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Democrats relish chance to knock off Ron Johnson, but their odds look long

For the third time in roughly 12 years, Democrats are watching their chances of defeating Sen. Ron Johnson (R) slip away in Wisconsin, a state that otherwise has a strong track record of voting for Democrats.  

Political handicappers are giving Democratic candidate Mandela Barnes, the state’s lieutenant governor, less chance of winning than challengers in the top-tier Senate races in Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania — an acknowledgement that Johnson, the stalwart conservative who was first elected to Congress as a Tea Party outsider, is likely to win again.  

Speaking at the University of Wisconsin-Madison last week, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, a leading handicapper, told an audience that the Wisconsin Senate contest ranks behind Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania in competitiveness. He gives Barnes only a 24 in 100 chance of beating Johnson.  

Yet Democrats hope they can drive enough young and base Democratic voters to the polls to defeat Johnson, who one GOP strategist conceded has seen his steady lead narrow in recent days.  

In a sign that Democrats haven’t given up hope, former President Obama — one of the party’s top draws — held a rally for Barnes in Milwaukee over the weekend.  

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel campaigned for Johnson the day before, helping him start a 10-day, 60-stop bus tour and signaling it remains a top-tier race to party leaders.

Defeating Johnson would be a major coup for Democrats, as he is expected to play a leading role in investigating the Biden administration if Republicans win back the Senate, which would be more likely if he wins reelection.

Johnson is set to take over as chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations under a GOP majority and vowed last week to be “like a mosquito in a nudist colony.” 

“It would be a target-rich environment,” he told WISN’s “Upfront” in an interview published Monday. “I think we need to take a look at what happened with the miserable, failed response to COVID.” 

“We’ve seen horrible corruption within the FBI, I would say partisanship within the Department of Justice. I think we need to find out more about that,” he added, signaling that he would take a leading role in Senate investigations of the Biden administration.

Democrats were optimistic of their chances of beating Johnson in early September, when Barnes had a solid 5-point lead in the RealClearPolitics average of public polls.  

But Johnson has since passed Barnes in public polling, and Senate Republican strategists feel confident he will hang on to win.

A poll of 1,376 likely voters conducted from Oct. 14 to Oct. 22 by Data for Progress, a left-leaning group, showed Johnson with a 5-point lead. It represented a 3-point improvement for Johnson compared to a Data for Progress poll conducted from Sept. 20 to Sept. 22, which showed Johnson leading Barnes 50 percent to 48 percent.  

A CNN poll of 714 likely voters conducted from Oct. 13 to Oct. 17, however, showed Johnson with only a 1-point lead. 

Democrats thought Johnson’s surprise victory over former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), a prominent incumbent who co-authored the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law, in 2010 was a fluke made possible by the Tea Party wave of that year’s midterm election.  

And Democrats thought they had him beaten in a 2016 rematch with Feingold when the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), shifted its attention to GOP candidates in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. 

The National Republican Senatorial Committee canceled plans in 2016 to spend $800,000 in the final weeks of the campaign, reflecting the conventional wisdom in Washington at the time that Hillary Clinton would win the state and carry the Senate race with her.  

Now Johnson is the clear front-runner heading into the final week before Election Day.  

But a Senate Republican strategist acknowledged the race has tightened in the past week. 

“It’s closer now than it was a week ago. Maybe that’s Democrats coming home” to Barnes, said the Senate GOP adviser.  

The GOP source predicted the late surge won’t be enough to swing the race to Barnes.  

The Democratic candidate has seen his approval rating drop to the mid-40s after Republican and GOP-allied groups pummeled him with television ads attacking his record and past statements as soft on crime.  

“Ron John, he’s going to win,” the Republican adviser said, predicting the Democrats’ heavy reliance on hitting Johnson over abortion rights won’t move many undecided voters at this point.  

“No undecided voter is picking their candidate based on abortion at this point. If you care about abortion, you already know your horse,” the source added.  

Democrats, meanwhile, hope that the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which struck down the right to an abortion established in 1973 by Roe v. Wade, will drive new voters to the polls, especially young women.  

Joe Zepecki, a Wisconsin-based Democratic strategist, noted that Wisconsin allows voters to register at polling locations on Election Day, which could open the door to a surge in new voters who are not being captured by surveys conducted so far.  

Zepecki thinks same-day voter registration made it easier for new voters to cast ballots for former President Trump in 2016, helping him steal the state from Hillary Clinton, something that few pollsters expected ahead of Election Day six years ago.  

“What we do here is close elections,” he said of the even divide between Democrats, Republicans and independents who lean toward either party in the state.  

“With same-day registration and without partisan registration in this state, there’s more likelihood than in other states that you just don’t see stuff until you see stuff. That’s kind of what happened in 2016 where Trump was able to activate a new part of the electorate,” he said. 

Zepecki said that Democratic-allied groups appear to have caught up to their Republican counterparts in spending and putting ads on the air.  

“I get the sense that they’re at parity,” he said. 

“The spending story in this race is there were a couple of weeks where the blue team was getting outspent and outpointed and that has shifted throughout the month of October where the blue team has had as many or more points [worth of television advertising] and as many or more dollars,” he added, referring to Democratic-allied groups.   

Barnes reported raising $8.16 million in net contributions in his pre-general election report spanning Oct. 1 to Oct. 19, significantly more than the $2.6 million Johnson reported collecting during the same time.  

He said it was crucial for Barnes and Democrats to catch up with Johnson and his allies on the airwaves now “when the lowest-information voters who care about politics now understand that it’s the time to make a plan and go vote and figure out who to vote for.”  

Republican strategists, however, say that Democrats are grasping at straws by hoping a late surge of new voters will help Barnes close the polling gap with Johnson.  

Brandon Scholz, a Wisconsin-based Republican strategist, said Johnson’s lead over Barnes is “relatively locked into place.”  

“You’ve seen Johnson move from the behind position that he was in after the primary to maintaining a couple-of-points lead,” he said. “The reason is that he got a jump on Mandela on the crime issue and pushed him hard.” 

He said Democrats have responded to the soft-on-crime attacks on Barnes by running an ad on abortion but didn’t get much traction with independents in the polls.   

With relatively few undecided voters up for grabs, both candidates are doubling down on trying to motivate their respective parties’ bases.  

“Barnes and Johnson too are playing to their bases more than anything else. Testament to that is Obama in town this past weekend,” he said.  

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) is also up for reelection and has a razor-thin lead in the RealClearPolitics polling average — half a point. Strategists say that’s not a big enough margin to help Barnes down ballot.  

“It’s all about base turnout,” Scholz said. “Wisconsin is a very red-blue state. There’s no purple. Independents make up their minds quickly post-primary. Any competitive race at the top of the ticket is going to be determined by a point or 2.”

“If Johnson gets a 3- or 4-point victory, that would be like a runaway, a landslide,” he said. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Five midterm races that will hold big lessons for 2024 and beyond

There is exactly one week to go before Election Day, and most of the attention is focused on the tightest races in the fierce fight for the Senate.

But some contests will be important for other reasons, providing crucial snapshots of where American politics stand right now, or offering clues toward 2024 and beyond.

Here are some of the most significant match-ups.

Nevada and the battle for Latino voters

Nevada gives Republicans their best chance of taking a Senate seat away from Democrats. 

Incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D) has never looked safe. Most recent polls have given her Republican challenger, Adam Laxalt, a small edge. In the RealClearPolitics (RCP) average on Monday afternoon, Laxalt was ahead by a single point.

Whichever way the race tips, political pros will be mining the results for signs of further erosion, or stabilization, in Democratic support among Latino voters.

Democrats are already concerned about signs of softening Latino support elsewhere in the nation, especially south Florida and Texas’s Rio Grande Valley.

Cortez Masto is the first Latina senator in U.S. history, and her platform includes strong support for comprehensive immigration reform.

Laxalt, whose grandfather served as a U.S. senator and as Nevada’s governor, has hit out at the senator and President Biden for what the Republican’s TV ads brand as “border chaos.”

Laxalt has been competing hard for Latino voters, including with Spanish-language ads and Latinos Con Laxalt events. He argues that Latino voters are responsive to the Republican promises of economic growth and opportunity,

Cortez Masto should still take most of the Latino votes cast, but the margin will be vital. 

The last two Democratic presidential nominees, Biden in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016, carried Latinos in Nevada by 26 points and 31 points respectively, according to exit polls.

If Cortez Masto can only eke out a much narrower margin, it will probably spell doom for her — and cause consternation to Democrats across the country.

Florida and DeSantis’s 2024 hopes

In theory, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) might have faced a tough reelection campaign.

The governor riles up liberals on a whole host of issues, the most explosive recent example being the flights of migrants he organized to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. 

DeSantis’s support for legislation restricting the teaching of sexuality in schools fueled another furor, and he and Biden tangled bitterly over the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite all that, DeSantis is well ahead of his Democratic opponent, former Rep. Charlie Crist. 

Crist is a former governor — and a former Republican — but DeSantis leads by more than 12 points in the RCP average.

A resounding victory for the incumbent governor would strengthen his hand as speculation mounts about a 2024 presidential bid. 

DeSantis is widely seen as the only Republican who could give former President Trump a run for his money for the GOP nomination. If Trump were to take a pass on the race, DeSantis would be the instant front-runner.

Florida has begun to lean red but only by narrow margins. DeSantis won his first race for governor by less than 1 percentage point in 2018, and Trump carried the state over Biden by roughly 3 points in 2020. 

