Politics

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Lexie Overstreet logged plenty of miles on foot, knocking on doors to try to persuade Kentuckians not to take away one of the last legal paths to restoring abortion rights in the state.

Now she’s hoping her side’s win at the ballot box Tuesday will convince the state’s highest court to throw out a sweeping abortion ban passed by the Republican-led legislature.

“It was great to wake up this morning and know that Kentuckians are on the same side as me,” the 21-year-old University of Louisville student and volunteer said after the election. “And know that the thousands of doors that I knocked aren’t going to be forgotten and that all those people I talked to, they cast their vote and their vote was heard.”

Whether those voices will resonate with the Kentucky Supreme Court, which is set to hear arguments for and against the ban Tuesday, hinges on legal arguments about whether state constitutional protections extend to a right to an abortion. With a hearing set for Tuesday, the case looms as the first legal test for abortion rights after midterm elections in which voters across the country came down firmly on the side of keeping abortion legal. No timeline has been given for a ruling.

In Kentucky, abortion rights supporters think the amendment’s rejection should be a consideration as the justices hear the case.

“My hope is that the Supreme Court will listen to the will of the people and know that the people have rejected extremism and rule accordingly,” Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, said in the days leading up to the pivotal court hearing.

Beshear, who is running for reelection next year, can take comfort in knowing that his position on abortion rights puts him squarely on the side of a majority of Kentuckians. But one of the GOP candidates hoping to take his job next year said the vote shouldn’t be a factor.

Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron said the result, though disappointing, didn’t change his belief that there is “no right to abortion hidden in the Kentucky Constitution.” Abortion policy, Cameron said, “belongs to our elected representatives in the General Assembly” to decide.

Right now it belongs to the courts, with attention shifting to the courtroom at the Kentucky Capitol in Frankfort, where the Supreme Court justices will hear arguments in the case.

Those arguments will center on a Louisville judge’s ruling from July, when he wrote that the state’s new, post-Roe abortion bans likely violate “the rights to privacy and self-determination” protected by Kentucky’s constitution. Judge Mitch Perry said it was not the court’s role to determine whether the state constitution contains the right to abortion, but whether the state’s restrictive laws violate freedoms guaranteed by its constitution.

It’s unclear how much impact, if any, the anti-abortion measure’s defeat will have on the court’s views on the case.

“It may well differ from justice to justice,” said University of Louisville law professor Samuel Marcosson. “Some of them may view the defeat of the initiative as a strong signal that Kentuckians believe there is and should be a right in the constitution, and this could empower those justices to rule that way. Others may say that it is at best an uncertain signal, and that it remains a task for them to determine the meaning of the constitution.”

Abortion opponents had hoped to shut off such a path through the courts. The amendment would have added “clarity and an extra level of protection against judicial activism,” said David Walls, executive director of The Family Foundation, a faith-based organization opposed to abortion.

Currently, abortions are mostly on hold in Kentucky, based on a trigger law at the center of the case before the state Supreme Court. Approved by lawmakers in 2019, the ban took effect after Roe v. Wade was overturned in June by the U.S. Supreme Court. That law ended all abortions with narrow exceptions to save a pregnant woman’s life or to prevent disabling injury. There are no exceptions for rape or incest victims. The state’s high court in August kept the ban in place while it reviews the case. A separate six-week ban that Kentucky lawmakers approved also is being challenged.

Now abortion rights supporters hope the amendment’s defeat is a springboard to victory in court.

“It is an important step in continuing the legal fight for abortion access in this state,” said Rachel Sweet of Protect Kentucky Access, an abortion-rights coalition. “Moreover, it is a repudiation of the extreme anti-choice agenda that is out of step with most voters’ values and beliefs.”

Attorneys for the two abortion clinics left in Kentucky — both of them in Louisville, the state’s largest city — will ask the state’s high court for an injunction to allow abortions to resume while the case is litigated.

Meanwhile, abortion rights supporters secured wins elsewhere across the country. Michigan, California and Vermont voted to enshrine abortion rights in their state constitutions. Voters in Montana rejected a ballot measure that would have forced medical workers to attempt lifesaving measures in the rare event of a baby born after an attempted abortion.

