Blake Masters, Mark Kelly and the White Knuckle: Running on the Knife: a Case Study in the Biden 2020 Midterm Election
But GOP Sen. nominee Blake Masters could cost Republicans a key pick-up opportunity in his race against Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, who’s running for a full six-year term after winning a 2020 special election. The former Astronaut blasted Masters in a debate last week for peddling “conspiring and lies that have no place in our democracy.”
The two men, who have spent months attacking each other on issues including abortion, border security, inflation and election integrity, were also joined by Marc Victor, the Libertarian candidate, who has not reached double digits in polls.
The debate did very little to shed new light on the most controversial issues, but the questions from the host of the debate were pointed in order to force the candidates to clarify their positions. Even though Mr. Masters wanted to straddle the line between his previous hard-line stances and his more recent softer one, he kept playing to his base even if it took some winks and a nod.
A white knuckle midterm election is racing into its last four weeks with the Senate on a knife-edge and with a strong prospect of a Donald Trump-aligned Republican majority in the House.
Democrats are fighting to stave off the first term-curse that usually punishes a president in congressional elections. They are talking about issues like abortion and the GOP taking extreme actions in response to inflation and rising gas prices that are haunting the Biden administration.
This is a midterm election that is like no other because it is taking place under the shadow of a former president who tried to cling to power even though he didn’t win the 2020 election.
Many Republican candidates are running on the false premise that Trump was cheated out of office. Some, in statewide races for governor or secretary of state posts, could end up controlling future elections. The campaign is being used as a testbed for a possible bid by the ex-President to recover the White House.
The Senate is on a knife-edge. Races in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Nevada look like they could decide the chamber’s fate. And a new CBS News poll in Wisconsin showed Republican Sen. Ron Johnson – the only GOP incumbent running for reelection in a state Biden carried – in a virtual tie with Democrat Mandela Barnes. Other intriguing battles are also unfolding in Arizona, which Democrats are defending, and North Carolina and Ohio, which the GOP is defending. As Republicans in many of these states have struggled to match the fundraising prowess of Democratic candidates, the powerful GOP super PAC Senate Leadership Fund, which is tied to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, has tried to level the playing field in some key states.
The Senate map is unpredictable and can be messy, which is keeping this cycle interesting. Despite Republicans picking up momentum across the country, for example, the seat most likely to flip is a GOP-held seat, not a Democratic-held one. Pennsylvania is the top spot since CNN first started ranking them in early 2021, due to the impending retirement of GOP Sen. Pat Toomey. Rankings are based on CNN’s reporting, fundraising and advertising data, and polling, as well as historical data about how states and candidates have performed. And two other GOP-held open seats – North Carolina and Ohio – have proved to be surprisingly competitive for Democrats this year, even if they’re much less likely to flip.
The GOP has history on their side since most of the voters believe that the country is headed in the wrong direction, with fears of a recession growing, and the country still trudging through after a once-in-100-year Pandemic. They are pounding Democrats as soft on crime and fans of open borders as migrants stream across, while leaping on Biden’s low approval ratings at a time of global turmoil to frame the election as referendum on a failing presidency.
This year’s key issues for voters would also seem to advantage Republicans. In a CNN poll, more than half of likely voters identified the economy and inflation as the most important factor to vote for Congress. The June ruling by the Supreme Court to overturn the abortion law was seen as a political blunder by most Americans. In a CNN survey of likely voters, 15% said the most important issue determining their vote was abortion. Many Americans think that things are going badly in the country.
Fetterman, the Democratic candidate for the Senate in Pennsylvania, on Sunday appealed to over a thousand of his supporters in northeastern Philadelphia to send him to Washington to restore abortion rights, raise the minimum wage and increase access to health care.
“If I am sent to D.C., I will be the 51st vote,” said the stroke survivor, whose blue collar campaign brands Mehmet Oz, a TV surgeon, as an elitist peddler of quack cures and carpetbagger from New Jersey.
The rising star of the Republican Party is Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who was re-elected in 2021, a year after Biden won it.
