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By Harm Venhuizen, Associated Press / Report for America

MILWAUKEE (AP) Facing critical races for governor and U.S. Senate, Democratic hopefuls in Wisconsin are hoping that their support for abortion rights in the face of a Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade can overcome the headwinds of a midterm election long expected to favor Republicans. But there's one key group their strategies might fail to mobilize: Black voters.

An issue with strong support from white Democrats is more complicated in the Black community, especially among churchgoers who hold more conservative views on abortion. The topic is so fraught that most community organizers avoid bringing it up.

"Among the Black Baptist church alone, that would split us in half," said David Liners, executive director of WISDOM, a faith-based organizing group with a statewide presence, when asked why his group isn't organizing around abortion. Karen Royster, spokeswoman for Milwaukee-based Souls to the Polls, called abortion "taboo" in church circles, making it difficult for faith leaders to do any sort of work around it.

Other groups, like Black Leaders Organizing Communities, "won't proactively bring up the issue" while doing voter outreach, but will discuss it if it comes up, said Angela Lang, BLOC's executive director.

It's an issue bound to get even more focus after a decisive statewide vote in heavily Republican Kansas on Aug. 2 in favor of protecting abortion access, buoying Democratic hopes the issue could galvanize voters elsewhere.

AP VoteCast shows that overall, Black voters in the 2020 presidential election were more likely than white or Hispanic voters to say abortion should usually be legal. But among those identifying with or leaning toward the Democratic Party, things looked different: White Democrats were more likely than either Black or Hispanic Democrats to say abortion should be legal in most or all cases, 88% to 77% to 76%.

Valerie Langston, a 64-year-old Milwaukee woman who is Black, backs Democrats and supports abortion rights. She said she's afraid to bring up the issue with friends because she has occasionally been surprised to learn that some of them are anti-abortion.

"They're still going to vote Democrat even if they don't agree with abortion," she said.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who won election four years ago by just over 1 percentage point, said he isn't worried about voter enthusiasm. He has noted that he has vetoed nine bills from the Republican-controlled Legislature that would have restricted abortion access. At a news conference, he projected confidence that the issue will carry him to reelection.

"I don't think theres going to be any trouble," Evers said when asked if he thought voters with varied views on abortion might not be motivated to support him.

Doctors in Wisconsin have stopped providing abortions after the Supreme Court's ruling due to an 1849 ban that Republican lawmakers have said they want to update. Anti-abortion groups have said they'll work to clarify the law to defend against challenges.

State Sen. La Tonya Johnson, a Black Democrat who represents a majority-Black district in Milwaukee, noted many voters are focused on economic concerns. She said she hasn't seen groups going door-to-door to talk about abortion rights, even though Black women are more likely than any other group to obtain an abortion, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Wisconsin Democratic Party's engagement teams that work directly with voters of color year-round prefer to take conversations where voters lead them, spokeswoman Iris Riis said. When it comes to abortion, "It's not the only thing we're talking to voters about, but we are talking about it," she said.

Shakya Cherry-Donaldson, executive director of 1000 Women Strong, a national political organizing group focused on issues that matter to Black women, favors a more direct approach. The key is to focus on the idea that "we have to have autonomy from the state," she said a message that resonates enough with a historically marginalized community to overcome personal and religious views on the morality of abortion.

"The framing of our messaging is that we cannot go back, only forward. Civil rights were won for all of us," Cherry-Donaldson said.

But her group is not in Wisconsin in 2022, focusing its efforts in seven other states where they were able to staff and fund their work.

Paru Shah, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee whose work focuses on race, ethnicity and politics, said Democrats would do well to make sure they are messaging on issues like crime and voting rights rather than focus on one particular issue like abortion.

"There isn't a lot of single-issue voting happening among Democrats in general, but especially among Black women who have kind of been the backbone of Democratic turnout for at least the last 10 years," said Shah.

The GOP's strategy and messaging to reach Black voters on abortion will be the same in the midterm as it's been for decades.

"What we will do is explain the inordinate I would say even lopsided access to abortion that's being pushed on African American women," said Gerard Randall, chair of the Wisconsin Republican Party's African American Council.

"They will hear certainly from the pulpits in many of their churches a similar message of restraint when it comes to accessing abortions," he said.

Still, Wisconsin Democrats see the issue as key to winning both the governor's race and the U.S. Senate race in the fall.

Polling by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research has found most people in the United States want Congress to pass legislation guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide and that overwhelming majorities also think states should allow abortion in specific cases, including for a woman's health and for rape.

The Democratic front-runner in Wisconsin's Senate race, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who is Black, emphasizes abortion access as a civil right. In his latest television ad, Barnes, who grew up in Milwaukee, and his mother talk about her decision to end a complicated pregnancy. LaJuan Barnes highlights that she was able to choose: "It was my decision, not some politicians'."

Harm Venhuizen is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Venhuizen on Twitter.

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Democratic candidates rally around abortion are they reaching Black voters? - PBS Wisconsin

Republican primary voters upended their partys establishment in Wisconsin on Tuesday, choosing a Trump-backed candidate for governor who has entertained overturning the 2020 election results to take on Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, in one of the countrys most consequential November contests.

Tim Michels, a wealthy construction magnate endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump, defeated former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, who had support from former Gov. Scott Walker, former Vice President Mike Pence and dozens of state legislators, as well as the states largest business organizations.

And Mr. Trumps followers gave a serious scare to the powerful Republican speaker of the State Assembly, Robin Vos. In recent weeks, Mr. Vos had become the former presidents chief antagonist among Wisconsin Republicans because he refused to indulge Mr. Trumps false claims that the 2020 results can still be decertified.

Mr. Vos inched past a far-right challenger and political neophyte who was desperately short on money but was buoyed by a Trump endorsement just a week before the primary.

Mr. Michels won by predicating his entire campaign on his support from Mr. Trump, highlighting that distinction in nearly all of his millions of dollars of self-funded television advertising and reminding voters about it during campaign stops and debates.

Id like to thank President Trump for his support, for his endorsement, Mr. Michels said in victory remarks at his campaign headquarters in Waukesha, Wis. It was a tremendous validation of our meteoric rise in this campaign. He knows that we need new leadership and he sees a lot of similarities.

During the primary, Mr. Michels, 60, subscribed to some of Mr. Trumps most outlandish conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. He pledged to consider signing legislation that would overturn Mr. Trumps defeat to Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Wisconsin and withdraw the states 10 electoral votes a move that has no basis in state or federal law.

But on Tuesday night, Mr. Michels did not mention the 2020 election or the states voting laws an issue that just last week he said he was very, very fired up about.