In Michigan, Democrats who took control of the Legislature for the first time in decades have signaled that affirming reproductive rights will be one of their top priorities in 2023.

Abortion rights supporters in Vermont are planning to ask the legislature to enact shield laws to protect Vermont providers that perform abortion services for out-of-state travelers.

In Kentucky, Cameron downplayed the anti-abortion amendment’s defeat in a post-election filing with the Supreme Court, saying the outcome “has no bearing on whether the court should create a Kentucky Roe v. Wade.”

“In short, because Kentucky voters chose to leave their Constitution as is, the constitutional text that the court must interpret to resolve this appeal is the same today as it was before” the vote, the Republican attorney general wrote.

But Overstreet, the University of Louisville student and abortion rights volunteer, said the voters’ rejection of the Kentucky amendment spoke volumes about where the people stand.

“I have family from Appalachia, and I grew up in the city,” she said. “People really underestimate Kentucky. People think that Kentucky is regressive. They think that Kentuckians don’t believe in one another. But that’s just absolutely not true. Kentuckians want abortion access. And that’s what this amendment has shown us.”

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Associated Press writers Wilson Ring in Stowe, Vermont; and Joey Cappelletti in Lansing, Michigan, contributed to this report.

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Democratic control of the U.S. Senate was settled Saturday when Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada won reelection, but the U.S. House majority is still in question. Let’s see where things stand.

WHY HASN’T THE AP CALLED CONTROL OF THE HOUSE YET?

It’s simple: Neither party has yet reached the 218 seats needed to control the House.

The Associated Press has declared winners in most contests, but a handful are outstanding. Heading into Sunday, Republicans had 211 seats compared with 204 for the Democrats, leaving 20 undecided.

The AP does not make projections and will only declare a winner when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow the trailing candidates to close the gap. In some contested races where a party or candidate has a history of consistent and convincing wins, The AP can use results from AP VoteCast — a survey of American voters aimed at determining why they voted how they did — to confirm a candidate’s victory, even as soon as polls close. But some races, as it is again this year, can take days or even weeks to call.

WHAT STATES ARE STILL COUNTING VOTES?

California, the country’s most populous state, has more undetermined contests than any other. A dozen races remain to be called there, with millions of votes left to count.

There are also close races in Colorado and Oregon, among others, including some tight enough that they could be headed to a recount.

In Alaska, where incumbent Democrat Mary Peltola won a special election this summer to fill an open House seat held for decades by Republicans, a second round of vote tabulating could take place.

That’s because Alaska has ranked choice voting in which voters rank candidates. If no one gets more than half of the votes cast on or before Nov. 8, the person with the fewest votes gets eliminated and voters’ choices count toward their second pick. The rounds continue until two candidates are left and the one with the most votes wins.

Peltola was leading Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich in a race too early to call.

WHAT OTHER CHALLENGES ARE THERE?

In 2020, former President Donald Trump challenged outcomes of the vote for president in states across the country. Those challenges failed in courts, though Trump continued to insist falsely that the race was stolen.

So far, nothing like those kinds of objections has materialized.

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Mike Catalini can be reached at https://twitter.com/mikecatalini

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

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

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Heading into this year’s midterms, voting rights groups were concerned that restrictions in Republican-leaning states triggered by false claims surrounding the 2020 election might jeopardize access to the ballot box for many voters.

Those worries did not appear to come true. There have been no widespread reports of voters being turned away at the polls, and turnout, while down from the last midterm cycle four years ago, appeared robust in Georgia, a state with hotly competitive contests for governor and U.S. Senate.

The lack of broad disenfranchisement isn’t necessarily a sign that everyone who wanted to vote could; there’s no good way to tell why certain voters didn’t cast a ballot.

Voter advocacy groups promoted voter education campaigns and modified voting strategies as a way to reduce confusion and get as many voters to cast a ballot as possible.

“We in the voting rights community in Texas were fearing the worst,” said Anthony Gutierrez, director of Common Cause Texas, on Wednesday. “For the most part, it didn’t happen.”

False claims that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump undermined public confidence in elections and prompted Republican officials to pass new voting laws. The restrictions included tougher ID requirements for mail voting, shortening the period for applying for and returning a mailed ballot, and limiting early voting days and access to ballot drop boxes.

