The latest on the midterm elections.
Georgia Senate Race a Toss-Up Despite Warnock’s Huge Spending
The Georgia Senate race is a critical one the nation will watch closely on Tuesday night. Incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock has spent more than $90 million this election cycle, much of it in ads attacking Republican Herschel Walker. Still, he hasn’t managed to lift his own numbers over 50 percent.Some late polls have even shown Walker, the former Georgia Bulldogs star making his first run for office, narrowly ahead. Most political analysts rate the race a toss-up. The Real Clear Politics average of polls shows Warnock with a 1.6 percent lead, but five of the last six significant polls show Walker leading.
In Minnesota, GOP Eyes Grab of Rare Midwest Democrat Stronghold
As Andrew Myers knocked on doors in a neighborhood with stunning views across Lake Minnetonka, the Republican state House hopeful got an earful from residents worried about crime in their far west Minneapolis suburb: a woman’s body had washed up on shore a few doors down earlier in the week, and authorities hadn’t said if it was foul play. Another family recently had their car stolen—something else that never happens in Tonka Bay.“Public safety for sure. Taxes,” resident Scott Musjerd said, as he promised Myers his support in a district that has swung between Republicans and Democrats in recent elections.
Control of state government hangs in the balance in Minnesota—one of only three states, in addition to Alaska and Virginia, where legislative control is divided. It’s also one of the few Midwest states where Democrats have had the upper hand in recent years. Buoyed by such issues as crime, and a midterm election that typically favors the party out of the White House, the GOP has hopes of capturing both chambers of the legislature and knocking off Democrat Gov. Tim Walz.
Wisconsin Court Shoots Down Attempt to Change Rules for Absentee Ballots Before Midterms
A Wisconsin judge on Wednesday dealt a blow to a group in the state who hoped to change rules governing absentee ballots, denying their request that local election clerks accept absentee ballots that contain partial addresses of witnesses.The judge noted that the nearly 60 years of precedent was enough to determine whether an absentee ballot has enough of a witness address to count.
“Since then, until the present, clerks have been legally free to interpret the term. They presumably have done so in good faith, in keeping with their oaths of office, and drawing on the non-binding guidance issued by the WEC and its predecessors, and perhaps also on advice from their jurisdictions’ attorneys,” Colas wrote.
Wisconsin Election Official Fired for Allegedly Sending Fake Military Ballots to State Lawmaker
An election official in Wisconsin’s most populous city has been fired after sending fake military ballots to a state lawmaker, the city’s mayor announced on Nov. 3.Kimberly Zapata, deputy director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, was removed, according to Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson.
Zapata “apparently sought fictitious military ballots from a state elections website” and directed the ballots to a state lawmaker, Johnson, a Democrat, told reporters during a press conference.
New Forecast Predicts Republicans Will Have a Good Night on Tuesday
Republicans are projected to have a good night on Nov. 8 in the Senate, according to a new forecast released Thursday.2nd Arizona County Mulling Hand-Counts Rejects Effort
The elected leaders of an Arizona county who had considered following the lead of a rural county by expanding their hand-counts of ballots from next week’s election rejected the effort Wednesday.The majority on the Pinal County board of supervisors said they saw no reason to doubt the current hand-count audits that verify machine tabulation results or expand them to include more precincts as one supervisor proposed.
That leaves rural Cochise County alone in the state in pursuing a full hand-tally of all their ballots, a move that is being challenged in court as illegal.
Pence Comes to North Carolina for GOP Senate Candidate
Former Vice President Mike Pence stumped in North Carolina on Wednesday in the final days before the midterm elections with U.S. Senate candidate Ted Budd, calling him one of the “strongest conservative voices” in the House, where he’s served for the past six years.“I’m here to say just one thing and one thing only, and that is that North Carolina and America need Ted Budd in the United States Senate,” Pence said after he and Budd answered questions on the economy and education from state GOP chairman Michael Whatley before a few dozen Republican activists.
Police Back Republican Candidates in US Midterms
The Wisconsin Fraternal Order of Police has endorsed some Democrat candidates in past elections. But this year, in each of the 13 races it weighed in on, the union decided Republicans would be more forceful champions of law enforcement.Reuters spoke to nine police unions and trade associations across the United States ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections, of whom six said their members were endorsing more right-wing candidates than in previous elections. The groups said Republicans had offered greater support to police in the wake of the 2020 protests.
Reset District Favors Florida GOP Rep in Clash of Congressional Incumbents
Since Reps. Neal Dunn (R-Fla.) and Al Lawson (D-Fla.) were both elected to the House in 2016, the three-term congressmen from Florida’s Panhandle have been reliably and routinely partisan in canceling out each others’ votes.On Nov. 8, voters in Florida’s reconfigured Congressional District 2 (CD 2) will cancel one of the two’s return tickets to Washington, D.C.
The Dunn–Lawson contest is one of just two 2022 midterm general election clashes pitting sitting incumbents against each other. The other is in Texas CD 34, where Reps. Mayra Flores (R-Texas) and Vicente Gonzalez, Jr. (D-Texas) are on the same ballot.
Biden Tells Voters ‘MAGA Republicans’ Will Lead US Down a ‘Path of Chaos’
President Joe Biden on Nov. 2 told voters to reject “extreme MAGA Republicans” in the midterm elections, saying those politicians are a threat to American democracy and will lead the United States down a “path of chaos.”Thousands Wait in Line Ahead of Obama Rally for Democratic Candidates in Phoenix
Jeff Gustavson of Mesa, Arizona, sees a political wave coming in the Nov. 8 midterm elections, but not a red one.And if thousands of Democrats standing in line waiting to hear former President Barack Obama speak at a Nov. 2 rally in Phoenix was any indication, Gustavson was even more confident.
“I think people have been talking about the red wave for too long. It’s going to be a blue wave,” Gustavson told The Epoch Times.
GOP Senate Candidate Don Bolduc Attacked Before New Hampshire Debate
New Hampshire’s Republican Senate candidate Donald C. Bolduc was the victim of an attempted assault prior to Wednesday’s debate against incumbent Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), according to the GOP nominee and campaign officials.Bolduc, a retired Army brigadier general, mentioned the incident near the end of the Nov. 2 second and final debate prior to the Nov. 8 midterm elections.
“It’s a sign of political problems—Republicans and Democrats—that fuel issues with people that get them to the point where they are just so upset at an individual that they strike out at them. Happened to me outside just before I came in,” Bolduc said, noting that this kind of behavior is wrong and needs to be stopped.
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