The Senate Is In Play

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.   The early signs in the 2026 midterms do not favor Republicans.

Alex Isenstadt at Axios:

Top Republicans are increasingly worried about private polling that paints a dire picture of the midterms — and it's not just the House they're afraid of losing, it's also the Senate.

...

Here's what's setting off GOP bells about the Senate:

1. The map's expanding

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is taking a lot of darts from his own party these days. But Republicans privately concede he's done a good job of recruiting Senate candidates in conservative states once seen as out of reach for Democrats.Schumer got former Sen. Sherrod Brown to run again in Ohio, and former Rep. Mary Peltola to run in Alaska. Ohio Sen. Jon Husted and Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan are the GOP incumbents.
Even if Democrats fail to win either race, Republicans now will need to spend potentially tens of millions to defend those seats.

2. The Texas problem

If incumbent Texas Sen. John Cornyn loses the upcoming GOP primary to state Attorney General Ken Paxton, polls suggest it could open the door to a Democrat winning Cornyn's seat in November.The NRSC penned a memo this week arguing that Cornyn is "the only Republican candidate" who can "reliably win a general election matchup" against either Democratic state Rep. James Talarico or U.S. Rep Jasmine Crockett (D). (Republicans might get some help — the Democratic primary has gone harshly negative recently.)
Even if Paxton wins in November, many Republicans warn, the party will have to unexpectedly spend tens of millions of dollars more than if Cornyn is the nominee.

Democrats haven't won a statewide race in Texas in more than three decades. But Republicans aren't dismissing the possibility this year. Last weekend the party suffered a lopsided special election defeat for a state Senate seat.Particularly glaring: Trump, who had endorsed the GOP candidate, won the district by 17 points in 2024.

3. The Georgia problem

The GOP's failure to recruit popular Gov. Brian Kemp for a Senate run has been a major setback in the party's efforts to pick off the most vulnerable Senate Democrat up for reelection, Georgia's Jon Ossoff.Kemp's decision not to run has left three lesser-known Republicans to fight for the GOP nomination — none with Kemp's fundraising chops.
Ossoff's has raised far more money than any GOP challenger and has over $25 million on hand. Whoever wins the bruising GOP primary will have to burn through cash before facing him.

A Blue Week

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  This year's elections have turned out badly for the GOP.

Julia Manchester at The Hill:

Republicans are feeling spooked by recent special elections losses and underperformances in party strongholds, as the White House ramps up President Trump’s presence on the campaign trail ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

On Tuesday, Democrats flipped Miami’s mayoral office for the first time in nearly 30 years and won a conservative-leaning state House district in Georgia that Trump carried by 12 points last year.

Those victories came after Republicans gave up ground to Democrats in a special election for Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District last week and lost by wide margins in Virginia and New Jersey’s gubernatorial races last month.

Republicans note that while the off-year gubernatorial losses were not necessarily a surprise, upsets in GOP strongholds such as Miami and the Georgia state House district have them on edge.

“Republicans losing in Republican areas? That’s a different story. I think that’s got people freaking out,” one former Trump White House staffer said

Andrew Egger at The Bulwark:

“It’s not a secret. There’s no sugarcoating it. It’s a pending, looming disaster heading our way.”

“We are facing almost certain defeat.”

“The chances are Republicans will go down and will go down hard.”

“You hit the nail on the head. This is an absolute disaster. No matter what party is in power, they usually get crushed in the midterms.”

These pessimistic assessments of Republicans’ chances in next year’s midterms are the sort of thing you’d expect to hear from disgruntled GOP operatives outside the MAGA camp. This week, however, they’ve been coming from someone way crazier: Joe Gruters, the Trump-diehard chair of the Republican National Committee, who has been barnstorming conservative radio this week.1

Gruters isn’t throwing Trump under the bus. Quite the opposite: As Democrats overperform in special election after special election and Republican confidence in the midterms craters, he’s trying to set expectations low—way low. After all, he says, the guys in power nearly always lose the midterms. And as once-unimaginable cracks have begun spiderwebbing across the MAGA coalition, he’s making a specific case to his party: “The only person that could bring the nose up and help us win is the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.”

