Politics

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Four people pleaded guilty on Monday to misdemeanors for their roles in absentee ballot fraud in rural North Carolina during the 2016 and 2018 elections. The convictions stemmed from an investigation that in part resulted in a do-over congressional election.

Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway accepted the plea agreements in Wake County court, which resulted in no active prison or jail time. Cases against six other defendants remained pending, with hearings scheduled through the end of next month, Wake District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said.

All 10 defendants, according to indictments handed up in 2019, had a common involvement with Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr., a longtime political operative in rural Bladen County.

Dowless also was indicted on more than a dozen state charges, with his case scheduled last year to go to trial last month. He rejected a plea agreement and looked forward to his day in court, according to a friend. But he died in April after being diagnosed with lung cancer. Freeman said at the time that the prosecution of the other cases would continue.

Dowless worked in the 2018 congressional race for then-Republican candidate Mark Harris, who appeared to have received the most votes in the general election for the 9th District seat in south-central North Carolina.

But allegations against Dowless surfaced, and testimony and other information revealed at a State Board of Elections hearing described him running an illegal “ballot harvesting” operation for the 2018 general election in Bladen County. In it, according to testimony, Dowless and his helpers gathered up hundreds of absentee ballots from voters by offering to put them in the mail.

Some of workers said they were directed to collect blank or incomplete ballots, forge signatures on them and even fill in votes for local candidates. It is generally against the law in North Carolina for anyone other than the voter or a family member to handle someone’s completed ballot.

The election board voted unanimously to order a new 9th District election. No charges were filed against Harris, who didn’t run in the subsequent election won in September 2019 by Republican Dan Bishop. The state investigation also led to charges of similar absentee ballot activities in Bladen for the 2016 general election and 2018 primary.

Those in court on Monday — Rebecca D. Thompson; Tonia Marie Gordon; Ginger Shae Eason; and Kelly Hendrix — all pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess absentee ballots. They all received suspended jail sentences, probation and 100 hours of community service.

Each of the four originally had been indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit felony obstruction of justice and possessing illegally an absentee ballot that belonged to someone else.

Freeman described the plea agreements as appropriate, identifying the defendants as local residents who met Dowless and agreed to help him out. Hendrix, who was indicted for both the 2016 and 2018 elections, met Dowless while she worked at a Hardee’s in Bladen County, according to Freeman.

“Mr. Dowless really was the ringleader in organizing all of this,” Freeman told the judge. “The individuals involved in these cases often were doing it out of some affiliation or feeling loyalty to him — maybe a little bit of money here and there.” Most elections-related prosecutions are handled by Freeman, as the DA of the county containing Raleigh, the state capital.

The district attorney said Gordon, who was indicted in relation to the 2016 general election, told investigators that Dowless paid her $100 for every 20 completed absentee ballot request forms and $5 for every completed absentee ballot she collected. Collecting the request forms isn’t necessarily unlawful.

Hendrix attorney Pete Wood told Ridgeway the plea agreement was a “good outcome” for his client: “Why did she do what she did? Because she was friends with Mr. Dowless … that doesn’t excuse it.”

The legal cases for the defendants were delayed in large part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which slowed court proceedings. Freeman also waited while a federal case against Dowless was resolved.

Dowless pleaded guilty in June 2021 to obtaining illegal Social Security benefits while concealing payments for political work he performed. He had worked for Harris’ campaign during some of the time scrutinized by federal prosecutors. He received a six-month prison sentence that he never served when his health deteriorated.

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Far from shying from his contrarian reputation, Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Jonson is leaning into controversy as he runs for his third term.

Johnson has called for the end of guaranteed money for Medicare and Social Security, two popular programs that American politicians usually steer clear from. He’s trafficked in conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and dabbled in pseudoscience around the coronavirus.

His Democratic challenger, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, has gone in a safer direction, cultivating an image as a nonthreatening defender of the middle class with TV ads showing him hitting baseballs, delivering pizzas to children and shopping for groceries.

