Daily Archives: July 19, 2020

* President Trump's ratings on his handling of the coronavirus pandemic continue to collapse. In a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, just 38% approved of how Trump has dealt with the virus while 60% disapproved. Back in March, 51% approved of how Trump was handling the pandemic while 45% disapproved in that same poll. As the public has soured on Trump's ability to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, it has also moved heavily in Joe Biden's favor in general election polling. The former vice president leads Trump by 15 and 11 points in two new national polls released this week.

* Democrats have a double-digit lead in party identification. In a new Gallup number, 50% of Americans identify as Democrats or Democratic leaners while 39% describe themselves as Republicans or Republican leaners. That's a major shift from January when Republicans had a 47% to 45% edge on party ID in Gallup polling and a rapid acceleration of Democrats' advantage since even May when Democrats had a 3-point edge on the party ID question.

"That fundraising difference is even larger in swing districts currently held by well-funded Democratic incumbents.

"Recent filings show that Democrats are widening the gap. In 13 races holding primaries in June and July that are considered competitive by the Cook Political Report, incumbent Democrats have 9 times more money in the bank -- $40 million to $4.5 million -- than the best-funded Republican challengers."

Political handicappers are taking notice.

"President Trump's abysmal polling since the pandemic began is seriously jeopardizing down-ballot GOP fortunes. We may be approaching the point at which dozens of House Republicans will need to decide whether to cut the president loose and run on a "check and balance" message, offering voters insurance against congressional Democrats moving too far left under a potential Biden administration....

"...Republicans began the cycle hoping to pick up 18 seats to win the majority back. Now they're just trying to avoid a repeat of 2008, when they not only lost the presidency but got swamped by Democrats' money and lost even more House seats after losing 30 seats and control two years earlier. For the first time this cycle, Democrats have at least as good a chance at gaining House seats as Republicans on a net basis."

"The Senate has been in play for at least nine months, but Democratic chances of winning control of the chamber have improved significantly in the last few weeks....

"...Democrats need a net gain of four seats for a majority, but can control the Senate by gaining three seats and winning the White House. With less than four months to go before Election Day, the most likely outcome is a Democratic net gain of 3-5 Senate seats. Since Biden has a clear advantage in the presidential race, that means Democrats are more likely than not to win control of the Senate."

"Trump is extremely unlikely to win if the polls continue to look the way they do now. And if these numbers represent a new normal, we need to account for the possibility that this election won't be particularly close, and that new states may come into play. In other words, if the national picture remains bleak for Trump, then the slippage he's seen from earlier this year wouldn't just be limited to a handful of swing states."

In short: All the signs are there that this could be a landslide up and down the ballot for Democrats. Yes, things could change between now and November 3. But, given Trump's obstinacy in refusing to admit his errors in dealing with the coronavirus and the current spikes in some of the most populous states in the country, such a turnaround seems very, very unlikely at the moment.

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The signs of a Democratic landslide are everywhere - CNN

Democratic officials have instructed senators, members of Congress and party delegates not to physically attend their national convention this summer, a sign of the ever-shrinking aspirations for their big campaign event in the face of a surge in coronavirus cases in the United States.

The directive, issued Thursday, ensures that little will happen at the convention site in Milwaukee beyond speeches from former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., his vice-presidential nominee and a handful of other top party leaders. The remainder of the events state delegation meetings, parties, voting on the party platform and on Mr. Bidens nomination will happen virtually or not at all.

We have been working closely with state and local public health officials, as well epidemiologists, and have come to the hard decision that members of Congress should not plan to travel to Milwaukee, Chasseny Lewis, a senior adviser to the convention committee, wrote in an email to congressional aides. No delegates will travel to Milwaukee, and Caucus and Council meetings will take place virtually.

The announcement came on the evening when Mr. Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, would have been delivering his acceptance speech for the nomination, underscoring how profoundly the coronavirus has upended the campaign. Earlier this year, shortly after the spread of the virus shut down many states across the country, the Democratic National Committee postponed its event by a month.

Ensuring the safety and well-being of everyone involved with the 2020 Democratic National Convention drives every decision we make, said Katie Peters, communications director for the convention committee. This communication reiterates our guidance from several weeks ago that all members of state delegations including elected leaders should plan to conduct their official business remotely.

Traditionally, conventions have marked the start of the heated fall campaign season, giving parties a chance to energize their supporters and sway undecided voters with days of pageantry and largely uninterrupted media coverage. Party leaders typically spend months if not years fund-raising and planning every aspect of the stage-managed events, from the program to the swag to the balloon drop that traditionally ends the celebrations.

