WASHINGTON (AP) — Trump loyalist wins GOP primary for post overseeing Arizona elections after embracing election fallacies.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A former White House spokesman whose testimony was broadcast before a House committee investigating the U.S. Capitol riot is joining Sarah Sanders’ campaign for Arkansas governor.
Sanders’ campaign on Tuesday announced Judd Deere will serve as its communications director. Deere was among several senior staff hires announced.
“All of them bring unique experiences and expertise, which makes this campaign, along with our incredible supporters, even stronger,” Sanders said in a statement.
Sanders, a Republican, is running against Democrat Chris Jones.
Sanders served as White House press secretary under former President Donald Trump and Deere is a former deputy press secretary. Video of a deposition Deere gave was aired during the Jan. 6 committee’s hearings last month.
In one part of his testimony, Deere talked about his reaction to Trump’s Jan. 6 tweet criticizing Vice President Mike Pence for refusing to block the certification of President Joe Biden’s election. Deere called the tweet “extremely unhelpful.”
“The scenes at the U.S. Capitol were only getting worse at that point,” Deere testified.
Deere has worked as a spokesman for two of Sanders’ former rivals. Before joining the White House, he was spokesman for Attorney General Leslie Rutledge. He also worked for Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin’s 2014 campaign. Rutledge and Griffin ran against Sanders for the GOP nomination for governor before dropping out to run for other offices.
“I am humbled by the confidence & trust Sarah has in me, & I’m excited for the work ahead!” Deere tweeted Tuesday.
Deere has also worked for Republican Sens. John Boozman of Arkansas, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee and Mike Crapo of Idaho.
Sanders, who is the daughter of former Gov. Mike Huckabee, is heavily favored in the race for governor in solidly red Arkansas. Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson is barred by term limits from seeking reelection.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris jointly endorsed U.S. Rep. Karen Bass on Tuesday to become the next mayor of Los Angeles, providing a boost to her campaign against billionaire developer Rick Caruso and cementing her place as the pick of the Democratic establishment.
In a statement, Biden and Harris said they were eager to work with Bass and her “innovative strategies” to deal with the city’s homeless crisis and rising crime rates.
“Karen Bass has our friendship, and she has earned our respect through her leadership in Congress on crime prevention strategies, effective and fair policing, and the welfare of children and families,” Biden and Harris said.
The endorsement was not a surprise. Bass was on Biden’s short list when he was selecting a vice president and Harris, a fellow Californian, has known her for years.
Bass — a favorite of the party’s progressive wing — could become the first woman to hold the city’s top job, and the second Black person.
Caruso, who is known for building high-end malls, is a political shape-shifter who calls himself a “centrist, pro-jobs, pro-public safety Democrat.” According to government records, he was a Republican for over two decades before becoming an independent in 2011. Caruso changed back to Republican in 2016 — a year when he served as California campaign co-chair for Republican John Kasich’s presidential bid — and then to independent again in 2019. He became a Democrat shortly before entering the mayor’s race in February.
Caruso has spent more than $40 million on the race, much of it his own money. Bass led the field by a comfortable margin in the June primary, setting up a November runoff with Caruso, the second-place finisher.
SEATTLE (AP) — Patty Murray is running for a sixth term in the U.S. Senate and, if reelected, she’d join two former Democratic stalwarts as the longest serving senators from Washington state.
Murray, 71, was first elected to the chamber in 1992 during the “Year of the Woman” and has aggressively promoted her support of abortion rights ahead of Tuesday’s primary. Her most high-profile opponent is Republican Tiffany Smiley, a well-funded first-time candidate who says it’s time Washington had a new senator.
Murray’s nearly 30 years in the Senate place her behind only Democratic Sens. Warren Magnuson and Henry “Scoop” Jackson for longest service in the Senate from the Evergreen State. The powerhouse duo served 36 years and 30 years, respectively, and were among the most powerful senators of the mid-20th century.
Murray is now a member of the Democratic leadership and has risen to chair of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
Murray would be the favorite in the November election as Washington hasn’t elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate since 1994. But she’s taking no chances in what could be a tough year for Democrats with rising inflation and economic turmoil.
