Herschel Walker campaign posters in Wrightsville, Ga., during the 2010 midterm election: a dot-to-dot drawing of a racial divide
Wrightsville, Ga. is a town. There were few Herschel Walker campaign signs around his hometown in the summer of 2010 as the race for a critical Senate seat was in full motion.
They were planted in front of big homes with big yards, in a downtown storefront window, near the sidewalk by the Dairy Queen. There were two on the corner by the Johnson County Courthouse, near a Confederate memorial.
The support appeared randomly scattered. But people in Wrightsville saw a dot-to-dot drawing of a racial divide that has shaped Wrightsville for generations — and is now shaping a critical political race with national implications.
“All those campaign materials were in the white community,” said Curtis Dixon, who is Black and who taught and coached Mr. Walker, a Republican, in the late 1970s when he was a high school football prodigy. The only other home with a Herschel Walker poster is his family.
The Georgia Republican Leaders and the Post-Galaxy Process: Rejoinding Me and My Dad with Geoff Duncan (Edinburgh)
Down to the finish line, people. There is elections about a month away. Some of the Senate campaigns are really unusual, if you are looking for diversion.
This was in many ways an expected result. The polls and models performed well. The Democrats overperformed expectations slightly, but as others have pointed out, their performance is better in seats than in votes.
Except — whoops — the Republicans have assembled a trove of truly terrible candidates. When the party decided that running the Senate was too many of a pain, they needed to get some nominees in order to keep their position in the minority.
In light of the Georgia Republican’s performance only six weeks ago in the general election, Warnock’s win this week was impressive. It was a lesson learned for Republicans. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said in August of last year that Candidate quality had a lot to do with the outcome in Georgia, and it was true.
The twelfth Lieutenant Governor of Georgia is a Republican named Geoff Duncan. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion articles on CNN.
Re-opening the State: The State of the Art in Governor Walker’s Presidency after a Major Decade of Business in Georgia
Walker has been under scrutiny because of allegations of domestic abuse, as well as revelations that he paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion even though he supports a total ban on the procedure with no exceptions.
Republican infrastructure members need to hold their breath, as they hope Walker can weather the storm. Walker has faced a number of serious allegations, including domestic abuse, an exaggerated business career and an erratic personality. He has a quality of surviving scandals that would cause people to lose their minds. Walker’s latest test is his most serious, not just by its nature, but in its October timing.
Kemp has shown other Republicans the road map for navigating the post-Trump presidency. The governor of Georgia was in the sights of the former president after certifying the 2020 election. Trump was so enraged that he recruited former Senator David Perdue to mount a quixotic primary challenge based solely on the falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen. Kemp kept his cool and won the race by more than 50 points.
Her stock has since fallen sharply. After her loss, she refused to concede. A federal judge tossed out a lawsuit that claimed the election was decided in a way that was improper. She also faced an investigation by the State Ethics Commission about her fundraising practices in 2018, which was dismissed this past summer.
Kemp is breathing easier this year thanks to factors that are beyond the reach of Abrams. He has his own record to fall back on, and it is one of accomplishments and results. Georgia has been named the best state for business for the ninth year in a row. Kemp re-opened our state from the ravages of the Pandemic faster than many others, angering even then president Trump, who has been around for a while. Georgia has taken strides towards becoming the technology capital of the East Coast because of the re-locations of people and businesses to our state.
Warnock’s campaign against Herschel Walker is a rebuke of the Republican presidential candidate, Barack Obama, and his fellow senators
The key characteristic of the race has been altered this time around, and it is now Democrat Raphael Warnock trying to beat the Republican candidate, Herschel Walker. The former football great and former President Donald Trump, who is endorsing him, is in a tight race with the current leader of the race, and is getting votes at an early rate.
The numbers are not false. The Senate race should be a referendum on Biden and his agenda. In an evenly divided upper chamber, Warnock could have stopped every piece of flawed legislation that passed along party line votes, including the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act and the $750 billion Inflation Reduction Act, both often cited by conservatives as some of the culprits for inflation rates at four-decade highs.
If we’re going to get the American public’s attention, we need to make sure our candidates are serious. That process goes beyond celebrity or fame. It requires leaders to be able to articulate a conservative vision for governing.