Mr. Michels has projected a tough-on-crime stance, pledging to fire the Democratic district attorney in Milwaukee, hire more police officers and increase prison sentences for gun-related crimes. He also opposes abortion, which is now illegal in Wisconsin under an 1849 law and is likely to remain that way under the Republican-controlled Legislature.

Now Mr. Michels will take on Mr. Evers, who has cast himself as a defender of fair elections and has vetoed more than a dozen bills passed by Legislature that would have restricted voting.

Mr. Michels has proposed replacing the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission with a body made up of one member from each of the states gerrymandered congressional districts a way for Republicans to maintain control of the states election apparatus for at least the next decade.

Mr. Evers has shattered fund-raising records in Wisconsin, raising more than $10 million through July despite worries among Democrats that he does not generate enough excitement among the partys base. Mr. Michels has spent more than $8 million of his own money since joining the race in April, and he is likely to invest even more in the general election.

While Mr. Michels prevailed, Mr. Trump ultimately failed to displace Mr. Vos, who has been in the Legislature since 2005 and served as speaker since 2013, wielding more influence than any other Republican in the state in recent years.

After pressuring Mr. Vos over the 2020 election in public and private for months, last week Mr. Trump endorsed his long-shot challenger, Adam Steen. A small-time real estate investor, Mr. Steen had no paid staff and barely raised enough money to print and mail campaign literature.

The race was far closer than Wisconsin analysts had expected, with Mr. Steen appearing to come within several hundred votes of toppling Mr. Vos, a testament to the power of the Trump endorsement and the enduring false belief that the 2020 election can still be rolled back.

Over the last year, Mr. Vos tried entertaining Mr. Trumps wildest conspiracy theories about the 2020 election without completely giving in to the lies. When the former president demanded last summer that the state review its election results, Mr. Vos instead appointed a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, Michael Gableman, to pursue a state-funded investigation of his own.

The Gableman investigation served as an albatross for Mr. Vos when Mr. Gableman, in March, falsely suggested that state legislators could decertify the 2020 election. Mr. Vos resisted the proposal, including in multiple conversations with the former president.

A week ago, Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Steen, who by that point had raised less than $40,000, barely enough to print and mail campaign literature to his district in western Racine County. Last weekend, Mr. Gableman turned on his political patron and joined Mr. Trump in endorsing Mr. Steen.

Mr. Vos, at his victory party, called Mr. Gableman an embarrassment to the state and said he would review the status of the former justices ongoing investigation next week.

The primaries on Tuesday in Wisconsin and three other states Minnesota, Connecticut and Vermont came a day after the F.B.I. conducted a search of Mr. Trumps home in Florida, setting off fury from Republicans nationwide. Mr. Michels called the search a political witch hunt, while Ms. Kleefisch said it was shocking and unprecedented.

On the Democratic side in Wisconsin, the party settled its most consequential primary two weeks ago, when three leading candidates dropped out and endorsed Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes in the contest to face Senator Ron Johnson, a two-term Republican.

The Barnes-Johnson matchup is expected to be one of the nations hardest-fought Senate races. Mr. Johnson, the only incumbent Republican senator running in a state Mr. Biden carried in 2020, is a top target of Democrats who point to his role as a leading amplifier of misinformation about the pandemic and American elections.

In Minnesotas race for governor, Republicans nominated Dr. Scott Jensen, a former state senator who rose to prominence by opposing pandemic mitigation efforts. His campaign may test the appetite for anti-abortion politics in Democratic states. His running mate, Matt Birk, a former professional football player, is one of Minnesotas most prominent proponents of restricting abortion rights.

Representative Ilhan Omar, one of the leading progressives in the House, narrowly survived a Democratic primary challenge to her Minneapolis seat from Don Samuels, a former Minneapolis City Council member backed by several local mayors who have been at odds with Ms. Omar since she was first elected in 2018.

In Vermont, Democrats chose Becca Balint, a state senator backed by Senator Bernie Sanders, to fill the states lone House seat. Ms. Balint defeated Lt. Gov. Molly Gray, who was endorsed by Senator Patrick Leahy.

The House seat was open because of Mr. Leahys retirement after eight terms. Representative Peter Welch gave it up to replace the senator, and coasted to victory in the Senate primary.

Ms. Balint, the president of the Vermont Senate, has presented herself a progressive fighter in Mr. Sanderss image. Ms. Gray campaigned as a liberal conciliator, more willing to work among the moderate figures in her party.

And in Connecticuts Republican primary for Senate, voters chose Leora Levy, a Cuban-born Republican National Committee member who was endorsed by Mr. Trump. She defeated Themis Klarides, a former minority leader of the Connecticut House who was backed by party moderates.

But Ms. Levy is not expected to mount a competitive challenge to Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat seeking his third term.

When Ms. Kleefisch announced her bid for governor of Wisconsin in September 2021, she promoted herself as the inheritor of the legacy of Mr. Walker with whom she served before Mr. Evers ousted them in 2018 and gathered endorsements from national Republicans like Mr. Pence and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.

But she failed to consolidate support from Mr. Trumps most devoted supporters, who searched for an alternative candidate for months.

Then, in April, Mr. Michels entered the race. Soon after in a relationship brokered by Reince Priebus, Mr. Trumps Wisconsin-born former chief of staff the former president endorsed Mr. Michels, whose fortune stems from a construction company he and his brothers inherited from their father that had a contract to help construct the Keystone XL pipeline before it was canceled by Mr. Biden.

Mr. Michels, who was the 2004 Republican nominee for Senate in Wisconsin, has spent much of the time since then living in New York and Connecticut, where he owns a $17 million estate and his children attended school. Mr. Michels continued to maintain a Wisconsin residence and has voted regularly in the state, though he skipped the 2016 presidential primary, when Mr. Trump was first on the ballot.

From the start, choosing Mr. Michels was rooted in Mr. Trumps grievance about his 2020 loss in Wisconsin.

When Mr. Michels met with Mr. Trump at his Florida estate, the former president discussed tweets of photos that showed Ms. Kleefischs then-16-year-old daughter going to a high school homecoming dance with the son of Brian Hagedorn, a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice. Mr. Trump and his Wisconsin supporters hold a grudge against Justice Hagedorn because he cast the deciding vote in rejecting Mr. Trumps legal efforts to overturn the election results in December 2020.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel first reported on Mr. Trumps interest in the photos.

While Mr. Michels never fully endorsed Mr. Trumps futile obsession with decertifying the 2020 results, he toyed with the prospect enough to allow voters to believe that he would try. In the final week before Tuesdays primary, Mr. Michels said he would consider signing legislation to claw back Wisconsins 10 electoral votes something for which there is no legal mechanism.

Ms. Kleefisch has said repeatedly that it is impossible to undo the election.

