A new NBC News poll released finds that 44% of registered voters see President Joe Biden as “very” or “somewhat” liberal, while 42% see him as “moderate.”
In contrast, in April 2009, the NBC News poll found that 59% of registered voters saw Barack Obama as “very” or “somewhat” liberal, while 30% saw him as moderate.
A new NBC News poll finds former President Donald Trump’s favorable rating has fallen to 32%, while 55% view him unfavorably. Even Trump’s pull within his own party appears to have lessened, with 44% of Republicans saying they’re more supporters of Trump than the GOP, versus 50% who say they’re more supporters of the GOP than the former president.
A new CNN poll finds more than three-quarters of Americans say they are satisfied with the guilty verdict in the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd last spring in Minneapolis.
“The widest gap in satisfaction with the verdict comes along partisan lines. While 97% of Democrats and 77% of independents express satisfaction with the outcome, just 53% of Republicans feel the same way. Divides by race, age or gender are less stark. Black adults are broadly satisfied with the outcome (95%), but broad majorities of Latinos (78%) and Whites (74%) are as well. Women (81%) express more satisfaction than men (73%), and there are no significant differences by age.”
Partisanship persists even in the face of clear facts.
A new NBC News poll finds 58% of all Americans prioritize ensuring that those who want to vote can do so, as compared to just 38% who want to make sure no ineligible people can vote.
REAPPORTIONMENT: On Monday, the Census Bureau released long-awaited data from the 2020 census showing which states will gain seats in the House for the coming decade and which will see their congressional delegations shrink. In all, 13 states will feel the impact of population changes over the past 10 years, with six adding seats and seven losing representatives. These shifts are all reflected in the map above (with a larger version available here), but they contain several surprises compared to projections based on recent growth trends.
Dave Wasserman summarizes the electoral implications of the new U.S. Census:
- States gaining one seat: Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon
- States gaining two seats: Texas
- States losing one seat: California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia
Under these allocations, Joe Biden would have won 303 electoral votes instead of 306 in 2020.
Per Shane Goldmacher, a census official noted that if New York had counted just 89 more people, it wouldn’t have lost a single congressional seat. Minnesota would have lost a congressional district instead had that happened.
But the biggest impacts of the census won’t be known until congressional redistricting is complete, a process that, thanks to delays in the production of necessary data, won’t begin until August at the earliest and will likely last through a good part of next year.
FiveThirtyEight: “We can now say with finality that Republicans will control the redrawing of 187 congressional districts (43 percent) — or 2.5 times as many as Democrats (who will redraw 75 districts, or 17 percent).
“There are also 167 districts (38 percent) where neither party will enjoy exclusive control over redistricting (either because of independent commissions or split partisan control).”
MinnPost: “Minnesota’s self-response rate for the 2020 Census was 75.1%, the highest in the country, while the national average for response rate was around two-thirds.”
“While the Census doesn’t rely entirely on self-reporting to tally population numbers, it’s worth nothing that if New York had counted just 89 more people, Minnesota would have lost a House seat instead. A higher response rate also helps if New York tries to sue to dispute the count.”
This was the smallest “lost seat” margin since 1940.
LOUISIANA 2ND CD — The all-Democratic special election runoff for Louisiana’s vacant 2nd Congressional District saw state Sen. Troy Carter defeat fellow state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson 55-45 on Saturday. Carter will succeed Cedric Richmond, who resigned from this New Orleans-area district in January to take a post in the Biden White House.
Many national observers saw the contest between Carter and Peterson (who are not related) as a battle between moderates and progressives. Both New Orleans-based legislators campaigned as ardent Democrats, but Peterson, who would have been the first Black woman to represent Louisiana in Congress, argued she was the more liberal of the two. Notably, while Peterson emphatically backed the Green New Deal, Carter would only call it “a good blueprint” and said he didn’t support the plan. Carter, in turn, insisted he’d have an easier time working with Republicans in Congress than Peterson.
Carter did in fact earn the support of some prominent Republicans, including Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng, but he also had endorsements from Richmond himself and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, the highest-ranking Black member of the House. Peterson, for her part, enjoyed the backing of Gary Chambers, a vocal progressive who took a strong third place in the first round of voting in March, as well as New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and she also benefited from $1.2 million in runoff spending from EMILY’s List.