Walker at his church is hosted by Jentezen Franklin who supports Mr. Walker because of his policies.
He said, “If you bring it along racial lines, it might be a group that was in the majority for so long trying to stay in that majority, but on the other side, you have to draw a line and say right is right.”
The Story of Herschel Walker (1908-2013): When he lost the Senate, and why he didn’t: Josh Holmes and the Associated Press
The president of the political action committee, Tony Perkins, endorsed Mr. Walker on Friday. The statement said Mr. Walker’s story was about grace, redemption, and the opportunity America still provides.
The last week of Herschel Walker’s Senate campaign – beset by a report that he paid for a woman he was dating to have an abortion more than a decade ago – has been an utter disaster.
The fact that smart Republican strategists have known for the better part of a year that Walker was a deeply inexperienced candidate made it worse.
More than a year ago, in response to an Associated Press story detailing Walker’s turbulent past – including reportedly threatening his ex-wife and exaggerating his business successes – Josh Holmes, a longtime confidante to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, was blunt in his assessment of the situation.
And while McConnell stayed silent publicly, he was operating behind the scenes to try to maneuver Walker from his prime position in the Georgia Senate primary.
“McConnell has suggested to allies that former Georgia senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler should take another look at running again, according to three sources familiar with the matter, after their narrow losses in January flipped the Senate to Democratic control.”
The efforts went for naught. McConnell stopped endorsing Walker around this time last year. McConnell claimed that Herschel was the only one who could unite the party and defeat Senator Warnock to take back the Senate.
His top political consigliere was one of the reasons he was skeptical of Walker. It was a classic case of, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” in action.
The Georgians’ 23 and Me: How Paul Walker and the American Civil Rights Reply to the Warnock Insights during a Matchup
The children of poor Black families who had lived in Georgia for generations were the two leading candidates for US Senate from the state.
Throughout the hourlong matchup in Atlanta, Mr. Warnock stepped out of character, opting for direct attack lines over the thinly veiled criticisms he has leveled at Mr. Walker for most of the campaign. He answered panelists’ questions with a mix of policy points and full-throated rebukes of Mr. Walker’s claims about his personal life, business prowess and academic record. He described Mr. Walker’s “well-documented history of violence” in reference to reports about Mr. Walker’s domestic violence against his ex-wife, Cindy Grossman, calling them “disturbing.”
“23andMe has screwed us all up, and a lot of other things,” Walker said at a recent rally outside Atlanta. It doesn’t matter whether you are black or white. A house can’t stand and I want to unite it.
Walker is no stranger to controversy in this election and he has also made headlines for how he talks about race, saying Democrats like his opponent use it to divide.
“These are two of the most important institutions for questions of equality and democracy,” said Rigueur.
With two black men running for senator in Georgia takes scenter stage: Killer-mike and Lawrence Warnock: Black people in Savannah, Georgia, can do something when you see injustice
Many black communities depend on the institution of the church. It’s an organizing and mobilizing space. Certainly sports becomes a site of resistance, in terms of African Americans desegregating teams, African Americans using sports to grasp some measure of social mobility.”
“I was just coming out to be a great athlete,” he told rapper Killer Mike in an interview on WABE. I think that my high school was mostly white-Black.
Walker wrote about being overcome by fear of the Ku Klux Klan in his memoir. He recalled their members stalking Black kids as they walked home from school, yanking them into the woods for mock lynchings.
“There is a broad misconception about what life is like in the 1980s in the South,” Riguer says. It’s still very difficult for black Americans to keep an economically equal society.
For Warnock, that society was Savannah, Georgia and the public housing complex where he grew up. During his teen years, Warnock listened to recordings of speeches by King at the nearby library.
“There are men who stand up in the pulpit and preach every Sunday, and yet they can look at racial injustice and never open their mouths against it,” King bellowed in a particularly influential sermon for Warnock – “A Knock at Midnight.”
King was influenced by Morehouse College, the historically Black school in Atlanta that he attended four decades earlier. Warnock signed up to serve as an assistant at the King Memorial Chapel on campus. The dean, Lawrence Carter, became Warnock’s mentor.
Carter remembered that he was confident and mature beyond his years. He seemed to be in control of his life by himself. He would come into the chapel library, study and write, even though no one else was there.
