Although the 10 Democratic presidential candidates in Thursday night’s debate talked about the importance of unity, they spent plenty of time trying to one-up each other with their own congressional records.
The debate stage was stacked with current or former members of Congress: only businessman Andrew Yang, former Housing and Urban Development secretary Julián Castro and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg of Indiana have never served in Congress.
Within eight minutes of each other Wednesday morning, the two House campaign committees blasted out dueling memos about what Republican state Sen. Dan Bishop’s 2-point victory in North Carolina’s 9th District means for the country’s political future.
The posturing was typical of reactions to special elections in the era of President Donald Trump. Publicly, at least, Republicans say everything is fine, while Democrats celebrate a narrow loss in a district that shouldn’t have been competitive.
Republicans have narrowly held on to a North Carolina district that President Donald Trump won by 12 points in 2016. It’s a relief for a party already in the minority but not enough to ease GOP fears about slippage in the suburbs.
With 95 percent of precincts reporting, GOP state Sen. Dan Bishop led Democrat Dan McCready 51 percent to 49 percent when The Associated Press called the race.
Republican state Rep. Greg Murphy has won the special election for North Carolina’s 3rd District, succeeding the late GOP Rep. Walter B. Jones and likely becoming the next member of the House Freedom Caucus.
With 44 percent of precincts reporting, Murphy led Democrat Allen Thomas 59 percent to 40 percent when The Associated Press called the race. Murphy, who won a primary runoff in July, was largely expected to win this seat left open by Jones’ death in February. Jones won a 13th term without opposition last fall, and President Donald Trump carried the seat by 23 points in 2016.
Georgia got another Senate candidate Tuesday — a familiar face who’s running in the same race that several Democrats are already running for.
Jon Ossoff, who lost the most expensive special House election in U.S. history, is challenging Republican incumbent David Perdue.
Republican leadership lowered expectations for the outcome in Tuesday’s North Carolina’s 9th District special election, calling it a “swing district.”
President Donald Trump carried this district by 12 points in 2016, but Republican outside groups have spent more than $6 million on the race, which Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales rates Toss-up.
It may not be 2020 yet, but in North Carolina — which is holding two House contests Tuesday — it might as well be an election year already.
As the Democratic presidential circus continues to steal national headlines, voters are going to the polls for special elections in two longtime Republican districts — one because election fraud invalidated last year’s result and the other because the sitting congressman died.
President Donald Trump is coming to North Carolina on Monday, and Democrats are looking to take advantage of his visit.
Democratic Senate candidate Cal Cunningham, who is challenging Sen. Thom Tillis, is releasing a digital ad Monday afternoon that’s geographically targeted to the location of Trump’s rally in Fayetteville, where the president is coming to boost GOP state Sen. Dan Bishop ahead of Tuesday’s redo election in the 9th District.
Bill Hagerty, who stepped down in July as ambassador to Japan, announced his campaign for Senate in Tennessee on Monday.
He’s running with the support of President Donald Trump, which has helped clear the GOP field for him in a state where the president remains popular with the Republican base. Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales rates the general election Solid Republican. GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander is not running for fourth term.
If Democrats are going to flip North Carolina’s 9th District this week, they need minority voters in the rural, eastern part of the district to vote.
That’s why the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has spent more than a million dollars on this toss-up race through its independent expenditure arm, has also been doing more under-the-radar work to study these voters and find effective ways to talk to them.
It’s September 2019, but we’re only just now wrapping up the 2018 election. Voters in North Carolina’s 9th District will finish it all off on when they decide on Sept. 10 whether Democrat Dan McCready or Republican Dan Bishop will represent them in Congress.
The lagging special election was necessary because the North Carolina State Board of Elections threw out last fall’s initial results because of election fraud tied to the Republican effort and its nominee, Mark Harris.
West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin has decided not to run for governor in 2020, which is welcome news for Senate Democrats who would have had a hard time defending a Senate seat in the Mountain State without him.
Manchin, who narrowly won reelection last fall, said remaining in the Senate puts him in a better position to help West Virginia.
Republican Rep. John Shimkus will not run for a 13th term in his southeastern Illinois district, vacating what will likely remain a safe Republican seat in 2020.
Shimkus announced his decision Friday afternoon, saying he wanted to make his plans known as candidates begin to circulate petitions for office next week.
Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, the first female combat veteran to run for president, has returned to the campaign trail from two weeks of active duty service overseas with the Army National Guard.
That may be welcome news for the Democrat’s team, which was required to run her campaign without her — and without any communication with her about the campaign — since she deployed to Indonesia on Aug. 14.
In a sign that Democrats are broadening their 2020 messaging, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on Thursday is rolling out digital ads attacking House Republicans over President Donald Trump’s trade policies.
The ads, obtained first by CQ Roll Call, are timed to back-to-school shopping. The animated ads running on Facebook highlight products whose rising costs could affect consumers in 11 districts across the country, all but one of which Trump carried in 2016.
Less than two weeks ahead of the special election in North Carolina’s 9th District — a do-over race because of last year’s election fraud — the Democratic and Republican candidates met Wednesday for their first and only debate.
Democrat Dan McCready, a Marine veteran and solar energy entrepreneur, stuck to the health care message he’s used throughout this campaign and previously in the 2018 race, which he lost by just 905 votes to Mark Harris. The North Carolina State Board of Elections called for a new election after allegations of ballot fraud tied to Harris’ campaign.
ELIZABETHTOWN, N.C. — Chris Council, a 53-year-old African American landscaper, is fired up about Democrat Dan McCready’s campaign for Congress.
“I’m not a betting man, but he’s going to win this race,” Council said after attending a McCready event in this 3,500-person town, the county seat of Bladen County, North Carolina.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is adding six more districts to the list of seats it’s targeting in 2020.
After gaining a net of 40 seats last fall, the House Democrats’ campaign arm released its initial 2020 target list in January that included 32 GOP-held seats and the open seat in North Carolina’s 9th District, which is holding a special election next month.
ELIZABETHTOWN, N.C. — Asked about immigration at a town hall last weekend, Dan McCready talked about securing the border and respecting the law.
He didn’t sound like “an Elizabeth Warren Democrat,” which is how the National Republican Congressional Committee is trying to tar him.
LAURINBURG, N.C. — Dan McCready is used to this.
“Y’all know this isn’t an easy race for a Democrat,” the candidate for North Carolina’s 9th District said, swatting away an army of gnats swarming attendees at a fish fry Friday night.
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