Still, it’s remarkably abnormal to see the chair of the institutional Republican party—the head of the party’s campaign apparatus!—openly predict doom for his candidates. It risks further depressing GOP voters and encouraging lawmakers to retire early. And, beyond that, it’s far from clear that the Republicans who actually need to get elected next year share Gruters’s assessment of how to fix their electoral predicament.

This week, I spoke to a number of swing-state GOP operatives about Trump and the midterm environment. And they were pretty blunt. To them, the biggest reason Republicans seem bound for disaster isn’t historical midterm trends. It’s the world the president has built for them to run in—particularly when it comes to affordability. (To encourage them to speak openly, including in ways that contradict top-down GOP messaging, we agreed not to disclose their names.)

“His message sucks. It’s absolute trash. ‘Affordability is a Democrat hoax’??? Give me a break,” said one strategist, a veteran of presidential and congressional campaigns. “It’s the non-college-educated version of the Biden message, and we saw how well that worked. . . . Nobody believes the economy and particularly affordability is getting better.”

The Senate Map

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Adam Wren, Rachael Bade and Lisa Kashinsky at Politico:

Brian Kemp’s decision not to run for Senate isn’t just a setback for Republicans in Georgia. It is the latest sign that the GOP’s prospects across the Senate map are far less certain than just a few months ago.

It could turn worse, too, as President Donald Trump’s tariffs cause global market chaos ahead of next year’s midterms and a cloudy economic picture comes into fuller view.

Republicans are still widely expected to keep the Senate. But after Kemp and former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu rejected GOP recruitment efforts — and with hardline conservative Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton primarying the establishment Sen. John Cornyn — the GOP is bracing for a more turbulent cycle than once expected.

That’s not to mention other brewing challenges in Louisiana and North Carolina, where MAGA figures are threatening primaries against longtime incumbents.

How Dems Lost Ground in Atlanta and Wayne County

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Our next book will look at the 2024 election. 

 Robert Gebeloff, Eli Murray, Elena Shao, Charlie Smart and Christine Zhang  at NYT:

In Atlanta and its suburbs, both candidates found new voters, but Ms. Harris’s gains in precincts where white voters were the largest racial or ethnic group were canceled out by losses elsewhere. Mr. Trump’s uptick in support from voters of color across Atlanta, along with improved performance in the state’s rural areas, was enough for him to win Georgia — a swing state he narrowly lost to Mr. Biden in 2020.

In Wayne County, which includes Detroit, Ms. Harris struggled to capture the support of Arab-American voters, many of whom had been turned off by the Biden administration’s Middle East policies. In a swath of voting precincts spanning Dearborn and Hamtramck, which have the nation’s highest concentration of people of Arab ancestry, Mr. Trump picked up thousands of votes compared with 2020, while the Democratic Party lost an even bigger number. Countywide, precincts with high shares of Arab residents made up just 6 percent of the electorate but accounted for more than 40 percent of the decline in Democratic votes.

The wins keep mounting for Deaborn in Trump's personnel choices: "In one video last year, he provided advice to Israeli leaders on how to prosecute their conflict with the militant group...“Kill every single one of them,” Gorka said. https://t.co/enGxSUTxSA

— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) November 23, 2024

Trump's Bonkers Attack on Brian Kemp

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. 

A  rule of thumb in political psychology: look at personality to account for political behavior only when no other explanation makes sense.  Case in point: attacking a governor whose support you desperately need.  Extra points for attacking a Southern governor's wife.

Adam Wren and Meridith McGraw at Politico:

Former President Donald Trump is reopening an old feud with Republicans in Georgia.

Just before rallying supporters in Atlanta on Saturday, Trump unleashed a tirade on the state’s popular Republican governor, Brian Kemp, whose vaunted ground game operation Trump may need in November, ripping into him on Truth Social for “fighting Unity and the Republican Party.”

And when Trump took the stage, he went at him even harder.

“He’s a bad guy, he’s a disloyal guy and he’s a very average governor,” Trump told supporters, eliciting boos toward Kemp from the crowd.

The attack — on social media and in person at the Georgia State University Convocation Center — marked an escalation of Trump’s longstanding criticism of Kemp. And it instantly unsettled Georgia Republicans, who warned Trump’s comments threaten his already shaky prospects in the state.

