Politics

NEW YORK (AP) — Republican presidential contenders typically fight for prime speaking slots at the Conservative Political Action Conference. But as conservative activists gather in suburban Washington this week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will be courting donors more than a thousand miles away in Texas and California.

The apparent CPAC snub is nothing new for DeSantis, who has emerged in the early phase of the 2024 presidential election as a leading contender for the GOP nomination even as he ignores many conventions of modern politics.

DeSantis is a frequent voice in conservative cultural fights on cable television, but he often avoids gatherings of fellow Republican governors and party leaders, who are quick to complain in private about his go-it-alone approach. He is the only top-tier presidential prospect yet to court voters in Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina, the states hosting the GOP’s opening presidential primary contests. And he is often at odds with the press, refusing even to notify local media of last week’s rare three-state tour with law enforcement.

Indeed, as DeSantis moves toward a White House run, it is becoming increasingly clear that the 44-year-old Republican governor will manage his presidential aspirations in his own way, on his own timeline, with or without allies in national GOP leadership or relationships with the press.

“DeSantis has, in his style and the actions he’s taken as governor, shown a willingness to fight the traditional powers that be, the establishment,” said David McIntosh, president of the Club for Growth, an influential conservative group based in Washington. McIntosh described DeSantis’ style as “refreshing” and suggested the GOP is ready to move on from former President Donald Trump.

For now, DeSantis is perhaps the most potent threat to Trump’s effort to win the GOP nomination for the third time. The Club for Growth will host DeSantis among a half-dozen presidential prospects at a closed-door retreat in Florida next weekend with top donors. Trump is not invited.

Meanwhile, DeSantis has quietly begun to expand his political coalition on his terms just as he releases a book, “The Courage to be Free,” which comes out Tuesday.

He spent the weekend huddled behind closed doors at a south Florida luxury hotel for a “Freedom Blueprint” retreat with more than 100 donors, elected officials and conservative influencers. The attendees included former Trump chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and Texas-based donor Roy Bailey, a former member of Trump’s national finance committee.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee were also in attendance, along with Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, Utah Sen. Mike Lee, Texas Rep. Chip Roy and Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham hosted a fireside chat with DeSantis on Sunday before he joined a “fighting back against woke” discussion with Chaya Raichik, who runs the “Libs of TikTok” social media account.

Details from the gathering were disclosed by participants who requested anonymity to discuss the the private event.

Trump was largely ignored throughout the weekend retreat, although conservative commentator Ann Coulter seized on his failure to build a wall spanning the entire U.S.-Mexico border during a Saturday panel discussion with DeSantis on border security, according to one person in the room. She accused the former president of never actually wanting to build it in the first place.

In the coming days and weeks, DeSantis will use the release of his book to introduce himself to voters beyond Florida, having established his political dominance there last fall by winning reelection by more than 19 percentage points.

He is expected to make his first appearances in key states on the primary calendar such as Iowa and New Hampshire in the coming weeks in addition to general election battlegrounds like Georgia and Pennsylvania. Last week, he made surprise stops in New York City, Philadelphia and Chicago to court law enforcement leaders, although the events were private and he did not notify local media.

The Florida governor is already scheduled to headline two Republican fundraisers in Texas on Saturday. The next day he’ll speak at a $500-a-head reception for the GOP of Orange County, California. He’ll serve as the keynote speaker for the Alabama GOP the following week.

While he has begun to expand his profile, DeSantis has done far less than most of the early 2024 class to connect with primary voters and would-be allies in key states.

He has long avoided gatherings of Republican governors or top GOP officials, who privately condemn his approach as arrogant. He’s never set foot in Iowa.

Former New Hampshire GOP chair Jennifer Horn noted that Republican primary voters often embrace anti-establishment candidates “who are willing to create their own lane or take their own path.”

“But when you’re running for president, and in this environment, I think he has to be careful not to be a victim of his own arrogance,” she said. “He has this belief that he knows better than everyone about everything, and that’s never a good thing.”

Meanwhile, DeSantis’ team feels no urgency to enter the 2024 contest, which already features three Republican candidates. Trump announced three months ago.

He’s also shown no interest in responding to Trump’s increasingly personal attacks, which include recent social media posts suggesting that DeSantis behaved inappropriately with underage girls when he briefly taught high school in his early 20s.

Trump refers to the Florida governor as Ron DeSanctimonious” and “Meatball Ron.”

By contrast, DeSantis in his new book actually credits Trump for helping him win the Florida governorship in 2018.

“I knew that a Trump endorsement would provide me with the exposure to GOP primary voters across the State of Florida, and I was confident that many would see me as a good candidate once they learned about my record,” DeSantis writes, according to an early copy obtained by the Guardian.

Trump’s increasing focus on DeSantis may unintentionally help the Florida governor by defining him as the strongest Republican Trump alternative, according to Sam Nunberg, a former Trump aide turned critic.

“Look, Donald is worried, and if I was working for him, I’d say he needs to update the playbook,” Nunberg said.

In the meantime, DeSantis is focused on expanding his conservative agenda in Florida’s looming state legislative session, which runs from March through May.

Already, he has pushed to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs from Florida’s public universities and colleges. Among his other priorities: allowing people to carry guns in public without a permit; weakening laws protecting journalists from lawsuits; and cracking down on illegal immigration, including a plan to eliminate in-state tuition for college students in the country illegally.

In a nod to his political strength, DeSantis is under attack from a growing group of Republican rivals.

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu publicly condemned DeSantis’ decision to use the levers of government to punish private businesses like Disney that push back against his policy priorities. North Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s team has criticized DeSantis’ record on abortion as insufficiently conservative.

DeSantis did himself no favors inside the Republican National Committee last month when he publicly sided with RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel’s challenger during her bitter reelection fight. McDaniel easily won reelection to her post.

“We are going to move forward. And that’s what I’m focused on,” McDaniel said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” when asked about her relationship with DeSantis. “The one thing Republicans can do to make sure we don’t win is fight each other all the time.”

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CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina is accustomed to increased attention in the years leading up to presidential elections, with the state hosting the South’s first voting contests for several of the last cycles.

But even by those standards, 2024 feels different.

Democrats elevated South Carolina to the top of their presidential primary calendar, leapfrogging Iowa and New Hampshire. Republicans, meanwhile, could potentially have two homegrown South Carolina presidential candidates in the race, a prospect that has already caused friction among the state’s GOP circles of supporters.

A look at why so many political roads to 2024 will lead to South Carolina:

THE DEMOCRATS

Earlier this month, the Democratic National Committee approved its 2024 calendar, an effort to give a prominent voice to a more diverse electorate.

President Joe Biden had endorsed a plan placing South Carolina first on the party’s calendar for the coming presidential cycle, followed by New Hampshire, Nevada, Michigan and Georgia.

Biden’s recognition of the role South Carolina played in reviving his 2020 campaign, after less-than-stellar performances in earlier-voting states, has been clear since his victory celebration three years ago in February.

“You brought me back,” Biden told supporters. His win built momentum that helped him plow through the Super Tuesday votes that followed.

Last year, in a fundraiser for South Carolina Democrats, Vice President Kamala Harris offered her gratitude, saying, “We see how South Carolina Democrats set President Joe Biden and me on a path to the White House. … Thank you, South Carolina.”

The Biden administration has keep close ties with the state, where Biden’s roots run deep and include family vacations to the state, as well as friendships with late Sens. Fritz Hollings and Strom Thurmond, and lawyer Dick Harpootlian, a former state party chairman who is now a state senator.

On Monday, Harris will return to South Carolina to discuss the administration’s advancements on broadband internet expansion, a top priority of Rep. Jim Clyburn, one of Biden’s closest allies and the lone Democrat in South Carolina’s congressional delegation. Other Cabinet officials visited last year.

While South Carolina Democrats have not won a statewide race since 2006, they have begun selling buttons, mugs and apparel flaunting the state’s new status, with the tagline “South Carolina Democrats Pick Winners.” But the party is undergoing a period of transition, with chair Trav Robertson announcing this past week he would not seek another term after six years in the job.

Looking ahead, Robertson noted the regional financial impact that could be felt from the early position of South Carolina, where media markets — and the campaign advertising dollars spent in them — bleed into surrounding states.

“We have long advocated that South Carolina’s position in this process has been extremely beneficial to North Carolina and Georgia and to Tennessee,” Robertson told The Associated Press. “The impact of this is going to be felt for a generation.”

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HOMEGROWN GOP CANDIDATES

Nikki Haley’s official launch to her 2024 presidential campaign, in downtown Charleston two weeks ago, was steeped in references to her six years as South Carolina’s governor.

“It’s a great day in South Carolina!” Haley said, a nod to her gubernatorial catchphrase that she for a time required state Cabinet agencies to use when answering public phone lines.

Haley, the first woman and Indian American to lead the state, also cloaked herself in references to accomplishments during her time in office, including creating jobs. She mentioned leading the state “beyond hate and violence,” a reference to the shooting of an unarmed Black motorist by a white police officer and the slayings of nine Black parishioners by a self-avowed white supremacist.

She did not explicitly mention the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the Statehouse grounds in 2015 after the church shootings — a move she pushed for after years of publicly supporting its presence.

With former President Donald Trump already in the 2024 race, Haley — who served two years as his U.N. ambassador — became the first major Republican to challenge him for the nomination.

Some of South Carolina’s top Republicans, including Gov. Henry McMaster, Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, have endorsed Trump, whose 2016 victory in South Carolina’s primary helped solidify GOP support behind his campaign.

Haley has lined up support from at least one member of the state’s congressional delegation, Rep. Ralph Norman. Rep. Nancy Mace, whom Haley endorsed for reelection last year, has said that, for now, “my powder is dry” when it comes to the 2024 White House race.

But Tim Scott, South Carolina’s junior senator, has been making moves that seem to put him on the verge of formalizing his own 2024 bid. The day after Haley’s launch, Scott was in Charleston himself, speaking at a Charleston County GOP dinner his team characterized as part of a “listening tour.” Days later, both he and Haley were in Iowa, which holds the GOP’s first 2024 votes.

Scott’s potential entry into the race has led to some awkwardness among the state’s Republicans, many of whom have been supporters of both him and Haley.

Catherine Templeton, who served in Haley’s administration, said Haley and Scott are calling the state’s Republicans seeking support, a process she characterized as “uncomfortable.”

“Generally, a Scott Republican and a Haley Republican are pretty similar creatures, but it is a game of addition, so both candidates are being deferential,” Templeton said. “They are saying, ‘If I can’t be your first, I’d like to be your second.’ You won’t find them criticizing each other, but ultimately, it is uncomfortable to choose between friends.”

Templeton won’t say whom she plans to support and says she expects a similar waiting game among GOP voters and donors in South Carolina.

“People are waiting to see what Tim does before they make a decision,” she said. “But Nikki is in either way.”

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WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?

The 2024 season in only getting started in South Carolina, just as in the other early states. Next month, the state plays host to one of the first leadoff, multicandidate events, when Palmetto Family sponsors its Vision ’24 conference in Charleston.

So far, one announced candidate — Haley — is scheduled to attend, though potential ones, including Scott and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, are set to come. Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, former Vice President Mike Pence and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are among those yet to RSVP.

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

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Ever the outsider, Jimmy Carter served a turbulent term in the White House. His presidency was beset by soaring interest and inflation rates, gasoline pump lines and the Iran hostage crisis that eventually led to his re-election defeat.

But he rose to even greater heights with his post-presidential career, devoting another four decades to working as an international envoy of peacemaking and democracy. James Earl Carter Jr., a peanut farmer who became the 39th president of the United States, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — Walter Mears was an Associated Press special correspondent who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the 1976 presidential campaign. Prior to his death in 2022, Mears wrote this retrospective article in appreciation of Carter, who entered hospice care on Feb. 18.

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Trounced by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election, Carter was, at 56, a politician with only a past and “a potentially empty life” ahead. Then, in 1982, he organized the Carter Center in Atlanta.

It kept him traveling, negotiating, leading election observation teams and speaking out, often to the discomfort or even resentment of the government he’d once led. Carter’s Nobel citation honored “his decades of untiring effort” to resolve conflicts, promote democracy and foster economic development.

The man who conceded that some considered him “a failed president” made himself the most active and internationally engaged of ex-presidents. “My role as a former president is probably superior to that of other presidents,” he said in a 2010 television interview.

When he ran for president as a one-term former Georgia governor, Carter was so improbable a candidate that he said his mother asked him, “President of what?”

To answer that and his all-but-invisible name recognition rating, he started campaigning early. Carter covered some 50,000 campaign miles, his garment bag draped over his shoulder.

He won the Democratic nomination and challenged President Gerald Ford, Nixon’s appointed vice president.

Ford had pardoned Nixon for any Watergate crimes. In the aftermath of Watergate, Carter was the anti-Richard Nixon figure. “I will never lie to you,” he told voters. But Carter was elected by only 2 percentage points.

The newly elected president and wife Rosalynn shunned the limousine and walked from the Capitol to the White House after his inauguration and tried to drop some of the pomp surrounding the presidency. But his solo style and unintended snubs left him short of political allies when he’d need their help.

For all that, Carter’s term left landmarks, such as the Israel-Egypt peace accord he engineered in personal negotiations at Camp David in 1978.

He won the beginnings of an energy conservation policy. He gained ratification of the treaties that yielded U.S. control of the Panama Canal. He opened full diplomatic relations with China. The departments of energy and education were created. But his administration struggled and Carter shook up his Cabinet amid “a crisis of confidence.”

And then things got worse.

On Nov. 4, 1979, Iranian demonstrators invaded the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, incited by their ayatollah to retaliate for the exiled former shah’s admission into the United States for medical treatment. Fifty-two Americans were held hostage for more than a year. Carter tried to negotiate, and when that didn’t work, he ordered the military rescue attempt that failed disastrously in the desert in April 1980.

Eight Americans were killed in the attempt. It was Carter’s bleakest hour.

The hostage crisis shadowed and essentially crippled Carter’s re-election campaign. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy challenged him in the Democratic primaries.

After that, it was all uphill against Reagan. Carter carried only six states to Reagan’s 44.

Minutes after Reagan was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 1981, the hostages were freed after 444 days in captivity. Carter’s first major act as an ex-president was as Reagan’s special envoy to welcome the freed hostages in Wiesbaden, Germany, the next day.

Jimmy Carter, the only president inaugurated by nickname, was born in tiny Plains, Georgia, where he arranged to be buried. The father for whom he was named was in the peanut business, with a farm and warehouse. His father, brother, Billy, and two sisters all died of pancreatic cancer.

Carter graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946, the year he married Rosalynn Smith, also of Plains. They had three sons and a daughter, Amy, the youngest child, who went with them to the White House.

Carter spent nearly seven years in the Navy’s nuclear submarine force, resigning to take over the family business after his father died in 1953. His first political stop was in the Georgia State Senate. A Democratic moderate with a New South image, Carter was elected governor of Georgia in 1970, succeeding segregationist Lester Maddox and gaining his first national note when he declared in his inauguration address “the time for racial discrimination is over.”

After he lost his presidential re-election bid, a shaken Carter retreated to Plains, to “an altogether new, unwanted” chapter in his life.

He began the Carter Center which, he said later, offered “superior opportunities to do good.” He and Rosalynn also worked with Habitat for Humanity, building housing for the poor in the United States and abroad.

Carter was a tireless peacemaker who bypassed usual diplomatic channels and, as he said in 1994, went “where others are not treading” — places such as Ethiopia, Liberia and North Korea, where he secured the release of an American who had been imprisoned after wandering across the border in 2010.

He helped oversee democratic elections in Nicaragua and Haiti, and the first Palestinian elections. Altogether, he participated in 39 of the center’s 100 election observation trips.

Carter said his center “filled vacuums in the world. When the United States won’t deal with troubled areas, we go there.”

And not always quietly.

He went to Cuba in 2002, met with Fidel Castro, then delivered a televised speech calling for an end to the U.S. trade embargo. He likened Israeli policy toward the Palestinians to apartheid. He denounced the Iraq war as “based upon lies.” He said George W. Bush was the worst president in history in foreign affairs.

That prompted a Bush White House spokesman to describe Carter as “irrelevant.”

He could be meddlesome, a freelance diplomat who irked more than one administration.

But never irrelevant.

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CHICAGO (AP) — For years, Republicans have sought to win over voters by depicting Democratic-led cities as lawless centers of violence that need tough-on-crime policies. In Chicago, some of the Democrats running for mayor are deploying the same strategy as they debate how to make the city safer.

One leading candidate, who touts his endorsement from the Chicago police union, says “crime is out of control” and the city needs hundreds more officers patrolling its streets. Another hopeful says that if suspects flee a crime scene, officers should be able to “hunt them down like a rabbit.”

Even incumbent Lori Lightfoot, the first Black woman and first openly gay person to serve as Chicago mayor, has used language right out of the GOP playbook, saying a top rival in her reelection bid wants to defund the police.

The shift in rhetoric reflects the degree to which concerns about crime have dominated Tuesday’s mayoral election in Chicago and threatened Lightfoot’s reelection bid. Far from being an outlier, the nation’s third-largest city is just the latest Democratic stronghold where public safety has become a top election issue.

In San Francisco, progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin was ousted in a recall election last year that was fueled by frustration over public safety. In Los Angeles, two Democrats running for mayor debated how to deal with rising crime rates and an out-of-control homelessness crisis. In New York City, voters elected Eric Adams as mayor, elevating a former city police captain who pledged to fix the department and invest more in crime prevention. And in Philadelphia, candidates running for mayor this year are debating how to curb gun violence.

The increased attention on public safety follows a spike in crime rates in many communities that coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic. High-profile incidents of police misconduct drew more scrutiny of policing, and there has been disagreement even among Democrats about so-called progressive public safety policies such as ending cash bail or providing safe injection sites for drug users.

Jaime Domínguez, a political science professor at Northwestern University, said it’s the first time in 20 years that he’s seen public safety be “front and center” in a Chicago mayoral election.

The difference, he said, is that crime is no longer largely isolated to some predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods. As more crime is occurring in other parts of the highly segregated city, including in the downtown and other areas frequented by tourists, public safety is also top of mind for white voters.

“Historically, it was primarily a pocketed matter. It was still pernicious and candidates spoke to it, but it didn’t really affect areas where you see crime occurring now,” Dominguez said. “That has been blown up. It’s just, it’s everywhere.”

Chicago has a higher per-capita homicide rate than New York or Los Angeles, but it’s lower than other Midwestern cities, such as St. Louis and Detroit. Still, the number of homicides in Chicago hit a 25-year high in 2021 with 797, according to the Chicago Police Department.

That number decreased last year but is still higher than when Lightfoot took office in 2019. Other crimes, such as carjackings and robberies, have increased in recent years.

Nine candidates are running in Tuesday’s officially nonpartisan mayoral election. With no candidate expected to get over 50% of the vote, an April 4 runoff between the top two vote-getters is likely.

Randall Fearnow, a 67-year-old health care attorney who is white and who lives near Wrigley Field on the city’s north side, experienced the city’s crime problem firsthand when he and his wife walked in the back door of their home one day last October and discovered burglars inside. The criminals ransacked the home and stole thousands of dollars’ worth of jewelry and money before running out the front door, he said. Police didn’t catch the perpetrators.

“It happened in the broad daylight,” Fearnow said. “When you step out, it makes you feel a little uneasy. … You’re not immune anywhere from crime in the city.”

Fearnow cast an early ballot for Paul Vallas, who was endorsed by the Chicago police union. He also voted against Lightfoot four years ago, saying he believed her rival in the 2019 runoff was “much more level-headed.” This year, Fearnow said the two most important factors in his vote were crime and rising property taxes.

“The city gets more expensive to live in and less safe,” he said. “So somebody needs to do something.”

As she fights to land a spot in the April runoff, Lightfoot has taken on opponents she sees as a threat — among them Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson. In a recent ad, Lightfoot accuses Johnson of wanting to defund police, using video of him speaking on a local radio program in 2020. During the interview, Johnson said reducing the amount of money spent on policing isn’t a slogan but “an actual real political goal.”

His statements came after the protests across the United States over the killing by Minneapolis police of George Floyd. Johnson also sponsored a nonbinding resolution, passed by the county board, that said money should be redirected from policing and incarceration and into social services.

Lightfoot said Johnson, who avoids the word “defund” when speaking on the campaign trail about policing, isn’t being candid with voters.

“He’s asked direct questions at a variety of forums, and that guy’s got more bobs and weaves than Muhammad Ali,” Lightfoot said.

Johnson, a former teacher and union organizer endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union, says he wants to invest more in areas such as mental health treatment. In a statement responding to Lightfoot, his campaign said that doesn’t mean cuts to the police department. Johnson also notes that Chicago still has a violence problem even though the police budget grows every year.

“Lori Lightfoot hasn’t made Chicago safer, but I will,” Johnson says in a new ad. “It’s time to get smart, not just tough.”

All of Lightfoot’s opponents want to fire the police superintendent she hired, saying that the former Dallas police chief has been ineffective and that hiring an outsider hurt morale. Lightfoot has defended the superintendent, David Brown, and says that while the city faced never-before-seen challenges such as the pandemic, their strategies are working and some crimes are falling.

Vallas, an adviser to the Fraternal Order of Police during the union’s contract negotiations with Lightfoot’s administration, says that if he becomes mayor, he would promote a new leadership team from within the department. Vallas says he would welcome back hundreds of officers who have retired or gone elsewhere out of frustration with Lightfoot. He also wants to return to a community policing strategy, with dedicated officers assigned to patrol each of the city’s nearly 300 police beats.

“We’ve got to restore public safety,” said Vallas. “Everything proceeds from that.”

Wealthy businessman Willie Wilson, another mayoral candidate, has doubled down on his comment that suspects in violent crimes should be hunted down like rabbits. Wilson says he lost a son to gun violence, and he believes police officers are being prevented from doing their jobs.

The other candidates are Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, Chicago City Council members Sophia King and Roderick Sawyer, activist Ja’Mal Green and state Rep. Kambium “Kam” Buckner.

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Associated Press writer Claire Savage contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawmakers in several Democratic-controlled states are advocating sweeping voter protections this year, reacting to what they view as a broad undermining of voting rights by the Supreme Court and Republican-led states as well as a failed effort in Congress to bolster access to the polls.

Legislators in Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey and New Mexico have introduced voting rights measures, while Michigan’s secretary of state is preparing a plan.

Among other things, the proposals would require state approval for local governments to change redistricting or voting procedures, ban voter suppression and intimidation, mandate that ballots are printed in more languages, increase protections for voters with disabilities, ensure the right to vote for those with previous felony convictions and instruct judges to prioritize voter access when hearing election-related challenges.

The measures are taking a much wider approach than legislation targeting a single aspect of voting or elections law. They seek to implement on a statewide basis many of the protections under the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, a law that many Democrats and voting rights groups say is being stripped of its most important elements.

If the legislation is enacted, the states would join California, New York, Oregon, Washington and Virginia in having comprehensive voting rights laws.

“It’s up to states now to ensure that the right to vote is protected,” said Janai Nelson, president of the the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Maryland’s proposal includes a requirement for local voting changes to receive preapproval, mirroring core provisions of the federal law that was struck down by the Supreme Court a decade ago.

Maryland was not among the states, mostly in the South, that was covered under the provision known as preclearance before the court ended it. But lawmakers there saw it as important because of persistent concerns over how districts for local governing bodies have been drawn, said Morgan Drayton, policy and engagement manager at Common Cause Maryland.

“A lot of our maps here are drawn behind closed doors, and there’s not a lot of input from the public that’s able to be given,” she said. “So this would do a lot to make these processes more transparent.”

In Maryland’s Baltimore County, a lawsuit claimed the county council’s map packed most Black voters into a single district. The state legislation would require jurisdictions in Maryland with a history of voter discrimination to have redistricting and election changes cleared by the state attorney general.

Democratic state Del. Stephanie Smith, a co-sponsor of the legislation, said that despite Maryland’s racial diversity and history of diversity in its political leadership, “access to the ballot and equitable representation is uneven.”

“This bill strengthens our commitment to voting access and protections at a time of great stress on our democratic institutions,” she said.

Proposals in Michigan and New Mexico address harassment against election workers and voters, especially those in minority communities. One of several bills in New Mexico would protect election officials, from the secretary of state to county and municipal elections clerks, from intimidation. That would be defined as inducing or attempting to induce fear, and a violation would be punishable as a fourth-degree felony punishable by up to 18 months in prison.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said she will seek similar protections for voters, including prohibiting firearms within a certain distance of polling places.

“We need an explicit ban on voter suppression and intimidation,” she said.

Connecticut’s legislation would expand language assistance for voters who speak, read or understand languages other than English. Language assistance is covered under the federal law, but only specifies protections for Spanish-speakers and for Asian, Native American and Alaska Native language minorities.

Ballots offered in Arabic, Haitian Creole and other languages also are needed, said Steven Lance, policy counsel at the national NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

A language would be covered if the group speaking it is more than 2% of the citizens of voting age in a particular municipality or the group includes more than 4,000 citizens of voting age, under Connecticut’s legislative proposal.

Residents also would have the right to ask the secretary of state to review whether a certain language should be covered, Lance said.

In New Jersey, advocacy organizations are pushing to expand voting rights legislation to include more groups that would be specifically protected from discrimination, including the state’s sizable Arab American population.

“A reality is the federal VRA was originally crafted in 1965, and while there have been other bills in the decade since, the VRA doesn’t reflect the diversity of the population of New Jersey in 2023,” said Henal Patel, law & policy director at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.

Some state voting rights bills also seek to create databases for information that has not always been readily available, such as polling place locations, voting rules and redistricting maps. The bills also would specify that state judges interpret voting laws in a way that ensures people maintain their right to vote.

Democrats in Minnesota are pushing numerous voting changes, including restoring voting rights to felons as soon as they are released from prison, allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to preregister so they are ready to vote as soon as they turn 18 and automatically registering people to vote when they obtain or renew their driver’s licenses.

Passing state voting rights legislation is only half the battle, said state Sen. Jennifer McClellan, a Virginia Democrat who introduced a state voting rights act that passed in 2021 when Democrats controlled both houses of the Legislature and the governor’s office.

McClellan noted that ensuring voting rights historically was a bipartisan issue, but said Republicans are now focused on “fighting phantom voter fraud” — making this year’s Virginia legislative elections all the more important.

“The entire General Assembly is up for election this year, and I think that’s going to be a big theme in the election — that if we want to protect our progress on voting rights, we’re going to need to make sure that Democrats keep the Senate and regain the majority in the House,” McClellan said.

McClellan won a special election this past week to fill an open seat in the U.S. House, where she will make history as the first Black woman to represent the state in Congress.

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Associated Press coverage of race and voting receives support from the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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MIAMI (AP) — Florida Democrats on Saturday are set to choose a new party leader after a disastrous midterm performance in the onetime presidential battleground state, with particularly abysmal results among Latinos.

The strongest contenders are former state Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried and former state senator Annette Taddeo, both of whom lost their own races last year. Fried lost the Democratic gubernatorial nomination to Charlie Crist, while Taddeo failed to unseat Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar.

Party members will select the new chair at a special meeting in Maitland, an Orlando suburb. They are picking a replacement for Manny Diaz, who resigned last month. In his resignation letter, he listed a number of problems facing the party, including a lack of resources and volunteers and poor messaging.

Within the last couple of years, Republicans have erased the voter registration advantage in Florida that Democrats had for decades. In the November midterm, longtime blue counties such as Miami-Dade and Palm Beach flipped red, and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis won a landslide reelection victory as he eyes a 2024 presidential bid.

Democrats performed particularly poorly with Latinos in Florida compared to previous years. Miami-Dade, the state’s most populous county, is home to 1.5 million Latinos of voting age.

Fried, whose term as agriculture commissioner wrapped up last month, has vowed to rebuild the party “from the ground up,” with a focus on voter registration. As the only statewide elected Democrat, Fried, 45, was a fierce critic of DeSantis, often challenging him on policies related to the COVID-19 pandemic and later on a law critics dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which bars instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.

Taddeo, 55, who served as a state senator from 2017 to 2022, says she wants a year-round effort to mobilize young voters and to register voters without outsourcing that job to other groups. She also says the party must conduct more outreach to Black and Hispanic communities.

Just over a decade ago, President Barack Obama won reelection to the White House after twice carrying the state of Florida. President Donald Trump won the state in the last two elections, carrying Florida by an even larger margin in 2020 than four years earlier.

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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — U.S. first lady Jill Biden gave one of the clearest indications yet that President Joe Biden will run for a second term, telling The Associated Press in an exclusive interview on Friday that there’s “pretty much” nothing left to do but figure out the time and place for the announcement.

Although Biden has long said that it’s his intention to seek reelection, he has yet to make it official, and he’s struggled to dispel questions about whether he’s too old to continue serving as president. Biden would be 86 at the end of a second term.

“How many times does he have to say it for you to believe it?” the first lady said in Nairobi, the second and final stop of her five-day trip to Africa.

She added, “He says he’s not done. He’s not finished what he’s started. And that’s what’s important.”

Granddaughter Naomi Biden, who is on the trip, cheered the first lady’s comments after the interview.

“Preach nana,” she said on Twitter.

The president himself was asked about his wife’s comments just hours later in an interview with ABC News, and laughed when told of her remarks, adding, “God love her. Look, I meant what I said, I’ve got other things to finish before I get into a full-blown campaign.”

Biden aides have said an announcement is likely to come in April, after the first fundraising quarter ends, which is around the time that President Barack Obama officially launched his reelection campaign.

The first lady has long been described as a key figure in Biden’s orbit as he plans his future.

“Because I’m his wife,” she laughed.

She brushed off the question about whether she has the deciding vote on whether the president runs for reelection.

“Of course he’ll listen to me, because we’re a married couple,” she said. But, she added later, “he makes up his own mind, believe me.”

The wide-ranging interview took place on the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Jill Biden recalled her trip into the country last May to meet the besieged country’s first lady, Olena Zelenska.

They visited a school that was being used to help migrants who fled the fighting. Some of the families, Jill Biden said, had hid underground for weeks before making their escape.

“We thought then, how long can this go on? And here we are, a year later,” she said. “And look at what the Ukrainian people have done. I mean, they are so strong and resilient, and they are fighting for their country.”

“We’re all hoping that this war is over soon, because we see, every day, the damage, the violence, the horror on our televisions,” the first lady added. “And we just can’t believe it.”

Jill Biden also spoke extensively for the first time about her skin cancer diagnosis, which led doctors to remove multiple basal cell lesions in January.

“I thought, oh, it’s just something on my eye, you know,” she said. “But then they said, no, we think it’s basal cell.”

Then doctors checked her chest, she said, and they said “that’s definitely basal cell.”

“So I’m lucky,” the first lady said. “Believe me, I am so lucky that they caught it, they removed it, and I’m healthy.”

Raising awareness about cancer screening has been a cornerstone of her advocacy efforts for years, even before her son, Beau, died from a brain tumor almost a decade ago. She often says the worst three words anyone can hear are “you have cancer.”

When it was her turn to hear a doctor say that, Jill Biden said, “it was a little harder than I thought.”

Now, she said, she’s “extra careful” about sunscreen, especially when she’s at the beach, which she described as “one of my favorite places in the world.”

Jill Biden is the only first lady to continue her career in addition to her ceremonial duties, teaching writing and English to community college students. At 71 years old, she said she’s not ready to think about retirement.

“I know that I will know when it’s enough,” she said. “But it’s not yet.”

She said she left detailed lesson plans for a substitute teacher while she was on her trip, and she’s been texting with students as she was traveling. She plans to be back in the classroom at 8 a.m. on Tuesday morning, after arriving home from Africa around 3 a.m. Monday.

Education has been a flashpoint in American politics, especially with conservative activists and politicians trying to limit discussion of race and sexuality in classrooms.

“I don’t believe in banning books,” she said.

She added: “I think the teachers and the parents can work together and decide what the kids should be taught.”

During the interview, Jill Biden reflected on the legacy of former President Jimmy Carter, who recently began home hospice care. The Carter Center, which the former president founded after leaving the White House, was key in helping to eliminate the Guinea worm parasite in African countries.

“That’s the perfect example,” she said. “He’s such a humble man. He didn’t go out and shout, ‘Look what I’ve done.’ He just did the work.”

Jill Biden recalled Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, reaching out on the eve of Joe Biden’s inauguration two years ago.

“They called and said congratulations,” she said. “And it meant so much to me and to Joe.”

She also talked about visiting the Carters at their home in Plains, Georgia, early in Biden’s presidency.

“It’s not just that here are two presidents. It’s here are two friends,” she said. “Actually four friends, who have really supported one another over the years.”

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Associated Press writer Chris Megerian in Washington contributed to this report.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — Darlene Superville has covered the White House and first ladies since 2009 and is co-author, with AP Executive Editor Julie Pace, of a 2022 biography of Jill Biden.

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DETROIT (AP) — Republican Rep. John James filed paperwork Friday to run for reelection to his Detroit-area House seat, opting against a campaign for the Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Debbie Stabenow in 2024.

James, a 41-year-old first-term representative and rising star in the party, had been considered one of Republicans’ most promising potential Senate candidates. He ran unsuccessfully for the Senate twice before, losing to Stabenow in 2018 and to Democratic Sen. Gary Peters in 2020.

Those two statewide bids raised James’ name recognition before he won his House seat in last year’s midterms, becoming Michigan’s first Black Republican member of Congress. He has been a frequent guest on conservative media outlets and a strong fundraiser.

Following an event in Detroit on Friday, James told The Associated Press that his focus on his House district “has been unwavering.”

Stabenow announced in January that she would not seek a fifth term, raising the stakes of the contest in the presidential battleground state and giving new hopes to Republicans as they try to retake control of the Senate in 2024. Democrats currently hold a 51-49 advantage in the chamber.

Nikki Snyder, a Republican State Board of Education member, this month became the first candidate to announce a run for Stabenow’s seat, but a high-profile candidate has yet to enter the race.

On the Democratic side, Reps. Elissa Slotkin and Debbie Dingell, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist have been discussed as potential candidates. Former Rep. Peter Meijer, who lost his Republican primary last year after voting to impeach then-President Donald Trump in 2021, is still considering a GOP run for the seat.

James’ decision to seek reelection thins an already small Republican bench of potential Senate candidates in Michigan after the party suffered sweeping losses in statewide and congressional races in November’s midterms. Republicans have taken just one of Michigan’s last 15 Senate races, winning an open seat in 1994.

James only narrowly won his race last year, defeating Democrat Carl Malinga by fewer than 2,000 votes despite outraising him by nearly $6 million.

His 10th Congressional District seat, which was recently redrawn to include a chunk of Macomb County and a small portion of Oakland County, is expected to once again be competitive in 2024 and could be critical to Republicans’ chances of maintaining a slim majority in the U.S. House.

Michigan Democratic Chair Lavora Barnes said in a statement to The Associated Press that the party is “aggressively working to flip the 10th congressional district blue.”

In his less than two months in Congress, James has been named vice chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment and delivered a prominent speech on the House floor last month to nominate Kevin McCarthy as speaker.

Over five generations, James said in the speech, “My family’s gone from slave to the floor of the United States House of Representatives,” now seeing him become the first in his freshman class of lawmakers to address the full House.

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

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Tony Earl, a Democrat who served one term as Wisconsin’s governor in the 1980s and later bemoaned the increasing partisanship in politics, has died. He was 86.

Earl, a champion of gay rights and a staunch environmentalist, died on Thursday “peacefully surrounded by family,” his daughter Julia Earl texted The Associated Press. Earl had been hospitalized after suffering a stroke earlier this week.

“A formidable leader and public servant, trusted colleague and mentor, and a good and loyal friend, Tony was well-liked and respected by so many,” Gov. Tony Evers said in reaction to his death.

Earl served only one term as governor, from 1983 to 1987, before being beaten by Republican Tommy Thompson who labeled him as “Tony the Taxer” because of tax hikes Earl signed in the opening months of his term. Thompson and Earl were friends for decades, despite their political rivalry.

“We both ran for Governor in 1986, but we didn’t run against each other,” Thompson said in a statement. “We often joked that I thought he should have been a Republican and he was sure I should have been a Democrat. What we both were was Wisconsinites first and foremost.”

Earl’s political career ended after he lost a Democratic primary race for U.S. Senate in 1988 to Herb Kohl, but he went on to become a leading advocate for campaign and election finance reforms and a champion of environmental causes.

“He never lost his ability to be good and nice and was never pompous,” said Jay Heck, the head of lobbying group Common Cause Wisconsin and a personal friend of Earl’s for decades. “That may have been one of his political failings. He was never mean enough to go after people others thought he should go after. … He was beloved by most Democrats and got along very well with Republicans.”

Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan said he volunteered on Earl’s first campaign for governor when he was in high school.

“From the first day I met him, he was always the most gracious person, with the goal of cultivating a Democratic bench for the future,” Pocan said in a statement Thursday. “Politics was never personal to him, and I’ve taken that lesson to heart.”

The sour economy proved to be tough for Earl to overcome during his time as governor. The unemployment rate was 12% when he took office. And the $1 billion budget deficit led to Earl’s pushing a tax increase through the Legislature, a move that hung over his tenure and ultimately fueled his defeat in 1986 by Thompson.

“From Day One, I was ‘Tony the Taxer,’” Earl told The Associated Press in 2013.

Earl attempted a comeback two years after losing reelection, running as a progressive Democrat for the U.S. Senate. One of his campaign slogans was, “What this nation needs is more Peace Corps and less Star Wars,” referring to the Republican-backed missile defense system proposed at the time.

But Earl’s campaign got cut off at the knees when Kohl, fresh off of purchasing the Milwaukee Bucks, joined the race late and poured more than $7 million of his own money into winning the Democratic primary and eventually the general election.

Earl never ran for office again. Instead, he set up shop in Madison as an attorney and became an outspoken advocate for good governance reforms. In 1996, he reorganized Common Cause of Wisconsin, a group that argues for campaign finance and election reforms, and he also later served as a board member of the Joyce Foundation, a charitable organization focusing on the Great Lakes region.

For more than three decades, including his four years as governor, the silver-bearded Earl frequented the Madison restaurant Avenue Bar, located just down the street from the Capitol. There he was known to enjoy a pint or two of LaBatt beer as he talked politics with reporters, former and current politicians, old friends and neighborhood residents who stopped in for the popular Friday fish fry.

Earl, in August 2013 at the Avenue, said he had no regrets about his time in office.

“Somebody told me when I was elected, ‘You’re about to embark on a mountaintop experience.’ And it really was in many, many ways,” Earl said. “I loved the retail politics. I loved to get around the state. I enjoyed all these little festivals.”

Earl said he believed his legacy would be his advocacy for gay rights. He established, by executive order, a process for gay people to bring discrimination complaints, created a Governor’s Council on Gay and Lesbian Issues and appointed an openly gay man as his press secretary. Tammy Baldwin, who went on to become the first openly gay person ever elected to the U.S. Senate, interned in Earl’s office.

Earl also appointed the state’s first female Department of Administration secretary, Doris Hanson, and the first Black Cabinet member, Howard Fuller, as head of the Department of Employee Relations.

“Now the kinds of things I was doing are absolutely taken as a given,” Earl told AP a decade ago.

Earl also said he believed his work on the environment, in particular joining with other Midwest governors to create the Council of Great Lakes Governors in 1983, will be a part of his lasting legacy.

Earl was born and raised in Michigan. He graduated from Michigan State University and received his law degree from the University of Chicago law school in 1961. He practiced law in the U.S. Navy from 1961 to 1965, and he was appointed assistant district attorney in Marathon County in 1965.

He worked three years as city attorney in Wausau before running for the state Assembly in 1969. He served until 1974, including four years as Democratic majority leader.

Earl ran for attorney general in 1974 but lost in the primary. He worked a year as secretary of the Department of Administration, and five years as Department of Natural Resources secretary, before running for governor in 1982.

Earl’s candidacy was seen as a long shot, given that he was poised to face popular Republican incumbent Gov. Lee Dreyfus. But Dreyfus decided against seeking reelection after Earl had begun his campaign, clearing Earl’s path to a 15-point victory over Republican Terry Kohler.

“I was sort of an accidental governor in a way,” Earl said at the Avenue, laughing as he took a sip of his beer.

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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — It’s early yet, but next year’s presidential race may feature something the political world hasn’t seen in the last 50 years: no Texans.

The Texas-size hole in the field will be on stark display Friday at a closed Republican donor event outside the state capital, Austin, featuring the likes of former Vice President Mike Pence, who is expected to mount a campaign, and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who announced her bid last week.

Some Texans could still run. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott won’t decide until after Memorial Day. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who ran in 2016, says he’s focused for now on reelection next year. Will Hurd, a onetime CIA agent and former Republican congressman from San Antonio, is seriously considering a bid and may bring on staff, aides say.

If none of them seeks the White House, it’d be the first time since 1972 without at least one major candidate who rose to public prominence in Texas or lived in the state while running for or holding office.

Finding the next most recent Texan-less presidential cycle requires going all the way back to 1952, four years before Lyndon B. Johnson made his first attempt at the White House.

“Clearly, there’s some constitutional amendment that voters supported back in the day that says, ‘If you’re a governor of Texas, you must consider running for president,’” joked Dave Carney, Abbott’s chief strategist and a top strategist to Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s 2012 presidential bid. “And many of them have. For good or bad.”

Some Texans’ White House runs were indeed forgettable.

That includes Democratic Sen. Lloyd Bentsen’s 1976 run and bids by Republican Rep. Ron Paul in 2008 and Republican Sen. Phil Gramm in 1996. John Connally was Texas’ Democratic governor from 1963 until 1969 but sought the White House as a Republican in 1980. Dallas businessman Ross Perot never held elected office but mounted major presidential campaigns in 1992 and 1996.

Indeed, if this cycle proceeds without a Texas official, it won’t be a sign of the state’s waning political influence. Texas’ booming population has added nearly 4 million residents since 2010 while getting younger and more diverse. Its strong economy has attracted tech companies and corporate stalwarts who have flocked in from around the country.

Texas has also become a bastion of conservative priorities, enacting one of the nation’s strictest anti-abortion laws even before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and dramatically loosening gun restrictions while calling for federal crackdowns along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“I think every year a Texan’s not in the presidential race is disappointing to me,” said George Seay, a major GOP donor based in Dallas who was Perry’s finance chair in 2012 and supported Marco Rubio in 2016.

“With all due respect to Florida, which is an incredibly compelling, right-leaning state from a political standpoint,” Seay added, “Texas is the sun, the moon and the stars.”

A possible presidential race without a Texan would be a departure from recent cycles, which featured more than one. The 2012 GOP presidential primary pitted Paul against Perry and 2016’s featured Perry and Cruz. Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke and former San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro both ran in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.

Although only three presidents have actually called Texas home, the state has left a mark on Washington.

Long after he left office, a Braniff Airlines flight dubbed the “LBJ Special” continued to fly from Washington Dulles to Austin every afternoon, an unusual nonstop flight for the time. President George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, was the “Western White House” but only because Johnson’s ranch in Stonewall, where he spent nearly a quarter of his presidency, had already claimed the “Texas White House” moniker.

Bush even flew his favorite caterer, Eddie Deen, from suburban Dallas to Washington to serve smoked ribs and stuffed jalapenos at his inaugural balls. His father, President George H.W. Bush, was a congressman from Houston and incorporated the state’s rugged ethos into his political brand, trying to season his Northeast upbringing with a dash of down-home.

“Everything is bigger in Texas, including the egos of our already outsize politicians,” said Mark Updegrove, CEO of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation, who noted that playing up their Texas swagger has paid off through the decades for presidential candidates from both parties.

Since the modern era of presidential campaigning began in 1972, Texans have been involved in more cycles than any other state. Candidates from California have launched more overall bids at 19, according to Eric Ostermeier, a research fellow at University of Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs. But Texans and New Yorkers are second, producing 15 total candidacies each.

Ostermeier says he counts a home state as where a candidate rose to public prominence or lived when they ran for office. That means Houston-born Marianne Williamson, who lives in Beverly Hills and is readying a 2024 Democratic presidential bid, would qualify as a Californian.

More clarity on possible Texans in the 2024 primary campaign will come after the state Legislature adjourns in late May. Carney said Abbott will then “look at what the state of the race is, and does he have something that would be differentiating to the race that would be attractive to voters.”

“The governor will not be a spoiler,” Carney said. “But, if he thinks he has something to offer, he might run. If he thinks there’s enough folks running with the same, similar ideas that he has,” then probably not.

Hurd, who retired from Congress in 2021 after three terms representing Texas’ most competitive House district, traveled to New Hampshire recently and is planning trips to other early primary states.

Cruz says he’s concentrating on his Senate race next year but hasn’t ruled out another presidential run. He could do both. Texas’ so-called LBJ law allows running for Senate and president simultaneously, and Bentsen was reelected to his seat while losing the vice presidency in 1988.

A Cruz aide called the prospect of no Texans in the presidential race since 1972 a “clever bit of trivia.” ___

Weissert reported from Washington.

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