his position as a senator provides him immunity under the U.S. Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause from having to answer questions related to his actions as part of the legislative process.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has subpoenaed Graham to answer questions about phone calls he made to a senior Georgia election official in the weeks after the November 2020 election.

Atlanta-based U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May last month narrowed the scope of questions that Graham must answer from the grand jury, ruling that he is protected from having to discuss “investigatory fact-finding” that he was engaged in during his calls to state election officials.

However, May said he may be questioned about alleged efforts to encourage officials to throw out ballots or alleged communication with the Trump campaign. May rejected Graham’s bid to avoid testifying altogether.

The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday declined to block Graham’s testimony pending an appeal.

Graham is not a target in the investigation but his testimony could shed further light on coordination among Trump allies to reverse the election results.

The senator’s lawyers said in his application that the testimony would “undisputedly center on Senator Graham’s official acts – phone calls he made in the course of his official work, in the leadup to the critical vote under the Electoral Count Act.”

Trump continues to appear at rallies repeating his false claims that the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden was stolen from him through widespread voting fraud.

The investigation was launched after Trump was recorded in a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn the state’s election results based on unfounded claims of voter fraud. During the phone call, Trump urged Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, to “find” enough votes to overturn his Georgia loss to Biden.

The transcript of the call quotes Trump telling Raffensperger: “I just want to find 11,780 votes,” which is the number Trump needed to win Georgia. Trump has denied wrongdoing in the phone call.

Legal experts have said Trump’s phone calls may have violated at least three state election laws: conspiracy to commit election fraud, criminal solicitation to commit election fraud and intentional interference with performance of election duties.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)

source

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Monday temporarily blocked Sen. Lindsey Graham’s testimony to a special grand jury investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and others illegally tried to influence the 2020 election in the state.

Thomas’ order is intended to prevent Fani Willis, Fulton County district attorney, from compelling Graham to testify while the Supreme Court weighs the senator’s request for a lengthier halt to the proceedings.

Willis has a deadline Thursday to tell the high court why Graham should have to answer the grand jury’s questions. Lower courts have ruled that his testimony can take place.

Thomas acted on his own, as the justice who handles emergency appeals from Georgia.

source

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) -U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas temporarily blocked a lower court’s order requiring Senator Lindsey Graham to testify to a grand jury in Georgia investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies attempted to overturn 2020 election results in the state.

Thomas granted the Republican senator’s request to halt the lower court’s decision pending a further order to come, either from him or the Supreme Court. Graham, a Trump ally, filed the emergency application on Friday after a federal appeals court denied his request to block the questioning.

Graham has argued that his position as a senator provides him immunity from having to appear before the grand jury.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has subpoenaed Graham to answer questions about phone calls he made to a senior Georgia election official in the weeks after the November 2020 election.

Last month, a federal judge narrowed the scope of questions that Graham must answer from the grand jury, rejecting Graham’s bid to avoid testifying altogether. Testimony from Graham could shed further light on Trump allies coordinating to reverse the election results.

Trump continues to appear at rallies repeating his false claims that the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden was stolen from him through widespread voting fraud.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)

source

By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Tom Barrack, a onetime fundraiser for former U.S. President Donald Trump, took the witness stand in his own defense on Monday in his trial on charges of being an illegal foreign agent for the United Arab Emirates.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said Barrack used his influence with Trump’s election campaign and administration to push the UAE’s interests in 2016 and 2017 without notifying the U.S. attorney general, as required by law. They say Emirati sovereign wealth funds invested $374 million in Barrack’s private equity firm Colony Capital, now known as DigitalBridge Group Inc, in 2017 and 2018.

Barrack, 75, has pleaded not guilty. On the stand on Wednesday, he testified that sovereign wealth funds in Qatar – a UAE rival in the Gulf – were “unquestionably” more significant investors in fueling Colony’s early growth than the UAE, and that Kuwaiti sovereign wealth funds also invested.

