In this edition: Republicans blow off the omicron variant, retirements weaken the Democrats ahead of 2022 and a lawsuit tries to halt Florida's special congressional election.
Somewhere in America, an opposition researcher just learned that he has to watch every Dr. Oz segment ever aired on TV. This is The Trailer.
Wp Get the full experience.Choose your plan ArrowRight
On Monday evening, a few hours after President Biden told Americans that the omicron variant of the coronavirus was a matter of concern but “not a cause for panic,” the Republicans running for U.S. Senate in Ohio debated how to prevent more government health mandates.
“We should shut down the government until the vaccine mandate ends,” author J.D. Vance told voters at the Ohio Press Network's forum near Cincinnati, urging Republicans to tie the debt limit vote to Biden's vaccine-or-testing mandate for companies with more than 100 employees.
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
“We've got to stop mask mandates,” said former state treasurer Josh Mandel. “It's not up to bureaucrats and politicians, it's up to moms and dads whether our kids wear masks.” And luxury car dealer Bernie Moreno asked why his rivals “never put themselves on the line,” and opposed stay-at-home orders, at the start of the pandemic.
“I did,” Moreno said, “and I got death threats.”
As policymakers wait to learn more about the omicron variant, the political response among Republicans is already firming up. Candidates and elected officials are promising to battle any new mandates, to unwind most mandates now in place, and to prevent state and local governments from ever again acting like they did in March 2020.
Story continues below advertisement
“It is likely that this virus will be with us for the foreseeable future and, as we have done with so many other viruses, we must learn to live with it,” said Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin (R), who is running for governor in 2022 and who signed a ban on vaccine mandates when Gov. Brad Little (R) was out of the state. (He revoked the ban when he returned to Boise.) “We need to go on about our lives and learn to protect our health and improve our immune systems with the range of tools that God has provided us.”
Advertisement
Diverging partisan responses to the pandemic are as old as the virus itself, and they’ve widened this year, even when covid-19 deaths in places won by Donald Trump have outpaced deaths in places won by Biden. Republican anger at lockdowns that took place when Trump was president has transferred, seamlessly, into anger at Democrats who justified those lockdowns.
“Joe Biden and the Democrats need to stop threatening shutdowns of schools, stop threatening shutdowns of business,” Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said in a Monday night interview on Fox News, though Biden had not threatened any shutdowns at all in his speech.
Story continues below advertisement
Some of the first Republican reactions to the omicron news, which broke the day after Thanksgiving, characterized it without proof as a power play — “the Midterm Election Variant,” as Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson (R) put it on Twitter — to help Democrats keep generous absentee voting laws in place.
Advertisement
“It's political motivations, from Democrats and people in the Biden administration,” Jackson, a medical doctor and former presidential physician, said in a Monday interview with Newsmax. “It's monetary motivation from the people making this. For crying out loud, how much money are they going to make if every person on the planet has to have the vaccine, has to have a booster, and then we have to have seasonal vaccines every year?”
Other Republicans facing reelection next year also highlighted the ways they were fighting vaccine mandates. When a federal judge in Missouri blocked a vaccine mandate for health workers in the states that had sued to stop it, Missouri Attorney Gen. Eric Schmitt (R) got a boost for his 2022 U.S. Senate bid. (The judge, Matthew Schelp, was appointed by Donald Trump.)
Story continues below advertisement
“People have had enough of the government locking people down,” Schmitt said in remarks shared by his Senate campaign. “They’ve had enough of the government instituting mask mandates. They’ve had enough of the government instituting vaccine requirements.”
Advertisement
In Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has achieved hero status for many conservatives by opposing even private-sector-imposed mandates, the discussion about the omicron variant was largely about how the state wouldn't respond. No lockdowns. No mandates. And the state would continue to offer unemployment benefits to people who left jobs over a refusal to get vaccinated.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result,” DeSantis said Monday. “The lockdowns didn’t stop covid. Forced masking, they said last year, would end the pandemic if 80 percent wore masks. Many more wore masks, and it hasn’t worked.”
Story continues below advertisement
The assertions are both impossible to prove and wildly popular positions with Republican voters, but far less popular than most of what the party's building a 2022 campaign around — battling inflation and “a parents' bill of rights.” Roughly 60 percent of Americans have been vaccinated, and in all but five states — Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, North Dakota and Tennessee — fewer than half of residents have refused to get one of the available shots. Polling has found the share of Americans who say they'll “never” get the vaccine shrinking since the start of 2021 — the holdouts are most often Republicans — and found broad support for multiple kinds of mandates, from masks in public schools to vaccines for health care workers.