In that context, a double-digit victory for DeSantis would be a powerful data point as his allies make the argument that he is the most electable Republican nationwide in 2024.

Given DeSantis’s strength, it’s no surprise that tensions are rising between him and Trump.

Trump will hold a rally in Miami on Nov. 6, just two days before Election Day. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who is expected to win reelection over Democratic Rep. Val Demings, will be in attendance. 

DeSantis, according to multiple media reports, was not invited.

Arizona and election denialism

Democrats have sought to make Trump an issue in this election, particularly in relation to his fictitious claims of election fraud in 2020 and his penchant for inflammatory language.

So far, it doesn’t appear like the argument is going to carry the day, at least beyond the Democratic base.

The prime example is Kari Lake, the Republican gubernatorial nominee in Arizona. 

Lake, a fervent Trump supporter, has repeatedly asserted that the 2020 election was illegitimate. She also suggested that her own primary race earlier this year might in some way be tainted — until it was clear she would win. “We out-voted the fraud,” she claimed.  

In a mid-October interview with Jon Karl of ABC News, Lake was notably equivocal about whether she would accept the results in the general election this year.

Pressed by Karl on whether she would acknowledge her own defeat, if it occurred, Lake replied that she would do so only “as long as it’s fair, honest and transparent.”

Even so, Lake is almost 4 points clear of her Democratic opponent, secretary of State Katie Hobbs, in the RCP average.

She has been helped to that position by her closeness to Trump, who endorsed her during the primary campaign, and by her media skills as a former TV news anchor. 

Perhaps most important of all, Biden’s approval ratings in the Grand Canyon State are dismal, with 39 percent of registered voters backing him and 54 percent disapproving of his performance in a late September Marist poll.

A Lake victory would be a huge boost for Trump and Trumpism. 

It would also chill the blood of Democrats and others concerned about the trajectory of American democracy.

Ohio and Democrats’ quest to shore up blue-collar support

One of the few bright spots for Democrats this year has been in Ohio, where Rep. Tim Ryan (D) has been more competitive than many Beltway pundits expected in his Senate race against Republican J.D. Vance.

Ohio was a bellwether for decades but has been trending sharply Republican in recent years. President Trump carried the state by around 8 points in both 2016 and 2020.

Ryan has rarely been more than 2 or 3 points adrift of Vance in the polling averages. 

He has stayed in contention by stressing his own modest roots in the Youngstown area and by making plain his differences from the more progressive elements of his own party, especially on the toxic topic of “Defund the Police.” 

Ryan, notably, has also said that he doesn’t believe Biden should run again in 2024.

None of this may be enough to carve out a victory, given the headwinds Ryan faces. 

He is currently 2 points behind in the RCP average, while data and polling site FiveThirtyEight gives Vance close to an 80 percent chance of prevailing. 

People close to Ryan are sore that the national Democratic Party did not provide him with more financial back-up even as a super-PAC linked to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has spent around $28 million to buttress Vance.

In any event, whether Ryan wins or loses, other Democrats will look keenly at the result to see how well he does with working-class voters. 

If he performs strongly, his campaign could provide a template for other races in the future.

Michigan and the fight over abortion rights

The Michigan governor’s race is one of several that has been jangling Democrats’ nerves of late.

Incumbent Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) has seen her Republican opponent Tudor Dixon whittle away at a lead that stood in double digits in early October. 

Whitmer leads by 4.2 percentage points in the RCP average. One recent poll showed a tied race.

One of the starkest dividing lines between the candidates is on abortion. 

Whitmer is a staunch defender of abortion rights, Dixon just the opposite.

The incumbent governor has talked about the issue in raw terms. She has spoken publicly about being raped while in college and her fear of becoming pregnant as a result. She has also cast the battle to protect abortion rights in reference to her two daughters, who are young adults.

Dixon, by contrast, has indicated she opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest, and has called Whitmer’s position “extremely radical.”

The abortion issue will be especially salient in Michigan because voters will get the chance to have their say on a ballot measure — “Proposal 3” — that would amend the state constitution to enshrine the right to abortion.

Polling suggests most Michiganders want abortion to remain broadly legal. Abortion rights activists note their side won a broadly comparable vote in the more conservative state of Kansas over the summer.

If Whitmer winds up a comfortable victor in Michigan, it will be testament to the potency of the abortion issue. 

But if the race remains tight, or she loses, the lesson will be very different.

Source: TEST FEED1

Political pressures divide, inflame response to Pelosi attack

The attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) husband Paul Pelosi has been met with finger-pointing over who’s to blame for political violence, fueling partisan tensions in the week before the midterm elections that will decide if the Speaker and her fellow Democrats keep or lose control of the House.

The brutal assault has kindled the already fraught debate over crime, law enforcement and the repercussions of political speech — issues that were already front and center on the campaign trail this cycle, particularly in the wake of last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Each political party, as usual, is not on the same page. 

In the eyes of Democrats, the attack marked the predictable consequence of right-wing rhetoric that’s targeted Pelosi for decades — an extension of the Democrats’ campaign warnings about the threat of “MAGA Republican extremism.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on Monday tweeted that the attack was “the logical result of a Republican Party that has targeted the Speaker and other prominent women in public life for over a decade now,” sharing screenshots of ominous campaign ads targeting Pelosi.

Republicans, by contrast, blamed the general, post-pandemic increase in certain crimes — and suggested, by extension, that Democrats were at fault for going too soft on those who break the law.

Complicating the debate, the Republican response has been clouded by mixed messages, highlighting the sometimes conflicting pressures facing different GOP factions in the era of former President Trump.

Following the assault of the 82-year-old Paul Pelosi in the couple’s San Francisco home, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) quickly condemned the violence in no uncertain terms, saying he was “horrified and disgusted” by the tragic incident. Yet Trump remained silent for days. And his eldest son, Don, Jr., took to Twitter to mock the attack, suggesting a hammer — the weapon allegedly used in the assault — would make a good Halloween accessory. 

Across the Capitol, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who’s hoping to win the Speaker’s gavel if the chamber changes hands next year, condemned violence in a Fox News interview on Sunday, saying “what happened to Paul Pelosi is wrong” and that he communicated sympathies to Pelosi over text after he learned about the attack. 

Many GOP leaders, including McCarthy and Trump, linked the Pelosi assault to crime rates and policies in general – an issue that has been a major theme in Republican midterm campaigns.

“With Paul Pelosi, that’s a terrible thing, and with all of them, that’s a terrible thing,” Trump told  conservative Spanish language outlet Americano Media over the weekend. “Look at what happened to San Francisco generally. Look at what’s happening in Chicago. It was far worse than Afghanistan.” 

The suspect, identified by police as 42-year-old David DePape, did not appear to attack randomly but was looking for Nancy Pelosi specifically and asking where she was, according to a source briefed on the matter. Online posts by DePape questioned the 2020 election results, defended Trump, and promoted QAnon conspiracy theories. 

The Justice Department on Monday charged DePape on two federal count of assault and attempted kidnapping.

DePape also had a history of pro-nudity activism, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, feuling right-wing arguments that the attacker was actually a leftist and spurring baseless conspiracy theories about him and Paul Pelosi. Police later said that DePape and Paul Pelosi did not know each other.

Beyond the online bickering about the attacker’s personal political beliefs, Republicans have pushed back on Democratic arguments that right-wing rhetoric fueled the attack by saying political violence is an issue on both sides.

Republicans over the weekend referred back to New York gubernatorial candidate and current Rep. Lee Zeldin (R) being accosted by a man as he spoke at a political rally earlier this year, and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) being shot when a gunman fired at Republicans practicing for a charity baseball game in 2017.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who had six ribs broken in an attack by his next-door neighbor in 2017, responded to the Pelosi attack by referencing a since-deleted tweet from Pelosi’s daughter in 2020 that said his neighbor was right.

“No one deserves to be assaulted. Unlike Nancy Pelosi’s daughter who celebrated my assault, I condemn this attack and wish Mr. Pelosi a speedy recovery,” Paul tweeted.

The finger-pointing and score-keeping on political violence comes as 80 percent of Democratic and Republican voters say that the other party poses a threat that could destroy America as we know it if not stopped, according to a recent NBC poll.

“The attack on Paul Pelosi is a product of our coarsening political rhetoric and shouldn’t be part of it. Any time there is any political violence, or the threat of it, the ultra-partisans go into ‘other side’ mode – my side is good and righteous and the other side is evil,” Republican strategist Doug Heye told The Hill in an email. “The reality is political violence can come from everywhere and is happening on a bipartisan basis. We can all do better, instead of spinning each other up as our discourse spirals further down the drain.”

Pelosi, more than any other Democrat in the Capitol, is accustomed to being targeted by Republicans, who have spent decades demonizing the long-time Democratic leader as a wealthy, San Francisco liberal who’s out of touch with much of the country. That strategy has, at times, been successful, riling up the GOP base and forcing vulnerable Democrats in battleground districts to distance themselves from the party’s top figure.

But the GOP attacks have also frequently jumped from politics to the personal, depicting Pelosi not merely as a political rival of differing views, but as a menacing “enemy” who, left to her own devices, would dismantle the freedoms Americans hold dear. Increasingly, those attacks have featured threatening rhetoric or allusions to violence. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), for instance, has accused Pelosi of being “guilty of treason” — a crime, Greene noted, that’s “punishable by death.” 

Pelosi’s Democratic allies have long warned that such violent political speech will inevitably lead to actual physical violence — an argument that’s being amplified in the wake of Friday’s attack on Paul Pelosi. 

“This is just the combination of the demonization of Nancy Pelosi by many folks on the other side of the aisle,” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) said Sunday in an interview with CNN. “This type of dangerous violent rhetoric is going to lead to the natural result, which is violence. And that’s what happened with Paul Pelosi.”

Partisan relations and day-to-day activities on Capitol Hill have been rocked by political violence and threats. Most prominently, last year’s attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob injured more than 150 law enforcement officers and resulted in several deaths, including police officers who would later take their lives.

Just a month after the Jan. 6 attack, the House voted to remove Greene from her committee assignments when it was revealed that,  before coming to Congress, she had liked social media posts promoting the assassination of prominent Democrats, including Pelosi.

Nine months later, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) was stripped of his committee posts after he promoted an animated video depicting him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), a national liberal figure who is frequently the target of violent threats. 

McCarthy has vowed to return both Greene and Gosar to their committee posts next year if Republicans take control of the House in the midterms.

Source: TEST FEED1

Here's why the Fed's next big rate hike may be its last

The Federal Reserve is on track to issue another massive rate hike Wednesday before slowing down the pace of its battle to fight inflation.

Analysts and economists are confident the Fed will hike its baseline interest rate range by another 0.75 percentage points at the end of a Wednesday meeting. The Fed’s move will mark the fourth consecutive rate hike of a size it once considered “unusually large.”

It may also mark a turning point as the Fed faces growing pressure to take its foot off the brakes of the economy.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell is not expected to announce a pause to rate hikes or the bank’s intentions for its final policy meeting in December. But Fedwatchers will be paying close attention for signs that Fed officials believe they may be close to the level they plan to set interest rates for the foreseeable future.

“We see a decent chance that core inflation and wage growth will slow at the same time, more or less, making it much more likely that the Fed’s final hike will be in December,” wrote Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, in a Monday research note.

The Fed’s rate hikes have caused a steep decline in home sales and the first steady price declines in more than a decade as buyers balk at rising mortgage rates. Wage growth has slowed as businesses curb their hiring ambitions, and firms have pulled back on long-term investments that could drive future growth.

“We see enough straws in the wind now to think that the economy is at a real inflexion point,” Shepherdson wrote.

Even so, inflation has remained stubbornly high, and Powell has warned that the bank will keep up the pressure until price growth shows clear signs of falling.

“These forces are not yet fully visible in the hard data which matter most to markets and the Fed,” Shepherdson continued. 

Prices were up 6.2 percent over the past year, as measured by the personal consumption expenditures price index, the Fed’s preferred gauge of inflation. It remains well above the Fed’s target for 2 percent annual inflation.

The consumer price index (CPI), another key gauge of inflation, was up 8.2 percent on the year in September. While the CPI is not the Fed’s primary inflation gauge, the bank still pays close attention to it.

“While the headline Consumer Price Index (CPI) has fallen from the 40 year record of 9.1% set in June to September’s 8.2%, that’s still appallingly high,” wrote Dan North, senior economist at Allianz Trade, in a Monday research note.

“The Fed’s super aggressive path is justified since inflation, which it caused, has not been killed yet. But by the time it is, the Fed will have driven the economy into recession,” he continued.

The Fed has faced a difficult balance since it began hiking interest rates in March: ramp up rates slowly and risk losing the ability to control inflation or raise them quickly at the risk of bringing the economy to a screeching halt.

Fed officials have decisively chosen the latter, insisting a recession caused by high interest rates would be less damaging than one caused by its refusal to bring inflation down.

“We think that a failure to restore price stability would mean far greater pain later on,” Powell said after the Fed hiked rates in September.

“The record shows that if you postpone, that delay is only likely to lead to more pain,” he continued, referring to the grueling recession the Fed triggered to bring inflation down from much higher levels during the 1980s. 

The bank is also facing more pressure to prove it can curb inflation after refusing to hike rates in 2021 while price growth accelerated, insisting it would come back down soon enough.

“Committing to slowing down prematurely without seeing meaningful progress on inflation could result in another challenge to the Fed’s credibility if inflation surprises to the upside and [Fed officials] are compelled to backtrack,” wrote economists at investment bank Nomura in a Monday research note.

“We believe the Fed will want clear and compelling evidence that inflation has indeed made progress before they commit to slowing the pace of rate hikes,” they added.

Source: TEST FEED1

These five races will determine the Senate majority

The battle for the Senate is anyone’s ballgame with only a week to go until voters head to the polls.

Republicans, needing to net only one seat, are knocking on the door as the national environment moves increasingly in their direction and some surveys show them in the lead in both Georgia and Nevada. According to FiveThirtyEight’s latest projections, the fight for the majority is a “dead heat,” turning the final days into an all-out sprint to get voters out to the polls. 

Here are five races that will determine the Senate majority.

Arizona 

Of the five states on this list, Democrats still have the best chance of holding Sen. Mark Kelly’s seat, though Republican Blake Masters has closed the gap in recent weeks.

Kelly, long considered one of the best Senate Democratic incumbents up for reelection, held a sizable lead over Masters for nearly two months after the GOP nominee emerged from the early August primary. Much of that was thanks to the onslaught of ads as a result of the Democrat’s juggernaut fundraising operation.

But the script has flipped in recent weeks, with Masters cutting Kelly’s lead to near the margin of error in most surveys. Much of that is due to two reasons, according to strategists: the natural tightening of the race in a swing state, and the impact of Republican Kari Lake’s presence at the top of the ticket. 

“I think Kelly squeaks it out, but it’s way tighter than anybody would want,” said one Democratic operative involved in Senate races. 

One Arizona-based GOP operative told The Hill that a The New York Times-Siena poll that emerged on Monday is “realistic,” but added that a 2- to-3-point undercount for Masters at this point is entirely plausible, with Lake being the driving force behind a possible upset. 

“There’s definitely a strategy of Lake and Masters working together,” the strategist said. “She’s trying to pull the whole team across the finish line.” 

According to the latest RealClearPolitics average, Lake leads Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) by 3.8 percentage points. Similarly, Kelly tops Masters by 2.4 percentage points.

Georgia

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) once appeared to have a distinct edge over his Republican opponent Herschel Walker, a former NFL star and first-time candidate who has grappled with a slew of personal and professional controversies over the course of his Senate campaign. 

Perhaps one of the most eye-popping revelations about Walker came early last month when the Daily Beast published a story detailing allegations that Walker had paid for his then-girlfriend to have an abortion in 2009.

Yet Walker hasn’t taken much of a hit in the polls. He has hammered Warnock repeatedly on perceived rising crime and lingering economic concerns, while largely brushing off the allegations as lies. In turn, he’s steadily narrowed his polling gap with Warnock, who now leads in the race by little more than 1 percentage point, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average.

“The fact of the matter is he’s been fired at as much as I’ve ever seen,” said Chuck Clay, a former state senator and Georgia GOP chair. “Unless there’s some other lurking horror story out there we’re not aware of, I think he’s been pretty well raked over the coals.”

What makes the race between Warnocok and Walker particularly volatile is the fact that Georgia is one of only two states where candidates are required to receive more than 50 percent of the vote to win their election. And as of now, neither Warnock nor Walker are hitting that threshold.

“Maybe [Walker’s] not at 50 percent, but it doesn’t appear all the negatives have had a significant impact,” Clay said. “It’s all going to come down to that final 2 or 3 percent of people who are still on the fence.”

Nevada

Of all the Senate Democrats locked in ever-tightening reelection bids, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) might be the most vulnerable.

Even in Democrats’ brightest days of the campaign, she’s never held the kind of clear lead over her Republican rival, former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt, that other battleground state Democrats have. A new poll from The New York Times and Siena College released on Monday found Cortez Masto and Laxalt deadlocked at 47 percent apiece. 

Nevada poses a series of challenges for both parties. On one hand, Democrats have had a winning streak in the state in recent years, culminating with the ouster of former Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) in 2018 and President Biden’s victory there two years later.

On the other hand, Republicans’ improving margins among Latino voters could chip away at a base of support that Democrats have long relied on to propel their victories in Nevada. The state also has a transient population that makes it particularly hard to pin down politically.

“I think, in a lot of ways, Nevada has just been kind of hard to get a hold on,” said one Democratic strategist who has worked on Senate campaigns. “It’s kind of a meeting point for a lot of the crosscurrents and trends we’ve been seeing.”

Pennsylvania

The wind is firmly at the back of Mehmet Oz in the final week of the campaign, but it remains to be seen whether that will be enough for him to defeat Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) next week. 

The trend lines are clearly in Oz’s favor at this stage. His constant attacks on crime have resonated with voters for months and he was the beneficiary of Fetterman’s continued struggles during last week’s debate due to his stroke. 

However, Oz’s push in the late stages hinges on whether he can peel off enough supporters of state Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) in the gubernatorial race, particularly in the Philadelphia suburbs. Shapiro is considered the heavy favorite against state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R) to replace Gov. Tom Wolf (D), who is term-limited.

“That crossover group in a really tight race could be impactful,” said Chris Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College, who laid out Oz’s recent message. “It’s ‘beat up Fetterman and sell yourself as moderate.’ He’s not talking about Trump. He’s not talking about any lightning-rod partisan stuff like Mastriano.”

