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Tag: Democrats

  • Ambitions collide as rising Democrats consider higher office

    Ambitions collide as rising Democrats consider higher office

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    “Open seats are the great resorting of the political dynamics in a given state,” said Jared Leopold, a Democratic strategist. “And in open races, you can end up with a game of chicken, where you’re trying to assess if another candidate will jump in, whether they’re holding off for the next one, whether you should hold off for the next one, given where the political environment may be — all of that is going into these calculations.”

    And it can all change, depending on “if the winds shift,” so “you better be prepared to go in 2024 or 2028, too,” Leopold said, “even if you’re building a political operation for something you want to run for in 2026.”

    How candidates approach the calculus of jumping into one of these open primaries can depend on the status of each state. In safe, blue states, the Democratic primary often functions as the single key election — and more candidates may jump in. In battleground states, a bloody primary can drain resources and put the party in a tough spot in the general election.

    As a result, Senate Republicans said they plan to reverse their neutrality policy in 2024. But the House GOP arm still plans to largely stay out of them. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, meanwhile, took a hands-off approach to primaries in 2022, as did the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. But both entities weighed in on Republican primaries through their affiliated outside groups, attempting to shape who emerged from those contests — another more common practice.

    But in 2018, the DCCC actively intervened in several competitive primaries on behalf of their preferred candidates, enraging some local leaders and progressives in the process.

    “All’s fair in love, war and primaries,” said Dan Sena, a Democratic strategist who led the DCCC during the 2018 election cycle. That’s the backdrop against which a number of the rising stars elected that year are considering runs for higher office now or in the near future.

    How the battleground states break down

    Michigan Democrats now boast one of the party’s deepest benches of swing-state talent, when not a single incumbent Democrat lost their general election and the party flipped the state legislature last cycle. But the party’s better-than-expected midterm performance also set off a scramble for who might run for retiring Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s seat.

    Yet the field is narrowing, not growing.

    Slotkin — who flipped a red seat in 2018 and became a fundraising powerhouse — jumped into the Senate race last week, raking in $1.2 million in her first 24 hours. But other top talent will not seek the office, like Gilchrist and Rep. Haley Stevens. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, who recently moved to Michigan, also opted out, as did state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who rocketed to viral fame in 2021.

    “We’ve got a set of Democrats who are willing to be pragmatic in these decisions, which is why what you’re seeing is playing out,” said a Michigan Democratic elected official, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “If we were not pragmatic, three people would’ve already jumped in, but we want someone who is going to win the seat and we also don’t want to have a primary that forces open a whole bunch of other offices below them, which then also need to be filled.”

    The field isn’t clear for Slotkin yet. Notably, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who has built a national profile around defending election administration, hasn’t formally weighed in yet on her decision. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), too, hasn’t withdrawn her own consideration for a bid.

    Hill Harper, an actor who was appointed to serve on President Barack Obama’s cancer panel, is also building out a campaign with plans to announce in April, according to a source familiar with Harper’s plans.

    Many of those same candidates are also considering whether they will run for governor, which will be open after Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer wraps up her second term in 2026.

    Gilchrist, in particular, is eying a run for governor, and so is Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, several Michigan Democrats said. Should Benson decline to go for Senate, she’d also be well-positioned to run for governor.

    Another would-be traffic jam could have materialized in Virginia, but Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) quickly headed off any chatter by launching his reelection bid last month. But another open primary is on the horizon: Virginia governor in 2025.

    In recent weeks, both Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney and Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) have launched new PACs to help support state legislative candidates heading into their off-year cycle. Former Rep. Elaine Luria, who narrowly lost a red-leaning seat in 2022, also launched her own political action committee aimed at fundraising for local offices.

    Safe blue seats

    Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer served a combined 55 years in office, so it’s no surprise a seat with the potential to be that safe drew three Democratic congressional leaders and prolific fundraisers into the primary — setting up what could be one of the most expensive elections in American politics.

    Rep. Katie Porter launched her bid before Feinstein retired, soon followed by Reps. Adam Schiff and Barbara Lee, after the 89-year-old Democratic senator formally announced her decision. All three are expected to get the backing from massive super PAC spending. The Senate primary also touched off a scramble to replace each of those members in Congress, as two represent safe seats of their own.

    “California had a roadblock for years and nobody moved,” said Doug Herman, a California-based strategist who is not involved in the race. “We had one retirement and it created a wave of movement down ballot, all the way to the mayor’s race in San Diego.”

    Herman noted that “it will take $50 [to] $60 million to win this race and that will be the ultimate bar to clear, because even with a vacant seat, one still has to raise the money to win.”

    Another contest hovers on the horizon: governor. Gov. Gavin Newsom will wrap his second term in 2026, likely triggering a cascade of candidates from statewide officeholders to county leaders.

    Another potentially bruising primary in a safe blue state in 2024 could come in Maryland, where Sen. Ben Cardin is still assessing whether to run again. At least three candidates — Prince George’s County executive Angela Alsobrooks and Reps. David Trone and Jamie Raskin — would all be well-positioned to jump into the race, likely kicking off a pricey intraparty battle.

    A handful of other blue states may not see massive, expensive primaries this cycle, but they hover on the horizon. The trio of top leadership in Washington — two senators and the governor — have represented the state for over a decade, stalling out any upward momentum in a heavily blue state. In 2026, Illinois could feature two marquee statewide races for Senate and governor, should Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker and Sen. Dick Durbin, who is 78, decide not to run for reelection.



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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Democrats step up pressure on Biden to reverse Trump’s decision on space HQ

    Democrats step up pressure on Biden to reverse Trump’s decision on space HQ

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    And one of the state’s senators is even seizing on the politics surrounding abortion and LGBTQ issues, arguing that sending the command from a blue state to a red one takes away the rights of service members.

    Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) “has raised the issue of reproductive health care access in his conversations about the Space Command basing decision,” said one congressional aide, who asked for anonymity to discuss private conversations between Bennet and the Pentagon.

    The senator, the aide added, “has serious concerns about the impact that abortion ban laws have on readiness and our national security.”

    It’s the latest turn in a saga that’s dragged on for three years after Trump personally directed the Air Force to choose Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, as the command’s permanent headquarters. Alabama and Colorado were the two finalists in the Air Force’s search.

    The decision, if given the final signoff by the Biden administration, would uproot the fledgling command from its current location at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs. Since the original decision, members of Colorado’s delegation in both parties have decried the move to a Trump-friendly state as political favoritism that will delay the organization from achieving full operating status.

    “I haven’t found any Democratic senator who thinks it’s a good idea to allow a precedent to stand that encourages politics to overrule the judgment of our military command,” Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper said in an interview.