Advertisement
“It’s a numerical majority, but not necessarily a vocal majority, and that seems to be the key here,” said Patrick Murray, the director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute in New Jersey, speaking of the vaccinated. “The numerical majority may not be enough. Nearly all the 40 percent who are against mandates say it's very important to them. The 60 percent who support mandates, they say it's not their top issue.”
This month's elections backed up that theory. According to Edison Research exit polling in Virginia, 84 percent of voters had received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, 54 percent favored vaccine mandates for employers and the same percentage believed that Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee, would handle the pandemic better than Republican nominee Glenn Youngkin.
Story continues below advertisement
The problem, for Democrats, was that vaccinated and mandate-tolerant Virginians didn't vote as a bloc. Forty-three percent of voters who had gotten the vaccine went for Youngkin, along with 20 percent who — unlike the candidate they voted for — favored an employer mandate.
Advertisement
Youngkin made a real push for those voters, running an ad encouraging Virginians to get vaccinated and narrowing the issue to what the state should be requiring from public employees. “Everybody is now starting to recognize that if we can just get the vaccine out, it will increase everyone’s confidence to do all the things we want them to do,” Youngkin told a local news interviewer in February. Later, while he promised to roll back the state's vaccine and mask mandates, he rejected the approach of governors like DeSantis, who banned local governments from making their own mandates.
In six weeks, Youngkin will be sworn in, and researchers will have a clearer picture of the omicron variant and its risks. In the meantime, other Republicans are approaching the new variant less as a public health problem and more as a test for politicians — will they, or won't they, rule out lockdowns and mandates?
Story continues below advertisement
Mehmet Oz, the heart surgeon and television personality best known as “Dr. Oz,” has been advocating vaccinations all year, appearing on Pennsylvania TV stations to debunk vaccine worries and myths. On Tuesday he launched a campaign for U.S. Senate in the state with an op-ed that mentioned vaccines just once, as a “gift to the world” that was “made possible by President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed.” He spent more time blasting away at “government mandated policies that caused unnecessary suffering” and “the arrogant, closed-minded people in charge [who] closed our parks, shuttered our schools, shut down our businesses, and took away our freedom.”
Advertisement
In a 60-second spot, Oz sharped the point. “Covid has shown us that our system is broken,” he said, attacking the lockdowns of 2020 and attributing them to “Washington” in general. “They took away our freedom, without making us safer.”
Every mention of the pandemic was in the past tense.
Reading list
“Democratic midterm fears mount as policies fail to resonate with voters,” by Tyler Pager, Sean Sullivan, Michael Scherer and Marianna Sotomayor
Story continues below advertisement
The strategy of panicking about a strategy.
“No one seems to like the Lincoln Project anymore,” by Christopher Cadelago and Meridith McGraw
Was the fake white nationalist tiki rally the turning point?
“Trump allies work to place supporters in key election posts across the country, spurring fears about future vote challenges,” by Amy Gardner, Tom Hamburger and Josh Dawsey
Advertisement
Republicans who insist that 2020 was stolen grab control of some voting systems.
“That ‘Team Beto’ fund-raising email? It might not be from Beto,” by Shane Goldmacher
If a fundraising pitch feels dishonest, it probably is.
“Democratic allies press the White House to focus more — and say more — on inflation worries,” by Annie Linskey and Ashley Parker
When Build Back Better is a distraction.
“Laser-focused on 2020, Trump seeks a Michigan Legislature that could help him in 2024,” by Allan Smith and Henry J. Gomez
Why a state legislature that could be willing to overturn an election appeals to Trump more than one that wasn't.
“Youngkin tests activists’ patience as he pushes abortion and guns aside,” by Laura Vozzella
Where do social issues fit on the new governor's agenda?
“‘They’re all begging me’: Trump’s 2024 veep tryouts get underway,” by Marc Caputo
Nikki Haley's out, Tim Scott might be in.
Retirement watch
House Democrats crossed a milestone Monday, but Republicans were much more interested in marking it. Rep. Tom Suozzi (N.Y.) announced a campaign for governor in 2022, becoming the 18th House Democrat to vacate his seat — one more than the number of Democrats who retired or otherwise left the House ahead of the party's 2010 meltdown.
