POLITICO NIGHTLY: Where the midterms will be won and lost

 

View in browser   BY CHARLIE MAHTESIAN Presented by With help from Calder McHugh and Alice Miranda Ollstein President Joe Biden looks on as Rep. Katie Porter speaks in October. Porter is in a close race to keep her House seat in the battleground of Orange County. | Mario Tama/Getty Images IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THIS — Close to $10 billion is expected to be spent saturating the airwaves with political ads this election cycle . Roughly a quarter of that spending is concentrated in just a few states and media markets — places that stand to play an outsized role in next week’s elections. One of them is in California, which doesn’t typically feature a big roster of competitive congressional races. This year, however, there are four tight House contests in Orange County alone. In New York, it’s a similar story: all four House seats on populous, suburban Long Island are up for grabs. The Las Vegas area is at the center of even more action. There are three contested House races in Nevada’s Clark County, not to mention neck-and-neck Senate and governor’s races (and a nationally watched secretary of state contest) where the populous county will play a pivotal role. Here’s a guide to some key battlegrounds to watch on Election Day — places that are poised to shape the outcome in the House and Senate, and the direction of national politics. South Texas Since 2020, South Texas has come to symbolize one of the most consequential electoral developments — Republican gains among Hispanic voters. The Rio Grande Valley isn’t the only place where Democrats are witnessing worrisome signs of erosion, but with three competitive House races in the majority Hispanic, traditionally Democratic region this year — all featuring GOP Hispanic women nominees — this is the place where it could have the biggest impact. Long Island, New York The four congressional districts that span New York’s suburban Nassau and Suffolk counties are in play this year — and Republicans could end up with all of them when the dust has settled. Long Island is also poised to play a critical role in the unexpectedly competitive governor’s race, where Republican prospects could hinge on a strong performance in the Long Island suburbs by Suffolk County-based GOP Congressman Lee Zeldin. Northeastern Pennsylvania/Lehigh Valley With two Democratic-held House seats in peril — the Lehigh Valley-based 7th District and the Wilkes-Barre-Scranton based 8th — and contentious Senate and governor’s races, this part of Pennsylvania is getting swamped with money and attention. Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden made visits to NEPA earlier this year; more than $83 million has been spent on campaign ads in the Wilkes-Barre-Scranton media market alone, according to AdImpact. In a race that could determine control of the Senate, GOP nominee Mehmet Oz’s performance with culturally conservative voters in working class Luzerne and Lackawanna counties — the traditional Democratic population hubs of northeastern Pennsylvania — could go a long way toward determining his fate against Democrat John Fetterman. Orange County, California  Once a conservative fortress, a place local GOP leaders proudly called “the most Republican county” in America, Orange County is now one of the nation’s top battlegrounds. The county features four competitive House races: Democratic Reps. Katie Porter and Mike Levin have tougher roads to reelection than GOP Reps. Young Kim and Michelle Steel. The two Republicans represent districts with relatively high numbers of Asian American voters, so their election performances may provide some insight into how successful recent GOP outreach efforts have been with various Asian American groups. Clark County, Nevada  In the last midterm election in 2018, a blue wave rolled over Nevada. This time around, the outlook is considerably more grim for Democrats due to inflation, high gas prices and concerns about the economy. With close to three-quarters of the state’s population, Las Vegas’ Clark County is central to Democratic hopes. It’s home to three of the state’s four House seats — and all three of them are imperiled this year. So are Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak, who need strong turnout and healthy Democratic margins in Clark to survive. That helps explain why, through the end of October, the Las Vegas media market saw more than $300 million in ad spending. Maricopa County, Arizona  Two years ago, Phoenix’s Maricopa County broke a 72-year streak of voting Republican at the presidential level by choosing Biden. It also exploded into the national consciousness as the Western capital of election denialism and conspiracy theories — potent forces that continue to roil the election environment in Arizona. This year, Maricopa, which is home to more than 60 percent of Arizona voters, is at the center of fierce battles for Senate, governor, secretary of state and several contentious House contests. How fierce? The Phoenix media market has seen roughly $375 million in ad spending through the end of October. Atlanta Metro Area Georgia’s closely watched Senate race is the nation’s second-most expensive to date, with $115 million spent by all candidates . Much of that cash has been plowed into ads that have blanketed the Atlanta media market, which saw close to $100 million in ad spending between the Senate, governor and other races in October alone. Those spots are aimed at influencing and turning out Atlanta’s Fulton County and the rapidly diversifying suburban giants that surround it — populous Cobb, DeKalb and Gwinnett counties — which powered Biden to victory over Trump in 2020. Democrats hope to replicate his path this year in the Senate race between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker, and in the gubernatorial contest between GOP Gov. Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams. For their part, Republicans hope to keep those metro area margins closer this year while running up the score in rural Georgia. Wake County, North Carolina For Democrat Cheri Beasley to win North Carolina’s open Senate seat, she’ll need big margins out of the state’s two most populous counties, Charlotte’s Mecklenburg County and fast-growing Wake County in the state’s Research Triangle. But that’s not the only reason why Raleigh’s Wake County is worth watching. It also casts the bulk of the vote in the state’s newly redrawn and open 13th Congressional District, which figures to be North Carolina’s most competitive House race this year. The race is important enough that Trump traveled to neighboring Johnston County in April to rally for two of his endorsed candidates — the eventual GOP Senate nominee, Ted Budd, and the eventual GOP nominee in the 13th, Bo Hines. Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District Wisconsin has bitterly contested Senate and governor’s races this year but only one vaguely competitive House race — an open seat contest in western Wisconsin’s 3rd District . Republicans are favored to pick up a seat long represented by a retiring Democratic incumbent, in part because of Democratic erosion in rural Wisconsin. The phenomenon isn’t new — much of the Upper Mississippi Valley region flipped to Trump in 2016 after voting for Barack Obama. But if Democrats hope to oust GOP Sen. Ron Johnson this year, or to reelect Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, they’ll need to stay competitive in places like the 3rd District — or at least not get blown out by huge Republican margins. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at cmahtesian@politico.com or on Twitter at @PoliticoCharlie . A message from DoorDash: Project DASH empowers food banks, food pantries, and other social impact organizations to increase access to their communities. Learn more about how Project DASH is helping combat food insecurity.   FIRST IN NIGHTLY Elon Musk in 2020. | Win McNamee/Getty Images TWITTER TAKEOVER — Elon Musk has plunged Twitter into chaos ahead of the midterms . Advertisers are fleeing the platform in droves and for the first time in a while, there are real questions about whether the social network will continue to be a driving force in political conversation. To get a sense of what’s going on — and what could come next — Nightly’s Calder McHugh called up Eli Pariser, the co-director of New Public and an expert on how technology and media serve democracy. What’s the social utility of having a space like Twitter on the internet? I think you know, what’s ironic about the whole situation right now is that Twitter came out of an idea about how it was gonna be this democratizing force, through the Arab Spring, with this premise that it was going to distribute power outward and downward, and make it possible for anyone to have a voice. I think what we’re living through now is the consequences of that; tacking that rhetoric onto what was essentially for profit advertising. How do you think Elon Musk understands Twitter and its role in society? He thinks it’s valuable because it’s a place where media elites and political elites gather and influence each other. And I think he understands that value. It’s also valuable to state actors for the same reason. It’s powerful to own Twitter if you don’t destroy it. It does look like some of the stuff he’s doing has had maybe the unintended consequence, but the consequence, of beginning to destroy the platform. I believe that there’s no 12-dimensional-chess here, and that Musk is a lot like Trump in that there is no grand secret plan. There’s just a lot of impulse-driven decision-making that started with his decision to buy it at all, and to buy it at the price that he bought it at. With advertisers and their platform and a lot of the people who have been maintaining it getting fired today, there’s a real question about whether this melts down. I don’t think it’ll happen overnight. But I don’t have any belief that there’s some brilliant plan that is going to stop that from happening. The pre-Elon days of Twitter were not necessarily some sort of platonic ideal of online discourse. So, if it does truly go away, where do we go from here? And what would be a positive outcome? If this is the moment that we recognize that the way that we’ve been approaching digital discourse is at a dead end, and that platforms that are driven by advertisers and require product managers to drive engagement are inherently fragile, then that’s a really good thing. If it encourages people to start experimenting, rather than building similar models. I don’t think that what happens next is that there’s one new platform that takes over and becomes the new Twitter, but in an ideal world, what happens is that we figure out how to build an overlapping ecology of digital civil society that helps mitigate some of the worst problems of the grand digital landscape. I think that’s totally doable with imagination and investment. But we haven’t kind of made those decisions to do that yet. So maybe this will unlock that decision making a little bit. POLL WATCHER 48 percent The percentage of voters who say they are “definitely voting” who support Herschel Walker, as well as the percentage of definite voters who support Sen. Raphael Warnock, according to a new poll from Marist College . The dead heat has both candidates underneath the 50 percent threshold which would be required to avoid a December runoff. WHAT'D I MISS? — Biden and other political A-listers crisscross nation in final midterm sprint: Top members of both parties are fanning out into the battleground states for the last-minute scramble to turn out their bases — and make closing arguments to swing voters — before the Nov. 8 election. But for the leaders of the Democratic Party, mired in low approval ratings that have set the tone for the midterm election, some care goes into picking the spots where they are getting involved. Biden is touting his legislative achievements in San Diego, where a Democratic-leaning House seat is under threat, while Vice President Kamala Harris is rallying virtually for Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock. Trump, meanwhile, is off the trail today, after hinting heavily at a soon-to-come 2024 presidential campaign announcement during a rally in Iowa Thursday night. — Oath Keepers leader takes the stand in seditious conspiracy trial: Stewart Rhodes, founder of the far-right Oath Keepers, took the stand today in his seditious conspiracy trial and sought to reframe the jury’s perception of his group as a benevolent, apolitical, patriotic force of military veterans. In one of the most consequential turns on the witness stand for a criminal defendant in modern history, Rhodes began laying out his most aggressive defense against charges that he attempted to subvert the 2020 election by force in order to keep Trump in power. — Trump ally Tom Barrack acquitted of foreign agent charges: Trump’s inaugural committee chair, Tom Barrack, was acquitted of all counts today at a federal trial in which he was accused of using his personal access to the former president to secretly promote the interests of the United Arab Emirates. The jury deliberated three days before finding Barrack not guilty of acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, obstruction of justice and making false statements. Barrack had vehemently denied the charges. A message from DoorDash: Project DASH has powered more than 2.5 million deliveries of an estimated over 50 million meals. Find out how Project DASH is reducing barriers to access.   AROUND THE WORLD General Secretary and Chinese President Xi Jinping. | Kevin Frayer/Getty Images READ MY LIPS — Chinese leader Xi Jinping made his most direct criticism yet of Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine today, warning the Russian president not to resort to nuclear weapons and calling on visiting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to push for peace talks, writes Stuart Lau . Xi’s warning comes just over a month after Putin threatened Ukraine with a nuclear attack, a sign of how far Ukrainian forces had rocked the Kremlin with their advances against invaders in the East. The international community, said Xi, should “jointly oppose the use of, or threats to use, nuclear weapons,” according to a statement carried by Xinhua, China’s state news agency. The world should also “advocate that nuclear weapons cannot be used, a nuclear war cannot be waged, in order to prevent a nuclear crisis” in Europe or Asia, Xi added. The Chinese leader, who just weeks ago secured a norm-breaking third term in office, asked Germany and Europe to “play an important part in calling for peace and facilitating negotiations.” Xi also called for “improving the humanitarian situation” in the crisis areas, especially during the winter. NIGHTLY NUMBER 261,000 The number of jobs that American employers added in October, a sign that as Election Day nears, the economy remains a picture of solid job growth and painful inflation . Friday’s government report showed that last month’s hiring remained near the robust pace it has maintained in the two-plus years since the pandemic recession ended. The unemployment rate rose to 3.7% from a five-decade low of 3.5%. RADAR SWEEP POLICING ON THE BALLOT — We’ve heard a lot — in this newsletter and elsewhere — about high-profile midterm races that could flip the Senate or the House, or could change the trajectory of statehouses. But with Republicans making crime a prime topic in this year’s elections and criminal justice reform still front-of-mind, what about our criminal justice officials? Michael Barajas and Daniel Nichanian report on the 30 prosecutor and sheriff races that will shape criminal justice in Bolts Magazine. PARTING WORDS Kentucky voters at the polls in 2020. | Jon Cherry/Getty Images DISPATCH FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL — On Tuesday, the Bluegrass State will be the first in the South to vote on an abortion rights ballot initiative since the fall of Roe. And while the battle over the proposed constitutional amendment has flown under the radar compared to similar contests in Kansas and Michigan that have drawn tens of millions in spending, it’s a high-stakes race that could upend expectations about how abortion resonates with conservative, Catholic and evangelical voters.  A near-total ban on abortion is already in place in Kentucky. But the measure known as Amendment 2 would amend the state constitution to say there is no protection for abortion rights, virtually closing off the possibility of getting the ban struck down in court. Alice Miranda Ollstein , who hit the campaign trail this week with members of Protect Kentucky Access — the coalition working to defeat Amendment 2 — writes in to Nightly about the vibe on the ground in the run-up to Election Day. Democrats in recent weeks have expressed anxiety that they’ve erred in focusing so much of their midterm messaging on the fall of Roe v. Wade as polling has indicated that voters are prioritizing other issues where Republicans are on stronger footing, including crime, immigration and inflation. But in the battleground suburbs of Louisville, that didn’t seem to be the case. Democratic, Independent and Republican voters alike told Alice they were just as fired up to vote as the day Roe was overturned. “I don’t want the choice we’ve always had to go away, and I don’t want 80-year-old, rich white men deciding what we’re going to do on a daily basis,” said Kathy Blair, a registered Republican planning to vote no on the measure. “That’s very offensive.” Another voter down the street declined to give her name out of fear of retaliation, saying she’d be concerned one of her conservative neighbors might slash her tires, but shared that as a rape survivor and mother of a 14-year-old daughter, she was highly motivated to turn out. “It’s horrible that we have to vote on this. It’s pathetic. It’s terrifying. It’s Handmaid’s Tale,” she said. The volunteers knocking on doors every day in the leadup to Tuesday’s election said the issue has moved them to engage in politics in new ways. Mary Limke had never gone canvassing for any political issue or candidate before this year. But the 70-year-old retired labor and delivery nurse said she was motivated to start knocking on doors this fall by fears that the horror stories she remembers from the days before Roe v. Wade would happen again. “My mother had a friend who died from a botched abortion,” she said. “I never thought I would have to be out doing this, especially at my age. But it really drives me crazy. And the scariest thing to me is to have to tell women that they have a baby that may not be viable, but they have to carry it full term.” Did someone forward this email to you?  Sign up here .   Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh Naomi Andu @naomiandu   FOLLOW US

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