However, other factors at work complicate the narrative that Carter’s victory was a win for the establishment over progressive outsiders. To begin with, both Carter and Peterson have served in elected office since the 1990s, and Peterson even chaired the state Democratic Party from 2012 until just last year.
In a marker of their political longevity, both candidates also competed against one another for a previous version of this seat 15 years ago. Carter took a distant fifth in the all-party primary, while Peterson went on to lose a runoff to then-Rep. Bill Jefferson; Carter would unsuccessfully run again two years later.
Stephanie Grace of the New Orleans Advocate also notes that Carter had the support of very influential liberal politicians in New Orleans, an area that made up just over half the vote in Saturday’s election. Among those in Carter’s corner were Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams, a progressive reformer who won his seat last year by beating a Peterson-backed opponent, as well as City Council President Helena Moreno. And while both candidates supported LGBTQ rights, Grace notes that Carter’s “longtime advocacy made him the favorite for much of that community.”
Local New Orleans political divides also likely played a big role in the end result. Peterson is a leader in the Black Organization for Leadership Development (BOLD), a longtime power-player in the Crescent City that has often clashed with Richmond and his allies. Both sides ran up some major wins and losses in the 2019 legislative elections, and if anything, Saturday’s runoff was a continuation of that long-running battle—one in which the Richmond-Carter bloc came out decisively on top.
Peterson had needed a good showing in Orleans Parish, which is coterminous with the city of New Orleans, to make up for her losses in the rest of the district, but Carter instead carried it 53-47.
“The effort to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom has enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, Secretary of State Shirley Weber’s office reported Monday, marking a significant milestone in the more-than-year-long campaign to remove the head of the nation’s most populous state,” the Sacramento Bee reports.
California officials believe the cost of conducting the recall election could run as high as $400 million.
NEW YORK 24TH CD — The Conservative Party in Onondaga County, which makes up most of New York’s 24th Congressional District, says it won’t endorse Republican Rep. John Katko next year, putting the congressman at risk of losing a ballot line that’s played a key role in sustaining his political career. Katko had previously lost the support of Conservatives in the other three counties in the district—Oswego, Cayuga, and Wayne—though the ultimate decision will fall to state party chair Jerry Kassar, who previously said Katko is “in trouble” and reportedly plans to defer to local leaders.
Katko has received a great deal of attention—and, from Donald Trump loyalists, scorn—for his vote to impeach Trump in January, but that’s not the only issue putting him at odds with the Conservative Party. Die-hards are also pissed that he backed the Equality Act, which would protect LGBTQ rights, and that he voted to boot Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments due to her violent rhetoric. However, Katko also voted for the Equality Act in 2019 and still retained the Conservative Party’s support the next year, so there may be time to repair the relationship.
Katko will certainly hope so: In 2018, he defeated Democrat Dana Balter by 13,694 votes—fewer than the 16,972 he received on the Conservative line. While his victory wasn’t dependent on that line in his 2020 rematch with Balter, Katko might not be so lucky next year, especially if Democrats target him in redistricting.
Onondaga Conservatives say they’ll ask Kassar to either leave the party’s line blank or endorse someone else in 2022. The latter option could prove particularly self-defeating, but it’s a tack not unfamiliar to right-wing extremists in New York: Republicans lost a special election in 2009 in what was then the 23rd Congressional District after the GOP and the Conservative Party nominated different candidates, allowing Democrat Bill Owens to flip a seat that had been red since the 19th century.
Ben Jacobs: “The presidency is the most powerful position in the country, but it could accidentally wind up with a new perk: the ability to cast electoral votes. That’s because, as a result of a constitutional quirk, the current push for D.C. statehood would leave a remnant federal district in which the White House might be the only permanent residence. It’s one of the more bizarre features of the long-running fight to grant congressional representation to the 700,000 taxpaying residents of the District of Columbia…”
“There’s no easy fix for such a scenario, because it would take a new constitutional amendment to undo the 23rd Amendment, which is far more difficult to pass than simple legislation.”
OHIO U.S. SENATOR / 13TH CD — Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan has launched a campaign for Ohio’s open U.S. Senate seat. Ryan, who is close to labor and had $1 million in the bank at the end of March, is the first major candidate to announce a bid for the Democrats, and he’ll likely be the frontrunner in a primary. He’d face a tough general election battle, though, in a former swing state that supported Donald Trump by a wide 53-45 margin last year.
