Campaign Report
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Campaign Report
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New Hampshire defies new Biden primary order
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The Granite State has bucked the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) presidential nominating order, setting a primary date that keeps its first-in-the-nation status.
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© Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP, Pool
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New Hampshire will hold its primary on Jan. 23, the state’s Secretary of State David Scanlan (R) announced on Wednesday, defying the Democratic calendar backed by President Biden.
That date is roughly two weeks before South Carolina is set to hold its Democratic primary on Feb. 3 — despite the DNC’s effort to bump the Palmetto State into the first-place slot in the party’s process.
Iowa and New Hampshire have long kicked off the presidential nominating cycle, but the DNC moved this year to reshuffle its primary calendar with a plan geared at upping racial diversity in the process.
The DNC would have South Carolina go first, followed by Nevada and New Hampshire on the same day, with Georgia in third and Michigan in fourth.
In a letter to the DNC last December, Biden stressed ensuring voters of color have a voice throughout the early stages of the presidential nominating process, and encouraged that it’s “time to update this process for the 21st century.”
“The Democratic Party looks like America, and so does this proposal,” said DNC Chair Jamie Harrison of the plan earlier this year.
The plan has angered some in New Hampshire — sentiments Scanlan echoed when he announced the Jan. 23 date on Wednesday.
“We did not take the first-in-the-nation primary from anyone, and we will vigorously defend it,” Scanlan said.
“Using racial diversity as a cudgel in an attempt to rearrange the presidential nominating calendar is an ugly precedent. At what point does a state become too old or too wealthy or too educated or too religious to hold an early primary?”
He contended that “there is no individual state that truly reflects the makeup of America, and no state is more American than any other state.”
New Hampshire law requires its primaries to be held at least seven days before any other state holds its own.
President Biden didn’t file for the New Hampshire primary, citing obligations to comply with the DNC guidance. His supporters in the state have launched a write-in campaign.
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Welcome to The Hill’s Campaign Report, we’re Julia Mueller and Liz Crisp. Each week we track the key stories you need to know to stay ahead of the 2024 election and who will set the agenda in Washington.
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Key election stories and other recent campaign coverage:
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President Biden late Wednesday quipped that California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) could have any job he wants, including potentially being president, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the governor’s much-discussed White House ambitions. “I want to talk about Gov. Newsom. Want to thank him. He’s been one hell of a governor, man,” Biden said at a welcome reception in San Francisco at the Asian Pacific Economic Conference (APEC) summit. …
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Independent 2024 presidential candidate Cornel West criticized Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for not calling for a cease-fire in the ongoing war between Israel and the militant Palestinian group Hamas. “You say, ‘Brother Bernie, man, this is reaching the point where it’s getting pathetic now, man,’” West said in an interview with Status Coup News on Wednesday. “If the pause is the best you can come up with given this situation, …
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Former President Trump holds a large lead in New Hampshire’s Republican presidential primary, while former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley is gaining ground in the key early voting state, according to a new poll. A CNN poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire and released Thursday found 42 percent of likely GOP primary voters in the Granite State said they would vote for Trump, while 20 percent said they’d …
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Upcoming news themes and events we’re watching:
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- 60 days until the Iowa presidential caucuses
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355 days until the 2024 election
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© AP Photo/Bryon Houlgrave
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GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who served as ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration, is vowing to scale back the United States’ involvement in the international organization if she’s elected.
Still, she doesn’t think that the U.S. should completely withdraw.
“We would defund the U.N. as much as possible,” she told Fox News host Sean Hannity during an appearance on his show Wednesday night. “The only reason, Sean, you don’t get out of the U.N. is we’re one country of five that has a veto.
“The number of things we were able to stop China, Russia and Iran from doing with that veto matters, and so you keep bad things from happening. But we don’t have to pay at the level that we’re paying, and we don’t have to be in any of those other organizations,” she continued.
Hannity asked Haley whether she thinks the U.N. has been “historically anti-American and antisemitic.”
“That’s a true statement,” she said.
The U.N. Security Council approved a resolution this week calling for a humanitarian pause in the ongoing Israeli-Hamas war and the release of hostages, but it has faced backlash because it didn’t condemn Hamas. U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield abstained from the vote.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who also is seeking the Republican nomination, also has vowed to defund the U.N. if he’s elected.