Carter says “when our chapel is packed and our pipe organ sounds in their ears, surrounded by people doing bold things, that pours iron into your spine.” You want to do something when you see injustice.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1128694481/with-two-black-men-running-for-senate-in-georgia-race-takes-center-stage
With Two Black Men Running For Senator in Georgia Race Takes Center Stage: Tom Jordan Meets Walker at a White Sheriff’s Office
Walker had just succeeded in leading Johnson County High School to the state football championship. Walker accepted a full ride to play at Georgia and it was a national news story. Days later, Wrightsville attracted the country’s attention again.
Protests against racial injustice had broken out, directed at the county’s white sheriff. They were met with violence as they arrived at the march. The governor called for state troopers when schools and factories were closed. Out-of-town civil rights leaders begged for Wrightsville’s most famous resident to speak out.
“White people called him the N word and he had Black people calling him Uncle Tom,” Tom Jordan, Walker’s track coach and an early mentor, said in an interview. “And he was just searching for his spot.”
The coach remembered that he called a team meeting. You can’t get in shape to march in a track meet, I said. You have to run. I don’t want to miss practice and it is at three.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1128694481/with-two-black-men-running-for-senate-in-georgia-race-takes-center-stage
The Loneliness of the Black Republican: When a Black Man Walks on a White Man’s Manifold and He Discovers His Family and Friends
What would have happened if I went the other way? Walker told Killer Mike. I wondered where I would be today. Because now I have an opportunity, where I can get a seat at the table.”
“His political viewpoints and rejection of race as a consideration does not represent African American audiences,” explained historian Leah Wright Rigeuer. “It is, however, the perspective of the majority of working class white voters in the state of Georgia.”
Rigueur, who wrote a book titled The Loneliness of the Black Republican, says these views are not an anomaly – citing for example, Georgia-born Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, one of the most conservative members on the bench. These perspectives should not be seen as a fringe viewpoint because they come from people with huge influence to shape American life, says Rigueur.
“We should want to understand that because of what it tells us about the very nature of Black politics, but also questions of American democracy,” Rigueur says.
The two candidates for congress are competing in an election that could determine which party controls the senate, as most polls show is a toss up, and they have conflicting descriptions of the country’s current divisions.
“We’re not a racist country,” Walker said at a recent rally. “The United States is the greatest country in the world today and it’s time we get leaders that know that.”
Sen. Walker and Republican Senator Chase Oliver: What Did Georgia Democrats Want to Learn About the U.S. Supreme Court Judges Joe Biden And The Warnock End?
It showed the results of a poll in which voters in Georgia were asked what their top concern was. The most common answer, given by about 40 percent of them, was the economy. The second most common answer was threats to democracy. Less than a third of abortions came from access to the procedure. Only 11.7 percent of respondents said that.
“For those of you who are concerned about voting for me, a non-politician,” Walker said during their debate, “I want you to think about the damage politicians like Joe Biden and Raphael Warnock have done to this country.”
Were they upset that Biden used an executive order to forgive billions of dollars in student loans? Walker let them know — succinctly and clearly — that he was, too. Was there a feeling that too many progressives showed contempt for the police? He registered his own upset about that.
It was as if he was going methodically through a checklist of the reasons Republicans were or should be on board with him, and he did so with a discipline that made prior characterizations of him as a hapless buffoon seem selective. Was he eloquent? Please. Was he articulate? In order to surpass the expectations for him, there was only one thing left to do.
During the debate, he said that he opposed abortion across the board and endorsed a Georgia law that outlaws it after six weeks of pregnancies but makes exceptions for rape and incest.
Chase Oliver, a Libertarian candidate in the senate race, brought up his libertarian views in the debate, such as keeping the government out of health care and energy investments. The two men found a common ground when they hammered their opponents for not being in the debate.
The Last Six Years Running Through Trump in Virginia: The Success of Lyndon Johnson, Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell
After two years out of power, the Republican Party’s keenness to return to the pinnacle in Congress is palpable, and has been the most important motivating factor in its midterm campaign strategy ahead of the election on November 8.
Given that Virginia governors aren’t allowed to serve consecutive terms, Youngkin is free from needing to keep his group together for the reelection run. He knows that if he wants to become a presidential candidate, he will need to appeal beyond just Virginia Republicans and that he has designs on becoming a national GOP figure.