“I’m sitting here scratching my head,” Bobby Saparow, a Republican operative and Brian Kemp’s former campaign manager, told POLITICO. “Attacking the popular governor of a pivotal swing state makes zero sense. If we want to actually unite, ask for the support of the guy who beat your endorsed primary opponent by 52 points and handily defeated Stacey Abrams.”

Or, as Erick Erickson, the Georgia Republican and radio host, told POLITICO: “Over 30,000 people refused to vote for [Trump] in Georgia in 2020 and he lost by about 12,000 votes. All he’s doing is reminding everyone why they don’t like him. And he has no Georgia ground game and will have to rely on Kemp. It’s going to hurt him.”

 

Trump's temper tantrums and rants are becoming a common occurrence again. Watch him lose it over Gov. Kemp's wife not endorsing him for president. pic.twitter.com/0pWabapGY1

— American Bridge 21st Century (@American_Bridge) August 3, 2024

My focus is on winning this November and saving our country from Kamala Harris and the Democrats - not engaging in petty personal insults, attacking fellow Republicans, or dwelling on the past.

You should do the same, Mr. President, and leave my family out of it. pic.twitter.com/m8y6CSuZKY

— Brian Kemp (@BrianKempGA) August 3, 2024

Trump Trial Delays

In Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics, we look at Trump's dishonesty and disregard for the rule of law.

 Our next book will look at the 2024 campaign and the impact of Trump's legal problems. New York courts have found that he is a rapist and a fraud.

Ben Protess, Alan Feuer, William K. Rashbaum and Maggie Haberman at NYT:

The schedule seemed stacked against Donald J. Trump: four criminal trials in four cities, all in the same year he is running for president.

But rather than doom Mr. Trump, the chaotic calendar might just save him.

Mr. Trump, who as president helped reshape the federal judiciary, has already persuaded the Supreme Court to delay his trial in Washington. His lawyers have buried judges in Florida and Georgia in enough legal motions and procedural complaints that his cases there have no set trial dates, either.

The case in Manhattan, where the district attorney accused Mr. Trump of covering up a sex scandal during and after the 2016 presidential campaign, was the only one not mired in potential postponements.

Until now.

On Friday, Justice Juan M. Merchan, who is overseeing the case, delayed the trial at least three weeks, until mid-April.

Trumpists Mess Up Michigan GOP

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state party organizations and campaign finance.

Nick Corasaniti

The mutiny took hold on Mackinac Island.

The Michigan Republican Party’s revered two-day policy and politics gathering, the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference, was an utter mess.

Attendance had plummeted. Top-tier presidential candidates skipped the September event, and some speakers didn’t show. Guests were baffled by a scoring system that rated their ideology on a scale, from a true conservative to a so-called RINO, or Republican in name only.

And the state party, already deeply in debt, had taken out a $110,000 loan to pay the keynote speaker, Jim Caviezel, an actor who has built an ardent following among the far right after starring in a hit movie this summer about child sex trafficking. The loan came from a trust tied to the wife of the party’s executive director, according to party records.

For some Michigan Republicans, it was the final straw for a chaotic state party leadership that has been plagued by mounting financial problems, lackluster fund-raising, secretive meetings and persistent infighting. Blame has centered on the fiery chairwoman, Kristina Karamo, who skyrocketed to the top of the state party through a combative brand of election denialism but has failed to make good on her promises for new fund-raising sources and armies of activists.

...

The pitched battle for control of the state party in a pre-eminent presidential battleground is the most extreme example of conflicts brewing in state Republican parties across the country. Once dominated largely by moneyed establishment donors and their allies, many state parties have been taken over by grass-roots Republican activists energized by former President Donald J. Trump and his broadsides against the legitimacy of elections.

These activists, now holding positions of state and local power, have elevated others who share their views, prioritizing election denialism over experience and credentials.

The result has been fund-raising problems and division. The Republican Party of Arizona spent much of this year in debt.

The Republican Party of Georgia has had similar difficulties, mostly caused by legal fees related to efforts to subvert the 2020 election. The state’s governor, Brian Kemp, a rare G.O.P. leader to buck Mr. Trump, had been forced to form his own political apparatus outside the state party for his re-election campaign in 2022. The leaders of the party in both states have aligned themselves with the election-denial movement.

Trump Surrenders in Fulton County

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

 Right after surrendering to authorities in Fulton County, Georgia, Trump returned to Twitter:

https://t.co/MlIKklPSJT pic.twitter.com/Mcbf2xozsY

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2023

Bail

 Our book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.