“Democrats are dropping like flies,” Calvin Moore, a spokesman for the Congressional Leadership Fund, said in a statement released during Suozzi's news conference on his next moves. “They know their days in the majority are numbered and are making the wise choice to quit rather than face defeat next November.”
Who's actually retiring, and why? They fit into three categories.
Retirements that opened up swing seats. That describes eight of this year's retirements, including Suozzi's, though redistricting complicated their decision and the political math. Suozzi is leaving New York's 3rd Congressional District, a stretch of Long Island that got bluer since it was drawn; Barack Obama carried it by three points in 2012, and Joe Biden carried it by 10 points last year. Democrats control the redistricting process in Albany, which could shore up the seat for another candidate — but Republicans romped in this month's local elections around Long Island, and the party wants to put more of suburban New York in play next year.
“I’m going to do everything I can to make sure my congressional seat goes to another common-sense Democrat,” Suozzi said Monday. But he didn't clear a field for a successor. Melanie D'Arrigo, who challenged Suozzi in last year's Democratic primary and grabbed 26 percent of the vote, and said in an interview that Suozzi's decision put her in a strong position to be the Democratic nominee. While Suozzi cultivated a business-friendly, moderate image — he was one of the Democrats who demanded a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure package before a vote on Build Back Better — D'Arrigo had always run to his left.
“Democrats used to fight for the environment, for health care, for civil rights, for reproductive choice,” D'Arrigo said. “You can call that common sense or whatever you want.” On Monday, Suozzi talked at length about getting some of the state and local tax (SALT) reduction restored after Republicans slashed it in 2017; D'Arrigo said she would have fought for some reduction, but less. “In districts like ours,” she said, referring to towns that cost more to live in than most of the country, “we've got many middle-class families that need relief.”
Seven other Democrats are retiring in districts that Biden carried by 10 points or less, or that Donald Trump carried narrowly; all of those lawmakers are being targeted by the National Republican Congressional Committee. Two of them, Rep. G.K. Butterfield (N.C.) and Rep. Filemon Vela (Tex.), announced their coming retirements as Republicans drew maps that would make it harder for them to hold their seats. One of them, Rep. Ron Kind (Wis.), retired before a Republican drawn-map made his district, which Trump carried by five points, more favorable to the GOP. Rep. Cheri Bustos (Ill.) and Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (Ariz.) both retired even after mapmakers drew districts that would be winnable, Illinois Democrats in the first case, a nonpartisan commission in the second. And two more, Rep. Conor Lamb (Pa.) and Rep. Charlie Crist (Fla.), are leaving to seek statewide office.
Retirements that opened up safe seats. Nine of the Democrats' 2022 vacancies are unlikely to affect party control in any way. Rep. Peter Welch (Vt.), Rep. Anthony G. Brown (Md.), Rep. Karen Bass (Calif.) and Rep. Val Demings (Fla.) are all seeking higher office from districts that backed Biden by at least 25 points; none of those seats are serious GOP targets. Rep. David E. Price (N.C.), Rep. Jackie Speier (Calif.), Rep. Mike Doyle (Pa.), Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (Tex.) and Rep. John Yarmuth (Ky.) are leaving seats anchored in deep-blue cities, and the only local question is over which Democrat will replace them.
Retirements in seats that won't exist anymore. There's just one of those: Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) bolted from his Mahoning Valley seat to run for U.S. Senate. Shortly thereafter, Republicans in Columbus broke up the region formerly represented by Ryan into several Republican-leaning seats and one safely Democratic one, a majority-Black district now represented by Rep. Shontel Brown (D).
In a good Democratic year — which, let's be honest, the party isn't expecting right now — none of these retirements would hand seats to the GOP. In a good Republican year, in which every GOP candidate ran as far ahead of the party's 2020 numbers as Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin did this month, eight of these seats would change hands, more than enough to put Republicans back in the majority.
Could Democrats compete in the places where Republicans are retiring, to cut those losses? Not really, no. Twelve House Republicans have announced their retirements. Just one of them, Rep. Lee Zeldin (N.Y.), represents a district that Donald Trump won by less than 10 points. (Zeldin's Long Island district actually butts up against Suozzi's.) Another, Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (Ohio), left a seat that was drawn to be safely Republican, but got more Democratic votes in the same gerrymander that blotted out Tim Ryan's seat; Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) is leaving after Democrats combined his district with another downstate seat, held by Rep. Darin LaHood (R).