Over the past several months, Democrats have scaled back their plans, moving the convention across downtown Milwaukee from Fiserv Forum, the citys professional basketball arena, to the Wisconsin Center, a modest convention space that typically hosts events like the citys car show. The last national political event to take place there was the 2004 Green Party convention.

Party officials have been consulting regularly with doctors and epidemiologists and say they are following the recommendations of the medical establishment.

Their decision comes as Mr. Trump has made clear he wants the Republican convention to go on,. Party officials moved it to Jacksonville, Fla., from Charlotte because North Carolina state officials said they would have to abide by social distancing rules.

On Thursday, the Republican National Committee announced new details about the convention, confirming a Times report this week that the party was planning to shift some events to take place outdoors.

Ronna McDaniel, the committees chairwoman, said that a number of indoor and outdoor venues in Jacksonville would be used, including the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena, where the indoor program had been scheduled to take place, as well as several other locations. For the first three days of the convention, attendance will be limited to regular delegates, while a broader group will be allowed on the final day when Mr. Trump accepts the partys nomination.

Many top Republicans are skipping the event, flouting Mr. Trumps desire for an elaborate event attended by large crowds.

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Democratic Officials Tell Members of Congress to Skip the Convention - The New York Times

Republican Sen. Martha McSally, seen here in 2019, is losing the money race to her challenger in Arizona, Democrat Mark Kelly. Mark Wilson/Getty Images hide caption

Republican Sen. Martha McSally, seen here in 2019, is losing the money race to her challenger in Arizona, Democrat Mark Kelly.

Updated 11:52 a.m. ET

To take control of the U.S. Senate, Democrats need to net three seats in November if former Vice President Joe Biden wins, and four if President Trump is reelected.

That once looked like a near impossibility, but it's becoming a real possibility.

Republicans hold a 53-to-47 majority in the Senate, with the Democrats' side including two independents who caucus with them.

Five Republican incumbents are looking increasingly vulnerable, with their races labeled as "toss ups" by the Cook Political Report. Meanwhile one Democrat, Doug Jones of Alabama, is seen as being in real jeopardy.

Those five Republicans are Arizona's Martha McSally, Colorado's Cory Gardner, Maine's Susan Collins, Montana's Steve Daines and North Carolina's Thom Tillis.

Fundraising reports from the Federal Election Commission provide glimpses of Democratic strength. In Arizona, for instance, challenger Mark Kelly has so far outraised the Republican incumbent McSally by some $12 million.

In all, there are 11 states that Cook labels as toss-ups or that "lean" toward one party or another. Republicans hold fundraising advantages in six of those states, but in several of those races, the Democrat's latest FEC report is a bit outdated, likely underselling the candidate's money raised. For example, challenger Cal Cunningham in North Carolina announced last week that he raised about $7 million in the second quarter.

So keep that in mind as you look at the how the money race stands in each of those 11 contests:

Arizona (McSally incumbent, toss-up)- Kelly, D: $31.3 million raised, $19.7 million cash on hand- McSally, R : $19 million raised, $10.3 million cash on hand

Colorado (Gardner incumbent, toss-up)- Gardner, R: $15.7 million raised, $9.3 million cash on hand- John Hickenlooper, D: $12.6 million raised, $5.9 million cash on hand

Maine (Collins incumbent, toss-up)- Sara Gideon, D: $23 million raised, $5.5 million cash on hand- Collins, R: $16.3 million raised, $5 million cash on hand

Note: Gideon is the favorite to win Maine's Democratic primary on Tuesday.

Montana (Daines incumbent, toss-up)- Daines, R: $9.4 million raised, $5.8 million cash on hand- Steve Bullock, D: $5.9 million raised, $4.1 million cash on hand

Note: Bullock's fundraising report only goes through May 13, while Daines' goes through June 17.

North Carolina (Tillis incumbent, toss-up)- Tillis, R: $11.7 million raised, $6.5 million cash on hand- Cunningham, D: $7.7 million raised, $3 million cash on hand

Note: Cunningham's fundraising report only goes through March 31, while Tillis' goes through June 9.

Georgia (Perdue incumbent, lean R)- David Perdue, R: $13.2 million raised, $9.4 million cash on hand- Jon Ossoff, D: $4.1 million raised, $1 million cash on hand

Note: Ossoff's fundraising report only goes through May 20, while Perdue's goes through June 20.

