Politics

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — U.S. Rep. Pat Ryan has won a full term representing part of New York’s Hudson Valley in Congress, becoming one of just a few Democrats in the suburbs around New York City to hold off Republican opponents in the midterm election.

Ryan defeated Republican Colin Schmitt, a second-term state Assemblyman who conceded the race early Wednesday. The Associated Press declared Ryan the winner Friday after it became clear there weren’t enough uncounted votes remaining for Schmitt to overcome the Democrat’s slim lead.

Ryan, the former Ulster County executive, initially won a seat in Congress in August in a special election to finish out the term of former U.S. Rep. Antonio Delgado, who resigned to become New York’s lieutenant governor.

His contest with Schmitt took place in a newly redrawn congressional district where he had to introduce himself to a new batch of potential constituents.

Ryan campaigned hard on abortion rights and Democrats hoped his summer win in the special election would be a bellwether for more victories in the suburbs.

But Republicans had a strong showing in New York, sweeping all four congressional districts on Long Island and ousting U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, a Democrat whose district would have adjoined Ryan’s in the Hudson Valley.

Overall, Democrats won at least 15 seats in New York’s congressional delegation in Tuesday’s election. Republicans have won at least 10.

One congressional race in central New York remains too early to call. In that contest in the Syracuse area, Republican Brandon Williams had a narrow lead over Democrat Francis Conole. The winner there will succeed U.S. Rep. John Katko, a Republican who is retiring from office.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — No. 3 House Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik is endorsing Donald Trump for president in 2024, becoming the highest-ranking congressional leader Friday to publicly back the former president, even as he’s being widely blamed by other Republicans for failures in the midterm elections.

Stefanik, of New York, has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential contender on an emerging Trump ticket. The former president has promised a Tuesday event at his private Mar-a-Lago club that is widely expected to be an announcement of his intentions to run again for the White House.

“It’s very clear President Trump is the leader of the Republican party,” Stefanik said in a statement.

“I am proud to endorse Donald J. Trump for President in 2024,” she said. “It is time for Republicans to unite around the most popular Republican in America, who has a proven track record of conservative governance.”

But Stefanik is an outlier among leading Republicans who are mostly reluctant to see Trump jump in the presidential race as his MAGA-styled candidates — MAGA is shorthand for Trump’s 2016 “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan — are being blamed for the GOP’s setbacks in the midterms.

Republicans had been expecting a midterm “red wave” that would give them big wins in races for governors, Congress and beyond this week in a rebuff of President Joe Biden and the Democratic agenda.

Instead, Republicans made only modest gains in the House and lost a crucial Senate seat in Pennsylvania when Democrat John Fetterman defeated Trump-backed celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz.

With votes still being counted as of midday Friday, control of the House and Senate remained too early to call.

Other Republicans are calling for the party to move on from the Trump era.

Stefanik easily won her own reelection to another two-year term from New York, and is expected to cruise to her spot as chair of the House Republican Conference in Tuesday’s internal party elections. If Republicans win the majority, hers would become the 4th ranking leadership position.

She launched her career as a more moderate conservative voice and as one of the youngest members of the House, is seen as a rising star in Trump’s orbit. She has not tamped down talk of a potential vice presidential nod.

Stefanik and Trump remain close and work together, according to a person familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it. She helped raise money and backing for several newly elected members of Congress.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections. And learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections.

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Stefanik, of New York, has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential contender on an emerging Trump ticket. The former president has promised a Tuesday event at his private Mar-a-Lago club that is widely expected to be an announcement of his intentions to run again for the White House.

“It’s very clear President Trump is the leader of the Republican party,” Stefanik said in a statement.

“I am proud to endorse Donald J. Trump for President in 2024,” she said. “It is time for Republicans to unite around the most popular Republican in America, who has a proven track record of conservative governance.”

Republicans had been expecting a midterm “red wave” that would give them big wins in races for governors, Congress and beyond this week in a rebuff of President Joe Biden and the Democratic agenda.

Instead, Republicans made only modest gains in the House and lost a crucial Senate seat in Pennsylvania when Democrat John Fetterman defeated Trump-backed celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz.

With votes still being counted as of midday Friday, control of the House and Senate remained too early to call.

Stefanik easily won her own reelection to another two-year term from New York, and is expected to cruise to her spot as chair of the House Republican Conference in Tuesday’s internal party elections. If Republicans win the majority, hers would become the 4th ranking leadership position.