Murray’s campaign has spent more than $1 million to run television ads since June blasting Smiley for supporting Roe v. Wade’s reversal.
“I want a country where everyone can make their own choices,” Murray has said.
Murray and Smiley appear on the same nonpartisan primary ballot Tuesday, where the top two vote-getters advance to the general election, regardless of party.
Smiley, 41, is a mother of three who has highlighted her advocacy for her husband, a military veteran who was blinded in an explosion while serving in Iraq in 2005.
Smiley worked as a triage nurse until her husband, Scotty, was blinded. She quit her job and flew to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to be by his side.
Smiley says she worked tirelessly to stop the Army from pushing her husband, a West Point graduate, into a medical retirement. Instead, he became the first blind active-duty officer in the Army, and is featured in her political ads.
She recently announced her campaign had raised $2.6 million in the second quarter and had $3.5 million in cash on hand. Murray reported raising $2.6 million in the same quarter, with about $6.6 million in the bank at the end of June.
Smiley, a former nurse from Pasco, Washington, said the Supreme Court’s decision on Roe leaves it to voters in individual states to decide if they wanted to allow abortions. Smiley said she doesn’t support a nationwide ban on abortion, despite what Murray has contended in her ads.
Murray, Smiley has said, is “resorting to misleading scare tactics. It shows desperation.”
Murray is also highlighting her efforts to help middle-class families, saying there should be more tax cuts for them than for corporations.
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Associated Press writer Nicholas K. Geranios contributed to this story.
NEW YORK (AP) — Three Republican U.S. House members who voted to impeach Donald Trump over the Jan. 6 insurrection are being challenged in Tuesday’s primary elections by rivals endorsed by the former president.
The primaries for Reps. Peter Meijer, Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dan Newhouse are the biggest test yet for GOP incumbents who broke with Trump after a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a bid to keep him in power. Trump has vowed revenge against the 10 House Republicans who crossed party lines for the impeachment vote.
Of the 10, four opted not to run for reelection in this year’s midterm elections. As for the ones who did, Rep. Tom Rice of South Carolina lost to a Trump-endorsed challenger in June, while Rep. David Valadao of California survived a challenge that same month from a fellow Republican, advancing to the general election. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming is bracing for defeat in her Aug. 16 primary against a Trump-backed rival.
In other races Tuesday, two Democratic incumbents in Michigan are facing each other in a newly drawn congressional district, and two members of the progressive “Squad” have primary challengers in Missouri and Michigan. In Arizona, GOP voters will decide whether to nominate a major QAnon figure for a congressional seat.
Some of the top elections:
FACING VOTERS AFTER IMPEACHMENT VOTES
The three House Republicans facing primary challenges Tuesday for impeaching Trump say they don’t regret their vote.
In Michigan, Meijer voted for impeachment just days after he was sworn into office for his first term. The former president has endorsed Meijer’s opponent, John Gibbs, a businessman and missionary who served in the Trump administration under Housing Secretary Ben Carson.
Gibbs has contended Meijer is not a true Republican because he voted to impeach Trump, and Gibbs chastised Meijer for supporting bipartisan gun control legislation that President Joe Biden signed into law in June.
Meijer, a member of the Army Reserves who served in Iraq, has criticized Biden over the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well as his handling of the economy. The congressman’s family is well known in the Midwest as owners of the chain of Meijer grocery megastores, and he has a large fundraising advantage over Gibbs. The winner will face Democrat Hillary Scholten in November in the state’s Democratic-leaning 3rd Congressional District.
In Washington state, the two Republicans who voted for impeachment are competing in crowded primaries, from which the top two vote-getters, regardless of political party, will move on to the general election in November.
Herrera Beutler’s primary against eight challengers, four of whom are Republicans, in Washington state’s 3rd Congressional District will be one of the toughest of her career. Trump is backing Joe Kent, a former Green Beret who has promoted the former president’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen.
Herrera Beutler has been in Congress since 2011 and represents an area that has favored Republicans.