There is no evidence there was widespread fraud or other wrongdoing in the 2020 election.

An estimated 33 restrictive voting laws in 20 states were in effect for this year’s midterms, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. The most high-profile and sweeping laws were passed in Georgia, Florida, Iowa and Texas. Arizona also passed new voting rules, but those were largely put on hold this year or will take effect later.

Of the four states with major voting law changes in effect, a preliminary analysis shows a decline in turnout among registered voters in Florida, Iowa and Texas, while Georgia turnout declined slightly. Several factors can affect turnout, including voter enthusiasm and bad weather.

In Texas, the bumbling rollout of new voting restrictions in the state’s March primary resulted in officials throwing out nearly 23,000 mailed ballots as confused voters struggled to navigate new ID requirements.

But preliminary reports after Tuesday’s election showed rejection rates reverting to closer to more normal levels, which election officials attributed to outreach and mail voters figuring out the new rules. In San Antonio, county officials put the preliminary rejection rate at less than 2% — a sharp reversal from the 23% of mailed ballots they threw out in March.

Groups such as the Texas Civil Rights Project, working through churches and other organizations, focused on ensuring voters knew how to properly complete their mail ballots under the law known as Senate Bill 1.

“As a Texas community we’ve worked very hard to prepare for SB1,” said Emily Eby, the group’s senior election protection attorney.

Florida last year added a host of new rules around mail and early voting. They included new ID requirements, changes to how many ballots a person can turn in on behalf of someone else and limiting after-hours access to drop boxes. This year, lawmakers created a controversial new office dedicated to investigating fraud and other election crimes.

Still, voting appeared to be relatively smooth this year, before and on Election Day. Election officials reported no major problems.

Mark Earley, president of the Florida Supervisors of Elections, said the new laws did not greatly affect voter turnout or access this year, but said the rules, taken together, posed a challenge.

“When you put all of these together — the cumulative effect — it becomes confusing, difficult to communicate and educate the public about, difficult for the public to understand,” said Earley, who oversees elections in Tallahassee’s Leon County. “It becomes a big logistical and educational burden, and more hurdles for people to be able to jump over before they can get their ballots together.”

Iowa’s new law shortened the period for voters to return their mailed ballots, reduced polling place hours and early voting days, and prohibited anyone but close relatives, a household member or caregiver from dropping off someone else’s ballot.

More than 1.2 million voters cast ballots in the Nov. 8 election. State officials said it was the second highest in state history for a midterm, but voting groups expressed concern that Latino participation may have declined due to the changes.

“We historically have had a fair amount of Latino voters who did the absentee ballot, which allowed LULAC volunteers to pick up those early ballots and return them to the county election offices,” said Joe Henry, a board member of the Iowa chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

In Georgia, more votes were cast in this general election than in any prior midterm election — although with more voters on the rolls than four years ago, the actual turnout rate was lower.

Gabriel Sterling, interim deputy secretary of state, noted that most of the changes in the election law, known as Senate Bill 202, affected pre-Election Day voting — “and they blew away every record in that.”

He said more votes were cast early — both in person and by mail — than in any previous midterm election in the state. It was Election Day turnout that was lower than expected.

After Democrats won the 2020 presidential contest and two U.S. Senate runoff elections, the Republican-controlled Georgia Legislature passed a sweeping overhaul of the state’s election laws in 2021.

The law shortened the time period to request an absentee ballot and required voters to sign absentee ballot applications by hand, meaning they needed access to a printer. It also reduced the number of ballot drop boxes in the state’s most populous counties and limited the hours they were accessible.

Critics said the changes made it more difficult to cast mail ballots. Democrats urged people to vote early and in-person this year instead. Kendra Cotton, CEO of the New Georgia Project Action Fund, said she believes the election law did have a negative effect in a state where key races have been decided by narrow margins in recent elections.

“The narrative that’s out there is that SB202 was trying to depress the vote writ large, and we submit that that was not, in fact, the case,” she said. “It was trying to stop just enough people from voting that the electoral outcome here in Georgia would shift.”

This year, Republicans swept the statewide constitutional offices, and a Dec. 6 runoff will be held to decide the winner in the U.S. Senate race.