She launched her career as a more moderate conservative voice and as one of the youngest members of the House, is seen as a rising star in Trump’s orbit. She has not tamped down talk of a potential vice presidential nod.

Stefanik and Trump remain close and work together, according to a person familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it. She helped raise money and backing for several newly elected members of Congress.

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In the midterm elections, evangelical Christians across the nation reconfirmed their allegiance to conservative candidates and causes, while Catholic voters once again showed how closely divided they are — even on abortion.

On a successful, high-profile ballot measure in the battleground state of Michigan, proposing to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, Catholic voters split about evenly, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 94,000 voters across the country.

In Kentucky, a reliably Republican state, voters rejected a GOP-backed ballot measure aimed at denying any state constitutional protections for abortion. Among those voting No were 60% of Catholic voters, according to VoteCast.

In contrast, about two-thirds of white evangelical voters in both Kentucky and Michigan voted against protecting abortion access.

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, said rejection of that measure in his state was an “unmitigated disaster.”

He was less surprised by abortion-rights amendments passing in more liberal Vermont and California and centrist Michigan. But the Kentucky vote was the “hardest loss” and followed a similar vote in August in another red state, Kansas.

Mohler said it’s important for abortion opponents to be willing to enact their views into policy.

Voters “who voted for pro-life candidates turned around and voted against a pro-life constitutional amendment,” Mohler lamented.

On the opposite side of the fight, Catholics for Choice president Jamie Manson said abortion access protections are popular.

“In red states and blue states, with religious voters and secular voters, wherever abortion was on the ballot, abortion rights disproportionately won,” she said in a statement.

John Fea, a professor of American history at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, said the Kentucky vote signaled that many Americans seem to want the status quo provided under the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. It legalized abortion nationwide — with some limits — until it was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in June.

“Most of the country wants some restrictions on abortion, but they don’t want bans,” Fea said. “The Christian right, despite the fact that they got what they wanted with the overturning of Roe, is not getting the extent of the victory they had hoped.”

Only about one in 10 voters nationwide and across most states say abortion should be illegal in all cases, according to AP VoteCast. Even among white evangelical voters, while most say abortion should generally be illegal, only about two in 10 say abortion should be illegal in all cases.

Despite setbacks on the ballot measures, abortion opponents took heart from some other election results. Michael New, who teaches social research at The Catholic University of America, cited the comfortable re-election victories for GOP Govs. Greg Abbott in Texas, Brian Kemp in Georgia, Ron DeSantis in Florida and Mike DeWine in Ohio.

“All these governors signed strong pro-life laws and did not hide from the abortion issue,” New said.

According to VoteCast, about 4 in 10 Catholics voting in the midterm elections identified as Democrats; about half as Republicans. A breakdown of some high-profile races for governor and for U.S. Senate illustrated how these voters are very much a swing constituency.

In Wisconsin, Catholic voters slightly favored Republicans in those two races.

In Pennsylvania, Catholics were slightly more likely to have voted for the Republican loser in the Senate race, Mehmet Oz, but more likely to vote for the Democratic winner in the governor’s race, Josh Shapiro. Oz is Muslim and Shapiro is Jewish.

In Arizona, Catholic voters were evenly divided between the Democratic and Republican candidates for governor, while about 60% backed Democrat Mark Kelly, seeking re-election to the Senate. The tight races in Arizona remain uncalled by The Associated Press.

In each of those three states, roughly two-thirds or more of white evangelical Christian voters backed the GOP candidates.

Another notable factor in these results: large majorities of voters who describe themselves as nonreligious voted for the Democrats and supported abortion rights in their decisions on the Michigan and Kentucky ballot measures.

While it remains uncertain which party will control Congress, John Fea and other scholars said the election was a setback for at least some Christian nationalist candidates on the Republican side – those who fuse Christian and American identity, symbols and mission.

While some candidates associated with the view succeeded – such as U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican re-elected in her overwhelmingly red Georgia district – those facing a more mixed electorate struggled.

Republican Doug Mastriano — whose campaign rallies were infused with Christian music and symbols though he has rejected the “Christian nationalist” label — lost decisively in the race for governor in Pennsylvania. Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, also associated with the movement, faced a tighter-than-expected race for re-election in Colorado.

Fea said Mastriano may have alienated people with his Christian nationalism but also with other factors, such as his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

“I think it’s a vote against an extreme brand of Christian nationalism, combined with election denying,” said Fea, author of “Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump.”