 Devlin Barrett, Spencer S. Hsu and Isaac Arnsdorf at WP:

Under the terms of Trump’s bond in Fulton County, he was ordered to “perform no act to intimidate any person known to him or her to be a codefendant or witness in this case” and “make no direct or indirect threat of any nature against any witness” or victim. The agreement announced Monday said the restrictions “include, but are not limited to, posts on social media or reposts of posts made by another individual on social media.”

Legal experts say placing a tight leash on Trump’s pretrial statements could play into his hands by sparking a legal fight over free speech that he has already signaled he wants.

In Washington, Chutkan “no doubt wants to treat Donald Trump like any other defendant, but she must treat him like every other defendant who is also running for president, an unprecedented situation,” said Barbara McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor and former U.S. attorney.

“Any judge would be very reluctant to jail a candidate for president, not only to protect the candidate’s First Amendment rights, but to permit voters access to the defendant’s statements as they decide how to cast their ballots,” McQuade said. “It will take an awful lot for Judge Chutkan to jail Trump, and you can bet he will push the line as far as he can. It is a win-win situation for him. If he is not gagged and jailed, he can disparage prosecutors and witnesses with impunity. If he is jailed, he can portray himself as a victim of persecution.”

"The Enterprise"

Our most recent book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and Trump's disregard for law.

The Georgia indictment:

Defendant Donald John Trump lost the United States presidential election held on November 3,2020. One of the states he lost was Georgia . Trump and the other Defendants charged in this Indictment refused to accept that Trump lost,and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump .That conspiracy contained a common plan and purpose to commit two or more acts of racketeering activity in Fulton County, Georgia, elsewhere in the State of Georgia, and in other states .

THE ENTERPRISE 

At all times relevant to this Count of the Indictment ,the Defendants , as well as others not named as defendants , unlawfully conspired and endeavored to conduct and participate in a criminal enterprise in Fulton County , Georgia ,and elsewhere . Defendants Donald John Trump, Rudolph William Louis Giuliani, John Charles Eastman, Mark Randall Meadows, Kenneth JohnChesebro, Jeffrey Bossert Clark , Jenna Lynn Ellis, Ray Stallings Smith III, Robert David Cheeley, Michael A. Roman, David James Shafer , Shawn Micah Tresher Still, Stephen Cliffgard Lee,Harrison William Prescott Floyd, Trevian C. Kutti, Sidney Katherine Powell, Cathleen Alston Latham, Scott Graham Hall, Misty Hampton,unindicted co-conspirators Individual 1 through Individual 30 , and others known and unknown to the Grand Jury, constituted a criminal organization whose members and associates engaged invarious related criminal activities including, but not limited to,false statements and writings, impersonating a public officer, forgery, filing false documents, influencing witnesses, computer theft, computer trespass, computer invasion of privacy, conspiracy to defraud the state, acts involving theft, and perjury. 

This criminal organization constituted an enterprise as that term is defined in O.C.G.A. § 16-14-3(3), that is,a group of individuals associated in fact.The Defendants and other members and associates ofthe enterprise had connections and relationships with one another and with the enterprise.The enterprise constituted an ongoing organization whose members and associates functioned as a continuing unit for a common purpose of achievingthe objectives of the enterprise.The enterprise operated in Fulton County,Georgia, elsewhere in the State ofGeorgia, in other states, including,but not limited to, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin,and in the District of Columbia.The enterprise operated for a period of time sufficient to permit its members and associates to pursue its objectives.

Georgia GOP

Our recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. 

Michelle Cottle at NYT:

The backstory: Some Republican incumbents took offense last year when the Georgia G.O.P.’s Trump-smitten chairman, David Shafer, backed Trump-preferred challengers in the primaries. (Mr. Trump, you will recall, was desperate to unseat several Republicans after they declined to help him steal the 2020 election.) Those challengers went down hard, and Mr. Kemp in particular emerged as a superhero to non-Trumpist Republicans. Even so, scars remain. “That’s a burn that’s hard to get over,” says Brian Robinson, a Republican strategist who served as an adviser to former Gov. Nathan Deal.