    The Biden White House vowed to reassess the choice after lawmakers blasted the basing decision. The Air Force secretary must still determine whether to follow through with Trump’s decision or keep the command in Colorado.

    The Air Force was expected to announce a final decision at the end of 2022, but the deadline passed with no ruling.

    “We don’t have anything new on the decision timeline,” the service said in a statement. The service declined to say why a choice has not been made.

    Lawmakers on both sides of the argument say they’re in the dark on when the Air Force might finally make a call, but both states’ delegations have said they believe they will prevail.

    “I do think the delay is, in my view, a positive thing,” said Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.). “My read of that is that the administration is taking a harder look and a fresh look at it and revisiting certain elements of the decision. That’s what I hope they’re doing.”

    The commander, Gen. James Dickinson, has said Space Command won’t be fully operational until the final basing decision is made.

    Pros and cons

    U.S. Space Command was restarted by the Trump administration in 2019 as it sought to emphasize the importance of the military’s space mission, coinciding with the creation of the Space Force. Space Command, which oversees the operations of military space assets and defending satellites, had been its own outfit since the 1980s, but was folded into U.S. Strategic Command following the creation of Northern Command in 2002.

    Colorado Springs and Huntsville were two of six finalists selected by the Air Force in late 2020 for the permanent headquarters. The list included military installations in Florida, Nebraska, Texas and New Mexico.

    Colorado lawmakers contend permanently keeping Space Command in its temporary home is more efficient and will ultimately prove better for national security because it will be near Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command.

    With a large military space presence already in the state, Colorado’s leaders argue that politics alone was the deciding factor in the Trump administration selecting Alabama.

    They point to comments Trump made after leaving office boasting that he made the call to move Space Command.

    “I hope you know that. [They] said they were looking for a home and I single-handedly said ‘let’s go to Alabama.’ They wanted it. I said ‘let’s go to Alabama. I love Alabama.’” Trump said on an Alabama-based radio show in August 2021.

    Alabama’s almost entirely GOP delegation says Huntsville — dubbed Rocket City because of the large aerospace industry presence there — checks all the boxes for the new command.

    The Pentagon visited each of the six prospective headquarters sites between Dec. 8, 2020, and Jan. 7, 2021, where experts gathered data and refined cost estimates. Those cost estimates were not released publicly, according to the Defense Department’s inspector general.

    “Democrats said it was political, but the best place to put it is in Huntsville,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said in an interview.

    “The only reason you would leave it in Colorado is because that’s where it’s at right now,” Tuberville said. “But we need to make sure it’s in the right spot. We have the missile defense. We have Redstone Arsenal, NASA. You name it, we got it.”

    Since a headquarters decision was announced in January 2021, both the Defense Department IG and the Government Accountability Office released reports that questioned whether the selection process was adequate.

    DoD IG found the Air Force base analysis that was conducted under the Trump administration’s direction “complied with law and policy” when selecting Alabama as the headquarters location, while the GAO asserted the service’s base location analysis had “significant shortfalls in its transparency and credibility.”

    Neither report determined whether Trump meddled in the decision.

    Both oversight groups agree a resolution was reached during a White House meeting with high-ranking officials on Jan. 11, 2021.

    Meeting attendees included the former president and top Pentagon leaders who have since left — the acting defense secretary, the vice chair of the Joint Chiefs, the Air Force secretary and the assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations, environment and energy.

    Days before the meeting, the Pentagon received new information that if Colorado was selected the military could renovate a building instead of having to construct a new one to house the new headquarters.

    But the Space Force did not deliver an updated estimate to Air Force officials ahead of the White House meeting, according to GAO.

    The Pentagon is keeping the cost estimates private and are not included in the GAO report because the information is designated as “sensitive and privileged.”

    Opting for renovation instead of new construction would allow for the command to reach full operational much sooner than the estimated six years.

    In interviews with the GAO, the head of Space Command, the top Space Force general, and the former vice Joint Chiefs chair, all said they conveyed in the meeting that the headquarters should remain in Colorado because that was the best way to reach full operational capability as quickly as possible.

    Bennet echoed the same concerns during a speech on the Senate floor this month.

    It is important the Biden administration not ratify “a political decision that was made in the last few days of the Trump administration,” Bennet said, referring to the former president dismissing the counsel of Pentagon officials who recommended the headquarters remain in Colorado.

    Bennet underscored it is not only expected to be cheaper and faster to keep Space Command in Colorado, but the military would not have to worry over the number of civilian workers who won’t opt to move to Alabama. Roughly 60 percent of the Space Command workforce are civilians, he said.

    “Decisions of this importance shouldn’t be made this way. It should be in the interest of our national security. And the Biden administration has the opportunity to restore the integrity of this process,” Bennet said.

    Renewed fight

    The Colorado delegation fought the move when it was initially announced, but had gone quiet in the following months. They rekindled their efforts last month when Hickenlooper and Bennet were the only Democrats to join Republicans in opposition to the confirmation of Brendan Owens, the nominee to oversee facilities and energy programs at the Pentagon. The pair said they opposed him because the Pentagon had brushed off their efforts to meet with Austin to discuss Space Command.

    Owens was still confirmed despite most Republicans also opposing him.

    Bennet also threatened to hold up other nominees to secure a meeting with Austin. Hickenlooper and Bennet met with Austin to discuss the decision on Jan. 26, though no resolution was reached.

    “He’s got a lot on his plate, so he wasn’t versed in the details of the issue,” Hickenlooper said. “But he listened very thoughtfully and I think he took it very seriously.”

    But Bennet continued to press the issue. A spokesperson said Bennet placed a hold on Ravi Chaudhary, Biden’s nominee to oversee Air Force installations. He dropped the hold this month after meeting separately with Chaudhary and Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall where he “reiterated his longstanding concerns” with the basing decision. The behind-the-scenes maneuvering has not been previously reported.

    Some opponents are also highlighting how the climate in the U.S. has changed since an initial decision was made in January 2021. Many Democrats are unsettled by moving service members from a blue to a red state after the Supreme Court dealt a blow to abortion rights last year.

    With the end of nationwide federal protections for abortion, many Democrats have raised the impacts on troops stationed in states where the procedure is now banned or significantly limited. Bennet has publicly raised similar concerns in the proposed Space Command move.

    “I’m deeply concerned about how the Dobbs decision and state abortion bans will affect Space Command’s workforce and readiness if the command leaves Colorado,” Bennet said in a statement to Military.com in August.

    Another driver for the Biden administration to keep the headquarters in Colorado and not move to a conservative state are rights for LGBTQ people.

