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Showing posts with label Indiana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Indiana. Show all posts

Friday, December 12, 2025

World War G: Trump Loses the Indiana Battle

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American PoliticsIt includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  The passage of Prop 50 in CA will offset the Texas gerrymander.  The D victory in VA will partly offset GOP gerrymanders elsewhere.

Mitch Smith at NYT:

Republican members of the Indiana Senate bucked President Trump on Thursday and joined Democrats in voting down a new congressional map that would have positioned Republicans to sweep the state’s U.S. House seats.

The 19 to 31 vote was a highly public defeat for Mr. Trump, who has spent significant political capital pushing for redrawn maps in Republican-led states and who repeatedly threatened political consequences for Indiana Republicans who did not fall in line. The defiance of Mr. Trump comes as he faces other signs of rifts within his own party.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office after the vote, Mr. Trump downplayed the result in Indiana, saying that “we won every other state.” He also said that he hoped the president pro tem of the Indiana Senate, who voted against the map, loses his next primary.

The rejection of the map in the State Senate, where Republicans hold 40 of the 50 seats, followed months of presidential lobbying that turned increasingly pointed in recent weeks as it became clear that some holdouts were not budging. Mr. Trump had called some of them out by name on social media, openly questioning their loyalty to the party and pledging to back primary challengers against them.

Friday, July 15, 2022

Abortion and the Midterm

 Our 2020 book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses how polarization has affected American life.  Abortion is a central issue in our national divide.



David Siders, Adam Wren, and Megan Messerly at Politico:
In the three weeks since the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe, Republicans poised for a winning midterm election have strained to keep public attention squarely on President Joe Biden’s weak job approval ratings and on inflation, fearful that abortion — a deeply felt issue that polls poorly for conservatives — could lift Democratic turnout and push moderates away from the GOP.

The case has become an instant flashpoint in the nation’s abortion wars, alarming Republicans as they try to use abortion to rally base voters without alienating the majority of Americans who say abortion should remain legal in at least some circumstances.

But the case of the pregnant 10-year-old has laid bare how uncontrollable GOP messaging around abortion may be. Not only were right-wing media outlets and Republican politicians who cast doubt on the story forced to backtrack once the facts of the case were confirmed, but the hits to Republicans appear likely to keep coming.

On Thursday, Jim Bopp, the National Right to Life Committee’s general counsel, inflamed the issue when he told POLITICO that the 10-year-old girl should have carried her pregnancy to term – a statement he later said resulted in him receiving death threats.

Despite what GOP leaders and strategists would prefer, the story is unlikely to fade quickly. Later this month, Indiana’s state legislature plans to convene a special session explicitly to pass new curbs on abortion, likely becoming the first state to do so in the wake of the Dobbs decision that reversed the national right to abortion enshrined by Roe in 1973.

Monday, September 4, 2017

Why Did Trump Carry the Rustbelt? One Reason: Union Membership Had Dropped

In Defying the Odds, we suggest an under-examined reason why Democrats were unexpectedly weak in key industrial states;  union membership was way down.
At the high point of their influence many years ago, they [labor unions] supplied the people who worked the phones, stuffed the envelopes and walked the precincts on behalf of the Democrats.  In some states, they still were a significant force, but overall, they were on the wane. Between 1983 and 2015, union membership as a share of employed workers plunged by almost half, from 20.1 percent to 11.1 percent.   Not coincidentally, the drop-off was steepest in five industrial states that voted Republican in the 2016 presidential race 
 Percentage Change in Union Density, Selected States, 1983-2015

                                    1983                2015                Change
Wisconsin                    24.2                 08.4                -15.8
Michigan                     30.8                 15.3                 -15.5
Indiana                        25.2                 10.1                 -15.1
Pennsylvania               27.7                 13.4                 -14.3
Ohio                             25.3                 12.4                 -12.9

Source: Barry T. Hirsch and David A. Macpherson, “State Union Membership Density 1964-2015,” http://unionstats.gsu.edu/State_Union_Membership_Density_1964-2015.xlsx; Barry T. Hirsch, David A. Macpherson, and Wayne G. Vroman, “Estimates of Union Density by State,” Monthly Labor Review 124, No. 7, July 2001, http://unionstats.gsu.edu/MLR_7-01_StateUnionDensity.pdf

