Politics

MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. (AP) — The Democrat running to be Georgia’s top elections official says a closer look at incumbent Republican Brad Raffensperger’s record will reveal he’s no hero for refusing to do the bidding of former President Donald Trump.

“There seems to be this idea that he is a moderate Republican, and that is not true at all,” Bee Nguyen, a state House member, said after a speech last week in the central Georgia town of Milledgeville.

While other Republican nominees for secretary of state embrace false claims that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election, Raffensperger stands by his refusal to bend to pressure from Trump to “find” enough votes to give him a win in Georgia. A recording of the phone call he took from Trump is now evidence in a Georgia criminal investigation.

“I report the results, and sometimes people don’t like that,” Raffensperger said at an Oct. 18 debate sponsored by the Atlanta Press Club. “And I’ve had to stand up to the incredible pressure. And I’ll continue to stand up to pressure, because when I do that, I’m standing up for you the voter; I’m standing up for the Constitution and I’m standing up for the rule of law. Many people buckled and folded. I didn’t, and I won’t.”

Those actions have given Raffensperger an appeal that’s making it harder for Nguyen. She’s one of a slate of strong Democratic downballot candidates running in Georgia, and has raised an unusually large $3.2 million to run for a sometimes-obscure office. That’s more than the $3 million Raffensperger has raised, including $850,000 in loans to himself.

But Nguyen faults Raffensperger for endorsing Georgia’s new voting law, which has narrowed the opportunity to cast mail ballots, banned giving food or water to waiting voters, curtailed ballot drop boxes and reduced opportunities for voters to cast a provisional ballot if they show up at the wrong place on Election Day.

Nguyen also reminds voters that as a state lawmaker, Raffensperger held a no-exceptions opposition to abortion.

“Georgia voters need to understand his record, which is out of touch with the majority of Georgians, from the personhood bill that he introduced, which would have eliminated even basic forms of birth control, to his stances on voting,” Nguyen said. “We deserve better than somebody who believes that the office’s duty is just to count the vote.”

Nguyen needs to sway independents and even some Democrats who may vote for Raffensperger. After being left for dead as Trump heaped scorn on him, Raffensperger proved himself quite politically alive in May’s Republican primary. He defeated challengers including Trump-backed U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, who objected to Georgia’s electoral votes being counted for President Joe Biden. Thousands who previously voted in Democratic primaries cast ballots in the GOP contest that day, possibly providing the votes necessary for Raffensperger to avoid a runoff.

No one would mistake Raffensperger, an engineer who grew wealthy after founding a concrete engineering company, for a dynamic speaker. His campaign consists mostly of interviews and talks to civic clubs. He has positioned himself above the fray, writing a book called “Integrity Counts” about the 2020 elections.

Even with Raffensperger’s primary victory, claims of election fraud haven’t been banished from Georgia’s secretary of state race — Libertarian Ted Metz is aiming for votes by claiming there are “still unresolved issues in the 2020 election” and says the outcome is ”not credible.”

With women’s access to reproductive health care now in play as a major driver of voting nationwide, Nguyen says Raffensperger’s opposition to abortion could become an issue if nurses get in legal trouble for aiding abortions that are now mostly banned in Georgia. That’s because the secretary of state’s office helps administer licensing for the Georgia Board of Nursing.

“We will keep fighting to protect our basic freedoms, including the freedom to vote and the freedom to choose,” Nguyen told the crowd in Milledgeville.

Raffensperger countered that his office only provides administrative support and said Nguyen “fundamentally” doesn’t understand the office’s role.

“We don’t select the boards, the boards run their shop,” Raffensperger said. “They are responsible for licensing, discipline and rules. Job 1 is to know the job, and you don’t know the job.”

But Nguyen notes Raffensperger in 2020 fired the board’s executive director in a dispute unrelated to abortion.

She also says Raffensperger hasn’t supported county election officials, noting that he recently had to retract incorrect guidance saying voters could be challenged at polling places. And she says he was inexcusably slow in calling in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to pursue a criminal inquiry into how Trump-aligned election deniers breached voting equipment in southern Georgia’s Coffee County.

“It’s been 21 months, no one has been held criminally accountable … It took a year and a half to bring GBI in to investigate those claims,” Nguyen said in the debate. “This is about public trust, and the secretary of state’s office mishandled that investigation.”

Raffensperger defended his performance, saying “People broke the law, they should be investigated, held accountable, and go to jail.”

He seeks to tie Nguyen to how Stacey Abrams, now in a rematch against Gov. Brian Kemp, ended her 2018 race. She acknowledged Kemp would be governor, but refused to use the word “concede,” arguing Kemp had abused his two terms as secretary of state to hurt the Democrats’ chances of winning elections. Raffensperger and others argue that Abrams’ claims were damaging in the same way Trump’s acts were after 2020.

“Don’t you think that election denial is a threat to our democracy?” Raffensperger asked Nguyen.

Nguyen, though, keeps trying to persuade voters that Raffensperger is the threat to freedom, saying in an Oct. 19 appearance that high early turnout doesn’t prove voting is secure.