Their race is one of a handful around the country that could decide control of the Senate next year, and the only one with an incumbent Republican seeking reelection in a state carried by President Joe Biden. It’s also shaping up as the kind of razor-close finish that’s become common in Wisconsin, where Donald Trump carried the state by fewer than 23,000 votes in 2016 and then lost to Biden by about the same margin two years ago.

Polls suggest that a Barnes edge in midsummer, likely propelled by his emergence as key Democratic rivals dropped out right before the state’s primary election, has evaporated under a barrage of attack ads from Johnson and his allies. A Marquette University Law School poll in mid-September had the race within the margin of error, with Barnes’ unfavorable ratings increasing by 10 percentage points from a month earlier.

“Ron Johnson isn’t doing anything to try and move his favorables up,” said Alex Lasry, a Milwaukee Bucks executive who was Barnes’ first main rival to leave the race and throw support to Barnes. “I think Ron Johnson’s campaign knows the voters don’t like him. What Johnson’s trying to do is drag everyone into the mud.”

Keith Gilkes, a GOP strategist who ran former Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s first campaign, said Johnson is simply defining Barnes and moving independents into his own camp.

“Now the pressure is back on Barnes,” Gilkes said. “How is he going to respond?”

Barnes, 35, and Johnson, 67, couldn’t be more different.

Johnson, a former plastics manufacturer, is a millionaire several times over. Barnes, the state’s lieutenant governor and potentially the state’s first Black senator, has championed his modest upbringing in Milwaukee as the child of a public school teacher and a United Auto Workers member.

Barnes’ messaging has tracked with that background, with talk of returning manufacturing to the state, protecting union jobs and helping small farmers — a play for rural voters who have slipped away from Democrats in recent years.

He has sometimes struggled financially as an adult, too — something he sought to turn to his advantage when attacked for paying his property taxes late. In one of his newest TV ads, Barnes says: “There were times I was getting by on peanut butter sandwiches. And that’s why I support a tax cut for the middle class.”

Johnson and his allies have accused him of speaking in platitudes rather than in detail about his plans, avoiding unscripted moments in front of reporters and hiding from voters.

When Barnes agreed to a single televised debate next month, Johnson — who had offered to do two more — pounced: “I can’t force the other guy out of hiding.” Barnes later agreed to a second debate.

Many of the attacks against Barnes from Johnson and Republicans have focused on violent crime and public safety, issues that polls show are concerns for voters this year. When Barnes had to remove the endorsement of two law enforcement officers from his website — the campaign said one was a clerical error, and the other one reportedly wasn’t aware his name would be made public — Johnson capitalized by releasing endorsements from a majority of Wisconsin sheriffs, including Democrats.

Barnes’ backers have said that ads attacking him on crime, including one from the National Republican Senatorial Committee citing his support for ending cash bail and calling him “dangerous,” are racist. The spot features footage of a car plowing through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, last year along with images of the Black man charged with killing six people and injuring dozens of others.

Barnes has talked about moving funding away from police departments to social service agencies, but he says he does not support defunding police. He rolled out a new ad last week that featured a retired Racine police sergeant declaring his trust in Barnes. And his campaign has highlighted appearances around the state to argue that he’s running an “open and accessible” campaign.

When he’s not attacking Barnes, Johnson is talking about issues that politicians facing an election typically avoid.

He has repeatedly called for removing guaranteed funding for Medicare and Social Security, saying it’s the only way to keep them viable. Those comments caught Biden’s attention, with the president repeatedly called Johnson out by name for wanting “to put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block every year.”

Johnson has also embraced conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, even though Biden’s win has been upheld by numerous courts, withstood partisan and independent investigations and weathered partial recounts in Wisconsin.

Johnson also dismissed concerns about climate change, said that he would have been more fearful during the Jan. 6, 2021, riots if the U.S. Capitol invaders had been Black Lives Matter protesters, and advocated for unproven and untested alternative treatments for COVID-19, saying mouthwash could be one way to fight the virus.

“Ron Johnson has never been a barrel of of sunshine, right?” said Mark Graul, a Republican strategist who ran Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush’s 2004 state campaign. “Him taking positions that are not exactly polling through the roof is what makes him Ron Johnson. … He’s not out here wanting to be loved.”