“It’s an appeal,” Borick continued. “His pitch to those folks is that he’s OK. That he’s not radical.”

Fetterman still leads by 1.5 percentage points, according to the latest RealClearPolitics average of surveys. 

No matter who emerges victorious, the winner is likely to win by a slim margin, increasing the likelihood that a winner will not be known on election night and that it could take days to determine who will be the next senator. Acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman (D) said last week that churning out full results could “take at least a few days.”

“If this is a tight election, we’re going to go down a very dangerous rabbit hole again where legitimacy of the election is called into question,” one Pennsylvania-based GOP operative told The Hill. “When you see other states that get this stuff done on time, it calls into question why Pennsylvania is unable to.”

Wisconsin

Despite facing a tough political environment in 2022 overall, Democrats eyed Wisconsin eagerly, believing that voters just might be convinced to oust their controversy-prone Republican incumbent, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). 

They nominated Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes (D-Wis.) for the job following a long and occasionally bitter primary campaign. And while early polls suggested that Johnson was in danger, Barnes also struggled to get his general election bid off the ground, opening himself up to weeks of attacks casting him as a “radical leftist.”

Democrats have been pouring cash into the race in its final weeks, hoping to give Barnes a last-minute boost. Former President Obama, still one of the most popular Democrats in the country, swung through Wisconsin over the weekend in an effort to salvage his party’s chances there.

And to be sure, the race remains close, with Johnson holding a 3.4-point advantage over Barnes in FiveThirtyEight’s average of the race. Still, Republicans argue that Barnes’s prospects were overplayed and that Democrats underestimated Johnson’s strength.

Doug Heye, a Republican strategist, echoed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who earlier this year downplayed his party’s prospects of winning the Senate because of “candidate quality.”

“Some people tried to give McConnell flack for saying that candidate quality matters. But it also matters on the Democratic side,” Heye said. “It’s part of why Mandela Barnes has been such a letdown.”

Source: TEST FEED1

San Francisco DA announces attempted murder charge for alleged Paul Pelosi attacker

The San Francisco district attorney on Monday announced an attempted murder charge for the man accused of violently attacking Paul Pelosi, the husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), in the couple’s California home last week.

District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced that David Wayne DePape, 42, will be charged with residential burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, false imprisonment of an elder and threats to a public official and their family, in addition to attempted murder.

He is scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday.

The state charges were announced shortly after the Department of Justice charged DePape with federal assault and attempted kidnapping.

DePape is accused of breaking into the Pelosis’ San Francisco home in the middle of the night and striking Paul Pelosi with a hammer, causing serious injuries, authorities said.

Developing

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Wheat prices shoot up after Russia suspends UN grain deal

Wheat prices shot up on global commodity markets after Russia pulled out of a deal to keep grain exports moving out of Ukrainian ports, exacerbating concerns that the move by Moscow could worsen global food shortages.

“Each fraction of a percentage point pushes someone somewhere over the line to extreme poverty,” United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths told the body’s Security Council on Monday.

Soft red wheat futures jumped 7 percent from Friday to Monday, while contracts for hard red wheat rose 6 percent.

Moscow’s move adds more pressure to international grain prices that are already up 11.2 percent since last year, according to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation’s (FAO) cereal price index. 

In the U.S., cereal and bakery products are up 16.2 percent since last year, according to the Labor Department. U.S. food prices in general are up 11.2 percent amid a broader rise in consumer prices now standing at 8.2 percent over 2021.

“We urge the Government of Russia to resume its participation in the Initiative,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement over the weekend, adding that “Russia is again weaponizing food in the war it started.”

His call was repeated by other international diplomats at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Monday, who noted both the commercial and humanitarian benefits of the grain deal, known as the Black Sea Grain Initiative.

So far, more than 9.5 million metric tons of agricultural products have been conveyed to global markets under the auspices of the deal.

Russia suspended its participation in the grain export initiative because it said its vessels had been attacked on Saturday morning by Ukraine. But the U.N.’s Griffiths told reporters that this wouldn’t constitute a breach of the agreement that’s facilitated the transport of food.

“The attack took place at 4 a.m. on Saturday morning,” he said. “The ships that were apparently attacked, which I think were largely military vessels – there are no military vessels, to our knowledge, that are in support of the Black Sea Grain Initiative.”

Griffiths added that the legal framework of the initiative was set up to be able to deal with these sorts of disputes, adding he hoped Russia would soon return to full participation with the accord, which is still fully in place from the U.N.’s perspective, with ships ready to move.

The practical difficulty, diplomats said, will be convincing maritime insurance companies to insure ships and cargos without having Russia on board as a security guarantor. Without assurances from the Russian military, the passage of commercial ships through embattled waters is a much riskier proposition.

Of course, the grain initiative was already a perilous operation.

Last week, a tugboat and a search-and-rescue boat were dispatched in the travel corridor to inspect what the U.N. called “a suspicious mine-like object.” 

While no mine was discovered during the inspection, officials decided to provide transiting cargo ships with escort vessels as an added protection.

Russia’s suspension of the grain deal comes as both fighting and rhetoric in the war have intensified in recent weeks, with President Biden using the term “Armageddon” and the Russian Ministry of Defense, without evidence, accusing Ukraine of planning to use a “dirty bomb.”

An official with the U.S. Department of Agriculture told The Hill that it wasn’t entirely surprising that Russia pulled out temporarily of the grain deal and that commodity markets were likely anticipating some uncertainty around the export corridor as the war grinds on.

The Ukrainian ambassador to the U.N. also said that he wasn’t surprised that Russia suspended its involvement in the grain deal. Russia attacked the port of Odesa only one day after the deal was initially signed in July.

“We are outraged but not surprised over the announcement by Russia to suspend its participation in the Black Sea Grain Initiative,” Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya told the Security Council.

The diminished amount of grain on world markets is bad news both for inflation, which is near 40-year highs in the U.S., and for the humanitarian conditions across the globe.

Commodity prices are up 55.7 percent since last year, with food commodities up 23.9 percent, according to U.N.’s latest report on trade and development.

The grain deal has had “massive global welfare effects,” according to Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General of the U.N. Conference on Development and Trade.

Agricultural exports from Russia tripled from July through September and wheat exports from Ukraine quadrupled over the same period, she told the Security Council on Monday.

As a result of simultaneous decline in the FAO’s food price index, 100 million people may have been kept out of poverty by the accord.

“The thought of even more global hunger next year — that’s the nightmare that we face,” Griffiths said.

With the Ukraine war now in its eighth month, alarm is also rising over a humanitarian crisis in Ukraine this winter with Russia unleashing a barrage of missiles on energy systems and utilities. 

On Monday, Russian strikes on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv had left as much as 80 percent of the city without running water. 

Earlier in October, CBS News reported that a portion of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne division had been deployed for drills to Romania, a country that borders Ukraine. 

“In the capital Kyiv, most people are without water in their homes, and some 350,000 houses and businesses have no electricity,” the spokesperson for the U.N. secretary-general said during a press conference.

Source: TEST FEED1

Supreme Court seems skeptical of race-conscious college admissions

The conservative-majority Supreme Court on Monday appeared skeptical of affirmative action in higher education during arguments over race-conscious admissions policies at two prestigious universities.

Over nearly five hours of oral argument, the justices posed sharp questions over admissions programs at the University of North Carolina (UNC) and Harvard University that consider the race of applicants — as one of many criteria — in order to achieve student body diversity.

The court’s majority appeared receptive to arguments by the conservative challengers, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), who argued that the schools had impermissibly weighed race in admissions decisions.

“What is your response to the simple argument that college admissions are a zero-sum game?” Justice Samuel Alito asked an attorney for a group of students backing race-conscious admissions. “And if you give a plus to a person who … falls within the category of underrepresented minority but not to somebody else, you’re disadvantaging the latter student?”

The cases heard Monday tee up the prospect that decades of affirmative action precedent could be overturned by the 6-3 conservative majority court, which last court term showed an extraordinary new willingness to scrap past rulings.

A key question heading into Monday’s arguments was how the affirmative action challenge would land with former President Trump’s three nominees — Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — none of whom have ruled on the issue as appellate judges. Those justices on Monday appeared to lean in favor of the conservative challengers, though it wasn’t clear how broadly the court’s newest members might be willing to rule.

The court’s three most senior conservatives — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Alito — each of whom had opposed racial preferences in prior cases, seemed similarly wary of the colleges’ arguments.

The court’s three liberals, for their part, appeared to lean in favor of the schools’ use of race-conscious admissions. Among them was newest Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the nation’s first female African American justice, who participated in the UNC case but recused from the Harvard dispute due to her recent role as a member of the school’s board of overseers.

DEVELOPING…

Source: TEST FEED1

Alleged Paul Pelosi attacker charged with assault, attempted kidnapping

The suspect in the attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), has been charged with assault and attempted kidnapping, days after he allegedly broke into the couple’s San Francisco home and struck Paul Pelosi with a hammer, causing serious injuries.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the charges Monday afternoon, days after the suspect — David DePape, 42 — was arrested and taken into custody.

DePape broke into the Pelosi home in the middle of the night and struck Paul Pelosi with a hammer, authorities say. According to a source briefed on the investigation, DePape confronted Paul Pelosi and asked “where is Nancy.”

The DOJ said authorities found DePape at the scene with a roll of tape, white rope, a second hammer, a pair of rubber and cloth gloves and zip ties.

–-This breaking news report will be updated.

Source: TEST FEED1