“We in Georgia know that we have always had to out-organize voter suppression,” Nguyen said. “Under Brad Raffensperger’s tenure, voting rights have become more restrictive in the last four years, not more expansive.”

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Follow Jeff Amy at http://twitter.com/jeffamy

Follow AP’s coverage of the elections at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections

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

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PHOENIX (AP) — The Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate from Arizona, Marc Victor, dropped out of the race Tuesday and urged his supporters to vote for Republican Blake Masters.

Victor’s endorsement a week before the midterm elections could help Masters further narrow the gap with Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly in one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country.

The endorsement came after overtures to Victor from Masters campaign aides and after Masters persuaded Victor in a phone conversation to back him. Victor posted video of their 25-minute discussion on his website.

“After that discussion, I believe it is in the best interests of freedom and peace to withdraw my candidacy and enthusiastically support Blake Masters for United States Senate,” Victor said in a statement released by the Masters campaign. “I intend to assist in any way reasonably possible to elect Blake.”

The race is one of a handful that will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate. The chamber is now divided evenly between Republicans and Democrats, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting tiebreaking votes.

Some Republicans had worried that Victor would act as a spoiler, drawing votes from right-leaning voters who might have supported Masters in a head-to-head matchup against Kelly.

The impact will be blunted, however, because the decision comes so close to the election that Victor’s name will still appear on all ballots. Hundreds of thousands of people have already voted, and many more have mail ballots in hand.

Victor is a defense attorney and longtime advocate for Libertarian ideas he terms the “live and let live” movement. He was critical of both Masters and Kelly during the race’s only televised debate. He has also said he’s considering changing his party affiliation to Republican to run against Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema in 2024.

“This is another major boost of momentum as we consolidate our support against the extreme and radical policies of Mark Kelly and Joe Biden,” Masters said in a statement.

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

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When is early voting over in the midterm elections?

Well, where do you live?

All states have their own rules and deadlines for ballots cast before Election Day, by mail or in person.

Early voting got a big boost in 2020, when many states made the practice more available, as the nation voted amid the coronavirus pandemic. Voters made use of it, too, with an unprecedented 103.2 million people casting early ballots in the presidential election, eager to avoid long lines and crowded polling stations, or simply drop off their ballots in official collection boxes

Now, as the early voting period winds down for the 2022 midterm elections, a look at when things are slated to wrap up:

IN-PERSON VOTING

Every state offers the opportunity to cast early ballots — some by mail, some in person, some both. For places with in-person early voting, the windows in which someone can cast an early ballot vary from more than a month to just over a week.

Early voting and in-person absentee voting starts as early as nearly six weeks ahead of Election Day itself in places such as Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, South Dakota, Vermont and Virginia.

In a lot of places, in-person, early voting is open right up to Election Day itself. Others, including Indiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska and Ohio accept voters until the day before the election.

Some, like New Mexico, North Carolina, South Carolina — where the practice is new this year — and Oklahoma wrap up the process the Saturday before Election Day. And Louisiana closes its early polls a week before Election Day itself.

MAILING IN THE VOTES

In a number of states, voters can cast their ballots early by mail.

Most places require that mail-in ballots be postmarked by Election Day, but many states will accept them in the weeks following the election. Illinois accepts mail-in ballots two weeks after the election, while Maryland and Ohio will accept ballots up to 10 days post-election.

In Colorado, where all registered voters receive mail-in ballots automatically, most votes are cast this way, although there are some in-person voting centers. Ballots can be dropped off up until the polls close.

Michigan requires its mail-in ballots to be received by the time polls close, as do other states including Arizona, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

WHEN DO EARLY VOTES GET COUNTED?

Before early mail-in votes can be counted, they have to be processed. This means that elections officials open up any paper ballots, verify signatures and sort them into correct piles.

When all of that can start varies state-to-state. Some places can get a head start, while others have to wait until Election Day itself, which can make some vote counts long and chaotic.

Some states can start processing ballots as early as three weeks before Election Day. Counting can even start ahead of poll closings, too.

In New Jersey, early mail votes can be processed before Election Day and counted before the polls close.In Washington, D.C., these votes can’t be processed until Election Day and can’t be counted until after the polls close.

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Meg Kinnard can be reached 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 elections at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections

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ELM CITY, N.C. (AP) — The man entrusted with promoting President Joe Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan barreled into this North Carolina town of 1,200 with the same rumbling intensity as the passing freight trains that shake anyone sitting in a chair.

It should be an easy sell. But Mitch Landrieu, the former New Orleans mayor and the administration’s infrastructure coordinator, knows the diplomacy it requires.

On a visit to Elm City last week, he toured the town’s quaint library decked out for Halloween. At an antique store with long johns hanging from the rafters, he tried to buy old license plates to commemorate the day, only to be told that someone else had spoken for them.

It was at the restored train depot that he got down to the business of the day, fielding a question about how a small-town government without a staff could possibly get its sliver of the infrastructure pie.

Landrieu kept it simple: Work with other communities.

“All of you are small, medium or large, but none of you has everything you need to do anything on your own,” he said. “So, this is kindergarten stuff. I don’t know if your mama sent you to school with a sandwich and some potato chips, but you wanted somebody’s M&M’s. And you had to learn how to trade and make friends.”