Barrack’s defense has argued his close relationship with Qatar shows he was not an Emirati agent. Last week, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin testified that Barrack urged him to get Trump to back Qatar in a 2017 blockade brought by the UAE, Saudi Arabia and others.

To prove Barrack was a UAE agent, prosecutors must prove he agreed to act under the Middle Eastern country’s direction or control.

Under questioning by his lawyer, Michael Schachter, Barrack said it would have been “impossible” for him to act subject to the “direction or control” of investors such as Kuwait or Qatar, because other investors would not tolerate it.

“If you are acting for them, you’re not going to act for us,” Barrack said.

Prosecutors were expected to cross-examine Barrack once Schachter finished his questioning.

During the monthlong trial, prosecutors have showed jurors text messages and emails indicating that Emirati officials provided feedback to Barrack on what he should say in television interviews and an opinion article about U.S. policy toward the Middle East in 2016 and 2017, and gave input about what Trump should say about energy policy in a 2016 presidential campaign speech.

Barrack’s lawyers have previously argued his interactions with Emirati officials were part of his job running Colony Capital. They have said that even in instances where his interests may have aligned with the UAE’s, Barrack was acting on his own volition.

In a post on his Truth Social platform on Sunday night, Trump said he did not believe Barrack was a UAE agent, and that Barrack never spoke to him about speeches or “what to say on this subject.”

“Tom Barrack is a highly respected businessman whose DREAM was to see PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST, a very good and noble thing,” Trump wrote. “He is being unfairly persecuted only because he is a supporter of ‘Trump.’”

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

source

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden sought to reassure Democratic voters who have doubts about whether the 79-year-old should run for re-election, while also saying in an interview that he could “drop dead tomorrow.”

Already the oldest president in American history, Biden would be 86 if he served out a second term. He has repeatedly said he will run for re-election in 2024, even as many Democrats have questioned whether the party should support a younger candidate instead.

A New York Times/Sienna College poll in July found only 26% of Democratic voters supported renominating Biden for 2024, with age cited as the biggest reason for those opposed.

In September, Biden publicly sought out Jackie Walorski, an Indiana Congresswoman who died in a car accident the previous month, seeming to forget that she had passed away.

“I’m in good health. All my, everything physically about me is still functioning well, so you know, and mentally too,” the president, who will turn 80 next month, said in the interview with MSNBC that aired on Sunday.

Biden said he should be judged based on his current vigor on the job, rather than his age, though he acknowledged the issue is a “legitimate” voter worry.

“I’m a great respecter of fate. I could get a disease tomorrow. I could, you know, drop dead tomorrow … in terms of my energy level, in terms of how much I’m able to do, I think people should look and say – can he still have the same passion for what he’s doing?” Biden said.

“And if they think I do and I can do it, then that’s fine. If they don’t, then they should vote against me – not against me, they should encourage me not to go. But that’s not how I feel.”

(Reporting by Joel Schectman; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

source

FUQUAY-VARINA, N.C. (AP) — In the fast-growing suburbs of Raleigh, North Carolina, the 13th District has emerged as one of the nation’s battlegrounds for congressional control, where a tight race between former President Donald Trump’s favored young upstart and a Democratic state senator could determine the balance of power in the narrowly split U.S. House.

Each refuting accusations of extreme stances and loose ties to the district, Republican Bo Hines and Democratic state Sen. Wiley Nickel are vying for the open seat that spawned from a tumultuous redistricting battle during which North Carolina fashioned boundaries for the new congressional district it was awarded following the 2020 census.

Analysts say the existing congressional map favors Republicans in seven of the state’s 14 districts, and favors Democrats in six. It was created by a panel of three judges after it declared the Republican-controlled legislature’s proposed boundaries amounted to unlawful partisan gerrymandering.

The map is only good for the 2022 election and will be redrawn by the legislature for 2024.

