Tag: voters

Names of many Muslim voters in a Bengaluru constituency removed

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Bengaluru: Names of 9,159 Muslim voters in the Shivajinagar constituency in Bengaluru have been removed from the voters’ list. This removal is done based on a complaint filed by a private agency named Chilume which has links to the BJP. The complaint was filed on November 16, 2022, and the action was taken by the Election commission in January 2023.
It is reported that the private agency, Chilume prepared a list of 26,000 voters after collecting the data illegally since October 2022 for the Shivajinagar constituency. The complaint filed to the Election Commission alleged that 26,000 fake voters are identified in the Shivajinagar constituency who have either shifted from that place or are dead.
The Election Commission published the final electoral roll for the Shivajinagar constituency on January 15, 2023. This is when the BJP private agency swung into action with its voters list some eight days after the electoral roll was published. The private agency of the BJP went to the Election Commission demanding that the 26,000 names mentioned in the EC list should be removed.
The EC officials immediately cross-checked all the 26,000 names and found that 9,159 had either shifted out of their old home addresses or were dead. Accordingly, EC asked the suspected voters to appear before the authorities.
However, media reports say the suspected names that were deleted were all wrong and it verified with those who received the notices found them to be alive and living at the same old addresses.
Congress MLA Rizwan Arshad has reportedly said, “Voters are getting harassed. Many people replied to the first notice, despite the that they have been issued a second notice asking them to appear before the EC. This process is to tire people out.. I don’t know why Shivajinagar was chosen for this experiment. Maybe because this is a safe seat for the Congress, the BJP wants to see if deletion can help them win the election.”
Further, the MLA asked, “how a private group can do door-to-door electoral roll calls and create a voter list of its own is something that is a mystery? The alarming part is the quick response of the election commission to such a complaint.
The move is being seen as a violation of Election Commission rules issued on September 13, 2021, that says no deletion to the electoral rolls can be done six months prior to the end of the term of the Assembly. (Karnataka assembly term ends in the last week of May).

Rules mandate that Form 7 has to be filled if anyone wants to raise an objection and delete a name from the existing electoral roll. Did the BJP fill 26,000 Form 7s? The Electoral Registration Office confirmed that the BJP did not fill any Form 7. If they didn’t, why did the CEO’s office accept their complaint?
Shivajinagar, which is in the heart of Bengaluru, has around 1.91 lakh voters, 40% of whom are Muslims. The constituency has been represented by a Congress MLA since 2008.
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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

February 25, 2023
Older voters balk at Nikki Haley’s competency test

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It’s also a risk.
In her short time on the trail, Haley has irked some older voters, the cohort that just so happens to be a substantial and reliable voting bloc within her party.
“I do like Nikki’s platform, her plank regarding term limits. I think that’s important,” Richard Ploss, 71, of Exeter, New Hampshire, said at her town hall in Manchester. But the mental competency test? “That’s a little over the top.”
“Well, we’re old …,” his 72-year-old wife, Susan Ploss, interjected. The Republican couple, who own a chemical supply company and previously voted for Trump, hesitated to applaud the line in Haley’s speech and ducked out before the question-and-answer portion of her event.
Interviews with more than a dozen attendees at Haley’s first campaign events in recent days — all but three in their 60s, 70s and 80s — revealed a GOP primary electorate open to a younger standard-bearer but sharply divided over the insinuation that someone their age might be lacking in mental aptitude. Seven said they opposed the call for applying mental acuity tests to elderly politicians. Three thought the testing requirement should apply to people of all ages. And three thought her plan targeting older people was a good idea.
Some political veterans in the key states said they weren’t surprised by those findings.
“I just feel like the competency test was a gimmick to get attention and one that ultimately could backfire, because arguably, the largest voting bloc in the Republican primary is older voters,” New Hampshire-based Republican strategist Mike Dennehy said. “New Hampshire’s population has been aging over the last decade. There are more and more older people coming to New Hampshire to retire.”
Haley’s campaign, in a statement to POLITICO, said she is merely suggesting the type of brief screening that doctors frequently used to measure older patients’ cognitive abilities.

“When 81-year-old Bernie Sanders is chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, it’s not too much to have him take a 10-minute test to see whether he has the mental ability to draw a clock or identify an animal,” said Nachama Soloveichik, one of Haley’s campaign advisers. “We’re not talking rocket science here.”
On the trail, Haley has framed her call for cognitive tests on septuagenarian politicians as “not being disrespectful” but, rather, pursuing “transparency.”
The call was part of her campaign launch in South Carolina, accompanied by tangential proposals under the umbrella of generational change: such as calls to drain the swamp and institute congressional term limits. The proposal was echoed in her speech before a few hundred Republicans packed into the showroom of Royal Flooring in Urbandale on Monday. It was delivered between popular lines about stopping gender lessons and “woke ideologies” in schools and ending national “defeatism.” Mostly, Haley drew a rhythmic applause from the crowd, including when talking about competency tests. But approached directly, not all older voters were totally on board.
Eric Riedinger, 63, of Des Moines, said he could get behind a competency test that would apply to candidates of all ages — and believes “Trump would do excellent.” But he is against merely targeting people who have reached their 70s.
“Why base it on your seniors?” Riedinger said. “You know, I’m a senior now, too.”
Haley’s potential opponents on the trail have largely dismissed her call or come out in opposition.
Trump, for his part, spent much of the last week ignoring it. But by Tuesday morning, he had embraced it, adding that such a screening should not just apply to older politicians. “ANYBODY running for the Office of President of the United States should agree to take a full & complete Mental Competency Test,” Trump posted on his Truth Social website, also suggesting candidates take “a test which would prove that you are physically capable of doing the job.”
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, 72, on Tuesday said there was no need for more restrictions on voters’ choices.
“The U.S. Constitution lays out requirements to hold the office of President of the United States, so let’s stick with that,” Hutchinson, who is considering a run for president, said in a statement to POLITICO. “Additionally, there is a mental acuity test every time a candidate stands before voters in a town-hall setting, a diner on the campaign trail, or on a voter’s door step.”
Vivek Ramaswamy, the 37-year-old entrepreneur now eyeing the Republican nomination, said Haley was “dead wrong” in calling for competency tests.
Former Vice President Mike Pence largely deflected when asked by a reporter last week, laughing as he said that voters in Indiana “think every politician should submit to a cognitive test.”
A representative for Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) declined to comment about Haley’s proposal, while staff for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu did not respond to requests for comment.
In an interview at Haley’s Urbandale event, Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), 67, said “there may be something” for Congress to do, eventually, with regard to gauging candidate competence. But she wasn’t convinced that there was any need for an immediate fix.
“But I would like to say that Sen. Grassley is tremendously competent,” the congresswoman, an ophthalmologist, said of 89-year-old Chuck Grassley, Iowa’s senior senator. “You talk to him, there’s not a subject that he’s not proficient in.”
Haley’s call comes as more than half of registered voters in a new national Harris/Harvard Center for American Political Studies poll say they doubt Biden’s mental fitness. That includes 66 percent of independents who, in open-primary states like New Hampshire, could pull a Republican primary ballot.
But Haley’s mental competency suggestion could prove to be off-putting to crucial voters in New Hampshire, which has the second-oldest population in the country based on median age, according to the most recent Census data.
At her town hall at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics in Manchester, Haley’s stump-speech line about cognitive tests for 75-year-olds drew noticeably less applause than her calls for generational change in leadership and for congressional term limits. Some voters grew visibly uncomfortable when asked their opinions of it.
Walter Neuman, an 80-year-old Republican from Hopkinton who voted for Trump in 2020, said “it’s about time” for younger leaders to take the helm of the party. But he added that he was “on the fence” about testing politicians’ mental acuity.
“I understand the concept,” Neuman said. “But we’ve been pretty successful through the years without it.”
Still, Haley has sold some voters on the idea, including those in the advanced-aged bracket. David Freligh, a 78-year-old from Pella, Iowa, said he fully supports the proposal.
“I’m slipping a little bit,” said Freligh, who wore an Air Force cap and a Haley 2024 T-shirt to her Monday town hall. “I think I’m still quite competent, but I’m not what I used to be.”
Republican Betty Gay, a former New Hampshire state representative who voted for Trump in 2020, said she would want mental competency tests “for people much younger” than 75.
“Age is not a guarantee that you’re wise,” the 77-year-old Republican said.
But there are signs that Haley knows the messaging on the competency tests needs to be fine-tuned. Across her two nights in New Hampshire, she added a line that tacitly acknowledged some older voters might be offended by the concept.
“I don’t mean any disrespect by that,” Haley said in Manchester. “But we all know young 75- year-olds and we all know old 75-year-olds, right? And you look at D.C. and you see a whole lot of old people. What I’m saying is you should have trust in who you send to Washington.”
By Monday night in Iowa, instead of focusing on all the old folks in D.C., Haley mocked Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-V.T.) disapproving response to her cognitive test suggestion. She then moved along to another topic.
Kim Schmett, a Republican consultant and activist in Iowa, said he “had to chuckle a little” when he first heard Haley’s competency test suggestion.
Schmett, who noted that his own age is creeping up, said he didn’t believe a cognitive exam is necessary for candidates, despite acknowledging concern about some aging officials. But he didn’t imagine the proposal itself would be determinative to Haley’s presidential prospects.
“I think most senior citizens realize there are some physical questions and so forth that are more frequent when you’re older,” Schmett said. “I don’t see any backlash for her on that.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 22, 2023
What climate law? Voters clueless about Biden’s top achievement

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The sales pitch for Biden’s signature legislation would be crucial to any reelection effort he wages in 2024. But polls show that few Americans are aware of the climate law and how it could benefit them — creating a political challenge that the president’s Democratic allies acknowledge.
“If we can’t figure out how to sell that story over the next two years, we should find a different job,” Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Tom Carper (D-Del.), whose committee wrote a sizable chunk of the law, said in an interview. “And I don’t have any plans to find a different job.”
It won’t be an easy task.
“If we can’t figure out how to sell that story over the next two years, we should find a different job.”
Tom Carper (D-Del.), chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
A third of registered voters have heard “nothing at all” about the climate law, while another 24 percent heard “a little” and 29 percent heard “some,” according to a Yale Project on Climate Change Communication poll conducted in December. A Washington Post-ABC News poll released Monday found that 62 percent of Americans thought Biden had accomplished “not very much” or “little or nothing.”
“I really feel sympathy with the president,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told POLITICO. “You do really important things that might have an impact and there’s a day or two of news coverage. If important political points are not getting out to the public, it’s not just the politicians’ fault.”
Republicans are offering no condolences — including lawmakers whose districts are poised to host many of the jobs the legislation would create. They contend that the law, H.R. 5376 (117th), has stoked inflation that is burdening households with high gasoline, food and home-heating prices.
“It has made the lives of American people, American families more difficult and it doesn’t matter how much spin the president puts on it — it’s been two years of failure,” said House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson of Pennsylvania, who like every other congressional Republican opposed the measure.
The Biden administration is employing two approaches to sell the law’s benefits to a largely unaware public — an effort that will take officials on the road and into people’s homes.

Biden, a self-professed “car guy,” has promoted the law and its tax credits for electric vehicles at public events such as the North American International Auto Show in Detroit and in appearances on Jay Leno’s Garage. On Wednesday, Biden spoke at a Laborers’ International Union of North America training center in Deforest, Wis., about new manufacturing jobs.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visited Ultium Cells in Spring Hill, Tenn., on Wednesday to champion new domestic battery manufacturing sparked by the climate law. EPA Administrator Michael Regan headed to Wabaunsee, Kan., that same day to talk electric school buses. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is on a three-state swing through Friday across Utah, Nevada and Massachusetts.
Granholm also made Thursday’s announcement of the $2 billion battery-materials loan, which will come from a 2007 DOE program that got additional funding and authority from Biden’s climate law. The company, Redwood Materials, said the loan would fund projects creating jobs in Nevada and Kansas.
“We have a lot of work to do and not a lot of time to do it,” said Casey Katims, executive director of the U.S. Climate Alliance, a coalition of 24 U.S. governors working to help the administration slash U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half from 2005 levels by the end of the decade.
The focus on the middle of the country is intentional. The Biden administration championed the climate law as a jobs boon for blue-collar workers that will ease consumers’ financial burden during the country’s transition to clean energy.
“We’ve already created 800,000 manufacturing jobs even without this law. With this new law, we will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs across the country,” Biden said in the State of the Union speech, noting Intel’s plans to build a semiconductor factory outside Columbus, Ohio. That project will bring jobs that pay workers $130,000 a year, including for many positions that don’t require a college degree, he noted.
Since Biden signed the law in August, 100,000 new job postings sprouted across 31 states and 94 clean energy projects have drawn $89.5 billion in new investment, according to an analysis by Climate Power, a coalition of environmental groups. Biden administration officials and Democrats widely promoted the study, which was released Monday.
Many of those jobs are in districts represented by GOP lawmakers who opposed the legislation.
Among other political headwinds, though, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said many Americans are simply exhausted from years of crises such as the coronavirus pandemic, the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, two impeachments of former President Donald Trump and protests about police brutality and racial justice.
“To the extent that the mood improves — and I think it is and it will continue to — I think that overwhelmingly benefits the party that has the White House,” Kaine said in an interview.
Meanwhile, Biden and his team are working to inform people about the economic gains the climate law promises. They’ve also added a consumer outreach official who is tasked with making it easier for the average American to take advantage of the law’s rebates, tax credits and other incentives.
Many of the law’s tax benefits, such as rebates for home improvements and appliance upgrades, won’t be felt until a year from now when Americans file their 2023 returns. Lawmakers, regulators and U.S. allies are still fighting over which electric vehicles should qualify for a $7,500 credit.
Joshua Peck, senior policy adviser on the White House implementation team for the climate law, said it’s not essential for Americans to know the legislation’s name — but they “need to see and feel benefits, and know that they are part of the president’s agenda.”
“Over the next year or two, so many of those accomplishments will be happening on top of each other,” Peck said.
Don’t expect splashy public service announcements or advertising. Peck and his team are working behind the scenes organizing businesses, trade associations, equipment manufacturers and state energy offices to bring awareness to the opportunities the law affords.
The idea is to spread the word that more energy efficient, cleaner options are available, which begins with educating people like heating and cooling contractors, tradespeople and electric utilities about ways they can inform customers of savings.
The White House’s environmental allies are also looking to help.
“It was just signed into law a matter of months ago. It’s a big, complex law,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president of government affairs with the League of Conservation Voters. “It’s incumbent on all of us to make clear to people all across the country the ways that — not the ins and outs or getting into the weeds of the legislation — but how does it benefit them? How does it save them money on their monthly energy bills? What are the rebates for making their home more efficient or electrifying the homes?”
Of course, that message runs up against Republican warnings that Biden is out to abolish traditional touchstones of Americans’ lives — including gas stoves along with older, inefficient, toilets, dishwashers, showerheads and incandescent light bulbs.
Rewiring America, a nonprofit whose work has been influential within the White House Climate Policy Office, has partnered with Redfin and Airbnb to get the message out to 10 million Americans about the benefits of converting appliances and homes to run off electric power rather than gas — tasks the climate law will make more affordable.
People already are curious: 400,000 people have used a tool on the website of Rewiring America run by a green advocacy group that calculates potential savings from the law. Those visitors all came to the tool by word of mouth and news articles, said Ari Matusiak, CEO of Rewiring America.
“If the policy is effective it is going to be embedded in the transactions that people are making and these electric machines are increasingly going to become the default,” Matusiak said. “That’s the actual goal — that it becomes the kind of no-brainer decision.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 10, 2023
EC’s song ‘Main Bharat Hoon’ to nudge voters for upcoming polls

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New Delhi: The Election Commission (EC) is gearing up for the nine Assembly Elections this year and the Lok Sabha polls early next year with the aim of pushing the voter percentages through innovative communication strategies.
As one of the initiatives, the EC, in collaboration with Subhash Ghai Foundation, produced a song – ‘Main Bharat Hoon, Hum Bharat ke Matdata Hain’, featuring celebrities from different walks of life, appealing to the people to cast their vote.
The song, which was screened in the presence of President Droupadi Murmu on the 13th National Voters Day — January 25, is already beginning to gain traction on social media through celebrities and influencers.
Officials said that within a week since its launch, the Hindi and the multilingual format of the song had already got over 3.5 lakh views and 5.6 lakh impressions on four major social media platforms — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
The song is one of such initiatives of EC’s ‘Systematic Voter’s Education and Electoral Participation’ programme, which is the flagship voter education programme focused on inclusion strategies and action plans for enhancing participation from all categories of voters under EC’s motto of ‘No Voter to be Left Behind’.
The song is aimed not only at educating the voters regarding their rights and responsibility towards strengthening democracy, but also at enthusing them for greater participation in the electoral process.
As per EC officials, the song was finalised after a number of interactions of the team led by Subhash Ghai with the Election Commission led by Rajiv Kumar, Chief Election Commissioner.
The Chief Election Commissioner said: “The song is dedicated to each voter who takes cognisance of their national duty and casts vote, beating all odds.”

The motivating lyrics of the song are written and composed by the filmmaker, Subhash Ghai, in association with Whistling Woods International School of Music, Mumbai and it is sung in Hindi and 12 regional languages including Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Assamese, Odia, Kashmiri, Santali covering the maximum geographical area.
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#ECs #song #Main #Bharat #Hoon #nudge #voters #upcoming #polls
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

February 3, 2023
Hyderabad: Voters awareness rally taken out from City College

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Hyderabad: A rally from the City College in Hyderbad was taken out as a part of National Voters Day on Wednesday.
Over 1000 students from the college took out the rally, holding placards, passing through the city bridge, leading to the area of Begum Bazar, covering a stretch of about 1.5 kilometres.
Creating awareness on the significance of every voter, especially students casting his/her vote in elections was the motive behind the rally.
Principal of City College, P Bala Bhaskar, who flagged off the rally, said that it was important for every citizen who has attained 18 years of age to get included in the voter list.
“Similarly, it is also imperative for every voter to exercise their franchise in every election as part of discharging their democratic duty,” he added.
An awareness session in the Azam Hall of City college was taken up before the rally where students were sensitised on practising their fundamental rights.
Demonstration on hosting a Republic day flag was also undertaken on the occasion where students learnt the existing difference between unfurling a Republic day flag and an Independence day flag.
Organisers of the rally included the Mehar organisation, Lion club of Charminar Centennial, Leo club of city college and the National service scheme (NSS)

President of Mehar organisation, Affan Quadri, Lion club members including, Firdous Sahreef, Syed Anwar, Praveen Kumar, Aditya, and Naresh participated along with the college principal and students in the walk.
The organisers finally appealed to the voters to never miss out on casting their vote as each electorate plays a major role in bringing about a revolution in the country.
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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

January 26, 2023
National Voters Day Observed at PHQ; ADGP (Headquarters) PHQ Administers Pledge to Officers, Personnel

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Jammu, Jan 25 (GNS): National Voters Day pledge ceremony was organized at Police Headquarters here on Wednesday. The ADGP (Headquarters) PHQ, M.K Sinha administered the pledge to officers and personnel.
ADGP (Coordination) PHQ, Danesh Rana, IGP (Headquarters) PHQ, Bhim Sen Tuti, DIG Admin PHQ, Sarah Rizvi, DIG (Training) PHQ Imtiyaz Ismail Parray, AIsG of PHQ, SO to ADGP Armed J&K, officers & staff of PHQ, APHQ and Telecommunication attended the pledge taking function as did other officers and personnel of JKP.
As is known, January 25 is observed as National Voters Day to commemorate the founding day of the Election Commission of India, which was created on this date in 1950. The first National Voters Day was observed on January 25, 2011, and ever since, it has been observed on January 25 with a particular theme. For 2023, the theme was “nothing like voting, I vote for sure”.
Meanwhile, pledge functions were also held at all the Units, Wings and District Headquarters of J&K Police across Jammu and Kashmir. (GNS)
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( With inputs from : thegnskashmir.com )

January 25, 2023
Lawmakers codify abortion rights in state constitution, sending it to voters