    “It’s hard not to think about the dramatically more hostile environment in Alabama when it comes to reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ rights,” said one Democratic aide. “It’ll mean many of the civilians who work for Space Command may not move with it. And service members will be forced to move somewhere where they’ll lose those rights.”

    Though both Tuberville and Hickenlooper downplayed the role the Supreme Court decision would play in the basing move, the impact on troops has been in focus after the reversal of abortion protections under Roe v. Wade.

    Even Austin, who is usually not outspoken on political issues, moved to shore up troops’ access for abortion. He issued a memo in October directing the Pentagon to pay for service members to travel costs for abortions, though not for the procedure itself, arguing the “practical effects of recent changes” in laws will hurt military readiness.

    Formal policies issued this month cover travel costs for obtaining abortions as well as administrative leave, as many troops are stationed in states where the procedure is now illegal.

    Tuberville was among the GOP lawmakers who slammed the move. He vowed to hold up civilian Pentagon nominations as well as top military promotions over the new policy.

    The issue, however, isn’t purely about red states vs. blue states. If Space Command doesn’t move to Alabama, the headquarters will remain in reliably conservative Colorado Springs. The area and its military assets are represented by Republican Doug Lamborn, who chairs the House Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee. Lamborn has also criticized the move as one of political favoritism over national security needs.

    The state’s other two Republican House members, Reps. Ken Buck and Lauren Boebert, have also protested the decision and signed several letters with Democrats arguing to keep the command in Colorado.

    Yet if the Biden administration decides to reverse the earlier decision, it could open itself up to criticism that it’s making a political call, just like the Trump White House. A reversal also would draw pushback from Alabama’s delegation, including Rep. Mike Rogers, who has new tools at his disposal as the House Armed Services Committee chair.

    In the meantime, Alabama lawmakers are confident the Trump administration’s decision will be upheld.

    “Nobody’s saying, but they’ve done several more reviews on it in the last two years,” Tuberville said of the final decision. “And we’ve pretty much passed all the tests.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Why Can’t Democrats Explain Themselves on China?

    Why Can’t Democrats Explain Themselves on China?

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    ap poll biden china 22065

    Vigorous competition would be a healthy version of a U.S.-China relationship, he said. But he did not sound convinced that Biden’s catch phrase fully addressed the status quo, since a competitor like the People’s Republic of China can become an “adversary” if they break the rules to win.

    “We have to protect our interests and we have to protect our values,” Krishnamoorthi said, even as “our businesses and our supply chain are interdependent with the business and technological ecosystem within the PRC.”

    Krishnamoorthi and a small group of Democrats will bring that layered worldview to the select committee when it holds its debut hearing on Tuesday. Conceived by the new Republican House majority and approved by a bipartisan vote as a wide-ranging investigative body, the committee is also a crucial opportunity for Democrats to explain their perspective on China for the American people.

    Up to this point, they have ceded too much of the political discourse on China to the right.

    If both parties agree that China poses a uniquely complex threat, only one has made it a daily obsession. Across the GOP’s warring factions, the Chinese Communist Party is a menace that nearly all can agree to despise; lawmakers voice that sentiment in sober floor speeches and frothing rants on Newsmax. The challenge for levelheaded Republicans on the select committee, led by Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, will be keeping the paranoid right from overwhelming their work.

    An important job for Democrats will be clarifying their own policies with a message that makes sense to regular people.

    Krishnamoorthi, a 49-year-old lawyer who is also a senior member of the intelligence committee, is sensitive to the task. He said he consulted veterans of the Jan. 6 committee about their methods of commanding public attention, with an eye toward using witness testimony and multimedia to engage a mass audience. In his Chicago-area district, Krishnamoorthi said he encounters many constituents alarmed by China’s human rights abuses, underhanded economic tactics and militancy toward Taiwan. But few voters can shape that swirling fog of concern into a coherent picture.

    That fog emanates, in part, from the White House.

    To people following his policies closely, Biden’s China strategy is clear enough. He has imposed painful restrictions on China’s tech sector and pressured European allies to do the same. He has deepened military alliances with China’s neighbors and promised to supply Australia with nuclear submarines to strengthen its defenses. His administration is weighing new limits on American investment in the Chinese economy. It is an approach aimed at forcefully undermining Chinese power while leaving some room for dialogue on matters of shared concern, like climate change and the war in Ukraine.

    But Biden has neglected the job of articulating all that to voters in plain English. He has explained one policy at a time, but he has not defined a bigger picture that is clearer than “competition, not conflict.”

    Sometimes that verbiage is risibly inadequate, like when Kamala Harris told my colleague Eugene Daniels, after the Air Force downed the spy balloon and the secretary of state canceled a trip to Beijing, that nothing needed to change in U.S.-China relations.

    “We seek competition, but not conflict or confrontation,” Harris insisted. Those tumultuous events, she said, were “very consistent with our stated approach.”

    On some subjects, that “stated approach” has been cryptic. Over and over, Biden has pledged to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack. He did so at a news conference in Japan, in an interview with 60 Minutes and in a town hall on CNN. But every time, Biden’s advisers have walked back his comments under cover of anonymity. “Strategic ambiguity” is fine as policy-planning jargon, but Americans deserve to know whether there is a good chance of open war with a nuclear power inside this decade. They might reasonably expect to have some say in the matter.

    Then there was Biden’s “Fawlty Towers” moment in the State of the Union speech: the outburst that reminded me of nothing more than John Cleese’s sitcom hotelier losing it before a group of German guests he was determined not to offend. Biden followed his script for a while, enunciating tight phrases about resolute competition with China (don’t mention the new Cold War!) until the polite façade collapsed. Like Basil Fawlty breaking into a flamboyant goose-step, Biden erupted in a shouted taunt: “Name me a world leader who would change places with Xi Jinping! Name me one!”

    What were Americans meant to draw from that?

    There are occasional moments of piercing clarity when people close to Biden shed the opaque language of diplomacy. An example came last week when on a conference call with several columnists the secretary of commerce, Gina Raimondo, described the strategic imperative to make the United States a tech-manufacturing superpower.

    On the call, Raimondo urged a “national mobilization” to build America’s semiconductor industry into a global force. After she invoked America’s World War II-era drive for nuclear technology and the Space Race of the 1960s, I pointed out that those happened in the context of America facing off against evil empires. Should Americans understand the semiconductor campaign in similar terms?

    “That is the point,” Raimondo answered. “We want the American people to make that link, because that’s the reality.”

    She predicted: “There’s going to be two separate tech ecosystems: one led by America with our allies, consistent with our values of openness, transparency, respect for human rights — and another.”

    I guess the lesson is: If you want a picture of the future, ask a member of the cabinet.

