Obama, Biden rally in Pennsylvania
Arizona’s deadlocked races pit brother against brother
PHOENIX — Truck driver Robert Williams has barely spoken with his twin brother since Donald Trump became president. That politics-fueled animosity has only increased in recent months as Arizona’s closely watched races draw national attention to four Trump-endorsed candidates.
“It’s really ruined our relationship as brothers,” he said.
Williams and his wife were among several hundred attendees at a local Teamsters union picnic featuring Katie Hobbs, a Democrat running for governor, and Sen. Mark Kelly. The union endorsed both candidates and a slate of other Democrats.
Williams and his twin brother are both Teamsters and coworkers, but their relationship has soured.
“Unless I’m at work, I don’t really talk to him,” Williams said. “He’s gone off the deep end.”
That division is felt throughout Arizona, where both the gubernatorial and U.S. senate races are virtually tied. While some voters say they are energized, others worry that the Republican candidates won’t accept election results if they lose.
Williams, who voted for Trump in 2016 but not in 2020, said the former president’s vitriol and peddling of unfounded conspiracy theories caused him to lose faith in the GOP. His wife, a Latina who has always voted Democrat, also pushed him to the left, he said.
“I wish more people would open their eyes to what that party has become,” Williams said. “Hopefully democracy survives.”
GOP Sens. Tom Cotton, Steve Daines stump for Arizona Republicans
CHANDLER, Ariz. — Following Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley’s surprise appearance in Phoenix on Friday night, Republican Sens. Tom Cotton, of Arkansas, and Steve Daines, of Montana, joined Arizona conservatives Saturday afternoon in an effort to boost GOP contenders who are tied neck and neck with their Democrat challengers.
Daines has campaigned on behalf of Republicans in tight races across the country, including in Georgia with Herschel Walker and Ohio with J.D. Vance.
In Arizona, Daines is throwing his weight behind Blake Masters, a 36-year-old venture capitalist who has worked closely with PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel. Masters is looking to unseat Sen. Mark Kelly, a former astronaut.
“I love the fact that Blake is a business guy. I just think he’s a great candidate,” Daines said of Masters.
Speaking to a large crowd outside Phoenix, Cotton also praised Masters and bashed everyone from President Joe Biden to Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser: “You can sense this is going to be a big [red] wave,” he said.
Obama makes case for Democracy at Philadelphia rally
Former President Barack Obama joined President Joe Biden Saturday in Democrats’ last-minute effort to bolster their candidates in key Pennsylvania midterm races, including U.S. Senate and governor.
Speaking at a Philadelphia rally for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is seeking a Senate seat, Obama continued to belt out fiery rhetoric about the importance of midterm elections, which Americans often find less important.
With the House facing voters and the political parties fighting viciously over a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania, Obama made a case for the election being existential for Democracy.
The former president drew a direct line between the Republican nominee for Pennsylvania governor, Doug Mastriano, and what he suggested was an increasingly undemocratic GOP.
Obama argued that so-called MAGA Republicans like Mastriano, a state senator who has said he was outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, represent this break with Democracy and support a more authoritarian form of government where counting a vote is more abstract.
Mastriano’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to an email request for comment.
“Generations of Americans fought and died for our democracy,” Obama said. They “gave their lives for this precious thing, this experiment in self governance.”
“You can’t take it for granted,” he added.
Republican voters in Arizona say border security, inflation are top concerns in midterms
PHOENIX — Longtime friends and lifelong Republicans Nancy Dombrowski and Deanna Schreckler couldn’t think of a better way to spend Saturday than to shake hands with their favorite candidates.
They were the first in line at 10 a.m. at the American Way Market and smokehouse outside Phoenix to meet a group of Republican contenders, who have been dubbed “the fabulous four” and “the fantastic four” by local party leaders.
The four, who have all been endorsed by former president Donald Trump, include gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, Blake Masters for U.S Senate, Abe Hamadeh for state attorney general and Mark Finchem for Arizona secretary of state.
“She’s a fighter. She’s a rockstar. She says it like it is,” Schreckler said of Lake, adding that she is most concerned with border security, inflation and rising crime rates.
“I don’t think anyone can say they are better off than they were two years ago,” Schreckler added.
Dombrowski, who moved from Oregon to Arizona 12 years ago, said she worries that Phoenix is becoming like Portland as homelessness and housing costs increase across the region.
“The left hates us,” she said. “We are all being targeted if you don’t agree with them. The U.S. is getting more and more like Russia.”
Stumping for Pennsylvania Democrats, Biden continues to defend his economy
Well aware of the economy’s top standing among voters’ concerns, President Joe Biden on Saturday continued to tout his record on taxes and the deficit as he stumped for Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.
The president, amid a last-chance campaign tour aimed at shoring up Democrats in Tuesday’s midterm elections, touted a new 15% minimum tax for corporations and slicing the federal deficit in half this year.
“The days are over for corporations paying zero federal tax,” he said at a rally in Pennsylvania, where Fetterman carries Democratic hopes to pick up an additional U.S. Senate seat.
Biden pushed back on Republican critics like U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, who think his student loan debt relief is an unfair giveaway.
He noted that Greene’s business interests were the beneficiary of $180,000 in forgiven Paycheck Protection Program loans.
“Marjorie Taylor Greene,” he said. “God bless her soul.”
Biden blamed big oil companies for the preponderance of price increases at the pump, repeating his talking point that six oil giants made more than $100 billion in profit in the last six months. “It’s outrageous,” he said.
The president’s remarks at Temple University in Philadelphia came a day after the Labor Department reported the U.S. economy added roughly 261,000 jobs in October.
Early voting breaks records in Georgia as bitter Senate race tests red-to-blue drift
SMYRNA, Ga. — A record-breaking early voting stretch has ended in Georgia and the two candidates in a bitterly contested Senate race are making their closing pitches in the final sprint to Election Day.
The contest will test the Democratic-friendly drift in this former Republican stronghold, which voted to elect President Joe Biden and two Democratic senators two years ago. Now, one of those senators, Raphael Warnock, is fighting for his political life in a tougher environment for his party against GOP rival Herschel Walker, a former football star who has been mired in controversy.
More than 2.5 million Georgians have already cast ballots by mail or voting early in person, setting a new record. According to the NBC News early vote tracker, 49% are registered Democrats and 42% are Republicans; 70% of them are age 50 or older, and 56% are women.
Down the stretch, recent polling shows Walker closing the gap to a statistical dead heat as Biden’s low approval rating and economic pain create headwinds for Warnock and Democratic candidates to navigate in battleground states across the country.
Gov. Candidate Josh Shapiro: ‘I have confidence’ in Pennsylvania election officials
Inside Obama’s much-fêted return to the trail
Former President Barack Obama is back on the campaign trail and enjoying the freedom that comes with stumping without the constraints of being in office.
A former Obama administration official who has traveled with the former president for some of his stops compared the more free-wheeling Obama to one seen in the early days of his 2008 candidacy, when he similarly had a smaller security footprint and fewer staff. Now free of the pressure of having to run his own campaign, he has emerged as perhaps Democrats’ most effective midterm campaigner.
Biden, meanwhile, has privately expressed…
Read More: Obama, Biden rally in Pennsylvania