2022 midterm election thread

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Voters Largely Reject Election Deniers as Secretaries of State – but the Partisan Battle for Election Administration Will Continue
by Thom Reilly
November 6, 2022

Introduction:

(The Conversation) Midterm voters in six states – Arizona, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico and Vermont – appear to have rejected extremist secretary of state candidates who denied the validity of the 2020 presidential election.

Secretaries of state serve key roles as chief election administrators who oversee elections at the state level. Most people holding these jobs are selected through explicitly partisan processes, such as elections or political appointments.

There were 27 secretary of state seats up for election on Nov. 8, 2022. This roster included nine Republican candidates who rejected the 2020 election results and proposed overhauls to how states should oversee elections. These potential changes include eliminating mail voting, ballot drop boxes and even the use of electronic voting machines, while giving more power to partisan election observers.

Conclusion:

Looking ahead

It appears that voters have largely rejected the vast majority of chief election official candidates who ran their campaigns as election deniers. But this election season raises questions, and exposes flaws, about how senior election officials are selected in the U.S. The platforms of these election deniers who appeared on the 2022 midterm ballot illustrate the risk that this dynamic poses to ongoing voter trust and future election results.

Read more here: https://theconversation.com/voters-lar ... ue-194137

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Republican Senator Kennedy Is Considering a Run for Louisiana Governor Next Year
Source: Bloomberg

Republican Senator John Kennedy is weighing a run for Louisiana governor next year and plans to make a decision soon, he said in a statement Monday.

Kennedy, who was elected last week to a second term with more than 61% of the vote, said he has been asked “time and time again to come home to serve as governor” and is giving serious consideration to the bid.

“I’ve spent my life and career serving the people of Louisiana. Becky and I raised our family here and are so proud to call it home,” Kennedy, who previously served as state treasurer, said. “But we can’t deny that our great state is facing serious challenges. To meet those challenges, Louisiana families deserve a governor who can lead our state and help solve our toughest problems.”

The state’s Republican Party leadership has already endorsed Attorney General Jeff Landry in the 2023 governor’s race, The Baton Rouge Advocate reported Nov. 7.

Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -next-year

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Why Lauren Boebert Might Lose
by Abigail Weinberg
November 14, 2022 “19 hours ago”

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) The only thing that’s certain in Colorado’s third congressional district is that it wasn’t supposed to be this close.

Most analysts assumed that Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) would cruise to victory in her solidly red district, which became even more Republican after redistricting. In 2020, Boebert defeated her Democratic opponent by six percentage points. This year, FiveThirtyEight gave Boebert a 97 in 100 shot of winning. In June, when Boebert won her primary, I declared, “It looks like two more years of Lauren Boebert in Congress.”

But as election workers began tabulating votes, Democrat Adam Frisch took a narrow lead. On Wednesday, with about 97 percent of votes counted, Frisch led Boebert by 62 votes. By Thursday evening, Boebert had eked out a 1,122-vote lead, accounting for just 50.17 percent of the vote. As of Monday, the race is still too close to call.

“A Republican incumbent in a red district in a lean-Republican year should not be struggling like this, especially after doing reasonably well in 2020,” Seth Masket, a political scientist at the University of Denver, told me over email. Masket said that Boebert needed the support not only of her enthusiastic supporters, but of right-leaning unaffiliated voters, too. “Usually that’s not a problem for a generic Republican, but Boebert’s all-bombast-all-the-time behavior as an incumbent has clearly irked many of them.”

On Thursday, I drove from my home in Denver down to Pueblo, Colorado, the largest city in Boebert’s huge, diverse district. Pueblo, which has about a 50 percent Hispanic population, is a union town and one of the largest steel-producing cities in the United States. In the district’s large rural areas, many people find work as ranchers or in the oil and gas industry. The district also includes small, staunchly liberal enclaves, like the wealthy ski town of Aspen.

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... m-frisch/

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Yes, Democrats Really Do “Need Georgia”
November 13, 2022

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) When Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto finally won her reelection battle Saturday evening, it became clear that Democrats would retain control of the US Senate. Cortez Masto’s victory gave her party 50 seats in the upper chamber, meaning that even if incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) were to lose to Herschel Walker (R) in next month’s Georgia runoff, Vice President Kamala Harris would be able to cast tie-breaking votes in the Dems’ favor. That’s the same situation that has existed for the last two years, and it has allowed Democrats to pass landmark legislation and confirm dozens of judicial nominees.