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Primary Elections: Live Race Calls and Updates - The New York Times

The Democratic Party establishment has not given up the fight to keep the Green Party off North Carolina's 2022 ballot. In an emergency motion filed today with the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, the North Carolina Democratic Party and lawyers from the powerful, Washington-based Elias Law Group argued that a lower court ruling letting the Greens on the ballot would undermine the state's orderly political process.

The Green Party has been trying to gain access to this year's ballot through the petition process, which meant submitting at least 13,865 valid signatures, validated by elections officials at the county and state levels, from registered North Carolina voters. Initially, at a June 30 meeting, the Democratic majority on the bipartisan, five-member State Board of Elections, voted 3-2 to deny certification pending further investigation into allegations of fraud in the Green Party's petition campaign.

Then, at an Aug. 1 meeting, board staff presented preliminary findings of the investigation. The probe turned up several hundred fraudulent signatures, tied to outside contractors hired by the Green Party to collect signatures, and sworn affidavits from some voters who stated they had not actually signed the petitions and others who claimed they had been misled about what they were signing.

Still, at that same meeting, the state elections board's general counsel said that the Green Party had exceeded its target number of valid signatures by more than 1,600, and the board voted unanimously to certify the Green Party for this year.

Greens candidate calls party certification a 'win for democracy'

Certification meant that North Carolina voters wishing to affiliate with the Greens could begin doing so through the registration process, and it meant that N.C. Green Party candidate Matthew Hoh could get into the race to succeed retiring Republican U.S. Sen. Richard Burr.

"This was a win for democracy and this was a win for North Carolina voters because now North Carolina voters can vote for someone who is in favor of universal health care, affordable housing, jobs, an end to the war on drugs, et cetera," Hoh declared Monday at a news conference in front of the Terry Sanford Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, in Raleigh.

Hoh and other Green Party officials and supporters turned out to hail U.S. District Court Judge James Dever III's order from last week instructing the state elections board to add Green Party candidates to the 2022 ballot even though the statutory July 1 deadline for doing so had passed.

Democrats had sought to block Green Party access to the ballot through a state court but Judge Dever's order from last Friday rendered that state case moot.

But Democrats argued in their 4th Circuit emergency motion that adding the Greens to the ballot at this late juncture would cause them irreparable harm "by forcing them to compete with a party that did not comply with the statutory deadline for naming candidates" requiring the Democratic Party to "expend party resources they would otherwise use for other purposes."

High stakes, slim margins in North Carolina's U.S. Senate race

North Carolina's U.S. Senate race promises to be an expensive, nationally-watched contest. The race's headline candidates are Democrat Cheri Beasley, a former state Supreme Court chief justice who could become North Carolina's first Black U.S. senator, and Republican Congressman Ted Budd, a hard-right gun shop owner and endorsee of Donald Trump. Libertarian Shannon Bray is also on the ballot.

The stakes in this race are high and the finish between Beasley and Budd promises to be tight, according to Prof. Chris Cooper, a political scientist and director of the Public Policy Institute at Western Carolina University. According to conventional wisdom, Cooper said, Green Party candidates tend to draw votes away from Democrats and that could make a difference come November.

"The polling has been pretty consistent here," Cooper said. "This is not a race that either candidate is going to run away with, this is a race that will be decided at the margins."

Indeed, Oliver Hall, an attorney with the nonprofit Center for Competitive Democracy and counsel for the North Carolina Green Party, says the Democratic Party's efforts to block the Greens' ballot access are about hardball politics, not election integrity.

"The Democrats' last-ditch appeal has no basis in fact or law, which is why the State Board of Elections certified the Green Party for the ballot after conducting an exhaustive investigation, and why Judge Dever issued his soundly reasoned order," Hall said in an emailed response to WUNC.

"The Democrats have only one interest," Hall said, "to suppress voter choice by interfering with my clients' First Amendment rights and those of all North Carolina voters who want and deserve meaningful choices in competitive elections."

Unless the Fourth Circuit intervenes, the State Board of Elections will be adding the Greens to the 2022 ballot per Judge Dever's order.

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NC Democrats are not done trying to keep the Green Party off the 2022 ballot - WFAE

Democratic Michigan congressional nominee Robert Lorinser claimed it could be proper and ethical for children suffering from a terminal illness to receive a medically assisted suicide, according to a Facebook post obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

[S]uch a difficult issue -DYING, Lorinser, who is running to unseat Republican Rep. Jack Bergman in November and is also a doctor, wrote on Facebook on Oct. 20, 2018. Children are harder than dying after a long life. Calling it medical assisting dying I like. When, who, howdevil is in the details.

Calling it suicide or killing is definitely negative and wrong. [sic] Calling it medical assisting dying may obscure the issue. A suffering child with a terminal illness say within weeks or months could it be proper and ethical. I think so, Lorinser wrote in the post, which has since been made private, thus shielded from public view.

Medically assisted suicide is the process by which a patient agrees a physician may end their life often by administering a lethal dose of drugs. (RELATED: Activist Doctors Fight To Legalize Assisted Suicide In Massachusetts)

Lorinser, who is the medical director for the Marquette County Health Department in Michigan, was responding to a 2018 article in the Daily Wire titled HORROR: Toronto Hospital Preps Assisted Suicide For Children, Might Not Inform Parents. The article is about doctors at a Canadian hospital who rolled out plans for allowing those under 18 years of age to receive medically assisted suicide in the near future.

Not in any case when the docs initiate this action without even contacting parents, a Facebook user, whose name the DCNF has redacted for their privacy, responded to Lorinser. Murder.

Diane Coleman, president and CEO of Not Dead Yet, a disability rights group that opposes legalization of assisted suicide, told the DCNF the practice is a form of discrimination.

Its discrimination because people with chronic health conditions and disabilities, whether or not theyre labeled terminal, are devalued in society, said Coleman.

Screenshot/Facebook/Bob Lorinser

Lorinser advanced unopposed in the Democratic primary on Aug. 2 for Michigans 1st Congressional District. The district is solid Republican, according to Politico, and a Democratic member has not been elected there since 2008.

Dr. Fauci wannabe Bob Lorinser sincerely thinks he is God, and this revelation further proves that point, a campaign spokesman for Bergman told the DCNF. Democrats in the First District continue putting up terribly radical and flawed candidates.

Last election cycle they put up a wife-beater, and now the same team puts up a doctor with viewpoints so radical they would make Dr. [Jack] Kevorkian blush, said the spokesman, alluding to Dana Ferguson, a Democrat who ran in 2020 against Bergman and was arrested for alleged domestic violence against his ex-wife. Bob Lorinser should withdraw from the race in disgrace.

