Politics

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Two more Virginia state lawmakers on Tuesday jumped into the crowded field of candidates seeking to replace Democratic U.S. Rep. A. Donald McEachin, who died last month.

State Sens. Jennifer McClellan and Joe Morrissey formally announced their candidacies at events in Richmond and Petersburg. At least five Democrats have now indicated plans to seek the party’s nomination during next Tuesday’s unassembled caucus, a party-run process that will involve five voting locations across the 4th District.

The winner of that contest will have an enormous structural advantage in the overwhelmingly Democratic district heading into the Feb. 21 special election, which GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin set on Monday. The tight nomination timeline was necessary because of state voting laws but has set off a mad dash for candidates to organize their campaigns and start reaching out to voters.

“The people of the Fourth are used to and expect a very strong social justice champion with extraordinary legislative skills and an extraordinary commitment to servant leadership. And while Congressman McEachin’s passing is a huge loss, I’m the candidate best able to bring all that to this district,” McClellan said in an interview ahead of her formal announcement Tuesday.

A long-serving lawmaker from the capital city, McClellan will benefit from heightened name recognition in this race due to a serious but unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination for governor last year. She was joined by dozens of supporters as she announced her bid on Capitol Square in Richmond and in a news release rolled out over 50 endorsements, including from three members of the Congressional delegation — U.S. Reps. Gerry Connolly, Don Beyer and Jennifer Wexton.

A corporate attorney who has earned bipartisan respect in the General Assembly, McClellan has played a leading role in many of Virginia Democrats’ key legislative accomplishments in the past several years, including as the sponsor of a landmark clean energy bill and a measure that greatly reduced barriers to abortion access in the state.

If elected, McClellan would be the first Black woman to represent Virginia in Congress.

Morrissey, who has acquired the nickname “Fighting Joe,” is a flamboyant attorney with a hard-charging style who overcame a litany of past scandals to win election to the state Senate in 2020. In the chamber, he’s a leading voice on criminal justice reform issues and an impassioned debater, and his office has a strong reputation for its grassroots connections and constituent service.

He was joined by Petersburg’s mayor, Sam Parham, and three members of the City Council as he announced his candidacy outside the city hall.

Morrissey, whose district includes parts of Richmond as well as Petersburg, called himself a “worker bee,” listing legislative accomplishments including helping to pass a measure ending the death penalty and reforming Virginia’s bail and sentencing processes.

“I’ve spent the better part of the last decade fighting for issues important to Virginians, like the environment, reforming our criminal justice system, investing in affordable housing, fighting for Virginians’ health care, and preventing gun violence,” he said.

The twice-disbarred former prosecutor-turned-defense attorney’s successful political career has come despite an extraordinary series of personal and professional controversies. Among them was his resignation from the House of Delegates in 2014 after being convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, his receptionist at his law firm. The two later married and have several children together.

Morrissey, who is Catholic and has something of an independent voting streak, has recently provoked the ire of some members of his own party for suggesting he is open to joining with Republicans to enact greater restrictions on abortions in Virginia.

An aide declined to comment Tuesday on the current status of his law license, which Morrissey told The Associated Press he would seek to have reinstated after he was pardoned in January for the 2014 misdemeanor conviction.

Another General Assembly member, Del. Lamont Bagby, announced his candidacy Monday. Bagby is a former educator and chair of the powerful legislative Black caucus who has said he was close with McEachin.

McEachin was elected to his first term to the U.S. House in 2016 after serving in the General Assembly. He died last month at age 61 of what his staff said were complications of his long-running fight against colorectal cancer.

Two other Democratic candidates have publicly declared their intention to run: Joseph Preston, an attorney who served for a year in the General Assembly after winning a special election, and Tavorise Marks, a civil rights activist and former state House candidate.

Among Republicans, pastor Leon Benjamin — who twice previously ran unsuccessfully against McEachin — and Dale Sturdifen, a retired Virginia State Police officer and congressional staffer, have announced bids.

The Democratic candidates face a noon Friday deadline to submit a $3,480 filing fee and paperwork including signatures from 150 registered 4th District voters.

The 4th District Democratic committee voted Monday night to chose the party’s nominee in an unassembled caucus, also known as a firehouse primary — essentially a primary election run by the party. The polls will be open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. at five locations across the district: one in Lawrenceville, two in Richmond, one in Highland Springs and one in Petersburg.

The 4th District has its population center in the Richmond area and stretches south to the North Carolina border.

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RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation said it has submitted to state prosecutors the findings of its voter fraud probe into Mark Meadows, a former White House chief of staff to President Donald Trump, who was simultaneously registered to vote in North Carolina and two other states earlier this year.

The State Bureau of Investigation announced Tuesday that it has turned over the case file detailing its investigation into Meadows’ North Carolina voter registration and listed residence to Attorney General Josh Stein’s office. Prosecutors with the attorney general’s office will determine whether criminal charges are appropriate, the bureau said in a statement.

Meadows, a former Republican North Carolina congressman, was removed from the state’s voter rolls in April after Stein’s office asked the bureau to examine his voter registration records. He had listed a mobile home Scaly Mountain, North Carolina, that he never owned as his physical address weeks before casting an absentee by-mail ballot in the state for the 2020 presidential election. Trump won the Southern swing state that year by just over 1 percentage point.

A representative for Meadows did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Public records indicate Meadows registered to vote in Alexandria, Virginia, in 2021, a year after he registered in North Carolina and just weeks before Virginia’s pivotal gubernatorial election in which Gov. Glenn Youngkin became the first Republican to win statewide office in a dozen years.

An outspoken proponent of Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, Meadows also registered to vote in South Carolina in March 2022 after he and his wife purchased a $1.6 million home on Lake Keowee, according to records for the address listed on their South Carolina voter registration forms.

The Trump ally began arousing public suspicion of widespread voter fraud leading up to the 2020 general election as the polls showed Trump trailing President Joe Biden. He repeated those unfounded claims throughout the election cycle and in the aftermath of the race as Trump insisted the election was rife with fraud.

Election officials from both parties, as well as judges and Trump’s own attorney general, concluded there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, noting only a few isolated incidents of intentional or unintentional voting violations common in every election.

Stein’s office, which received the final case file from state investigators in November, declined to comment on its progress.

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

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is considering running for president, on Tuesday called a third Donald Trump White House bid the “worst scenario” for Republicans and said his call for terminating parts of the Constitution hurts the country.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Hutchinson said he planned to make a decision early next year on whether to seek the Republican presidential nomination. Hutchinson, 72, leaves office in January after serving eight years as Arkansas’ governor.

He’s part of a growing cohort of Republicans eyeing a White House run at a challenging moment for the party, which fell short of its hopes for sweeping victories in last month’s midterm elections. Trump, who has already announced another run for the presidency, has faced blame from some Republicans for contributing to the GOP’s lackluster performance by elevating candidates and issues that didn’t resonate with voters during the general election.

Hutchinson has previously said he wouldn’t support Trump’s candidacy in 2024, but on Tuesday, he didn’t rule out backing Trump if he becomes the Republican nominee.

“That’s really the worst scenario,” Hutchinson said of another matchup between Trump and Biden. “That’s almost the scenario that Biden wishes for. And that’s probably how he got elected the first time. It became, you know, a binary choice for the American people between the challenges that we saw in the Trump presidency, particularly the closing days, versus Biden, who he made it that choice.”

Hutchinson also derided Trump’s recent statement calling for terminating parts of the Constitution to overturn the 2020 election as “so out of line and out of step with America that it almost does not deserve a response.”

“It hurts our country,” he said. “I mean, any leader, former president that says suspend the Constitution is tearing at the fabric of our democracy. And so we want to make sure that the people know that it’s Republicans that support the rule of law.”

Hutchinson said he’s measuring how much financial support he’d have for mounting a presidential bid, but said he’s also testing to see what kind of response his message is getting as he weighs a run. Hutchinson, who’s been a regular presence on Sunday news talk shows, said he’s been reaching out to other governors, members of Congress and evangelical leaders for advice on a possible run.

“The midterm elections made it clear to me that the GOP needs a bold agenda, but also new voices that’s articulating what our party stands for, the direction we want to take our country,” Hutchinson said.

Hutchinson said he didn’t view the midterms as a rejection of Republicans overall as much as of specific candidates.

“We’re very disappointed that because of poor candidates, poor messaging, looking back instead of looking forward, we didn’t do as well as we should have in the midterm election,” he said.

Hutchinson is among several Republican candidates who are weighing a presidential run. Others include former Vice President Mike Pence, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Another Arkansan, Sen. Tom Cotton, announced he wasn’t seeking the Republican nomination.

Despite the potentially crowded field, Hutchinson said he doesn’t expect a repeat of 2016 when GOP rivals hoping to block Trump’s candidacy instead split the vote. Hutchinson said he thinks the early primary and caucus states will winnow the number of rivals to Trump very quickly.

“I think it will be much more methodical this cycle than what we’ve seen in previous years,” he said. “And I think that competition is good and it’s healthy.”

Though he’s offering himself up as a new voice, Hutchinson has been a fixture in Arkansas politics going back to the 1980s when the state was predominantly Democratic. Hutchinson is a former congressman who served in former President George W. Bush’s administration as the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration and an undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

Hutchinson has ramped up his criticism of Trump in recent months, including a speech at the Reagan Library where he recounted his experience as a U.S. attorney who prosecuted white supremacists in Arkansas in the 1980s. Hutchinson contrasted that background with Trump having dinner with a Holocaust-denying white nationalist and a rapper who has spewed antisemitic conspiracies.

Hutchinson said that contrast is one of the reasons he thinks his voice may be needed in the presidential race. Republicans need figures who speak the truth and are not worried “whether you’re satisfying somebody down in Mar-a-Lago or not,” he said.

Hutchinson earned the ire of Trump last year when the governor vetoed legislation that would ban gender-affirming care for minors. GOP lawmakers overrode Hutchinson’s veto and enacted the ban, which has been blocked by a federal judge.

Trump called Hutchinson a RINO — Republican in Name Only — for vetoing the ban. The governor’s successor, former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, has said she would have signed the ban into law.

Hutchinson, who has said he would have signed the measure if it was limited to gender-affirming surgery, called Arkansas’ legislation “one of the most extreme in the country.”

A vocal opponent of abortion who has signed other restrictions on transgender youth into law, Hutchinson said Republicans need to tread carefully on culture wars issues.

“The key thing is for Republicans and conservatives is to think about let’s not instinctively say, well, let’s use the power of government to accomplish our social agenda or our cultural agenda,” he said. “You know, our first response is a strength in the home, the strength and the families and the communities and our churches and synagogues strengthen those because that’s the greatest impact on our culture.”

Nearing the end of his eight years as governor, Hutchinson is touting his work on tax cuts and on expanding computer science courses as his top accomplishments. Hutchinson, who wrapped up his one-year term as National Governors Association chairman in July, is term limited and could not seek reelection. He said he thinks it’s important to have a governor running for the office.

“I’m known for having a steady hand in leadership, but also a bold agenda,” he said. “And I think that’s a good combination for a leader of the country.”

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“This law and the love it defends strike a blow against hate in all its forms,” Biden said on the South Lawn of the White House. “And that’s why this law matters to every single American.”

Lawmakers from both parties were there, as well as first lady Jill Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff. Singers Sam Smith and Cyndi Lauper performed.

“For once, our families, mine and a lot of my friends — and people you know, sometimes your neighbors — we can rest easy tonight, because our families are validated,” Lauper said at the White House briefing room before the ceremony.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wore the same purple tie to the ceremony that he wore to his daughter’s wedding. His daughter and her wife are expecting their first child in the spring.

“Thanks to the dogged work of many of my colleagues, my grandchild will live in a world that will respect and honor their mothers’ marriage,” Schumer said on the Senate floor in the morning.

“Racism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, they’re all connected,” Biden said. “But the antidote to hate is love.”

Plaintiffs from lawsuits that originally helped secure the nationwide right to gay marriage were also there.

“It’s not lost on me that our struggle for freedom hasn’t been achieved,” said Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign. “But this is a huge step forward, and we have to celebrate the victories we achieve and use that to fuel the future of the fight.”

Robinson attended the ceremony with her wife and 1-year-old child.

“Our kids are watching this moment,” she said. “It’s very special to have them here and show them that we’re on the right side of history.”

In a concurring opinion in the case that overturned Roe, Justice Clarence Thomas suggested revisiting other decisions, including the legalization of gay marriage, generating fear that more civil rights could be imperiled by the court’s conservative majority. Thomas did not include interracial marriage with other cases he said should be reconsidered.

Lawmakers crafted a compromise that was intended to assuage conservative concerns about religious liberty, such as ensuring churches could still refuse to perform gay marriages.

In addition, states will not be required to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. But they will be required to recognize marriages conducted elsewhere in the country.

A majority of Republicans in Congress still voted against the legislation. However, enough supported it to sidestep a filibuster in the Senate and ensure its passage.

He memorably — and unexpectedly — endorsed same-sex unions in a television interview in 2012, when he was vice president. Days later, President Barack Obama announced that he also supported gay marriage.

A clip of the interview was played at the ceremony.

“What this is all about is a simple proposition: Who do you love?” Biden said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” a decade ago. “Who do you love and will you be loyal to the person you love? And that is what people are finding out is what all marriages at their root are about.”

A Gallup poll showed only 27% of U.S. adults supported same-sex unions in 1996, when President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which said the federal government would only recognize heterosexual marriages. Biden voted for the legislation.

By the time of Biden’s 2012 interview, gay marriage remained controversial, but support had expanded to roughly half of U.S. adults, according to Gallup. Earlier this year, 71% said same-sex unions should be recognized by law.

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DENVER (AP) — An automatic recount confirmed Monday that Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert won her reelection bid against Democrat Adam Frisch. The nail-biter race showed the congresswoman’s combative style is wearying voters in her conservative Colorado district.

Secretary of State Jena Griswold announced the results Monday evening. Frisch netted a total of four votes in the recount, far from enough to close a 500-plus vote gap with Boebert. An Aspen City Councilman, Frisch had already conceded the race last month after the first tally put him just under the state’s margin for a mandatory recount.

Few expected the race to come down to such a narrow margin. In her first term in office, Boebert rocketed to national renown for her staunch support for former President Donald Trump, aggressive use of social media and willingness to engage in personal feuds with Democratic representatives.

Frisch ran against what her called her “ angertainment,” saying he wouldn’t back U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as party leader and describing himself as a nonpartisan problem-solver. Few gave him much of a chance in the conservative 3rd Congressional District, which edges up against some famed, liberal ski towns but is dominated by vast, less glamorous and energy-rich swathes of rural Colorado.

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NEW YORK (AP) — For Alexandra Pelosi, the brutal attack on her father earlier this year was a culmination of vitriol that had been building for decades. Her family’s name, she says, has been weaponized for years, turned into a curse word for Republicans.

Then, in October, a man broke into the family’s San Francisco home and attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer, leaving him unconscious in a pool of his own blood.

The bubbling political rhetoric that led to that moment is chronicled in a new documentary premiering Tuesday night on HBO. The film, “Pelosi in the House,” directed and produced by Alexandra Pelosi, the youngest of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s five children, follows the elder Pelosi’s career over three decades.

The film offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at her political life, chronicling major milestones from her election to Congress in 1987 to becoming the first female House speaker in 2007 to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress was voting to certify Joe Biden’s presidential win.

“There’s a thread from the very first time they started taking ads out against Nancy Pelosi and turning her into a witch and turning our last name into a curse word. You can follow that thread 20 years later to my parents’ doorstep to my father getting attacked,” Alexandra Pelosi said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Pelosi’s film follows her mother, literally, through the Capitol and behind the scenes as she negotiates key votes for major pieces of legislation. It also depicts threats the family received, including a severed pig’s head that was delivered to the speaker’s San Francisco home just days before the attack on the Capitol.

The camera was also rolling on Jan. 6 as the House speaker prepared for the certification of the presidential election and as rioters began smashing through the doors and windows, violently shoving past overwhelmed police officers, leaving many officers bruised and bloodied.

The film includes extended clips recorded as Pelosi and other congressional leaders are rushed out of the Capitol and evacuated to Fort McNair, a nearby Army base. It captures frantic leaders calling the defense secretary, attorney general, then-Vice President Mike Pence and other officials trying to get assistance to the Capitol.

Some of the footage was played during a hearing of the House panel investigating the attack on the Capitol. Alexandra Pelosi and her team provided the footage to the committee.

“When they took Nancy Pelosi out of the chamber, she didn’t even get to take her cellphone. They rushed her out. And she was making calls to the defense secretary, the attorney general, the vice president, and I thought there should be a record of this,” Alexandra Pelosi said.

“She didn’t get to take the House clerk, who has a transcript of all this, to record what was happening. This was historic what was happening, and somebody needed to have a record of what was said,” she said.

Among those historic moments: discussion about whether to move the entire Congress – all 100 senators and 435 members of the House – by bus to Fort McNair and convene the joint session there to continue the certification of the election.

For the House speaker, the attack on the Capitol was one of the worst moments of her career, as her panicking staff members fled for cover, hiding silently under tables as rioters trashed the speaker’s office and called out “Nancy!” as they searched for Pelosi.

“She thinks that the Capitol is sacred ground,” Alexandra Pelosi says of her mother. “That’s why January 6 really tore at her soul. Because to her, the Capitol is sacred ground, and the rioters literally pooped inside the sacred ground.”

Less than two years after that attack, a man broke into the Pelosi family home in San Francisco, roused the speaker’s husband and reportedly demanded “Where is Nancy?” Officers arrived at the home after Paul Pelosi called 911 and they arrested the intruder, David DePape. He appears to have made racist and often rambling posts online, including some that questioned the results of the 2020 election, defended former President Donald Trump and echoed QAnon conspiracy theories.

The Pelosi family has also received death threats. The FBI has stepped in on several cases involving threats to Pelosi’s grandchildren and Alexandra Pelosi said she receives threatening messages nearly every day.

“It was so inevitable, because the rhetoric has just amped up so much over the past few years,” Alexandra Pelosi said as she looked out the window of her New York home.

As the family gathered for Thanksgiving this year, a tactical team of police officers holding rifles lined the perimeter of the house. Alexandra Pelosi has been struggling to explain to her children why so many people want to kill their grandmother.

“My son comes into the kitchen in the morning for breakfast. He’s like, ‘Hey, did you see that that guy that said that he wanted to hang Nancy Pelosi from a lamppost got convicted?’ That’s just weird for a teenager to be talking about his own grandmother, being hung from a lamppost,” she said.

“And as the mother you’re trying to say all humanity is good. We are decent people. No, we’re not.”

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SHREVEPORT, La. (AP) — Voters in Louisiana’s third-largest city have elected a Republican mayor for the first time in 28 years.

Tom Arceneaux, 71, won a runoff election Saturday to become the next mayor of Shreveport. He defeated Louisiana state Sen. Greg Tarver, a Black Democrat, in a city where roughly 55% of registered voters are African American.

Arceneaux and Tarver were the top two finishers in the November mayoral election, but neither won a majority of the vote, the Shreveport Times reported. That forced them into a monthlong runoff campaign.

A restorer of historic homes who served on the Shreveport City Council in the 1980s, Arceneaux got a major boost during the runoff when he was endorsed by outgoing Shreveport Mayor Adrian Perkins and the city’s two previous mayors. All three of them are Black Democrats.

“You know, we have tonight looked beyond historical barriers and distinctions,” Arceneaux told supporters in a victory speech Saturday. ”We have a new future in the city of Shreveport, it will look different from what it did in the past.”

Perkins said he was backing Arceneaux because he questioned Tarver’s honesty and integrity, the Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reported. Former Mayor Ollie Tyler said Tarver had cast votes in the state Senate that were harmful to Shreveport, a city of 184,000 people.

In a concession speech, Tarver pledged to work with Arceneaux in helping Shreveport move forward, KSLA-TV reported.

“Anything that I can do or my family can do to help Tom run this city, we will support him all the way,” Tarver said.

Shreveport elected its last Republican mayor, Bo Williams, in 1994. He served a single term and left office in 1998.

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INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch formally started her 2024 campaign for governor on Monday and said she would not shy away from Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb’s record despite discontent among many conservatives over his COVID-19 policies and other actions.

Crouch, who was Holcomb’s running mate in 2016 and 2020, is joining U.S. Sen. Mike Braun in what could become an expensive fight for the Republican nomination in hopes of extending the GOP’s 20-year-hold on the governor’s office. Holcomb cannot seek reelection because of term limits.

Crouch announced her campaign in an online video message released just hours ahead of Braun’s campaign kickoff luncheon with supporters at a downtown Indianapolis steakhouse. Braun filed paperwork on Nov. 30 with state election officials allowing him to raise money for the governor’s race, a move that will forego him seeking another Senate term when that seat also goes up for election in 2024.

Braun, 68, was a little-known wealthy businessman before fueling his successful 2018 Senate campaign with more than $11 million in personal loans. He presented himself as a political outsider, defeating Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly.

Crouch, 70, said her campaign to become Indiana’s first female governor would highlight her decade as a local government official in Evansville before joining the state Legislature in 2005. She then served three years as state auditor and became lieutenant governor in early 2017.

“I think if you put me on a stage with the other announced candidates, the differences are obvious,” Crouch told The Associated Press ahead of her announcement. “But when you look at the resumes, there is no candidate that has the local, state, legislative and executive experience that I have. There is no candidate that knows better how government works and how it can work better for people.”

Crouch has already raised more than $2.5 million for her campaign and Fort Wayne businessman Eric Doden, who was a state economic development official for then-Gov. Mike Pence, has raised a similar amount since he kicked off a campaign last year for the Republican nomination.

Crouch has been a loyal administration member under Holcomb and appeared at his side during several of his near-daily news conferences during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Holcomb easily won reelection in 2020, but frustration among conservatives over COVID-19 business restrictions and a statewide mask mandate boosted a Libertarian candidate to 11% of the vote. Holcomb further angered conservatives — and drew a public denouncement from Braun — with his veto in March of a GOP-backed bill banning transgender females from competing in Indiana girls sports teams.

Crouch said Indiana’s economy and state finances had continued to improve during Holcomb’s time as governor.

“We have accomplished a great deal and I’m proud of that record, not just over the past six years, but over the past 17 years being a part of turning this state around,” Crouch said.

During Crouch’s announcement video, supporters donned her signature red-rimmed eyeglasses. Crouch emphasized common conservative stances, such as saying she would “make sure it’s parents and nobody else who’s in charge of what’s being taught to your children.” She also called for enforcing criminal laws “to the fullest” and decried “our country’s wide open southern border” as the source of illicit fentanyl blamed for many overdose deaths.

State campaign filings show no other Republicans are actively raising money for the 2024 governor’s race, but that doesn’t mean the GOP field is set.

Republican U.S. Rep. Trey Hollingsworth alluded to a possible run for a different office when decided to not seek reelection this year — and some Republicans are hoping that former Gov. Mitch Daniels will seek a Statehouse return after he steps down as Purdue University’s president at the end of December.

U.S. Rep. Jim Banks, who unsuccessfully sought a top House Republican position last month, and U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz have both said they are considering seeking the GOP nomination for Braun’s Senate seat.

Discussions of possible 2024 statewide Democratic candidates have centered on Donnelly, who is now President Joe Biden’s ambassador to the Vatican, and former state schools superintendent Jennifer McCormick, who won election as a Republican in 2016 but has since switched parties after disputes with GOP Statehouse leaders over education policies.

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A nonprofit group that became a point of controversy for distributing hundreds of millions of dollars in election grants during the 2020 presidential campaign is releasing a fresh round of money to local election offices, including in states where Republican lawmakers tried to ban the practice.

The Chicago-based Center for Tech and Civic Life has released only general details about how much money each office will receive or what it will fund.

It has said 10 county and municipal election offices will be part of the first group to receive grant money under the center’s U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, which has $80 million to hand out over the next five years, with few restrictions.

Conservatives took aim at the center during the last presidential race after it gave local election offices around the country more than $350 million, almost all of it donated by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Opponents termed the grants “Zuckerbucks” and claimed they were an attempt by the billionaire to tip the vote in favor of Democrats, although there was no evidence to support that.

Much of the earlier money went to election offices in urban areas that have traditionally supported Democrats, but the center pointed out that it gave funding to every office that requested it – nearly 2,500 in all. The center previously said the current round of grant funding will not include money from Zuckerberg.

The center did not initially disclose the amounts each jurisdiction would be eligible to receive, but it posted a range of figures two weeks after the initial announcement in response to questions from The Associated Press.

Grant amounts will vary based on the size of each jurisdiction, from $50,000 for those with fewer than 5,000 registered voters to $3 million for those with more than 1 million voters. The first offices will receive grants over a two-year period leading up to the 2024 presidential election, said Tiana Epps-Johnson, the center’s executive director.

The money comes with almost no restrictions on how it can be spent. Election officials said they hope to use the grants for everything from improving websites to recruiting poll workers and building larger, more secure office spaces.

The center’s hesitancy to disclose details about its renewed efforts has drawn criticism from the same conservative groups that opposed its work in 2020.

“It seems like this entire process will occur behind the scenes with no guardrails or transparency, furthering the concerns of voters over undue influence on the conduct of elections,” said Hayden Dublois, a researcher at the conservative Foundation for Government Accountability.

The center’s grants will not fund offices in any of the more than 20 states where Republicans enacted laws since 2020 that ban private funding for elections, but it will go to offices in some states where Democratic governors vetoed bans passed by Republican-controlled legislatures. That includes Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

Dublois said he was skeptical of the list of jurisdictions the center chose to support. The center declined to provide specific details about how it selected members of the alliance.

“It seems most of the targets for the alliance are geared towards blue states, with some Democratic strongholds in swing states included, as well,” he said, voicing concerns that increased funding could boost Democratic turnout.

Five of the selected jurisdictions lean Republican, but they make up only a fraction of the total population in the more Democratic jurisdictions.

The initial election offices selected are: Contra Costa and Shasta counties in California; Greenwich, Connecticut; Kane and Macoupin counties in Illinois; Ottawa County, Michigan; Clark County, Nevada; Brunswick and Forsyth counties in North Carolina; and Madison, Wisconsin.

In Wisconsin, a perennial political battleground where former President Donald Trump has sought to decertify the results of the 2020 presidential election, Republican lawmakers tried to work around Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ veto power this spring by proposing an amendment to the state constitution that would ban private funding for elections. The proposal passed the Legislature but would need a second consecutive approval in 2023 before it could be put to a statewide vote.

Madison Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick said he saw joining the alliance as a way to stay current on how other election officials are operating. He said his office will consider accepting grants and wasn’t worried about the city’s involvement drawing backlash.

“ The issue has gone to the courts, and the courts have repeatedly said there was nothing wrong with the grants,” he said.

Top Wisconsin Republicans said they believe the program has partisan aims.

“This is just liberals telling other liberals they are doing a good job,” said Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, the state’s top Republican. “Cities like Madison and Milwaukee continue to try to find ways to only engage with and turn out certain voters.”

The center and participating election officials have stressed that the alliance’s work is nonpartisan, but the lack of publicly available details about how they selected the offices and how the money will be used has fed conservatives’ concerns.

“Our citizens should have peace of mind that the outcomes of elections are not affected by the flow of private money into election administration,” said Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Tyler August, Vos’ second in command who sponsored the proposed amendment to ban election grants.

In Michigan, more than 460 election offices accepted grants from the center in 2020. The state now has constitutional protections for private grants thanks to a voting-related ballot initiative voters passed in November.

Opponents such as Jamie Roe of Secure MI Vote criticize what they see as special interest groups trying to influence elections. The group pushed unsuccessfully for private funding to be outlawed.

“The elected officials and the clerks in Michigan need to know that they’re going to be held accountable,” Roe said. “They should be very careful about what sort of agreements they enter into with special interests.”

Two recipients stand out: deeply Republican Shasta County in the rural, far northern part of California and Democratic-leaning Clark County in Nevada. Both have been on the front lines of election conspiracies.

Clark County, home to nearly three-quarters of registered voters in the presidential battleground state, has been the target of false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged to favor Democrats. County spokesperson Dan Kulin said the county’s handling of mail ballots likely contributed to its selection. It’s the only jurisdiction in the alliance with enough registered voters to be eligible for up to $3 million in grants.

Several Republican groups in the state did not respond to phone calls and emails.

Shasta County has been roiled by far-right politics since the 2020 presidential election. Election workers have been followed while delivering ballots and monitored by trail cameras outside their office, The Los Angeles Times reported. County Clerk Cathy Darling Allen said she has feared for the safety of her staff. The Shasta County elections office received $95,000 from the center in 2020 and now is eligible for $1.5 million.

“The doubts about election administration that have been sown on social media particularly have been troubling and difficult to quash,” Darling Allen told the AP.

She said she hopes to present the county’s participation in the alliance early next year to the board of supervisors, where far-right candidates secured four of the five seats in November’s election.

One of the newly elected supervisors, Kevin Crye, said he had concerns about “who and how our electoral process can possibly be manipulated,” but declined to elaborate.

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

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Two months after becoming entangled in a racism scandal that shook public trust in Los Angeles government, disgraced City Councilman Kevin de Leon has refused calls to resign and is attempting to rehabilitate his reputation as he faces a politically uncertain future.

As of Monday, de Leon, a former state legislator, is the only council member still resisting calls from President Joe Biden to step down, while continuing to collect his annual salary of nearly $229,000 — among the most lucrative paydays for city council members in the nation.

Gil Cedillo, another councilman involved in the scandal over a leaked recording of racist insults emerged in October, had vanished from public view within days of its disclosure but refused to resign. His term expired Monday at 12:01 a.m., after he lost a reelection bid earlier this year.

Continuing fallout from the racism scandal is one challenge that will confront the city’s new mayor, Democrat Karen Bass, as she takes office Monday. Meanwhile, three other current or former Council members have been indicted or pleaded guilty to corruption charges.

Stripped of his ability to participate in council committees, facing widespread pressure to resign and after an extended absence from council meetings, de Leon has been maneuvering in public and private to emerge from political purgatory, despite being reviled by colleagues who say they cannot work with him.

His situation deteriorated Friday, when he scuffled with an activist who heckled him at a holiday toy giveaway that was partially captured on video and posted on Twitter. The confrontation left children at the event in tears.

Council President Paul Krekorian, who has called on de Leon to step down, said in a statement that the councilman, one of his staff members and a volunteer were attacked and he called it intolerable. The Los Angeles Times reported that activists said de Leon was the aggressor.

“This city has endured horrendous division and toxicity in recent months,” Krekorian said. “We need to reject hatred in all of its forms and we need to reject the atmosphere of intimidation, bullying and threats.”

De Leon appeared Friday at his first council meeting since mid-October, setting off a chaotic protest between competing factions in the audience. About a dozen protesters bellowed at de Leon to leave the ornate chamber, while his supporters chanted “Kevin, Kevin.”

Some council members walked out and police ejected two people, fearing they might fight.

“Leave, Kevin!,” one protester shouted at de Leon. “This is why these meetings need to be shut down.”

The scandal triggered the resignation in October of then-City Council President Nury Martinez and a powerful labor leader, Ron Herrera, along with calls from Biden and other elected officials for de Leon and others to resign.

The uproar stemmed from a leaked recording of crude, racist comments from a year-old meeting involving Martinez, Herrera, de Leon and Cedillo — all Latino Democrats — in which they plotted to expand their political power at the expense of Black voters during a realignment of district boundaries.

The once-a-decade redrawing of district lines can pit one group against another to gain political advantage in future elections.

The California Legislative Black Caucus has said the recording “reveals an appalling effort to decentralize Black voices during the critical redistricting process.” A long line of speakers at Council meetings that followed said it echoed the Jim Crow era and was a stark example of “anti-Blackness.”

De Leon has apologized repeatedly but said he will not resign. He argues that he wants to continue working on homelessness, fallout from the pandemic and the threat of evictions for renters in his district, which includes downtown Los Angeles and the heavily Latino Boyle Heights neighborhood.

There is no legal avenue for his colleagues to remove him — the council can only suspend a member when criminal charges are pending.

Krekorian, the council president, has said “the only way we can begin to heal as a city is for Mr. de Leon to take responsibility for his actions, accept the consequences and step down.”

While de Leon has largely stayed away from City Hall, he has continued to quietly conduct business, including attending holiday events and meeting officials on pending homeless projects and illegal dumping problems.

With his appearance at the council meeting Friday, it’s clear he is trying to gradually step back into the public sphere. Meanwhile, organizers behind an effort to recall him from office have been cleared to collect petition signatures needed to qualify the proposal for the ballot.

Council members also have received a spate of letters from people identifying as de Leon’s constituents, defending him and urging the council to let him resume his duties. They also asked the council to refrain from any additional punishment, which is being considered and could include restricting de Leon’s office funds.

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