In the central part of Washington, Newhouse, a four-term congressman, is facing seven challengers, six of whom are Republicans, in the solidly conservative 4th Congressional District. His rivals include Loren Culp, a former small-town police chief who refused to concede the governor’s race in 2020. Culp has Trump’s backing but has lagged other candidates in fundraising.
CANDIDATE LINKED TO QANON
Ron Watkins, one of the most prominent figures in the QAnon conspiracy movement, is running for a House seat in Arizona’s sprawling 2nd Congressional District.
He served as the longtime administrator of online message boards that helped seed the conspiracy movement whose adherents believe a group of satanic, cannibalistic child molesters secretly runs the globe.
Watkins no longer runs the message boards and has denied fueling the QAnon movement. He said he is running for Congress because he hopes to “fix the machine from the inside.”
He is considered a long shot in the crowded GOP field, having been outpaced in campaign fundraising by the other candidates.
State Rep. Walter Blackman and Eli Crane, a former Navy SEAL who owns a bottle opener business and was endorsed by Trump, are considered the leading GOP contenders. The winner will take on Democratic U.S. Rep. Tom O′Halleran in November in a district that favors Republicans.
FROM COLLEAGUES TO COMPETITORS
Two incumbent Michigan Democrats, Reps. Andy Levin and Haley Stevens, are running against each other for a newly drawn 11th Congressional District in suburban Detroit. They’re vying for a left-leaning area, which means the winner of Tuesday’s contest will likely win the seat in November.
Stevens flipped a district in 2018 that was long held by Republicans. Before running for office, she led the auto bailout under President Barack Obama.
Levin also won his first term in 2018, taking over the seat long held by his father, Rep. Sander “Sandy” Levin. He’s been endorsed by Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
CHALLENGING THE ‘SQUAD’
Two members of the Squad in Congress are facing primary challenges on Tuesday.
In Michigan, Rep. Rashida Tlaib faces three Democratic challengers as she seeks a third term in office. She’s running in a newly drawn Detroit-area district where the winner is expected to easily carry the 12th Congressional District seat in November. Tlaib’s main competition is longtime Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey, who has strong name recognition in the city.
In Missouri, first-term Rep. Cori Bush is facing a challenge in the state’s 1st Congressional District. State Sen. Steve Roberts is betting that Bush, a vocal advocate for defunding the police and moving money to social services and mental health programs, is too liberal even for heavily Democratic St. Louis.
Roberts has twice faced rape allegations, though prosecutors said they didn’t have enough evidence to merit charges. He has accused the Bush campaign of dredging up the allegations to distract from her record.
Bush has touted her accomplishments, including persuading the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up radioactive waste near a St. Louis County creek, pushing for climate change action and standing against evictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
10 YEARS AFTER TUCSON SHOOTING, INTERN SEEKS GIFFORDS’ SEAT
Daniel Hernandez Jr., the hero intern credited with saving Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ life after an attempted assassination in 2011, is running for her former seat in Congress.
Hernandez, who recently stepped down from the state Legislature to focus on his campaign, faces another former lawmaker in the Democratic primary. However, the once highly competitive district centered in Tucson now favors Republicans after the boundaries were redrawn.
Hernandez was a 20-year-old college student in his first week interning for Giffords when he went to her “Congress on your corner” constituent event. A gunman there opened fire, killing six and injuring 13. Hernandez kept the Democratic congresswoman conscious and applied pressure to her head wound until paramedics arrived.
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Associated Press writers Sara Burnett in Chicago, Felicia Fonseca in Flagstaff, Ariz., Joey Cappelletti in Lansing, Mich., Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix, Chris Grygiel in Seattle and Jim Salter in St. Louis contributed to this report.
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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.
PHOENIX (AP) — The Republican Party’s embrace of Donald Trump’s election lies will be tested on Tuesday as voters in Arizona choose between candidates who say they wouldn’t have certified the results of the 2020 campaign and those who argue it’s time to move on.
The former president has endorsed and campaigned for a slate of contenders who support his falsehoods, most prominently former television news anchor Kari Lake in the race for governor. Lake, who says she would have refused to certify President Joe Biden’s narrow Arizona victory, faces Karrin Taylor Robson, a lawyer and businesswoman who says the GOP should focus on the future despite an election she has called “unfair.”