Considered the state’s lone swing district based on past elections, the 13th stretches from the southern border of the capital city beltline to the hog farms at the western edge of the coastal plain, aggregating a myriad of urban, suburban and rural communities. Its candidates are now seeking to portray themselves as moderate enough to represent the diverse constituency.

Political analysts, such as David McLennan of Meredith College in Raleigh, say the race is yet another test of Trump’s influence in a crucial swing state. But he expects even a successful election year for North Carolina Democrats won’t be enough to protect the party from losing control of the House.

In Fuquay-Varina, a right-leaning suburb, Hines turns heads as he enters a bustling coffee shop. A local contractor stands up to shake his hand, and two teenagers at the corner table chatter about his “frat boy charm.” He’s new to the neighborhood — he relocated to the district from Winston-Salem just a month before the May primary — but the 27-year-old former college football player asserts he understands the issues that matter to its residents.

“I feel like I have my finger on the pulse in this community, and North Carolina values are North Carolina values,” Hines told The Associated Press earlier this month.

Democrats have criticized Hines for “district shopping,” but the Republican, who lived in Raleigh for two years before transferring to Yale from North Carolina State University, said he always intended to run for the seat that Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Ted Budd is vacating. Budd currently represents a 13th District that is located to the west.

Nickel, 46, who still resides in the neighboring 2nd District but has represented Raleigh and nearby Cary in the state Senate since 2019, is “one to talk” about residency, Hines said.

North Carolina congressional candidates are not required to live in the district they seek to represent.

Some unaffiliated voters, like Bambi Bishop Lockhart, a kindergarten teacher in the Raleigh suburb of Holly Springs, aren’t convinced Hines has the experience or maturity to represent their interests in Congress.

“Bo Hines — he’s young, he’s immature and it’s so evident that he moved to the district just to run for Congress,” Lockhart, 47, said. “It reminds me of pageant hopping, like when girls from my childhood would move from place to place competing in local pageants until they finally qualify for Miss North Carolina. Bo’s trying to do that here when he’s actually an outsider who doesn’t represent us.”

She described Nickel — a two-term state senator, criminal defense attorney and former White House staffer under President Barack Obama — as “jovial” and “passionate about the issues that matter,” namely education and abortion access.

Other voters, like Fuquay-Varina structural engineer Tommy Faulkner, 48, are less concerned by Hines’ recent relocation. An unaffiliated voter who “leans conservative,” Faulkner said he sees Hines as the best candidate for the economy.

“He’s a North Carolina son, so no matter what area of North Carolina he decided to represent, I think he could represent well,” he said. “On more of the moral issues, like abortion, I trust him to maintain traditional North Carolina values.”

In a campaign cycle that has often framed abortion access and inflation reduction as mutually exclusive priorities, Nickel told the AP he is running a campaign focused on their intersections. The Democrat, who said federal abortion protections are the first policy he hopes to pass in Congress, argues people won’t want to do business in a state without abortion access, which could hurt North Carolina’s economy.

Hines said he supports a total ban on abortion, “but with the exception of life of the mother.” Democrats called him out earlier in the campaign cycle for wiping any mention of abortion from his campaign website, accusing him of hiding his “extremist” stance to appeal to moderates. Hines told the AP he removed it because he was hearing from constituents that abortion wasn’t among their primary concerns.

The first bill Hines hopes to pass in Congress, he said, is a 10-year moratorium on immigration. He described it as “a pause” to allow the United States to completely redraw its immigration system.

“I’m not against immigration,” Hines said. “I think we need to have an immigration system that allows us to properly vet people and allows us to expedite the process for folks, which, right now, it takes years if you do it correctly.”

But Nickel argues his opponent’s proposal runs counter to his platform of supporting the nation’s economic revival. The Democrat, for his part, has outlined a 30-point inflation action plan he said offers bipartisan economic solutions.

“The things he says are so dangerous and so far outside the mainstream,” Nickel said of Hines. “A 10-year moratorium on immigration would literally wreck our economy. People would go out of business, farmers wouldn’t be able to put food on the table.”