    Biden’s China strategy would probably make for good politics if Americans understood it. Yet it has mostly existed in a space outside politics — in a world of policy memoranda and formal strategy documents and distant events like the Munich Security Conference. As it is, a sizable majority of the country disapproves of how he is handling relations with China: 58 percent in a new AP-NORC poll.

    It does not take a world-class diplomatic mind to understand why Biden would avoid giving a forthright account of his tough-on-China policies in a speech to Congress. There is a limit to the rhetorical provocations China will tolerate while maintaining even a tenuous working relationship.

    But it also does not take a world-class political mind to see the perils in Biden’s coded approach.

    One lesson of the Trump era was that danger lies in the gap between studied elite consensus and visceral public opinion. A policy that is smart and careful and invisible to the untrained eye cannot easily survive a brute attack from a motivated adversary. Good ideas need to be explained and defended if they are to win out over crude and offensive ones.

    And when it comes to China, crude and offensive ideas abound. Look no further than the proposal in Texas to ban Chinese nationals from buying property. That is but one manifestation of an ugly, reactionary mood that continues to intensify.

    That phenomenon weighs on Krishnamoorthi. The committee, he said, must shun “rhetoric that could end up being discriminatory toward Chinese-origin people or Asian-origin people.”

    “That can really infect the conversation and endanger people,” he told me. “That’s what we saw, unfortunately, with President [Donald] Trump.”

    There is another risk, too, in Biden leaving the full extent of his China strategy unexplained: that unwanted events could take the country by surprise. If Biden and his party aim to counter China’s power without prompting an open clash, there is always the risk that they will misjudge how far they can go. Or that China could initiate a conflict for its own reasons, regardless of their precautions.

    In our conversation, Krishnamoorthi sounded most worried about a collision over Taiwan. He told me he is confident the United States would come to Taiwan’s defense and the result would be “nightmarish” for China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army.

    “Suffice it to say, there are various scenarios that don’t end well for, in my opinion, the PLA and the CCP,” Krishnamoorthi said. “But it would be a horrible situation for the world.”

    These are risks that Americans ought to understand. If Biden won’t explain them, it is incumbent on other Democrats — like Krishnamoorthi and Raimondo — to take up the challenge.

    It is a job too important to be left up to the president.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • The Local D.C. Crime Law Squeezing National Democrats

    The Local D.C. Crime Law Squeezing National Democrats

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    It begins with Brown’s response to a House vote to overturn two duly enacted D.C. Council measures: One is a bill that permits noncitizens to vote in local elections, and the other is a long-gestating criminal code rewrite that, among other things, lessens minimum sentences for certain crimes. Predictably, both measures, in caricatured form, had been targets for conservative media and GOP politicians.

    In a democracy, overturning the will of the voters is a grave affront, no matter the details. But Brown opined that defending these particular laws might not represent a hill worth dying on. “I think it’s just naive,” he told me. “The guys in the city council don’t understand, after all this time, that Congress has the ultimate say in the District of Columbia.”

    Given that a shadow senator’s sole job is to fight that status quo, it’s easy to see why D.C. die-hards were so furious: It was as if a State Department spokesman responded to Chinese diplomatic criticism by abruptly announcing that, come to think of it, maybe it actually was a little hysterical of the Biden administration to shoot down that balloon.

    When we spoke this week, he did not sound especially chastened.

    Yes, “Congress should stay the hell out of our business,” he said, noting that he’d do his job and defend the measures — before quickly pivoting to denounce the District’s 13-member elected legislature for passing them at a moment when national politics have been fixated on crime and immigration. “We’re under attack, and this isn’t going to help,” he said. Under the terms of D.C.’s less-than-bulletproof home rule law, Congress has the right to disapprove of measures passed by local elected lawmakers, though it hasn’t exercised that power in 32 years.

    “They reminded me of my teenagers,” Brown told me in reference to the Council, which overrode mayoral vetoes to approving the laws late last year, despite predictions that it would draw the ire of Congress’ new GOP majority. “The day after your mom catches you drunk in the living room with a bottle of wine is not the day you should be asking to borrow the car.”

    In a minority-led city where locals have long chafed at “paternalistic” treatment by national political leaders, it takes a special chutzpah for one of the District’s own official defenders to literally compare adult local elected officials to his own errant children.

    “Unhelpful,” Paul Strauss, Brown’s fellow shadow senator, told me. “We don’t get to pick and choose what we fight for and what we don’t in the democracy movement because we fight for democracy.”

    “Very disappointing,” added Josh Burch of the activist group Neighbors United for D.C. Statehood. “We have to support home rule and D.C. statehood at all costs. That’s how democracy works.”

    In fact, the criminal-code rewrite and the noncitizen-voting bill had been controversial at the local level before Congress weighed in. Both measures were opposed last year by Mayor Muriel Bowser, a relative centrist, and championed by the Council’s progressive bloc. (They ultimately passed with enough votes to override a veto). Though the mayor cited policy reasons in opposing the bills, the city’s precarious position vis a vis Congress was also top of mind.

    Now, as locals are faced with the humiliating reminder that their territory lacks the right of the 50 American states to pass laws that folks elsewhere might find boneheaded, the question of how energetically the mayor and other establishment figures have defended home rule has become part of the recriminations.

    “I think our reaction to this meddling is very different than past meddling,” says Burch. “The mayor and the council have always stood together in opposing it, and it just doesn’t seem as unified or as strong as in the past. I wish we were more loud and unified about it.” Yesterday, Bowser wrote a letter to Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell urging the Senate to reject the push to overturn. Saying that her own objections to the bills were a matter for the D.C. Council, not Congress, the mayor wrote: “I call on all senators who share a commitment to the basic democratic principles of self-determination and local control to vote ‘NO’ on any disapproval resolutions involving duly enacted laws of the District of Columbia.”

    Ordinarily, this is the kind of tactical debate that bores anyone outside the narrow universe of statehood foot soldiers. What’s notable about the new acrimony among hyperlocal activists, though, is how much it mirrors the much more familiar conversation taking place among Democrats on Capitol Hill and beyond. As such, it’s an important one even for national party figures who couldn’t name a single D.C. Council member.

    As my colleague Burgess Everett reported last week, Democrats in the Senate (where the override bill now heads) and the Biden administration (which might then have to decide whether to veto it) are now sweating about having to take a stand on the politically tricky measures. D.C. activists would like them to be guided by the philosophy that all Americans should be allowed to control their local affairs. But for a Senator who might wind up on the wrong end of a 30-second spot accusing Democrats of legalizing carjacking in D.C., the appeal to principle will only go so far. The House vote to overturn the laws already drew dozens of Democratic votes, most of them from pols who just two years ago voted to grant the capital full statehood.