Wisconsin’s close races typically turn on whether Democratic turnout in the urban centers of Milwaukee and Madison counter Republican strengths in rural areas and the Milwaukee suburbs. It also matters which candidate can better tap into the issues most important to independents, said Scott Spector, who ran Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s successful 2018 campaign.

That includes abortion — perhaps the one area where Johnson is showing caution given polls showing a strong majority back it being legal. Johnson recently said that questions about Wisconsin’s abortion ban should be decided by a statewide vote, but when Democratic Gov. Tony Evers proposed a way to do that, Johnson balked.

Gilkes, the Republican strategist, said Barnes needs to “rise to the moment” in the campaign’s final weeks and pivot from defending himself to being more aggressive in taking on Johnson.

“He needs to fix the messaging, get focused and get out there more to ultimately be successful,” Gilkes said. “That flow is going against Mandela. He’s being overwhelmed by it right now.”

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By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democratic U.S. Representative Val Demings enters the final weeks of her campaign to unseat Republican U.S. Senator Marco Rubio in a stronger position than many observers had expected in conservative-leaning Florida.

Demings, a former Orlando police chief, is the underdog against Rubio, who is seeking his third six-year term in the Senate and ran unsuccessfully for the 2016 Republican U.S. presidential nomination. But recent polls show Demings pulling close to Rubio ahead of the Nov. 8 midterm election, even as the state’s Republican Governor, Ron DeSantis, maintains a wide lead over Democratic challenger Charlie Crist.

While DeSantis is expected to easily fend off Crist’s challenge, some political observers have said that Rubio faces a closer race with Demings.

Control of Congress is at stake on Nov. 8, with Democrats holding slim majorities in both the House of Representatives and Senate. Democrats currently hold the Senate by the narrowest possible margin, through Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote in a chamber split 50-50 between the parties.

While Republicans are favored to win a majority in the House, competitive races in states including Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona have increased the chances for Biden’s party to successfully defend its Senate majority. Demings is hoping to add Florida to that list.

Rubio has sought to link Demings closely to President Joe Biden, saying on Twitter last month that she is “just another blame-America-first rubber stamp” and accusing Democrats of allowing a rise in urban crime.

“This race is about Val Demings versus Marco Rubio,” said Christian Slater, communications director for Demings’ campaign. “We have a clear contrast in this race: A cop on the beat who is a no-nonsense, straight-shooter with voters versus a career politician.”

Demings has raised more campaign funds than Rubio, pulling in $47.2 million to the incumbent’s $36.5 million as of Aug. 3, the latest figures available.

“I see both running hard – anything is possible,” said a Republican strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Rubio will need a strong turnout in Florida’s heavily conservative northwestern panhandle, the strategist added.

Republicans nominated untested Senate candidates including former football star Herschel Walker in Georgia, television doctor Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and venture capitalist and author J.D. Vance in Ohio, as well as far-right candidate Don Bolduc in New Hampshire. Holding seats like Rubio’s is thus all the more important for them.

Allies of Demings acknowledge that she faces political headwinds in Florida including Biden’s low popularity. Biden lost the key election battleground state to Trump by 3 percentage points in 2020. An average of opinion polls published in the past month places Demings within about 3 percentage points of Rubio, according to RealClearPolitics.

Demings has leaned hard on her 27-year career in law enforcement, identifying herself in ads as “the chief” rather than playing up her six years in the House. Demings also served as one of the Democratic House managers in Trump’s first Senate impeachment trial in 2020. If elected, Demings would become the first Black U.S. senator from Florida. There are no Black women currently serving in the Senate.

Jose Parra, an adviser to the Florida Democratic Party, said that for Demings to win, she would need to boost turnout among voters in south Florida, including Rubio’s birthplace Miami, and lure independents in a vote-rich corridor traversing central Florida.