And in the race to oversee elections as secretary of state, Trump is also backing a state lawmaker who was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and claims the former president was cheated out of victory.
As the midterm primary season enters its final stretch this month, the Arizona races are poised to provide important clues about the GOP’s direction. Victories by Trump-backed candidates could provide the former president with allies who hold sway over the administration of elections as he considers another bid for the White House in 2024. Defeats, however, might suggest openness in the party to a different path forward.
“I think the majority of the people, and a lot of people that are supporters of Trump, they want to move on,” said former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who is backing Robson. “I mean, that was two years ago. Let’s go. Let’s move.”
Other closely watched races on Tuesday include the Republican contests for Michigan governor and Missouri senator. Voters in Kansas will be the first to weigh in on abortion rights since the U.S. Supreme Court revoked a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. And two Republican House members from Washington state who voted to impeach Trump are facing primary challengers.
But the contests are especially salient in Arizona, a longtime Republican stronghold that has become more favorable to Democrats in recent years because of explosive growth in and around Phoenix. The primary and the fall election will provide insight into whether Biden’s success here in 2020 was a onetime event or the onset of a long-term shift away from the GOP.
With such high stakes, Arizona has been central to efforts by Trump and his allies to cast doubt on Biden’s victory with false claims of fraud.
Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general have said there is no credible evidence the election was tainted. The former president’s allegations of fraud were also roundly rejected by courts, including by judges Trump appointed. A hand recount led by Trump supporters in Arizona’s largest county found no proof of a stolen election and concluded Biden’s margin of victory was larger than the official count.
Though Trump is still the most popular figure inside the GOP, his efforts to influence primary elections this year have yielded mixed results. His preferred candidates in states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania prevailed in their primaries.
But in Georgia, another state that is central to Trump’s election lies, his handpicked candidate for governor was defeated by more than 50 percentage points. Georgia’s Republican secretary of state was also renominated over a Trump-backed primary rival.
The former president is hoping he’ll have more success in Arizona, where the incumbent governor, Doug Ducey, can’t run for reelection. That could give Trump a better opportunity than in Georgia to influence the winner.
Lake is well known in much of the state after anchoring the evening news in Phoenix for more than two decades. She’s now running as a fierce critic of the mainstream media, which she says is unfair to Republicans, and other enemies of Trump’s Make America Great Again Movement, including the McCain family.
A vocal supporter of Trump’s election lies, Lake says her campaign is “already detecting some stealing going on” in her own race, but she has repeatedly refused to provide any evidence for the claim.
Robson, whose housing developer husband is one of the state’s richest men, is largely self-financing her campaign. The GOP establishment, growing increasingly comfortable creating distance from Trump, has rallied around her over the past month with a series of endorsements from Ducey, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Vice President Mike Pence.
The groundswell of establishment support for Robson has drawn national scrutiny to a race for what it says about the GOP base ahead of the crucial presidential primary in two years.
“Everyone wants to try to make this some kind of proxy for 2024,” said Christie, who ran for president in 2016. “Believe me, I’ve been through enough of these to know that 2024 will be decided by the people who step up to the plate and ’24 and how they perform or don’t perform at that time.”
Robson is running a largely old-school Republican campaign focused on cutting taxes and regulations, securing the border and advancing school choice.
On the Democratic side, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs is the front-runner against Marco Lopez, a former mayor of Nogales and border enforcement official during President Barack Obama’s administration.
As Arizona’s top elections official, Hobbs endeared herself to Democrats with an impassioned defense of the integrity of the 2020 election, a stance that has drawn death threats. However, she’s been weighed down by a discrimination case won by a Black policy adviser from Hobbs’ time in the Legislature.
In the Senate race, Trump is backing Blake Masters, a 35-year-old first-time candidate who has spent most of his career working for billionaire Peter Thiel, who is bankrolling his campaign. Masters is emphasizing cultural grievances that animate the right, including critical race theory and allegations of big tech censorship.