While she acknowledged there weren’t many problems on Election Day, Cotton said the law created a lot of “noise” that drained energy and resources from organizations such as hers.

“We’re having to go out and help voters fight to remain on the rolls,” Cotton said.

Voter advocacy groups already are mobilizing to support Georgia voters heading into the Dec. 6 Senate runoff. Previously, runoffs were held nine weeks after an election. The new law shortened that to just four weeks, a period that also leaves too little time for new voter registrations.

“These types of tactics aim to suppress votes,” Andrea Hailey, CEO of Vote.org, said in a statement. “But Georgians have shown that they are ready and willing to navigate tough voting environments in order to make their voices heard.”

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Associated Press data journalist Aaron Kessler in Washington, D.C., and writers Kate Brumback in Atlanta; Anthony Izaguirre in Tallahassee, Florida; Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey; David Pitt in Des Moines, Iowa; and Paul J. Weber in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — With control of the House still hanging in the balance, Speaker Nancy Pelosi stayed mum Sunday on her future plans but said congressional colleagues are urging her to seek another term as Democratic leader following a strong showing in the midterm elections.

Appearing in Sunday news shows, Pelosi said Democrats are “still alive” in their fight to win the chamber and that she will make a decision on whether to run for House leadership in the next couple weeks.

“People are campaigning and that’s a beautiful thing. And I’m not asking anyone for anything,” she said, referring to House Democratic leadership elections set for Nov. 30. “My members are asking me to consider doing that. But, again, let’s just get through the (midterm) election.”

“A great deal is at stake, because we will be in a presidential election,” Pelosi said.

Over the weekend, Democrats clinched control of the Senate following Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s victory in Nevada. But in the House, a majority remains unsettled with neither party having yet reached the 218 seats needed to control the 435-member chamber. As of Sunday, Republicans had 211 seats compared with 204 for the Democrats, with 20 races still to be called by The Associated Press.

Some races can take days or even weeks to call.

Pelosi, D-Calif., declined to predict whether her party will retain control of the House, saying she was “disappointed” with four Democratic losses in New York, including by Congressional Campaign Chairman Sean Patrick Maloney, which ultimately could make the difference.

“Nonetheless, we still think we have a chance to win this,” she said. “Nobody would have ever expected that we would be this close. Well, we expected it.”

On the GOP side, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy is seeking to become House speaker if his party prevails, but the disappointing showing in the midterms has created turmoil for leaders and calls for a new direction. Former President Donald Trump’s effect on the 2022 races is also being hotly debated as he prepares to announce another run.

Pelosi on Sunday said she believed that President Joe Biden should run for a second term, citing his legislative accomplishments such as the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act as well as the creation of millions of jobs under his watch.

“He has been a great president and he has a great record to run on,” she said.

The 82-year-old Pelosi, who has led Democrats in the House since 2003 and is the first female speaker, had struck a deal with House members to serve for two more terms as leader — or four years — after Democrats won control of the chamber in 2018. But she hasn’t announced her plans, nor have her top two deputies, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C. There has been some pressure from younger House members to pass the torch to new leaders.

Pelosi’s decision also comes after her husband was attacked late last month in the couple’s San Francisco home, suffering a skull fracture and other injuries. The intruder, 42-year-old David DePape, demanded “Where is Nancy?” before striking Paul Pelosi with a hammer. She was in Washington at the time.

Pelosi said Sunday that her husband’s recovery will be a “long haul, but he’s doing well,” though the trauma of the attack was “intensified” by Republicans’ “ridiculous, disrespectful attitude.” Top Republicans, including Trump, had downplayed the attack and spread misinformation about it.

“It wasn’t just the attack. It was the Republican reaction to it, which was disgraceful,” she said.

Pelosi said her decision on whether to run again for House leadership will be “about family” but “also my colleagues,” citing a need to move forward “in a very unified way” going into a new Congress and the 2024 campaign season. She stressed the opportunities for Democrats that lie ahead.

“Who would have thought two months ago that this red wave would turn into a little tiny trickle, if that at all?” she said. “But we never believed that. We believed.”

“There are all kinds of ways to exert influence,” Pelosi added. “Speaker has awesome power, but I will always have influence.”

Pelosi spoke on CNN’s “State of the Union” and ABC’s “This Week.”