Lorinsers campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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EXCLUSIVE: Democrat Candidate Claimed Assisted Suicide Could Be 'Proper And Ethical' For Terminally Ill Children - Daily Caller

As Democrats celebrated a victory with the Senate passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, some of Colorados highest-profile Republicans argued Tuesday that its a bad deal for Coloradans.

Republican candidates and party leaders gathered Tuesday to launch into the final three months of the midterm election season and took the chance to repudiate the Democrats federal legislation on health care, climate, and taxation.

It goes against everything that we believe in here in Colorado and trying to make it more affordable, Senate candidate Joe ODea said of the IRA. I don't know why they're calling it an Inflation Reduction Act Its a tax.

The imminent passage of the bill has given Democrats a feeling of momentum after months of rising concern over inflation and a failure to achieve many of President Joe Bidens priorities.

The bill would spend about $433 billion to address climate change and shift the country away from fossil fuels. It would be paid for with new taxes on corporations, but also by beefing up enforcement of the existing tax code.

The bill includes some $80 billion to boost the IRS, including by hiring more agents to audit people and corporations. Supporters of the bill say that new workforce will be aimed at ensuring wealthy people and businesses arent avoiding their tax obligations. But ODea and other Republicans argue it and other measures will amount to more tax enforcement against the middle class.

If they have to hire 87,000 IRS agents to collect that tax from working Americans, it's a tax, ODea said.

The claim of 87,000 new IRS agents has circulated widely among Republicans and some news publications, but administration officials have told reporters claim its not accurate.

The agency has outlined plans to hire more than 80,000 employees over a decade with new funding, but "the majority of those will be filling open vacancies, according to a Treasury Department spokesperson. Many of the employees will work in areas like customer service, not enforcement, the publication reported. But about $46 billion of the infusion will go toward tax enforcement, according to The Washington Post.

"The majority of new employees will replace the standard level of staff departures over the next few years. New staff will be hired to improve taxpayer services and (add) experienced auditors who can take on corporate and high-end tax evaders, without increasing audit rates relative to historical norms for people earning under $400,000 each year," read a statement from the Treasury Department to CPR News.

In a letter to the Senate, IRS commissioner Charles Rettig wrote that the new spending is absolutely not about increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans.

New auditors will focus on (l)arge corporate and high-net-worth taxpayers (that) often engage teams of sophisticated representatives who pursue unsettled or sometimes questionable interpretations of tax law, the letter continued.

Staffing levels at the IRS are 17 percent lower today than in 2010, with an even sharper drop for enforcement employees, The Washington Post reported. A deputy Treasury Department Secretary told NPR that understaffing and old technology mean the agency is missing out on hundreds of billions in uncollected taxes this year.

ODeas spokesman, Kyle Kohli, said it was improbable that the agency could find that much new revenue without hitting the middle class.

GOP House candidates are also critical of the Democratic bill. Weld County Commissioner Barbara Kirkmeyer, the candidate in CO-8, and Eric Aadland, whos running in CO-7, both said if elected theyd want to revisit the bill, including its provisions regarding prescription drug pricing.

Under the Inflation Reduction Act, Medicare would use its market power to negotiate lower rates on some prescription drugs and would penalize companies that raise prices more than the rate of inflation. Kirkmeyer worries it will lead to reduced investment in new medicines. Basically, they're not going to make new drugs. They may not even produce certain drugs, she said.

Aadland added he does want transparency in drug pricing, but thinks the costs could be addressed by stopping onerous government regulation of companies.

As for the efforts to tackle climate change in the bill, Aadland argued it doesnt include the right kind of energy policy. He said the subsidies and tax incentives for people to transition to renewable energy, such as help buying electric vehicles and solar panels, would only really benefit the wealthy individuals.

The bill is projected to lower emissions 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. It would also fine companies for exceeding methane emissions from oil and gas drilling. But in a concession to oil and gas states, the bill would also require the administration to continue to hold new oil and gas leasing auctions.

Beyond their specific complaints, Republicans hammered the bill for not doing what the title says it would: reduce inflation. The Congressional Budget Offices analysis of the bill shows it would have little effect on inflation in the near term, but experts add if the bill can reduce health care costs, it could hold down inflation in the long term.

The GOP press conference went far beyond the new Democratic legislation. Also speaking were gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl; attorney general candidate John Kellner; secretary of state candidate Pam Anderson; education board candidate Dan Maloit; and treasurer candidate Lang Sias.

They generally sought to tie Colorado Democrats to Biden, who remains deeply unpopular. They blamed the party, which has held Colorado in Colorado for the past four years, for inflation, crime and the new fees that Democrats created to pay for priorities like transportation.

(Governor) Jared Polis has decided to fight for Joe Biden and the Democrat failed policies. He's fighting for his own political career, for his own American Dream to be president and destroy our country just like he's destroying Colorado, Ganahl said.

In a statement, Colorado Democratic Party Chair Morgan Carroll said her party has offered real solutions on the state and federal levels. Democrats have touted that they are saving people money through measures like paying out TABOR refunds several months early and temporarily delaying a new gas fee.

In her statement, Carroll said the GOP was pursuing a far-right agenda of taking away the freedom from women to make their own decisions, denying climate change, and growing tax cuts that benefit the wealthy and make things tougher for working families.

Election day is Nov. 8, but ballots will be mailed almost a month early.

CPRs Caitlyn Kim contributed to this reporting.

Editor's note: This article was update on Aug. 9 with comment from the Department of the Treasury.

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Colorado Republicans enter the final stretch of 2022 by uniting against the Democrats' agenda - Colorado Public Radio

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One of President Joe Bidens favorite sayings from the campaign trail is, "Dont compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative." And it seems, less than 100 days out from the 2022 midterm elections, voters are doing just that: comparing each candidate on their own individual merits. The oft-repeated mantra that "candidates matter" is proving true as Republicans are consistently underperforming their Democratic counterparts in the polls and nominating extreme candidates far outside the mainstream. In an evenly divided U.S. Senate, every candidate and battleground state matters.

Here's a look at three critical factors working against Republican hopes for returning to power in the upper chamber this fall.

Money Talks

Second quarter fundraising numbers released just last month paint a very different picture between rival camps, with Democrats posting "blockbuster" hauls while GOP candidates have mostly flopped. Arizona, Georgia and New Hampshire are must-win states for Team Reds chances of flipping the Senate, but the incumbent Democrats wiped the floor with their Republican challengers. Arizona provided the starkest financial divide as incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly raised $13.6 million during the quarter, compared with just $827,000 for Blake Masters, the Republican nominee.

