Politics

By Karen Freifeld

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The New York judge overseeing a tax fraud case against the Trump Organization on Monday rejected any effort to delay next month’s trial, acknowledging concern that former President Donald Trump’s company might be trying to “stall” the criminal case.

At a pre-trial hearing in a New York state court in Manhattan, Justice Juan Merchan warned against delaying tactics, even as a Trump Organization lawyer said the decision by longtime chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg to plead guilty changed how the defense will present its case.

“One of the accusations is the defense is trying to stall,” Merchan said. “It’s starting to feel that way a little bit. … I am repeating. We are not delaying this trial. It’s starting Oct. 24th and we’re going forward.”

Prosecutors charged Trump’s company and Weisselberg in July 2021 with scheming to defraud, tax fraud and falsifying business records for awarding “off-the-books” perks to senior executives.

The Trump Organization, which manages golf clubs, hotels and other real estate around the world, has pleaded not guilty and faces possible fines and other penalties if convicted.

Weisselberg initially pleaded not guilty, but changed his plea on Aug. 18 and agreed to testify though he is not cooperating with prosecutors’ larger probe into Trump. His plea agreement calls for a five-month jail sentence.

Merchan also said he will not let the Trump Organization argue to jurors that it was a victim of “selective” prosecution by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, now led by Democrat Alvin Bragg.

Susan Necheles, a lawyer for the company, said Weisselberg felt he was being targeted because of his ties to the Republican former president.

“I believe that he will say that he thinks he was targeted because of his association with Donald Trump,” and pleaded guilty in part from concern the targeting would continue and he would be “unfairly unpunished,” Necheles said.

Necheles also said Weisselberg told prosecutors that no one other than himself and Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney, who has immunity from prosecution, knew about the tax wrongdoing.

“He has no knowledge of former President Trump knowing anything about it or any of the other Trumps,” Necheles said.

Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass disputed her characterization of Weisselberg’s discussion with prosecutors.

Nicholas Gravante, a lawyer for Weisselberg, declined to comment.

Donald Trump has not been charged or accused of wrongdoing in the case.

Outside the courtroom, Necheles took issue with any suggestion of a stall. The trial is expected to last about four weeks.

“I’m not stalling,” Necheles said. “I’m ready for trial.”

(Reporting by Karen Freifeld in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)

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Election officials preparing for the rapidly approaching midterm elections have one more headache: trying to combat misinformation that sows distrust about voting and results while fueling vitriol aimed at rank-and-file election workers.

Some states and counties are devoting more money or staff to a problem that has only grown more concerning since the 2020 presidential election and the false claims that it was marred by widespread fraud. A barrage of misinformation in some places has led election officials to complain that Facebook parent Meta, Twitter and other social media platforms aren’t doing enough to help them tackle the problem.

“Our voters are angry and confused. They simply don’t know what to believe,” Lisa Marra, elections director in Cochise County, Arizona, told a U.S. House committee last month. “We’ve got to repair this damage.”

Many election offices are taking matters into their own hands, starting public outreach campaigns to provide accurate information about how elections are run and how ballots are cast and counted. That means traveling town halls in Arizona, “Mythbuster Mondays” in North Carolina and animated videos in Ohio emphasizing the accuracy of election results. Connecticut is hiring a dedicated election misinformation analyst.

Still, the task is daunting. Despite Oregon putting additional money into joining a national #TrustedInfo2022 campaign, misinformation continues to reach social media and force local election officials to respond, taking time from other duties.

Ben Morris, spokesperson for the Oregon secretary of state’s office, cited three recent Facebook posts that Meta allowed to remain on Facebook despite his office providing evidence to them that they were false.

One alleged a candidate’s name had been improperly censored from election fliers. Another falsely asserted that one party was purposefully denied access to a local elections office. Yet another claimed inaccurately that election workers in Multnomah County were being required to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination.

“Meta’s policies are too limited to address the misinformation we see at a state and local level,” Morris said. “Their policies cover big national issues, but false posts about a county clerk or a state law aren’t removed. When you realize this could be happening at Meta’s scale, it’s deeply concerning.”

The disconnect may be that Facebook policies “prioritize provably false claims that are timely, trending and consequential.” All three posts Morris referenced were presumably too localized to have “trended,” though he contends they were still damaging.

They also were posted by candidates for office, a group that includes a growing number of election deniers and whose speech social media companies strive to protect.

Meta spokesperson Corey Chambliss said the policies exempt much of what politicians say online because of “Facebook’s fundamental belief in free expression, respect for the democratic process, and the belief that, especially in mature democracies with a free press, political speech is the most scrutinized speech there is.”

But he said those protections are waived in cases of direct election interference or threats of violence or intimidation.

In Arizona’s largest county, Maricopa, candidates shielded by those protections have liberally posted misinformation during this year’s election cycle. That has prompted officials to aggressively condemn the false narratives themselves.

When a candidate for county supervisor encouraged supporters to steal ballot-marking pens given to them at polling places on Election Day during the state’s August primary, the county attorney, Rachel Mitchell, wrote warning her to stop. The candidate pushed false claims that the pens allow election workers to change people’s votes.

And when Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake made unsupported claims of potential fraud ahead of the primary, Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates told local reporters her claims were “beyond irresponsible.”

“They never brought any specifics to us,” said Gates, a fellow Republican.

He said he has been more vocal on social media and more available to traditional media than ever before this year, in an effort to tamp down false election claims before they get out of hand.

Gates and County Recorder Stephen Richer regularly respond directly to false Twitter posts with the facts. Richer said his department also emails Twitter when it sees a misleading narrative or threats against election workers gathering steam online, though it has disagreed with some of the platform’s responses.

When debunked claims about the county deleting election data off a server in 2021 resurfaced at an activist-led “election security forum” three days before the state’s August primary, the presenters publicly identified two election workers they claimed were responsible and called their actions a crime. That prompted threats and harassment against the workers online, part of a disturbing trend affecting election offices across the country.

Richer said the county wrote to Twitter in hopes of muting the hate, but the platform “didn’t always agree” that the content violated its policies.

Last month, Twitter activated enforcement of 2022 election integrity policies intended to “enable healthy civic conversation on Twitter, while ensuring people have the context they need to make informed decisions about content they encounter.” The company’s efforts included unveiling state-specific pages with live election updates featuring tweets from election officials and local reporters. The platform didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Video app TikTok, whose growing popularity has made it yet another hub for misinformation this election cycle, announced last month it is launching an election center that will help people find voting locations and candidate information. The platform said it works with over a dozen fact-checking organizations to debunk misinformation and will incorporate artificial intelligence as part of its efforts to detect and remove threats against election workers and push back against voting misinformation.

Not every state or county has Maricopa’s command of social media.

Relatively few county election offices have official presences on both Facebook and Twitter, according to a recent report by a pair of scholars who specialize in voter participation and the electoral processes, Mississippi State University’s Thessalia Merivaki and Connecticut College’s Mara Suttmann-Lea.

Many more local offices are on just one platform or the other, and the vast majority aren’t on either.

Legislation introduced in Congress earlier this year would provide $20 billion over the next decade to help state and local governments support election administration, which includes fighting misinformation.

“Election after election, millions of Americans see inaccurate or misleading information about elections and the voting process on social media, and it is hurting our democracy,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat who is co-sponsoring the legislation, said during a hearing last spring.

When election officials battle through staffing, funding and personal safety concerns to get more involved on social media, voters of all ages — and particularly younger voters — become more engaged, according to the recent academic report on elections. The electorate benefits, the researchers wrote, “as does democracy itself.”

That’s just what the election supervisor’s office in Collier County, Florida, is trying to do.

In one TikTok video on her personal account, office spokesperson Trish Robertson snaps her fingers to the Sicilian song “Che La Luna” amid images of district maps, portraits of election officials and large windows that allow for public viewing during vote counting.

The lighthearted video from June, playing off a TikTok trend in which users display essential items in their homes and offices, is one of many efforts Robertson is making to restore voters’ trust. Besides posting to her own TikTok feed, she manages the county supervisor’s social media channels, hosts “transparency tours” of the office and responds to piles of public record requests, which often demand information that doesn’t exist.

Amid election falsehoods stoked by former President Donald Trump and amplified by his allies, Robertson said fighting misinformation “has pretty much become a full-time job.”

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Associated Press misinformation reporter David Klepper contributed to this report.

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SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — A few days before middle school teacher Shaun Nielsen joined a work group to develop South Dakota’s social studies standards, he got a thick package in the mail.

Sent from Hillsdale, Michigan, home to a conservative private college enjoying outsize influence among top Republicans, it contained materials that would ultimately form what the state’s public schools students could be expected to learn about American history and civics.

“Whoa — these are already written,” Nielsen remembers thinking as he opened the document this spring.

Hillsdale College, which has sought in recent years to “revive the American tradition of K-12 education” by fostering a nationwide network of schools, won new prominence when then-President Donald Trump tapped the school to help develop a “patriotic education” project. Now, in a sign of Hillsdale’s growing influence in public education, South Dakota has proposed statewide standards that contain distinct echoes of Hillsdale’s material.

While Republican governors such as Tennessee’s Bill Lee and Florida’s Ron DeSantis have embraced Hillsdale’s education for K-12 students, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has been perhaps the most enthusiastic. Larry Arrn, the school’s president, even said in a speech last year that Noem had “offered to build us an entire campus in South Dakota.”

That doesn’t appear to be in the works. But it was Noem, widely seen as a 2024 White House hopeful, who turned to former Hillsdale politics professor William Morrisey to develop the state’s social studies standards. The state paid him $200,000, and he tapped Hillsdale’s material, according to members of the standards commission.

The college played an integral part in Trump’s “1776 Report,” a conservative response to work like the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” which re-examined the founding of the United States with the institution of slavery at the center. Hillsdale followed up by producing “The Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum,” which offers nearly 2,400 pages of lesson plans on American history.

South Dakota’s proposed standards released in mid-August align with the “1776 Curriculum.” Both emphasize the ideals of the country’s founders as an argument for American exceptionalism — an idea popular in conservative circles that the U.S. is uniquely worthy of universal praise.

The documents both define patriotism similarly, as preserving the “good” of the country while correcting its flaws. They teach that progressivism conflicts with the nation’s founding ideals, and assert that most of the founders — including such slave owners as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison — wanted to end slavery.

Morrisey declined an interview, and Hillsdale did not grant a request to interview a member of its K-12 Education Office.

Noem’s administration referred questions to Ben Jones, who oversees the South Dakota Historical Society and worked on the commission to develop the standards. Jones defended the scholarship at Hillsdale as respected in higher education and said Morrisey brought the commission a “generic” version of U.S. history that could be found in most textbooks.

“Frankly, it’s a logical fallacy to say that something is bad because it’s associated with this group that I don’t agree with over this other thing,” he said of criticism of Hillsdale.

Jones pointed out that Morrisey’s draft included descriptions of how the first Africans were enslaved and brought to the colonies and how the U.S. broke treaties with Native American tribes.

“The good, the bad, the ugly was all there,” he said.

Jones added that the group discussed and debated the standards over several meetings and by the end, “my sense was that we all made this very much our own.”

When Noem’s administration formed the 15-person commission, it chose three people, including Nielsen, currently certified to teach in South Dakota public schools. The group decided which grade levels should learn the standards and added South Dakota and Native American components to the proposal, Nielsen said.

As the proposal became public last month, Nielsen said he felt conflicted. He said he is a conservative but is careful to separate his political opinions from his classroom teaching. He said he agreed with Noem’s desire to make South Dakota a national leader in social studies education and even with much of the content it covered.

Ultimately, he said, he decided to speak out against the standards because they didn’t originate with South Dakota educators.

“The ‘1776 curriculum’ — it’s pretty much close to that,” he said.

“When you’re handed a set of standards to approve, it’s not a collaborative process at all,” he added. The standards, he worried, were not written with the practical needs of a classroom in mind.

Prominent voices among South Dakota educators agree. The standards — which will be subjected to public hearings this fall before the governor-appointed Board of Education Standards decides whether to adopt them — have been greeted coolly by organizations representing teachers, school boards and school administrators.

“It’s coming from a private, out-of-state college,” said Tim Graf, the superintendent of Harrisburg School District outside Sioux Falls. “I just don’t want it to be political in any way.”

Jennifer Lowery, the superintendent at Tea Area School District, worried teachers for younger grade levels would have to spend more time on social studies at the expense of foundational skills like basic math and reading.

“We’re not stomping our feet because our feelings got hurt or our profession was disrespected,” she said. “You’re hearing the outcry because this isn’t what’s best for our kids.”

Several educators said the standards rely too much on memorization and too little on inquiry-based learning that teaches students to question and analyze. Jones, the state historian, countered that memorization at younger grade levels will pave the way for analysis later.

Stephen Jackson, a history professor at the University of Sioux Falls, said that runs counter to criteria for state standards from the American Historical Society, which says inquiry engages students and helps them connect historical events to modern contexts.

Jackson was part of a group that created social studies standards last year, only to have its work scrapped by the governor. As conservatives began pushing back against historical analyses that argued racism and U.S. history are inextricably intertwined, Noem called for teaching how the “U.S. is the most special nation in the history of the world.”

Noem said the new standards are the best in the nation, calling them “a true, honest, and balanced approach to American history that is not influenced by political agendas.” Hillsdale College used similar language when it launched its curriculum.

Jonathan Zimmerman, an education historian at the University of Pennsylvania, suggested high school students could benefit from analyzing the “1619 Project” alongside the Trump administration’s “1776 Report” and learning how to evaluate and debate them. That’s unlikely in South Dakota, since Noem has moved to block teachings like the “1619 Project” from public schools.

“People like Kristi Noem are correct when they say that the fundamental narrative of America is under challenge like never before,” Zimmerman said. “I just think it’s a good challenge.”

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New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Delaware will host the final multistate primary elections of the 2022 midterm season Tuesday, with contests to select candidates for governor, U.S. Senate and the U.S. House.

Because of their late primaries, the winners of Tuesday’s races will have a mere eight weeks to win over voters ahead of the Nov. 8 general election. Delaware’s primary will feature just one contested statewide race — the Democratic primary for auditor.

As in earlier contests in other states, former President Donald Trump’s shadow looms large over some key races to be decided Tuesday, particularly in New Hampshire.

What to watch:

SUNUNU SEEKS A FOURTH TERM AS NEW HAMPSHIRE GOVERNOR

Until late last year, New Hampshire’s Republican Gov. Chris Sununu was widely expected to run for the U.S. Senate, taking on Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan. Instead, he opted to seek a fourth two-year term as governor, dealing a major blow to Republicans who had hoped he could help them retake control of the Senate.

Although he faced intense pressure to run for the Senate, Sununu insists he can have a bigger and more direct impact as governor than as a senator. And despite efforts by Trump’s former campaign manager to recruit a challenger, none of the other five Republicans on the ballot Tuesday poses a serious threat.

Democratic state Sen. Tom Sherman is running unopposed for his party’s nomination for governor.

REPUBLICANS’ SCRAMBLE FOR U.S. SENATE IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

With Sununu out of the running, a crowd of 11 candidates stepped forward to seek the GOP Senate nomination, including state Senate President Chuck Morse, former Londonderry town manager Kevin Smith and cryptocurrency entrepreneur Bruce Fenton. But retired Army Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc, who lost the GOP primary for New Hampshire’s other Senate seat in 2020, quickly emerged as the front-runner via dogged grassroots campaigning to compensate for his lack of cash.

That has made establishment Republicans nervous, with Sununu calling Bolduc “not a serious candidate” and a conspiracy theorist. Sununu issued a last-minute endorsement for Morse.

Democratic groups, meanwhile, have put up ads promoting Bolduc, hoping he’ll be an easy opponent for Hassan in November.

Hassan, seeking a second term in the battleground state, faces two virtually unknown challengers on the Democratic side. Although Democrats hold all four of New Hampshire’s congressional seats, Republicans control the state Legislature, and Hassan’s 2016 win was a narrow one.

GOP EYES 2 CONGRESSIONAL SEATS IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

Many expected major changes in New Hampshire’s two congressional districts thanks to the once-a-decade redistricting process, but that didn’t happen. Earlier this year, the Republican-controlled Legislature redrew the state’s two districts to give the GOP an advantage in the 1st District. But Sununu vetoed the plans, and the maps were updated by the courts instead with only minor changes.

Still, Republicans are bullish about their chances in New Hampshire and are eagerly eyeing both Democratic-held seats as potential pickups in November.

New Hampshire’s 1st District flipped five times in seven elections before Democrat Chris Pappas won his first term in 2018. He faces no primary opponent this year, while more than 10 Republicans are competing for a chance to challenge him.

The field includes a number of candidates with ties to Trump: Matt Mowers, the district’s 2020 Republican nominee and a former Trump State Department adviser; Karoline Leavitt, a former assistant press secretary in the Trump White House; and former TV broadcaster Gail Huff Brown, who is married to Scott Brown, a former U.S. senator from Massachusetts and the Trump administration ambassador to New Zealand. While Trump hasn’t endorsed in the race, the candidates haven’t been shy about emphasizing their connections to him.

In the second district, Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster faces no primary challenge as she seeks a sixth term. Seven Republicans are vying for their party’s nomination to challenge her, including pro-Trump candidate Bob Burns, a former county treasurer who runs a pharmaceutical safety company, and the more moderate George Hansel, mayor of Keene.

TOUGH DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY FOR RHODE ISLAND GOVERNOR

Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee is trying to fend off four Democratic challengers as he seeks his first full term in office. McKee, the former lieutenant governor, became governor a year and a half ago when then-Gov. Gina Raimondo was tapped to be the U.S. commerce secretary in the Biden administration.

McKee is expected to be in a close contest against Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea. Both were first elected to statewide office in 2014 and maintain a base of support and name recognition among voters.

Also running in the Democratic primary: Helena Foulkes, a former CVS Health executive who has proved to be an adept fundraiser and is spending heavily on the race in her first bid for public office; former Rhode Island secretary of state and progressive candidate Matt Brown; and community activist Dr. Luis Daniel Muñoz.

McKee is hoping his stewardship during the COVID-19 pandemic — and his 94-year-old mother — will earn him the Democratic nomination.

Willa McKee is a star of her son’s first television ad, titled “motha” because that’s how she pronounces “mother.” The two are playing cards as the governor talks about helping the economy, eliminating the state’s car tax, creating affordable housing and passing gun safety laws to keep families safe.

“Not bad for a year and a half,” the governor says.

He laughs as his mother replies, “Not bad for a governor that lives with his motha.”

A RHODE ISLAND CONGRESSIONAL SEAT RIPE FOR FLIPPING?

The 2nd Congressional District seat has been held by Democrats for more than three decades in a state traditionally dominated by the party. National Republican leaders think now is their best chance to flip it.

U.S. Rep. Jim Langevin, who has represented the district since 2001, announced his retirement in January. The state’s Democratic treasurer, Seth Magaziner, had been running for governor but switched races after Langevin’s announcement to try to keep the seat in Democratic control.

Magaziner, who is considered the front-runner and has been endorsed by Langevin, faces a crowded Democratic field, including Joy Fox, a former top aide to Langevin; former Biden administration official Sarah Morgenthau; Omar Bah, executive director of The Refugee Dream Center in Providence; and former state lawmakers David Segal and Spencer Dickinson.

A popular former Rhode Island mayor, Allan Fung, is running unopposed for the Republican nomination after two rivals dropped out of the race. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy visited Rhode Island in August to raise money for Fung.

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Follow AP for full coverage of the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and on Twitter, https://twitter.com/ap_politics.

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TOCCOA, Ga. (AP) — When Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp made one of his first general election campaign swings in August, he went straight to the modern heartland of the state’s Republican Party.

It wasn’t Buckhead, the glitzy Atlanta neighborhood where Kemp lives in a governor’s mansion dwarfed by other nearby estates. And it wasn’t suburban Cobb County, once the bastion of Newt Gingrich.

Instead, Kemp kept going north, deep into the Georgia mountains that have become one of the most Republican areas in the country over the last three decades. He stopped at a gas station turned coffee shop in Toccoa to urge people to “turn out an even bigger vote here in this county and in northeast Georgia than we’ve ever seen before.”

“Ask your kids, your grandkids, your friend’s kid, are they registered to vote?” Kemp told attendees. “If they’re eligible, and they’re not, we got to get them registered, and we’ve got to go tell them to pull it for the home team.”

The emphasis on this rural region represents a notable shift in the GOP’s strategy in Georgia. The party grew into a powerhouse in Georgia once it began combining a strong performance in the Atlanta suburbs with growing dominance in rural areas. But that coalition has frayed in recent years as voters in the booming Atlanta region rejected the GOP under former President Donald Trump, turning this onetime Republican stronghold into the South’s premier swing state.

A 41-county region, including some distant Atlanta suburbs encroaching into north Georgia, now has as many GOP voters as the core of metro Atlanta, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. Those changing dynamics have intensified pressure on Kemp to maintain — or strengthen — his support in rural mountainous communities like Toccoa to offset losses closer to the capital city.

“The party … in terms of understanding where they’re going to get votes, understands that now they need those votes in north Georgia to compensate for their losses in the suburbs,” said Bernard Fraga, an Emory University political scientist.

Kemp won the governor’s office in 2018 by defeating Democrat Stacey Abrams by just 1.4 percentage points. As the two wage a rematch for the post this year, early summer polling found a close race, with some suggesting Kemp has a narrow advantage.

But his reliance on voters like those in Toccoa is driving the party further to the right.

In a diversifying state, north Georgia is overwhelmingly white. While Democrats attack and Republicans fret over abortion restrictions in the suburbs, there’s little public wavering in the mountains. Voters love guns so much that they cut out the middleman and chose gun dealer Andrew Clyde as one of north Georgia’s two very Trumpy members of Congress. The other member? Marjorie Taylor Greene.

“It reflects a lot of the country right now, in the sense that it’s very populist, very close to the vest, very isolated in the sense of distrust of government, very strong-willed, mountain Appalachian-type individuals that are very self sufficient,” said former Rep. Doug Collins, the Republican who preceded Clyde in representing northeast Georgia’s 9th Congressional District.

Kathy Petrella, a Clarkesville retiree who was visiting the state Department of Driver Services in early September in Toccoa, said she’s a “true blue conservative.”

“It means I don’t believe in the government telling me anything I have to do, except law and order,” said Petrella, who cites her Christian faith as an important anchor of her political affiliation and fears a decline into “communism.”

Lee MacAulay of the north Georgia town of Cleveland, also visiting Toccoa, said she believes Trump won the 2020 election and calls President Joe Biden “a ridiculous joke” and “an idiot.”

“I was a Trumper,” MacAulay said. “I am a Trumper.”

She discounts the idea that lingering doubts about the 2020 election will suppress turnout as they appeared to do in the 2021 Senate runoff elections, when victories by Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff gave their party control of Congress. MacAulay said she believes many neighbors are eager to vote for Republicans this year, “but we need everybody.”

Jay Doss, a Toccoa lawyer, said he feels “working-class people are benefited more by the conservative party” and that “I just feel that less government is better for everybody.”

There was once another conservative tradition in north Georgia — in the Democratic Party. While there were always some Republicans, a legacy of white mountaineers who backed the Union over the Confederacy in the Civil War, they won few elections.

“It used to be slap Democrat. If you ran Republican, you could not get elected. Now, if you run Democrat, you ain’t got a chance much of getting elected,” said Stephens County Commissioner Dennis Bell, a Republican who owns Currahee Station, the coffee shop where Kemp campaigned in Toccoa.

That Democratic lineage, nourished by the 1930s-era New Deal, produced former Gov. Zell Miller, a proud son of the mountains and titan of Georgia Democratic politics a generation ago.

Miller rode high in the 1990s as a Democrat who combatted crime and overhauled welfare, while creating lottery-funded college scholarships. Miller even squeaked out a reelection victory in the 1994 “Republican Revolution” that vaulted Gingrich to U.S. House speaker.

That year, Miller actually lost his home region to Republican Guy Millner, a self-financed millionaire businessman. But Miller lost by fewer than 4,000 votes across north Georgia, and Millner’s strength in suburban Atlanta wasn’t enough, leaving the Republican 32,000 votes short statewide.

By 2004, as a U.S. senator, Miller was giving the keynote speech at the Republican National Convention that renominated George W. Bush. By then, Miller had written “A National Party No More,” a book that blamed his own party for abandoning Southern conservative Democrats.

“Obviously, southerners believe the national Democratic Party does not share their values,” Miller wrote in the 2003 book. “They do not trust the national party with their money or the security of the country.”

North Georgia was 19% of Millner’s vote in 1994. It was 26% of Kemp’s vote in 2018. Some of that is due to population growth, but reflects a partisan shift to Republicans. Millner won less than 51% of the vote in the region. Kemp won almost 72%.

Democrats, enduring steep decline, grew demoralized. June Krise, who then chaired the Democratic Party in north Georgia’s White County, remembers crying when the county probate judge, clerk of court and sheriff all switched to run as Republicans.

“’If we don’t switch, we will lose because the Republicans are going to run somebody against us,’” Krise remembers the men telling her. “And guess why they were going to lose. Barack Obama was the Democratic nominee for president.”

Republicans say formerly Democratic voters gravitated to their party because of cultural issues, but those who study the electorate note white voters are much more likely to be Republican, and Appalachia made a hard turn against Obama, the nation’s first Black president.

“The Republican Party has now started organizing itself, I think, to be more in line with the white people who are there — more rural, less urban-interested, even less suburban-interested, in terms of the state party,” Fraga said. “And that’s looks more like North Georgia in a lot of ways.”

Fraga sees the split in the Georgia Republican Party over Trump’s attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory in Georgia in part as a conflict between suburban and rural. Suburban-identified politicians including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger were willing to oppose Trump, Fraga said, while Republicans representing more rural areas, such as Greene, were “on the Trump train.”

Democrats have been trying to rebuild. Mike Maley, a Toccoa pediatrician who chairs the Stephens County Democratic Party, says just getting people on the ballot helps get the message out.

“I have hope for our community,” Maley said. “I feel like we can make a difference and this is worth fighting for.”

Democrats note that even if they’re not going to win in places like Stephens County, where more than 80% of voters chose Kemp in 2018 and Trump in 2020, each additional vote counts in Georgia’s ultra-close statewide elections. That’s what brought Abrams to the mountain town of Clayton on July 28.

“Why would you go there?” Abrams told Rabun County Democrats she was asked about her trip. “Because counties don’t vote, people do.”

Abrams’ strategy is simple. Get more Democrats to vote across the state, backed up by a campaign that sometimes seems focused more on rural areas than her home turf of Atlanta.

“We’ve got to boost turnout dramatically across the board,” Abrams said that day. “But we’ve already seen it’s possible.”

But many voters, like Bell, will be looking to Kemp and other Republicans. The Stephens County commissioner says Democrats are “going way too far to the left” and says debt, spending and restrictions on oil and gas drilling make a GOP vote in north Georgia “a no-brainer.”

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Follow AP for full coverage of the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ap_politics

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By Jarrett Renshaw

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) -Democratic U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman on Sunday sought to allay concerns about his health after suffering a near-fatal stroke earlier this year, at a campaign rally focused on abortion rights in suburban Philadelphia.

Speaking at times in a halting and clipped fashion, Fetterman took aim at his Republican opponent in Pennsylvania’s Senate race, celebrity physician Mehmet Oz, for questioning his fitness to serve. “Unfortunately,” he said, “I have a doctor in my life doing that.”

He spoke for about 10 minutes before moving slowly off the stage. He walked into the crowd, shaking hands, greeting people and smiling for selfies as AC-DC’s “Back in Black” played.

Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, has largely kept off the campaign trail since a stroke in May that he said almost killed him. Oz has seized on the issue, suggesting Fetterman’s health would prevent him from carrying out his duties if elected.

Polls show Fetterman leading Oz in a race that will help determine whether President Joe Biden’s Democrats hold onto their razor-thin margin in the U.S. Senate. The race for the seat held by retiring Republican Pat Toomey is important enough that both Biden and former President Donald Trump have traveled to the state in recent weeks to promote their parties’ candidates.

Speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss their concerns, five state Democratic Party officials interviewed in the past two weeks expressed worries about Fetterman’s health and whether Republican attacks were swaying voters.

“It’s important for people to see John Fetterman out on the campaign trail and to see for themselves that he’s all right. In a state where one (percentage) point can decide an election, it matters,” said Joe Foster, a state Democratic committeeman from the Philadelphia suburbs.

Fetterman held his first public event after his stroke in August, and has made a handful of campaign appearances since, including at a Labor Day parade in Pittsburgh. His campaign confirmed he relies on closed captions to conduct interviews due to hearing damage. He has said the symptoms are temporary.

Fetterman campaign spokesman Joe Cavello said he is up to the job.

“John marched for over two hours in the rain in Pittsburgh’s Labor Day parade, and spoke at two other events afterwards,” Cavello told Reuters on Friday. “Anyone who’s seen John speak knows that while he’s still recovering, he’s more capable of fighting for PA than Dr. Oz will ever be.

Fetterman rallied with abortion-rights advocacy group Planned Parenthood in Philadelphia’s largest suburban county as he seeks to fire up women voters concerned about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June to end the nationwide right to abortion.

“Women are the reason we can win,” Fetterman said.

The stakes are high in Pennsylvania, where the governor’s race will decide whether women will maintain their access to abortions. Fetterman has vowed to help protect that access, while Oz says he’s “100% pro-life” but supports exceptions in cases of rape or incest or if the life of the mother is at risk.

Christopher Borick, a political science professor at Pennsylvania’s Muhlenberg University, said bread-and-butter campaign events like Sunday’s take on added meaning following the stroke.

“He doesn’t have to be pre-stroke John Fetterman, but people need to see that he’s capable,” Borick said.

Oz used an initial refusal by Fetterman to debate to argue that his rival was either afraid of him or concealing the scope of the damage done by the stroke.

“John Fetterman is either healthy and he’s dodging the debate because he does not want to answer for his radical left positions, or he’s too sick to participate,” Oz told reporters last week, according to media accounts.

Fetterman has now agreed to debate in October, but his campaign is looking at the possibility of using a closed captioning monitor for the event so that he does not miss any words as he continues to recover from his stroke.

“Let’s be clear, this has never really been about debates for Dr. Oz,” Fetterman said in a statement. “This whole thing has been about Dr. Oz and his team mocking me for having a stroke because they’ve got nothing else.”

(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw, Additional reporting by James Oliphant; Editing by Scott Malone and Daniel Wallis)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Attorneys for Donald Trump said in a court filing on Friday that all documents seized in an FBI search of the former president’s Florida home should be reviewed by a special master, including those with classified markings, a position opposed by the Justice Department.

In the filing, Trump’s attorneys and the Justice Department each proposed two different names to serve as an independent arbiter known as a special master.

(Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Caitlin Webber)

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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Under pressure from his Republican rival, Pennsylvania Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman said this week he would participate in one debate before the November election.

In Georgia, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker are still working through the details of what a debate might look like, though they appear to be inching closer to a deal. And in Arizona, Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Katie Hobbs has declined a televised debate with Republican Kari Lake.

With the fall campaign rapidly approaching, the time-honored tradition of televised debates as a forum for voters to evaluate candidates may be the latest casualty of constant media coverage and powerful digital platforms, as well as the nation’s polarized political climate. For some Republicans, eschewing debates is a chance to sidestep a media structure some in the party deride as biased and align with Donald Trump, who has blasted presidential debates. Some Democrats, including Hobbs, have pointed to raucous GOP debates from the primary season as a reason to avoid tangling with their opponents.

Despite such skepticism, veteran political consultant Terry Sullivan defended debates as “the one forum where candidates are forced into answering questions that they don’t want to answer.”

“They’re not going to do it in their TV commercials,” added Sullivan, who managed GOP Sen. Jim DeMint’s 2004 bid in South Carolina and handled media for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential effort. “And in stump appearances, press conferences, they can evade, they can dodge.”

And sometimes, Sullivan added, it’s the media coverage of what happens onstage, rather than the back-and-forth itself, that can make a bigger impression.

In what “should have been the most boring debate in the history of mankind,” Sullivan said that a 2004 panelist questioning DeMint and Democrat Inez Tenenbaum asked DeMint if he agreed with a state GOP platform tenet in opposition of openly gay teachers in South Carolina’s public schools.

“That kind of turned the race on its head for the next three months,” Sullivan said, noting headlines he characterized as “DeMint wants to fire gay teachers.”

DeMint went on to win the open seat by nearly 10 percentage points, a margin typical in recent South Carolina statewide elections. But in more competitive states, Sullivan said, a debate can serve as “a good way to find out where candidates are on the issues.”

In addition to winning candidates thousands of impressions in earned media and repackaged video clips, debate footage can also propel candidates’ messages far more broadly — and cheaply — than could television ad buys, said Michael Wukela, a South Carolina Democratic media consultant and veteran of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential bids.

“You’re getting that in one shot,” Wukela said, of a debate appearance being worth airtime that would otherwise cost millions. “That’s like a Super Bowl ad.”

Refusal to participate can draw ire from rivals. The Republicans whom Walker refused to debate ahead of Georgia’s primary critiqued him as ill-prepared to take on Warnock, a skilled orator.

“If you can’t get on the stage and debate fellow Republicans, how the heck are you going to debate with Raphael Warnock in the general election?” Latham Saddler, a Navy veteran and former Trump administration official who was among five Republicans challenging Walker, asked. “Usually if you’re hiding, you’re hiding for a reason.”

Walker repeatedly proclaimed his eagerness to face off with Warnock in the fall but, instead of agreeing to Warnock’s challenge to three debates, accepted an invitation to a different one altogether. This week, Warnock said he would participate in that debate, if Walker agreed to another forum Warnock wants. That back-and-forth remains unresolved.

Other Senate contests are playing out similarly.

In North Carolina, where U.S. Rep. Ted Budd skipped four Republican primary debates in his U.S. Senate bid, said Friday he wouldn’t accept an invitation from the North Carolina Association of Broadcasters to debate Democrat Cheri Beasley, as the two head for a presumably close general election. Budd said he had accepted a cable debate invite, but there’s no agreement with Beasley on that appearance.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, mused to reporters this week about what would happen if voters elected a senator who never has ”answered a legitimate question from a voter, from a newscaster in a non-taped setting, in a debate stage?” citing Fetterman’s campaign-trail absence as he recovers from a stroke.

Fetterman’s campaign said he will participate in a televised debate in October but gave no other details, including why he would agree to just one debate. Oz’s campaign immediately dubbed it a “secret debate,” with no details on when or where.

In Pennsylvania’s governor’s race, the Republican nominee Doug Mastriano has rejected a media-moderated debate and instead reserved a hotel ballroom on Oct. 22 and picked a partisan moderator for himself: Mercedes Schlapp, who served as Trump’s White House strategic communications director and is married to the chair of the American Conservative Union.

The campaign of Democrat Josh Shapiro said Mastriano’s refusal to accept an independent moderator blew up about a dozen invitations from news organizations and other groups.

Some incumbents with an edge on their rivals have rebuffed requests for multiple debates, uninterested in taking a risk on stage that might change the course of their campaign.

South Carolina Democrat Joe Cunningham called for four general-election debates with Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, whose campaign dismissed the request as a “stunt” and ultimately agreed to one matchup. In Texas, GOP Gov. Greg Abbott has granted a single debate to Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke — on a Friday night in the thick of high school football season, which will be broadcast as distracted voters are instead at games kicking off around the state.

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis initially committed to a statewide televised debate with his Democratic opponent before U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist — who came under fire for not agreeing to primary debates — won his party’s nomination. Now, the two are set to spar in a single debate, shown only on a West Palm Beach TV station.

Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Republican nominee Tudor Dixon finally agreed to a single October debate after a scheduling flap. Whitmer announced last month she would participate in two statewide, televised debates, a decision her campaign said was “consistent with past precedent.” Dixon, who criticized Whitmer for not debating before voter are able to send in absentee ballots, ultimately agreed to the solo meeting.

Noting that the uncertainty of debates can be “terrifying” for all involved, Wukela acknowledged incumbents’ reticence to allowing their challengers prominent opportunities to equate themselves with the office, or its existing occupant.

“Strom Thurmond refused to debate any of his opponents,” Wukela said of the longtime South Carolina Democrat-turned-Republican governor and senator. “If I’ve got a four-touchdown lead, why would I ever throw the ball?”

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Associated Press writer Sara Burnett in Chicago contributed to this report.

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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP.

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Follow AP for full coverage of the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ap_politics.

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By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department and Donald Trump’s attorneys said on Friday they are deeply divided over whether classified records seized by the FBI from the former president’s Florida estate should be reviewed by a special master, and they each put forth a separate list of candidates for the job.

In a joint filing on Friday evening, the U.S. Justice Department told U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that Trump’s legal team is insisting that the special master should be allowed to review “all seized materials, including documents with classification markings.”

Trump’s lawyers also want the special master, an independent third-party, to review the records for possible executive privilege claims – a mandate the department opposes.

Both sides also each proposed two different sets of possible candidates for the job, though they said they intend to inform the court about their views on each others’ candidate list by Monday.

A special master is an independent third-party sometimes appointed by a federal court to weed through sensitive records that could be privileged and segregate them so they are not viewed by prosecutors and do not taint a criminal investigation.

The Justice Department said it is proposing two candidates for special master: Retired judge Barbara Jones, who previously served as a special master in cases involving Trump’s former lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Michael Cohen, or retired judge Thomas Griffith, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush who served on the D.C. appeals court from 2005-2020.

Trump’s team proposed Raymond Dearie, a judge on senior status in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York and former U.S. Attorney who served on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and Paul Huck, Florida’s former Deputy Attorney General and a former partner with Jones Day, a law firm that previously represented Trump’s campaign.

Both sides also said they disagree on whether the special master should be required to consult with the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, which is tasked with preserving executive branch documents.

In addition, neither side could agree on who should pay for the special master, with Trump’s team proposing to split the costs and the Justice Department saying Trump should pay since he requested it in the first place.

JUDGE HAD ORDERED ARBITER

Trump is under investigation for retaining government records, some of which were marked as highly classified, at his Palm Beach, Florida, home after leaving office in January 2021. The government is also investigating possible obstruction of the probe.

The documents probe is one of several federal and state investigations Trump is facing from his time in office and in private business. He has suggested he might run for the White House again in 2024, but has not made any commitment.

The joint filing came after Cannon, a Trump appointee in Fort Pierce, Florida, ordered the appointment of a special master arbiter on Monday, granting a request by Trump.

After the Justice Department warned on Thursday that doing so could slow the government’s effort to determine whether classified documents were still missing, Cannon said in a court filing she was willing to consider limiting the special master’s role so that person would not review classified documents.

Cannon on Monday barred federal prosecutors from continuing to use any of the seized records for their ongoing criminal probe until a special master could review them, though she carved out a narrow exemption allowing U.S. intelligence officials to continue their intelligence risk assessment.

The Justice Department on Thursday asked her to reconsider, saying it opposes giving a special master access to classified records, and needs to continue reviewing them both for the criminal probe and the national security assessment.

They also said the criminal probe and intelligence assessment are inextricably linked, and that the government was forced to pause its intelligence review amid the legal uncertainty ruling her order has created.

Prosecutors gave Cannon until Sept. 15 to decide. If she rules against them, they threatened to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

Trump, for his part, has said on social media that he declassified all the records – a claim his lawyers have avoided repeating in legal filings to the court.

The government “wrongly assumes that if a document has a classification marking, it remains classified in perpetuity,” they said on Friday.

Now that Trump’s team has voiced its opposition to the department’s request, it remains to be seen whether Cannon will agree to exclude the classified materials from the special master’s mandate.

Of the more than 11,000 seized records, there are only about 100 documents with classification markings.

Trump’s team has until Monday to formally spell out its position on the Justice Department’s request.

Cannon has also faced criticism for previously ruling that the special master will be tasked with reviewing records not just covered by attorney-client privilege, but also by executive privilege as well.

The Justice Department has questioned the logic of her decision, noting the government records are not Trump’s personal property and he is no longer president.

The U.S. Supreme Court last year side-stepped the question of how far a former president’s privilege claims can go in rejecting Trump’s bid to keep White House records from a congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot by his supporters.

However, the U.S. National Archives, after conferring with the Justice Department, told Trump’s lawyers earlier this year that he cannot assert privilege against the executive branch to shield the records from the FBI.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; additional reporting by Eric Beech and Caitlin Webber; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Friday underscored the need for a broad coalition of partners to help Ukraine recover and rebuild after Russia’s invasion, with a focus on near-term, high-impact projects, the Treasury Department said.

During a virtual meeting with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, Yellen also discussed the need for Ukraine’s partners to deliver expeditiously on economic assistance for the country, which has been besieged for over six months by Russian forces.

Yellen also expressed support for Ukraine’s effort to develop a macroeconomic reform program supported by International Monetary Fund financing, the Treasury said.

Ukraine, which faces $635 million in principal payments on prior IMF loans beginning next week, hopes to get details soon on the format of fresh support from the global lender, a senior central bank official said Thursday.

The United States is providing grants to Ukraine that will add up to $8.5 billion by end-September, the Treasury said. The Biden administration is also requesting an additional $4.5 billion from Congress to help the country cover its critical needs in the coming months.

Yellen’s meeting with Shmyhal came hours after the first comprehensive assessment of Ukraine’s damages and needs showed it could cost nearly $350 billion to rebuild the country, or about 1.6 times its gross domestic product in 2021.

In her discussion with Shmyhal, Yellen also outlined the next steps for implementation of a Group of Seven price cap on Russian oil meant to put downward pressure on global energy prices and reduce revenues that Russian President Vladimir Putin is using to fund the war, the Treasury said in a statement.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Leslie Adler and Jonathan Oatis)

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