#2022 Arizona Elections

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Matt Shuham at HuffPost:

Kari Lake on Tuesday won the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Arizona, setting her up to face off in November’s general election against Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who ran uncontested for his party’s nomination. The winner will replace outgoing Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), who said in March she would not seek reelection. Lake, a former local news anchor, has made a name for herself as a hard-right Republican in Donald Trump’s mold ― not only amplifying his lies about the 2020 election being stolen, but saying the same about her own unsuccessful race for governor in 2022. (Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, defeated Lake by 17,000 votes.) Lake played a video of Trump endorsing her when she launched her campaign in October, and Trump again voiced his support for Lake in a call with supporters Monday. Lake is currently still litigating the last election — as the defendant in an ongoing defamation lawsuit from Stephen Richer, a Republican and the elected recorder in Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest county. After Lake accused Richer of intentionally sabotaging the 2022 election, Richer sued for defamation. In March, Lake declined to defend herself against Richer’s suit, calling it a “perversion of our legal system.” Discovery is ongoing in the dispute.

Lake was widely expected to beat Republican challenger Mark Lamb, the sheriff of Pinal County, in the Senate primary. The real question in some analysts’ minds was just how much Lake would win by ― and whether it would be enough to make her a compelling general-election candidate.

[...] That’s in part because of Lake’s brand of Trumpism, which includes election denial, border hysteria and attacking the late GOP Sen. John McCain (something she later tried to walk back). This approach is popular with a portion of Arizona’s Republicans, but it’s not necessarily the ticket to statewide office, as Lake found out two years ago when she lost the governorship to Hobbs.

Serial election denier Kari Lake wins the #AZSen GOP Primary, will face off against Rep. Ruben Gallego (D) this fall. Go Gallego!

[contemplatingoutlander]

"But then I realized I AM the job. Defaming me is her path to campaign donations, speaking opportunities, and national trips."

--Stephen Richer, Maricopa County Recorder on Kari Lake

This tweet by Stephen Richer was heart wrenching.

It's NOT okay for MAGA Republicans to make up lies about election officials who are just doing their jobs.

It's NOT okay for MAGA Republicans to stir up their supporters to repeatedly harass an election official--all because they can't admit they lost an election.

And it is certainly NOT okay to do so as a way of staying in the spotlight and soliciting donations--and perhaps auditioning to become Trump's VP. 😬

Ironically, Stephen Richer is a Republican.

But being a Republican didn't save him from being targeted by a corrupt politician like Kari Lake.

It is past time that someone made her accountable for her lies.

[spennythespoon]

Georgia Senate race really be like

Edit 12/07/2022: Hell Yeah Warnock won

[not-safe-for-democracy]

[lastoneout]

BLUE ARIZONA LETS FUCKING GO BABY!!!

[schraubd]

The 2022 Almost-Post Mortem

I was a bit hesitant to write my post-mortem recap today, since some very important races remain uncalled. Incredibly, both the House and Senate remain uncalled, though the GOP is favored in the former and Democrats have the slight advantage in the latter. It would be truly delightful if Catherine Cortez Masto can squeak out a win in Nevada and so make the upcoming Georgia run-off, if not moot, then slightly less high stakes. But again, things are up in the air that ought make a big difference in the overall "narrative" of the day.

Nonetheless, I think some conclusions can be fairly drawn at this point. In no particular order:

There was no red wave. It was, at best, a red trickle. And given both the underlying fundamentals  on things like inflation and the historic overperformance of the outparty in midterm elections, this is just a truly underwhelming performance for the GOP. No sugarcoating that for them.

If Trafalgar polling had any shame, they'd be shame-faced right now, but they have no shame, so they'll be fine.

In my 2018 liveblog, I wrote that "Some tough early results (and the true disappointment in Florida) has masked a pretty solid night for Democrats." This year, too, a dreadful showing in Florida set an early downer tone that wasn't reflected in the overall course of the evening. Maybe it's time we just give up the notion that Florida is a swing state?

That said, Republicans need to get out of their gulf-coastal-elite bubble and realize that what plays in Tallahassee doesn't play in the rest of the country. 

That's snark, but also serious -- for all the talk about how "Democrats are out-of-touch", it seems that the GOP also has a problem in not understanding that outside of their fever-swamp base most normal people maybe don't like the obsession with pronouns and "kitty litter" and "anti-CRT". Their ideological bubble is at this point far more impermeable, and far more greatly removed from the mainstream, than anything comparable among Democrats.

Abortion is maybe the biggest example of this, as anti-choice measures keep failing in even deep red states like Kentucky, while pro-choice enactments sail to victory in purple states like Michigan (to say nothing of blue bastions like California). Democratic organizers should make a habit of just putting abortion on the ballot in every state, and ride those coattails.

It's going to fade away almost immediately, but I cannot get over the cynical bad faith of what happened regarding baseless GOP insinuations that any votes counted after election day were inherently suspicious. On November 7, this was all one heard from GOP officials across the country, even though delays in counting are largely the product of GOP-written laws. But on November 8, when they found themselves behind on election night returns, all of the sudden folks like Kari Lake are relying on late-counted votes to save them while raising new conspiracies about stolen elections. Sickening.

Given the still powerful force of such conspiracy mongering, Democrats holding the executive branch in key swing states like Wisconsin and Michigan is a huge deal. Great job, guys.

For the most part, however, most losing MAGA candidates are conceding. Congratulations on clearing literally the lowest possible bar to set.

The GOP still should be favored to take over the House, albeit with a razor-thin majority. And that majority, in turn, seems almost wholly attributable to gerrymandering -- both Democrats unilateral disarmament in places like New York, but also truly brutal GOP gerrymanders in places like Florida. This goes beyond Rucho, though that case deserves its place in the hall of shame. The degree to which the courts bent over backwards to enable even the most nakedly unlawful districting decisions -- the absurd lawlessness of Ohio stands out, but the Supreme Court's own decision to effectively pause enforcement of the Voting Rights Act because too many Black people entering Congress qualifies as an "emergency" on the shadow docket can't be overlooked either -- is one of the great legal disgraces of my lifetime in a year full of them.

Of course, I have literally no idea how the Kevin McCarthy will corral his caucus with a tiny majority. Yes, it gives crazies like Greene and Boebert (well, maybe not Boebert ...) more power, but that's because it gives everyone in the caucus more power, which is just a recipe for chaos. Somewhere John Boehner is curling up in a comfy chair with a glass of brandy and getting ready to have a wonderful day.

My new proposal for gerrymandering in Democratic states: "trigger" laws which tie anti-gerrymandering rules to the existence of a national ban. If they're banned nationwide, the law immediately goes into effect. Until they are, legislatures have free reign. That way one creates momentum for a national gerrymandering ban while not unilaterally disarming like we saw in New York. Could it work? Hard to know -- but worth a shot.

Let's celebrate some great candidates who will be entering higher office! Among the many -- and this is obviously non-exhaustive -- include incoming Maryland Governor Wes Moore, incoming Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, incoming Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman. Also kudos to some wonderful veterans who held their seats in tough environs, including Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Virginia congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, New Jersey congressman Andy Kim, Maine Governor Janet Mills, and New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan.

Special shoutout to Tina Kotek, who overcame considerable headwinds (and the worst Carleton alum) to apparently hold the Governor's mansion in my home state of Oregon. Hopeful that Jaime McLeod-Skinner can eke out a victory in my congressional district too, though it looks like that might come down to the wire.

I also think it's important to give credit even to losing candidates who fought hard races. Tim Ryan stands out here -- not only did he force the GOP to spend badly needed resources in a state they should've had no trouble keeping, but his coattails might have pushed Democrats across the finish line in at least two House seats Republicans were favored to hold. (I hate to say it, but Lee Zeldin may have played a similar role for the GOP in New York).

I'm inclined to agree that, if Biden doesn't run in 2024, some of the emergent stars from this cycle (like Whitmer or Shapiro) are stronger picks for a presidential run than the also-rans from 2020. But I also think that Biden likely will get an approval bump off this performance -- people like being associated with winners!

On the GOP side, the best outcome (from my vantage) is Trump romping to a primary victory and humiliating DeSantis -- I think voters are sick of him. The second best outcome might be DeSantis winning narrowly over Trump and provoking a tantrum for the ages that might rip the GOP apart. DeSantis himself, as a presidential candidate, is an uncertainty -- I'm not convinced he plays well outside of Florida, but I am convinced that if he prevails over Trump the media will fall over itself to congratulate the GOP on "repudiating" Trumpism even though DeSantis is materially indistinguishable from Trump along every axis save that he's not abjectly incompetent (which, in this context, is not a plus).

The hardest thing to do is to recognize when even candidates you really like are, for whatever reason, just not going to get over the hump. This fits Charlie Crist, Beto O'Rourke, and (I'm sorry) Stacey Abrams. It's no knock on them -- seriously, it isn't -- but they're tainted goods at this point. Fortunately, Democrats have a deep bench of excellent young candidates who we can turn to next time around.

And regarding the youth -- I'm not someone who's a big fan of the perennial Democratic sport of Pelosi/Schumer sniping. I think they've both done a very good job under difficult circumstances, and deserve real credit for the successes we saw tonight and across the Biden admin more broadly. However, we do need to find room for some representatives from the younger generation to assume leadership roles. Younger voters turned out hard for the Democratic Party and deserve their seat at the table. It says something that Hakeem Jeffries, age 52, is the immediate current leadership figure springing to mind as a "young" voice -- that (and again, there's no disrespect to Jeffries here) is not good enough.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/1YJTzbo

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

Maricopa County has identified the solution for the tabulation issues at about 60 Vote Centers. County technicians have changed the printer settings, which seems to have resolved this issue. It appears some of the printers were not producing dark enough timing marks on the ballots. This solution has worked at 17 locations, and technicians deployed throughout the county are working to resolve this issue at the remaining locations.

ARIZONA VOTERS

They're currently fixing the "problem". Stay in line. Get back in line if you had to leave. Vote. The Democratic governor candidate is the current Secretary of State who is in charge of voting in the state. She hasn't recused herself from the position of overseeing the election she's running in. She hasn't even showed up for work today! The only way these problems go away is if you vote Kari Lake and Blake Masters in. Vote!

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Video footage released Friday night showing armed individuals sitting near a ballot drop box in Mesa, Arizona is heightening alarm over right-wing intimidation efforts as early voting kicks off across the United States.

The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office told a local ABC affiliate that it is investigating several individuals who were watching a Mesa voting location on Friday. The department confirmed that two individuals at the site were armed.

A clip posted to social media by ABC reporter Nicole Grigg shows two masked people dressed in tactical gear observing the ballot drop box.

"This is obviously totally incompatible with liberal democracy and an open society," MSNBC's Chris Hayes wrote in response to the video.

Maricopa County, the largest county in Arizona, emerged as a key election-denial flashpoint in 2020 as Trump supporters baselessly accused local officials of engaging in fraud to deny the former president a second term. President Joe Biden narrowly won the state in 2020, a victory that was subsequently confirmed by a GOP-led review of the vote count.

Two years later, in the midst of the critical midterm election season, Arizona is once again drawing national attention as right-wing groups animated by false fraud narratives mobilize and harass voters. Making matters worse, election deniers are running for key posts in the state, including governor and secretary of state.

Earlier this week, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs referred to the U.S. Justice Department a report from a Mesa voter who said that a group of people gathered near a ballot drop box filmed and photographed him and his wife as they attempted to vote.

The person said he was accused of "being a mule," a reference to a ballot-stuffing conspiracy theory that's become popular in right-wing circles.

Justin Heywood, a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Recorder's Office, told VICE that "the county supports the referral to the Department of Justice on this potential case of voter intimidation."

"We have received four reports forwarded by the Arizona Secretary of State's Office," Heywood said. "We encourage any voter who feels threatened, harassed, or intimidated to report it. It is unacceptable and unlawful to impede any voter from participating in the election."

In another complaint that Hobbs forwarded to local election officials, a voter said there were "camo-clad people taking pictures of me, my license plate as I dropped our mail-in ballots in the box."

"When I approached them asking names, group they're with, they wouldn't give anything," the complaint continued. "They asked why I wanted to know, well it's because it's a personal attack."

One individual who was watching a ballot drop box in Maricopa County earlier this week said he was with a group called Clean Elections USA, which declares on its website that it is "asking every patriotic American citizen to join us as we organize to safeguard our elections with a legal presence at every ballot box in each and every state that has them."

The organization's about page features an image of a person submitting a ballot crudely labeled "dead person's vote."

Concerns about right-wing voter intimidation efforts reach well beyond Arizona.

"While poll watching has been an element of electoral transparency since the 1800s, the practice grew in prominence in the 2020 election cycle due to former President Donald Trump's unfounded allegations of voter fraud," the Associated Press reported in August. "Trump's debunked claim that the 2020 presidential election results were fraudulent has motivated thousands of his supporters to scrutinize elections operations nationwide, intensifying concerns of voter intimidation."

"A survey of county elections directors in late May found violations in 15 North Carolina counties, where officials observed poll watchers harassing voters and attempting to enter restricted areas to view confidential voting records," the outlet noted.

In addition to intimidation efforts at polling sites, recently released police bodycam footage shows cops arresting people accused of voter fraud as part of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' newly formed Office of Election Crimes and Security.

While a Miami judge on Friday dropped charges against one 56-year-old man who was arrested for supposed fraud, rights groups have warned that such arrests could have a chilling effect on voter turnout.

As Politico reported, the man "was among 20 mostly Black defendants arrested in August as part of a voter fraud crackdown led by the Florida Office of Election Crimes and Security. The first wave of arrests, which were announced during a high-profile press conference in mid-August, focused on people previously convicted of felonies who voted despite not having their voting rights restored."

"Yet since those arrests, new information was uncovered showing that most of the defendants were told by state officials that they could vote," Politico added. "In each case, the defendants registered to vote without issue. Election officials with the DeSantis administration processed the voter registrations, which caused confusion among the defendants who believed they were legally allowed to vote."

The ACLU of Florida said in a Wednesday statement that "the timing of these arrests and the respective announcement in August, less than a week from the primary, made clear then that the purpose of this office is to investigate and intimidate Florida voters."

In other key states such as Georgia—which could determine control of the U.S. Senate—voters are running up against barriers established by Republican officials and lawmakers as part of a nationwide voter suppression push.

"Under the state's new Election Integrity Act, Georgia citizens can challenge a voter's eligibility on the state's voting rolls an unlimited number of times," The Guardian reported Saturday. "Right-wing groups, spurred by baseless claims that the 2020 election was rife with voter fraud, have mounted thousands of organized challenges across the state, putting even more pressure on the election process for voters, poll workers, and election officials."

"While most have been dismissed already," the newspaper observed, "more challenges cropped up ahead of early voting."

[reasonsforhope]

“The 45,000 or so residents of Dunn County live off on the western side of Wisconsin, not far from central Minnesota, but not close to much of anything. Like other rural counties, it leans heavily Republican, going by double digits to Donald Trump in 2020. This year, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., notched a 14-point margin there, and Tim Michels beat the incumbent Democratic Gov. Tony Evers by 9 percentage points.

But when it came to health care, Dunn County voters said they would support a national health insurance program. The overwhelmingly Republican residents of this farming community approved a ballot measure that affirms their support for a single-payer public health insurance program. The idea, which passed 51-49, ran 11 points ahead of Evers, who was reelected statewide, and 16 points ahead of Senate candidate Mandela Barnes.

The largely unnoticed rural election result affirmed support for nationalizing and expanding health insurance, a program popularly known as Medicare for All. While the national media discourse about the election largely ignored health care issues beyond abortion rights, voters across the country registered support for progressive reforms focused on improving health care access and reining in the for-profit industries that dominate the medical system.

In Arizona and South Dakota, like in Dunn County, progressive health care initiatives outpaced Democratic Party candidates by a wide margin. Arizona voters passed Proposition 209, a measure that reduces the allowable interest rate for medical debt and expands exemptions for what can be garnished by medical debt collectors, with a landslide 72 percent in favor. South Dakota became the 40th state to expand Medicaid coverage, making an additional 40,000 residents eligible.

Oregon passed Measure 111, making it the first state to enshrine a right to “cost-effective, clinically appropriate affordable health care” for every resident in the state constitution. In Massachusetts, voters enacted Question 2, which forces dental insurance companies to spend at least 83 percent of premiums on actual dental care, rather than administrative costs and profits...

The support for an expanded public support for health care across the country gives the administration a mandate as it drafts rules implementing key provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, which allows Medicare to negotiate prices on the costliest prescription drugs covered by the program.” -via The Intercept, 11/29/22

[fatchance]

I voted early in Cochise County.

This year voting felt a little different. There were several candidates on my ballot that seem willing to make voting harder and less accessible for people in Arizona. They don’t think they can win based on the strength of their (mostly horrible) ideas, so they want to silence the inconvenient citizens who don’t see things their way. I want to remain inconvenient as long as I can. 

If you live in a state that doesn’t allow permanent early voting by mail, I’d urge you to petition your legislature or representatives to adopt it. I spent over an hour completing my ballot today. I consider myself fairly well-informed about the candidates and propositions on our ballot, but voting still required careful reading and care. I can’t imagine taking that much time in a voting booth. Voting from home meant I could take my time and do a little extra research. Ballotpedia is a great starting point, and this year the Sierra Vista hometown newspaper posted short candidate interviews on YouTube for mayoral and town council contests. 

Choosing can still be hard. This is an old rant: It is 2022. Anyone running for office should have a dedicated web page describing their positions, qualifications, affiliations, and endorsements.  A Facebook page and a few thousand yard signs is not enough. It is past time to figure this out. 

[westeroswisdom]

For our friends outside the United States...

Liz Cheney is an anti-Trump pro-democracy Republican. Kari Lake is a rabidly pro-Trump conspiracy nutcase who was the Republican candidate for governor of Arizona.

Cheney’s political committee spent over $500,000 for political ads to attack Lake and Mark Finchem – another unhinged pro-Trump fanatic who was running to be Arizona’s top election official.

Lake was defeated in the November 8th election by Democrat Katie Hobbs who had been endorsed by Cheney.

Finchem also lost.

After Hobbs was declared the winner, Cheney trolled Lake.

Liz Cheney, Other Republicans Brutally Troll Kari Lake After Arizona Loss

h/t @jaspersboy​

[contemplatingoutlander]

undefined

Excerpt of Kari Lake interview with 60 Minutes Australia

Kari Lake is a dangerous, dangerous politician.

And she might become the governor of Arizona.

Above is an excerpt from Kari Lake’s off-the-wall interview with Liam Bartlett for 60 Minutes Australia. It is worth your time to watch the entire interview, which you can see HERE (at these video times: 12:37 - 14:23, 16:17 -19:07, 20:14 - 20:33). 

During the interview, Lake uses the Trumpian defense techniques of lying, grossly exaggerating, attacking others, and projecting what the GQP does onto others.

In the video clip above, we see that when Lake doesn't like the direction the interview is going in, she accuses the mainstream media (and Bartlett) of being "conspiracy theorists." The interview goes downhill from there. Here’s part of the video transcript: 

LAKE: Maybe they get away with that stuff in Australia. Perhaps in Australia because you've given your rights away; you melted down all of your guns, and you guys have no freedom that you find that okay. But here in America we do things differently. We have something called the U.S. Constitution and we have rights.”

BARTLETT: So we’d be better off having more guns here. I mean, what? You would be better off—

LAKE: Yeah, you would. You absolutely would, sir. You absolutely would. I feel so sorry for the people in Australia have no power. The only thing keeping us from being Australia right now is our second Amendment, and we will never, ever let that go. Mark my words. What we saw happening in Australia where you have internment camps, and people are being forced, if they've encountered anybody with COVID, to be locked into a quarantine camp is the most horrifying thing I think I've ever seen a government do.

BARTLETT (Cross-talking): Would it—

LAKE (Cross-talking): It's frightening, and if you if you can't see that I feel sorry for you.

BARTLETT (Cross-talking): Would it have been better-- 

LAKE (Cross-talking): This is our last question Liam. We have to run but thank you for your time. 

BARTLETT (Cross-talking): Just, just answer me this one question. One, one more question, Kari-- 

LAKE(Cross-talking): Well, no, I've already told you we're done. Thank you so much.

BARTLETT (Cross-talking): Well, just-

LAKE (As an aside as she is getting up to leave): That guy's a complete nut. Seriously, a complete insane person.

I have honestly never seen a less professional and over-the-top interview by a politician as this one (and that’s saying something, given some of Trump’s interviews). 

Heaven forbid Lake ever makes it into federal politics where she has to deal with international representatives. 

I mean, accusing Australia of having COVID “internment camps”!😱 It’s not surprising that Kari’s statement is based on right-wing misinformation. Australia built a quarantine facility for travelers coming into the country, whether or not they were vaxxed. Most countries during the deadly COVID pandemic had quarantine requirements for incoming travelers. Kari’s comment was completely outrageous given the reality of what was actually happening in Australia.

Clearly Lake is used to American journalists who don’t push back on politicians who lie or try to evade answering questions. Lake’s meltdown in the above video in part was probably triggered by Bartlett’s previous confrontation of Lake’s claims that the 2020 election was “stolen” (shown in an earlier part of the interview not included in the above video). 

When Bartlett pushed her, Lake had the audacity to say that the bogus “forensic” Cyber Ninja Arizona audit proved that the election was stolen. Uh, no. In fact, it supported the fact that Biden won Arizona and that there was no substantial voter fraud in Arizona’s 2020 election.

Unfortunately, Lake is charismatic and there has been some talk of her being a VP candidate if Trump runs for president in 2024. 

Let’s pray that she loses Arizona and is also ignored for federal office. 

[edited]

[gwydionmisha]

Two officials in Arizona charged for 2022 election interference

[queerism1969]

[classicwoodie]

Katie Hobbs in the tabulation room. Take it as you will. Look at the Date/Time.