Georgia (Loeffler incumbent, lean R)- Kelly Loeffler, R: $11.7 million raised, $6.1 million cash on hand- Doug Collins, R: $2.5 million raised, $2.2 million cash on hand- Raphael Warnock, D: $1.5 million raised, $1.2 million cash on hand

Note: The election in November is a special election and would go to a runoff if no one gets more than 50%. These three candidates led a recent poll of the race.

Iowa (Ernst incumbent, lean R)- Joni Ernst, R: $12.3 million raised, $7 million cash on hand- Theresa Greenfield, D: $7.1 million raised, $4.7 million cash on hand

Note: Greenfield's fundraising report only goes through May 13, while Ernst's goes through June 30.

Kansas (open seat with Sen. Pat Roberts retiring, lean R)- Barbara Bollier*, D: $7 million raised, $4 million cash on hand- Bob Hamilton, R: $2.2 million raised, $2.2 million cash on hand- Roger Marshall, R: $2.1 million raised, $1.9 million cash on hand- Kris Kobach, R: $595,000 raised, $317,000 cash on hand

Note: The state primaries are Aug. 4; *Bollier's numbers were released by the campaign, but not yet officially posted to the FEC.

Alabama (Jones incumbent, lean R)- Doug Jones, D: $11.8 million raised, $8.3 million cash on hand- Tommy Tuberville, R: $4 million raised, $448,000 cash on hand- Jeff Sessions, R: $2.2 million raised, $500,000 cash on hand

Note: The Republican runoff election is Tuesday. Jones' fundraising report only goes through March 31.

Michigan (Peters incumbent, lean D)- Gary Peters, D: $15.8 million raised, $8.8 million cash on hand- John James, R: $13.1 million raised, $8.6 million cash on hand

The marquee race is the Alabama Republican Senate runoff, which pits former Sen. Jeff Sessions (seen here) against former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville. Vasha Hunt/AP hide caption

The marquee race is the Alabama Republican Senate runoff, which pits former Sen. Jeff Sessions (seen here) against former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville.

1. Alabama Senate matchup to be decided: There are elections in Alabama, Maine and Texas on Tuesday. The marquee race is the Alabama Republican Senate runoff, which pits former Sen. Jeff Sessions against former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville. Back in March, Tuberville took the top spot in the GOP primary with 33% of the vote to Sessions' 32%. To win the nomination, a candidate needs more than 50% of the vote. Now, with it a two-man race, Tuberville is seen as the favorite.

Sessions has asked for debates, which Tuberville hasn't agreed to. And despite Sessions being the first U.S. senator to endorse Trump, Trump backed Tuberville and tweeted against Sessions. "Alabama, do not trust Jeff Sessions. He let our Country down," Trump tweeted. All because Sessions recused himself from the Mueller investigation as Trump's attorney general.

2. Coronavirus cases continue to jump...: More than 135,000 Americans have died of COVID-19, and more than 3 million Americans have been infected with the coronavirus. And Sunday brought more bad news for Florida, which reported 15,299 new coronavirus cases the largest single-day increase of any state since the start of the pandemic. And nearly half of Florida's intensive care units are reportedly at least 90% full. Gov. Ron DeSantis claimed last week that Florida's curve was "flatter" than other places, making the virus hang around longer.

3. ...And Trump is passing the buck: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, says he hasn't briefed Trump on the coronavirus in two months and the last time he saw him in the White House was June 2. And yet Trump now is trying to lay blame on him. "Dr. Fauci is a nice man, but he's made a lot of mistakes," Trump said on Fox News. No matter who the president tries to pass the buck to, Americans are not approving of how he has handled the pandemic. An ABC News/Ipsos poll found just 33% approved of his handling of it, while 67% disapprove. That's a record low, something reflected in an average of the polls as well.

4. Trump tries to push other areas: Trump is pushing for schools to reopen this fall, and there could be new guidelines issued to align with that from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But there could also be a series of executive orders coming from Trump, focusing on other areas like immigration, China, manufacturing and even prescription drug pricing. On Wednesday, Trump travels to Atlanta to discuss transportation and infrastructure.

And we'll see if the president announces another rally after canceling his scheduled outdoor one in New Hampshire that was supposed to take place this past weekend. It was canceled due to the threat of a tropical storm. Trump is searching around for anything to stick to get him out of this political hole he's dug for himself.

"I've never been against masks, but I do believe they have a time and a place."

After months of refusing to wear one, Trump was photographed wearing a mask during a visit to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Saturday. Staffers reportedly had been "pleading" with him to wear one.

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Democrats Could Retake The Senate. Just Follow The Money - NPR

But theres a problem with this narrative: Watson would later go on to help refound the Ku Klux Klan, though you wont learn about that here. Frank mentions the South Carolina demagogue Ben Tillman without noting that only a few years earlier, Pitchfork Ben had stood high in the populist pantheon. He writes glowingly of William Jennings Bryan, the Democrat whom the Populist Party endorsed for president in 1896, but does not remind the reader that Bryan ended his career ranting about the evils of modern science in the Scopes monkey trial. Demagogy may not have been the populists true nature; their heroism, and tragedy, were real. But how, given this history, can one wholly dismiss the kinship between the populists and the followers of Orban and Trump? Is it really a sign of elitism and hostility to democracy to regard invocations of the people, whether by right-wing nationalists or left-wing activists, as dangerous invitations to exclude the not-people?

Franks purpose here is explicitly polemical: He wants to realign history in order to force us to reimagine the present. The great cleavage of the past century, he insists, is not between progress and reaction, or liberal and conservative, but between ordinary people and the elite of both parties. Thus Franklin Roosevelt was a populist while progressive Teddy Roosevelt was an agent of reaction even though Franklin traced his own ideological descent to Teddy as well as to Jefferson.

In Franks view, Bernies with the people, and the Democratic establishment the Biden faction is in the pocket of the fat cats. The bottom line is class. But this poses another problem for Frank, because even before our Black Lives Matter moment much of the activist left cared less about class than about issues of identity. Frank treats identity politics as yet another species of elitism. Who, then, are the people? Are they the older working-class African-Americans who put Biden over the top in the Democratic primaries? Apparently not. But it was the white working class that provided Donald Trump with his margin of victory in 2016. How could that be? These Trump voters were, Frank explains as he did in his earlier book on Kansas beguiled by the phony populism of the right. By bad populism, not good populism.

Yet many of the Democratic leaders and policy experts whom Frank accuses of antipopulism now agree that liberal centrism has reached a dead end. The combination of the calls for racial justice that have filled our streets and the need for enormous government intervention in the face of the coronavirus pandemic will only hasten that leftward movement. Exhibit A would be Gene Sperling, a former senior economic official in the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. In Economic Dignity, this consummate insider lays out an agenda closer to Sanders than to Biden. Sperling writes of forces of domination and humiliation that define the lives of many low-wage earners. Unorganized workers, he argues, need labor rights and the full panoply of social protections; unionized workers need a voice in corporate affairs, as they enjoy in places like Sweden. Though Sperling prefers direct payments to people suffering dislocation to a wholly universal basic income, in most respects he has gone full Nordic.

Sperling does not thoroughly explain, or even acknowledge, his own conversion; he appears to be one of the many centrists who were shaken out of their neoliberal faith in the marketplace by the 2016 election. In seeking some orienting principle beyond economic growth and incremental redistribution, Sperling has landed on the idea, unavoidably amorphous, of dignity. Liberals tend to look on talk of values as a cynical distraction from matters of economic justice; that is, in fact, the central theme of Whats the Matter With Kansas? Yet Sperling makes a forceful case that only by speaking to matters of the spirit can liberals root their belief in economic justice in peoples deepest aspirations in their sense of purpose and self-worth.

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The Fight Over the Future of the Democratic Party - The New York Times

It's the latest indication that Democrats' hopes to win a Senate seat in Kansas for the first time since 1932 rest largely on Kobach winning the primary, hoping he would amount to the weakest candidate in a difficult general election against their candidate, state Sen. Barbara Bollier. And if Democrats take the Kansas seat, they will be in a strong position to win back the Senate majority, which currently stands at a 53-47 GOP advantage.

The new group, called the Sunflower State PAC, has quietly reserved $850,000 for ads just this week alone, according to data from the Campaign Media Analysis Group. The ad, reviewed by CNN, bashes Republican US Rep. Roger Marshall as a "phony" and "soft on Trump" and notes that Kobach is called "too conservative" who "won't compromise on building a wall" or "getting tough on China."

Sunflower State formed just this week, filing a statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission on July 13. By forming shortly after the end of the second quarter, on June 30, the group could avoid disclosing any information about its donors until the end of the third quarter, all the way in September, even if it spends millions between now and then. Even if the group chooses to file more regular monthly reports with the FEC, it won't have to disclose donors until late August, weeks after the Kansas primary on August 4.

And the group quickly hit the airwaves after forming. One day after it filed initial paperwork with the FEC, the group placed the $850,000 TV ad reservation set to run this week on broadcast and cable in Kansas.

The group placed its reservations through Old Town Media LLC, a media firm that has also placed nearly $4 million of ad reservations for Unite The Country, the super PAC supporting former Vice President Joe Biden's presidential campaign.

On its FEC forms, the group lists Amalgamated Bank as its financial institution, a company that supports progressive causes and lists as its clients, the Democratic National Committee, environmental groups, labor unions, Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and the Biden Foundation.

An individual listed as the treasurer for Sunflower State, Jim Jesse, did not respond to a phone call seeking comment. Asked about its ties to Democrats, the group responded via email to CNN simply saying: "Sunflower State is focused on educating voters about the US Senate race in Kansas and is operating in accordance with all federal election laws."

It's unclear if the group has ties to other major Democratic players, including the main Senate Democratic super PAC, Senate Majority PAC, which is aligned with Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer. A spokesman for Senate Majority PAC did not respond to inquiries seeking comment about the new Kansas outfit.

Eric Pahls, campaign manager for Marshall, argued the reason why the group is attacking the candidate is because Democrats are "terrified of him."

"This is not a new phenomenon," Pahls said in a statement, arguing the strategy at hallmarks of a past Senate race that led to the reelection of then-Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in Missouri. "In 2012, national Democrats poured money into the Missouri Senate Race to nominate flawed candidate Todd Akin, who was handily defeated by Claire McCaskill. Their ad from 2012 closely mirrors this message, and they view Kobach as even more easily beatable."

A spokesperson for Kobach didn't respond to a request for comment.

It is not the only outside group with Kobach on its mind -- nor is it the only time that an outside group has gotten involved in the opposing party's primary.

A Republican-aligned group, Plains PAC, formed last week and announced a $3 million ad campaign against Kobach in an effort to derail his candidacy. And earlier this year in North Carolina, a super PAC aligned with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to prop up a Democratic candidate that the party believed would be weaker in the general election, though that candidate ultimately lost in the Democratic primary.

In Kansas, Kobach is facing 10 Republican candidates including his top rival, Marshall, an obstetrician-gynecologist who represents the same solidly Republican, farm-focused district from which former Senate Republican leader Bob Dole, Sen. Jerry Moran and the retiring Sen. Pat Roberts built the base of their power.

Other GOP candidates include Bob Hamilton, who owns a plumbing company, and Dave Lindstrom, a former Kansas City Chiefs player and businessman.

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Democratic-allied group gives a boost to conservative Kobach in Kansas Senate primary - CNN

As a Navy combat pilot, Mark Kelly landed fighter jets on aircraft carriers hundreds of times. He flew twenty-two million miles in space as a NASA astronaut, orbiting Earth eight hundred and fifty-four times. His toughest trip may have been his last. In May of 2011, he rocketed to the International Space Station, a few months after his wife, U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords, was gravely wounded by a would-be assassins bullet while she was meeting with constituents in Tucson. During that mission, which delivered a fifteen-thousand-pound cosmic-particle detector designed to study the formation of the universe, Kelly greeted Giffords by spelling out Its a Beautiful Day in letters that drifted through the zero-gravity air.

Kelly left NASA after that flight, to devote himself to Giffordss recovery and, soon after, to building a nonprofit advocacy organization for gun safety, now called Giffords. He emerged in countless interviews, often with his wife by his side, as a genial and respectful partner in a cause that mattered to both of them, partly because they themselves own guns. In the 2018 election cycle, Giffords and other national gun-safety groups outspent the National Rifle Association, and more than eighty per cent of the candidates whom Giffords endorsed went on to victory. As Arizona sputtered through fractious policy debates and coped with the death of one Republican senator (John McCain) and the departure of another (Jeff Flake), Democrats often asked Kelly to run for office. Kelly demurred. He said he felt good about his career and his choices, although he once told an interviewer, I wish I couldve gone to Mars.

This campaign cycle, with control of the U.S. Senate at stake, he changed his mind and now finds himself well ahead of the Republican incumbent, Martha McSally, herself a former fighter pilot, who has aligned herself closely with the increasingly unpopular President Trump. Polls show Joe Biden ahead of Trump in a state that has been carried by only one Democratic Presidential candidateBill Clinton, in 1996in the past seventy-two years. As Flake put it to me, Arizona is as much the state to watch as Wisconsin. Suburban women, minorities, millennialssome of whom, particularly in the millennial camp, have been walking away from the Party for a whileare now in a dead sprint.

Among many factors is the halting response to the COVID-19 crisis by Trump and Arizonas Republican governor, Doug Ducey. An ABC News/Ipsos poll released last week found that sixty-seven per cent of Americans disapprove of Trumps handling of the pandemic. In a separate survey, an academic consortium reported that Ducey has a thirty-two-per-cent approval rate for his handling of COVID-19, the lowest of any governor in the country. Ducey took the pandemic threat lightly and raced to reopen the state, only to see confirmed cases and hospitalizations climb. On July 1st, he asked the Trump Administration to send hundreds of reinforcements for the states health workers. Aides have warned Trump that he is in trouble in Arizona, which he won by less than four points in 2016, just four years after Mitt Romney won by nine. But when I asked the Trump campaign to discuss its Arizona efforts, the spokesperson Samantha Zager sounded unconcerned. She replied, by e-mail, that Republicans have held over two thousand events during the 2020 election cycle and are seeing remarkable enthusiasm from Arizona voters, while Joe Bidens campaign seems to have just located Arizona on a map.

Much can happen in four months, but to look at this moment in freeze-frame is to see Trump, McSally, and any number of Republicans across the country struggling to find a message. Amid a pandemic that has killed more than a hundred and thirty thousand people in the United States and pushed more than forty million workers to file for unemployment, Trump seems to have abandoned his original 2020 slogan, Keep America Great, while offering neither explanation nor apology for his handling of the coronavirus and the economic fallout. His principal answer to the Black Lives Matter protests that have spread from cities into the largely white towns that helped produce his Electoral College majority has been to tweet, in all caps, LAW & ORDER! Flake, for one, does not think that Trumps tough talk, including his vilification of undocumented immigrants and his trade wars, will work. Anger and resentment are not a governing philosophy, Flake said. You can, in an election here or there, drill down on the base and pull out a win. But it runs its course, and you end up in a demographic cul de sac.

If Republicans are headed toward a reckoning in November, Arizona offers warning signals for a beleaguered party that is defending seats up and down the ballot for the second election cycle in a row. Energized Democrats have spent years building a grassroots operation, especially in the big cities that often determine statewide success. Its one of those states thats moving our direction little by little, Josh Schwerin, the communications director of Priorities USA, a pro-Biden super-PAC that is running an ad accusing Trump of failing America, said. Schwerin reported that the organization plans to spend eleven million dollars on advertising in Arizona before Election Day. The Lincoln Project, an increasingly high-profile effort led by Republicans who aim to defeat Trump and many of his supporters in the Senate, is running withering ads in Arizona, targeting Trump and McSally.

One sign of change is visible in voter registration, which has grown by twenty-five per cent since 2012. During that time, Democrats have cut the Republican registration lead in half, with about one-third of Arizonans registering as independents. Significantly, Latino voter registration and turnout have increased, favoring Democrats. An Arizona State University poll, conducted in March, before Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee, showed a wide preference among Latino voters for Kelly and any Democrat running against Trump. An intensification of old-fashioned canvassing helped. We know that we can improve voter turnout and that, over time, once you get people voting, theyll continue to vote, Eric Meyer, the former Democratic leader in the state House, told me.

On a Sunday afternoon in June, two Democratic candidates for state representative on Meyers old legislative turf, District 28, held a Zoom call to mobilize volunteers. For more than ninety minutes, forty people discussed issues ranging from health care to the challenge of attracting fence-sitting Republicans. One of the candidates was Kelli Butler, who won office on November 8, 2016, the night that Trump stunned Hillary Clinton. I thought it was going to be this wonderful election party, and I felt like Id boarded the Titanic, Butler told me. Yet Trumps election had a silver lining for Democrats in her district, which includes the prosperous Paradise Valley and parts of North Central Phoenix: it inspired anti-Republican activism. Just a huge jump of people, she said. Christine Marsh, a high-school English teacher who was once Arizonas teacher of the year, was the other candidate on the Zoom call. She is in a rematch of the 2018 state-senate race, when she came within two hundred and sixty-seven votes of defeating the incumbent, a moderate Republican named Kate Brophy McGee. To win this time, Marsh said, her team has helped register four thousand more Democrats and is making about two thousand phone calls a week.

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Democrats Are Optimistic in Arizona - The New Yorker