Youngkin told all Republicans to get behind Lake but also to convey the ideological choice he must make for a future in the party.
There is nothing wrong with a political party focused on winning power. Politics is the art of the possible. It’s important for successful parties to know that election victories are paramount. Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton and many other Democratic presidents were known for their willingness to do what was necessary in order to win. 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 once took pride in its heritage of promoting global democracy against tyranny, this is a striking leap. The party of Lincoln still values such values, but ostracized the Republicans who defended them against Trump. A Trump-backed challenger defeated Cheney in the summer primary and she didn’t run for reelection. 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 recent example of the naked pursuit of power is when House minority leader Kevin McCarthy went to Mar-a-Lago to make up with Trump after he criticized him over the Capitol insurrection. The California lawmaker knew that his party’s hopes of a House majority depended on a rapprochement with Trump and his base voters.
An understanding of the path to power – for the last six years running through Trump – explains why Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell lived with the ex-President’s malfeasance and chaos, despite his personal disdain for Trump. The Kentucky Republican decided not to vote to convict the former President in his second impeachment trial, which could have led to a return to power for him.
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’s affiliated super PAC is spending money in New Hampshire, where the GOP nominee said he wouldn’t vote for McConnell. There is a chance that it 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.
Walker’s two surrogates – Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who heads the GOP’s Senate campaign arm, and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton – behaved as though Walker was just any other Republican candidate.
He is campaigning with both Trump and Kemp, even though he tried to get Trump ousted this year.
So while his endorsement may be valuable to Lake in a close gubernatorial race, her rising star power in Trump world also offered a strong incentive for his trip. And it explains the hug after his speech in which he embraced the kind of political personality who wouldn’t have been let anywhere near his events last year.
The Changing Face of the Senate: Five Thirty Eight Sens. The Case Against a Democratic Lt.-Governor
According to a model built by FiveThirtyEight, Democrats had a 7-in- 10 chance of keeping their majority in the US Senate.
John Fetterman, a Democrat, now leads Mehmet Oz, a Republican, by a narrow margin due to the health concerns of the lieutenant governor. President Joe Biden spoke with Fetterman in Pennsylvania.
Republican candidate for Arizona,Blake Masters, has begun to make up some ground on his opponent, Mark Kelly. The incumbent remains the favorite in the race, but there’s no question there has been some tightening.
- A CBS News/YouGov poll out in Nevada shows the Senate race is in a dead heat, with Republican nominee Adam Laxalt at 49% and Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto at 48%.
Democrats in Wisconsin are pointing fingers at the lieutenant-governor, who is in a close race with GOP Sen. Ron Johnson. “People are just hitting their heads against the wall. Tom Nelson was a Democrat who ran for Senate nomination earlier in the year.
As of this writing, it is not clear how the House of Representatives will be controlled. There’s a slim GOP majority, nowhere near the anticipated red wave. The Senate will stay in Democratic hands after Republican losses in Nevada and Arizona.
Jay Bookman: Predicting Georgian Voter Turnout and Other Elections with a Backseat on a False Narrative
Editor’s Note: Jay Bookman is an award-winning author and political columnist from Georgia who has written for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other newspapers. He’s writing regularly for the Georgia Recorder. He can be reached on social media at #jaysbookman. The views expressed here are his own. CNN has more opinion.
Voters continue to turn out in record numbers here in Georgia, with early voting totals approaching those of a presidential election year. In a closely watched, high stakes, bitterly fought campaign season, the question is natural: What does it mean?
It is hard to say how long it will take to predict outcomes. In the Trump era, high turnout is not necessarily the advantage that it used to be for Democrats, and we don’t know how much of the early-voter surge represents newly motivated voters or are merely voters who would have cast their ballots anyway through some other means. High-profile candidates in the Senate and governor’s races are no doubt driving voters to the polls, and with so many wild-card factors in play this year – from the overturning of Roe v. Wade to inflation to changes in state election law – it’s impossible to know what the 2022 electorate is going to look like.
It’s a nightmare for pollsters. Predicting how people will vote is pretty easy. Predicting whether they will vote is a lot of work. In a tumultuous year like this one, with so many variables, that’s a caution to the rest of us about putting too much credence in pollsters’ work product.