BLAKE MASTERS WINS ARIZONA'S REPUBLICAN SENATE PRIMARY IN KEY BATTLEGROUND STATE SHOWDOWN

In New Hampshire, incumbent Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan raised just over $5 million in Q2, compared to just $538,000 for challenger Chuck Morse, the state Senate president. In the Peach State, Trump-backed Herschel Walker, who easily bested his GOP rivals in May, posted a respectable $6.2 million, but Sen. Raphael Warnock raised nearly three times as much, bringing in $17.2 million during the same period.

Herschel Walker speaks at Save America event in Perry, Georgia. (Herschel Walker campaign)

With a handful of GOP retirements in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and North Carolina, Democrats are on the offense in a midterm year that could actually buck historic trends and headwinds. In the Keystone State, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman raised $11 million, nearly three times the $3.8 million raised by Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz, despite the latters backing by former President Donald Trump and Ozs primary victory in June. Populist Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan also trounced his opponent J.D. Vance in Ohio last quarter, raking in $9.1 million to just over $2.3 for the author-turned senate hopeful.

Fractured Base

Long dead are the days when Ronald Reagans eleventh commandment, "Thou shall not speak ill of another Republican" prevailed. In 2022, the Republican primary elections were cruel, filled with political and personal attacks and a bitter divide among candidates.

Brutal primary campaigns in Ohio and Pennsylvania, pitting Trump-backed candidates against more establishment supported challengers, have left the victors struggling to pick up the pieces ahead of November. In Pennsylvania, recent polling has Oz down double digits against his Democratic rival Fetterman, due in large part to inability to unite Republicans across the Commonwealth, including locking in voters who backed rivals David McCormick and Kathy Barnette during the primary.

In neighboring Ohio, Vance narrowly secured a primary win in May, thanks in large part to his backing from Trump. That endorsement caused a schism from within the primary electorate, pitting Vance against former Ohio State Treasurer Josh Mandel, who enjoyed the support of the Club for Growth, among others. In the end, more than $66 million was spent by GOP Senate candidates vying for the open seat with the vast majority of that spending going toward negative advertising specifically driving down Vances approval ratings.

In Arizona and Missouri, GOP primary voters went to the polls last night to choose their Senate candidates. In Arizona, venture capitalist Blake Masters won the GOP nod with just 39% of the vote in a hard-fought, contentious primary. In Missouri, current Attorney General Eric Schmitt fared better in the primary, netting just over 45% of the vote in an even more heated race against former Gov. Eric Greitens and two sitting Republican congressmen. In both races, a majority of Republicans supported different candidates and have followed in the wake of others highlighted above with some of the most negative campaigning we have seen in GOP contests, which in the end only benefits Democrats in November.

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Roe Matters

Prognosticators in both parties believed that the Supreme Courts decision in Dobbs to overturn decades of precedent on abortion rights might have impacts just on the margins of a handful of key races. Yet, voters in deep-red Kansas last night overwhelmingly voted to keep that states constitutional right to abortion, including from large numbers of Republican voters. This shows that Dobbs is a much bigger issue for voters than was presumed. That vote, in a state Trump won easily in 2020, demonstrates that voters in both parties soundly reject the anti-choice rhetoric coming from Republicans. This landmine will be tough for Republicans to navigate not only in close races, but in races where the GOP thinks they have a greater margin of likely victory. Voters, especially women, are angry, and they are turning out in large numbers to have their voices heard.

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One hundred days is a lifetime in politics, and Republicans could certainly rebound should their base begin to consolidate around their candidates, if Democratic fundraising starts to dwindle, or if key indicators on the economy do not improve. But as former House Speaker Tip ONeill famously quipped, "all politics are local," and the Senate majority will not be decided in Washington nor what decisions happen in Washington, but will rather be by voters who look at their candidates as binary choices. And, with a fractured slate of less than stellar Republican candidates, I like my partys chances in November.

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Kevin Walling is a Democratic campaign strategist, former Biden 2020 campaign surrogate, vice president at HGCreative. Follow him on Twitter @KevinPWalling.

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I'm a Democrat and here are 3 reasons why we'll hold the Senate in 2022 - Fox News

WASHINGTON, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Bipartisan legislation has been introduced in both houses of U.S. Congress to establish a path to American citizenship for thousands of Afghan evacuees admitted to the United States on temporary immigration status, the sponsors announced on Tuesday.

The bill also would expand eligibility for Special Immigration Visas (SIVs) beyond Afghans who worked for the U.S. government to those who fought alongside U.S. forces as commandoes and air force personnel, and to women who served in special counterterrorism teams.

Identical versions of the bill were introduced days before the first anniversary of the final U.S. troop withdrawal and the chaotic evacuation operation that ended America's longest war and saw the Taliban overrun Kabul.

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"We must keep our commitment to provide safe, legal refuge to those who willingly put their lives on the line to support the U.S. mission in Afghanistan," Democratic Representative Earl Blumenauer, co-sponsor of the House bill with Republican Peter Meijer, said in a statement.

Three minority Republicans, including Senator Lindsey Graham, joined three majority Democrats in introducing an identical version of the Afghanistan Adjustment Act in the thinly divided Senate, enhancing its chances of passage.

Even so, a congressional aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the measure likely will face "resistance" from anti-immigration Republicans.

Many of the 76,000 Afghans flown out in last year's evacuation operation entered the United States on humanitarian parole, a temporary immigration status that typically only lasts up to two years.

The legislation would allow those evacuees to apply for permanent legal status if they submit to additional background checks.

Generally, those Afghans only can gain permanent legal status in the United States by applying for asylum or through SIVs, programs beset by major backlogs.

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Reporting by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Sam Holmes

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Democrats, Republicans sponsor bill to give thousands of Afghans path to citizenship - Reuters.com

On a muggy evening last week at a golf course in southern Brooklyn, more than 200 Democratic Party judicial delegates packed into a large white tent. Theyd been elected in June from across the borough to be the peoples voice at the annual convention where the party decides on its nominees for Brooklyns Supreme Court.

In reality, however, their choices were predetermined.

Two days earlier, Kings County Democratic Party executives had hashed out a single slate of 12 candidates for the delegates to vote up or down on, leaving them no chance to weigh individual contestants for the bench.

Standing at the front of the tent with a microphone, Jeffrey Feldman, a longtime party operative in a black suit and light blue tie, read off the pre-selected names, and asked for the delegates to say AYE or NAY.

After hearing shouts from both sides for a few seconds, the party functionary had made up his mind. The ayes have it, he told the crowd to applause.

Feldman was still reading off a sheet of paper ratifying the vote, when Katie Walsh, a first-time judicial delegate from Sunset Park, walked up to a microphone stand in the crowd and interrupted him.

You havent got evidence that the nays were the minority so you have to go and do a roll call vote, she said.

