2022 midterm election thread

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caltrek
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Is Arizona’s 2022 GOP Primary Just All About 2020?
by
July 30, 2022

Introduction:
(Vox) There seem to be an endless number of Republican primary races in Arizona that all hinge on two things: The legitimacy of the 2020 election, which was challenged more dramatically in Arizona than any other state, and fealty to Donald Trump.

State House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who testified to the January 6 committee about pressure he faced from Trump associates to unwind the 2020 election, has a serious primary challenge. The race to challenge Sen. Mark Kelly (D) features five Republicans — including state Attorney General Mark Brnovich, whom Trump supporters are still hounding to challenge election matters, and the Trump-backed election denier Blake Masters.

And Kari Lake and Mark Finchem have made Trump’s election lies a centerpiece of their campaigns for governor and secretary of state, respectively, the two offices that have the most direct influence on elections. They’ve formed something like an unofficial ticket, which has gotten a hearty boost from Trump himself.

Lake’s chief GOP primary opponent, Karrin Taylor Robson, has used an influx of her own money and endorsements from more establishment GOP figures like Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey and former Vice President Mike Pence to make the race competitive in the home stretch. Finchem has three challengers, including some who aren’t election deniers, but he remains the frontrunner for the GOP nomination. The winners will face Democratic nominees for open seats in the competitive purple state.

To understand how those races are shaping up — and what’s at stake in them — I spoke to two Arizona Republic reporters: Mary Jo Pitzl is a senior reporter covering the secretary of state’s race, and Stacey Barchenger is a state politics reporter focused on the gubernatorial election. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Read more here: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politic ... ion-fraud
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Re: 2022 midterm election thread

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PollTracker
@PollTrackerUSA
·
23h
2022 #AZGov Republican Primary Poll:

Kari Lake 49%
Karrin Taylor Robson 38%
Matt Salmon 3%
Paola Tulliani-Zen 2%
Scott Neely 2%
Undecided 6%

@trafalgar_group
~ 1,064 LV ~ 7/30-8/1
https://thetrafalgargroup.org/wp-content/upl
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caltrek
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Re: 2022 midterm election thread

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Blake Masters Wins Arizona Republican Senate Primary
by Makena Kelly
August 3, 2022

Entire article:
(The Verge) Blake Masters, protege to billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel, has won the Arizona’s Republican nomination for US Senate late Tuesday night, the Associated Press and New York Times are reporting.

Masters’ triumph over solar power executive Jim Lamon installs the Trump-endorsed candidate as the GOP’s choice to take on former NASA astronaut Sen. Mark Kelly (D) this fall. Arizona is one of a handful of toss-up races that could decide which party controls the Senate come November.

Prior to Masters’ campaign announcement last summer, Politico reported that controversial tech investor Thiel funneled millions into the new Saving Arizona PAC in anticipation of his pupil’s Senate race. Thiel has donated at least $15 million to the PAC as of election day, according to campaign finance records.

Much of the PAC’s funding has gone towards a wave of negative ads attacking Lamon and opponent Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who drew criticism from Trump for not doing enough to investigate false allegations of voter fraud in Arizona. On Monday, Brnovich released a report identifying that his office found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in 2020.

With Masters’ Tuesday win, both of Thiel’s favored Republican Senate candidates successfully beat out their primary competitors this cycle. J.D. Vance, a longtime friend to Thiel and Hillbilly Elegy author, won the Republican Ohio Senate primary this past May. Thiel put $15 million into a pro-Vance super PAC, over the last year. If Masters and Vance go on to win their November general elections, they would bring newly tech-inspired ideologies to the Senate, both strongly inspired by Thiel and endorsed by Trump.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/3/2328 ... e-yarvin
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caltrek
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Re: 2022 midterm election thread

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weatheriscool wrote: Wed Aug 03, 2022 4:20 am PollTracker
@PollTrackerUSA
·
23h
2022 #AZGov Republican Primary Poll:

Kari Lake 49%
Karrin Taylor Robson 38%
Matt Salmon 3%
Paola Tulliani-Zen 2%
Scott Neely 2%
Undecided 6%

@trafalgar_group
~ 1,064 LV ~ 7/30-8/1
https://thetrafalgargroup.org/wp-content/upl
Although Lake is leading, with 79.6% of the votes cast as of this writing, she has 46.2% of the vote versus 44.5% for Karrin Taylor Robson. Much closer than the Trafalgar poll projected. Of course, with slightly over 20% of the vote still outstanding, Lake could pad her lead. Last night, Robson was in the lead because votes that were reported upon first tended to favor her. Voters that cast their ballots before election day had their votes counted first, and they were more inclined to be Robson supporters.