“It’s going to be all about the independents,” Parra said. (This story corrects to delete paragraphs 3 and 4, which referenced a trip to Florida by Biden planned for Sept 27 that was canceled on Sept 24)

(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Will Dunham and Scott Malone)

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin’s Republican Assembly leader is suing to block a subpoena that orders him to testify before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection about a conversation he had with Donald Trump about overturning the 2020 election.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos filed the lawsuit on Sunday in federal court in Wisconsin arguing that the subpoena falls outside the scope of the committee’s investigation into last year’s Capitol attack and infringes on his legislative immunity from civil process.

Vos, who had a falling out with Trump this summer, also alleged that the short notice of the subpoena placed an undue burden on him. Rep. Bennie Thompson, committee chair, issued the subpoena Friday ordering Vos to appear on Monday morning either in person or via videoconference.

He did not testify. The deposition was postponed.

In his lawsuit, Vos said the only explanation for the “extreme deadline” was to conduct the interview before the committee’s next televised hearing on Wednesday “so that clips can be edited out to be used in a multimedia show.”

Others who have been subpoenaed by the committee have also sued to avoid giving testimony.

Vos, in a statement Monday, said he was surprised to be subpoenaed because he has no information about the events surrounding the Jan. 6 attacks.

“Given how close we are to the midterms, this subpoena seems to be more about partisan politics than actual fact-finding,” he said.

A letter from Thompson that accompanied the subpoena said lawmakers want to talk with Vos about a July call with Trump in which the former president asked Vos about steps he was taking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The call was in response to a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that absentee ballot drop boxes, which were used in the 2020 election and others before it, would be illegal going forward.

After Vos took no action to overturn the election, Trump endorsed his primary challenger.

Vos narrowly won his primary, and three days later fired Michael Gableman, the former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice he had hired, under pressure from Trump, to investigate the 2020 election. Vos called Gableman, who also endorsed his primary opponent, an “embarrassment.”

Gableman’s inquiry turned up no evidence of widespread fraud, but the investigator joined Trump in calling for lawmakers to consider decertifying the 2020 election.

The new lawsuit was assigned to U.S. District Judge Pamela Pepper, who was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama.

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Venhuizen 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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More on Donald Trump-related investigations: https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump

Follow the AP’s coverage of Jan. 6 at: https://apnews.com/hub/capitol-siege

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday urged companies running gas stations, banks and cell phone services to lower costs for consumers coping with inflation.

During a White House meeting, Biden said that “junk fees” such as bank overdraft fees and cellular phone termination charges were hurting families and that gas station operators needed to lower prices at the pump “now.”

(Reporting by Jeff Mason, writing by Katharine Jackson, editing by Chris Gallagher)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden’s executive actions cancelling some student loan debt will cost about $400 billion, the Congressional Budget Office said on Monday.

(Reporting by Eric Beech; Caitlin Webber)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department is not aware of any change in Edward Snowden’s American citizenship status, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Monday, adding that Washington’s position on the former U.S. intelligence contractor has not changed.

President Vladimir Putin on Monday granted Russian citizenship to Snowden, nine years after he exposed the scale of secret surveillance operations by the National Security Agency (NSA).

(Reporting by Simon Lewis and Kanishka Singh; Writing by Daphne Psaledakis and Humeyra Pamuk)

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Only glimpses of videos that make it online show the protests convulsing Iran over the death of a 22-year-old woman who had been detained by the nation’s morality police.

But those flashes show that public anger across the country, once only simmering, is now boiling.

The demonstrations surrounding the death of Mahsa Amini — and the government crackdown emerging to stifle them — represent just the latest cycle of unrest to grip Iran since its 1979 Islamic Revolution.

It likely won’t be the last as the Islamic Republic lurches between crises at home and abroad. The window through which the wider world can view them will only become more dim as authorities restrict internet access, detain journalists and tightly control all levers of the government’s power.

Protests over Amini’s death have spread across at least 46 Iranian cities, towns and villages. State TV has suggested that at least 41 protesters and police have been killed since the protests began on Sept. 17. An Associated Press count of official statements by authorities puts the death toll at at least 13, with more than 1,200 demonstrators arrested.

But the tightening crackdown doesn’t come as a surprise, given Iran’s modern history.

