New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew, whose election to a GOP-held district last fall helped Democrats flip the House, plans to switch parties after meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House on Friday, according to multiple Garden State sources.
Members of his party were already wishing him good riddance.
More than in previous election cycles, national Democratic groups are making litigation over election and voting laws a key part of their 2020 strategy.
A handful of Democratic groups are currently litigating about a dozen cases over what they see as unfair election laws and maps across the country.
Corrected 12/10 | Rep. George Holding announced Friday that he will not run for Congress again in 2020 in his own district or a neighboring one. The North Carolina Republican’s district became more Democratic on a new congressional map.
Holding’s decision comes after he said earlier this week that he would not run in a district that he could not win and that he would not challenge a sitting Republican in a neighboring, and more favorable, district.
Georgia Rep. Tom Graves, a Republican serving his fifth full term, is not running for reelection in 2020, leaving behind a solid red district.
“As we all do, I’m entering a new season in life. An exciting season,” Graves said in a statement Thursday, in which he said the holidays have been a “time of reflection.”
North Carolina Rep. George Holding has been here before, facing a district that doesn’t look like the one he currently represents.
But unlike in 2016, when court-mandated redistricting moved his seat across the state and he choose to run in a different district closer to home, the partisan composition of his current 2nd District has now changed significantly, becoming virtually unwinnable for a Republican.
It was the most expensive local referendum in New Jersey history. Airbnb raised more than $4 million this fall to fight one city’s regulations on short-term rentals. But in a high-profile blow as the company prepares to go public next year, the short-term lodging service lost overwhelmingly, defeated by a coalition of groups that spent one-fourth of the money.
Republican and Democratic senators took a break from their predictably partisan conference lunches Tuesday afternoon for a bipartisan barbecue honoring Sen. Johnny Isakson.
The outpouring of tributes made clear the Georgia Republican’s successor will have big shoes to fill, and the political reality is that financial executive Kelly Loeffler, whom Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp will announce Wednesday as Isakson’s replacement, might not have an easy time following his bipartisan lead.
California Sen. Kamala Harris announced Tuesday that she is suspending her presidential campaign, citing a lack of financial resources.
“I’ve taken stock and looked at this from every angle, and over the last few days have come to one of the hardest decisions of my life,” Harris wrote in a letter to supporters Tuesday. “It is with deep regret — but also with deep gratitude — that I am suspending my campaign today.”
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is expected on Wednesday to appoint financial executive Kelly Loeffler to the Senate seat that Sen. Johnny Isakson is vacating at the end of the year.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which broke the news that Loeffler would be Kemp’s pick, reported the timing of the appointment. Isakson is scheduled to deliver his farewell address to the Senate on Tuesday.
North Carolina’s congressional elections will go forward under the new maps that the GOP-controlled legislature drew last month, a panel of state judges ruled Monday.
Democrats are likely to pick up two seats under the new configuration, which they’d been challenging in court for not adequately remedying the 2016 maps, which the court had already found to be an unlawful partisan gerrymander.
Retired businessman Garland Tucker is not filing for Senate with the state Board of Elections on Monday, dropping his primary challenge to North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis, one of the most vulnerable Republicans up for reelection in 2020.
Through a combination of loans and contributions, Tucker had given his campaign about $1.3 million by the end of September, which had forced Tillis to spend money early to build up his name recognition and base of support with conservatives. Tillis reserved more than $2 million earlier this year in TV advertising. Trump endorsed Tillis, but the first-term senator was still booed at the president’s most recent rally in the Tar Heel State.
Winning for Women, a nonprofit political group that supports Republican women, is backing 13 House candidates on Wednesday in its initial round of 2020 endorsements.
The group is also backing all Republican women in Congress who are seeking reelection. That includes the five of the eight Republican women in the Senate who are up for reelection next year and 11 women in the House. Two of the 13 GOP women currently serving in the House have announced they won’t be running in 2020.
It’s not every day a fundraising email contains more than hyperbolic talking points.
But South Carolina state Rep. Nancy Mace, who’s vying for the Republican nomination in one of the GOP’s top pick-up opportunities for Congress next year, got a little more personal this week, offering in an email to supporters to release her student records from The Citadel.
A Georgia Democrat in one of the most competitive House districts in the country is canceling her health insurance, a risky move that she says is financially necessary as she runs for Congress.
Nabilah Islam is one of a handful of Democrats running for the party’s nomination in the open 7th District. Islam is trying to save money, but she’s also making a political point — about who can afford to run for Congress and the necessity of fixing America’s health care system.
Several of the presidential candidates who debated Wednesday night in Atlanta were sticking around on Thursday, even though some of them will be out of the race by the time Georgia holds its March 24 primary and the state has not backed a Democrat for president since 1992.
The reason for that is that Democrats up and down the ballot are expecting intense contests in Georgia next year, including two for Senate seats that could determine which party controls the chamber.
If there’s an abiding lesson from 2016, it’s that national public opinion in the presidential race is not as important as the votes of individual states. Republican Donald Trump won by taking 304 electoral votes to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s 227, even as Clinton beat him by 2.9 million votes and 2.1 percentage points nationally.
In 2020, Democrats will be looking to recapture states Trump won that went for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. And many of those states will also be prime battlegrounds in the fight for control of the Senate, where Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take a majority (three if they win the White House and the vice president can break 50-50 ties), while Republicans need a net gain of 19 seats to retake the House.
If there’s an abiding lesson from 2016, it’s that national public opinion in the presidential race is not as important as the votes of individual states. Republican Donald Trump won by taking 304 electoral votes to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s 227, even as Clinton beat him by 2.9 million votes and 2.1 percentage points nationally.
In 2020, Democrats will be looking to recapture states Trump won that went for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. And many of those states will also be prime battlegrounds in the fight for control of the Senate, where Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take a majority (three if they win the White House and the vice president can break 50-50 ties), while Republicans need a net gain of 19 seats to retake the House.
If there’s an abiding lesson from 2016, it’s that national public opinion in the presidential race is not as important as the votes of individual states. Republican Donald Trump won by taking 304 electoral votes to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s 227, even as Clinton beat him by 2.9 million votes and 2.1 percentage points nationally.
In 2020, Democrats will be looking to recapture states Trump won that went for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. And many of those states will also be prime battlegrounds in the fight for control of the Senate, where Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take a majority (three if they win the White House and the vice president can break 50-50 ties), while Republicans need a net gain of 19 seats to retake the House.
Former South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford ended his bid for the Republican presidential nomination Tuesday — just two months after his campaign began.
“I am suspending my race for the Presidency because impeachment has made my goal of making the debt, deficit and spending issue a part of this presidential debate impossible right now,” Sanford said in a statement. He made the announcement at a news conference at the New Hampshire Statehouse.
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