    In recent years, at both the local and national levels, it’s been easy to think that the costs of pleasing the base are low. At the national level, centrist predictions that pronouns would lead to Democratic doom failed to pan out in November, just like prior alarms that issues like same-sex marriage would consign the party to permanent minority status. And at the local level, the District’s remarkable two-decade municipal comeback has disproved old assumptions that the city’s progressive government would forever scare off businesses and residents — while the near-universal Democratic embrace of statehood gave the lie to assertions that statehood could never attract support beyond the progressive fringe.

    But there’s another way to look at it, too: Maybe they’ve just been on a lucky streak. For the last decade or more, the hot-button issues that prompted camera-seeking Republican politicians to trample on the capital city’s autonomy have been ones where public opinion has generally been on D.C.’s side: marriage, weed, euthanasia, democracy. Operating on the Obama-era assumption that the culture was inexorably breaking their way, the average Democratic elected official was apt to see defending the capital’s home rule as politically painless.

    Now it’s becoming clear that it won’t necessarily always be that way.

    By involving a pair of issues where the average D.C. elected official is probably not in line with prevailing national public opinion, the current fracas has an altogether more retro feel — recalling, for instance, the early-1990s controversy that followed the killing of an aide to then-Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama. Outraged at the murder and at the perception of a crime-ridden capital unwilling to get tough, Shelby crusaded to re-impose the death penalty in Washington, ultimately forcing a ballot initiative on the question. (It lost.)

    At the time, the push to interfere in local criminal justice matters was understandably odious to D.C. residents, who deserve the same right to be out of step with national opinion as citizens of any other state. But in an era when the American population was alarmed about crime and broadly partial to the death penalty, the assault on democracy elicited little national backlash. It wasn’t even a partisan cause: Shelby, who switched parties in 1994, was still a Democrat at the time.

    Also worth noting: The most recent Congressional victim of crime in D.C., Minnesota Rep. Angie Craig, was one of the 31 Democrats who voted this month to overturn the criminal-code rewrite.

    As D.C. boosters keep pointing out, Washington’s crime stats today are nothing like the horror show of the ’80s and ’90s, but it’s a reminder that the perception of the capital as anything less than an immaculately governed place is still bad for the cause.

    For the political elites who work out of Washington but rarely pay attention to local issues that seem small-ball, the scrum over how or if the city should fight to keep its laws from being overturned is worth paying attention to — and not just because the right to self-government really is a matter of justice. Today’s interference with obscure provisions to let foreigners vote in Advisory Neighborhood Commission elections could, a couple elections from now, very easily become efforts to overrule the will of the people on abortion rights or medical care, issues that might just prove important even to folks who don’t follow local-yokel politics.

    For the same reason, though, maybe some of the die-hards should lay off Brown, the unfortunate shadow senator. Yes, it’s appalling that the elected representatives of any American citizens should have to cater to the whims of a Congress they don’t elect. It’s also not new or unique to D.C. Since independence, aspiring members of the union have maneuvered to please the national government they seek to join. Discretion can sometimes be the better part of valor, especially since the past month has taught a new generation of local activists something that would have been obvious to their counterparts of 30 or 40 years ago: They shouldn’t count on the monolithic support of one of the nation’s two political parties.

    Just this week, as it happens, Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton was soliciting campaign donations based on his opposition to the noncitizen-voting measure, which his fundraising email said proved that “when liberals tell you they care about election integrity, don’t believe them.” Local activists trying to maintain the remarkably broad national Democratic support they’ve enjoyed over the past few years would not be complete sell-outs to think that one way to do so would be to avoid issues that hand a weapon to the party’s foes.

    Of course, that’s not how activists steeped in the language of fairness and equality are likely to see it.

    To Burch, the GOP Congress was always going to bogeyman D.C. issues, an easy target at a time of divided government for attention-seeking members whose constituents live elsewhere. Given the amount of bad faith involved, preemptively trying to placate them is like negotiating with yourself.

    “The District has to do what it must do,” adds Eleanor Holmes Norton, the city’s longtime Congressional Delegate — an actual federal office, unlike Brown’s. Norton says she empathizes with the plight of her fellow Capitol Hill Democrats, many of whom can’t afford not to consider their own constituents while they ponder bills that apply only to her’s. The whole ugly spectacle, she says, is an argument for statehood. But in the meantime, “I don’t think the District should keep an eye on Congress when it decides what’s best for the city.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Democrats, Republicans join up to urge Biden to send F-16s to Ukraine

    Democrats, Republicans join up to urge Biden to send F-16s to Ukraine

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    The letter was organized by Maine Democrat Jared Golden. Also signing on were Democrats Jason Crow of Colorado and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania and Republicans Tony Gonzales of Texas and Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin.

    The missive is the latest push from Capitol Hill to give Kyiv U.S.-made fighters. It also comes as supporters of Ukraine aid in both parties look to navigate a faction in the new House Republican majority that wants to curtail assistance.

    The lawmakers contend that fighters — either the Lockheed Martin-manufactured F-16 or something similar — would give Ukrainian forces greater capability than ground-based artillery provided by the U.S. and other nations.

    “F-16s or similar fourth generation fighter aircraft would provide Ukraine with a highly mobile platform from which to target Russian air-to-air missiles and drones, to protect Ukrainian ground forces as they engage Russian troops, as well as to engage Russian fighters for contested air superiority,” they argued.

    The bipartisan push from Capitol Hill comes after a coordinated U.S.-German decision to send main battle tanks to the front lines. After some wrangling, the U.S. agreed to send Abrams tanks at a future point while Germany will donate Leopard tanks that will enter the field sooner.

    But Biden appeared to reject sending F-16s to Ukraine last month, though the president later said he’d speak to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

    Even if Biden elected not to send U.S. F-16s, other Western nations that fly the American-made fighters could send them to Ukraine, though the U.S. would need to approve the transfer.

    POLITICO reported the move has picked up steam at the Pentagon. But some argue there’s a greater need for artillery, air defenses and armor for Ukraine.

    U.S.-made F-16s have been on Kyiv’s wish list for weapons since Russia’s invasion began a year ago. Lawmakers have also said the U.S. should send F-16s to Eastern European that transfer their old MiG fighters to Ukraine. That move won bipartisan support, though a weapons swap never came.

    In their pitch to Biden, the lawmakers argued a decision on F-16s “must be made quickly” given the time needed to train Ukrainian pilots.

    Still, they noted many Ukrainian pilots have already trained with the U.S. military in major exercises before the war and argued sending the jets “represents a sound strategic investment in bolstering Kiev’s military capability and bringing this conflict to a just conclusion.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Senior Democrats’ Private Take on Biden: He’s Too Old

    Senior Democrats’ Private Take on Biden: He’s Too Old

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    Phillips would know from those quiet rooms.