Mastriano won about 6 in 10 of the votes of his fellow evangelical Christians, according to VoteCast, but that seemed to slightly lag behind the two-thirds who backed Mehmet Oz.

Overall, among voters nationwide, about 4 in 10 say they attend religious services at least monthly; about a third say they never attend. About a fifth say they go once a week or more.

Democrats largely attend religious services less frequently – about 7 in 10 go less than monthly. Among Republicans, 46% attend at least monthly, while 54% go less often.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections. And learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The races for two US House seats in Oregon remained unresolved Friday heading into the weekend, with tens of thousands of ballots left to be counted in the vote-by-mail state.

In Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer had a thin lead over Democrat Jamie McLeod-Skinner for the seat. In the 6th Congressional District, Democrat Andrew Salinas was slightly ahead of Republican Mike Erickson, a businessman who is running for the third time.

A new law in Oregon allows votes to be counted as long as they are postmarked by Election Day, meaning that some ballots have just arrived at election offices and many county offices were closed Friday for Veteran’s Day.

Clackamas County, a vast county south of Portland that stretches from the suburbs to the rural flanks of Mount Hood, is key in both contests. Elections officials there said late Thursday that as many as 65,000 late-arriving ballots were left to be counted and staff would work through the weekend.

Salinas, a state representative, and Chavez DeRemer, former mayor the Portland suburb Happy Valley, are both seeking to be Oregon’s first Latina congresswoman.

A population boom made Oregon one of just six states to gain a House seat following the 2020 census. The state’s population jumped by more than 10% in the past decade to more than 4.2 million people, giving it a new congressional district — the 6th District — for the first time in 40 years.

The 5th District seat was left open when McLeod-Skinner, a progressive Democrat, beat seven-term incumbent and moderate Democrat Kurt Schrader in the primary. The defeat made Schrader the first incumbent Democratic congressman to lose his seat this year.

Republicans targeted the seat, which was largely redrawn following the 2020 census to include parts of central Oregon, in a hard-fought campaign. Democrats controlled four of the state’s previous five U.S. House seats, including in the 5th District.

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CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Aaron Appelhans is among a rare few in Wyoming: A Democrat who won in Tuesday’s midterm election in this ever-redder state.

After being appointed as Wyoming’s first Black sheriff almost a year ago, he is now the state’s first elected Black sheriff. He beat a 20-year Republican police veteran with 52% of the vote.

“Albany County’s kind of purple politically, so I was able to run on my record, the things that I’ve done,” Appelhans said Thursday.

Yet across Wyoming, Democrats suffered another dismal election even as their party defied expectations and did reasonably well nationwide.

Democrats didn’t even field candidates for three of Wyoming’s six statewide races, those for secretary of state, state treasurer and state auditor. They got just 25%, 17% and 23% in the other three, the contests for U.S. House, governor and superintendent of public instruction, respectively.

The party will keep its two seats in the 31-member state Senate. But Democrats lost two of their seven seats in the 62-member state House, pushing their share of the Legislature under 8%.

Wyoming had a centrist Democratic governor, Dave Freudenthal, from 2003-2011. But in a state that cherishes gun ownership, is often suspicious of LGBTQ+ advocacy and stands up for its all-important coal mining industry amid efforts to limit climate change, the party has been on the decline here since the 1990s.

“We’ve had election cycle after election cycle now, dating back to 1994, when Republicans have been very effective at characterizing any Wyoming Democrat as representing the national party,” University of Wyoming political science professor Jim King said. “Whether they do doesn’t really matter. In these low-information races, the charge sticks, and Democrats then find themselves at a disadvantage on election night.”

But even in the state that gave Donald Trump 70% of the vote in 2020, some Democrats insist they can still win by talking to as many voters, one-on-one, as possible.

Appelhans credits on-the-ground campaigning, good organization and hard work by volunteers — along with policing reforms he has implemented in the Sheriff’s Office — for his win in southeastern Wyoming’s Albany County, home to the University of Wyoming.

“It took a lot of time. I worked two jobs,” Appelhans said of his campaign. “We had a good crew, a large, large group of volunteers, people that, you know, are believers in my abilities, believers in the campaign, to go out there and help as well. It really was kind of a community effort.”

Another Democratic winner was Pete Gosar, a former state party chairman who was reelected to the Albany County County Commission. Gosar got the most votes in a four-way race for two commission seats up for grabs.

A brother of Republican U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, Gosar rejected any notion that most Albany County voters, at least, are hyper-partisan, once you get to know them personally.

“It’s not just luck. There’s a real strategy to get out and meet people,” Gosar said. “You hear about hyper partisanship, and you’d expect that in the state that voted for the former president by the widest margin. But that’s not what I found, whether it was Republican, Democratic or independent doors. They might not vote for you, but there was kindness and cordiality.”

Decades ago, Democrats used to be able to rely on Albany County and the rest of southern Wyoming, with its many union railroad and coal mining jobs, as reliable turf.

But not for a long time now. Along with Albany County, only Teton County at the doorstep of Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks has an electorate not overwhelmingly Republican.

Wyoming’s losing Democrats this year included the chairman of the state party, Joe Barbuto, who with 31% of the vote failed to win re-election as Sweetwater County treasurer. Barbuto didn’t immediately return phone and social media messages Thursday seeking comment.

Another was Chad Banks, whose state House district nestles within southwestern Wyoming’s Sweetwater County. A gay former Rock Springs City Council member who was first elected to the state House in 2020, Banks got 39% of the vote in losing to a local Republican businessman.

Banks voted with Republicans 90% or more of the time in the Legislature, he said, but getting associated with issues pushed by Democrats nationally cost him and other Democrats in the state.

“I still support our coal communities in Wyoming. I hope that coal remains a strong industry in Wyoming. It’s important to my community and it’s important to my state — and that’s of course different than what you’re hearing from the D.C. crowd,” Banks said.

For Gosar at least, the key for Wyoming Democrats to counter the party’s perspective nationally is to bring a Wyoming-focused message to as many people as possible locally.

“”It’s easy to, you know, sing the death song for the Wyoming Democratic Party, and things are difficult,” Gosar said. “But I think there’s real opportunity, and I think it all starts with some of the stuff that’s been done in Albany County. You have to get out and talk to people and give them a different perspective.”

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play.

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Follow Mead Gruver at https://twitter.com/meadgruver

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PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The races for two US House seats in Oregon remained unresolved Friday heading into the weekend, with tens of thousands of ballots left to be counted in the vote-by-mail state.

In Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer had a thin lead over Democrat Jamie McLeod-Skinner for the seat. In the 6th Congressional District, Democrat Andrew Salinas was slightly ahead of Republican Mike Erickson, a businessman who is running for the third time.

A new law in Oregon allows votes to be counted as long as they are postmarked by Election Day, meaning that some ballots have just arrived at election offices and many county offices were closed Friday for Veteran’s Day.

Clackamas County, a vast county south of Portland that stretches from the suburbs to the rural flanks of Mount Hood, is key in both contests. Elections officials there said late Thursday that as many as 65,000 late-arriving ballots were left to be counted and staff would work through the weekend.

Salinas, a state representative, and Chavez DeRemer, former mayor the Portland suburb Happy Valley, are both seeking to be Oregon’s first Latina congresswoman.

A population boom made Oregon one of just six states to gain a House seat following the 2020 census. The state’s population jumped by more than 10% in the past decade to more than 4.2 million people, giving it a new congressional district — the 6th District — for the first time in 40 years.

The 5th District seat was left open when McLeod-Skinner, a progressive Democrat, beat seven-term incumbent and moderate Democrat Kurt Schrader in the primary. The defeat made Schrader the first incumbent Democratic congressman to lose his seat this year.

Republicans targeted the seat, which was largely redrawn following the 2020 census to include parts of central Oregon, in a hard-fought campaign. Democrats controlled four of the state’s previous five U.S. House seats, including in the 5th District.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — To Mona Cohen, a lifelong Philadelphia Democrat, democracy is under attack in the United States. In the midterm elections, she lists a woman’s right to abortion as one of many fleeting freedoms she voted to defend.

Cohen, 68, feared the Supreme Court’s decision in June to eliminate women’s constitutional protections for abortion was only the beginning of a broader erosion of rights. So she backed Democrats in her state of Pennsylvania, where the party flipped a U.S. Senate seat and won the contest for governor against a pair of Donald Trump loyalists.

A government dominated by Republicans, Cohen said, “would have gone on to impede contraception, to impede marriage equality, to impede any kind of civil rights that we as a society have fought for in the past 50 years.”

Support for abortion rights did drive women to the polls in Tuesday’s elections. But for many, the issue took on higher meaning, part of an overarching concern about the future of democracy.

Women, especially Democratic women, were more likely than men to say the Roe v. Wade reversal was a top factor in their vote, according to AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of more than 94,000 voters in the midterm elections. More women also said the reversal made them angry, and said abortion had a major impact on their decision to turn out and which candidate they supported.