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

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

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SEATTLE (AP) — Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez has been elected to the U.S. House from southwestern Washington, capturing a district that has long eluded her party.

She defeated Donald Trump-backed Republican Joe Kent to prevail in the 3rd District.

The incumbent, long-time Republican U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, lost in the primary. She was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Gluesenkamp Perez — who co-owns an auto shop with her husband just across the Columbia River in Portland, Oregon — said that as a small business owner who lives in a rural part of the district, she is more in line with voters.

She supports abortion access and policies to counter climate change, but also is a gun owner who said she opposes an assault rifle ban, though she does support raising the age of purchase for such guns to 21.

“I am not your typical Democrat,” she has told voters.

Kent, a former Green Beret who is a regular on conservative cable and podcasts, has called for the impeachment of President Joe Biden and an investigation into the 2020 election. He’s also railed against COVID shutdowns and vaccine mandates and has called to defund the FBI after the search on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home for classified documents.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Blake Masters wasn’t posting the numbers of votes he needed in Election Day ballots as they were counted and released by officials in Arizona’s biggest county.

The Republican challenger was significantly outpacing Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly only in a small number of vote batches coming in from Maricopa County; in nearly all other cases, Kelly had a slight or substantial edge.

That’s what led AP to call the race for Kelly after Maricopa County released another batch of 80,000 votes late Friday.

There were some Republican activists in Arizona who advocated that voters intentionally wait until Election Day itself to drop off their ballots. Some of this push was based on theories that fraudsters could manipulate voting systems and rig results for Democrats, once they had seen how many GOP votes had been returned early.

Experts had also warned that such a last-minute crush of ballots could end up creating delays that can ultimately be used by a bad actor to undermine confidence in the election. There were some hang ups this year. About a quarter of voting centers in Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous, had a printing problem Tuesday, in which marks weren’t showing up correctly when voters showed up to print out their ballots. Officials said the problem was addressed within hours and everyone was able to vote.

Arizona has a long political history of voting Republican, but changing demographics have made the state friendlier to Democrats.

With Kelly’s victory, the Senate remained evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, with two races — in Nevada and Georgia — yet to be decided.

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PHOENIX (AP) — There was no powder in an envelope that was opened at the Phoenix campaign headquarters of Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, police said.

Phoenix police spokesperson Donna Rossi said Friday that “the state lab tested the items turned over to them,” The Arizona Republic reported. The lab “determined there was no substance inside.”

Phoenix police and fire officials said they were called to the building around 2 a.m. Sunday, on a report of an envelope containing suspicious white powder.

Police said at the time there were no reports of injuries or illness, though Lake’s campaign had said the staff member who opened the envelope was under medical supervision.

The Lake campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Republic.

The gubernatorial race between Lake and Democrat Katie Hobbs in the crucial battleground state remained too early to call as of Saturday morning. It often takes days to know the results of key races in Arizona.

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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Utah Democrats’ decision to back an independent rather than nominate a member of their own party to take on Republican Mike Lee transformed the state’s U.S. Senate race from foregone conclusion to closely watched slugfest.

Independent Evan McMullin, an anti-Trump former Republican best known for his longshot 2016 presidential bid, attracted millions in outside spending in his campaign against Lee. He forced the second-term Republican to engage with voters more than in prior elections and emphasize an independent streak and willingness to buck leaders of his own party.

Ultimately, though, it wasn’t even close. Lee is on his way to a double-digit win.

That’s spurring a debate: Did Democrats’ strategy create a blueprint to make Republicans campaign hard, compete for moderates and expend resources in future races? Or does the sizeable loss prove that Republicans’ vice grip is impenetrable in the short term, no matter the strategy?

The answers could contain lessons for both red and blue states unaccustomed to competitive elections.

Some Democrats say supporting McMullin was worth it — it shifted the political conversation, made the race competitive and forced Lee to spend almost double what he spent in his 2016 campaign. But other Democrats say the strategy hurt down-ballot candidates who didn’t have a strong top-of-the-ticket contender to help boost them.

“Building my bench in that sense is going to be so much harder. How do I convince candidates, going forward, that the Democratic Party will support them?” said Katie Adams-Anderton, Democratic Party chair in Utah’s second largest county.