On the Democrat side, Katie Hobbs is coasting to an easy victory with 72.8% of the votes cast in the Democrat primary.

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/2022%20pri ... n-results
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Re: 2022 midterm election thread

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How 2020 Election Denialist Candidates are Faring in Arizona Primary Races
by Jeremy Duda and Jessica Boehm
August 3, 2022

Introduction:
(Axios) What else is happening: Mark Finchem won the secretary of state race. Abraham Hamadeh is up in the six-way Republican primary for attorney general.

• Finchem will face either Adrian Fontes or Reginald Bolding.
• Kris Mayes ran unopposed in the Democratic primary for attorney general.

The intrigue: All four of the Trump-backed statewide Republicans campaigned on the falsehood that the 2020 election was rigged. Both Lake and Finchem claimed without evidence in recent weeks that there had been fraud in the primary.

• The governor, secretary of state and attorney general must certify the results of all statewide elections.
• Finchem is a leading proponent of the falsehood that the 2020 election was rigged. He organized a November hearing where Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies aired conspiracy theories about the election and was part of the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Read more here: https://www.axios.com/local/phoenix/20 ... ary-races
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Re: 2022 midterm election thread

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CNN Projection: John Gibbs Will Win GOP Nomination for Michigan’s 3rd District, Defeating Representative Peter Meijer
August 2, 2022

Introduction:
(CNN) Rep. Peter Meijer became the second of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump to be ousted in a primary Tuesday, losing to Trump-endorsed conservative challenger John Gibbs in the GOP primary for his seat in Michigan's 3rd Congressional District, CNN projects.

Meijer, a freshman, voted to impeach the then-President just days after taking office, after the insurrection at the US Capitol of Jan. 6, 2021. Gibbs, meanwhile, backed Trump’s lies about widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

Meijer’s loss means the Grand Rapids-based 3rd District seat will be one of the most competitive House contests in November’s midterm elections.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, eyeing the seat as a possible pick-up opportunity, spent more than $300,000 on television ads seeking to bolster Gibbs with pro-Trump GOP primary voters by portraying him as a Trump-aligned conservative.

Meijer, at his election night event at a bar in Grand Rapids, said he’d heard from House Democratic colleagues who were angry about the “hypocrisy that that represented.”
Read more here: https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news ... ndex.html

Edit:
American Israel Public Affairs Committee is Cleaning Up in Democratic Primaries
by Tim Murphy
August 2, 2022

Introduction:
(Mother Jones ) Michigan Rep. Haley Stevens defeated fellow Democratic Rep. Andy Levin on Tuesday, in a matchup between two incumbents competing in the same district after Michigan lost a seat in redistricting. Levin, the son of former Rep. Sander Levin and nephew of the late Sen. Carl Levin, is a progressive who boasted the support of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, while Stevens has a more moderate platform. But the most notable thing about this race wasn’t what either of them said or did—it was the incredible amount of money that poured in from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the biggest American lobbying group for, in its words, “a strong, enduring and mutually beneficial relationship with our ally Israel.”

The group pumped $4.3 million into the race in support of Stevens, using a super-PAC called the United Democracy Project, with ads that left no indication of the group’s actual purpose. What’s the backstory there? NBC News offers some helpful context: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022- ... rcna40662
Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... rimaries/
Last edited by caltrek on Wed Aug 03, 2022 5:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2022 midterm election thread

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Washington State Results

August 2, 2022

Washington's top-two primary system puts all candidates on one ballot and advances the top two vote-getters to the general election, regardless of party.

Senate incumbent Democrat Patty Murray leads with 54% of the of the vote with Republican Tiffany Smiley garnering only 32%.