But the future of democracy was an even greater factor than Roe for women voters. In interviews with AP reporters, many women linked their concerns about abortion to fears for the country.

“I’m not glad that we had to have this abortion drama happen, but I’m glad that it brought a new conversation to the table about what democracy should be to our country,” said Pennsylvania resident Brianna McCullough, 20, a sophomore at Chatham University in Pittsburgh. “If they can take this away, they can take anything away from people. And I don’t think that’s right.”

Heading into this week’s election, Republicans were expected to seize control of Congress. That’s still a possibility, with several races too close to call, but Democrats denied Republicans the sweeping nationwide victory they had expected.

Abortion “may have made the difference in some key races where the elections were really competitive,” said Ashley Kirzinger, director of survey methodology at KFF, which designed questions for and published an analysis of VoteCast.

Many Democratic candidates advocated for abortion rights on the campaign trail. But they also cast their Republican rivals’ “extreme” attitudes on abortion as one example of a broader threat to the country’s democratic institutions, including its election systems.

In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Democrats who won tight governors’ races will appoint people who run the state’s elections. In Michigan, Democrats won races for governor and secretary of state, defeating candidates who opposed abortion rights and had denied the 2020 election results.

“Michigan is a good place to be right now,” said Ellie Mosko, 40, an attorney and mother of three in the Detroit area. Democrats also championed a successful ballot measure that enshrines the right to abortion in the state constitution. Moreover, Democrats took control of the state Senate for the first time in 40 years.

“The key issues for me are the preservation of democracy and voter rights,” Mosko said, “because without that we can’t preserve women’s access to reproductive freedom.”

Voters in California and Vermont also chose to enshrine abortion protections in their state constitutions on Tuesday, while voters in Kentucky and Montana rejected anti-abortion amendments.

Republican candidates did gain ground in some states, including Ohio and Florida, potentially paving the way for more state bans on women’s abortion access. But the GOP elsewhere lost contests that would have allowed them to advance restrictions easily.

Among Black and Latina women across age groups, majorities of whom backed Democratic candidates, at least half said Roe played a major impact in their decision to vote. The Democrats also were buoyed by white women under 50 — about half said it had a major impact on their decision to turn out, compared with about a third of older white women.

Reproductive rights were a driving factor for Alison Brock McGill, 38, a Black mother with a 2-year-old son. She moved in 2020 from New York to Atlanta, where a recent conversation reminded her she was not in Brooklyn anymore.

At her recent annual OB-GYN visit, the topic of having a second child came up. The doctor reminded her that in Georgia, a woman now has until around six weeks’ gestation to terminate a pregnancy. After that, the doctor would have to refer her to a physician in another state if she wanted an abortion.

Georgia’s new law, banning most abortions once cardiac activity is detected, took effect after the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.

“I was just blown away by that,” said McGill. “At six weeks, nobody knows anything.”

That’s a major reason she voted Democratic up and down the ticket, including for Sen. Raphael Warnock, whose hotly contested U.S. Senate race is advancing to a runoff with his Republican rival, the former football star Herschel Walker.

Still, for many women, the country’s inflation woes outweigh abortion. About two-thirds of Republican women said inflation was their primary consideration, compared with about a third of Democratic women.

“A woman might need an abortion once or twice in her lifetime, but I need to feed these kids every day,” said Kelly Morris, 60, a registered Republican in Dayton, Ohio, and mother of nine.

In Ohio, Trump-endorsed JD Vance won an open U.S. Senate seat, and the GOP swept statewide offices. A ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy is currently blocked by a lower court in Ohio but is being appealed. Three conservative victories on Ohio’s Supreme Court, plus an upcoming appointment by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, mean that ban is likely to come before a court with a 4-3 GOP majority.

Still, for abortion rights-opponent Elizabeth Lamoreaux of suburban Cincinnati, the election was about more than that. She cared about inflation, border security and “the whole LGBT alphabet issue” — in particular, opposing transgender rights for youth.

Said Lamoreaux: “I feel as if our country as a whole is sort of a dumpster fire now.”

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AP VoteCast is a survey of the American electorate conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for Fox News and The Associated Press. The survey of 94,296 voters was conducted for nine days, concluding as polls closed. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. The survey combines a random sample of registered voters drawn from state voter files; self-identified registered voters using NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population; and self-identified registered voters selected from nonprobability online panels. The margin of sampling error for voters is estimated to be plus or minus 0.5 percentage points. More details at https://ap.org/votecast.