Motion for roll call vote, Walsh continued. Motion for roll call vote!

Within seconds, her mic was cut off.

The brief public spectacle that got those 12 names on the November ballot for Brooklyn Supreme Court offers only a hint of the true nature of the process which began behind closed doors months before the official convention.

It featured significant sums of money moving between campaign and committee accounts, phone calls from party leaders strategizing on how to best get their picks through, and even near fisticuffs at a private meeting of party executives deciding on the candidates.

And this was a relatively harmonious year.

From the outside, the process couldnt appear more democratic: judicial screening panels, elected delegates, and a public vote on which names make it to the general election ballot.

But in practice, critics have contended for decades, its a system thats been designed to allow the Brooklyn Democratic Party leaders to hand-pick the boroughs Supreme Court justices, who preside over life-changing cases for residents ranging from criminal felony charges to intra-party election disputes to high-dollar civil matters.

While the party nominees still have to win on the general election ballot in November, in blue Brooklyn, convention endorsements almost guarantee candidates a seat on the bench.

Its a little skit, a little theater skit, where the party leaders essentially with different criteria thats known only to themselves select people, and delegates just go along, said Margarita Lopez Torres, a former Brooklyn Surrogates Court judge who challenged the process in a failed lawsuit that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007.

Its certainly not the best way to select judges, she added. Were all kind of stuck with it.

Two days before the convention, the real decisions were hashed out at Nicks Lobster House, an old-school seafood joint on Brooklyns southeastern shoreline.

There, over plates of calamari and chicken wings, party executives haggled over their preferred candidates for the bench many of whom had hobnobbed at their local political clubs, helped them with their candidate petitions, and made more than $108,000 in combined campaign contributions to party leaders election accounts and clubs in the months and years beforehand.

Cheryl Gonzales, a Housing Court judge whom party executives decided to reward with a nomination that day, had previously shelled out nearly $12,000 in campaign contributions to party leaders, the party committee and affiliated Democratic clubs.

She received 40 votes from party leaders, more than any other candidate in the pack.

Aaron Maslow, a former election attorney for Brooklyns Democratic party boss, Flatbush Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, also got the nod from the executive committee.

Over his career as an attorney, Maslow had spent more than $30,000 on mailers and campaign contributions to help party executives close to the establishment with most of it going to his wife, a former party leader who last year chose to resign from her post over her racially charged comments about Chinese and Palestinian people.

And in the months leading up to the June primary, the election attorney had also worked to help numerous establishment-backed Democrats, including some of the party leaders weighing in that day, with their signature petitions.

If you had your petitions filed this year they were done by Aaron Maslow for free night after night, said Frank Seddio, an influential party executive from Canarsie, speaking on Maslows behalf at the secret pre-meeting.

Seddio, who clashed with progressives in his previous role as party boss, closed his speech for Maslow by noting that the party chairs former election attorney would be an outstanding judge especially in the election part, a reference to the courtroom where establishment and progressive Democrats litigate pivotal intra-party disputes.

Other district leaders, hailing from self-styled reform clubs, immediately pushed back during the meeting, pointing out that Maslow was vying for the Supreme Court nomination despite having never served as a lower court judge a typical stepping-stone position.

We have a list of people who have served in the civil court for a length of time with stellar records who arent being considered, said Doug Schneider, a party executive from Park Slope and a civil rights attorney by trade, to the gathering. And theyre not being considered because Aaron Maslow did a lot of favors for people.

Those arguments coming from the reform faction didnt move the majority of party executives allied with Bichotte Hermelyn, all of whom voted him in.

Despite considerable alignment between the Democratic establishment and party dissidents on most of the other candidates, the night ended with Seddio having to be held back from fighting another outgoing party leader, David Schwartz.

Schwartz had recently lost his seat as district leader in a close race after facing considerable opposition from party boss Bichotte Hermelyn and her ally Mayor Eric Adams, after Schwartz endorsed Andrew Yang rather than Adams in last years mayoral race.

That night at Nicks Lobster House, Schwartz questioned whether Seddio had misrepresented which nominees were backed by a party leader who was absent from the meeting. Following the meeting, Seddio had to be restrained from physically going after him, video of the incident shows.

What I am is a fucking Sicilian who will take your fucking heart out, the septuaginarian shouted as Schwartz pointed his cell phone camera at him. You should only suffer a terrible death.

Seddio and Schwartz didnt respond to voice messages seeking comment.

A number of witnesses said the group was kicked out of the restaurant after the blowup.

The restaurant staff was like, Everyone needs to leave, recalled Julio Pea III, a Sunset Park party executive affiliated with the New Kings Democrats, a dissident progressive caucus. Its embarrassing that were resorting to violence and aggression at that level.

Two days later, hundreds of judicial delegates ventured out to the Marine Park Golf Course for the official vote.

As the proceedings began, Seddio congregated on the left side of the clubhouse with the dozen pre-selected nominees while the delegates who were nominally voting on the candidates went to the right from the clubhouse, noisily filling more than 200 white folding chairs assembled neatly in rows.

The quicker we can get started the quicker we can leave, party leader Joe Bova said shortly after 6:30 p.m. in a bid to hush the crowd.

In an oddity of the rules governing the evenings process, the attendees were required to spend more than 45 minutes conducting a roll call vote to nominate the person who would chair the convention vote. The meeting chair, Feldman, was approved by a vote of 167 to 38.

But there was no count of votes for the actual nomination of judges, despite Walshs subsequent attempt to request one from the crowd of delegates.

How can you possibly take this vote of something that is so critically important, like voting for New York State Supreme Court judges, and do it in such a way that its based on the loudest yelling of voices? Walsh said in a subsequent interview with THE CITY.

The entire affair including thank you speeches by most of the nominees concluded in 99 minutes.

Afterward, in a press release, party spokespeople declared the convention was a success, with delegates civically engaged in a fair and transparent process, and pointed to the historic diversity of the nominees.

The final slate included the nomination of six Black female candidates including one who is likely to be the first ever Haitian-American on the bench in Brooklyn.

Congratulations to all the nominees, who have proven track records of progressive judicial and courtroom achievements and will continue to help bring fairness and impartiality to the courts, said party chair Bichotte Hermelyn. Im ecstatic to see these groundbreaking nominations happen under my leadership, and Im confident Brooklyns judicial system will remain in extremely capable hands when the nominees are elected in November.

The formal process for landing a nomination begins earlier in the year with screenings that determine which candidates are eligible for the partys approval but the glad-handing, schmoozing and campaign donations are a years-long endeavor.

Some good government groups have also questioned the makeup of the judicial screening panel, whose attorneys sometimes land paid assignments from sitting judges whose qualifications they review.

