The Truth About Republicans and Latinos: Why the Democratic Party Doesn’t Care About the Economy As It Is Being Voted (and What It Can Do To Save Them)
This year, the truth is more relevant to Democrats than it has been in years and so goes the nation. The Democratic incumbent for governor of Nevada is Steve Sisolak, who is competing against the sheriff of the most populous county. And its congressional races could help determine partisan control of both chambers: In three of its four House races and in the contest for U.S. Senate, Democratic incumbents are in tight battles.
She faced several challenges, one of them being that many voters hadn’t gotten to know her or her record. Republicans tried to tie the Democrat to the unpopular President Joe Biden, whose approval ratings are low in a state he narrowly won in 2020.
Progressive activist LaLo Montoya estimates he’s knocked on 10,000 doors around Las Vegas in the months leading up to Election Day. He told NPR that he knows that he’s doing the correct thing and that he wants to inspire people when he does it.
Montoya is an organizer for PLAN Action, a progressive state-based group that focuses on helping low and moderate income families. Like many Democrats in Nevada, he’s on edge. I’m worried but I think we do our best. but there’s so much misinformation that we’re going up against.”
Republican campaigns are heavily focused on the economy in a state hit hard by inflation. Democrats like retiree Mike Sanchez agree that life is getting harder in this predominantly working class state with the second highest gas prices in the country and skyrocketing housing costs. “It’s very high all over.” You go anywhere and it’s a problem,” Sanchez said.
She said that Democrats seem to be not helping them out. “They’re not going to make people want to like join the (police force) by like demoting their pay.”
Ruy Teixeira is a liberal scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who has studied shifting demographics and how they can change politics. He says Democrats face a two-fold problem with Latinos right now: the party is not meeting their economic needs in real-time, and many feel socially alienated from the party’s values. “The Democratic Party has become a much more culturally liberal party, pretty much down the line: race, gender, crime, immigration, what’s taught in the schools, you name it.”
Hispanics are seen by Democrats as a core part of their party’s future. Democrats in the state want the presidential nominating calendar changed so Nevada can be the first-in-the-nation state when the nomination season starts in 2024.
Cortez Masto had long been viewed as one of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents as she fended off a challenge from former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt in a state whose economy had been hard hit by the Covid-19 pandemic and inflation.
The 2020 Georgia Senate Runoff: The Case for a Good Friends of Donald Laxalt and a Republican Supporter of “Big Oil”
After CNN projected Democratic victories in Arizona on Friday and Nevada on Saturday, Democrats now have 50 Senate seats to Republicans’ 49 seats. Although it no longer matters for control of the chamber, Georgia’s Senate runoff will determine just how big Democrats’ majority is.
Control of the US House is still undecided and may not be decided for some time with many ballots remaining in close races in California as well as other states.
Laxalt was a good friend of Donald Trump, who helped overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the Silver State. The state’s difficult economic climate became the most important factor in the Senate contest because of the high inflation and gas prices that remain above $5 a gallon.
Though there are many economic forces at play in driving inflation, including Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, supply chain issues and the effects of the pandemic, the GOP argued that the spending and relief bills pushed by Democrats led to the sticker shock that many Nevadans are feeling at the gas pump and the grocery store. Cortez Masto focused on Democrats’ legislative efforts to reduce Americans’ costs, including on health care and prescription drugs, while trying to tie her Republican opponent to “big oil.”
She also asked voters to know the history of Laxalt being one of Trump’s campaign co-chairs, and she accused him of pushing “an extreme agenda” and conspiracy theories that helped to lead to the storming of the US Capitol.
She and allied Democratic groups also tried to argue that Laxalt would put abortion rights at risk in Nevada, even though they are protected up to 24 weeks by a 1990 voter referendum. In an Op-Ed for the Reno Gazette Journal, Laxalt pushed back – stating that abortion access was settled law in the state and that he would not support a federal ban on abortion.
The MAGA Republicans Who Decided to Defend the Next Two Years: CNN’s View of Biden’s Case for the Senate Runoff
Democrats’ defied political gravity to deliver a surprisingly strong midterm showing. CNN exit polls showed that 49% of voters who said they somewhat disapprove of Biden voted for Democrats while 45% backed Republicans; of the 38% of voters who said the condition of the economy is “not so good,” 62% voted Democratic compared to 35% for the GOP.
Although Republicans were widely expected to win the majority in the House, the outcome is still up for grabs. Ballots are still being counted in a number of states, including California, Arizona and Oregon. The GOP could leave with a small and unruly majority, even if Democrats don’t control the House.
“I think it’s a reflection of the quality of our candidates,” Biden told reporters in Cambodia shortly after CNN and other news outlets projected Democrats would keep their Senate majority. “They’re all running on the same program. Biden said wasn’t anyone who wasn’t running on what we did.
Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker are facing off on December 6 after neither candidate cleared the 50% threshold on Tuesday.
Biden said he was “looking forward to the next couple of years” with Democrats, and said he was now focused on the Senate runoff in Georgia, acknowledging it would be better to have 51 seats in the Senate.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Saturday night called the Democrats’ hold on the Senate a “vindication” of the party’s agenda and said it amounted to a rejection of “anti-Democratic, extremist, MAGA Republicans.”
“Oh and one other thing we did, which I cannot forget, we staunchly defended a woman’s right to choose,” Schumer said, referring to the battle over abortion rights after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
“Because the American people turned out to elect Democrats in the Senate, there’s now a firewall against a nationwide abortion ban threat that so many Republicans have talked about.”
Republicans successfully defended seats in hard-fought races in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin, while Democrats retained their seats in competitive contests in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and New Hampshire.
In Arizona, CNN projects that Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and the husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, will defeat Republican Blake Masters, a venture capitalist who was endorsed by Trump and supported by tech mogul and emerging GOP megadonor Peter Thiel.
After winning the Senate primary, Masters shaved his website of language that included a false claim that the election was stolen. In a debate with Kelly, he also conceded that he had not seen evidence of fraud that would have changed the outcome of the election. But the Republican nominee seemed to reverse course after receiving a phone call from Trump urging him to “go stronger” on election denialism, a conversation that was captured in a Fox documentary.
Cortez Masto vs. Adam Laxalt in the U.S. Senate: How a Candidate For Trump’s Future Can Vote On Reproductive Rights
The Associated Press reported Saturday that Catherine Cortez Masto defeated Adam Laxalt, a former state attorney general.
The Democrats could potentially add to their tally if the incumbent is defeated by the republican in the Georgia senate race.
The two chambers will have disagreements over government funding bills if Republicans take the House. A Democratic hold of the House would mean President Biden’s party would maintain its trifecta of power for another two years.
Democrats in the Senate still do not have a 60-vote supermajority, so the debate over whether or not to modify the filibuster is likely to take center stage.
Earlier this cycle, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell predicted there was a “greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate,” citing, in part, “candidate quality.”
The abortion rights issue was one of the factors that helped the Democrats get their majority. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, researchers saw a distinct increase in voter registration among women and young people. While national polls indicated that the economy and inflation were top of mind, there’s no doubt that the issue of abortion rights played a crucial role in motivating voters and increasing fundraising for Democratic candidates.
Cortez Masto served two terms as Nevada’s attorney general before becoming the first Latina ever elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016. She campaigned on women’s reproductive rights, criticizing Laxalt for calling the Roe v Wade decision “a joke,” the Nevada Independent reported, and categorizing a vote for her opponent as an “automatic vote for a federal abortion ban.”
The Republican candidate was also a proponent of the former president’s claims that the 2020 election results were a sham, and referred to Trump as the current president during a phone call earlier this summer, NPR previously reported.
That wasn’t the first time Laxalt’s family spoke up about his role in politics. Twelve relatives wrote a letter opposing his bid during his 2018 run for governor.
Democratic Party Candidate Cisco Aguilar: The Associated Press’ Claims against Republican Republican Jim Marchant in the State’s 2020 Election
“We believe that Catherine possesses a set of qualities that clearly speak of what we like to call ‘Nevada grit,’ ” the letter said. “No further comments will be made, as we believe this letter speaks for itself.”
“I wasn’t surprised that some Democrats in my family were supporting another Democrat despite being outside the state,” Laxalt said in a reply to the letter.
Democrat Cisco Aguilar has been elected Nevada secretary of state, according to a race call by The Associated Press, sending a blow to one of former President Donald Trump’s loyalists in the process.
Aguilar, an attorney who spent a number of years on the state’s Athletic Commission, defeated Republican Jim Marchant, who has long baselessly maintained the 2020 election was stolen.
Aguilar — and election experts nationally — painted the race for Nevada’s top voting official as existential for the future of democracy in the swing state.
“Everything is based on truth and honesty and trust. And it’s my responsibility if I’m elected secretary of state to build that trust from scratch,” Aguilar told NPR on Tuesday, before voting ended. “My opponent has built everything he has on a false foundation of lies and disinformation.”
The Nevada race call, which came Saturday evening, means that every election denier running in a secretary of state race in a competitive state was defeated, following losses by Republican candidates in Arizona, Michigan and Minnesota, among others.
After losing a race for a House seat in 2020, Marchant claimed that the election was fraudulent though he never provided evidence to back that up. He gained Trump’s endorsement, and the former president rallied with him in October.
Marchant was among the most radical candidates running for a secretary of state position this midterms cycle. One of the key goals of the coalition he started was to eliminate early voting.
In addition to saying that he wanted to severely restrict voting access in Nevada, Marchant has also led a push in the state for counties to hand-count ballots instead of using machines, even though research has shown that method to be less accurate.