___

Hannah 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. Follow her on Twitter at @H_Schoenbaum.

source

Israeli Election Unlikely to Boost Women’s Representation in Knesset, Experts Say

Latest polls show that women-led parties are currently at risk of falling below electoral threshold

Israel’s upcoming election is unlikely to lead to greater women’s representation in the Knessetand could even have the opposite effect, gender equality experts believe.

The past two elections saw 30 women make it into the Knesset, representing 25% of the total 120seats available.

The latest polls indicate that that figure is unlikely to increase after the country votes on November 1, its fifth time doing so in four years.

Most surveys carried out over the past week showed that the political gridlock would likely continue, with the Binyamin Netanyahu-led bloc scoring 60 seats in total, just one seat short of a majority. Meanwhile, the bloc led by Prime Minister Yair Lapid appeared set to win 56 seats, while Hadash-Ta’al (which does not support either bloc) would scrape by with four seats.

Prof. Ofer Kenig, a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), has kept track of the number of women elected right in cent rounds of voting. One of his recent analyses for the IDI showed that Israel is currently ranked 61st out of 192 countries in terms of women’s political representation and 23rd out of 38 among the OECD states.

This situation is unlikely to improve and could even worsen this time around, Kenig warned.

“Because there are so many parties that are in the danger zone of not passing the electoral threshold, it’s hard to tell,” Kenig told The Media Line, noting that Meretz and Labor – both left-wing parties led by women – are at risk of falling below the electoral threshold.

A survey released by the Maariv news site on Friday showed the Likud leading with 31 seats, Yesh Atid with 23, followed by the far-right Religious Zionist party with 14 seats. The ultra-Orthodox parties are expected to win 15 seats altogether, while Defense Minister Benny Gantz’sNational Unity party appears poised to receive 12 mandates.

At the bottom of the list, and in danger of not making it into the Knesset at all, are the left-wing and Arab parties: Labor (5), Meretz (5), Ra’am (4) and Hadash-Ta’al (4).

Kenig predicted that roughly 30 women will again get voted in if both left-wing parties get enough votes come November 1.

From 1999 to 2015, Israel saw a dramatic increase in female representation, he said, however from 2015 onwards there has been little to no improvement in that regard, and female politicians continue to score 28-30 seats in parliament.

There are several factors that may have led to this plateau that are unique to the Israeli political landscape.

“Security issues were always and are still central in Israeli politics and women are still perceived as being less equipped or suitable to deal with such issues,” Kenig asserted. “For instance, no woman has ever been appointed to the office of defense minister.”

The second challenge facing female politicians is that Israeli society has large segments of ultra-conservative groups that are opposed to the inclusion of women in the political arena, namely the ultra-Orthodox and some religious Arab sectors.

“Hopefully we’ll reach the day where ultra-Orthodox parties will agree to include women in their parties because otherwise, it would be practically impossible to get even close to gender equality in the Knesset,” he said, adding that providing financial incentives to parties that include more women in their lists could move the trend in a more positive direction.

On the other side of the political spectrum, the Arab parties have just one woman who has achance of getting elected in the upcoming vote: MK Aida Touma-Sliman (Hadash-Ta’al), who currently heads the Knesset’s Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality.

“Israeli society has been going through changes and in my opinion, backlash concerning women,” Touma-Sliman told The Media Line. “The political [sphere] is also undergoing a crisis. Usually in those two situations, there is a withdrawal of the rights of women and their representation.”

Like Kenig, Touma-Sliman pointed to the “religious parties” as being primarily responsible for the lackluster progress seen on the political front when it comes to gender equality.

But she also believes that other factors are at play.

“I think there is a need, first of all, to help women to compete especially in parties that have a wide canvas, where high costs are involved in running in the primaries,” she argued. “Usuallywomen don’t have these kinds of resources. Secondly, there are fewer women that are involved in politics because politics in Israel are becoming very tiring; with six elections in seven years fewer women are interested in going through an experience that might last for only a few months before they start again.”

source