The clash also made clear that Republican candidates, or at least popular incumbents, don’t much need the party apparatus anymore. This is part of a broader trend: The clout of parties has long been on the slide because of changes in how campaigns are funded. That got turbocharged in Georgia in 2021, when its legislature, the General Assembly, passed a Kemp-backed bill allowing certain top officials (and their general-election challengers) to form leadership PACs, which can coordinate with candidates’ campaigns and accept megadonations free from pesky dollar limits.

The PAC Mr. Kemp set up, the Georgians First Leadership Committee, raked in gobs of cash and built a formidable voter data and turnout machine. The governor plans to use it to aid fellow Republicans, establishing himself as a power center independent of the state party.

As big-money conduits, leadership PACs can bring plenty of their own problems. But whatever their larger implications, in the current mess that is Georgia Republican politics, they also mean that elected leaders “don’t have to play nice in the sandbox with a group that is sometimes at odds with them,” says Mr. Robinson.

The governor says he will skip the state party’s convention in June, as will the state’s attorney general, its insurance commissioner and its secretary of state. At a February luncheon for his Georgians First PAC, Mr. Kemp basically told big donors not to waste their money on the party, saying that the midterms showed “we can no longer rely on the traditional party infrastructure to win in the future,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

The Walker Campaign Autopsies

 Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.  In a normal year, Republicans would have regained a majority in the Senate.  But in some places, they threw away seats by running bad candidates. The worst was Herschel Walker in Georgia.  He ended up with 48.6 percent of the vote.  If the Republicans had run a normal candidate (e.g., Doug Collins) or even if Walker had run a normal campaign, the GOP would have taken the seat.

Marc Caputo at NBC reports that Walker's son told the campaign about his unacknowledged children.

By that point, because of the family information provided by the candidate’s son in January, the staff was prepared for questions about Walker’s other children after it had conducted opposition research into him to anticipate future surprises. The “oppo” book, however, didn’t have information about the abortion story, which rocked Walker’s campaign.

The oppo book was also the second dossier made about Walker.

Before Walker announced his candidacy Aug. 25, 2021, he engaged three top political consultants with Georgia roots — Austin Chambers, Paul Bennecke and Nick Ayers, who had served as former Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff. They promptly hired a law firm to conduct opposition research on Walker. It’s a standard practice on campaigns to do self-research, in order to know everything that could come out about a candidate.

In just two weeks, the firm assembled a 500-page dossier filled with possible business scandals, controversial quotes from Walker and allegations of domestic violence and bizarre behavior, according to four sources who had seen the oppo book.

“We found 500 pages in two weeks on you and God only knows what else is out there,” Chambers told Walker, according to one of the sources who overheard him discuss the book with Walker in a July meeting in the dining room of a Republican donor who lived in Atlanta’s Buckhead district.

Insiders diverge on why the three consultants did not end up working for Walker, but knowledgeable sources say they parted ways.

Natalie Allison at Politico:

Interviews with a dozen campaign staff members and Republican operatives working with the Walker campaign suggest that it wasn’t just the candidate who had flaws — the campaign itself was hampered by poor decision-making.

Some said that Walker and his wife, Julie Blanchard Walker, never fully empowered his team to make decisions, frequently questioning suggestions and plans by veteran campaign operatives. The pair insisted on spending what aides described as an “excessive” amount of time poring over proposals for every campaign stop, bottlenecking planning. That included wanting to spend significant time in heavily Democratic areas to woo Black voters, a problem that worsened in the runoff when staff wanted Walker to focus exclusively on mobilizing Republicans who had just voted for him in the general election.

Staffers said Blanchard Walker even suggested her husband should be winning as much as 50 percent of the Black vote in Georgia, regularly commenting that the campaign needed “to be getting him in front of his people, in front of his community,” as one person working on the campaign recalled.

Roger Sollenberger at The Daily Beast:

Walker wasn’t surprised he had won Johnson County. He won it, in fact, with slightly under 74 percent of the electorate. Walker was instead surprised—“absolutely shocked,” according to a former staffer—that he didn’t win 100 percent of the county. Not only did Walker fall well short of those absurd expectations, Gov. Brian Kemp outperformed him in Johnson County, another fact that infuriated him, three staffers said.

“I’m gonna call the sheriff and have him find out who didn’t vote for me,” Walker said, according to one aide.