Utah is among the fastest growing states, and Democrats hope they will be able to compete as the electorate becomes younger and more urban. Yet Republicans currently hold both Senate seats and all four congressional seats, occupy every statewide office, and this week expanded their supermajorities in the Legislature.

Four years after running for U.S. Senate herself, Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson supported Democrats’ decision to back McMullin. She credits it with making Lee sweat. Though McMullin lost, she said, coalescing behind an independent benefited voters by making the race competitive. She hopes putting Lee on his heels will influence how he governs and votes in the U.S. Senate.

“This was a unique moment, and I actually do think we’ve lost an opportunity by not electing Evan to help break up some of the hardened partisanship,” she said, noting that whether backing an independent was a good strategy depended largely on circumstances.

Votes remain to be counted, but Lee is on track to defeat McMullin by double digits. That’s a narrower margin than his 41 percentage-point victory in 2016 over grocery store clerk Misty Snow but wider than McMullin’s team anticipated.

McMullin won 100,000 more votes than Utah Democrats’ four congressional candidates did collectively, but preliminary results don’t suggest his campaigning against the two-party system energized voters enough to substantially buoy turnout.

Independents have won Senate races in Vermont and Maine, yet in deeply red states like Utah, party politics remain entrenched and important to voters.

To put together a fragile coalition of Democrats, Republicans and independents, McMullin focused closely on threats to democracy. Rather than campaign on traditional midterm election issues, he attacked Lee’s November 2020 text messages to Trump’s White House chief of staff about ways to challenge President Joe Biden’s victory.

Both Lee and Democrats skeptical of his candidacy criticized McMullin for being unclear on issues such as abortion or infrastructure spending.

“You say you want to put country over party. I respect that,” Lee said at an October debate, addressing McMullin. “But parties are an important proxy for ideas. You see, because it’s ideas more than parties that tell the people how you will vote.”

Kael Weston, the Democrat Senate candidate who lost the party’s backing when it lined up behind McMullin, acknowledged it would have been difficult for a Democrat to defeat Lee. But he said McMullin’s focus came at the expense of local concerns, such as water or the closure of rural post offices. Focusing on those kinds of issues is the path to making elections competitive in red states, not becoming “Republican lite,” he said.

Though outside spending from Democratic-donor funded PACs and conservative groups like Club for Growth reflect how the race was more competitive than usual, Weston said, McMullin’s attempts to distance himself from Biden and Democrats hurt Democrats who were lower on the ballot.

“If all you see for three months is, Joe Biden is evil and Democrat is a four-letter word, that has an effect,” he said, noting the anti-McMullin television ads might have hurt Democratic candidates for statehouse seats.

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Today in History

Today is Saturday, Nov. 12, the 316th day of 2022. There are 49 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Nov. 12, 1927, Josef Stalin became the undisputed ruler of the Soviet Union as Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party.

On this date:

In 1920, baseball got its first “czar” as Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was elected commissioner of the American and National Leagues.

In 1936, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened as President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressed a telegraph key in Washington, D.C., giving the green light to traffic.

In 1942, the World War II naval Battle of Guadalcanal began. (The Allies ended up winning a major victory over Japanese forces.)

In 1948, former Japanese premier Hideki Tojo and several other World War II Japanese leaders were sentenced to death by a war crimes tribunal.

In 1970, the Bhola cyclone struck East Pakistan; it’s believed that as many as a half million people were killed.

In 1975, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas retired because of failing health, ending a record 36-year term.

In 1982, Yuri V. Andropov (ahn-DROH’-pawf) was elected to succeed the late Leonid I. Brezhnev as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee.

In 1996, a Saudi Boeing 747 jetliner collided shortly after takeoff from New Delhi, India, with a Kazak Ilyushin (il-YOO’-shin)-76 cargo plane, killing 349 people.

In 2001, American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300 headed to the Dominican Republic, crashed after takeoff from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 260 people on board and five people on the ground.

In 2009, Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan (nih-DAHL’ mah-LEEK’ hah-SAHN’) was charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder in the Fort Hood, Texas, shooting rampage. (Hasan was later convicted and sentenced to death; no execution date has been set.)