Patty Murray (i)
D 557,978 votes 54.0%
Tiffany Smiley
R 330,176 votes 32.0%

For Secretary of State, with 46.9% of the vote counted, Democrat Steve Hobbs leads with 415,619 votes to second place Independent Julie Anderson with 129, 616 votes

Source and results of select House of Representative races in Washington: https://www.npr.org/sections/2022%20pr ... n-results
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Kansas Had a Choice: Vote to Help Women or Hurt Them. It Chose Well.
by Hayes Brown, MSNBC Opinion Columnist
August 2, 2022

Introduction:
(MSNBC) Kansans went to the ballot box on Tuesday with an especially weighty task before them: whether to amend the state’s constitution to explicitly allow for a ban on abortion. Proponents and opponents of the amendment had spent the last few weeks in a pitched battle to either upend or maintain the status quo in one of the few states in the region where abortion remains legal.

We’ve spent considerable time over the last few years discussing the threat to democracy that minority rule creates. We’ve seen it in gerrymanders that create one-party state legislatures, the Senate’s filibuster rule and in a small band of conspirators trying to keep a losing candidate in the White House. All represent hostility to the majority.

The push to end abortion in Kansas, though, is the flip side of that coin, in that Tuesday’s referendum sought to use majority rule to create an oppressive law. It was from the start a campaign to strip rights from others, an example of democracy at its worst. And on Tuesday, that campaign failed. Others like it will follow, but for now at least one state has opted to use the power of the majority to look out for everyone's rights.

The first section of the Kansas Bill of Rights, included in its state constitution from 1859, was cribbed almost verbatim from the Declaration of Independence. It holds that “all men are possessed of equal and inalienable natural rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In 2019, the state Supreme Court cited those words in finding that the state constitution “affords protection of the right of personal autonomy, which includes the ability to control one's own body, to assert bodily integrity, and to exercise self-determination. This right allows a woman to make her own decisions regarding her body, health, family formation, and family life—decisions that can include whether to continue a pregnancy.”

It's that ruling that the amendment put before Kansas voters sought to overturn. The so-called “Value Them Both” amendment sought to add a new section 22 to the state bill of rights, declaring that as “Kansans value both women and children, the constitution of the state of Kansas does not require government funding of abortion and does not create or secure a right to abortion.” It also grants “the people, through their elected state representatives and state senators” the power to “pass laws regarding abortion.”
Read more here: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opi ... 297665
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Re: 2022 midterm election thread

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Eric Defeats Eric in a Battle of GOP Election Deniers
by Tim Murphy
August 2, 2022

Introduction:
(Mother Jones) Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt easily won the Republican primary for US Senate in Missouri, one day after former President Donald Trump jointly (and very strangely) endorsed both Schmitt and a top rival, former Gov. Eric Greitens.

The defeat of Greitens—who resigned in 2018 after allegations that he sexually assaulted and blackmailed a hairdresser (he has denied any wrongdoing)—will calm the nerves of Republicans who feared that he would jeopardize a seat the party is likely to hold in November. It will also come as a relief, more broadly, to people of various persuasions who don’t think someone who has also been accused by his ex-wife of abuse (Greitens has also denied those allegations) should hold high office. So that’s over with now.

But as I wrote on Tuesday, Schmitt may lack Greitens’ personal baggage, but he’s a fairly radical nominee in other contexts:
  • When Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has been under indictment for securities fraud for seven years, filed a lawsuit in December 2020 attempting to coax the Supreme Court to throw out the electoral slates from three Biden-won states—a lawsuit so sloppily argued that it has since triggered a lawsuit against Paxton by the State Bar of Texas—Schmitt filed an amicus brief in support of his effort. His office then led the effort to get more Republican AGs to sign on; ultimately 16 of them did. Paxton’s false claim that those states carried by Biden had conducted illegitimate elections—and that therefore those results should be overturned—was the intellectual basis, such as it was, for January 6.
    Schmitt was the vice-chair of the Republican Attorneys General Association when the group’s 501(c)(4) arm, the Rule of Law Defense Fund, sent out robocalls urging Trump supporters to show up to the National Mall on January 6, 2021, although he has denied any involvement in that expenditure.
After the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in March, Schmitt boasted of making Missouri the first state to “effectively end abortion.” He has since sued St. Louis in an effort to block the city from using federal funds to help women access reproductive care in other states.
Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... te-trump/
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