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Saving the GOP Senate II

Reid Wilson reports at The Hill:
On the presidential campaign trail, Rubio had trashed Washington. But the Rubio who returned to the Senate was not that Rubio. He threw himself into legislating with new vigor, especially as he sought funding to fight the outbreak of the Zika virus, which hit his state hard. McConnell noticed his young colleague on the floor more often, and he suspected all the talk about hating the Senate had been a facade for Republican primary voters.
McConnell asked Rubio to reconsider his decision not to seek reelection. When Rubio didn’t show up for one of the Senate Republican Conference’s weekly lunches, McConnell told his fellow senators to seek him out and urge him to run again. Ward Baker, the executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), organized a parade of phone calls from friends and supporters back in Florida pushing Rubio to get back in the race.
By Memorial Day, Rubio had all but decided to enter the field. He made it official in June, citing the devastating mass shooting at an Orlando nightclub.
...
Sen. Rob Portman’s (R) campaign had focused on the number of jobs Ohio lost during Strickland’s tenure in office, a term that overlapped with the 2008 recession. Those attacks sent Strickland’s favorable ratings plunging 10 points between March and June, and his unfavorable ratings soared even more than that. Before Labor Day, Republicans had spent an incredible $35 million making the case against Strickland.
...
Portman’s advantage: “The flip side of being a longtime D.C. insider is a mountain of money,” a top Democratic strategist lamented.
Indiana was not what Democrats hoped.
Bayh began to look like a candidate whose time had passed, like Tommy Thompson or George Allen before him. He had been a great candidate when he ran in 1998 and 2004; by 2016, he lamented to the Indianapolis Star, politics had changed — and, he may have implied, left him behind.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Latest Crossroads GPS Ads in House Races

Crossroads GPS gets tough again in Nevada 4:



Another hit on Tim Bishop's ethics in New York 1:


A tax attack in CA 21:


And in Indiana 2, the Democrat is "one of them."

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Crossroads Senate Ads

Crossroads GPS goes after Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) on taxes and jobs:

 

...and after Shelley Berkley (D-Nevada) on ethics and taxes:

 

... and after Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) on taxes:



...and after Joe Donnelly (D-IN) on taxes and Obamacare:

 

...and after Tim Kaine (D-VA) on spending and taxes:

  ... and after

American Crossroads, meanwhile. goes after Bill Nelson (D-Florida) over Obamacare and rationing:

Friday, June 8, 2012

Update on Crossroads Ad Buy

At Politico, Alexander Burns writes of the new Crossroads ads in New Mexico, Indiana, and Montana:
New Mexico is a race that’s looked like more of a reach for Republicans: the Democratic nominee, Martin Heinrich, has held a lead over former Rep. Heather Wilson (a former Crossroads board member, by the way) in public polling. The fact that outside groups are investing there is a sign that the race isn’t a foregone conclusion.
Indiana is on the other side of the spectrum: a campaign in which Republicans have been favored, but where Sen. Dick Lugar’s defeat in the GOP primary has raised the prospect of a competitive general election. And Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly, the challenger for the seat, rushed to paint the Crossroads ads as a sign Republicans are nervous.
...
The ad buys show Crossroads testing the limits of the Senate map on both sides — offense and defense. That’s one of the luxuries of virtually unrestricted campaign spending: you don’t have to be as cautious about cutting checks or practice aggressive triage early in the election cycle.
At The Hill, Cameron Joseph says:
 Crossroads GPS is spending $866,000 combined to blame Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) on the rising national debt and rip them for backing Democrats' health insurance reform law and the stimulus package. In New Mexico, American Crossroads introduces former Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) to voters with a positive bio spot that has approximately $250,000 behind it. Wilson won her primary on
The ad buys suggest that the behemoth Republican-affiliated group sees both New Mexico and Indiana as potentially competitive races — it's their first ad buys in either state. Most observers see Wilson as a slight underdog, but Republicans are high on her candidacy. Indiana became a state in play when Indiana state Treasurer Richard Mourdock (R) beat incumbent Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.).

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Crossroads in NM, MT, and IN

American Crossroads is running an ad for Heather Wilson in New Mexico:

 

 Crossroads GPS is doing "New Majority Agenda" issue ads against Tester in Montana:

 

And against Donnelly in Indiana: