The Midterm Races That Give Democrats Nightmares

Career Democrats have many fears about the 2022 midterm elections that will keep them up at night.

Chief among these: losing Congress and handing over investigative powers and the ability to set the Washington agenda to Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell. Giving Republicans full control over states where abortion is still contested. Seeing President Biden turn into a crippled duck prematurely.

At the top of that list is the concern that voters will elect Donald Trump’s favorite candidates to the office of Secretary of State, a job that in many states plays a critical role in securing voting rights, while also ensuring the smooth running and fairness of the vote. the electoral system.

To put it plainly, the widespread concern on the left is that Trump’s loyalists will guarantee his re-election in 2024 if they take power in 2022. It’s not something that Trump or these candidates are particularly hard to refute.

Secretary of State is generally not a glamorous performance; it is primarily an administrative job and usually attracts little attention from the public and the press. That changed significantly in battlefield states after the Trump-fueled 2020 election chaos, and now money and attention is pouring into the races of secretaries of state — not least because the former president has made it his mission to pick Republican candidates who support his conspiracy theories. .

It’s easy to say what Trump wants: total allegiance. It is often much more difficult to figure out what voters want.

Take part in a new poll of five swing states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota and Nevada – shared with The New York Times ahead of publication. The survey, which surveyed 1,400 people likely to vote in November, was conducted by: David Binder Research on behalf of iVote, a group that supports Democrats in Secretaries of State.

Interpreting the findings, which are not aimed at candidates but at the opinion of voters about what they find important in a secretary of state, is a difficult matter.

The poll found that 82 percent of likely voters see “accurate vote counting in elections and certifying the results” as an all-important responsibility. In addition, 67 percent said they would be much more likely to support a candidate “who prioritizes options for all voters and ensures that every vote is counted.”

But as is often the case with voters, they give us conflicting signals. Fifty-nine percent said they would be much more likely to support a candidate “who says the top priority is to ensure fair elections and ensure that only eligible voters vote.” That sounds a lot more like what many Republican candidates say.

As an indication of how much traction Trump’s claims still have on the GOP base, 72 percent of voters who elected Trump in 2020 said the election was stolen from him. That’s about a third of all voters.

Key themes of the 2022 midterm elections so far

And when the poll is split between those who said Biden won fairly and those who held the false belief that Trump’s election was stolen, a remarkable symmetry emerges: Supermajorities on both sides express concern that “elected officials will try to overthrow the elections. will of the people’, for example, but each group is naturally concerned that the other team will undermine the real results – and each group differs as to what those are.

Ellen Kurz, the founder and president of iVote, has been dealing with secretaries of state for nearly a decade, she said in an interview. In 2018, the group spent $7 million helping Democrats in Arizona and Michigan, who later became key players in the 2020 election.

This year iVote a budget of more than double that amount — $15 million, which it plans to spend on broadcast, cable and digital advertising to bolster its candidates.

Kurz argued that long before Trump took the national stage, Republicans tried to suppress the votes of people of color and other key Democratic blocs — but that his obsession with voter fraud and claims of stolen elections have boosted those efforts.

“I believed it used to be really bad, but this is another level,” she said. “It’s on a next level of danger.”

Republicans are also hyper-focused on races of secretaries of state, led by a group of Trump allies called the America First Secretary of State Coalition, along with official groups like the Republican State Leadership Committee.

Let’s break down each of the surveyed swing states:

Arizona, August 2

These primaries have not happened yet, and Democrats and proponents of democracy say they are especially crucial.

On the Republican side is Trump-backed candidate Mark Finchem, a state legislator who has gone all in on the former president’s 2020 conspiracy theories.

Finchem is just one of four contenders, a group that also includes Shawnna Bolick, another state legislator who also supported throwing the election results in Trump’s favour; Beau Lane, an advertising executive backed by business; and Michelle Ugenti-Rita, a state legislator who has promoted some restrictive voting laws in the Arizona Senate.

The incumbent Secretary of State, Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, is running for governor. That has left a vacuum on the Democratic side, with Adrian Fontes, the former Maricopa County Recorderthe state’s largest county, vying for the job against Reginald Bolding, the State House minority leader and a voting rights activist.

Despite all the national attention these primaries have received, they have yet to spark a lot of enthusiasm among the actual voters in Arizona. For example, a debate between Fontes and Bolding in May attracted an audience of only 70 peopleaccording to The Tucson Sentinel.

Democrats nominated Bee Nguyen, a progressive nonprofit executive and state legislator, to run for secretary of state, a position that proved pivotal in 2020 as Trump tried to pressure Georgian officials to reverse the results in his favor.

But during this year’s Republican primary, pro-democracy groups spent a lot of money to help Brad Raffensperger, the incumbent secretary who defied Trump’s demands. In May, Raffensperger easily sent Trump’s chosen candidate, Representative Jody Hice.

One factor in that race was a wave of external spending. Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump Republican agent who helped raise funds to defend Raffensperger, said she noticed that when voters were asked about Hice in focus groups, they kept saying they’d never heard of “her.”

Hi is a man. His lack of brand awareness struck Longwell as an opportunity, so Unite America and other groups she worked with donated money into the race in the last 10 days.

“At the end you could see there was a wide opening for Raffensperger to crawl through,” she said.

Michigan, August 2

Karamo has made incendiary comments on her personal podcast, such as calling yoga a “satanic ritual” originally intended by its creators to “evoke a demon.” She’s almost certain to become the GOP’s official nominee in August, Michigan Republicans say.

Democrats back Jocelyn Benson, the incumbent Secretary of State who oversaw the 2020 election. Benson has become a top villain for Republicans, falsely accusing her of manipulating the results in favor of Biden in Michigan, which he narrows. won.

In particular, Benson has drawn fire for sending a ballot paper to every registered voter in the state, a decision that an appeals court in Michigan later announced. ruled was lawful.

Minnesota, August 9

The leading Republican candidate is Kim Crockett, who called the 2020 election “rigged” in a campaign email. At the Minnesota Republican convention, where Crockett won the approval of the state’s GOP, she played a video that portrayed George Soros, the liberal financier, above the caption, “Let’s destroy elections forever and ever.”

Crockett has also shown support for “2000 Mules,” a documentary by Dinesh D’Souza promoting various conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

On the Democratic side, Steve Simon, the incumbent Secretary of State, is running for reelection. He has a huge fundraising lead on Crockett, with over $500,000 on hand as of May, while reporting she only had $56,000 in her campaign account.

Nevada, June 14

Jim Marchant, who organized the America First Secretary of State Coalition, handily won the Republican primary. Marchant has said a “clique” of people around the world are manipulating voting machines, a conspiracy theory that has been repeatedly debunked and is the subject of a libel suit against several Trump allies. As for Marchant’s claim that his own failed bid to Congress in 2020 was stolen, he… told The Guardian that “many judges have also been bought off”.

Marchant’s Democratic opponent is Cisco Aguilar, who ran unchallenged. Aguilar, a lawyer and former state athletics commissioner, has the support of the most prominent Democrats in the state, as well as Andre Agassi, the retired tennis star.

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— Blake

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