In 2019, Venice saw its worst flooding in more than 50 years, with the water reaching 6.14 feet above average sea level; damage was estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

In 2020, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a broad coalition of top government and industry officials, rejected President Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud, saying that the election was “the most secure in American history“ and that there was “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised.”

Ten years ago: The United States was re-elected to another three-year term on the U.N. Human Rights Council in the only contested election for the organization’s top human rights body.

Five years ago: President Donald Trump said he believed U.S. intelligence agencies, which concluded that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, but that he also believed that Russia’s Vladimir Putin felt that Russia did not interfere. Trump exchanged taunts with North Korea’s leader, tweeting, “Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me ‘old,’ when I would NEVER call him ‘short and fat?‘”

One year ago: Steve Bannon, a longtime ally to former President Donald Trump, was indicted on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress after he defied a subpoena from the House committee investigating the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. (Bannon would be convicted and sentenced to four months in prison.) The government directed nursing homes to open their doors wide to visitors, easing many remaining pandemic restrictions while urging residents, families and facility staff to keep their guard up against coronavirus outbreaks. A judge in Los Angeles ended the conservatorship that had controlled the life and money of pop star Britney Spears for nearly 14 years.

Today’s Birthdays: Singer Brian Hyland is 79. Actor-playwright Wallace Shawn is 79. Rock musician Booker T. Jones (Booker T. & the MGs) is 78. Sportscaster Al Michaels is 78. Singer-songwriter Neil Young is 77. Rock musician Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser (Blue Oyster Cult) is 75. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., is 73. Country/gospel singer Barbara Fairchild is 72. Actor Megan Mullally is 64. Actor Vincent Irizarry is 63. Olympic gold medal gymnast Nadia Comaneci (koh-muh-NEECH’) is 61. Rock musician David Ellefson is 58. Retired MLB All-Star Sammy Sosa is 54. Figure skater Tonya Harding is 52. Actor Rebecca Wisocky is 51. Actor Radha Mitchell is 49. Actor Lourdes Benedicto is 48. Actor Tamala Jones is 48. Singer Tevin Campbell is 46. Actor Ashley Williams is 44. Actor Cote de Pablo is 43. Actor Ryan Gosling is 42. Contemporary Christian musician Chris Huffman is 42. Actor Anne Hathaway is 40. Pop singer Omarion is 38. NBA All-Star Russell Westbrook is 34. Folk-rock musician Griffin Goldsmith (Dawes) is 32. Actor Macey Cruthird is 30.

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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The crowd at South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster’s election night party chanted along with the Republican incumbent as he closed his victory speech with a Tim McGraw lyric: “I like it, I love it, I want some more of it.”

It was a fitting tune for the South Carolina Republican Party, which got more than just “some” of it in a cycle when its GOP counterparts across the country failed to generate the wins typically seen during a midterm election under an opposing party’s president. McMaster won reelection by nearly 18 points, double the margin in his last go-around and the largest victory in a South Carolina gubernatorial race since 1990.

But the substantial success came down ballot. Republicans netted seven more state House seats– including five districts represented by African American Democrats in a surprising result, even after redistricting — to gain a supermajority in the lower chamber for the first time since at least Reconstruction.

Election night was “better here in South Carolina, certainly, than other places around the country,” Drew McKissick, the state GOP chairman, told reporters on Wednesday. “In South Carolina, the ‘Red Wave’ came and swept in along the coast and went all the way to the upstate, proving, yet again, what we already know, that South Carolina is a solid Republican state.”

Tuesday’s results cemented the state GOP’s gains over the last decade in rural areas, according to Matt Moore, who served as South Carolina Republican Party chair from 2013 to 2017. House districts covering rural counties like Jasper and Hampton, Greenwood and McCormick, Sumter and Clarendon, and parts of Charleston and Colleton all flipped to Republicans. Meanwhile, Democrats picked up one seat in suburban Richland County.

Republicans have been growing their legislative majority for a generation now. When Moore was party chair, he said a total of 80 House Republicans felt out of reach. That there could be as many as 88 House Republicans next term is “stunning” to him.

White, rural South Carolina has become less and less competitive, said Vincent Sheheen, a former state Senator who ran twice as the Democratic gubernatorial nominee.

“You’re seeing that the suburbs are more competitive,” Sheheen said. “But you also saw traditional Democratic strongholds crumble in the rural areas.”