    The third-term Democrat from suburban Minneapolis, a gelato company executive before running for Congress, was one of the few lawmakers last year to say his party should turn to a new generation in the next presidential race. And since the Democrats’ unexpectedly strong midterm performance, scarcely few have followed suit, while every potential Biden successor has fallen in line behind his yet-to-be-announced candidacy. Meanwhile, the private conversations about the wisdom of nominating an octogenarian and despair over who could take Biden’s place have hardly subsided.

    “It’s fear, plain and simple,” Phillips explained of both the lack of Democratic officials calling for a new nominee and reluctance of other candidates to step forward. “People are focused on self-preservation and their aspirations.“

    He has only praise for Biden, and not just of the Minnesota Nice sort. “He’s a president of great competence and success, I admire the heck out of President Biden,” Phillips said. “And if he were 15-20 years younger it would be a no-brainer to nominate him, but considering his age it’s absurd we’re not promoting competition but trying to extinguish it.”

    This is where it gets delicate — or perhaps will soon in caucus meetings and between floor votes.

    Republican officials were reluctant to criticize Donald Trump when he launched his first re-election effort, even though party elites barely tolerated him, because their voters overwhelmingly favored the former president. Democrats today reflect the mirror image: polls indicate many of their voters want a new nominee but few lawmakers say as much because it could create awkwardness with their fellow leaders, who don’t want to speak out.

    Phillips reminded me that he criticized Republican lawmakers who would say very different things about Trump when the tape recorders were off and the beer tap was on.

    “Yes, the circumstances are different, and the presidents are very different, but it’s your responsibility when you represent constituents to speak your truth and not hide it,” he said of his Democratic colleagues.

    Phillips’s message to those in his party who share his feelings about 2024: “Say it out loud.”

    To which I would say: don’t hold your breath.

    My conversations with a variety of Democratic lawmakers and a number of the party’s governors, who were in Washington last week for National Governor’s Association’s winter meeting, bear out Phillips’s case that he has ample company in his view of Biden — but that they are as muted about it as he is loud.

    There was the senator who said few Democrats in the chamber want Biden to run again but that the party had to devise “an alignment of interest” with the president to get him off the “narcotic” of the office; there was the governor who mused about just how little campaigning Biden would be able to do; and there was the House member who, after saying that, of course, Democrats should renominate the president told me to turn off my phone and then demanded to know who else was out there and said Harris wasn’t an option.

    My favorite, though, was the Democratic lawmaker who recalled speaking to Jill Biden and, hoping to plant a seed about a one-term declaration of victory, told her how her husband should be celebrated for saving democracy. When I asked if I could use any of that on the record, the lawmaker shot back: “absolutely not.”

    The only other Democratic lawmaker willing to publicly call for a new nominee in 2024 was Phillips’s fellow Minnesotan, Rep. Angie Craig, who also said the same last year.

    “I said it, I still believe it, but if the president chooses to run again I’ll respect that decision and I’ll support him,” Craig told me. She and Phillips both told me they never heard from the White House after making their initial statements, a reminder of the soft touch from this president.

    Another reminder of why Biden enjoys goodwill from Democratic leaders came more recently, when the president did telephone Craig — after she was assaulted in an elevator. Biden called the congresswoman soon after, checking in on her and wishing her a happy birthday. As Craig put it to me before the attack took place: “Joe Biden is a really good man.”

    But it’s hardly just Biden’s decency and gift for personal connection that keeps Democrats at bay.

    Remarkable as it may sound for an 80-year-old, self-diagnosed “gaffe machine,” he has become the political equivalent of a safe harbor, at least in the minds of his lieutenants and many party leaders.

    Biden’s team is eying an April announcement (the same month he began his campaign in 2019), weighing who should run the campaign and their super PAC. (California-based Democratic strategist Addisu Demissie will take a leadership role at one of the two entities.) The Biden folks believe that Trump or any other Republican nominee will be reluctant to work with the Commission on Presidential Debates, lessening the chances, and risk, of a head-to-head debate.

    “We know what we have and we know the stakes in 2024, we cannot lose,” Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina told me. “And that was the thinking of nominating Joe Biden in 2020 to start with. It worked then, why is it not going to work now?”

    Saluting his candidacy is publicly framed as simply backing an incumbent president, dog bites man, nothing to see here.

    In truth, it gets them out of a potentially messy primary, buys them time on his eventual, and perhaps equally messy, succession and helps keep the focus on Trump and the Republicans, which is both the adhesive that binds their coalition and their best calling card for the broader electorate: See, we’re not those guys.

    “Politics has become not about what you want but what you don’t want,” as Jim Hodges, the former South Carolina governor, put it.

    There’s something more cynical at work with the public show support of Biden, however. It’s an exercise in escape-hatch politics (a new sort of the Democrats’ politics of evasion).

    By simply stating their support for the president’s reelection, they may be suppressing their misgivings but they’re also avoiding the inevitable follow-up question: Well, are you for the vice president?

    When nearly a dozen Democratic governors lined up for a news conference to trumpet their midterm gains, eager to take a turn at the microphone, the voluble bunch grew quiet when I asked if they thought Harris should be nominated without a primary were Biden not to run.

    “I don’t think we’re going to go there on that one, the president is running,” said Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, the chair of the Democratic Governors Association.

    When I asked if any of the other governors wanted to speak to the question, they all stayed silent until Murphy said “we’re good” and the governors broke out in a round of nervous laughter.

    In fact, Harris would not face an uncontested primary and some of the very governors behind the microphone would likely challenge her.

    “The field would be really large and really unruly and really divisive around racial and gender lines,” said Howard Wolfson, the longtime Democratic strategist, dipping into his French to say: “After Biden, the deluge.”

    This is all to say that the only topic Democrats may be less happy to discuss than actuarial tables and Biden’s second term is his vice president. To express their concerns about a woman of Jamaican and Indian descent touches, to put it mildly, on highly sensitive matters.

    More to the point, Democrats have seen what happens when anyone in their party openly criticizes Harris — they’re accused by activists and social-media critics of showing, at best, racial and gender insensitivity. This doesn’t stifle concerns about her prospects, of course, it just pushes them further underground or into the shadows of background quotes.

    Such as this, from a House Democrat: “The Democrats who will need to speak out on her are from the Congressional Black Caucus, no white member is going to do it.”

    Members of the CBC, however, are either supportive of Harris or no more willing to give public voice to their unease with the vice president than the above lawmaker.

    One senior Black lawmaker, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), was more candid than most in discussing the party’s calculation behind rallying to Biden.