“No longer should American taxpayer dollars support this corrupt, morally bankrupt, hotbed of antisemitism that empowers our enemies and coddles dictators and the worst human rights abusers,” he wrote online Thursday.
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Will Nebraska be the next abortion battleground?
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© Kenneth Ferriera/Lincoln Journal Star via AP
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Nebraska voters may get a chance to say whether there is a right to abortion in the state if advocates collect enough signatures to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2024.
If advocates are successful, Nebraska would join a growing list of states that have put the issue of abortion before voters through a proposed constitutional amendment.
Protect Our Rights, a coalition of groups in the state that support abortion rights, officially launched the effort this week that would establish a right to abortion prior to fetal viability and when needed to protect a patient’s life or health.
Nebraska currently allows abortion up to 12 weeks of pregnancy, but the ballot effort is an attempt to roll that back and prevent future restrictions after the U.S. Supreme Court upended Roe v. Wade last year. Viability is about 24 weeks.
Advocates must collect about 125,000 valid signatures by the summer to get the measure on the ballot next year.
“Our constitutional amendment is informed both by medical experts and where most Nebraskans are on this issue,” Ashlei Spivey, a member of Protect Our Rights’s executive committee and executive director of I Be Black Girl, said in a statement. “Unlike the state officials working to totally ban abortion, we’re elevating the voices and lived experiences of Nebraskans who believe that pregnant people should be able to access needed care with compassion and privacy, free from political interference.”
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) opposes the effort, calling it “totally out of step with the pro-life principles of the overwhelming majority of Nebraskans.”
“This flawed initiative would radically expand abortion in Nebraska, resulting in the deaths of thousands of babies in mothers’ wombs. Its vague and deceptive language could throw open the doors to brutal late-term abortions, putting abortion providers in charge of judging whether, for example, a 39-week-old pre-born baby can be aborted,” he said in a statement. “I look forward to standing shoulder to shoulder with pro-life leaders across Nebraska to defend life in our state.”
According to the state Health Department, 2,547 abortions were performed in Nebraska last year, mostly for women in their 20s. More than 350 of them were for residents of other states that have more restrictive abortion laws.
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Branch out with a different read from The Hill:
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2024 GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie predicted former President Trump will be a convicted felon by spring 2024. In an interview Thursday on CNN’s “The Lead” with Jake Tapper, Christie suggested America’s founding fathers would never had predicted a convicted felon could run for the presidency. If they had, Christie argued, they would have specifically banned felons from the presidency. In a discussion about …
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GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis pledged to strip the United Nations of its funding if elected to the White House after it passed a resolution calling for a humanitarian pause and a release of hostages Wednesday. The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution calling for the release of hostages held by the militant group Hamas and for urgent humanitarian pauses, but it did not include language that condemned Hamas. DeSantis …
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Local and state headlines regarding campaigns and elections:
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Pat Fallon says he changed his mind about running for Texas Senate after pleas from his son and Mike Johnson (The Texas Tribune)
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Colorado case using ‘insurrection’ argument to bar Trump from the ballot goes to the judge (The Denver Post)
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Kildee won’t seek re-election to Congress, says cancer gave him new perspective (MLive)
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Election news we’ve flagged from other outlets:
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Biden supporters’ New Hampshire write-in campaign risks underscoring the president’s vulnerability (NBC News)
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How Trump and his allies plan to wield power in 2025 (The New York Times)
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Police and protesters clash outside Democratic HQ during a demonstration over the Israel-Hamas war (The Associated Press)
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Key stories on The Hill right now:
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Trump-allied conservatives are using more pugnacious rhetoric than ever, and in some cases, such as an incident Tuesday featuring Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), are ready to make things physical, a trend that is setting off alarm bells on Capitol Hill. Republican and Democratic senators say former President Trump’s bombastic threats … Read more
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The House Ethics Committee in a report released Thursday said there is clear evidence that Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) committed serious crimes, though it stopped short of recommending formal sanctions, as some had hoped it would do. The panel referred its findings of “potential violations of federal criminal law” to the Department of … Read more
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Opinions related to campaigns and elections submitted to The Hill:
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You’re all caught up. See you next time!
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