Until Trump’s endorsement, the race had no clear front-runner between Masters, businessman Jim Lamon and Attorney General Mark Brnovich, all of whom jockeyed for his support.
Lamon says Trump made a mistake in endorsing Masters and is digging into his own fortune to highlight Masters’ ties to technology firms and his writings as a college student supporting open borders. Lamon signed a certificate falsely stating that Trump had won Arizona in 2020 and that he was one of the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.
Trump soured on Brnovich and may have torpedoed his campaign when the attorney general’s election fraud investigation failed to produce criminal charges against election officials.
The eventual winner in the primary will take on incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly in the fall.
The Republican race for secretary of state includes Mark Finchem, a Trump-backed candidate who was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and Shawnna Bolick, a state lawmaker who has pushed for legislation allowing the Legislature to overturn the will of the voters and decide which candidate gets the state’s 11 electoral votes for president. The GOP establishment has rallied around advertising executive Beau Lane, who says there were no widespread problems with the 2020 election.
Republican state House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who gave testimony to the House Jan. 6 committee about Trump’s pressure campaign following the 2020 election, faces a Trump-backed challenger in his bid to move up to the state Senate.
PHOENIX (AP) — Republican primary voters in Arizona and Kansas on Tuesday are deciding whether to elevate loyalists to former President Donald Trump who support his false claims that he lost the 2020 election and send them to the general election.
The GOP primary elections for secretary of state are the latest this year to feature candidates who doubt the security of their state’s elections despite the lack of evidence of any problems widespread enough to change the results. Republican voters elsewhere have split on sending those candidates to the November ballot.
A secretary of state primary in Washington state includes several Republican candidates and unaffiliated candidates, including one who has made voter fraud claims without evidence. Washington state has a primary system in which the top-two vote-getters make it to the general election regardless of party affiliation.
The Democratic candidates in all three states reject the premise of a stolen 2020 presidential election and warn that victories in November by any of those who promote conspiracies would endanger free and fair elections. In all three states, the secretary of state is the top election official.
In Arizona, a major battleground for president and the U.S. Senate, two of the four GOP candidates contend the election was stolen from Trump and plan to push major changes if they win the primary and the November general election.
They include state Rep. Mark Finchem, who attended Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, rally that led to the attack on the U.S. Capitol. He tried this year to get the Republican-controlled Legislature to notify Congress that Arizona wanted to decertify Biden’s election win.
The other Republican backing Trump’s claims also is a member of the Arizona House. Rep. Shawnna Bolick introduced a bill last year that would allow a simple majority of the Legislature to overturn presidential election results. Republicans control the Legislature in Arizona.
Two other Republican candidates are on Arizona’s ballot: State Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, who acknowledges President Joe Biden’s victory but has worked for a decade to tighten election laws, and businessman Beau Lane, who is backed by GOP Gov. Doug Ducey.
Finchem is endorsed by Trump and said in a recent interview that worries about the effect of his potential victory on free and fair elections are unfounded. He said he will just enforce laws as written.
“I think it’s interesting that there are people, particularly Democrats out there, claiming, ’Oh, he’s going to ruin the system. He’s going to do this, he’s a threat to democracy,’” Finchem said. Still, he contends tens of thousands of fake ballots led to Biden’s win, a claim for which there is no credible evidence.
Two Democrats, House Minority Leader Reginald Bolding and former Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes, are seeking their party’s nomination.
In Kansas, voters will choose between a GOP challenger who questions the 2020 presidential results and the incumbent Republican who believes the election was secure in his state.
Secretary of State Scott Schwab has defended the use of ballot drop boxes, which Trump and other Republicans say are prone to misuse, even though both Republican and Democratic secretaries of state across the country reported no significant problems with them. He has dismissed baseless theories about fraud, at least in Kansas elections.
Schwab faces Mike Brown, a former county commissioner in the Kansas City suburbs who has made doubts about the security of the state’s elections central to his campaign. He has promised to ban ballot drop boxes and said he will use the secretary of state’s office to pursue election fraud cases, rather than taking Schwab’s approach of working through prosecutors.
