| | |  | BY HOLLY OTTERBEIN | | With help from Adam Wren
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Dr. Mehmet Oz answers brief questions after casting his ballot. | Win McNamee/Getty Images | With help from Adam Wren SOUL SEARCHING — The midterm election was a letdown for the GOP across the map. But no one had it quite so bad as Pennsylvania’s Republicans. Their candidates not only underperformed expectations — they got swept under a blue wave. Democrats in Pennsylvania won the races for governor and Senate, and they may take control of the state House for the first time since 2010, something many in the party didn’t even think was possible this year. The shellacking has been humbling — and infuriating — for the GOP. That’s because many in the state’s Republican establishment saw this coming: Afraid far-right state Sen. Doug Mastriano would lead the GOP ticket to down-ballot slaughter, they made a last-ditch effort in the primary to stop him from winning the gubernatorial nomination. And they largely wanted Dave McCormick, a former hedge fund CEO who had deeper ties to the state than Mehmet Oz, to win the Senate nod. That has some pointing fingers at former President Donald Trump, whose endorsement of Oz proved pivotal in a primary he won by fewer than 1,000 votes. Many establishment types also fault Trump for not marshaling the party behind an alternative to Mastriano — and, instead, endorsing him days before the primary when Mastriano was already on track to win. “President Trump weighing in did not help either race,” said Rob Gleason, the former chair of Pennsylvania’s Republican Party who worked to elect Trump in the state in 2016. “Many of the regulars were for McCormick because they felt that McCormick would be the stronger candidate. And although he was gone for a while, he did have strong roots in Pennsylvania. Even today as I sit here and look at the results, he would have been a winner.” Trump didn’t merely endorse McCormick’s opponent. He also unleashed on McCormick at a rally for Oz, bashing him as a “liberal Wall Street Republican” who was insufficiently MAGA. That rally might have won Oz the nomination: According to a person familiar with McCormick’s internal polling, it showed that he was still holding onto a lead after Trump’s endorsement. It wasn’t until Trump’s smackdown that he really took a hit, the source said — with Oz gaining ground and another candidate, MAGA firebrand Kathy Barnette, rising. Andy Reilly, a Republican National Committeeman in Pennsylvania, said many Trump-endorsed candidates across the country this year did not “appeal to the general election audience.” Reilly called Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is seen as Trump’s top rival for the 2024 presidential nomination, “the model we can look towards.” DeSantis won reelection this week by 19 percentage points, even flipping Democratic Miami-Dade County in the process. “He’s a conservative, he’s tough, but he’s also someone with compassion.” We’re old enough to remember when some Republicans distanced themselves from Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — or after the Access Hollywood scandal in 2016 — only to come back into his good graces later on. But with a Trump 2024 presidential announcement potentially days away, the fact that Republicans in a major battleground state like Pennsylvania are critiquing Trump — and praising DeSantis — carries a little more weight than usual. At the very least, it’s not great timing for Trump. “We have factions in our party because we have two parties. Whoever keeps their factions together wins,” said Reilly. “While President Trump has many good political qualities, keeping factions together is not among them.” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at hotterbein@politico.com or on Twitter at @hollyotterbein .
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(L-R) Michigan Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist II and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer celebrate during an election night watch party. | Brandon Bell/Getty Images | PARTY BOSS — POLITICO’s Adam Wren writes in with a post-election update on Democrat Mallory McMorrow, the Michigan state legislator who became the poster child for the importance of winning state legislative races nationwide in 2022 and spearheaded a six-month campaign that started with a viral speech . The last time Michigan Democrats controlled the state Senate, Mallory McMorrow hadn’t been born. But the 36-year-old saw history made this week. Early Wednesday morning around 2 a.m., as she and her husband returned home from Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s election night watch party in Detroit to relieve their babysitter in suburban Royal Oak, McMorrow learned that her efforts had helped flip the upper chamber for the first time in nearly 40 years. “It was that just like crazy idea of, ‘can we leverage this into something much bigger?’” McMorrow said in an interview. “It’s really hard for people to wrap their arms around how important state legislatures are as an abstract concept, but I think recognizing I’m one person that a lot of people have seen by now, in a very consequential swing state that happens to have a lot of key issues playing out on the ground, can I become a spokesperson for them?” McMorrow did, though a darkening national environment left her allies uncertain in the days before the election. State legislatures took more prominence in the 2022 midterm elections, with issues such as abortion and election security cast in sharp relief. Along with Michigan, Minnesota Democrats vanquished Republicans to flip the Minnesota Senate, and Pennsylvania Democrats are within two seats of taking back the House . Two weeks after her speech, as requests for cable television interviews continued to flood her inbox, McMorrow realized something was happening. Among the first signs for the millennial state lawmaker: Not long after she delivered her address, she signed an email for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the campaign arm charged with electing Democrats to statehouses around the country, that raised $50,000. “The fact that we were still getting requests a few weeks later was the lightbulb moment for me that this could be something much bigger if we get strategic about it,” McMorrow said. “And there was a realization that this can either be 15 minutes of fame that I did not ask for, or we can finally shine a spotlight downballot in a way that we’ve never been able to do.” Now, since raising $2.35 million and building a national network of supporters, the emerging political athlete plans to travel the country, meeting with donors and building a long-term political operation that now includes an email list of 53,000, and 12,545 contributors from all 50 states and Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. “Looking ahead to 2024, Michigan is going to be playing a key role in the next presidential cycle,” McMorrow told POLITICO. “We’re already planning on continuing to go out and travel and meet with the donors who took a risk with me for the first time to really do a deep dive.” She is building out her political operation, which includes former Pete Buttigieg senior adviser Lis Smith, finance director Anthony Mercurio, and state Rep. Darrin Camilleri, a Democrat who won a seat alongside McMorrow in the state Senate Tuesday night. “He and I have been talking about how to build a long-term political operation so that I’m simultaneously continuing to build relationships with our new donor base and keeping national attention.” In a sign of her growing national profile, McMorrow will speak on behalf of Democrats at the Gridiron Club’s winter dinner on Dec. 3. McMorrow chalked up Democrats’ performance to voter fatigue with Trump and the culture wars. “It feels like, especially in the Midwest, that the Republicans runnings really went all in on Trump and election denial and culture wars, and it backfired,” McMorrow said. Now that she has the legislative majority, McMorrow said she will try and take a breath amid the Midwestern tradition known as “hunting break.” (She is not a hunter, she specified, but will use the break to recuperate). And then she’ll get back to work. “We’ve got to do the basics,” McMorrow said. “First, we have to shore up voting rights protections. We’re planning to repeal the 1931 abortion ban, even with Prop three, if dad has taught us anything, I think we have to cover all of our bases and just get that law off of the books once and for all, expanding our civil rights act to explicitly protect the LGBTQ community. And then it gets into continuing the work that Governor Whitmer has done to expand battery plants and manufacturing.” McMorrow added: “We’ve got a lot to do to prove out what an actual big tent party looks like in the Midwest.
| | — DHS secretary to Biden’s top border chief: Quit or be fired: Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus, who has clashed with immigration officials over how to handle an influx of migrants at the southern border, has lost the confidence of his bosses and has been asked to resign or be fired , according to three current and one former Department of Homeland Security officials. Magnus was told on Wednesday by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that he should either resign or be dismissed and, so far, the CBP chief has refused to step down, according to the four people. — The path to 218: Why Democrats aren’t out of the race for the House yet: Republicans still have a wider path to the House majority than Democrats — but it’s narrowed a lot over the past 24 hours. As the vote count continues, particularly in mail-heavy Western states, Democrats continue to win most of the contested races, keeping them in the hunt and meaning news organizations won’t declare a winner in the overall fight for the chamber. Read a detailed analysis of the districts left to be called and what it would take for either party to take control of the lower chamber. — Crypto giant files for bankruptcy, megadonor CEO resigns: Beleaguered crypto exchange FTX said today that it filed for bankruptcy and that its CEO Sam Bankman-Fried stepped down , just days after revealing a devastating financial crunch that has started to take down the broader digital currency market. FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S., meaning it will try to restructure its ailing business. The company — once one of the world’s largest crypto trading platforms — halted customer withdrawals earlier this week after hints of financial instability triggered a run on the exchange. — Trump targets Youngkin in latest outburst against a potential 2024 rival: Trump today jabbed at Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin , lashing out for a second straight day at a potential rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. “Young Kin (now that’s an interesting take. Sounds Chinese, doesn’t it?) in Virginia couldn’t have won without me,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, the social media platform he helped found. “I Endorsed him, did a very big Trump Rally for him telephonically, got MAGA to Vote for him - or he couldn’t have come close to winning. But he knows that, and admits it. Besides, having a hard time with the Dems in Virginia - But he’ll get it done!”
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A fan holds a sign for Brittney Griner before a game in August. She's now been in a Russian prison for 267 days. | Steph Chambers/Getty Images | LIFE IN THE GULAG — Crowded barracks, limited access to health care, grueling labor and abusive inmates and staff — these are just some of the things that Brittney Griner, the WNBA star sentenced to nine-and-a-half years over less than a gram of cannabis oil in a vape cartridge, could expect to find in a Russian penal colony, according to Olga Romanova, a founder of prison rights advocacy group Russia Behind Bars, writes Anastasiia Carrier . The fraught relationship between Russia and the U.S. has only worsened since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, and negotiations over a potential prisoner swap for Griner have dragged on for months. “In the current political situation, the fact that she is American is certainly a disadvantage,” Romanova said. “She is obviously going to come out as a different person. We can’t know what kind of person that would be.” Romanova, 56, founded the advocacy group in 2008 after her husband was imprisoned over alleged financial crimes. (He was released after serving four years.) Romanova was an acclaimed journalist with more than two decades of experience covering everything from economic news to the bloody Beslan school siege of 2004, but she was still shocked to realize that the Russian prison system was hardly any different from the Gulags she’d read about in books written 50 years earlier. “I quickly realized I didn’t know my country,” Romanova said. Intensely long and hard workdays, brutal physical and sexual violence, meager rations and other human rights abuses are prevalent in the system. For women, Romanova says, it’s even worse — “Everyone is up for themselves there. Everything goes — you can betray, you can abuse. There are no rules of behavior.” Read Carrier’s full interview with Romanova here .
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€18 billion The amount of aid to Ukraine that Hungary, in its capacity in the European Commission, is blocking . Several EU diplomats have slammed Hungary for the move, including German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who said Budapest should not “play poker” in an attempt to put pressure on Brussels in a separate rule-of-law dispute. Multiple EU officials told POLITICO that they believe Hungary is blocking the aid in order to get €13 billion in EU funds to Hungary released. |
| | | INBOX HELL — Why was a journalist at the politics website Slate recently talking to a source about what city is the best for witches? Every day, journalists get a litany of pitches in their emails from public relations or communications professionals who are often casting a (very) broad net. One day, Dan Kois tried to respond to all of them. Follow his journey .
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Maricopa County recorder Stephen Richer (left) opens mail in ballots at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center today in Phoenix, Arizona. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here .
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