Iran’s theocracy has viewed itself as under threat from the moment the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Tehran in 1979.

Bombings in 1981 blamed on dissidents killed dozens of top officials. One even paralyzed the right arm of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein launched a bloody eight-year war on Iran in which 1 million people were killed.

In Tehran, enmity toward the United States began with the American-backed 1953 coup that cemented the shah’s reign. For Washington, the 1979 U.S. Embassy hostage crisis stoked hostility toward Iran.

And the mutual distrust continues today. Since the collapse of a deal in 2015 intended to curtail Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, Iran has amassed enough highly enriched uranium to produce an atomic bomb if it chose to do so.

The Iranian government has dismissed the latest protests as a foreign plot, rather than an expression of public outrage over the death of a woman detained only because her mandatory headscarf, or hijab, wasn’t to the morality police’s liking.

Pro-government marches in Tehran and other cities echoed the official line, with some marchers chanting “American mercenaries are fighting the religion.”

The government’s decision to restrict Instagram, LinkedIn and WhatsApp — three of the last Western social media apps working in the country — has limited the ability for protesters to organize and share their videos with the outside world.

Instead, only short clips find their way out, including those of security forces firing at protesters and women defiantly cutting off their hair and burning their hijabs. Security forces, including motorcycle-riding volunteers with Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, have attacked peaceful demonstrators.

There’s also been footage of apparent demonstrators setting fires, flipping over police cars and fighting back against riot police.

These scenes are similar to those that occurred in 2019 after the government dropped fuel subsidies, prompting demonstrators to set gas stations ablaze and ransack banks. Rights groups say that the unrest across more than 100 cities and towns — and the government crackdown that followed — killed over 300 people and led to thousands of arrests.

Because of the internet restrictions, it remains unclear if the latest protests have eclipsed those of 2019. Exiled opposition groups and Iranian hard-liners have both used the short clips online to paint their own pictures of the unrest as the government largely remains silent.

Independent observers such as human rights activists face threats, intimidation and arrest in Iran. Text messages from the government to the public warn of criminal charges for joining demonstrations. At least 18 reporters are known to have been arrested so far in the crackdown, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Like other rounds of unrest since 2009, when millions took to the streets as part of the so-called Green Movement to protest a disputed presidential election, the latest demonstrations appear spontaneous and leaderless.

Even if a government crackdown eventually quells the protests, it likely won’t eradicate the deep-seated rage.

Iran’s economy has cratered, and Western sanctions have destroyed the savings of a generation. The value of the currency has plummeted, from 32,000 rials for a dollar in 2015 to 315,000 rials for a dollar in 2022. Iranian youth increasingly try to find new livelihoods abroad at whatever cost. Those left behind struggle to make ends meet.

Iranian politics have grown insular and uncompromising. In the 2021 presidential election, all serious contenders were disqualified to allow Ebrahim Raisi, a protégé of Khamenei, to take the presidency in the lowest turnout vote in the Islamic Republic’s history.

The economic challenges and hard-line political positions are only likely to solidify. Even if Iran agreed to a road map to restore the nuclear deal, it likely will face new U.S. sanctions over selling so-called suicide drones to Russia to use in its ongoing war in Ukraine.

A battle over leadership could turn Iran’s focus further inward. There is no designated successor for the 83-year-old Khamenei, though some analysts suggest his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, might be considered by clerics to become the next supreme leader.

Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Guard, which answers only to the supreme leader, has grown increasingly powerful — both militarily and economically — during the recent tensions with the West. The U.S. Treasury said the Guard has smuggled “hundreds of millions of dollars” worth of sanctioned oil into the international market.

Both the theocracy and the Guard have financial and political incentive to continue the status quo. And with no other outlets, mass protests by the Iranian public seem likely to continue.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — Jon Gambrell, the news director for the Gulf and Iran for The Associated Press, has reported from each of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Iran and other locations across the world since joining the AP in 2006. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.

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ATLANTA (AP) — Outraged by false allegations of fraud against a Georgia elections employee in 2020, Amanda Rouser made a vow as she listened to the woman testify before Congress in June about the racist threats and harassment she faced.