Youngkin said people are seeing inflation go through the roof and that cost of living is going up as well.
The Phenomenology of the GOP: Changing the course of the Biden/Fermi campaign for the 2024 presidential election
The consequences of the election are large. If the GOP wins the House, they plan to kill Biden’s legislative agenda and launch a slew of investigations against the administration, including over the business dealings of the President’s son. A GOP majority would be a tool of revenge for Trump and could impeach key Cabinet officials and even the current President himself in a brutal run-up to the 2024 presidential election.
The pro-Trump nominee has faced allegations that he paid for a woman to terminate her pregnancy despite having said during the campaign that he would support a national ban on the procedure with no exceptions. Walker has denied the allegations, which CNN has not independently confirmed, but the furor highlighted the risky nature of a candidacy that probably wouldn’t have happened but for his friendship with Trump.
The good news for Fetterman, even as his own negatives have gone up, is that Oz’s negatives remain relatively high – 17% of Republicans and more than half of independents had an unfavorable view of the celebrity surgeon in the Times survey – and the Democrat continues to outpace Oz on the question of which candidate understands the concerns of everyday Pennsylvanians, according to the Monmouth survey. Biden and Obama are campaigning with Fetterman for the Senate seat that is playing host to the president, in Philadelphia on the final weekend before Election Day.
The candidates were essentially tied in a late October Marist survey, which likely speaks to this particular matchup given that the same survey showed the gubernatorial contest not even close. But Republicans are confident, given the makeup of the state, that the remaining undecided voters in the Senate race, who made up 8% of registered voters in that Marist survey, will break late for Vance. A day before Election Day, Donald Trump is holding a rally in Ohio.
In Arizona, Trump tried to overturn Biden’s election win, similar to how he tried to overturn Georgia’s election win. The Republican nominee for governor, Kari Lake, is refusing to say if Biden is legitimate and she has become a rising star in the so-called “Maga world” in her campaign. Recent polls by CNN show no obvious leader in the race.
McConnell rode out the madcap eruptions of Trump’s term and chafed at his selection of questionable midterm candidates and meddling in key races, which has complicating the party’s mission of wining Senate control, even in places that should have been a slam dunk in a national environment that favors the GOP.
Flipping a Question on Republican Election Theoretical Theorems: The Case of Joe Biden, the President, and Senator Mark Kelly
Masters, a venture capitalist, flipped a question over whether he believed Biden was the legitimate president to coin a soundbite on a GOP election theme. The President is Joe Biden. I mean, my gosh, have you seen the gas prices lately?” he said.
More than twice as many voters cited the economy and inflation as their #1 issue in Nevada and Arizona, while abortion was listed as the #2 issue in each state. Majorities in each state said that the economy there is worsening.
The results show that the best chance for the Republican’s to win the election lies in a constant focus on Biden’s economy, and not making the campaign all about him.
In Arizona, Mr. Trump helped win the Republican Senate nomination for Mr. Masters. Masters recorded a social media video in which he told viewers he thought Mr. Trump won in 2020. The former president believed that another Republican candidate did not do enough to support the lie that the election was rigged.
But at a debate last week with Senator Mark Kelly, the Democratic incumbent, Mr. Masters agreed that Mr. Biden had been legitimately elected. He said that Mr. Biden had probably won because social media companies suppressed negative news about Hunter Biden, the president’s son.
Masters is getting some late help from other Republican spenders – including Trump’s super PAC and the political arm of the Club for Growth – after the Senate Leadership Fund had to cut its spending here to divert resources to other states. A venture capitalist who has the backing of both Trump and Peter Thiel, Masters tried to dial back some of his more extreme rhetoric on abortion and election denialism after winning the GOP primary. The former president wants him to go stronger on election fraud claims.
Nessel said the referral to look into the voting machine tampering came from the Michigan Department of State. She says she then asked for the special prosecutor to avoid a conflict of interest. Her request named DePerno as “one of the prime instigators of the conspiracy.”
The things that he’s said and the other things he’s done should disqualify him. “And I think it’s just a matter of people learning about him — not just Democrats but independents and Republicans. The more you know about Matthew DePerno, the less likely you are to cast your ballot for him.”