Kansas Democrat Jenna Repass is unopposed in her party’s primary.
Washington state’s top-two primary features the incumbent, Democratic Secretary of State Steve Hobbs. He was appointed by Gov. Jay Inslee last November and hopes to retain his seat for the remaining two years of former Republican Secretary of State Kim Wyman’s four-year term.
Hobbs faces several Republican and unaffiliated challengers, including Tamborine Borrelli, an “America First” candidate who was fined by the state Supreme Court earlier this summer for making meritless claims alleging widespread voter fraud.
Hobbs and Pierce County Auditor Julie Anderson, who is running as a nonpartisan and said she is the most experienced in running elections, have raised the most money. Republicans in the race include former state Sen. Mark Miloscia and current Sen. Keith Wagoner.
Under Washington’s primary system, the top two vote-getters advance to the general election in November, regardless of party. Results will likely take days to tally because it’s an all-mail election.
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Associated Press writers John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, and Rachel La Corte in Olympia, Washington, contributed to this report.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Joe Cunningham has chosen Tally Parham Casey, a civil litigator who flew fighter jets during three combat tours over Iraq, to be his running mate in his quest to become South Carolina’s first Democratic governor in 20 years.
“She’s one of the most impressive people that I’ve ever met,” said Cunningham, who previewed his lieutenant governor pick for The Associated Press ahead of a formal announcement Monday. “She’s fought for our freedoms abroad, and she wants to continue fighting for those freedoms, so that’s why I put her on the ticket, and she’s agreed to do it.”
Cunningham, 40, planned to introduce Casey, 52, at an event in Greenville, her hometown.
This is the second gubernatorial election cycle in which contenders for South Carolina’s top two executive offices run on the same ticket. In years past, governors and their lieutenant governors were elected separately, meaning that sometimes the politicians clashed ideologically or were from different parties.
Last week, Gov. Henry McMaster and Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, 54, became South Carolina’s first gubernatorial ticket to file for reelection, with McMaster calling the payroll company founder “fully conversant with the trials, tribulations and challenges of business.” That skillset, the governor has said, complements his decades in law and politics.
Since her election in 2018, Evette has spent many months traveling the state, meeting with businesses and promoting their relationships with South Carolina’s technical training schools. Both she and the governor say keeping them strong is key to the state’s manufacturing economy.
Cunningham also points to the diverse experiences of his running mate. Casey’s military service, legal savvy and the fact that she’s a woman make her the right fit for where he’d like to take the state, he said.
“Tally is the best person for the job, period,” Cunningham told AP. “And the fact that she’s a woman brings that perspective to the ticket, especially in light of everything that’s gone on with Gov. McMaster’s attack on our freedoms and his assault on women’s rights. It makes it that much more personal for Tally.”
The Republican-dominated Legislature is on track to make abortions even harder to get in South Carolina following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to reverse its nearly 50-year-old Roe v. Wade ruling affirming a constitutional right to the procedure.
While abortion-rights groups challenge the state’s current law, which bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy but includes some exceptions, a special legislative committee advanced a proposal last week to ban almost all abortions, except when the mother’s life is at risk.
McMaster, who has said he would “immediately” work with those lawmakers, said last week that the six-week ban includes “good exceptions” and is “quite reasonable.”
“If there are other steps, if there are other things that they believe should be done after thorough examination, then I’d like to hear about it,” McMaster said.
Cunningham has called for legislators to hold off on debating the measure this fall until after the November election.
Casey was South Carolina’s first female fighter pilot, enlisting with the state’s Air National Guard’s 157th Fighter Squadron in 1996 and attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel. She has nearly 1,500 hours in the F-16, more than 100 of them in combat, and has received numerous service-related awards.
Casey has also been an attorney for more than two decades, most of that at Wyche P.A. in Columbia, where she was elected chair in 2017 and focuses on commercial litigation, products liability, insurance and aerospace law. The graduate of Princeton University and the University of Virginia School of Law has also been a federal law clerk.
Like Cunningham, Casey is significantly younger than McMaster, who at 75 is the state’s oldest governor, and whose age the Democrat has said is too advanced to adequately represent South Carolinians.