Landrieu speaks often with anecdotes and metaphors, the New Orleans accent offering a below the Mason-Dixon Line bonhomie to the audience. He uses the language of chatty simplicity to explain the big ideas that can get lost in a divided country.

And he comes bearing gifts, the promise of jobs and dramatic local improvements. For nearly a year, Landrieu has barnstormed a country with that same message of what’s possible when people work together, even in a bitterly polarized era playing out before the midterm elections.

What Landrieu has seen is just how much effort it takes to get the money to where it matters — and to get a small measure of credit for the administration for progress that can seem like it’s coming at glacial speed.

What’s riding on that $1 trillion?

It’s more than just whether Democrats can retain the House and Senate. There’s the survival of thousands of American communities that need some combination of jobs, road improvements, new sewage pipes, high-speed internet and help to fight climate change.

Landrieu sees himself as a bridge. But where he goes from here is an open question. The son of a mayor and the sister of a former U.S. senator, Landrieu is often mentioned as a possible presidential candidate and could benefit from traveling the country to dole out cash for local projects.

After multiple hurricanes and a devastating oil spill, Landrieu redeveloped his home city as mayor from 2010 to 2018. He made the controversial decision to remove its Confederate statues, jumpstarting a national conversation on race. Soon came a pair of fateful phone calls that brought him to Washington.

Brian Deese, director of the White House National Economic Council, phoned Landrieu about a year ago to ask if he would be willing to talk with Biden about how to implement the biggest infrastructure infusion of cash since the 1950s.

“Sure — the president can call me any time he wants,” Landrieu recalled answering.

Deese phoned back the next day. “Well, I talked to the president and he would like you to come up and run the thing.”

“What thing?” Landrieu said.

“The whole infrastructure thing,” said Deese.

Nearly a year later in the orange haze of dawn, Landrieu, 62, whistled as he strolled through the wood-beamed terminal of the Raleigh-Durham International Airport.

“I love airports because they make me think that we’re going to be OK in America,” Landrieu said last week after climbing into a Ford SUV. “You’ve got to believe that that airport was full of people that thought differently and acted differently, but nobody was yelling and screaming. And everybody had one purpose: to get where the hell we’re going.”

Even if they share a destination, though, they may not always agree on the road to get there. Administration officials love to point out how Republicans who voted against the infrastructure bill are nonetheless seeking its cash for local projects, and even taking credit for them. But Republican governors want more flexibility with how to spend the money, saying the rules can increase costs at a time of high inflation.

Landrieu said action on long-delayed infrastructure projects can’t foster “political” unity, but it can create a sense of “national” unity — if the American public and its leaders look past divisions on abortion, civil rights and more to focus on shared goals.

The challenge is that it’s still early for voters to appreciate projects that are generational in scale. Landrieu explains the dilemma by referencing the French post-impressionist artist Georges Seurat and his painting “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grade Jatte.” The painting of Parisians on the banks of the Seine is composed entirely of colorful dots of paint that, when viewed at a distance, form a full picture.

So far, Landrieu says, the infrastructure effort is just a bunch of dots on the canvas. He’s trying to sell people on how those dots connect.

Since February, Landrieu has gone to 37 cities, encouraging government officials and businesses to apply for infrastructure grants and loans. Some 6,000 projects are already under way. He numbers his conversations with governors, mayors and others in the thousands. That suggests he’s reaching much more deeply into Republican territory than Biden, who can be a lightning rod for GOP criticism.

Landrieu has gotten roughly $185 billion in infrastructure spending out the door. His trip to North Carolina with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack last week was to announce $759 million to lay broadband fiber for internet in rural counties.

That sum is a lifeline for places like Warren County in North Carolina. Census figures show it lost more than 11% of its population between 2010 and 2020. A fast internet connection is a must for businesses and residents to stay.

“What I hear often is I cannot find a place in Warren County that gives me the speed that I need,” said Charla Duncan, the county’s community and economic development director.

Landrieu listened intently as Duncan spoke during a roundtable with Vilsack and North Carolina officials. When Gov. Roy Cooper said that one million North Carolina residents lack high-speed internet, Landrieu registered that number with his eyes. He would use it later that day in Elm City.

Landrieu has been giving voters a deeply political message ahead of the midterm elections, trying to convey that Biden cares about them and is improving the capacity of government to meet their needs. It’s an uphill battle as high inflation weighs on the minds of voters and has left Biden’s approval rating at just 43%.

As a scion of a Louisiana political dynasty, Landrieu has spent his life dwelling on the gap between how governments function and how they should operate. He was a state legislator and lieutenant governor before serving as New Orleans mayor. His father, Moon, held the same job when Mitch was a child and teenager.

On the day Landrieu was born in 1960, he says, his father was one of two state representatives to vote against segregation, and racial, class and other divides have always been a part of how he thinks.

He studied the political divisions after removing New Orleans’ Confederate monuments and starting the nonprofit E Pluribus Unum. He traveled across the South and talked with coal miners in West Virginia who felt abandoned by government leaders.

