US midterm elections 2022: both Senate and House remain in balance as counting continues

Adam Gabbatt has been in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for the Guardian, and today has profiled John Fetterman’s rise from small-town mayor to Pennsylvania senator:

Arguably it was Donald Trump who launched the political career of John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Democrat who clinched the state’s US Senate seat in Tuesday’s election.

In the days after the 2020 presidential vote, the former US president infamously claimed there had been widespread election fraud, including in Pennsylvania, where Fetterman was lieutenant governor. Fetterman disagreed.

When Trump later said he would sue Pennsylvania over alleged, but nonexistent, voter fraud, Fetterman’s response was succinct. “The president can sue a ham sandwich,” he said.

Fetterman’s image as an earthy, working-class hero enabled him to position himself as the opposite to Mehmet Oz Oz’s elitist, rich man vibe, and to appeal to a broad range of Pennsylvanians, although the truth isn’t quite that simple.

The Democrat has an MBA from the University of Connecticut and a master’s from Harvard, and has acknowledged growing up in a “cushy” environment made possible by his father’s successful insurance business. Fetterman has said he received financial assistance from his parents for almost all of his 13 years as Braddock’s mayor – the job only paid $150 a month – until he became Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor in 2019.

There seems little disingenuous about Fetterman, however, who chose not to move into the lieutenant governor’s mansion when elected, instead remaining in Braddock, where he lives, as he has often told crowds at rallies, opposite a steel mill. His passion for the town is visible on his right forearm, where nine tattoos mark the dates that people were killed “through violence” in Braddock while he was mayor.

Having spent the bulk of his political career in charge of a town of 2,000 people, Fetterman will now represent Pennsylvania’s population of nearly 13 million. As he spoke to the crowd in the early hours of Wednesday, it seemed like a challenge he was ready for.

Read more from Adam Gabbatt here: John Fetterman’s rise from small-town mayor to Pennsylvania senator

CNN’s Fredreka Schouten reports that allegations of intimidation or harassment of Arizona voters continued, with a total of 21 complaints – including one threatening government officials — being forward to federal and state law enforcement, according to information released yesterday. She writes:

One of the 21 complaints involved a threat against government officials. The 22 October email, which said it was a warning to “Corrupt and Treasonous Government Officials”, mentioned the violence of the French Revolution and promised to use property tax records to find workers’ homes. The secretary of state’s office has referred it to the FBI. All of the complaints forwarded to federal and state law enforcement so far involve reports of alleged intimidation before election day.

Alexi McCammond and Emma Hurt write for Axios this morning that Democrats and Republicans are readying to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into Georgia over the next few weeks if, as seems very possible, control of the Senate comes down, once more, to a Georgia runoff. They write:

Depending on the outcome of other races that still haven’t been called, Georgia may end up being Republicans’ last chance to deny Democrats a Senate majority. Republican Herschel Walker performed significantly worse than Governor Brian Kemp, who easily won re-election Tuesday while Walker failed to crack 50% of the vote.

Republicans turning out to vote for Kemp may have helped pull Walker’s scandal-plagued campaign close to 50% — meaning he could have a harder time rallying support on his own in the runoff.

Back to Arizona for a second, and Meg Kinnard at the AP has this explainer of just why the counting is going so slowly, even by their standards. She writes that part of it is because of all of the ballots that got dropped off on election day in Arizona’s biggest county.

Officials in Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous and home to Phoenix, estimated Wednesday there were about 400,000 votes left to count, with about 275,000 of those being ballots that came in on Election Day itself votes known in some places as “late earlies,” the counting of which has been known to hold up tabulation.

There are also about 17,000 outstanding ballots, about 7% of those cast in person on election day that were set aside due to a Tuesday printing problem at about a quarter of the county’s vote tabulation centers. A judge denied a request from Republicans to keep the polls open, saying he didn’t see evidence that people were not allowed to vote, and officials said those votes would be tallied throughout the week.

Election officials said they also received about 8,000 provisional ballots on election day, which included those cast by people who did not have ID, or those whose records showed they had already voted by mail.

Outside of Maricopa County, about 200,000 ballots remained to be counted, the bulk of them in Pima County, which includes Tucson.

Adam Taylor has written the Washington Post’s Today’s WorldView newsletter today, with a focus on Florida’s governor, asking is the world ready for President DeSantis? Taylor writes:

A disappointing night for most Republicans turned into a very good night for one Floridian. Governor Ron DeSantis not only won a second term in Tuesday’s midterm elections but also did so by a sizeable margin.

The results cemented many expectations that DeSantis would run for president in 2024. And to some Democrats, the double-digit wins seen by not only DeSantis but Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio on Tuesday have firmly ended the chapter where the state could be seen as a swing state.

Taylor picks out a couple of implications for a future DeSantis run for the White House, noting:

DeSantis is not…