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Tag: vote
Nikki Haley

'Never Vote For Him Again': Haley Voters In GOP Strongholds Soured On Trump

Former President Donald Trump appears to be bleeding out critical support in typically redder suburban areas well outside of major cities, according to a new analysis.

Politico analyzed 2024 GOP presidential primary results across more than 1,000 counties across the US and determined that the former president may lose votes in traditionally Republican territory he carried in both 2016 and 2020. This could prove costly in November — particularly in must-win battleground states.

"You hear a lot of moderate Republicans now who say that they’ll never vote for Trump again," Emmet County, Michigan GOP chair Parker Fairbairn told Politico. Fairbairn added that voters there are longing for "commonsense conservatism," as opposed to Trump's blustery retribution-focused rhetoric and his proposed radical restructuring of the federal government.

Politico reported that unlike suburbs on the outskirts of large, Democratic-leaning cities like Detroit where Republicans have already been losing significant ground to Democrats, jurisdictions like Emmet County — which is on the far northern tip of Michigan's lower peninsula and hours from any major city — have usually been reliable Republican strongholds. Trump won the county with 55 percent of the vote in 2020.

Swing states like Michigan, which voted for Trump in 2016 and President Joe Biden in 2020, could be decided by a relatively small number of votes. And those isolated groups of votes could similarly decide who wins a majority of Electoral College votes and thus the White House. In 2016, for example, Trump carried Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by approximately 77,000 combined votes, with those three states putting him over the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the election. Likewise, Biden won Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin by less than 43,000 combined votes in 2020.

Biden's campaign is hoping to get a competitive edge over Trump by peeling away enough GOP voters in redder areas, or at the very least convince them to stay home in November. Politico reported that Biden is rolling out an ad targeted at GOP voters by showing Trump attacking former UN ambassador Nikki Haley on the campaign trail.

"Nikki Haley voters, Donald Trump doesn’t want your vote," Biden tweeted. "I want to be clear: There is a place for you in my campaign."

Republicans are counting on partisanship to win the day and for disgruntled GOP voters to ultimately vote for Trump anyway by November. But more recent GOP primaries have exposed a chink in the former president's armor. In Georgia, Trump easily won the Peach State's Republican primary, but 77,000 still voted for Haley. And of those voters, roughly 22,000 cast their ballots for the ex-president's former rival even after she suspended her campaign.

Given that Trump lost Georgia by less than 12,000 total votes in 2020, that bloc of anti-Trump Republican voters may help push Biden over the edge in the once-solidly red Southern state.

“There’s still a lot of raw feelings about how Nikki Haley and her family were treated, and about the way that MAGA and Donald Trump are treating Nikki Haley supporters and the whole ‘permanently barred from MAGA,'” said Robert Schwartz, who is a senior adviser to the "Primary Pivot" super PAC.

“As we get closer to the election, those kinds of feelings of resentment are going to fade away... We want to lock in that feeling of resentment and disgust toward the way Trump treated them," he said.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Evangelical 'Christians' Parrot Trump's False And Vindictive Rhetoric

Evangelical 'Christians' Parrot Trump's False And Vindictive Rhetoric

Despite facing four indictments, one demographic's support for Donald Trump has increased over the last eight years — right-wing evangelical Christians.

According to NBC News, "In 2016, Trump garnered just 22 percent of Iowa’s evangelical vote, according to caucus entrance polling. In the latest NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll, 51 percent of likely Iowa evangelical caucusgoers said that they are backing Trump for the GOP’s 2024 nomination."

In a Wednesday, January 10 report, NBC News' Dan Gallo, Vaughn Hillyard, and Jake Traylor note that many evangelical ministers are displaying their staunch support for Trump through the form of prayer.

"The invocations have become their own political call to action, sometimes punctuated with applause lines and partisan language, invoking the same falsehoods and vindictiveness that Trump himself spreads," they write.

Gallo, Hillyard and Traylor note:

Celebrity pastors, such as Paula White and Kenneth Copeland, who preach the 'prosperity gospel,' have long stood by Trump’s side, giving him early credibility in their corner of Christianity. Now, the pastors taking the political stage across the country are most often local pastors with more immediate followings — further proof that Trump’s reach goes well beyond the television megachurches and into local congregations that were once more skeptical of a somewhat vulgar New York real estate tycoon and casino owner.

Reverend Joel Tenney of Coralville, Iowa, told "several hundred supporters" at a December rally, “We have witnessed a sitting president weaponize the entire legal system to try and steal an election and imprison his leading opponent, Donald Trump, despite committing no crime. We have witnessed a sitting president weaponize the entire legal system to try and steal an election and imprison his leading opponent, Donald Trump, despite committing no crime."

The Iowa pastor, praying that God "would help us to re-elect President Donald Trump," said the 2024 presidential election "'is part of a spiritual battle' with 'demonic forces at play.'"

According to NBC, Iowa Pastor Barney Bornhoft "prayed at the beginning of an Ankeny, Iowa, rally in December for 'a hedge of protection' around Trump, while offering something of a midprayer commentary: 'I don’t believe we have any idea the pressure that he’s under,' calling the cases against the former president 'ridiculous.'"