“He’s been in politics literally longer than I’ve been alive, and you look at where that’s gotten us,” Cunningham said. “What Tally offers is much-needed change, and it’ll be a refreshing take on politics.”
Cunningham has proposed an age cap of 72 for South Carolina officeholders — a shift that would require voters to approve a constitutional change. He’s signaled openness to a similar federal age limit, which would apply to 82-year-old House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina and 79-year-old President Joe Biden.
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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP.
By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An associate of the far-right Three Percenters militia could be sentenced to more than a decade in prison on Monday for joining the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 while armed and threatening to harm his own children if they ratted him out to the FBI.
Guy Reffitt, of Wylie, Texas, was convicted by a jury in March of five felony charges, including bringing a gun onto the Capitol grounds and obstructing an official proceeding. Federal guidelines recommend a prison sentence of 9 to 11.25 years for those crimes, prosecutors say.
Reffitt, who was 49 at the time of his conviction, never entered the Capitol, but video evidence showed him egging on the crowd and leading other rioters up a set of stairs outside the building.
His emotionally charged trial included testimony from his estranged son Jackson, who brought his father to tears as he told the jury about how his father threatened him if he dared to call the FBI.
“He said, ‘If you turn me in, you’re a traitor,’” Jackson Reffitt told jurors. “‘And traitors get shot.’”
Reffitt was the first Capitol rioter to go to trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
To date, federal prosecutors have prevailed and won convictions in all but one of 13 trials tied to the Capitol attack.
Federal prosecutors are asking U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich to sentence Reffitt to 15 years, more than the U.S. sentencing guidelines recommend, citing Reffitt’s crime as being “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion.”
“A member of the Texas Three Percenters militia group,… Reffitt was aware of Congress’s Joint Session on Jan. 6, 2021, to review and certify the Electoral College ballots, and he wanted to stop it,” they wrote in their sentencing memo.
Reffitt’s attorney has sought to portray him as man who felt marginalized and down on his luck after losing his job in 2019.
Depressed and suicidal, his attorney said he turned to political news on social media and became a fervent believer in former President Donald Trump.
His daughter Peyton told the court in a letter she could see how her father’s ego and personality “fell to his knees whenPresident Trump spoke.”
“You could tell he listened to Trump’s words asif he was really truly speaking to him … Constantly feeding polarizing racial thought.”
His attorney F. Clinton Broden said that while his client broke the law, his actions were not as egregious as those of others who entered the Capitol and assaulted police.
He noted that Reffitt will get credit for the 19 months he has already spent behind bars since his arrest, and has asked the judge to impose a sentence of no more than two years.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Scott Malone and Bernadette Baum)
(Reuters) – The Republican-controlled West Virginia senate on Friday passed a bill that would be the first to restrict abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled there is no constitutional right to the procedure.
But instead of now going to the governor who has indicated he would sign it, the bill must return to the house, where it passed earlier this week, to reconcile a Senate amendment stripping the possibility of prison time for doctors who perform abortions outside narrow exemptions.
Several senators expressed concern about the state’s ability to attract doctors if they could be hit with prison time for medical decisions they might make. Doctors could still have their licenses to practice revoked if found to violate the ban.
Thirteen other Republican-controlled states previously passed so-called trigger laws intending to enact bans of most abortions after the June 24 decision by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion.
West Virginia still had a law on its books from the 1800s that banned abortions except where a pregnant person’s life was at risk, but a state judge earlier this month blocked officials from enforcing it.
In response, West Virginia Governor Jim Justice ordered lawmakers back from recess for an emergency session.
Abortions are legal at West Virginia’s lone abortion clinic up to 20 weeks post-fertilization. The bill would ban abortions except in the case of a serious threat to the life of a pregnant woman or of a fetus that is not medically viable.
It also makes exceptions for rape or incest up to eight weeks of pregnancy for an adult and up to 14 weeks for a minor if the victim can show they have reported the assault to law enforcement.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Additional reporting by Nate Raymond and Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Lincoln Feast.)