The governor and secretary of state conceded that voter fraud was not a factor in the recent election outcomes. In Raffensperger’s words, “we had safe, secure, honest elections,” a conclusion shared by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, federal officials in former President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice, and state and federal judges. And if fraud wasn’t the real reason for those changes, what was?
That’s what happens when you sell people on a false narrative, then rewrite state law to encourage taking action on that false narrative. If voting isn’t being suppressed so far, confidence in voting surely has been.
Democrats have built an effective, well-funded voter-protection apparatus to help people overcome whatever bureaucratic hurdles are placed between them and the ballot box.
That’s a very important point. The Republicans say that the changes made in Senate Bill 202, which made it harder to cast an early vote, were necessary to fight voter fraud. That motive makes no sense.
The whole industry of voting fraud has been a bad-faith invention since the beginning because of the right to serve as cover for its voter suppression targeting minorities. We know that because every republican administration over the last 25 years has desperately tried to find proof of such fraud on a scale that will swing the elections and every investigation has failed. When he served as Georgia secretary of state from 2010 to 2018, Kemp tried and failed to find such fraud. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis is attempting to find it but so far he’s not found it.
The consequences of that bad faith narrative ought to worry us. As we witnessed in 2020, Trump took the suspicion and distrust of the electoral system that the GOP had nurtured over decades and he repurposed it to an even more nefarious goal, transforming it from an excuse to suppress voting into an excuse to treat election outcomes as illegitimate altogether.
Trump is still making that argument to this day, telling supporters at rallies this fall that “I don’t believe we’ll have a fair election again. I don’t think it’s true.
In SB 202, for example, Georgia Republicans added a clarifying sentence to a section of state law regarding how a voter, or elector, can legally challenge the eligibility of other voters to cast ballots. It now says that there won’t be a limit on the number of people whose qualifications theelector may challenge. Local election boards must hear such challenges within 10 business days according to the new law.
Around the state, conservatives are attempting to challenge the eligibility of tens of thousands of legally registered voters on extremely flimsy grounds and are growing frustrated that those challenges keep failing.
An activist told a board at its October 19 meeting that they are doing their job. Get your county in order, or get your things in order.
For the second time in less than two years, the Peach State, which elected two Democratic senators in the last election cycle, is home to a contest that has gripped both national parties and potentially holds the key to the fate of President Joe Biden’s agenda.
During his speech at a Georgia rally on Tuesday for Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, former vice president Mike Pence did not mention Walker, despite his party’s mix of ambivalence and political practicality.
Herschel Walker, the Doctor Before He Was Stopped: The Case for a Runoff Without Warnock After His Surgeon Became Injected
Warnock, meanwhile, initially sought to steer clear of directly addressing the controversy. But late last month, he launched a television ad titled “Hypocrite.”
- Warnock tapped into his background as pastor to appeal to swing voters by presenting himself as a senator who could reach across the aisle to get things done. He highlighted his work with senators as ideologically different from himself such as Republican Sens. Ted Cruz from Texas and Tommy Tuberville from Alabama, and trumpeted his support for niche but popular programs like capping insulin prices.
“I’ll work with anyone if it means helping Georgia,” he says in another ad, hammering home a message the senior pastor at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church has repeated at rallies and in his lone debate with the Republican.
Obama told the crowd in College Park that there was little evidence that Walker had taken interest or shown interest in public service or volunteer work.
Walker’s campaign has trafficked heavily in culture war rhetoric, along with criticism of inflation and crime rates under Biden, whom he’s sought to tie to Warnock to as tightly as possible.
It could be seen in this election. Herschel Walker is a terrible candidate. He has a history of infidelity, abuse and abortion, which is considered a problem for a candidate running as a social conservative. One of his advisers said that he lies like he is breathing. Voters know that Walker is flawed. But there’s a reason he netted enough support to force a runoff with Raphael Warnock.
Or take it the other way: I am not John Fetterman’s doctor and I don’t know the extent of the damage his stroke inflicted. Still, the impairments it left are visible, and in another era, might have stalled his political career. If you were supporting Fetterman before the stroke, then you should switch your vote to Oz. Fetterman will be part of a coalition that tries to decarbonize the economy and expands health care for women at any level of impairment. Oz would have been part of a coalition that seeks to do the opposite on every count.