Shortly after Cortez Masto’s race was called, an influential journalist tweeted, “Democrats don’t even need Georgia.” The author deleted that tweet, but not before it went viral and sparked intense debate online. I don’t think there was anything nefarious about the tweet; it’s the type of poor phrasing that can happen to any of us—especially after five days of covering every twist in the midterm election results. Still, it’s worth taking a look at a few of the reasons why the Georgia runoff really is a very big deal:

1. The candidates
Let’s start with the most obvious point. There are nearly 11 million residents of Georgia, and many of them care deeply about who represents them in Washington. I’ll leave it at that.

2. The basic math
This is also pretty obvious, but 51 is more than 50. You’ve probably noticed that Democrats—two Senate Democrats, in particular—don’t always line up behind President Joe Biden’s agenda. More seats mean more room for comfort on any given vote. A Warnock victory would give the Dems a 51-49 advantage, so if either Sen. Joe Manchin or Sen. Kyrsten Sinema broke with their party, Harris could still cast a tie-breaking vote. In addition, Democrats could still win floor votes if one or two of their members were absent.

(See article linked below for Twitter feeds).

3. Control of committees
In the current 50-50 Senate, Democrats don’t fully control committees….Having a true majority in the Senate would give Democrats majorities on most committees, too.

The article also explains how majority control on most committees can help on procedural matters, including judicial appointments.

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... majority/

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The Midterms Brought Some Bad News for Public Education
by Isabela Dias
November 14, 2022

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) As he delivered his landslide reelection victory speech Tuesday evening, Gov. Ron DeSantis repeated one of his favorite battle cries: “Florida is where woke goes to die.” DeSantis has made himself to be the loudest parents’ rights champion, signing legislation to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and discussions of gender identity and sexuality in schools. In building that political brand, he has not only bolstered his own standing, but also symbiotically propelled a squad of conservative foot soldiers to office—with the help of an army of Moms—where they’ll carry on the mission of eradicating “evil ideology” from the classroom at local school boards. “The DeSantis Education Agenda was on the ballot,” a spokesperson for the governor’s campaign said in a post-election statement to NBC News, “and the voters made their voice clear: We want education, not indoctrination.”

DeSantis has been credited with advancing one of the country’s most sweeping legislations to expand school choice, a conservative agenda promoted by former US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to channel public funds to private and charter schools that has been gaining momentum with the proliferation of parents’ rights groups nationwide. The unprecedented involvement of the Republican presidential hopeful in local school board races bore fruit. Twenty four out of 30 candidates DeSantis endorsed won elections, including six in the runoffs.

Not all candidates who have expressed extreme positions needed the governor’s Midas touch to fare well. A newly-elected Collier County school board member, who is not among DeSantis’ endorsees, said after his victory that he would like to see corporal punishment back in classrooms and fewer “rights” for LGBTQ students, according to the Naples Daily News. On his website, Jerry Rutherford says he supports having cameras in the classroom and eliminating “leftist anti-American propaganda” from K-12 education.

But it wasn’t just in Florida or even in local school board races that anti-CRT warriors emerged victorious. In states including Texas, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Kansas, conservatives running ostensibly on culture wars issues have claimed positions as state board of education members and superintendents of education.

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... ducation/

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Democrat Overturns Election Result in Recount, Beats Republican by One Vote
Source: Newsweek

A seat in the New Hampshire House of Representatives flipped from Republican to Democrat by the narrowest of margins after a recount.

The race for the Hillsborough County House District 16 seat in Manchester, saw Democrat Maxine Mosley defeat her Republican opponent Larry Gagne by a single vote.

Mosley won the seat with 1,799 votes to Gagne's 1,798. Before the recount, Gagne led Mosley by 23 votes.

Adam Sexton, the political director for Manchester news outlet WMUR, gave updates on the ongoing recounts on his Twitter feed.

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... 42cb207bfc

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