Former judge Lopez Torres filed her lawsuit challenging the process for picking Supreme Court nominees in 2004 after she was repeatedly prevented from participating in the partys screenings and encountered obstacles in her bid to identify the names of judicial delegates whom she might convince to nominate her to a seat.

While the lawsuit ultimately failed in the countrys highest court, the Brooklyn federal district court ruling unequivocally agreed with Lopez Torres that the process was rigged to preclude any challenges from judges not endorsed by party leaders.

The plaintiffs have demonstrated convincingly that local major party leaders not the voters or the delegates to the judicial nominating conventions control who becomes a Supreme Court Justice and when, wrote former federal judge John Gleeson in a January 2006 ruling. The result is an opaque, undemocratic selection procedure that violates the rights of the voters and the rights of candidates who lack the backing of the local party leaders.

Gleeson found that while technically there were other paths to the ballot available to candidates not backed by county leaders including petitioning to get on the ballot themselves or convincing judicial delegates to nominate them from the convention floor the obstacles were such that these options were practically impossible in the real world.

He noted in his ruling granting a preliminary injunction that in the four decades prior, no one recommended for the ballot by county leaders had failed to secure a nomination by the judicial delegates.

Reasonably diligent candidates who lack the support of entrenched party leaders stand virtually no chance of obtaining a major party nomination, no matter how qualified they are and no matter how much support they enjoy among the registered voters of the party, he wrote.

Lopez and self-styled party reformers thought Gleesons blistering decision, which was subsequently affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, signaled the end of Brooklyns top-down convention process.

But two years after that initial victory, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the lower court findings.

The question of whether New Yorks convention system ensured judicial candidates had a fair shot was for the legislatures, not judges, to determine, noted Justice Antonin Scalia in the 9-0 opinion.

Wrote Scalia: Party conventions, with their attendant smoke-filled rooms and domination by party leaders, have long been an accepted manner of selecting party candidates.

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Holding Court: How Brooklyns Democratic Party Execs Select the Judges on Your Ballot - THE CITY

Todays newsletter is a guest dispatch from Georgia, where my colleague Maya King covers politics across the South.

ATLANTA Long before Georgia became the center of the American political universe, Stacey Abrams and leagues of Democratic organizers across the Peach State were testing out a new strategy to help their party win more top-ticket elections.

National Democrats largely dismissed their calculations, which called for exhausting voter turnout in the reliably blue Metro Atlanta region while investing more time and money in turning out rural, young and infrequent voters of color outside the capital city instead of the moderate and independent white voters in its suburbs.

There were strong civil rights interests at stake, given the history of discrimination against Black voters in Georgia and across the South.

But there were hardball politics at play, too, in Abramss push to register millions of new voters. She and her allies hoped they would become the backbone of a coalition that could turn Georgia blue for the first time since Bill Clinton won the state in 1992.

In 2018, Abrams, Georgias current Democratic nominee for governor, came extraordinarily close to winning her first campaign for the office. In 2020, her organizing helped Joe Biden narrowly win the state before boosting the fortunes of two Democrats who won both of the states Senate seats two months later.

The strategy is now widely accepted on the left although it is expensive. But Abrams, her fellow Democratic candidates and several voter-focused organizations in Georgia are counting on it again this year to prove that their wins in 2020 were not a fluke made possible by former President Donald Trumps unpopularity, but rather the continuation of a trend.

Its why Way to Win, a collective of progressive Democratic donors and political strategists, is pouring $8.5 million into Georgias voter mobilization efforts ahead of November, according to plans first shared with The New York Times.

The group has already shelled out nearly $4 million to more than a dozen organizations in Georgia, including the Working Families Party and the New Georgia Project, which Ms. Abrams founded in 2014 and whose board Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat who is running for election to a full term, chaired from 2017 to 2020. The groups goal is to provide the financial backing for Democrats to continue turning out the same broad swath of voters that they did in previous cycles, and blunt the effect of national trends working against them.

They also feel like they have something to prove to skeptics in Washington yet again.

If you talk to these voters every voter that has been ignored by traditional pundits and traditional institutional leaders if you build a big tent, they will come, said Tory Gavito, co-founder, president and chief executive of Way to Win. I cant tell you how many rooms I still go to where traditional operatives will say, Is Georgia really a battleground? And its like, are you kidding? How many cycles do we have to go through where Georgia leaders really show the power of a multiracial coalition?

To win the big statewide races, Georgia Democrats are counting on high turnout from the same coalition that brought them success in 2018 and 2020: a mix of loyal, rain-or-shine voters in addition to a critical mass of moderate, independent and infrequent voters.

But the outside forces getting them to the polls, or not, look very different than they did in the two previous election cycles. Where anti-Trump sentiment, a nationwide movement against systemic racism and coronavirus-related provisions that expanded access to the ballot fueled record turnout in 2020, voters this year are keeping rising prices and concerns about an economic recession front of mind, dampening their enthusiasm. They are also contending with a new, more restrictive voting law passed by the Republicans who control the state legislature and governors mansion.

The state of the midterms. We are now over halfway through this years midterm primary season, and some key ideas and questions have begun to emerge. Heres a look at what weve learned so far:

Way to Wins investment reflects a growing understanding among Democratic donors that early money matters even more in a tough midterm cycle.

An Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll out Wednesday found that just over 60 percent of likely Democratic voters said they believed the country was on the wrong track. That same poll showed Abrams trailing her Republican opponent, Gov. Brian Kemp, by five percentage points. Warnocks Senate race against Herschel Walker, the first-time candidate and former University of Georgia football icon, is statistically tied. Political operatives and observers in both parties are expecting the campaigns to be among the most costly in the country this year.

And, as long as the economy remains the elections top animating issue, Georgia Republicans are pinning the nations economic woes directly on Democratic leaders in Washington, warning that President Joe Bidens policies will trickle further down south should Abrams win in November.

In a speech to supporters in McDonough, Ga. on Friday morning, Kemp railed against what he called the Biden-Abrams agenda for Georgia.

Stacey Abrams campaigned for Joe Biden, publicly auditioned to be his vice president, celebrated his victory and took credit for his win, Kemp said. He also condemned her for listening to TV hosts on MSNBC, her big donors in New York and California and liberal elites who can stay in their basement for months on end.

Democrats are also throwing their weight behind a number of races down the ballot, including for attorney general and secretary of state two offices that have proven their importance in light of developments on abortion and election security.

Many groups, particularly those led by people of color, have long decried money dumps from big, national donors that dont come in until September or October or, as Britney Whaley of the Working Families Party describes it, the holiday, birthday and special occasion giving.

By then, said Whaley, who spearheads the progressive groups southeast regional organizing, its often too late for the groups aiming to mobilize hard-to-reach voters to make a big difference.