Every other Republican retirement, so far, has come in deep-red territory. And that's obviously a sign of confidence about who's going to be running the House in 2023.
Ad watch
Susan B. Anthony List Education Fund, “Amy Miles.” On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the constitutionality of Mississippi's ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Abortion opponents see, for the first time in decades, a chance to roll back or overturn the protections in Roe v. Wade. A decision wouldn't come for months, but the antiabortion SBA List is running some ads to set the table for a favorable ruling — like this one, with an Oregon woman who talks about surviving an abortion and finding out years later. “I would want to tell the Supreme Court that my life mattered,” Miles says. “It's time to make a change.” The ad doesn't get into the specifics of the case or of Miles's story, but she has said elsewhere that her mother was 28 weeks pregnant at the time of the attempted abortion, which would make it illegal in about half the country under current state laws.
Judicial Crisis Network, “Career Puppet.” This newsletter has a soft spot for ads with mysterious financing that go after the threat of “dark money.” It's a bipartisan habit, engaged in here by a conservative group that has kept its largest donor anonymous in its tax filings. The ad labels Dale Ho, the director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, as a “a career puppet for left-wing dark money groups” who should be denied a seat on the federal bench. Opposition to mandatory voter ID polls worse than any other liberal voting rights stance, and it gets whacked here, as well as Ho's role in defeating a Trump administration effort to leave noncitizens out of the census count; or, per the ad, “when the census wanted to know if Americans were actually Americans”
Kevin Rinke, “Drive.” The latest Republican to enter the 2022 race for governor of Michigan, Rinke, a former Pontiac dealer, introduces himself to voters by comparing Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) to a Yugo. “Whitmer acts like a queen, not a governor,” Rinke says, hitting Whitmer over a trip she took to Florida while she was urging Michiganders not to travel. That's going to be a theme of every Republican campaign against Whitmer; Rinke, who's said he will invest at least $10 million of his own money into the race, is coming at them from a “conservative outsider” angle, but no one in the GOP primary has experience in elected office.
You are reading The Trailer, the newsletter that brings the campaign trail to your inbox.
Poll watch
“President Joe Biden is fulfilling campaign promises.” Do you agree or disagree? (NPR/Marist, 1,048 adults)
Agree: 43% (-20 since April)
Disagree: 51% (+16)
Unsure: 6% (+4)
Anyone who paid close attention to the 2020 presidential election can name a few Biden agenda items that have yet to be acted on. The public option? Not happening right now. A $15 minimum wage? Voted down by a half-dozen Democrats in the Senate. Marist's pollsters didn't ask Americans which of Biden's promises, specifically, were unfulfilled, but Republicans and Trump supporters are more likely to say they haven't seen action from Biden: Just 1 in 10 Biden voters say he hasn't fulfilled his promises, compared to 1 in 5 Trump supporters. There's no racial gap despite Biden's strength with non-White voters last year and his double-digit defeat among White voters: Half of White voters and half of non-White voters now say that Biden isn't fulfilling his promises.
Gerrymandering
South Carolina's Republican-run legislature is moving ahead with maps that would eliminate the state's only swing seat, by adding more Republican votes to the Charleston-based 1st Congressional District. Joe Cunningham, the Democrat who won that seat in 2018 and lost it last year, spoke at a Monday hearing of the Senate redistricting subcommittee
“If gerrymandering was an art, this proposed plan would be a Picasso,” said Cunningham, who's running for governor in 2022. “For decades, legislators have bent over backwards to eliminate competitive congressional districts and create safe districts, where it’s impossible to lose the general election. And what’s been the result? You have a Congress that cannot function.”
The full Senate will return Monday, and no serious challenge to the maps is expected, though Democrats and civil rights groups are ready to sue.
In the states
New York. As we told you higher up in this newsletter, three-term Rep. Tom Suozzi (D) joined the Democrats' crowded gubernatorial primary Monday, telling reporters that he would “work with anybody” to tackle property taxes, stop crime, fix homelessness and convince people to stop leaving the state for Florida and Texas.
“It’s not about being politically correct, it’s about doing the correct thing,” Suozzi said at a news conference, calling himself a “common-sense Democrat” who could lap the field in real experience.