 

Consultants and the GOP

 Our recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. 

Erick Erickson:

A number of years ago, I noted a connection between various Republican consultants and the incestuous ties within political campaigns. The GOP has a problem with a lot of consultants. They get paid commissions whether a candidate wins or loses. They get commissions from most parts of a campaign business and, interestingly, do not invest in parts that do not pay commissions. It is time for action.

On the consultant front, here in Georgia, it is not just that Raphael Warnock outspent Herschel Walker. It is how Warnock outspent Walker. In 2021, Warnock had over seventy varieties of streaming ads for digital services. The Republicans had two. This time, again, Warnock more precisely targeted various voters online than the GOP did. One will not be surprised to discover how little consultants make off digital advertising.

In 2008 and 2012, Barack Obama brought his consulting team in house, paid them salaries, and gave them benefits. The GOP continued to rely on outside consultants who drew commissions and often worked multiple candidates. Obama hired some of the best and had them totally committed to him. The GOP hired the freelancers who freelanced and made commissions. Obama got better deals because his consultants were in house, not marking up their work for commissions.

There really are no commissions for early voting ground games. The GOP consultants have focused on media ad buys, mail pieces, and not critical operations for vote mobilization. That must change for the GOP to win. Either the consultants need to rethink or the GOP needs better consultants.

Trump is going through some things...

 Our recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good.  And for Trump, things are getting bad, even before the indictments.

Lloyd Green at The Guardian:

Tuesday delivered a spate of bad news for Donald Trump and the Republican party. First, Bennie Thompson, chairman of the January 6 committee, announced that criminal referrals to the US Department of Justice would be forthcoming. A few hours later, a Manhattan jury convicted the Trump Organization on 17 counts of tax fraud, conspiracy and falsification. According to prosecutors, the former president was complicit.

And now, the incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock has prevailed in a hard-fought runoff. Georgia again rejected Herschel Walker and Donald Trump, his patron.

Come January, Mitch McConnell and his Republican colleagues in the US Senate will be staring at an actual 51-49 Democratic majority. The president’s nominees will have an easier time winning confirmation. In the end, the minority leader and his caucus will bear a portion of the cost of those abortions Walker reportedly paid for.

The ex-University of Georgia football great now joins the ranks of other Trump-endorsed casualties: Pennsylvania’s Dr Oz and Doug Mastriano; Arizona’s Kari Lake and Blake Masters; Michigan’s Tudor Dixon. Unfortunately for them, swing-state America yearned for normal.

But wait, there's more.  Alayna Treene at Axios: 

• A series of polls pitting Trump against his expected 2024 rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has stirred unease within Trumpworld..
• Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith subpoenaed local election officials in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin for their communications with Trump and his allies as part of the department's investigation into Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election....
• Trump drew massive backlash from Republicans for hosting a dinner with antisemitic rapper Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) and white nationalist Nick Fuentes, as well as pushing for the suspension of the Constitution.
• An appeals court dropped the Trump team's effort to appoint a special master to review documents seized from Mar-a-Lago.
• The Supreme Court denied Trump's bid to block the House Ways and Means Committee from obtaining his tax returns.
• A federal judge ordered Trump's former White House lawyers to provide additional grand jury testimony, dealing a blow to Trump's attempt to exert executive privilege in the Justice Department's investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

Problematic Candidate Update

 Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.  In a normal year, Republicans could be confident of regaining a majority in the Senate.  But in some places, they are running abnormal candidates.

FFS!

Dr Oz at a fundraiser in Orange County, CA, last night literally standing alongside a vehicle once owned by & used as a touring wagon by Adolph Hitlerhttps://t.co/DXDQ0CRAQY

c: @JohnFetterman @giselefetterman @AriMelber @kurtbardella @dscc @sueonthetown @kylietcheung pic.twitter.com/AKDu1ztwso

— 𝙻𝚊𝚛𝚛𝚢 𝚃𝚎𝚗𝚗𝚎𝚢 📷 🏳️‍🌈Make #GoodTrouble (@LarryTenney) October 7, 2022

NEW from @kylietcheung: Dr. Oz's research experiments at Columbia killed 329 dogs and inflicted extensive suffering on them, violating the Animal Welfare Act multiple times, for which Columbia quietly paid a fine. https://t.co/WzQfPzlTuI

— Laura Bassett (@LEBassett) October 3, 2022

EXCLUSIVE: Herschel Walker's wife has reached out to the woman who said that they had an abortion. The woman is now revealing truly stunning details about Walker's behavior as a father, backed up with texts, photos, and court records. Me @thedailybeast https://t.co/lqgK3jQDlD

— Roger Sollenberger (@SollenbergerRC) October 8, 2022

Walker Update

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. 