McKissick partially attributed his party’s success this year to the state GOP’s largest door-knocking campaign for a midterm election. He also said strong candidates at the top in McMaster and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott helped “build a straight-ticket machine all around the state.”

South Carolina is one of six states that allows voters to choose all of their party’s candidates straight down the ticket with a single ballot selection. The system had long benefited Democrats until 2016, when McKissick said South Carolina Republicans outpaced the opposition in straight-ticket voting for the first time. This year, 62% of the roughly 1 million straight-ticket ballots cast in South Carolina were Republican, according to McKissick.

Republicans’ straight-party votes alone set them up to quickly outpace all votes cast for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Joe Cunningham.

“South Carolina Republicans are supporting the team more than Republicans in other states,” Moore said. “The reason is good candidates. Republicans lost nationally where bad candidates underperformed.”

Straight-ticket voting — along with gerrymandering — decreases competitiveness and contributes to lower turnout, according to Joshua Meyer-Gutbrod, a political science professor at the University of South Carolina.

Roughly 60% of South Carolina state House candidates ran unopposed, including 55 Republicans and 17 Democrats. That figure is higher than the national average for uncompetitive races, which is about 40%, according to Meyer-Gutbrod. No Democrat ran in statewide elections for Treasurer, Attorney General, Comptroller General or Commissioner of Agriculture.

Lawmakers also gerrymandered competition out of some state House races, Meyer-Gutbrod said, benefitting not only the Republican majority but incumbents from both major parties.

“It leaves citizens looking at it thinking their vote isn’t going to count. There is very little chance to swing an election,” Meyer-Gutbrod said. “And the result is they just don’t turn out. Why invest that cost if the chances of you having an impact aren’t that prominent?”

Midterm turnout dropped among all South Carolina registered voters from 55% in 2018 to roughly 51% in 2022. Meanwhile, the state added over 241,000 registered voters amid population growth. The number of Democratic straight tickets dropped by nearly 160,000 compared to the totals four years ago.

Some South Carolina Democrats — inspired in 2020 by record fundraising totals for Jaime Harrison’s unsuccessful challenge to U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham — are now questioning how to move forward.

While Democrats might expect to lose in a conservative state like South Carolina, Mandy Powers Norrell said they shouldn’t expect turnout to drop. For Norrell, the 2018 Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, the reduction was “shocking.”

“We had fewer people actually show up to the polls by a lot. But we increased our registered voters by a quarter of a million,” she said. “That points to a problem with, I think, inspiring the base.”

State Rep. Jermaine Johnson said there was a lack of Democratic excitement, calling the mood “abysmal.” The Democratic lawmaker said the party wrongly expected abortion to be its “saving grace,” but liberal anger over the Supreme Court reversing its Roe v. Wade decision protecting rights to the procedure didn’t buoy turnout in South Carolina.

Johnson called on elected officials, state party leaders and county-level offices to build a “consolidated, team effort.” That process should start by engaging likely Democratic voters and those who have stopped voting on the local issues most important to them, Johnson said.

“If we don’t stop the bleeding and put a Band-Aid on this bleeding right now, we’re going to see much worse in two years when the (state) Senators come up for reelection,” Johnson said.

South Carolina Democrats face the challenge of convincing Black voters, a key part of their base, that the party can prioritize their interests while statewide candidates attract broad enough appeal to win, said Todd Shaw, a University of South Carolina professor of political science and African American studies. The state’s Black voters are “very pragmatic,” he said.

“For the most part, with some notable exceptions, the Deep South remains deep red,” Shaw said. “It’s a Catch-22: you’re in a deep red state and you’re in a weakened position and you haven’t yet built an effective coalition that you can convince that there’s a pathway to winning.”

Sheheen said boosting turnout requires showing voters that they will make a difference, pulling in swing voters and moderates. That was always going to be a tall task this year for the state’s Democrats, he said.

“All politics is national. And that is very true in this state,” Sheheen said. “The national trend gets exacerbated in this state. So if it’s a light Republican trend nationally, which it was this year — they were talking about a wave, it wasn’t a wave nationally but it was still a light Republican trend — then it is going to be more pronounced here.”

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James Pollard 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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