    “He’s the president,” Beatty told me. “And right now he says he’s going to be our candidate. And people will fall in line because he can win the general election.”

    Putting a finer point on it, she said: “Biden is the guy that can beat Trump.”

    That argument, however, captures the gamble the president and his on-the-record allies appear to be making. What if Trump isn’t the nominee? Will Democrats then regret not opening up the competition and denying Republicans the generational contrast many in the GOP crave?

    “If Donald Trump tomorrow announced he was moving to Elba, and would stay there, there would be a very different conversation in the Democratic Party,” said Wolfson.

    But the gentleman from the shores of Lake Minnetonka wants that conversation now.

    “What I’m trying to remind my colleagues and the country is that competition is good, and the absence of competition is unhealthy for democracy,” said Phillips, adding that “not providing platforms to aspiring leaders is antithetical to strong leadership.”

    As for those in the party who are alarmed about the vice president and her prospects in the general election, he flashed a hint of irritation in his Midwestern mien.

    “That’s why we have primaries,” said Phillips. “Look at how many members of Congress succeeded through primaries, for God’s sake.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Senate Democrats reject Hochul’s nomination for New York’s top judge

    Senate Democrats reject Hochul’s nomination for New York’s top judge

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    Hochul, who had continued to push for LaSalle’s confirmation despite opposition, warnings and a committee rejection on Jan. 18, said she will now make a new nomination for Senate consideration from a list provided by the state’s Commission on Judicial Nomination.

    “I remain committed to selecting a qualified candidate to lead the court and deliver justice,” she said in a statement. “That is what New Yorkers deserve.”

    The governor painted Wednesday’s vote — though not in her favor — as “an important victory from the constitution,” but added that it was “not a vote on the merits of Justice LaSalle, who is an overwhelmingly qualified and talented jurist.”

    Stewart-Cousins and her Senate counterparts expressed exasperation with the four weeks of waiting for Hochul to accept their determination after the 19-member Judiciary Committee rejected LaSalle in January. The outcome was the same, they said during floor debate on Wednesday, and both branches of government lost time and energy during weeks typically spent negotiating the $227 billion budget proposal for the fiscal year that starts April 1.

    “All this did, frankly, was underscore the value of the committee process and illustrate why it makes sense,” Stewart-Cousins said.

    Hochul continued to push for LaSalle’s confirmation following the Judiciary Committee’s rejection, saying that the state constitution required consideration from the full 63-member body. She threatened legal action, though never laid out any specific details.

    Senate Republicans ultimately did it for her with a lawsuit in Suffolk County last week to try and force a full floor vote. So Stewart-Cousins ordered the full Senate vote on Wednesday. She maintained that the committee vetting process was the appropriate channel for the nomination, but a lawsuit would only prolong the vacancy at the top of the Court of Appeals following Janet DiFiore’s resignation last summer.

    The Senate is eager to vet a new candidate, she told reporters, but her conference is looking for a “visionary leader” and has now shown that it will be rigorous in its scrutiny.

    The political play highlighted for the first time the Senate supermajority’s willingness to wield its power over Hochul, who is in her first year of a four-year term after she succeeded Gov. Andrew Cuomo when he resigned in 2021. It could signal an even rockier road ahead for the governor as she searches for her stride in legislative relations.

    Hochul and Stewart-Cousins had a “cordial conversation” preceding the vote, Stewart-Cousins said, though they did not discuss what the governor “learned or didn’t learn” from the experience.

    “We both believe what we believe, but we also both understand the importance of being able to tackle the issue at hand, which again, is the budget, and we know that it is important that we work together, and we are committed to doing that,” she said.

    No Democrats have emerged happy from the monthslong ordeal, but Senate Republicans are taking some credit for getting the process moving. The question that emerged had been whether the full Senate was required to vote on LaSalle or could the issue end with the vote in the Judiciary Committee, as Democrats contended.

    “But for Senate Republicans and but for Senator (Anthony) Palumbo’s lawsuit, this doesn’t happen today. Governor Hochul didn’t do anything to make it happen,” Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt told reporters following the vote. Ortt maintained that a full floor vote was necessary for members of his conference to have a say in the nomination that they wouldn’t otherwise get from the Judiciary Committee, where Democrats control the outcome.

    “We brought a lawsuit … and I’m glad we did, because today was a victory for democracy, for the Constitution, and for the rule of law,” he said.

    The lawsuit — though based on the specific circumstances surrounding getting the LaSalle nomination to a floor vote — will continue, he said. The first court date in Suffolk County is set for Friday.

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    #Senate #Democrats #reject #Hochuls #nomination #Yorks #top #judge
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Senate Democrats marked a major milestone on Tuesday: They’ve now confirmed 100 of Joe Biden’s picks for the federal courts. 

    Senate Democrats marked a major milestone on Tuesday: They’ve now confirmed 100 of Joe Biden’s picks for the federal courts. 

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    20230213 rules 1 francis 1
    That figure eclipses the pace of both Donald Trump and Barack Obama.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • ‘He rope-a-doped them’: Democrats celebrate GOP jeers at SOTU

    ‘He rope-a-doped them’: Democrats celebrate GOP jeers at SOTU

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    20230207 sotu biden 7 francis 1

    Schumer said on Democrats’ side of the room Tuesday, “there was excitement” as Biden was “hitting it out of the park.” The contrast with the Republican side of the room, he said, will be “remembered for quite a while, by anybody who watched it.”

    At one particularly tense moment, GOP lawmakers booed the president when he claimed Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset — referring to Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) proposal to wind down all laws after five years. Biden went off-script as the outrage from Republicans on the floor grew louder, attempting to clarify “I don’t think it is a majority of you” and finally saying, “So folks, as we all apparently agree, Social Security and Medicare, off the books now, right?”

    Schumer said Wednesday “there is no way” to eliminate the deficit in 10 years — a goal of Republican leadership — without slashing Medicare and Social Security, though House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) did pledge Tuesday that he wouldn’t touch the two programs in the ongoing debt limit fight. The New York Democrat also called Biden “deft” for letting Republicans “walk into his trap” by essentially making them assert to the public they aren’t for cutting Medicare and Social Security.

    “Joe Biden was so deft. He let them walk into his trap. He rope-a-doped them,” Schumer said. “And now all of America has seen the Republican Party say, ‘No, we’re not going to cut Social security and Medicare.’ He did a service.”

    Vice President Kamala Harris called the Republican jeering “theatrical” and applauded the president for being “in command” and staying “focused on the American people” as opposed to “the gamesmanship that was being played in the room.”

