Elections 2022 live updates: Midterms loom as candidates ready final push
Laxalt’s fiery closing pitch shows Nevada GOP’s pro-Trump transformation
SPARKS, Nev. — For more than a year, Republican Senate candidate Adam Laxalt has pitched Nevada voters on sending him to Washington with a simple message: He has little interest in working with Democrats when he gets there.
The left should be put “in the ash bin of history,” and Republicans “can’t negotiate with” Democrats, he said in separate June media appearances. In March he declared, “The left must be defeated. We must destroy their radical ideology.”
And in the closing weeks of one of the tightest swing-state races in the country, Laxalt at a Reno event in October showed no interest in working with “the radical, leftist Democrat Party.”
His pitch defies conventional wisdom, which traditionally sees candidates trying to broaden their appeal in the twilight of a general campaign that could hinge on swing voters.
By contrast, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, the Democratic incumbent, on the trail has boasted of Republican endorsements and highlighted her work with Republicans like Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley.
Latino voters rank the economy and abortion as top issues
Latino voters in battleground states such as Florida, Texas and Arizona can move the needle in tight races that will determine what party controls Congress and top state offices.
Results of the eighth week of a Latino tracking poll commissioned by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) have consistently shown that the economy ranks as the top concern of Latino voters — at 47% — and that abortion and reproductive rights, once hardly mentioned, vaulted to the No. 2 concern this midterm election season, at 30%.
This week, the final week of polling before the Nov. 8 election, shows Latinos backing Democratic candidates for Congress nationally.
Despite those poll results, Republican candidates in tight races may only need a small margin of Latino votes to win, as both parties make last-minute appeals to Hispanics amid early voting and ahead of Election Day on Tuesday. NALEO projects about 11.6 million Latinos will vote on Nov. 8 — about the same as in 2018.
Recriminations and blame games: Why internal post-election fights matter
The election is days away, but we already know the outcome of the 2022 midterms in one key respect: Regardless of which party comes out on top, there will be no resolution of the larger cultural fights raging in the U.S.
This standoff will shift the terrain only by inches, even if it does help change which party has technical control of Congress. As for resolving the larger argument, that’s still a decision that the country makes during presidential elections, not midterms.
But what these elections will decide is which of the two major parties is going be on the defensive and most in need of reform.
By the numbers: Trump’s midterm impact
Even though he’s no longer in office, former President Donald Trump has still had an impact on the midterm elections, fueling Democratic hopes that they could make this election a choice between former President Joe Biden and Trump’s GOP.
The former president has played an outsized role in helping pick his party’s nominees in major battlegrounds, wielded his political power in 77 primaries considered competitive by the NBC News Political Unit. Sixty of them won their primaries.
Trump has backed many candidates who echo his false claims about the 2020 election, with more than 70% of his preferred candidates denying or questioning the 2020 results. And though his endorsement is still powerful in GOP primaries, Trump has remained unpopular since leaving office. In October’s NBC News poll, 34% of voters said they had positive feelings about Trump, while 55% said they viewed Trump negatively.
‘Every single vote is going to count’: Two Virginia House races could be bellwethers
Biden to campaign in New York’s Westchester County on Sunday
President Joe Biden will travel Sunday to Westchester County, N.Y., the suburbs just north of New York City, to participate in a political event, the White House said.
Biden plans to host a “Get Out the Vote” event with Gov. Kathy Hochul in Yonkers, according to a statement from the governor’s office. Hochul is in a competitive re-election race against GOP challenger Rep. Lee Zeldin, who has served in the House since 2015.
Westchester County is a heavily Democratic-leaning area. Biden carried the county with 68% support in the 2020 presidential election compared to 31% who went for Donald Trump.
Ex-Wisconsin elections worker charged with using fake names to request absentee ballots
The Milwaukee County district attorney filed a criminal complaint Friday against Kimberly Zapata, who had worked as deputy director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, after she was accused of fraudulently requesting absentee ballots to be sent to a state representative.
The complaint said that an investigation found that Zapata “created three fictitious names and used them to apply for three military absentee ballots.”
“She applied for those ballots using the false names and falsely representing they were military voters,” the filing said. “She then used her governmental access to the WisVote database to obtain the address of JB and have the absentee ballots sent to JB. All of this behavior was in excess of her authority.”
In a news release Monday, state Rep. Janel Brandtjen, the person referred to in the filing as JB, said that she was surprised to find the military ballots sent to her home last month from clerks in Menomonee Falls, South Milwaukee and Shorewood.
“I believe someone was trying to point out how easy it is to get military ballots in Wisconsin. Registration for military ballots is not requested, so a fictitious name and birthdate is all that is required to obtain a military ballot online,” Brandtjen said.
In an interview with investigators, Zapata said she “wanted to make a point that there is fraud in existence,” the complaint said.
“She stated that it is not the conspiracy theories out there, but she wanted to bring the actual true fraud out,” the filing said. “Zapata stated that she felt overwhelmed due to the threats of violence the Election Commission was receiving, in addition to the constant daily harassment and accusations of lying and hiding things.”
The district attorney charged Zapata with one count of misconduct in public office and three counts of making a false statement to obtain or vote via absentee ballot. Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said Thursday that Zapata had been fired over the incident.
Less than 10 percent of House in 2023 will have been elected in 20th Century
Amid the flurry of retirements and primary defeats this cycle, Congressional turnover will continue in November.
When the dust settles after Election Day, between 36 and 40 members of the House will be left who took office in the 20th Century (four incumbents are in races rated competitive by The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter). In the Senate, eight incumbents elected to their posts in the 20th Century are slated to return, with an additional two in competitive races.
Former President Donald Trump’s longtime friend and former fundraiser, Tom Barrack, was found not guilty Friday of charges that he acted as an unregistered foreign agent for the United Arab Emirates during the Trump administration and then lied to the FBI about those contacts.
The jury deliberated for about two days in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, before voting to acquit Barrack, who prosecutors alleged had traded on his decades-long friendship with Trump to “illegally provide” UAE officials with access to — and inside information on —the Trump White House and his 2016 presidential campaign.
Barrack, who served as the chairman of Trump’s inaugural committee, was charged with acting as an agent of a foreign government without prior notification to the Justice Department, a violation that carries up to 10 years in prison. In addition, he was charged with obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI about his UAE contacts during a 2019 interview with federal agents.
Biden touts October jobs report, accuses GOP of ‘rooting for a recession’
President Joe Biden on Friday used a better-than-expected jobs report to attack Republicans just days before polls close in the midterm elections.
In a written statement, Biden said “one thing is clear: While comments by Republican leadership sure seem to indicate they are rooting for a recession, the U.S. economy continues to grow and add jobs even as gas prices continue to come down.”
Biden said that while inflation is still a major problem, he had a plan to “bring costs down, especially for health care, energy and other everyday expenses.”
“The Republican plan is very…
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