Nessel says she won’t debate DePerno because of the investigation. The ethical standards of the American Bar Association would prevent her from discussing it, leaving her at a disadvantage.
Nessel is the first openly gay person to serve as Michigan’s attorney general.
“All of those things we’re not talking about because the media wants to ask questions about what Dana Nessel is doing to me — and usually not in a negative way like in terms of how bad that is for her,” he said backstage at a recent rally with Trump.
DePerno told the crowd that he would fight to clean up the state as the next attorney general.
No drag queens in every school: What Nessel and Miller didn’t want to see in a Michigan legislator about culture war (and why Michigan should have allowed anti-abortion)
Culture war issues are playing a role in the campaign. While speaking at a conference this summer, Nessel reportedly made an offhand joke about how “drag queens are fun” and they would make schools better.
He asked the crowd if they needed drag queens in every class, and then said that she wants to put a drag queen in every classroom. When the crowd said no, DePerno asked, “No, people.” Not just no — hell no.”
The Republicans had the ball in their court and the mandate was to not be crazy. “I think that’s the way people have fallen into,” said Miller, a former state Rep.
He says Nessel, who narrowly won in 2018, should have been vulnerable. She’s made her own headlines for stances like refusing to enforce Michigan’s anti-abortion law and for occasionally going off script.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/18/1129521692/matthew-deperno-dana-nessel-michigan-attorney-general-voting-machines
The Pain of Defending the Election: The Case Against Instability of the Reionization of Michigan Attorney General Tom DePerno
It’s unclear what exactly would happen if DePerno wins and is subsequently indicted and convicted. Michigan election law says the attorney general position becomes vacant upon the officeholder’s conviction of an “infamous crime.” The Detroit Free Press said that it is considered to be a crime if you are convicted of it and sentenced to state prison.
Some have wondered about the long-term effect candidates with a track record of denying election results — like DePerno — will have on the Republican Party.
“Parties can adapt quickly,” he said. “You can throw out the people you used to support and get in new people and they can just pretend they didn’t know who you were yesterday.”
The reality of today makes the Republican Party’s embrace of basic instincts questionable. Most often, GOP leaders are enabling and embracing a twice impeached ex-President with clear autocratic tendencies who incited an insurrection to try to overturn a democratic election. They are elevating Trump followers who built their careers in his image and lied about the election.
The Virginia governor, raising his national profile in midterm races, touted his own credentials by suggesting any red wave in November had its “headwaters” in his state last year, which President Joe Biden had won by 10 points just the year before. And by appearing with candidates like Lake, whose extreme pro-Trump credentials are more obvious than his own, he was demonstrating an awareness of the reality of how successful careers are built in today’s GOP.
Youngkin said that elections have consequences and urged all Republicans to get behind Lake, but also show their ideological support in order for him to survive.
There is nothing wrong with a political party focusing on winning power. Politics is something that is possible. Victorious parties and leaders understand the importance of electoral victories. Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton were both known for doing what was necessary to win, even if it meant changing their principles. Johnson, a former Senate majority leader, especially was ruthless in wielding his authority won at the ballot box. And more recently, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has not dominated the House for nearly two decades without being determined to use her power.
For a party that was once proud of promoting global democracy against tyranny, this is a big leap. Republicans who defended such values, which were once prized in the party of Lincoln, against Trump – including Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney and former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake – were ostracized. Flake did not run for reelection and Cheney, the vice chair of the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, lost her primary this summer to a Trump-backed challenger. Meanwhile, extremists who promote conspiracy theories and question the election, like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, are superstars in the party because the Trump base loves them.
The most striking recent example of the naked pursuit of power was when House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy rushed down to Mar-a-Lago after he criticized Trump over the Capitol insurrection. The California lawmaker knew that his party’s hope of a House majority and his own dreams of being speaker hinged on a rapprochement with Trump and his base voters.
McConnell knows how good it is to live with a party leader like Trump, who is exactly opposite of him. Last time around, McConnell rode the Trump wave and completed the epochal quest for an unassailable right-wing Supreme Court majority. If Republicans are in the Senate, he will have the ability to change the makeup of the judiciary. He is close to becoming the longest serving Senate party leader in history despite the attempts of Trump to get him out of his leadership post.
And McConnell has shrugged off Trump’s insults and racist social media posts against his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. He’s done more than keep quiet. The Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC affiliated with the minority leader, has poured tens of millions of dollars into key races – including in states like Ohio and Georgia in a bid to bail out misfiring candidates effectively crowned as party nominees by none other than Trump.
McConnell has an affiliated group that is spending money in New Hampshire, where the GOP nominee has said that he would not vote for McConnell. But it’s another pickup opportunity that could bolster a possible GOP majority.
The impulse to win control of Congress at all costs – even if it appears to compromise values the GOP professes to stand for – was on display when several US senators flew into Georgia earlier this month to rescue controversy-swamped Senate nominee Hershel Walker.
Scott and Cotton, Walker’s two supporters, behaved as though Walker was a different Republican candidate.
He’s doing much the same now – appearing with Trump candidates like Lake and Michigan GOP gubernatorial nominee Tudor Dixon, but also stumping with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who fended off Trump’s efforts to oust him earlier this year.
He could make a difference in the governor’s race, but the rising star power in Trump world made him want to go. It helps explain the hug after his speech in which he embraced the type of political personality that wouldn’t have been allowed near his events last year.
The Case for Doug Mastriano: The Unusual Way to Win the House of Representatives in Pennsylvania During the 2018 Labor Day Primary
Pennsylvania has been at the epicenter of the last two presidential elections, with Donald Trump winning it narrowly in 2016 and Joe Biden doing the same four years later. And it’s expected to be among the most competitive states again in 2024.
Combine that with the fact that the governor of the Pennsylvania has wide latitude when it comes to election oversight – the governor appoints the state’s top election official – and you can begin to grasp why controlling this seat matters a whole lot.
New polling from CNN shows state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, leading state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a Republican, by a whopping 56% to 41% margin among likely voters.
People closely following the governor’s race likely aren’t terribly surprised. Mastriano is one of the most prominent 2020 election deniers and has run an unusual campaign.
Mastriano has walled himself off from the general public while on tour so that he can only get in contact with true believers, who want to keep him safe. …
Republican leaders wanted Mastriano to reach out to undecided voters during the summer, and they hoped that would happen. Instead, the opposite has happened. Labor Day came and went.”
Meaning that beating him was no easy task. But national Republicans – perhaps unnerved by getting sideways with Trump – did very little to try to sway primary voters away from Mastriano, even as it was clear that there were major doubts about his willingness and ability to reach out beyond the hardcore GOP base in a general election.
Every race will matter on Election Day as Republicans look to win control of the evenly divided chamber and severely curtail the second half of President Joe Biden’s term.
Even though the battleground states on the Senate map were mostly won by Biden in 2020, Democrats are in good shape. Even though Biden is unpopular in a number of states, the Democratic incumbent and his challenger amassed huge amounts of money to run on their own brands during the summer months while their Republican opponents were out of the race. The difference between candidates getting more favorable advertising rates and groups that have to come in and make up the difference for some GOP nominees is due to the way the campaign spending is structured.
Budd, Trump’s first nonincumbent Senate endorsee of the cycle, has been outraised by Beasley. And even though he’s benefited from outside spending that attacks Beasley on crime, the Democrat’s campaign has been able to take advantage of the more favorable advertising rates that candidates get. A former state Supreme Court chief justice, who would be the state’s first Black senator, Beasley has been trying to run as the outsider. She says in a recent spot that Ted Budd isn’t listening to her about stagnant wages and high prices. She has ads that do not mention that she is a Democrat or that her party wields power in Washington. Democrats trying to make an economic counterargumen and hitting Budd on abortion. One senior says in a Beasley ad that Budd voted against lowering drug prices for people like them.
Warnock continues to enjoy stronger favorability ratings than his GOP challenger, whose image is underwater. The Democrat’s favorability ratings are also higher than Biden’s approval – a potentially significant separation in a state the president flipped by less than half a point in 2020. But the gubernatorial race in Georgia could help carry Walker across the finish line with GOP Gov. Brian Kemp appearing to have the advantage over Democrat Stacey Abrams in a rematch of their 2018 contest. The winner of the senate election on November 8 will advance to a December 6 runoff while the loser will stay in office.
As the only Republican senator running for reelection in a state Biden won in 2020, Sen. Ron Johnson is the chamber’s most vulnerable GOP incumbent. A Marquette University Law School poll released Wednesday showed no clear leader in the race between Johnson and Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes – similar to a CNN survey from mid October – which is comparable to the close governor’s race.
Biden only carried Wisconsin by less than half a point in 2020, so it’s still a tough state, with an even tougher national political environment for Barnes. More than half of likely voters broke for Johnson in the survey, and more than half of registered voters worried about an inflation issue that favors Republicans. Barnes was polling at 48% in the Marquette poll, slightly lower than Biden’s percentage of the Wisconsin vote in 2020. That’s one reason why Obama, who received a higher 53% in the state in 2012 while winning a second term, rallied with Barnes in the final weeks of the campaign.
The libertarian candidate dropped out Tuesday, allowing Masters to keep his spot in the race. But with voters already voting, it’s unclear how much of a difference the move will actually make. This is another state where the governor’s race could affect the Senate contest since Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake is considered a much stronger candidate than Masters. Masters doing well here on election night is a sign that the environment is better for Republicans than they had expected, given their struggles in this race so far.
The race to replace retiring GOP Sen. Richard Burr looks more close than many observers had expected. A late October poll showed Democrat and Republican representatives in a dead heat. (Budd, a third-term congressman, had a small edge among definite voters.) North Carolina is accustomed to close elections – Trump only won it by about 1 point in 2020. The last time the state went blue for a president was in 2008; Democrats have not won a Senate race since.
Democrats hope that Beasley is able to help them bring in parts of their base that don’t usually turn out in elections. But national Democrats haven’t been able to pour as much money into this race given the number of incumbents they’re defending. The Senate Majority PAC increased their spending in the state this fall, suggesting Democrats believe Beasley has a chance.
Sununu once said that the GOP nominee was a conspiracy theory candidate, but is now supporting him. He told CNN this week that no one should be a one-issue voter. Bolduc also recently picked up an endorsement from Trump. Senate Leadership Fund and the National Republican Senatorial Committee have cut funding as they divert resources to higher-priority races despite some Republicans coming to his side. That’s accentuated the resource disparity between Bolduc, who had raised about $1 million at of the end of the Federal Election Commission’s pre-general reporting period on October 19, compared with Hassan’s $39 million.
Still, Hassan’s closing ad, in which she talks about “standing up to the president – whatever it takes,” speaks to her vulnerability this year given the national environment, which even her massive fundraising advantage may not be able to erase.
The Sunshine State might be a better candidate than Ohio for the 2016 Florida Super Presidential Election, and an O’Dea strategist may be better
Florida voted for Trump by a smaller margin than Ohio, but for the second month in a row, the Sunshine State has ranked lower on the list of seats most likely to flip. Marco Rubio is a two-term incumbent who seems to be doing everything he can to win in this environment, despite being outraised by a strong challenger.
Demings, a former Orlando police chief, has leaned heavily into her law enforcement experience. She says in a spot that the Senate could use a cop on the beat. She doesn’t have enough to blunt the Republican attacks on her for siding with Nancy Pelosi.
It could help O’Dea in a state Biden carried by more than 13 points. In a sign of the GOP’s brewing divisions, the race is now a point of disagreement between Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The Senate Leadership Fund gave the same amount of money to a pro-O’Dea group that it gave to a Republican group in Washington state. But Biden’s smaller margin in Colorado (he won Washington by 19 points) makes it more likely to flip if the national environment gives Republicans a chance to pick up a seat in a state seen as safely blue.