Herschel Walker says he has no idea who this woman is who claims she had an abortion at his urging.

We can now reveal, with her permission, that the woman is actually the mother of one of his children. She has a lot to say: https://t.co/MrpT8wPIkz

— Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) October 6, 2022

Herschel Walker is running a TV ad complaining that people are making too big of a deal of the fact that he threatened to kill his wife.

This is not a joke. pic.twitter.com/OTAQ2mwxwy

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) October 6, 2022

Dana Loesch: “I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate.” pic.twitter.com/gp3jbG5P1B

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) October 4, 2022

Herschel Walker told Hugh Hewitt this morning: “If that had happened, I would have said there's nothing to be ashamed of there.”

I just asked Walker to square that statement w/ his opposition to abortion.

Walker claimed he didn’t say it.pic.twitter.com/GRTw9AX5Fi

— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) October 6, 2022

Walker Abortion

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. 

Katherine Tully McManus at Politico:

Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker says he’ll be suing The Daily Beast for its bombshell story Monday night detailing Walker’s alleged payment to an ex-girlfriend for an abortion in 2009. Roger Sollenberger’s reporting includes a receipt from the clinic, the image of a $700 personal check from Walker and a card that the check came in and conversations with the woman’s friend who cared for her after the procedure.

Walker has backed a national 15-week ban on abortion, proposed by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and has said repeatedly that he doesn’t see any recent for exceptions to an abortion ban, including in cases of rape, incest and when the life of the mother is at stake.

The mess got messier when first, Walker’s TikTok-famous son weighed in on Twitter, lambasting his father. And then Walker himself went on Hannity to deny the Beast’s story.

“I never asked anyone to get an abortion. I never paid for an abortion, and it’s a lie,” he said on Hannity. Asked about the check, Walker said, “I send money to a lot of people.”

Why this might not matter: We’ve seen this before. Sure, some anti-abortion politicians who encourage their own partners to get abortions end up flaming out when the news breaks. But there are also survivors. During the 2012 general election, documents made public from Tennessee Republican Rep. Scott DesJarlais’ 2001 divorce proceedings revealed that the anti-abortion physician encouraged his then-wife and a mistress (who was also a patient) to have abortions. He won reelection that year, and is still in Congress today.

Problematic Statewide GOP Candidates

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. 

 Alayna Treene, Hans Nichols, Zachary Basu at Axios:

A trio of Trump-endorsed Senate candidates in three crucial battleground states are under fresh scrutiny after a 24-hour barrage of negative headlines, raising new questions about their liabilies in the general election:

• In Georgia, an explosive Daily Beast scoop alleged GOP nominee Herschel Walker lied to his own campaign staff about his undisclosed children. The story paints a picture of a volatile, unprepared candidate whom three sources independently called a "pathological liar."
• In Arizona, the New York Times reported on old writings in which Trump-backed candidate Blake Masters "approvingly quoted a Nazi war criminal" and said he opposed U.S. involvement in both world wars.
• In Pennsylvania, a Politico piece titled "Where in the world is Dr. Oz?" details Republican fears about the GOP nominee falling behind in the polls, going dark on the airwaves since May 21, and struggling to unite the party after a bruising primary.

AP:

A leading contender for the Republican nomination for governor in Michigan was sued in the 1990s, accused of using racial slurs about Black people in the workplace and sexually harassing his employees.

One of his rivals pleaded not guilty in federal court on Thursday to misdemeanor charges after authorities said he rallied Donald Trump’s supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection. Another candidate is a chiropractor and self-help guru who hawked supplements he falsely claimed treated COVID-19.

And even the contender who has garnered mainstream support had an “admittedly lame” hobby acting in low-budget horror pictures, one of which included a zombie biting off a man’s genitals.

In one of the most politically consequential states in the U.S., the Republican primary for governor is shaping up as a battle of whose personal baggage is the least disqualifying. In an otherwise favorable election year for Republicans, the spectacle surrounding the Aug. 2 contest could hobble the party’s effort to defeat Democratic incumbent Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in the fall.

J6 Hearing

Our book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.  Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellion, coups, and secession.  Trump and his henchmen were involved in violent intimidation.

Chris Cillizza at CNN:

Wandrea "Shaye" Moss was nervous.

She couldn't get the microphone in front of her to work. She initially struggled to find the words to express herself.

But as the former Georgia election worker unspooled her story of being unfairly targeted by then-President Donald Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday before the House select committee investigating January 6, she transformed into the single most powerful witness to appear in these public hearings so far.

Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, had been working in relative anonymity in Fulton County until, without warning, Giuliani and Trump fixated on the notion that they had somehow committed actions that were proof positive of votes being stolen for Democrats in the 2020 election.

Trump called Freeman a "professional vote scammer" and a "hustler." Giuliani said that Moss and Freeman had been passing around USB ports like "vials of cocaine or heroin." (Moss said at Tuesday's hearing that her mother had been handing her a "ginger mint," not a USB drive.)

In the wake of those false and racist allegations, Moss detailed how people had tried to barge into her grandmother's home and how Trump supporters had villainized her and her mother. (Her mother, who was known as "Lady Ruby," said she no longer liked being called that.) Moss said of the threats she had received: "A lot of them were racist. A lot of them were just hateful."

"I haven't been anywhere at all," she said through tears.

Her testimony drove home a powerful point that too often gets lost when we talk about the logistics of who knew what and when on January 6: The lies told by the former President and his ilk had real-world -- and deeply negative -- impacts on the lives of people who were, effectively, innocent bystanders.

Voting Machines: Breach and Seizure

Our book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. Trump and his minions falsely claimed that he won the election, and have kept repeating the Big Lie.  And we now know how close he came to subverting the Constitution.  

 Sarah D. Wire at LAT:

Supporters on the fringes of former President Trump’s circle explored seeking sweeping authority after the 2020 election to enlist armed private contractors to seize and inspect voting machines and election data with the assistance of U.S. marshals, according to a draft letter asking the president to grant them permission.

The previously undisclosed “authorizing letter” and accompanying emails were sent on Nov. 21, 2020, from a person involved in efforts to find evidence of fraud in the election that year. The documents, which were reviewed by The Times, are believed to be among those in the possession of the House Jan. 6 committee, which is scheduled to begin public hearings Thursday.

The letter appears to be one of the earliest iterations of a draft executive order presented to the then-president in the Oval Office on Dec. 18, 2020, by then- Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, former national security advisor Michael Flynn and former Overstock.com Chief Executive Patrick Byrne in an effort to take control of voting machines.

Jose Pagliery at The Daily Beast:

The Georgia Secretary of State claims it is investigating how a local election supervisor gave a cadre of 2020 election truthers improper access to an election computer system, in what initially seemed like the latest example of rogue actors misusing their government positions to cast doubt on President Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump.

But that investigation may expose a far more sinister plot than previously suspected.

According to text messages obtained by The Daily Beast, the covert access granted to Atlanta bail bondsman Scott Hall and his technical team was actually part of a coordinated effort to find election irregularities. And the effort, it turns out, was led by a local elections official and the chair of the rural county’s Republican Party—who was also one of former President Donald Trump’s infamous slate of fake electors.

Last month, The Washington Post revealed that the Secretary of State’s office was investigating the matter. But the previously unreported text messages shed new light on who arranged the possibly illegal access to the computer and who was on the team that traveled south to do it. The Secretary of State’s office is already fighting off a lawsuit over the security of the state’s voting machines and may face tough questions before a federal judge next week, given that the Coffee County incident demonstrates the state’s inability to keep its machines off limits.

The situation has election cybersecurity experts concerned about the actual danger to election systems posed by these vigilante expeditions, which are mainly driven by disproven conspiracy theories.

“Everything we have seen so far shows that the people who have been doing this have no fucking skills. You have an elephant in a porcelain store. They can accidentally install malware, accidentally cause all kinds of havoc,” said Harri Hursti, a Finnish computer programmer with extensive experience analyzing election systems.

Efforts at election subversion are ongoing.