“I said that day to myself, ‘I’m going to go work in the polls, and I’m going to see what they’re going to do to me,’” Rouser, who like the targeted employee is Black, recalled after stopping by a recruiting station for poll workers at Atlanta City Hall on a recent afternoon. “Try me, because I’m not scared of people.”

About 40 miles north a day later, claims of fraud also brought Carolyn Barnes to a recruiting event for prospective poll workers, but with a different motivation.

“I believe that we had a fraudulent election in 2020 because of the mail-in ballots, the advanced voting,” Barnes, 52, said after applying to work the polls for the first time in Forsyth County. “I truly believe that the more we flood the system with honest people who are trying to help out, it will straighten it out.”

Barnes, who declined to give her party affiliation, said she wants to use her position as a poll worker to share her observations about “the gaps” in election security and “where stuff could happen afterwards.”

Nearly two years after the last presidential election, there has been no evidence of widespread fraud or manipulation of voting machines. Numerous reviews in the battleground states where former President Donald Trump disputed his loss to President Joe Biden have affirmed the results, courts have rejected dozens of lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies, and even Trump’s own Department of Justice concluded the results were accurate.

Nevertheless, the false claims about the the 2020 presidential contest by the former president and his supporters are spurring new interest in working the polls in Georgia and elsewhere for the upcoming midterm elections, according to interviews with election officials, experts and prospective poll workers.

Like Rouser, some aim to shore up a critical part of their state’s election system amid the lies and misinformation about voting and ballot-counting. But the false claims and conspiracy theories also have taken hold among a wide swath of conservative voters, propelling some to sign up to help administer elections for the first time.

The possibility they will play a crucial role at polling places is a new worry this election cycle, said Sean Morales-Doyle, an election security expert at The Brennan Center for Justice.

“I think it’s a problem that there may be people who are running our elections that buy into those conspiracy theories and so are approaching their role as fighting back against rampant fraud,” he said.

But he also cautioned that there are numerous safeguards to prevent a single poll worker from disrupting voting or trying to manipulate the results.

The Associated Press talked to roughly two dozen prospective poll workers in September during three recruiting events in two Georgia counties — Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta and where more than 70 percent of voters cast a ballot for Biden, and Forsyth County north of Atlanta, where support for Trump topped 65 percent.

About half said the 2020 election was a factor in their decision to try to become a poll worker.

“We don’t want Donald Trump bullying people,” said Priscilla Ficklin, a Democrat, while taking an application at Atlanta City Hall to be a Fulton County poll worker. “I’m going to stand up for the people who are afraid.”

Carlette Dryden said she showed up to vote in Forsyth County in 2020 only to be told that she had already cast a mail-in ballot. She said elections officials let her cast a ballot later, but she suspects someone fraudulently voted in her name and believes her experience reflects broader problems with the vote across the country.

Still, she said her role was not to police voters or root out fraud.

“What I’m signing up to do is to help others that are coming through here that may need assistance or questions answered,” she said.

Georgia was a focus of Trump’s attempts to undo his 2020 election defeat to Biden. He pressured the state’s Republican secretary of state in a January 2021 phone call to “find” enough votes to overturn Biden’s victory in the state and seized on surveillance footage to accuse the Black elections worker, Wandrea Moss, and her mother, Ruby Freeman, of pulling out suitcases of fraudulent votes in Fulton County. The allegation was quickly knocked down, but still spread widely through conservative media.

Moss told the House Jan. 6 committee that she received death threats and racist messages.

At a farmer’s market in the politically mixed suburb of Alpharetta north of Atlanta, Deborah Eves said she was concerned about being harassed for working at a voting site but still felt compelled to sign up.

A substitute teacher and Democrat, Eves visited a recruiting booth set up by Fulton County officials next to stands selling single origin coffee, honey and empanadas.

“I feel like our government is ‘we the people, and ’we the people’ need to step up and do things like poll working so that we can show that nobody’s cheating, nobody’s trying to do the wrong thing here,” she said.