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“Here in New York we will never let the extremist, anti-choice agenda to prevent anyone from accessing reproductive health care,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said Tuesday at a rally near the state Capitol with abortion-rights activists.
New York added stronger abortion rights into state law in 2019 and approved new laws last year to shield providers and patients from out-of-state litigation.
But in the wake of the Roe vs. Wade decision, abortion rights advocates and some lawmakers pushed to enshrine the protections in the constitution as a way to make it harder to overturn by any future legislature.
The amendment adds new protected classes to the constitution’s existing Equal Protection Clause, which prohibits discrimination based on a person’s race, color, creed or religion. It would also bar intentional government discrimination based on a person’s ethnicity, national origin, age, disability or sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes and reproductive health care and autonomy.
“We’re modernizing our constitution to recognize that all these categories of New Yorkers should have equal rights under the constitution to be protected from discrimination,” Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan) said at a news conference. “Because guess what we’ve learned recently? The courts can change and suddenly protections you thought you had because some court cases aren’t there anymore.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul hailed the measure, and she proposed new laws in her State of the State address earlier this month that would allow pharmacists to directly prescribe contraceptive pills and increase Medicaid reimbursement rates for reproductive health providers.
“I’m the first governor in the state of New York to ever have had a pregnancy, ever raise children, ever had to go through all the screaming,” Hochul, the first woman governor, said at the rally. “I know more than any governor before me of what it’s like to be a woman and whether someone else in Washington has the right to take away what I should be able to decide on my own.”
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#Lawmakers #codify #abortion #rights #state #constitution #sending #voters
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 25, 2023
Governors to voters: The state of our nation is bleak, except under me – The News Caravan

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“>Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, cast his state as the place “where woke goes to die,” to which Murphy, in his State of the State address, responded, “I’m not even sure I know what that means.”
House speaker amid hardline opposit…
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It’s not just the nation’s highest-profile chief executives getting in on the crowing, either. It may be news to most, but Jim Justice, the Republican governor of West Virginia, is aware of “jealousy” about his state, “because now, all of a sudden, we’re the diamond in the rough that they missed.”
“We’re in a never-before-seen era of contrast between red and blue states,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist. “What state you live in has become a subtext for what your politics must be, and I don’t think that was ever really true until the last six years or so.”

Covid, he said, “has thrown an accelerant on the way governors have presented their states. It became more a point of contrast – open or closed, mandate or no mandate, pro-vaccine or vaccine skeptic. There were very few governors who played it down the middle.”
The governors’ addresses have not been without some introspection about what could improve within their geographic boundaries. In Indiana, Gov. Eric Holcomb, a Republican, pointed last week to the relatively high rates of smoking and obesity in his state, where “our life expectancy in Indiana has declined in recent years.” In Arizona, Katie Hobbs, the newly-elected Democratic governor, warned of “potential catastrophe that will happen in just a few months” if lawmakers do not address an education funding cap, while noting the state is facing a “drought unlike anything in modern times.”
In New York, Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, after a closer-than-expected election, warned that inflation was harming Empire Staters. “And on top of that,” she added, “how do you pay the monthly rent, or the mortgage? It’s just so overwhelming for our families.”
(This news/post has been generated from www.politico.com and its was posted in their category. CT is not responsible for the above information.)

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January 18, 2023
Governors to voters: The state of our nation is bleak, except under me

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, cast his state as the place “where woke goes to die,” to which Murphy, in his State of the State address, responded, “I’m not even sure I know what that means.”
It’s not just the nation’s highest-profile chief executives getting in on the crowing, either. It may be news to most, but Jim Justice, the Republican governor of West Virginia, is aware of “jealousy” about his state, “because now, all of a sudden, we’re the diamond in the rough that they missed.”
“We’re in a never-before-seen era of contrast between red and blue states,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist. “What state you live in has become a subtext for what your politics must be, and I don’t think that was ever really true until the last six years or so.”
Covid, he said, “has thrown an accelerant on the way governors have presented their states. It became more a point of contrast – open or closed, mandate or no mandate, pro-vaccine or vaccine skeptic. There were very few governors who played it down the middle.”
The governors’ addresses have not been without some introspection about what could improve within their geographic boundaries. In Indiana, Gov. Eric Holcomb, a Republican, pointed last week to the relatively high rates of smoking and obesity in his state, where “our life expectancy in Indiana has declined in recent years.” In Arizona, Katie Hobbs, the newly-elected Democratic governor, warned of “potential catastrophe that will happen in just a few months” if lawmakers do not address an education funding cap, while noting the state is facing a “drought unlike anything in modern times.”
In New York, Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, after a closer-than-expected election, warned that inflation was harming Empire Staters. “And on top of that,” she added, “how do you pay the monthly rent, or the mortgage? It’s just so overwhelming for our families.”
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#Governors #voters #state #nation #bleak
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 18, 2023