Still, the congressman and his allies are hoping that Ryan, who has represented the Youngstown area in Congress since 2003, will be able to win back the type of working class voters who backed the Democratic ticket until the Trump era. He very much seemed to be aiming his opening message at this demographic, declaring, “Ohioans are working harder than ever, they’re doing everything right, and they’re still falling behind.”
Ryan himself has also managed to decisively hold the 13th Congressional District, which backed Barack Obama 63-35 in 2012 but only supported Joe Biden 51-48, despite its ugly trend to the right. Still, his 52-45 showing last cycle was by far the narrowest victory in his 10 House campaigns.
Ryan has, until now, explored running for statewide office numerous times only to stay in the House, but his congressional district may not exist for much longer. Ryan made his announcement hours before the Census confirmed that Ohio would be losing a seat. Ohio Republicans also will more or less have free rein to draw the new congressional maps as they please despite the passage in 2018 of a supposedly reform-minded constitutional amendment, and they very well could leave Ryan’s would-be Democratic successors without a friendly constituency to campaign for.
ARIZONA U.S. SENATOR — Thiel Capital chief operating officer Blake Masters hasn’t even publicly expressed interest in a Senate bid yet, but Politico reports that hasn’t stopped his Republican mega donor boss, billionaire Peter Thiel, from dumping $10 million into a super PAC to support him. Thiel recently made a similar investment on behalf of venture capitalist J.D. Vance, a likely GOP Senate candidate in Ohio.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, meanwhile, has reportedly been attempting to convince Gov. Doug Ducey to change his mind and run against Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly after all, but Donald Trump is certainly not making McConnell’s job any easier. The Daily Beast writes that Trump, who remains furious with the governor for not going along with his attempt to steal Arizona’s electoral votes, has “told associates he would gladly and personally spoil any of Ducey’s future political plans.”
Trump even reportedly ranted that he’d go and campaign for Kelly if Ducey won the GOP nomination, a threat that, while few believe Trump would actually follow through on, shows just how much he despises his one-time ally. We may never find out just how far Trump would go, though, as the conservative Washington Examiner said last week that Ducey “continues to wave off the encouragement from fellow Republicans” to run.
NEW YORK CITY MAYOR — Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams unveiled an endorsement Monday from Ruben Diaz Jr., his counterpart in the Bronx, for the June instant-runoff Democratic primary. Diaz, who is one of the more prominent Latinos in city politics, surprised almost all political observers last year when he decided not to wage his own campaign for mayor.
TEXAS 6TH CD — Republican activist Susan Wright picked up an endorsement Monday from Donald Trump less than a week ahead of the May 1 all-party primary to succeed her late husband, Rep. Ron Wright.
Trump made his not-tweet days after his camp publicly called out former wrestler Dan Rodimer for claiming, “Our campaign is the only one that has ever been endorsed by President Trump in this race.” Trump did indeed back Rodimer last year when he was the GOP nominee for Congress―in Nevada.
OHIO 15TH CD — Gov. Mike DeWine on Monday announced the dates of the special election to succeed Rep. Steve Stivers, a fellow Republican who will resign May 16 in order to lead the state Chamber of Commerce. The filing deadline will be the following day, May 17. The primary and general will be Aug. 3 and Nov. 2, respectively, the same as the dates for the special for the 11th District.
VIRGINIA GOVERNOR — The Virginia Republican Party will be choosing its statewide nominees at its May 8 convention, but the Washington Post’s Laura Vozzella says it will likely take “several days” to learn the winners. The party’s State Central Committee voted Sunday to begin a hand-count of the ballots starting the day after the gathering, a lengthy process that involves instant-runoff tabulations; Vozzella adds, “Votes will be weighted based on each locality’s performance in past GOP contests.”
NEW JERSEY 11TH CD — The New Jersey Globe mentions former Monmouth County Commissioner Christine Myers as a possible Republican opponent for Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill, though there’s no word on her interest. Myers’ name came up here in 2018 and 2020, but she opted to remain at the Small Business Administration during both cycles. Myers, though, was one of the many Trump appointees who recently lost their post in the federal government.
IOWA — Associated Press reports that the state of Iowa has moved 294,000 registered voters to inactive status: “Being marked as inactive in the state’s voter registration database does not immediately affect anyone’s ability to vote in any way, according to the Iowa Secretary of State’s office. But under state law, it’s the first step in a process that would result in the cancellation of one’s registration after four more years of inactivity.”
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