Allison Saunders, who worked at a voting site for the first time during the state’s May primary, said she believes Moss and Freeman were targeted because they are Black. Saunders, a Democrat, was visiting the farmer’s market with her son.

“More people that look like me need to step up and do our part,” said Saunders, who is white. “I think it’s more important to do your civic duty than to be afraid.”

Threats after the 2020 election contributed to an exodus of full-time elections officials around the country. Recruiters say they have not seen a similar drop in people who have previously done poll work — temporary jobs open to local residents during election season. But some larger counties around the country have reported that they are struggling to fill those positions.

Working the polls has long been viewed as an apolitical civic duty. For first-time workers, it generally involves setting up voting machines, greeting voters, checking that they are registered and answering questions about the voting process.

Elections staff in the U.S. generally do not vet the political views of prospective poll workers deeply, although most states have requirements that seek to have a mix of Democratic and Republican poll workers at each voting location.

Forsyth County’s elections director, Mandi Smith, said she was not worried about having people who believe the last presidential election was fraudulent serve as poll workers. The county provides training that emphasizes the positions are nonpartisan and that workers must follow certain rules.

“It’s a very team-driven process, as well, in the sense that there are multiple poll workers there and you are generally not working alone,” she said.

Ginger Aldrich, who attended the county’s recruiting event, said she knows people who believe the last election was stolen from Trump. Their views made her curious about what she described as the “mysterious” aspects of the voting process, such as where ballots go after they leave the voting site.

“There’s going to be some people that are unscrupulous, and they are going to spend all this time figuring out how to beat the system,” said Aldrich, who is retired.

While she believes there is fraud in elections, she said she was willing to use her experience as a poll worker to try to convince people that there were no problems in her county with the midterm elections.

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Follow AP for full coverage of the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and on Twitter, https://twitter.com/ap_politics

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CINCINNATI (AP) — Democratic House candidate Greg Landsman can tick off how his party’s control of Congress and the White House has benefited his city.

The bipartisan infrastructure deal will mean upgrades to the heavily traveled highway bridge linking Cincinnati with its airport and northern Kentucky while bolstering a vital westside viaduct. COVID-19 relief funding meant training for more new police academy recruits. A sprawling spending package capped insulin prices.

But Landsman won’t say whether President Joe Biden, who signed those measures into law, will help or hurt his campaign to unseat longtime Republican Rep. Steve Chabot. He doesn’t think the president will visit the southwest Ohio swing district before the November midterm elections and insists that, in thousands of conversations while campaigning, Biden usually “just doesn’t come up.”

Officeholders and top candidates often distance themselves from their party’s unpopular president. Some Republicans shunned Donald Trump ahead of the 2018 midterms when Democrats flipped the House, just as many Democrats ran away from Barack Obama as 2010’s red wave loomed. George W. Bush and Bill Clinton suffered similar midterm election fates.

But this cycle presents conflicting political incentives that have forced some front-line Democrats into delicate balancing acts. While improving lately, Biden’s approval ratings remain low and inflation is still running near record highs. Yet unemployment is down, wages are up and the White House has notched key congressional wins applauded by many Democrats in close races.

The predicament underscores the lack of a national Democratic playbook on how to run in relation to Biden ahead of the midterms.

“These issues become, especially in places like Cincinnati, Greater Cincinnati, very local very quickly,” said Landsman, a City Council member whose hesitancy to mention Biden is a change from his appearance with the president in Cincinnati in May.

Two hundred miles north in Toledo, Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in House history, has been more direct, producing an ad saying she “doesn’t work for Joe Biden” mere weeks after greeting the president at the Cleveland airport in July.

Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, running for Ohio’s open Senate seat, appeared with the president at the recent groundbreaking of an Intel computer chip factory outside Columbus. But he suggested then of the possibility of Biden seeking reelection in 2024 that both parties need “new leadership” and “it’s time for a generational move.”

When Biden visited Milwaukee on Labor Day, Democratic Gov. Tom Evers, who is up for reelection, appeared with him, but Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, competing against Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, did not. In Maine, Democratic Rep. Jared Goldenhas an ad saying he opposed “trillions of dollars of President Biden’s agenda because I knew it would make inflation worse.” Democratic Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly is giving Biden’s performance “mixed reviews.”