Bornhoft told the news outlet, on one hand, "it is awkward for a minister to take the same podium as Trump, but added: 'Part of who he is on stage kept us out of war years ago, kept us with a border that was closed.'"

He added, "There’s been a lot of presidents behind the scenes who curse, who do a lot of different things. I hate to say it this way, but the office at times requires it."

Tenney emphasized to his audience, "When Donald Trump becomes the 47th President of the United States, there will be retribution against all those who have promoted evil in this country."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Wife Of Iowa GOP Candidate Convicted On 52 Voter Fraud Counts

Wife Of Iowa GOP Candidate Convicted On 52 Voter Fraud Counts

Kim Phuong Taylor was convicted by a federal jury on Tuesday for orchestrating a voter fraud scheme during the 2020 primary and general elections in Woodbury County, Iowa, and faces up to five years in prison for each of the 52 counts.

Iowa Public Radio reported that the 49-year-old — who is married to Woodbury County supervisor Jeremy Taylor — illegally filled out voter registration forms and absentee ballots on behalf of other Vietnamese immigrants without their knowledge. According to the Department of Justice's statement on Kim Taylor's conviction, she "completed and signed voter forms without voters’ permission and told others that they could sign on behalf of relatives who were not present."

Jeremy Taylor ran an unsuccessful campaign in the 2020 Republican primary for Iowa's Fourth Congressional District, which was previously held by Rep. Steve King. King ended up losing the primary to Randy Feenstra, who also won the general election. After losing that primary, Jeremy Taylor successfully ran for the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors, where he is currently vice chair. Matthew Ung, who chairs the county board, urged Taylor to resign following his wife's voter fraud conviction.

"[Kim Taylor was] Set up to take the fall for him, as they were both involved," Ung said. "There was never a time I didn’t know what my wife was doing to help my campaign."

During Kim Taylor's trial, Woodbury County Auditor and Commissioner of Elections Pat Gill testified that he suspected foul play when seeing signatures on absentee ballots that looked like they were made by the same person. Additionally, the prosecution brought two Iowa State University students to the stand, who testified that they had tried to fill out absentee ballots and cast votes for Democrats, only to learn that ballots had already been cast in their name, including for then-President Donald Trump. Both students were ultimately able to obtain new ballots to vote in time for the 2020 election.

Prosecutors argued that finding Kim Taylor guilty of voter fraud was important to safeguard democracy, and that she had worked on campaigns since 2008 and "knew the difference between right and wrong."

Kim Taylor was convicted on 26 counts of providing false information in registering and voting, 23 counts of fraudulent voting, and three counts of fraudulent registration. A sentencing hearing will be set at a later date.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Vote

Ohio Republicans Scheming To Overturn Abortion Rights Referendum

Ohio voted 56.6 to 43.4 percent to put the right to abortion in its state constitution. The very next day, Republicans were vowing to overturn that election. Overturning elections is a growing Republican Party trend, but it’s possible that even Donald Trump would hesitate to try it with a 13 percentage point margin of victory where the top election official was a Republican.

Ohio Republicans are in the “throw things at the wall and see what sticks” phase of trying to undo what their state’s voters did, as a press release from the Ohio House of Representatives Republican newsroom clearly shows.

There’s the “ignore the margin, the election was stolen anyway” argument, which state Rep. Jennifer Gross made. “Foreign billionaires don't get to make Ohio laws,” she said, adding, “This is foreign election interference, and it will not stand.” She’s talking about money from the George Soros-backed Open Society Policy Center. Soros was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1961, the expenditures were made according to U.S. law, and if a few million dollars could reliably swing elections toward progressive issues or candidates in Ohio, it’s safe to say the past few elections would have gone very differently. Ohio voters made this Ohio law. They’re adults who made up their own minds.

Then there are some Republicans gearing up to pretend that this amendment doesn’t mean what it says and that it needs the legislature to step in and say what it really means. “Issue 1 doesn't repeal a single Ohio law, in fact, it doesn't even mention one,” according to state Rep. Bill Dean. And that’s the opening he hopes to exploit, or, as he put it, “The amendment’s language is dangerously vague and unconstrained, and can be weaponized to attack parental rights or defend rapists, pedophiles, and human traffickers.”

While there are significant issues left to litigate, with the courts needing to decide which current abortion restrictions are allowed following the Issue 1 vote and which ones to strike down, state House Republicans are clearly very nervous about how that will go in the courts. According to their press release:

To prevent mischief by pro-abortion courts with Issue 1, Ohio legislators will consider removing jurisdiction from the judiciary over this ambiguous ballot initiative. The Ohio legislature alone will consider what, if any, modifications to make to existing laws based on public hearings and input from legal experts on both sides.

How’s that for an announcement of a planned power grab? They lost big in August on the vote attempting to make it more difficult to pass abortion rights. They lost big in November. Now, they’re looking ahead to losing in the courts—so they’re laying the groundwork to steal this election by stealing power from the courts.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.