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Brooke Schultz contributed from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Hannah Fingerhut from Washington. Gecker reported from San Francisco.

Schultz is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a national nonprofit that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — There were no signs that Republican Christina Drazan was improving on her vote totals over recent days that would have enabled her to overtake Democrat Tina Kotek in the Oregon governor’s race.

That’s what led the AP to call the race Thursday night for Kotek over Drazan and unaffiliated candidate Betsy Johnson.

Even without factoring votes coming in from areas that favored Kotek, there still wasn’t enough room for Drazan to make up the difference.

Kotek joins Maura Healey, elected Tuesday as governor of Massachusetts, in making history as the nation’s first openly lesbian elected governors.

Oregon hasn’t had a Republican governor since the 1980s and is typically reliably Democratic in statewide contests. But this year’s race to succeed term-limited incumbent Democrat Kate Brown had Republicans hopeful and Democrats worried.

President Joe Biden campaigned for Kotek in the closing weeks of the campaign, highlighting the race’s importance to Democrats.

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Reach Mike Catalini at http://twitter.com/mikecatalini and Meg Kinnard at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP

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Check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the 2022 midterm elections. Follow AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections.

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DENVER (AP) — Colorado voters have passed a ballot initiative to decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms for people 21 and older and to create state-regulated “healing centers” where participants can experience the drug under supervision.

Colorado becomes the second state, after Oregon, to vote to establish a regulated system for substances like psilocybin and psilocin, the hallucinogens found in some mushrooms. The initiative, which would take effect in 2024, also will allow an advisory board to add other plant-based psychedelic drugs to the program in 2026.

Supporters argued that the state’s current approach to mental health has failed and that naturally occurring psychedelics, which have been used for hundreds of years, can treat depression, PTSD, anxiety, addiction and other conditions. They also said jailing people for the non-violent offense of using naturally occurring substances costs taxpayers money.

Natural Medicine Colorado, the group that promoted the measure, called its passage “a truly historic moment.”

“Colorado voters saw the benefit of regulated access to natural medicines, including psilocybin, so people with PTSD, terminal illness, depression, anxiety and other mental health issues can heal,” the group said in a prepared statement.

But critics warned that the Food and Drug Administration has not approved the substances as medicine. They also argued that allowing “healing centers” to operate, and allowing private personal use of the drugs, would jeopardize public safety and send the wrong message to kids and adults alike that the substances are healthy.

The move comes a decade after Colorado voted to legalize recreational marijuana, after initially allowing its use for medical reasons, which led to a multibillion-dollar industry with hundreds of dispensaries popping up across the state.

Critics of the latest ballot initiative say the same deep-pocketed players who have pushed for legalizing recreational marijuana in various states are using a similar playbook to create a commercial market, and eventually recreational dispensaries, for dangerous substances.

Voters in this week’s midterm elections approved recreational marijuana in Maryland and Missouri but rejected it in two other states, signaling support gradually growing for legalization even in conservative parts of the country.

The results mean that 21 states have approved marijuana’s recreational use.

Under Colorado’s measure, the psychedelics that would be decriminalized are listed as schedule 1 controlled substances under state and federal law and are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use with a high potential for abuse.

Even so, the FDA has designated psilocybin a “breakthrough therapy” to treat major depressive disorder. The designation can expedite research, development and review of a drug if it might offer substantial improvements over existing treatments.

Colorado’s ballot initiative would allow those 21 and older to grow, possess and share the psychedelic substances but not sell them for personal use. It also would allow people who have been convicted of offenses involving the substances to have their criminal records sealed.

Those who want to use mushrooms would not need approval from a doctor. In addition to being able to grow and use their own mushrooms, those who want to try the therapy could do so through the newly formed “healing centers,” which would be allowed to supply clients with mushrooms but not sell them. Instead, clients would pay for the services of the “facilitator” at the center.

Proponents have stressed that the measure does not allow dispensaries like those selling recreational and medical marijuana.

In 2020, Oregon became the first state in the nation to legalize the therapeutic, supervised use of psilocybin after 56% of voters approved Ballot Measure 109. But unlike the Colorado measure, Oregon allows counties to opt out of the program if their constituents vote to do so.

Oregon’s initiative is expected to take effect at the beginning of next year.

Washington, D.C., and Denver have partially decriminalized psychedelic mushrooms by requiring law enforcement officers to treat them as their lowest priority.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play.

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