The Flip of 2016 and Why America is Going Where It Went: Why America Turned On SOME WAY in 2016, and Why We Are Getting Closer
We live in an era of unusual political competitiveness. In a few states, presidential elections are decided by a few points. In nearly every contest the House and Senate are up for grabs. In both 2016 and 2020, fewer than 100,000 votes could’ve flipped the presidential election. parity means small marginal changes can dramatically alter American politics, even when there are fewer minds changing.
American politics has typically had “sun” and “moon” parties. The Republicans had control over American politics after the Civil War. After the New Deal, Democrats dominated. Democrats held the House for all but four years from 1931 to 1995. Since 1995, control of the House has flipped four times, and if Republicans win the gavel in 2023, that’ll be five.
Take this year. If 40,000 people in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania had voted for Hillary Clinton rather than Trump, American politics travels a radically different path. Scalia is likely to die on the Supreme Court. The Republicans blame Trump for blowing a winnable election and then turning against them and everything they represent. In 2016 everything turned on so little.
Heck, I even wrote a book about it more than a year ago predicting this outcome. I don’t like being correct. I am conservative in a lot of ways. I think that America is headed in the wrong direction, because of the policies of President Joe Biden and the Trump years.
There is more than one in my unhappiness. CNN surveys show that more than 70% of people said they are dissatisfied or angry with the direction of the country.
The victory of Sen. Raphael Warnock, the former University of Georgia football star, Herschel Walker, in the $20rm emu$ election: How Donald Trump and Ron DeS
This year’s most expensive US Senate race in the country – over $380 million spent through the end of November – is finally over. Georgia’s incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, pastor at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, won the December 6 runoff against his Republican challenger, former University of Georgia football star Herschel Walker.
Their friendship goes back to the United States Football League. The first time they met was in the New Jersey Generals’ league, when Walker was the star running back. Walker won the primary in large part because of Trump’s endorsement.
According to a recent survey by a university, Biden has poor favorability in Georgia, but his predecessor is even worse. Only 40% approve of Trump.
Trump recruited Perdue into the primary to re-litigate his baseless conspiracy theories, and the former senator obliged, arguing, “in my election and the president’s election, they were stolen. The evidence is compelling.
This documented history and the disputed allegations had an impact on voters who otherwise voted for Republican candidates in November. For instance, in the strongly Republican exurban Cherokee County, Walker ran nearly 7 points behind Kemp in November. Drop offs in Republican support were found all over the state.
The first call should be made by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as his team compiles his wish list. The talk of the town right now is, of course, DeSantis. He won reelection with the largest margin of any Florida governor in 40 years. A victory of barely 30,000 votes in 2018 turned into a margin of more than 1.5 million four years later. He got a sizable win over Latino voters, with a 56-43 margin. He did it with a record of conservativism in a formerly battleground state.
There will be a lot of talk about his national ambitions, but for the time being it is worthwhile taking a look at his recent accomplishment. It proves that effective and decisive GOP leadership can yield significant electoral success.
Walker doesn’t need to take advice from me. I have been criticized for speaking out against Trump at the Republican garden party. Something must change if the GOP can not beat the Democrats with a president with an approval rating of under 40. Don’t just take my word for it.
Begala said there were three reasons for the opposition. First, “it undermines President Biden’s powerful message that Trump leads a mega-MAGA fanatical fringe that is a clear and present danger to our democracy.” There is still a huge force in American politics, especially in the Republican Party. I don’t want Trump anywhere near the White House.” Third, “while I respect the political success of governors like DeSantis, Youngkin, Hogan and Christie, if the Democrats can’t beat them, we don’t deserve the White House.”
If Democrats truly worry about the fragility of American democracy, they should not take any steps that would facilitate Trump’s return to office, even if that means a higher chance that they lose the presidency. There is a slightly higher chance of Donald Trump winning the presidency, but that same chance is offset by worries about democracy.