    “The president, it’s his nature and it’s his commitment to the American people to work across the aisle,” Harris said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “That’s not going to stop even if some people are cynical about it.”

    Assistant Democratic leader Rep. James Clyburn (S.C.) said Biden’s speech could be a preview for his 2024 campaign for reelection, should he make good on his stated intentions to mount another White House bid. Clyburn added that “it was the best effort I’ve seen” from Biden in a “long, long time,” and praised his “maturity” in responding to the hecklers.

    “I saw in him last night the kind of maturity that the American people would like to see in a president,” Clyburn said. “He took on the hecklers. Let them have their say. Gave them a nice little smile and responded in a very positive way.”

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    #ropeadoped #Democrats #celebrate #GOP #jeers #SOTU
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • How Democrats got sidetracked in their swing state of the future

    How Democrats got sidetracked in their swing state of the future

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    That’s left North Carolina Democrats having to fight for the resources now flowing freely into places like Arizona and Georgia, now two of the most tightly divided battlegrounds in America (which did not turn blue in 2008). Cooper and others are making the case that North Carolina’s fortunes have national impact — the governor’s presence has made it a refuge for abortion access in the South, and it remains a key piece of any potential GOP president’s political math.

    “Republicans know that they have to win North Carolina in order to win a presidential race — there’s no other path for them. There are other paths for a Democrat to become president and not win North Carolina,” said Cooper, who is now termed out of his governorship, in an interview with POLITICO.

    Cooper argued that makes victories in places like Arizona and Pennsylvania in 2022 possible, as North Carolina soaks up resources that could go elsewhere. But Cooper said he’s still making the argument “to the president on down” that North Carolina should chart the top of their priority list in 2024.

    Yet interviews with nearly a dozen North Carolina Democratic elected officials and strategists yielded a range of problems, including a weak in-state party infrastructure, a series of less-than-inspiring federal candidates and not enough investment from national Democratic groups. Unlike a number of other Sun Belt states, growth has not been driven by one major city but by a patchwork of regionalized metro areas, all with different media markets, and North Carolina’s urban and non-white populations have not grown at the same lightning speed as cities like Atlanta or Phoenix.

    “I wouldn’t say it’s the next domino that will make it blue, on a presidential level, forever in the way we see in Virginia, Arizona and even Georgia, where the demographics and population changes are truly driving this,” said Corey Platt, a Democratic strategist who served as the Democratic Governors Association’s political director. “It’s a purple state that’s center-right on economics and a bit more center-left on social issues, and so it takes the right Democrat or the right Republican to win, and federally, we haven’t been able to thread that needle.”

    Former Republican Gov. Pat McCrory said that wins in North Carolina often “comes down to who has more money, and the stats show it.”

    “Both parties can be accused of misreading North Carolina, but I would be shocked if Democrats leave it uncontested,” McCrory said, who lost a Senate GOP primary bid in 2022. “North Carolina can swing back and forth.”

    It all has big implications for 2024, as Cooper drives to make it a top priority for a Biden reelection and state Attorney General Josh Stein launches bid to succeed Cooper in what could be the most expensive gubernatorial race next cycle. A potential redrawn congressional map later this year could also pad the GOP’s slim edge in the battle for the House next year, now that the state Supreme Court leans conservative.

    The size of North Carolina’s swings back and forth has shrunk, meanwhile, into a smaller and smaller pool of truly independent voters, making the days of backing President George W. Bush by 12 points — even with then-Sen. John Edwards on the Democratic ticket — and Democratic Gov. Mike Easley by 13 points in 2004 feel like ancient history. Mirroring national trends, North Carolina’s urban-rural divide reveals a stark partisan split — an intractable problem for Democrats, as the state boasts the second largest rural population, behind just Texas.

    When Democrats fail to turn out their core base in urban corridors, Republicans’ rural edge becomes insurmountable. In 2022, Democrats struggled with just that, despite a history-making candidate on the ballot in Cheri Beasley, a former state Supreme Court justice who is a Black woman. Instead, Democrats saw significant dropoff with young voters, urban voters and Black voters.

    Statewide, African American turnout dropped by 6 points compared to 2018, another midterm year when there wasn’t a major statewide race atop the ticket. Voters over 60 made up a far larger share of the electorate compared to millennials and Gen Z, while urban voters lagged behind the statewide turnout average, according to an analysis by Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at Catawba College.

    That turnout drop off, some Democrats argue, came down to cash. Republican outside groups significantly outspent their Democratic counterparts, giving now-Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) about a $50 million spending edge over Beasley. Republicans, meanwhile, note that Beasley outraised Budd in candidate cash by $24 million, which should’ve helped close some of that gap, since candidates get better rates on TV ads than outside groups.

    “It’s almost impossible to overcome a $53 million outside spending gap that depresses votes for the Democratic candidate,” Cooper said. “I do think resources play a huge role and will play a huge role in 2024.”

    Senate Majority PAC, the flagship Democratic outside group, noted its $22 million investment in North Carolina in 2022, calling it “a perennial battleground state with traditionally close races where we know we can succeed — and we look forward to helping Democrats win there in the future,” Veronica Yoo, a spokesperson for the group, said in a statement.

    Still others pointed to the party’s infrastructure, which is “still missing a critical, year-round organization that can mobilize and turnout voters,” said state Sen. Jay Chaudhuri, a Democrat who represents part of Wake County. “I think we have a really good foundation, but it’s cracking the code on the field and organizing side of things that will be key.”

    But even as fewer voters split their ticket in North Carolina, Democratic Rep. Wiley Nickel still believes that what works in North Carolina is to reach into that middle.

    “There’s a vast group of voters in the middle, and they don’t want people on the far right and they don’t want people on the far left,” said Nickel, who won an evenly divided congressional seat against former President Donald Trump-endorsed Republican Bo Hines. “Anyone who watched our race knows that we were running against extremism in both parties and on the issues that mattered to most folks in the middle.”

    Running against extremism is already a clear theme of Stein’s campaign, who became the first Democrat to launch his bid for the open governorship earlier this month.

    Within the first minute of his launch video, Stein’s campaign featured footage of a potential GOP opponent, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, and former President Donald Trump on stage together. It spliced together some of Robinson’s anti-abortion rights and anti-LGBTQ comments, including a voice over from Stein: “Some politicians spark division, ignite hate, and fan the flames of bigotry.”

    Jim Blaine, a Republican strategist, said Stein’s opening salvo is proof “that they don’t think they can carry the day on the merits of their candidate alone, so they have to make it about the other guy,” he said.

    “North Carolina is a competitive state, but it’s Republican-leaning, so you have to nominate a centrist, if you’re a Democrat, to win, and they don’t tend to nominate those candidates,” Blaine continued.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )