Politics

MIAMI (AP) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis may need some help from the state Legislature if he proceeds with a highly anticipated bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

A “resign to run” law requires state officeholders to commit to leave their positions if they run for federal office. The measure, which has been on and off the books over the past several decades, was reinstated in 2018. But Republican leaders in the GOP-dominated Legislature have expressed openness to changing or rescinding the law when they gather again in March.

Florida House Speaker Paul Renner recently told reporters that it was a “great idea” to review the law. Senate President Kathleen Passidomo similarly said that changes to the resignation requirement would be a “good idea.”

“If an individual who is a Florida governor is running for president, I think he should be allowed to do it,” she said.

DeSantis is emerging as an early favorite of some Republican donors and activists who are seeking a conservative leader without the baggage associated with former President Donald Trump, who has already announced his 2024 White House bid. In an underwhelming year for Republicans in much of the U.S., many in the party are taking notice of DeSantis’ commanding reelection victory, including his strong performance in longtime Democratic strongholds around Miami.

The governor has dodged questions about his presidential aspirations, telling reporters last month to “chill out” about the subject. But during a debate before the November election, he pointedly declined to answer questions about whether he would serve out his full term. And he’s gained notice for his travel around the country on behalf of other GOP candidates and will release an autobiography next year.

Florida constitutional experts said there’s little ambiguity in the law, likely requiring some type of action by the Legislature.

“There is no ambiguity, no debate, no dispute,” said Bob Jarvis, a professor at Nova Southeastern University’s law school. “Under current law, DeSantis cannot run for president before first resigning as a governor.”

But given the Republican majorities in the Legislature, the law isn’t expected to pose a significant hurdle. The governor didn’t respond to a request for comment about whether he’s calling for a change.

There is precedent for changes to the Florida law to help clear a path for potential candidates for higher office. In 2007, the Republican-controlled Legislature changed the law to prevent problems for then-Gov. Charlie Crist, who was being considered as a possible running mate for Republican John McCain in 2008. Crist later became a Democrat and challenged DeSantis for reelection this year.

“You can make the argument that there is no reason to have this law. The voters all knew that there was a chance that (DeSantis) would not complete his term as governor and that he was at the very least considering a presidential run,” Jarvis said. “No voter could say I was duped into voting for someone.”

Only a handful of states have similar resign-to-run laws. Some say that while the law is clear about politicians having to resign if they seek federal office, it is vague about when they would need to do so. It states the resignation must be submitted at least 10 days before the first day of qualifying for the office.

“There is too much ambiguity,” said Jon McGowan, an attorney that specializes in business and state government law, adding that it is not clear if a candidate would be qualified when he runs for the Republican nomination or for the general election. McGowan says the motivation behind the law “is really about not having endless elections.”

“What we’ll see is they will create a new section so that candidates for president or vice president do not have to resign to run, and just if they win.”

A revision to the law is likely just one piece of a legislative agenda DeSantis would like to oversee next year as a launching pad to a presidential campaign. DeSantis calls his administration and election results a “blueprint” for Republican success.

Education and abortion bills are likely to be filed. Incoming Republican state legislative leaders have referred to a new law limiting instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in early grade school that DeSantis championed, hinting that additional similar legislation could follow.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has declared that Democrats should give up “restrictive” caucuses and prioritize diversity at the start of their presidential primary calendar — dealing a major blow to Iowa’s decadeslong status as the state that leads off the process.

In a letter Thursday to the rule-making arm of the Democratic National Committee, Biden did not mention specific states he’d like to see go first. But he has told Democrats he wants South Carolina moved to the first position, according to three people familiar with his recommendation who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

The president’s direction came as the DNC rules committee gathered in Washington on Friday to vote on shaking up the presidential primary calendar starting in 2024. Members now expect to approve new rules putting South Carolina first, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada on the same day a week later.

Georgia and Michigan would move into the top five as new early states, and each would hold primaries in subsequent weeks, committee members say. The two battlegrounds were critical to Biden’s 2020 victory over then-President Donald Trump, who had won both states in his 2016 White House campaign.

Much of the rest of the country would vote as part of Super Tuesday soon afterward.

Such changes are set to come after years of calls from many top Democrats for the voting calendar to better reflect the party’s deeply diverse base than mostly white Iowa, which holds the country’s first caucus, and New Hampshire, which holds the first primary. The new calendar would still have to be approved by the full DNC in a vote likely to come early next year, but the DNC will almost certainly heed the rule-making panel’s recommendations.

The proposed order of the early states was first reported by The Washington Post.

“For decades, Black voters in particular have been the backbone of the Democratic Party but have been pushed to the back of the early primary process,” Biden wrote in a letter on personal stationery that did not carry the White House seal. “We rely on these voters in elections but have not recognized their importance in our nominating calendar. It is time to stop taking these voters for granted, and time to give them a louder and earlier voice in the process.”

He said caucuses were “restrictive and anti-worker” because they require voters “to spend significant amounts of time” on one night gathering to choose candidates in person, “disadvantaging hourly workers and anyone who does not have the flexibility to go to a set location at a set time.”

The changes could be implemented as soon as 2024 but would be rendered largely meaningless until 2028 if Biden opts to seek a second term. The president has said for months that he intends to run again, and White House aides and Biden allies have begun staffing and structural discussions for his likely 2024 bid while refraining from overt steps while the president weighs a final decision.

Such a shakeup would nonetheless be seismic given that Iowa’s caucus has led off the Democratic voting calendar since 1976. Still, it would come two years after a series of technical glitches so marred party results that they prevented The Associated Press from declaring a 2020 Iowa Democratic caucus winner.

Iowa Democratic Party Chair Ross Wilburn said in a statement Thursday night that the state party intended to abide by Iowa law and hold its caucus first.

“Our state law requires us to hold a caucus before the last Tuesday in February, and before any other contest,” Wilburn said. “When we submit our delegate selection plan to the Rules and Bylaws Committee early next year, we will adhere to the State of Iowa’s legal requirements, and address compliance with DNC rules in subsequent meetings and hearings.”

New Hampshire state law calls for it to hold the first actual primary, and officials there have for months threatened to simply move up their election regardless of what new rules the DNC approves

On the current Democratic calendar, Iowa has been followed by New Hampshire, which has held the nation’s first primary since 1920. Nevada and South Carolina have gone next since the 2008 presidential election, when Democrats last did a major primary calendar overhaul.

The Republican National Committee, meanwhile, has already decided to keep Iowa’s caucus as the first contest in its 2024 presidential calendar, ensuring that GOP White House hopefuls — which include Trump — will continue campaigning there frequently.

South Carolina holds special relevance to Biden. His victory in the state’s first-in-the-South primary in 2020 kickstarted his presidential campaign after poor finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire on his way to winning the Democratic nomination.

Dick Harpootlian, a longtime Biden ally, fundraiser and former South Carolina Democratic Party chair, said Thursday that he and Biden discussed South Carolina’s possible advancement the night of Biden’s 2020 primary victory there. Harpootlian said he’d impressed upon Biden that the state was a better place than Iowa to hold an even earlier presidential voting contest — to which Harpootlian said Biden was receptive.

“I think he agreed that this was a much more dynamic process,” Harpootlian said. “Iowa was just a nightmare.”

The DNC rules committee has been discussing reordering the early calendar for months, touching off a fierce battle among many states to go first. In a joint statement Thursday night, Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lavora Barnes and U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell said, “We have always said that any road to the White House goes through the heartland and President Biden understands that.”

Several states have previously tried to violate party rules and jump closer to the front, only to be threatened with having their delegates not count.

New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen issued a statement blasting “the White House’s short-sighted decision,” while fellow New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan said, “I strongly oppose the President’s deeply misguided proposal.”

“But make no mistake,” Hassan said in a statement. “New Hampshire’s law is clear and our primary will continue to be first in the nation.”

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Kinnard reported from Columbia, S.C. Associated Press writer Steve Peoples in New York contributed to this report.

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wasn’t seeking political retaliation when he removed a prosecutor over abortion and transgender views, but simply wanted to ensure state law would be enforced, the governor’s attorney told a federal judge Thursday.

Lawyers for Andrew Warren, a Democrat suspended from his twice-elected post as state attorney in Hillsborough County, disagreed, saying it’s clear DeSantis’ action was based on what Warren said and believed and not on his competence as a prosecutor.

DeSantis suspended Warren in August over the prosecutor’s signing of statements that said he would not pursue criminal charges against seekers or providers of abortion or gender transition treatments, as well as his policies about not charging people with certain minor crimes. Warren is suing to be reinstated.

“The motivating focus … is all about enforcement of the law,” said George Levesque, a private attorney representing DeSantis.

The issue arose after Florida passed a law banning abortions after 15 weeks. Florida doesn’t have a law addressing gender-confirmation treatments.

Lawyers for Warren said the suspension was clearly motivated by politics considering DeSantis made his announcement at a campaign-like rally with cheering supporters during which he attacked “woke” ideology. They noted he made similar statements that night on Fox News.

“For Gov. DeSantis it was a chance to kill three political birds with one stone,” said David O’Neil, who represents Warren. He said the one act allowed DeSantis to score political points by opposing abortion, projecting a strong “law-and-order” stance and by attacking “woke” ideology.

The three-day trial over Warren’s lawsuit against DeSantis concluded Thursday evening. U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle said it will be at least two weeks before he rules.

“I don’t know who’s going to win,” Hinkle said.

Warren was elected in 2016 and 2020 as prosecutor of Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa. He has said DeSantis overturned the will of voters by removing him from office.

More than 90 district attorneys, state attorneys general and other elected prosecutors throughout the U.S. have signed a letter saying they don’t intend to prosecute people for seeking, providing or supporting abortions. Dozens of prosecutors and law enforcement leaders also signed the letter opposing the criminalization of gender-confirmation treatments.

Warren’s suspension came as DeSantis, a potential 2024 GOP presidential candidate, joined a wave of Republican opposition to progressive prosecutors who exercise discretion over whether to charge people with what they deem to be low-level crimes.

In San Francisco, voters in June recalled Chesa Boudin, a former public defender who was elected district attorney in 2019 on a criminal justice reform platform. Boudin faced criticism over crime rates after declining to prosecute most drug offenses. A similar effort to recall the Los Angeles district attorney failed to garner enough signatures.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate moved quickly Thursday to avert a rail strike that the Biden administration and business leaders warned would have had devastating consequences for the nation’s economy.

The Senate passed a bill to bind rail companies and workers to a proposed settlement that was reached between the rail companies and union leaders in September. That settlement had been rejected by some of the 12 unions involved, creating the possibility of a strike beginning Dec. 9.

“I’m very glad that the two sides got together to avoid a shutdown, which would have been devastating for the American people, to the American economy and so many workers across the country,” Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters.

Schumer spoke as Labor Secretary Marty Walsh and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg emphasized to Democratic senators that rail companies would begin shutting down operations well before a potential strike would begin. The administration wanted the bill on Biden’s desk by the weekend.

Shortly before Thursday’s votes, Biden — who had urged Congress to intervene earlier this week — defended the contract that four of the unions had rejected, noting the wage increases it contains.

“I negotiated a contract no one else could negotiate,” Biden said at a news briefing with French President Emmanuel Macron. “What was negotiated was so much better than anything they ever had.”

Critics say the contract that did not receive backing from enough union members lacked sufficient levels of paid leave for rail workers. Biden said he wants paid leave for “everybody” so that it wouldn’t have to be negotiated in employment contracts, but Republican lawmakers have blocked measures to require time off work for medical and family reasons. The U.S. president said that Congress should now impose the contract to avoid a strike that Biden said could cause 750,000 job losses and a recession.

Railways say that halting rail service would cause a devastating $2 billion-per-day hit to the economy. A freight rail strike also would have a big potential impact on passenger rail, with Amtrak and many commuter railroads relying on tracks owned by the freight railroads.

The rail companies and 12 unions have been engaged in high-stakes negotiations. The Biden administration helped broker deals between the railroads and union leaders in September, but four of the unions rejected the deals. Eight others approved five-year deals and are getting back pay for their workers for the 24% raises that are retroactive to 2020.

On Monday, with a Dec. 9 strike looming, Biden called on Congress to impose the tentative agreement reached in September. Congress has the authority to do so and has enacted legislation in the past to delay or prohibit railway and airline strikes. But most lawmakers would prefer the parties work out their differences on their own.

The intervention was particularly difficult for Democratic lawmakers who traditionally align themselves with the politically powerful labor unions that criticized Biden’s move to intervene in the contract dispute and block a strike.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., responded to that concern by holding a second vote Wednesday on a bill that would add seven days of paid sick leave per year for rail workers covered under the agreement. The call for paid sick leave was a major sticking point in the talks along with other quality-of-life concerns. The railroads say the unions have agreed in negotiations over the decades to forgo paid sick time in favor of higher wages and strong short-term disability benefits.

The unions maintain that railroads can easily afford to add paid sick time when they are recording record profits. Several of the big railroads involved in these contract talks reported more than $1 billion profit in the third quarter.

The House passed the legislation enacting September’s labor agreement with broad bipartisan support. A second measure adding seven paid sick days for rail workers passed on a mostly party-line vote in the House, but it fell eight votes short of a 60-vote threshold needed for passage in the Senate.

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PHOENIX (AP) — A rural Arizona county certified its midterm election results on Thursday, following the orders of a judge who ruled that Republican supervisors broke the law when they refused to sign off on the vote count by this week’s deadline.

Two Republicans on Cochise County’s three-member board of supervisors balked for weeks about certifying the election, even as the deadline passed on Monday. They did not cite any problems with the election results. Rather, they say they weren’t satisfied that the machines used to tabulate ballots were properly certified for use in elections, though state and federal election officials have said they were.

Secretary of State Katie Hobbsfiled suit Monday, as did a local voter and a group of retirees, asking a judge to force the supervisors to certify the election, a process formally known as a canvass. Hobbs said she is required to hold the statewide certification on Dec. 5 and by law can delay it only until Dec. 8.

At the end of a hearing Thursday, Judge Casey McGinley ordered the supervisors to convene within 90 minutes and to approve the election canvass by the end of the day.

“I am not ashamed of anything I did,” said Supervisor Peggy Judd, one of the two Republicans who twice blocked certification. “And today I feel I must, because of a court ruling and because of my own health and situations that are going on in our life, I feel like I must follow what the judge did today.”

The board’s other Republican, Tom Crosby, skipped the meeting.

Two hours earlier, Supervisor Ann English, the board’s lone Democrat, urged the judge to order the board to immediately certify the election and not wait another day. She said Crosby is trying to stage a “smackdown between the secretary of state and the election deniers” at a meeting scheduled for Friday.

“I think it’s a circus that doesn’t need to have to happen,” English said. “So I’ve had enough. I think the public’s had enough. So I’m asking for a swift resolution of this if that’s possible.”

The vote allows the statewide certification to go forward as scheduled on Monday.

Hobbs, a Democrat who was elected governor in November’s election, had warned that she may have to certify statewide results without numbers from Cochise County if they aren’t received in time, an outcome that could have tipped the balance of several close races. The county’s 47,000 votes went overwhelmingly to Republicans.

The board members represented themselves in court after struggling to find someone willing to take the cases. The elected county attorney, who normally represents the board in legal disputes, refused to handle the cases, saying the supervisors acted illegally. The board voted hours before the hearing to hire a Phoenix-area attorney, but he was not able to get up to speed before the hearing and did not inform the court he was representing the supervisors.

Days before the Nov. 8 election, the Republican supervisors abandoned plans to hand count all ballots, which the court said would be illegal, but demanded last week that the secretary of state prove vote-counting machines were legally certified before they would approve the election results. On Monday, they said they wanted to hear again about those concerns before taking a vote on certification. A meeting is scheduled for that purpose on Friday.

There are two companies that are accredited by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to conduct testing and certification of voting equipment, such as the electronic tabulators used in Arizona to read and count ballots.

Conspiracy theories surrounding this process surfaced in early 2021, focused on what appeared to be an outdated accreditation certificate for one of the companies that was posted online. Federal officials investigated and reported that an administrative error had resulted in the agency failing to reissue an updated certificate as the company remained in good standing and underwent audits in 2018 and in early 2021.

Officials also noted federal law dictates the only way a testing company can lose certification is for the commission to revoke it, which did not occur.

Meanwhile, a federal judge in Phoenix sanctioned lawyers who represented Kari Lake and Mark Finchem, the defeated Republican candidates for governor and secretary of state, respectively, in a lawsuit seeking to require hand counting of all ballots.

Judge John Tuchi, a Barack Obama appointee, agreed with lawyers for Maricopa County, who argued the lawsuit was based on frivolous information, and ordered the lawyers to pay the county’s legal fees.

The lawyers “made false, misleading, and unsupported factual assertions” in their lawsuit, Tuchi wrote. He said the court will not condone lawyers “furthering false narratives that baselessly undermine public trust” in the democratic process.

The lawyers for Lake and Finchem, including well-known Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press. They told the court that their claims were “legally sound and supported by strong evidence.”

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This story corrects a previous version that said Mark Finchem was the Republican candidate for attorney general. He was the candidate for secretary of state.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Biden urges Democrats to move past ‘restrictive’ caucuses, embrace diversity in blow to Iowa’s leadoff primary status.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats considering shaking up the order of their 2024 presidential primary are waiting on President Joe Biden, anxious to see if he’ll endorse stripping Iowa of its traditional leadoff spot or discourage major changes while mulling his own potential reelection bid.

But Biden seems to be showing little urgency in addressing the primary calendar, allies say. The president previously avoided moves that could upset any state ahead of November’s critical midterm elections. And he continues to do much of the same even now, as his team quietly moves to lay the groundwork for a 2024 run.

The clock is nonetheless ticking because the Democratic National Committee’s rulemaking arm is meeting Friday to begin deciding which states should be the first four to vote, while considering adding a fifth slot. The lack of a clear signal from the White House has left rules committee members in a holding pattern.

“We do have a leader of our party, and that is President Biden. So we know that there will be a way in from the White House,” said Artie Blanco of Nevada, a member of the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee. She added, “Our goal is to have the best calendar that gives our president — when he’s running again — what it looks like for us and for future candidates.”

Still, the primary calendar showdown may be coming before the 80-year-old Biden is ready to fully discuss reelection. The president says he “intends” to run again but plans to talk it over with his family over the holidays before revealing his decision early next year.

Biden spent Thanksgiving on the Massachusetts island of Nantucket and will see more relatives over Christmas, meaning he may not have deep discussions until then. White House aides and Biden allies have begun staffing and structural discussions for his likely 2024 run to ensure the campaign would have all that it needs to be successful, but they have avoided taking any overt steps while the president weighs a final decision.

Then-President Barack Obama didn’t officially launch his reelection effort until April 2011, some six months after the 2010 midterms, and Biden allies are eyeing a similar time frame should he decide to go forward. That, in part, is because the first quarter after a midterm election is historically a weak fundraising period.

Still, Biden’s predecessor, former President Donald Trump, has already announced his third campaign for the White House. He did so just a week after a midterm election that didn’t feature major Republicans gains that many had predicted — with the party winning only narrow control of the House and failing to recapture the Senate despite sky-high inflation rates and Biden’s low approval ratings.

The Democratic rules committee had been expected to decide the primary order in August but put off doing so until after the midterm elections. No matter what the group ultimately does, its decision will still have to be approved by the full DNC, which will likely come next year — though that vote will likely follow the committee’s recommendation.

Michigan Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell has led the effort to get her state in the top five and suggested the DNC committee might not make a final recommendation this week. But she also said too much work had already been done for a decision to drag out indefinitely.

“They’re being very, very careful,” Dingell said. “They’re doing their homework.”

If Biden runs again, the DNC’s decision will be largely moot for 2024 since the party will have little appetite for encouraging a major challenge to a sitting Democratic president. Still, its move could have implications for the presidential race in 2028 and beyond.

Iowa’s caucus has kicked off presidential primary voting since 1976, but technical glitches sparked a meltdown in Democratic 2020 results that kept The Associated Press from declaring a winner. Many party leaders have also long called for beginning the presidential nominating process in a state that is less white, reflecting Democrats’ deeply diverse electorate.

Vying to replace Iowa are New Hampshire, which holds the nation’s first primary but follows Iowa’s caucuses, and Nevada, a heavily Hispanic state that had held a caucus but now plans to stage a primary and is looking to jump ahead from third place.

South Carolina, with its large bloc of Black Democrats, could move from fourth to third, freeing up a large Midwestern state to go next. Michigan and Minnesota are making major cases that were only strengthened by Democrats winning full control of both states’ legislatures in the midterms. The Michigan Senate on Tuesday passed a bill moving the state’s primary to the second Tuesday of February, and the proposal should soon clear the state House with bipartisan support.

If the DNC committee adds a fifth early slot, that could go to Iowa to soften the blow of no longer going first.

Ken Martin, chairman of the Minnesota Democrats and a rules committee member, said his state sports strong union membership and the country’s highest voter turnout, including among communities of color.

“It not enough to just be diverse on paper. We turn out diverse communities,” Martin said.

Nevada, which has spent months arguing that simply standing on tradition isn’t enough, now says that Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s narrow reelection — it was instrumental in her party clinching control of the Senate even with a runoff election still to come in Georgia — proves that it should go first. Still, Republican Joe Lombardo defeated incumbent Nevada Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak in the same midterm election.

“We are THE battleground state,” Blanco said.

Representatives from Iowa and New Hampshire say that small states let all candidates — not just well-funded ones — connect personally with voters and that losing their slots could advantage Republicans in congressional races. While New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan was reelected in the midterms, so was the state’s Republican governor, Chris Sununu.

The midterms didn’t go as well for Democrats in Iowa, where Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley won another term and the GOP swept all four House seats. Republicans have already decided to keep Iowa starting their 2024 presidential nominating cycle.

New Hampshire Democratic National Committeeman Bill Shaheen championed his state producing speedy midterm results, saying that “by 11 p.m., we knew who won the major races.”

“We’ve got it down,” Shaheen said, “and we give everyone a chance.”

New Hampshire has also threatened to simply disregard DNC decisions and move to go first on its own — and the state has taken such action before. When the DNC approved remaking the primary calendar ahead of the 2008 election, it called for Nevada’s caucus after Iowa and before New Hampshire, only to see New Hampshire move up its primary.

In the past, other states that tried to violate Democratic Party rules and jump closer to the front were threatened with having their delegates not count toward their chosen candidate clinching the party’s nomination, but Shaheen said his state would take its chances.

“If you take it away from New Hampshire, New Hampshire might just do it anyway,” Shaheen said. “We’d forfeit our delegates, but we don’t care.”

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This story corrects the spelling of Sen. Maggie Hassan’s last name.

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Associated Press writers Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire, and Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

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This story has been corrected to show the spelling of the senator’s surname is Hassan, not Hassen.

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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The Virginia NAACP said Tuesday it was “deeply disappointed” after receiving “scant” information of substance in response to a wide-ranging public records request it made with the state’s Republican attorney general about his new election integrity unit.

After expressing concerns that the unit could lend credence to election-fraud conspiracies, the civil rights group paid a deposit of more than $19,000 for a records request related to its organization, staffing, activities and other matters. It received documents from Attorney General Jason Miyares’ office in early November and released them Tuesday.

The NAACP sought 17 detailed categories of information about the unit, according to the correspondence. While the responsive documents span hundreds of pages, scores are news clippings. In 11 of the 17 categories, including a request for “all records concerning the staffing” of the unit and another for records dealing with “procedures, policies, practices” and training materials, Miyares’ office said it had no responsive documents.

The group also asked for any records identifying the number of convictions for crimes constituting “election cheating” in Virginia in each year since 2008; the attorney general’s office said it had no such records.

“This unit is plainly a paper tiger, a public relations ploy to pander to the election deniers and conspiracy theorists who are the real force undermining public confidence in our elections,” Robert Barnette Jr., president of the Virginia State Conference of the NAACP, said at a news conference.

Barnette reiterated the group’s call to disband the unit.

Victoria LaCivita, Miyares’ spokeswoman, said in an email that the NAACP was engaging in “groundless attacks that are offensive, ridiculous and without single shred of proof.” She noted that Miyares has repeatedly affirmed that there is no evidence of widespread election fraud in Virginia. She said the unit was fielding citizen complaints and handling lawsuits involving elections issues and irregularities — “exactly what it was created to do.”

“Due to the NAACP’s inappropriate and baseless attack, we continue to expect an apology on behalf of the hundreds of men and women at the Office of the Attorney General who work every day protecting the rights and freedoms of all Virginians,” she wrote.

The NAACP announced that it was pursuing the Freedom of Information Act request in October, after Miyares said in September he was forming the election integrity unit “to help restore confidence in our democratic process in the Commonwealth.”

The request pertained only to the attorney general’s office. Election-related fraud cases often are investigated and prosecuted at the local level.

Some documents included talking points, correspondence with journalists and lawmakers, and emails from the unit’s leader, Senior Assistant Attorney General Joshua Lief, to members of the public who wrote with either praise or criticism.

“I hear your concerns and I can assure you the mission of this unit is to call balls and strikes under the Code of Virginia. It is not to target one political party or group of voters,” Lief wrote in one email to a constituent.

Nearly 300 records were withheld under exemptions to the public records law, according to the attorney general’s office.

“We were deeply disappointed in the scant amount of information related to a unit that the attorney general touted as essential,” Barnette said.

The NAACP pursued the request with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Office of the General Counsel of the NAACP and the law firm Hogan Lovells. It ultimately paid just over $9,500 for the records. The attorney general’s office provided a refund of nearly $10,000 after the review took less time than expected.

Barnette said Tuesday he believed the office charged what he characterized as exorbitant fees to try to dissuade the NAACP from its pursuit.

But LaCivita said fulfilling the request was a “massive undertaking” that required over 200 staff hours from over 20 employees and noted that the NAACP sought documents from a span of 15 years.

In an op-ed in The Washington Post in October, Miyares said the creation of the unit amounted to a restructuring of employees who were already working on election matters. He also wrote that there was no widespread fraud in Virginia or anywhere else during the 2020 election.

LaCivita said the unit had received complaints connected to this month’s elections, but she could not comment on whether any investigations had resulted.

Similar units in other states are looking into scattered complaints after the midterms but have provided no indication of systemic problems.

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Fields reported from Washington.

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HUDSON, Wis. (AP) — A word — “Hope” — is stitched onto a throw pillow in the little hilltop farmhouse. Photographs of children and grandchildren speckle the walls. In the kitchen, an envelope is decorated with a hand-drawn heart. “Happy Birthday, My Love,” it reads.

Out front, past a pair of century-old cottonwoods, the neighbors’ cornfields reach into the distance.

John Kraft loves this place. He loves the quiet and the space. He loves that you can drive for miles without passing another car.

But out there? Out beyond the cornfields, to the little western Wisconsin towns turning into commuter suburbs, and to the cities growing ever larger?

Out there, he says, is a country that many Americans wouldn’t recognize.

It’s a dark place, dangerous, where freedom is under attack by a tyrannical government, few officials can be trusted and clans of neighbors might someday have to band together to protect one another. It’s a country where the most basic beliefs — in faith, family, liberty — are threatened.

And it’s not just about politics anymore.

“It’s no longer left versus right, Democrat versus Republican,” says Kraft, a software architect and data analyst. “It’s straight up good versus evil.”

He knows how he sounds. He’s felt the contempt of people who see him as a fanatic, a conspiracy theorist.

But he’s a hero in a growing right-wing conservative movement that has rocketed to prominence here in St. Croix County.

Just a couple years ago, their talk of Marxism, government crackdowns and secret plans to destroy family values would have put them at the far fringes of the Republican Party.

But not anymore. Today, despite midterm elections that failed to see the sweeping Republican victories that many had predicted, they remain a cornerstone of the conservative electoral base. Across the country, victories went to candidates who believe in QAnon and candidates who believe the separation of church and state is a fallacy. In Wisconsin, a U.S. senator who dabbles in conspiracy theories and pseudoscience was reelected – crushing his opponent in St. Croix County.

They are farmers and business analysts. They are stay-at-home mothers, graphic designers and insurance salesmen.

They live in communities where crime is almost nonexistent and Cub Scouts hold $5 spaghetti-lunch fundraisers at American Legion halls.

And they live with something else.

Sometimes it’s anger. Sometimes sadness. Every once in a while it’s fear.

All of this can be hard to see, hidden behind the throw pillows and the gently rolling hills. But spend some time in this corner of Wisconsin. Have a drink or two in the small-town bars. Sit with parents cheering kids at the county rodeo. Attend Sunday services.

Try to see America through their eyes.

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There’s a joke people sometimes tell around here: Democrats take Exit 1 off I-94; Republicans go at least three exits farther.

The first exit off the freeway leads to Hudson, a onetime ragged-at-the-edges riverside town that has become a place of carefully tended 19th-century homes and tourists wandering main street boutiques. With 14,000 people, it’s the largest town in St. Croix County. It’s also replete with Democrats.

The Republicans start at Exit 4, the joke says, beyond a neutral zone of generic sprawl: a Target, a Home Depot, a thicket of chain restaurants.

“For some people out here, Hudson might be (as far away as) South Dakota or California,” says Mark Carlson, who lives off exit 16 in an old log cabin now covered in light blue siding. He doesn’t go into Hudson often. “I don’t meet many liberals.”

Carlson is a friendly man who exudes gentleness, loves to cook, rarely leaves home without a pistol and believes despotism looms over America.

“There’s a plan to lead us from within toward socialism, Marxism, communism-type of government,” says Carlson, a St. Croix County supervisor who recently retired after 20 years working at a juvenile detention facility and is now a part-time Uber driver.

He was swept into office earlier this year when insurgent right-wing conservatives created a powerful local voting bloc, energized by fury over COVID lockdowns, vaccination mandates and the unrest that shook the country after George Floyd was murdered by a policeman in Minneapolis, just 45 minutes away.

In early 2020 they took control of the county Republican Party, driving away leaders they deride as pawns of a weak-kneed establishment, and helped put well over a dozen people in elected positions across the county.

In their America, the U.S. government orchestrated COVID fears to cement its power, the IRS is buying up huge stocks of ammunition and former President Barack Obama may be the country’s most powerful person.

But they are not caricatures. Not even Carlson, a bearded, gun-owning white guy who voted for former President Donald Trump.

“I’m just a normal person,” he says, sitting on a sofa, next to a picture window overlooking the large garden that he and his wife tend. “They don’t realize that we mean well.”

He’s a complicated man. While even he admits he might accurately be called a right-wing extremist, he calls peaceful Black protesters “righteous” for taking to the streets after Floyd’s murder. He doubts there was fraud in the midterm elections. He drives a Tesla. He loves AC/DC and makes his own organic yogurt. In an area where Islam is sometimes viewed with open hostility, he’s a conservative Christian who says he’d back the area’s small Muslim community if they wanted to open a mosque here.

“Build your mosque, of course! That’s the American way!”

He believes, deeply, that America doesn’t need to be bitterly divided.

“Liberalism and conservatism aren’t that far apart. You can be pro-American, pro-constitutional. You just want bigger government programs. I want less.”

“We can work together,” he says. “We don’t have to, like, hate each other.”

Repeatedly, he and the county’s other right-wing conservatives insist they don’t want violence.

But violence often seems to be looming as they talk, hazy images of government thugs or antifa rioters or health officers seizing children from parents.

And weapons are a big part of their self-proclaimed “patriot” movement. The Second Amendment and the belief that Americans have a right to overthrow tyrannical governments are foundational principles.

“I’m not a big gun guy,” says Carlson, whose weapons include pistols, a shotgun, an AR-15 rifle, 10 loaded magazines and about 1,000 additional rounds. “For a lot of people that’s just a start.”

That cocktail of weaponry and politics concerns plenty of people outside of their circles.

Liberal voters, along with many establishment Republicans, worry that men in tactical clothing can now occasionally be seen at public gatherings. They worry that some people are now too afraid to be campaign volunteers. They worry that many locals think twice about wearing Democratic T-shirts in public, even in Hudson.

Paul Hambleton, who lives in Hudson and works with the county Democratic Party, found comfort in the midterm election results, which even some Republicans say could signal a repudiation of Trump and his most extreme supporters.

“I don’t feel the menace like I was feeling it before” the vote, Hambleton says. “I think this election showed that people can be brave, that they can stick their necks out.”

He spent years teaching in small-town St. Croix County, where the population has grown from 43,000 in 1980 to about 95,000 today. He watched over the years as the student body shifted. Farmers’ children gave way to the children of people who commute to work in the Twin Cities. Racial minorities became a small but growing presence.

He understands why the changes might make some people nervous.

“There is a rural way of life that people feel is being threatened here, a small town way of life,” he says.

But he’s also a hunter who saw how hard it was to buy ammunition after the 2020 protests, when firearm sales soared across America. For nearly two years, the shelves were almost bare.

“I found that menacing,” says Hambleton. “Because no way is that deer hunters buying up so much ammunition.”

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When the newly empowered conservatives get together it’s often at an Irish bar in a freeway strip mall. Next door is the little county GOP office where you can pick up Republican yard signs and $15 travel mugs that proclaim “Normal Is Not Coming Back — Jesus Is.”

Paddy Ryan’s is the closest thing they have to a clubhouse. One afternoon in late summer, Matt Rust was there talking about the media.

“I think they’re an arm of a much larger global effort by very rich powerful people to control as much of the world as possible,” says Rust, a designer and product developer who can quote large parts of the U.S. Constitution from memory. “And I don’t think that’s anything new. It’s always been that way,” from ancient Persian rulers to Adolf Hitler.

“Is that a conspiracy or is that just human nature?” he asks. “I think it’s just human nature.”

Today, polls indicate that well over 60% of Republicans don’t believe President Joe Biden was legitimately elected. Around a third refuse to get the COVID vaccine.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican known for her conspiratorial accusations and violent rhetoric, is a political star. Trump has embraced QAnon and its universe of conspiracies. In Wisconsin, Sen. Ron Johnson, a fierce denier of the 2020 election who has suggested the dangers of COVID are overblown, won his third term on Nov. 8.

This seems impossible to many Americans. How can you dismiss the avalanche of evidence that voter fraud was nearly non-existent in 2020? How do you ignore thousands of scientists insisting vaccines are safe? How do you believe QAnon, a movement born from anonymous internet posts?

But news in this world doesn’t come from the Associated Press or CNN. It only rarely comes from major conservative media, like Fox News.

Where does it come from?

“The internet,” said Scott Miller, a 40-year-old sales analyst and a prominent local gun-rights activist. “That’s where everybody gets their news these days.”

Very often that means right-wing podcasts and videos that bounce around in social media feeds or on the encrypted messaging service Telegram.

It’s a media microcosm with its own vocabulary — Event 201, the Regime, democide, the Parallel Economy — that invites blank stares from outsiders.

While many reports are little more than angry recitations of right-wing talking points, some are sophisticated and believable.

Take “Selection Code,” a highly produced hour-long attack on the 2020 election underwritten by Trump ally Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO. It has the look of a “60 Minutes” piece, tells a complex story and uses unexpected sources to make some of its main points.

Like Hillary Clinton.

“As we look at our election system, I think it’s fair to say there are many legitimate questions about its accuracy, about its integrity,” the then-senator is shown saying in a 2005 Senate speech, questioning the reelection of former President George W. Bush.

Miller laughs.

“I’ll give the Democrats credit. At least they had the courage to stand up and point it out.”

___

Cornfields come right up to the country church, deep in rural St. Croix County and just down the road from a truck stop Denny’s. The closest town, Wilson, is little more than a half-dozen streets, a post office and the Wingin’ It Bar and Grill.

From the pulpit of Calvary Assembly of God, Pastor Rick Mannon preaches a Christianity that resonates deeply among this type of conservatives, with strict lines of good and evil and little hesitation to wade into cultural and political issues. He pushed back hard against COVID restrictions.

It’s an outpost in the culture wars tearing at America, and a haven for people who feel shoved aside by a changing nation.

“If Christians don’t get involved in politics, then we shouldn’t have a say,” Mannon says in an interview. “We can’t just let evil win.”

Religion, once one of America’s tightest social bonds, has changed dramatically over the past few decades, with the overall number of people who identify as Christian plunging from the early 1970s, even as membership in conservative Christian denominations surged.

From churches like Calvary Assembly, they’ve watched as gay marriage was legalized, as trans rights became a national issue, as Christianity, at least in their eyes, came under attack by pronoun-proclaiming liberals.

It’s hard to overstate how much cultural changes have shaped the right wing of American conservatism.

Beliefs about family and sexuality that were commonplace when Kraft was growing up in a Milwaukee suburb in the late 1970s and early 1980s, tinkering with electronics with his father, now can mark people like him as outcasts in the wider world.

“If you say anything negative about trans people, or if you say ’I feel sorry for you. This is a clinical diagnosis’ … Well, you are a bigot,” says Kraft, 58, a member of Mannon’s congregation. “People with normal, mainstream family values- – churchgoing, believing in God — suddenly it’s something they should be ostracized for.”

But in today’s world, words like “normal” don’t mean what they once did.

That infuriates Kraft, who energized the Republican Party of St. Croix County as its leader but stepped down last year after a quote on the party’s website – “If you want peace, prepare for war” – set off a public firestorm. He moved to a neighboring county earlier this year.

He ticks off the accusations leveled at people like him: sexist, homophobic, racist.

But such talk, he says, has lost its power.

“Now it’s just noise. It’s lost all its meaning.”

___

The plans, if they are mentioned at all, are spoken of quietly.

But sit in enough small-town bars, drive enough small-town roads, and you’ll occasionally hear people talk about what they intend to do if things go really bad for America.

There are the solar panels if the electricity grid fails. There’s extra gasoline for cars and diesel for generators. There are shelves of non-perishable food, sometimes enough to last for months.

There are the guns, though that is almost never discussed with outsiders.

“I’ve got enough,” says one man, sitting in a Hudson coffee shop.

“I would rather not get into that with a reporter,” says Kraft.

The fears here are mostly about crime and civil unrest. People still talk about the 2020 protests, when they say you could stand in Hudson and see the distant glow of fires in Minneapolis. That frightened many people, and not just conservative Republicans.

But there are other fears, too. About government crackdowns. About firearm seizures. About the possibility that people might have to take up arms against their own government.

Those prospects seem distant, murky, including to the self-declared patriots. The most dire possibilities are spoken about only theoretically.

Still, they are spoken about.

“I pray it will always be that the overthrow is at the ballot box,” says Carlson, who seems genuinely pained at the idea of violence.

“We don’t want to use guns,” he continues. “That would be just horrible.”

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Follow Tim Sullivan on Twitter at @ByTimSullivan

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ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Term-limited Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan was holding fundraisers for future political activity Wednesday at events where the Republican is expected to talk about his eight years as governor, as well as plans for the future.

Hogan, who leaves office in January, has positioned himself to run as a legitimate alternative to former President Donald Trump, who already has announced he’s running for president in 2024.

Hogan was holding two fundraisers at a hotel and casino about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the state capital. One will mark the launch of a political action committee called Better Path Forward, and the other is being held for Hogan’s political organization, An America United, said David Weinman, who is the organization’s executive director.

The events are expected to raise more than $1 million, Weinman said.

Before the fundraisers, Hogan was scheduled to attend a leadership summit in Annapolis to talk about the future of the country.

“For eight years, Governor Hogan has demonstrated how to lead and deliver commonsense conservative results in a deep-blue state, and we’ve seen overwhelming support in Maryland and across the country for building on this model of success,” Weinman said. “We are excited to host these events to celebrate that success and look toward the future.”

Hogan has said publicly he is focused on finishing his term as governor and that an official announcement about his plans would not happen until after he leaves office in mid-January. However, with a media availability scheduled Wednesday night at the casino, the event sounded similar to one Hogan held in November 2013, when he let supporters know that he planned to run for governor, even though he said at the time he did not plan to formally announce his candidacy for a couple of months.

Hogan, who has been a fierce critic of Trump, would be an underdog in a Republican primary. The Republican candidate Hogan endorsed for governor, Kelly Schulz, lost the GOP primary for governor in Maryland to Trump-endorsed Dan Cox. Cox, however, went on to lose by a large margin in November to Democrat Wes Moore.

Hogan has been a popular governor in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1. He is only the second Republican governor to ever be reelected in Maryland.

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