How Did We Learn About the 2016 Pre-election Election? The Realistic Side of the Florida and New York Red Wave: How Donald Trump and his Party Operated in 2020
There is no one story to tell from this election. In the election, there were quite significant differences across states. Pennsylvania and Michigan — and even Wisconsin and Arizona — ended up somewhat better than the pre-election polls suggested (in some cases, quite a bit better). From this perspective, Democrats should be happy. They did worse in Florida and New York than expected. Which lesson is the right one?
The same thing was said by Sean Trende, who wrote that the Republicans made gains among African Americans and Hispanics, but that they did not translate to seats. Since the Voting Rights Act mandates that the voters be placed into heavily Hispanic districts, which become overwhelmingly Democratic districts, it takes huge shifts in vote performance among these voters to win a district.
Politics is a place in which context is important. Democrats performed better than expected. The red wave washed away many Democrats in the south, from Virginia down to Florida.
It might not be a winning strategy for Republicans to appeal to Trump voters without him on the ballot. The types of voters who are enthusiastic for Trump do not seem equally enthusiastic for his endorsees.”
In other words, it isn’t just that moderates and independents were scared off by extremist candidates; MAGA voters themselves were not fully animated by their own candidates. They don’t want a DonBolduc or a Mehmet Oz, they want Trump.
It’s good to feel comfortable in their prospects or good shape in the country. The national electorate is quite divided. Ultimately, I believe turnout is going to matter more than persuasion.
The parties are evenly matched and it does not seem like it is going to change quickly. The election was close. I think the presidential election will be close as well. Trump-endorsed candidates, he acknowledged,
did poorly, but this does not mean that a Trump-centric Republican Party cannot win or that Trump himself cannot win. He almost did in 2020. The election will be close if he is the nominee.
Republican Party elites are, in turn, increasingly voicing their concerns over the prospect of a 2024 Trump bid. Ed Goeas replied by email that he would have to believe a Trump nomination would be devastating if the economy were to recover.
Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, the Republican who won a second term, told a meeting that he didn’t like how Trump was running the country. Let’s stop supporting crazy, unelectable candidates in our primaries and start getting behind winners that can close the deal in November.”
Editor’s Note: Fredrick Hicks is a political strategist and campaign expert. He served as a debate preparation partner for then-candidate Raphael Warnock in 2020. The campaign did not have a staffer working for them in that year. He is the owner of a consulting firm. The views he gives are his own. It is advisable to read more on CNN.
On December 6, Warnock again made history – this time as the first African American US Senator to be elected to a full term in the history of Georgia. While this might sound redundant, had he lost, Warnock would have been relegated to a historical footnote, ignominiously known as one of the shortest serving Senators in US History, serving just a few months longer than the person he defeated, former Sen. Kelly Loeffler.
In so doing, Warnock is now the leader of a new generation of Democratic leaders, including the likes of House Minority Leader-elect Hakeem Jeffries, Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who are younger and more diverse than their predecessors.
After the counting is finished, he will be one of the most prolific non-presidential fundraiser in recent memory, with over 300 million dollars raised since becoming a candidate. In a game where votes and money are the barometers of success and viability, Warnock has more of both than anyone – something his ancestors never could have imagined.
The Importance of Early in Person Voting: A Comment on the Defending Democrat Campaign for the 2016 Georgia Senate re-election
This is an opportunity to move the agenda of the center- left for the country. With large states like California, Illinois and New York safely in the Democratic ledger, if the nominee can compete and win in southern states, then it will be nearly impossible for any Republican to win the presidency for the foreseeable future.
Edward Lindsey is a former Republican member of the Georgia House of Representatives and its majority whip. He is a lawyer in Atlanta focusing on public policy and political law. The views he expresses in this commentary are his own. CNN has an opinion on it.
There are four. For campaigns, runoff elections are more about driving turnout than about persuasion. Republicans seem to have been hampered in their efforts over the last two election cycles by Trump’s denigration of early in person voting and absentee mail in voting. While GOP operatives and other elected officials have tried to counter Trump’s claims and urge their supporters to view each of these methods as reliable, there is still resistance from many activists and voters in the GOP base to early vote.
This forced the Walker campaign to place most of its hopes for victory on Election Day voting. While Walker did well in Election Day voting, he could not overcome the lead Warnock’s campaign built up in early voting.
Georgia voters were just like those in other states that failed to convince voters to support their candidates despite their dislike of Biden, they simply could not back Biden for Senate.