If we hadnt created the conditions on the ground that prepared us for Jan. 5, all of the money in the world would have been for naught, she said, referring to the day Warnock and Senator Jon Ossoff were elected in 2021. Those two victories allowed Democrats to claim a majority in the Senate, unlocking the billions in spending that Republicans now criticize as wasteful and inflationary.

Spending money several months before voting begins, Whaley added, should actually be the standard.

The Working Families Partys national organizing arm has also taken notice of both the strategy and its implications for future elections. Maurice Mitchell, the partys national director, said the Georgia model of balancing reliably blue voters in cities with new groups of voters in rural areas could be replicated in other battleground states, like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

And he warned against making too much of the debates among pundits and Democratic strategists that have continued since Warnock and Ossoffs seemingly improbable wins: Should the Democratic Party exert more effort to win back the working-class white voters theyve steadily lost since the 1980s, go after upscale college-educated suburbanites who are repulsed by Trump, or stick with Abramss approach of bringing new voters and communities into a multiracial, rural-urban alliance?

The framework is there, and I think theres been enough examples in recent history of it working, Mitchell said. I think we should fight for every vote, but the idea that we would de-emphasize or de-prioritize communities of color or progressives or young people in a sort of zero-sum to reach out to moderate or swing voters, I think that is a dangerous strategy.

Democrats on the House panel investigating the events of the Jan. 6 attack are skeptical of a bipartisan Senate proposal to reform the Electoral Count Act, Politico reported this week.

Alan Feuer and Katie Benner explained former President Donald Trumps fake electors scheme.

In The Atlantic, Barton Gellman writes about how just six states could subvert the 2024 election.

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On Politics regularly features work by Times photographers. Heres what Kenny Holston told us about capturing the image above:

As a photojournalist who has covered former President Donald Trump in some capacity since 2016, I know a chaotic scene is never too far behind him.

This was the case earlier this week when Trump returned to Washington, D.C., for the first time since he left office.

Officers from the Metropolitan Police Department lined the street in front of the Marriott Marquis hotel, where Trump spoke at a gathering of the America First Policy Institute. On one side of the police line stood anti-Trump protesters, and on the other, Trump supporters.

Officers broke up a few scuffles between the dueling demonstrations as hotel guests watched the disorder unfold from the lobby window, all while a large box truck projecting oscillating images of Trump and his 2020 election loss on its sides circled the block repeatedly.

In an effort to convey this scene in a single photo, I decided to use the reflection in the hotel window. I got very close to the glass with my camera and tilted the camera slightly, allowing me to partially see through the glass while also capturing everything reflected in it, as seen in the photo above.

Thanks for reading. Well see you Monday.

Blake

Is there anything you think were missing? Anything you want to see more of? Wed love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.

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Democrats Plan to Win in 2022 Looks a Lot Like 2020 and 2018 - The New York Times

As national Democrats strategize ahead of the midterms, the party would be wise to take note of the Democratic Senate candidate in Ohio, Rep. Tim Ryan. Ryan is emerging as a sleeper candidate to flip a solid red seat blue and is arguably becoming a model for the Democratic Party going forward.

Indeed, amid a national political environment that is highly unfavorable toward Democrats, Ryan has a realistic chance of winning a reliably Republican Senate seat in a state that Donald Trump won by 8-points in both2020and2016.

Recent polling from Suffolk University shows Ryans opponent, Trump-endorsed Hillbilly Elegyauthor J.D. Vance, leading by justthree points, while some polls conducted by Democratic strategy groups put Ryanslightly ahead.

Ryans relative strength in the race is largely due to his campaigns strategic successes in three crucial areas: He is running toward the center on key issues, appealing to blue-collar voters and making a concerted effort to reach out to both Republicans and Democrats.

To be sure, this used to be the overarching campaign strategy for the Democratic Party however, to the partys detriment, the establishment and leadership have abandoned this approach in favor of promoting a far-left agenda that appeals to a small fraction of the electorate.

To his credit, Ryan is running to the political center and has moved to the right of President Biden and party leadership on key issues like crime and policing, China, trade and the economy.

One of Ryanscampaign adsmakes clear his unequivocal opposition to defunding the police, andanotherunderscores his views on the need to fight back against China and invest in Ohio manufacturing. In addition, he routinely criticizes his own party for not doing enough to counter inflation.

To that end, Ryan is making a concerted effort to appeal to working class and blue-collar voters a coalition that was once the core of the Democratic base, but slowly moved away from the party as it has become more progressive and woke. Put another way, these are the voters that backed Barack Obama in 2008 but voted for Donald Trump in 2016.

Regaining the support of these voters especially those concentrated in the rust belt is essential to the Democrats chances of keeping the White House in 2024 and winning closely contested races in this years midterms.

Ryan has connected with these voters by staying on message about making the economy work for the middle class again by bringing manufacturing jobs back to the state, taking an aggressive stance on inflation and proposing a working-class tax cut.

Perhaps most importantly, Ryan has attempted to do during his campaign what President Biden promised to do during his presidential run: take a conciliatory tone, stop finger-pointing and listen to the other side.

It is a near-extinct approach in American politics today yet it is one that Americans so desperately want to see resurrected.

Ryan has embraced it. His campaignreleased an adthat ostensibly combines Bidens Soul of the Nation appeal with Trumps America First stance and argues that we cant afford to be Democrats and Republicans right now, we have to be Americans first. Another ad supports and applauds a signature Trump policy tariffs on China where Ryan says that he agreedwith Trump on trade.

Ryans frequent appearances and ads on Fox News are helping him connect with voters on the other side of the aisle. Currently, his campaign is running a spot on the conservative news network, which features prominent network hosts Tucker Carlson and Bret Baier heapingpraiseon him and his policies.

In addition, Ryan, as a lifelong Ohioan, has been running a relentless campaign ground game, making campaign stops at county fairs, small businesses and factories to talk about state-specific issues rather than national feuds or culture wars.

While Ryans approach has regrettably lost its prominence in Democratic politics over the last decade, this strategy is clearly his best path to winning the Ohio Senate seat and is also Democrats best path to remaining politically viable in 2022, 2024, and beyond.

Of course, it will still be an uphill battle for Ryan, a 10-term congressman, to win in a state Donald Trump carried easily in the past two elections. That being said, even a narrow loss for Ryan will be a win for Democrats and will give them a roadmap for staying competitive in battleground races in future elections.

Douglas E. Schoen is a political consultant who served as an adviser to former President Clinton and to the 2020 presidential campaign of Michael Bloomberg. He is the author of The End of Democracy? Russia and China on the Rise and America in Retreat.

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Democrats across the country can learn from Tim Ryans success - The Hill