Landsman says he appeared with the president because he supported White House-backed microchip legislation that helped make the new Intel facility a reality. Kaptur says she appeared with Biden because he was announcing $1 billion for Great Lakes improvements and got a firsthand look at the town of Lorain, which has been devastated by steel mills closing.

“There’s some other things I don’t agree with the president on. But that one — getting attention to Lorain, Ohio, which has endured such a battering in the international markets, and the people are still so positive and so constructive,” she said, “it was a great moment.”

Phil Heimlich, a former Cincinnati City Council member and Republican county commissioner who opposes Trump and has endorsed Landsman, said Democrats’ struggles with Biden are real but pale in comparison to GOP candidates contending with a national party increasingly beholden to his predecessor.

“I think the national stuff still plays a role,” Heimlich said, “but that cuts both ways.”

When Trump held a rally recently in Youngstown, Ohio, Chabot didn’t attend. Kaptur’s opponent, J.R. Majewski, did. But they aren’t letting their opponents escape Biden’s political shadow.

“I think people know Pelosi and Biden. Some people are favorable. But I don’t think that’s the majority,” said Chabot, who has criticized Landsman for briefly working in Nancy Pelosi’s Washington office in 1999, before she was House speaker. He’s also tagged tweets about rising prices #Bidenflation.

Majewski said in his first TV ad that “Biden and Kaptur are spending more and more while inflation goes up and up.”

Chabot was first elected to Congress in 1994 and has won several hotly contested reelection races. But Ohio’s new congressional maps mean his territory encompasses more of Democrat-friendly Cincinnati.

A recent Landsman campaign event included his releasing a 5-year-old wire-haired dachshund named Jerome in a wiener dog race as Oktoberfest celebrations thronged the city’s downtown. Chabot, that same weekend, greeted would-be voters at a smaller, Catholic church-sponsored street festival in the nearby town of Reading, where he was born.

“I know a lot of people who are not Democrats and they are definitely going to be voting,” Jean Huneck, a 67-year-old who owns a small mechanical engineering business, said of the new, ostensibly bluer district. Huneck is a registered Democrat but supports Chabot and said the GOP needs big November wins to counter Biden.

“I feel like our livelihoods are depending on it,” she said.

Kaptur has held her seat since 1983 but faces circumstances opposite from Chabot’s. Redistricting swapped parts of her district’s largely blue Cleveland suburbs for a conservative, eastern swath of the state that hugs Lake Erie and reaches the Indiana border.

Some of the new territory is dotted with cornfields and bait and tackle shops. An occasional yard sign says “Trump 2024 or Before,” a reference to the former president’s spurious suggestions he could be reinstated into power.

Majewski is Trump-endorsed, and Kaptur has branded him as a past devotee of QAnon conspiracy theories who passed police barricades during last year’s deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Kaptur says in a TV ad that her opponent is “too dangerous to serve in Congress.”

The National Republican Campaign Committee, the party’s House campaign arm, promoted a photo of Biden kissing Kaptur’s hand upon arriving in Cleveland and a video of her saying that, after a year in office, the president’s “report card is outstanding” juxtaposed with headlines about inflation and the president’s sinking approval ratings.

Following an Associated Press report that Majewski misrepresented his military career, the NRCC canceled TV ads it had booked to support his campaign.

Brendan McHugh, a 31-year-old who works in investment real estate in Toledo, said linking Biden and Kaptur isn’t a bad thing because “Democrats have been getting some wins recently.”

“I’ve been pleased with the progress that the Biden administration’s been making,” McHugh said, calling that “a net positive” for Kaptur.

Michael Jones, a 56-year-old attorney who lives in the same Old Orchard neighborhood near the University of Toledo, said that he’s a Kaptur supporter and that controlling things like inflation is largely out of Biden’s hands. But he added, “There’s a lot of challenging things happening right now.”

“People may look at who’s at the top right now,” Jones said. “And it may impact how an undecided person might vote.”

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Follow AP for full coverage of the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ap_politics.

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