He sees infrastructure as a vehicle for economic opportunity, yet demurred when asked if he planned to stay in his post as he said he serves at “the president’s pleasure.” Landrieu suggested his fate could change after the Nov. 8 elections and the possible ascension of the GOP to House and Senate majorities.

“We’ll see what happens in a couple of weeks and then the world changes dramatically around here,” he said. “I don’t really know the answer to that question.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for Sen. Lindsey Graham’s testimony in a Georgia investigation of possible illegal interference in the 2020 election by then-President Donald Trump and his allies in the state.

The court lifted a temporary hold on Graham’s appearance before a special grand jury, now scheduled for Nov. 17.

But in an unsigned order, the justices noted that Graham still could raise objections to some questions.

The South Carolina senator, a top Trump ally, had argued that a provision of the Constitution, the speech and debate clause, shields him from being forced to testify.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had told the justices that “the delay resulting from a stay would be unavoidably harmful” to the grand jury investigation.

Lower courts had rebuffed Graham’s plea for a pause while the legal case plays out.

Tuesday’s order dissolved a temporary hold that Justice Clarence Thomas had placed on the testimony while he and his colleagues weighed the arguments.

There was no immediate comment from an attorney for Graham or the senator’s spokesman.

Graham, a four-term senator who last won reelection in 2020, was first subpoenaed in July by Willis. The district attorney opened her investigation shortly after a recording of a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was made public. In that call, Trump suggested Raffensperger could “find” the votes needed to overturn his narrow loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Willis wants to question Graham about two phone calls he made to Raffensperger and his staff in the weeks after the election.

During those calls, Graham asked about “reexamining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump,” Willis wrote in a petition seeking to compel his testimony.

Graham also “made reference to allegations of widespread voter fraud in the November 2020 election in Georgia, consistent with public statements made by known affiliates of the Trump Campaign,” she wrote. She said in a hearing last month that Graham may be able to provide insight into the extent of any coordinated efforts to influence the results.

Raffensperger said he took Graham’s question about absentee ballots as a suggestion to toss out legally cast votes. Graham has dismissed that interpretation as “ridiculous.” Graham has also argued that the call was protected because he was asking questions to inform his decisions on voting to certify the 2020 election and future legislation.

Lower courts already have told Willis that she “may not ask about any investigatory conduct,” which is protected under the Constitution.

The justices wrote Tuesday that their intervention is unnecessary because the courts “have held that Senator Graham may not be questioned about such activities.”

He also can return to federal court if disputes arise over the questioning in front of the grand jury, the justices wrote.

Thomas initially dealt with Graham’s appeal, but involved the rest of the court in Tuesday’s order, as is customary.

But Thomas did not step aside from the case, and indeed he has participated in all the election-related disputes brought to the court by Trump and his allies, despite the involvement of the justice’s wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, in efforts to question Trump’s defeat in 2020.

Ginni Thomas, a conservative activist and staunch Trump supporter, attended the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse and wrote to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the weeks following the election encouraging him to work to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory and keep Trump in office.

She also contacted lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin in the weeks after the election, though no evidence has emerged that she contacted Georgia officials.

Thomas was recently interviewed by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, and she stood by the false claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent, despite the fact that numerous federal and local officials, a long list of courts, top former campaign staffers and even Trump’s own attorney general have all said there is no evidence of mass fraud.

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SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Republicans are funneling resources and determination into a law-and-order campaign for governor of New Mexico led by a local TV celebrity with a hard-line message about criminal justice — hoping to dislodge an incumbent Democrat who staunchly defends abortion access.

New Mexico is one of a handful of Democratic-dominated states from New York to Oregon where Republicans hope to win the top statewide office by elevating concerns about household hardships of inflation along with rising crime and shifting attitudes about public safety.

Former TV meteorologist and GOP nominee Mark Ronchetti has relentlessly hammered incumbent Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham for fostering a “catch-and-release” environment in the criminal justice system as the state’s largest city, Albuquerque, sees a record-setting spate of homicides.

He’s drawing support from a pack of ambitious GOP governors with little love for former President Donald Trump. Fundraising by Ronchetti’s campaign has surged amid visits from incumbent Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, termed-out Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and purple-state Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia.

On Monday, Trump posted a social media endorsement of Ronchetti, who has steered clear of Trump’s false election-fraud claims that sparked the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and acknowledges that President Joe Biden won in 2020.

Biden is scheduled to visit New Mexico on Thursday to shore up Lujan Grisham’s standing with voters in a state that Trump lost twice — and where Democrats hope to keep control of every statewide elected office, legislative majorities and the state Supreme Court.

Lujan Grisham has staked her reelection above all on abortion access as a cornerstone of women’s rights — touting her collaboration with Democratic legislators in overturning a dormant state abortion ban last year ahead of the U.S. Supreme Court striking down Roe vs. Wade.

She later signed executive orders to ensure safe haven for local abortion doctors and visiting patients, while earmarking $10 million to help build an abortion and reproductive health clinic in Las Cruces.

If “women don’t have equal rights, you cannot have a democracy,” Lujan Grisham told news reporters last week. “It’s perilous.”

Biden’s trip to New Mexico comes on the heels of visits and endorsements by prominent Democrats, from a video feed by Barack Obama to a moderated discussion on reproductive rights in Albuquerque last week between Lujan Grisham and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Ronchetti spokesman Ryan Sabel said Monday that the Biden visit would remind voters of reckless policies that “have led to higher gas prices, open borders, and drugs and violent crime taking over our neighborhoods.”

Lonna Atkeson, a political scientist who directs the LeRoy Collins Institute at Florida State University, said Republicans have seized on the most visceral of political issues.

“Crime really affects people, and the economy is more important than crime,” she said. “As long as you can keep these issues in the minds of voters, the GOP has a winning strategy.”

Atkeson, a former professor at the University of New Mexico, said campaigning on abortion policy can activate voters across the political spectrum in a heavily Hispanic state with strong currents of Catholicism.

“We’ve got both right-to-life and pro-choice people on the other side. So it’s not the clear winning issue,” Atkeson said. “Abortion is in some ways an abstract issue for a lot of people that they’re not going to face tomorrow.”

The outcome of the governor’s race in New Mexico holds other national implications.

A Ronchetti win would put Republicans back in the driver’s seat on oilfield and climate regulations in the nation’s No. 2 state for petroleum production. And Ronchetti has pledged to deploy troops and police to the U.S.-Mexico border, aligning enforcement with Republican-led initiatives in Texas and Arizona.

The winner also will oversee a windfall in state government income linked to oil production, in a state with persistently high rates of childhood poverty and low-marks for public school performance.

Lujan Grisham has urged voters to stay the course on increased public investments in education, health care and policing.

She recently signed cuts on sales taxes and social security benefits. Ronchetti says he would go farther, including a permanent annual rebate tied to oilfield income for every individual in the state of 2.1 million residents.

Republicans have spent heavily on turning the election into a referendum on crime and punishment.

The Republican Governors Association has invested in TV ads that provide a frightening narrative around the release of a convicted felon who went on to slay his estranged girlfriend last year.

Patty Lane, manager of a gallery of shops in Truth or Consequences, said Ronchetti’s approach to crime, border security and the economy resonate in her community, and that she still resents aggressive pandemic health restrictions from Lujan Grisham that limited access to businesses while drawing down prison populations.

“Her handling of COVID, letting prisoners out that shouldn’t be let out. … Ronchetti, he just seems more level-headed,” Lane said.

Ronchetti, who ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 2020, said he’ll appoint hard-nosed judges and has pledged to back police officers by restoring local immunity from prosecution to policing agencies, while railing against the state’s pretrial release system. A voter-approved constitutional amendment in 2016 reduced the role of money-bail and made it harder to deny release while defendants await trial.

New Mexico has alternated between Democratic and Republican governors since the early 1980s. An incumbent governor last lost reelection in 1994.

The Democratic Party also seized on abortion access as a galvanizing issue in 2020 to oust several of the party’s own incumbent state senators who had balked at overturning the state abortion ban — clearing the way for 2021 legislation to preserve access.

Since then, New Mexico has taken on an outsized roll in providing access to abortion for residents of neighboring states. Operators of the Mississippi clinic at the center of the court battle that overturned Roe v. Wade have opened a clinic in southern New Mexico.

Ronchetti supports a ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy with limited exceptions, while advocating for a statewide referendum on whether to impose new restrictions.

At the University of New Mexico, 19-year-old student Taylor Rittman said she was unlikely to support candidates who want to restrict access to abortion.

“It opens up the opportunity for the government to continue to take away freedoms” from women, Rittman said.

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

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is heading to Florida to underline the contrast between the Democratic and Republican agendas, blasting the GOP over proposals to undo prescription drug price caps and change Social Security and Medicare.

Biden’s trip Tuesday will include taxpayer-funded remarks in Hallandale Beach, where the White House said he would highlight Republicans’ “very different vision” for America. Also on Biden’s schedule are a fundraiser for Florida gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist and a rally for the state’s Democratic Party, including Senate candidate Val Demings.

The visit to Florida, where Democrats are trailing in both the Senate and the gubernatorial races, may appear counterintuitive just one week before polls close in the midterm elections when so many other races are tighter. Yet Biden allies say it exemplifies the president’s efforts to go where he can be helpful — Florida Democrats are hoping Biden can help boost base turnout — but also to drive a message that vulnerable Democrats can amplify nationwide.

Biden has avoided appearing with some of the Democrats’ most embattled candidates, including Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, but his aides insist he can be helpful from afar by talking about GOP policies they believe voters find objectionable. Biden is set to campaign in New Mexico on Thursday, California on Friday and Pennsylvania on Saturday.

Republicans are bullish on their prospects across Florida as voter registration trends and demographic shifts suggest the state will continue shifting to the right.

Democrats are particularly concerned about the trend in Miami-Dade County, home to 1.5 million Hispanics of voting age and a Democratic stronghold for the past 20 years, where the GOP made significant gains in the last presidential election. Republicans, such as Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez, are openly predicting that the region will turn red on Nov. 8.

Should Democrats lose Miami-Dade, it would virtually eliminate their path to victory in statewide contests, including presidential elections, moving forward.

Biden has seized on Florida Sen. Rick Scott’s February proposal to sunset all federal legislation after five years, which the president says would require Congress to reauthorize Medicare and Social Security, as emblematic of what he’s termed the “ultra-MAGA” agenda Democrats are running against.

Besides Scott’s plan, the White House said Biden would emphasize other GOP proposals that affect older Americans, including raising the retirement age and repealing Medicare’s ability to negotiate drug prices with manufacturers and the $2,000-a-year cap on out-of-pocket drug costs included in Democrats’ August health care and climate law.

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Associated Press National Political Writer Steve Peoples in New York contributed to this story.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections

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INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Even before Republican legislators this summer made Indiana the first state to pass an abortion ban since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Democrats started urging angry voters to take their revenge at the ballot box.

Indiana Democrats haven’t let up on that push in the final days of this year’s elections, although a limited number of competitive races on the Nov. 8 ballot for the currently Republican-dominated Legislature leave them with slim chances of being able to do much about abortion access that is also being debated during campaigns across the country.

Indiana Republicans, meanwhile, argue that voters are more worried about other issues such as inflation and crime — concerns widely believed to favor the GOP.

Democratic candidate Joey Mayer said the abortion ban has remained a top issue as she’s talked with voters in a northern Indianapolis suburban district where she’s challenging a four-term Republican House member who voted in favor of the ban when it passed in August.

“Many people that I have met through door-knocking that identify as a Libertarian or a lifelong Republican have said, ‘I’m done, I’m done. This is ridiculous overreach,’” Mayer said.

The state Supreme Court has allowed abortions to continue in Indiana while it considers a lawsuit from abortion clinic operators arguing that the ban violates the state constitution.

Mayer, a business consultant from Westfield, said the blocking of the abortion ban only slowed down talk about it among voters for a couple days.

“Then people were like, ‘This doesn’t fix the problem’ and it seemed like everybody started to get spun up again,” Mayer said.

Republicans go into the election with a 71-29 Indiana House majority and a 39-11 state Senate advantage, giving them supermajorities in both chambers that allow them to take action even without any Democrats present.

Republicans used those commanding margins to boost their legislative campaign funds to about $8 million for the year through the end of September — about four times what Democrats raised, according to state campaign reports. GOP lawmakers also controlled last year’s redistricting process that produced new legislative district maps that political analysts found locked in a partisan advantage for the next decade.

In order to pick up the five House seats needed to break the two-thirds supermajority, Democrats such as Mayer will have to capture Republican-held seats in suburban Indianapolis and hold onto GOP-targeted seats in cities such as Anderson and Jeffersonville.

Current Republican lawmakers largely held off numerous hard-right challengers in the May primary who argued that the Legislature had not been aggressive enough in attempting to ban abortion. The law that ultimately passed during a special session over the summer includes exceptions allowing abortions in cases of rape and incest and to protect the life and physical health of the mother — exceptions that were opposed by many anti-abortion activists as making the ban too lax.

Republican House Speaker Todd Huston said he believed his party would retain the supermajority as GOP candidates have focused on talking about issues such as the economy, education and crime.

“It’s hard to talk about how Democratic leadership is doing things positively across the country,” Huston said. “So, you have to pick one thing and they decided the one thing they wanted to pick. I think we’ve got a much broader and better story to tell.”

Many voters won’t have a chance of voting Democratic for the Legislature as the party doesn’t have candidate on the ballot for 33 of the 100 House seats and eight of the 25 Senate seats up for election. Republicans aren’t running in 14 House races while all Senate districts have GOP candidates.

The July 15 deadline for parties to fill ballot vacancies passed a couple weeks after the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling and before the Legislature’s special session began.

Republican state Sen. Vaneta Becker of Evansville, who joined Democrats in opposing the abortion ban, said many women have been angry about the law and Democrats missed an opportunity by not have more candidates. Time also hasn’t been on the side of those campaigning as abortion-rights supporters, said Becker, a 41-year member of the Legislature.

“I think if the election had been held in September they would have done a lot better,” Becker said. “I think now it’s kind of fatigued.”

Democratic candidate Katherine Rybak said issues such as rising utility costs were on her mind when she decided last year to challenge Republican Rep. Wendy McNamara in a GOP-leaning district that covers part of Evansville and extends into rural Posey County in southwestern Indiana.

The abortion issue was pushed to the forefront in that race as Huston picked McNamara to sponsor the abortion ban bill this summer and Cheryl Batteiger-Smith, a former Posey County Republican vice chair, joined the ballot as an independent calling for a tighter abortion ban without exceptions.

Rybak, a semi-retired lawyer, said she believed that victories by candidates such as herself who support abortion rights would send a strong message to the Legislature.

“If I can pull this out, it will show that there is a groundswell of support for women and women’s rights, and I think it may moderate the Republican Legislature,” Rybak said. “That’s all we can hope at this point. I think it does show that maybe a safe seat isn’t a safe seat.”

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Learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections.

And follow the AP’s election coverage of the 2022 elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — At least three Republicans running for the U.S. House attended the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, and made their way toward the U.S. Capitol during the insurrection to stop Joe Biden’s election.

Countless other House Republican candidates are skeptics and deniers of the 2020 election lost by Donald Trump.

There are veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, small-business owners and the most geographically, racially and culturally diverse group of Republicans seeking House seats in the modern era — many of whom, like Trump in 2016, are political newcomers who have never held elected office.

All told, the House GOP’s Class of 2022 midterm candidates includes a new generation of political outsiders, populists and some extremists who could bring an intensity to Capitol Hill. They would be an untested and potentially unruly majority if Republicans win the House in the Nov. 8 election.

“Trump inspires all of this,” said John Feehery, a Republican strategist who was the long-serving spokesperson for former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert.

“There’s not a lot of shrinking violets,” Feehery said about the House Republican candidates. “Not a lot of people trying to be moderates. They’re warriors for their beliefs.”

Republicans are increasingly confident they will win control of the House, confronting Democrats on a widening map. The party in the White House traditionally suffers setbacks in the president’s midterm, and Democrats are weighed down by Biden’s lagging approval ratings and voter unease over inflation’s grip on the economy.

In many ways, Republicans are reassembling the Trump coalition with a well-funded but unusual alliance of candidates reflecting his supporters: charismatic Trump-styled media stars, “America First” military veterans, women, minorities and what’s left of the GOP’s traditional conservatives.

“This is going to be the most diverse class of Republicans — ever — in every sense of the word,” said Carlos Curbelo, a Republican former congressman from Florida. “What it means for governing is a big question mark.”

To be sure, some of the House Republican candidates are familiar with elected office or more moderate conservatives who have come up through the ranks of public service — like the former mayor of Cranston, Rhode Island, Allan Fung, the son of immigrants who is working to flip a seat opened by a Democratic retirement.

But the Republican class is likely to be defined by the Trump-styled newcomers.

Retired Navy SEAL Derrick Van Orden traveled to Washington for Jan. 6 — though he insists he didn’t join the mob attack on the Capitol — and is considered a rising star poised to defeat Brad Pfaff for an open Wisconsin seat long held by Democrats.

Florida’s Cory Mills caught attention with a provocative campaign ad in which the former combat veteran, who was also in special operations and went on to be a Trump adviser at the Pentagon, boasts about his company’s riot gear that was used on Black Lives Matter protesters and various liberal groups.

Karoline Leavitt was not her party’s first choice to take on Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas in New Hampshire, but Republican voters made the former Trump White House press aide, who questioned the 2020 election results, their nominee.

“She’s an election denier who believes the last election was stolen from Donald Trump,” Pappas said during their recent debate.

Leavitt, who recently said during a WMUR event that Biden is, in fact, “the legitimate president,” retorted that Pappas voted with Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “100% of the time.”

Unlike the Republican tea party class of 2010 that came to Congress to slash federal budgets or the 2018 Democrats who swept to power on the promise of good governance, the 2022 candidates appear less unified around a common policy agenda.

Instead, what many of the Republican recruits do share is Trump’s rejection of the establishment and civic norms, an approach much like that of Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, that is transforming the party.

Across the country, the GOP candidates reflect Trump’s lasting influence and willingness to bring the far-right into the fold — as seen in Washington state after Joe Kent, a former Green Beret and CIA officer with a harrowing life story, advanced to the November general election over Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who voted to impeach Trump over the Jan. 6 attack.

“Kevin McCarthy and MAGA Republicans have worked overtime to nominate extremist candidates across the country,” said CJ Warnke, the communications director at House Majority PAC, an outside group aligned with Pelosi. “We look forward to voters rejecting their out-of-touch policies at the ballot box in November.”

House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, who is poised to become House speaker if Republicans gain control, has been instrumental in recruiting the new class that could lift him to power.

Learning from the past elections, McCarthy reached deeper for candidates that better reflect the diversity of America, a turnaround from the 2018 election that left about a dozen Republican women and no Black Republicans in the House.

Among Republican incumbents and other candidates, there are 28 Black nominees, 33 Hispanics, 13 Asian Americans and three Native Americans, according to the National Republican Campaign Committee, the party’s House campaign arm.

McCarthy has maintained a close if sometimes rocky relationship with the former president. In a speech this summer in South Carolina, he championed his far-flung recruits, many of whom have been endorsed by Trump. Since August, McCarthy has visited 34 states in support of Republican candidates and members.

“There’s not one place we are not going to play,” he vowed.

Not all those Republicans are party favorites. In fact, leaders tried to keep some of the more extreme Republican candidates off the ballot.

More than $11 million was spent during the primary campaigns to prop up favored GOP candidates in Virginia, Texas, California and other states by the Conservative Leadership Fund, the outside group aligned with McCarthy.

The leadership fund achieved its preferred outcome in most of those races, though there were setbacks. In North Carolina, Trump-styled Sandy Smith — she tweeted on Jan. 6, “In DC fighting for Trump! Just marched from the Monument to the Capitol! — trounced the party favorite.

McCarthy campaigned early with JR Majewski, another Republican nominee who was at the Capitol on Jan. 6. The party has stuck with the Ohio candidate after The Associated Press reported that he misrepresented his military record.

During the primaries, Democrats promoted some of the more far-right candidates, helping elevate Trump-backed John Gibbs in Michigan, in a controversial counteroffensive strategy designed to push centrist and independent voters away from Republicans.

But Republicans are digging deep into Democratic strongholds of New England, Florida and notably South Texas, where three Latina candidates with tough border control positions reflect a dramatic re-sorting of traditional party allegiances, sounding alarms among Democrats.

“The moment reflects where the party is right now — Republicans are becoming a more broadly tented party that is making inroads in all types of communities,” said CLF spokesperson Calvin Moore.

“It’s a whole cadre of new voices putting forward their vision of what it means to put the country back on track.”

But recruiting and electing candidates and governing the country are different skill sets.

If Republicans win the House, “they’re going to have to teach these guys the value of regular order and the value of working together as a team,” Feehery said. “And that’s not going to come naturally.”

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

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BELOIT, Wis. (AP) — Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, emerging from a private meeting last week with business executives at a massive foundry-turned-tech hub, smiled despite what he said was a difficult conversation about inflation, high energy prices, staffing shortages and rising crime.

“We had a very good discussion, even though it wasn’t particularly uplifting, because the reality right now is concerning,” Johnson said.

As one of the nation’s critical U.S. Senate races nears an end, Johnson has reason to feel confident. All those negatives stand to work well for him and his party in a midterm election in which voters typically blame the party that holds the White House. And Johnson is hammering those themes in what amounts to his closing argument for voters to give him a third term over Democrat Mandela Barnes, the lieutenant governor.

“These people are fundamentally destroying this country,” Johnson said of Barnes and Democrats at a campaign stop Monday. “They have to be stopped. They need to be defeated. They need a real shellacking.”

Barnes has ratcheted up his own rhetoric in the closing days, saying Johnson has “lied to our faces for 12 straight years” and returned repeatedly to Johnson’s downplaying of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and his attempts to deliver a slate of fake electors to former Vice President Mike Pence.

“He’s not just a danger to this state, he’s a threat to the stability of this country,” Barnes said Tuesday at a meeting of the Rotary Club of Milwaukee. “That’s who he is.”

The Wisconsin race is one of a handful that could be critical to which party controls the Senate. Polls have shown Johnson with an apparently increasing lead over Barnes, and national Republicans who abandoned his campaign six years ago are pouring money into the final days.

The former plastics manufacturer rode the tea party wave in 2010 to win his first Senate race over Sen. Russ Feingold, then beat Feingold in a rematch six years later.

Johnson has proven to be an elusive target for liberals even as he has drifted rightward since Donald Trump’s election in 2016 and polls have shown Johnson’s favorability rating to be upside down. Trump won Wisconsin in 2016, and lost it in 2020, by less than a point. Johnson won both of his elections by fewer than 5 points.

Barnes, who is seeking to become Wisconsin’s first Black senator, has sought to portray Johnson as out of touch with the cares of middle-class voters. He has reminded them of an investigation by ProPublica that found that provisions Johnson added to the 2017 tax bill delivered millions in tax savings to key donors including billionaire Diane Hendricks of Beloit-based ABC Supply.

Hendricks developed the industrial park in Beloit where Johnson had his meeting. She has poured millions into his race, including $3.1 million a month before Election Day.

Johnson hasn’t shied away from his vote in support of the 2017 tax bill. He said a provision he pushed for cutting business taxes “allows small businesses to compete with the big guys.”

Barnes, who paid no income taxes in 2018 and was on the state’s Medicaid program, has contrasted his upbringing in Milwaukee by his schoolteacher mom and factory worker father with Johnson’s wealth. He has also pointed out a generational divide; at 35, he’s almost half the age of the 67-year-old Johnson.

“Ron Johnson does not truly represent who we are,” Barnes said at the Madison rally with U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a fellow millennial and former Democratic presidential candidate. “People like Ron Johnson have had their day; it’s our time now.”

Barnes, like Democrats all across the country, has also tried to make the race a referendum on abortion rights. Johnson is a longtime supporter of an abortion ban without exceptions, a position Barnes calls “dangerous and out of touch.” Johnson has tried to blunt the issue by saying he supported a state referendum to let voters decide, but he opposed an effort by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers for such a vote.

And Barnes has tried to present himself as a unifier, echoing themes of both President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama’s campaigns, saying Tuesday that “we’ve got to bring back decency to this state and to this country.”

Both Barnes and Johnson say the other has done little to help the state over their time in office.

Barnes served four years in the Assembly as part of a Democratic minority that could do little against the Republican majority. As lieutenant governor, a job with almost no official duties, Barnes took up the issue of climate change and led a task force examining ways the state can address it.

Johnson points to passage of his “right-to-try bill,” which allowed terminally ill patients to receive experimental drugs, as one of the ways he has delivered for Wisconsin.

Johnson has said things politicians usually shy away from, including taking away guaranteed funding for Social Security and Medicare, saying that’s the only way to save the popular entitlement programs. He contends voters will reward him for truth-telling.

“When I ran in 2010 I made two promises,” Johnson said in Beloit. “I’ll always tell you the truth, and I’ll never vote or conduct myself with my reelection in mind. I’ve honored those promises.”

A reporter pointed out that Johnson had also promised to only serve two terms.

“That was my intention,” Johnson said. “Things change.”

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