Suozzi is the third well-established Democrat to enter the race against Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) who took over from disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in August. He was beaten into the race by Attorney Gen. Letitia James and New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, both products of the left-wing Working Families Party, which gave the impression of a pileup in the race's liberal lane. Democratic strategist Rebecca Katz called Suozzi's decision “good news” for James, who needed it — her campaign launch was overshadowed by the aftermath of the Cuomo scandal, including from Cuomo himself, who accused the attorney general of a “political prosecution.”
Williams narrowly lost to Hochul in the 2018 primary for lieutenant governor, a far stronger performance than Suozzi pulled off in his quixotic 2006 campaign for governor. (Suozzi won 18 percent of the vote against future governor Eliot Spitzer in the Democratic primary.) But in early polling, Williams and James have trailed Hochul, and the governor is dominant in every part of the state outside of New York City — including Suozzi's Long Island. In 2018, when Hochul prevailed by around 90,000 votes, she got a 30,000-vote cushion in Long Island's Nassau and Suffolk counties.
Texas. Actor Matthew McConaughey will not run for governor in 2022, explaining in a short video that he would not take the “humbling and inspiring path” into politics after a few months of research and exploration.
“Our politics needs new purpose,” McConaughey said in the video, standing in front of copies of his best-selling memoir, framed by an American flag and a Texas state flag. “Do we have the courage to help more than we hurt? Can we expect to get what we earn, or what we think we deserve?”
McConaughey's announcement ended a year, at least, of speculation about whether he'd challenge Gov. Greg Abbott (R) as he seeks a third term. “It would be up to the people more than it would me,” the actor told radio host (and Washington Post columnist) Hugh Hewitt last November, while promoting the memoir. Pollsters found voters intrigued by McConaughey, who had rarely spoken out about partisan politics, and didn't say much about a governing agenda as he talked about running.
Georgia. Voters in Atlanta will pick a successor to Mayor Keisha Lance-Bottoms today, with City Councilman Andre Dickens facing city council President Felicia Moore. Both are Black Democrats, though the office is technically nonpartisan. The runoff campaign, which began four weeks ago, has been fairly cordial, with both candidates pledging to fight crime and prevent wealthy Buckhead from breaking off from the city. While Lance-Bottoms is leaving after just one term, Dickens moved up in public polls after securing her endorsement.
Special elections
The longest special election of 2021 isn’t quite over yet. Broward County Commissioner Dale Holness filed a lawsuit last week to block Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, the CEO of a local health-care company, from taking the Democratic nomination in Florida’s 20th Congressional District.
Holness, 64, had not spoken to Cherfilus-McCormick, 42, since a recount confirmed her five-vote victory in the Nov. 2 special election primary. On Nov. 24, he sued in Broward County Circuit Court, arguing that the primary result should be voided because Cherfilus-McCormick campaigned on a $1,000 universal basic income — which Holness described as a bribe — and because 18 military and overseas ballots, rejected during the recount, could put him in the lead.
“That issue was literally litigated at the canvassing board,” said Cherfilus-McCormick legal representative Mitch Caesar, a former chairman of the Broward County Democratic Party, pointing out that other military ballots verified by the canvassers were counted.
Cherfilus-McCormick “knew this promise was a gimmick designed only to motivate people to vote for her,” Holness argued, providing a few examples of the campaign materials that advertised her People’s Prosperity Plan. Other candidates had cried foul over the ads, but none had tried to sue over them. (“There's something called free speech in this country,” Caesar added.)
The bribe accusation is the most confounding of the lawsuit's three claims. Other candidates have run on UBI, or proposed even larger ones, and no court has viewed that as a bribe. Holness has made other attempts to open the contested military ballots, and argues in this filing that because there are more of those ballots than votes separating him from Cherfilus-McCormick, they must be counted. Some courts have sided with plaintiffs in cases like that; Holness's third claim, that failing to file one financial disclosure form before the election invalidates her win, has no precedent. The general election's just 42 days away, and absentee ballots can start going out shortly, but the Cherfilus-McCormick team wasn't worrying about a delay in an election that's left part of South Florida without representation in the House since the April death of Rep. Alcee Hastings (D).
“It's highly unlikely, because the law flies in the face of this,” said Caesar. “I fully expect this to be dismissed.”
Countdown
… 11 days until municipal runoff elections in Louisiana
… 15 days until the 2022 candidate filing deadline in Texas
… 42 days until the election in Florida’s 20th Congressional District
… 91 days until the first 2022 primaries
… 343 days until the midterm elections