Battle for House majority is now the biggest unanswered question of the midterms
Arizona governor race remains too early to call after latest Maricopa vote drop
Simone Pathe
The high-profile Arizona governor’s race remains too early to call Sunday evening after Maricopa County released more unofficial results.
Democrat Katie Hobbs led Republican Kari Lake by 1 percentage point — 50.5% to 49.5% — as of Sunday evening. CNN has not made a projection in the race.
Maricopa County election officials estimate that the count in the state’s largest county is now 94% complete and that there are about 85,000 to 95,000 ballots remaining. The Elections Department expects to release more unofficial results Monday evening.
Mastriano concedes Pennsylvania governor race
From CNN’s Brian Rokus
Republican Doug Mastriano, a leading voice advancing former President Donald Trump’s lies about 2020 election fraud, has conceded his race for Pennsylvania governor to his Democratic opponent.
“Difficult to accept as the results are, there is no right course but to concede, which I do, and I look to the challenges ahead,” Mastriano wrote in a statement sent Sunday afternoon. “Josh Shapiro will be our next Governor, and I ask everyone to give him the opportunity to lead and pray that he leads well.”
Shaprio, Pennsylvania’s attorney general, will succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, CNN has projected.
Earlier Sunday, Shapiro was asked by CNN’s Dana Bash if Mastriano had ever called him to concede the race.
“Who cares if he calls, right?” Shapiro said on “State of the Union.”
“He doesn’t get to pick the winner, the people pick the winner, and in a resounding way they made clear that they wanted me to lead this commonwealth forward.”
Mastriano has been one of the most well-known and extreme GOP election deniers. As a state senator, he has pushed false claims about mass voter fraud in 2020 and worked to try to reverse the results of the last presidential contest.
What to know about control of Congress and outstanding votes in other races
From CNN’s Eric Bradner and Maeve Reston
The battle for control of the House is now the biggest unanswered question of this year’s midterm elections after Democrats kept their narrow Senate majority.
Which party reaches the 218 seats necessary for a House majority will hinge on races in states with a large share of mail-in ballots — including California, where identifying winners in some races could take weeks, Oregon and Arizona.
Another high-profile contest remains too close to call: The Arizona governor’s race. Republican Kari Lake, the Donald Trump-supported election denier, is facing Democratic secretary of state Katie Hobbs, a defender of the state’s election process.
Democratic upset keeps narrow House majority hopes alive
Republicans appear to be slowly inching toward a slim majority, but Democrats’ hopes have not yet fully faded.
Republicans have won 211 of the 218 seats they’d need to take the majority, according to CNN projections, while Democrats have won 204, with 20 undecided as of Saturday evening.
Democrats scored a major victory in Washington’s Republican-leaning 3rd District, where on Saturday CNN projected that Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez would defeat Republican Joe Kent, who had aligned himself closely with former President Donald Trump.
Many of the other undecided races are in California, where counting mail-in ballots can take weeks and significant shifts can occur late in that process. Other states with large quantities of mail-in ballots, including Arizona and Oregon, also have undecided races.
Arizona governor’s race still undecided
The Arizona governor’s race between Lake, one of the most prominent election deniers on the ballot this year, and Hobbs, remains tight, with Hobbs clinging to a 34,000 vote lead as of late Saturday with an estimated 290,000 votes to be counted.
If she wins, Lake would be a rare Trump-supported election denier to win a competitive statewide race this year.
In an interview with CNN Saturday afternoon, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates said that about 190,000 votes remain to be counted in Maricopa County.
He said he was confident that about 95% to 99% of those votes will be recorded by Tuesday. He said the county will continue to report about 85,000 votes per night until they are done.
Other races to keep an eye on:
In Alaska, the state’s at-large House seat and one of its Senate seats will hinge on ranked-choice results.
Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, who won a special election this summer, is in a strong position to eclipse the 50% mark. But Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski faces a stiffer challenge from Republican Kelly Tshibaka, who is backed by Trump as part of his bid for retribution against Murkowski and others who for his impeachment after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
And in Los Angeles, Rep. Karen Bass on Saturday widened her lead over developer Rick Caruso in the mayoral race.
If elected, Bass would become the first woman and the first Black woman to lead America’s second-largest city.
Sen. Warnock appeals to Georgia voters: “Tell everybody in your circle it’s time to show up”
From CNN’s Rashard Rose
Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock appealed to Georgians Sunday afternoon to vote in the upcoming runoff election, making an appearance during rapper Lil Baby’s Fall Festival and Charity Drive in Atlanta.
“Tell everybody in your circle it’s time to show up. I want you to know it is the honor of my life to represent you in the United States Senate. And to not vote, is to vote. It means somebody else is going to speak on your behalf. I don’t want anybody else speaking for me,” Warnock told the audience.
Following his brief remarks on stage, Warnock spoke to media during a gaggle.
A reporter asked if his campaign message will change following the projected results in Nevada, which mean that his race will not determine whether Democrats control the Senate.
“Well, congratulations to my colleagues, but our message is the same,” Warnock said. “This election is about who’s ready, and who’s fit to serve the people of Georgia in the United States Senate. It’s a race about competence and about character. And on both of those scores, there is a world of difference between me and Herschel Walker.”
Remember: Neither Warnock nor his Republican challenger Walker surpassed the 50% threshold needed to win the race outright Tuesday evening, CNN projected, forcing a runoff election in December.
The Georgia runoff election is still really important to Democrats:
Although Democrats are already projected to win control of the Senate, CNN chief political Gloria Borger said the upcoming Dec. 6 Georgia runoff is still really important to the party.
“They want to have a clear majority,” Borger said on CNN Saturday. “But, I think that one vote actually does matter in so many ways because it doesn’t give anybody the kind of leverage that say a Joe Manchin had.”
GOP Sen. Scott calls for delay in leadership election: It doesn’t make sense to have them this week
From CNN’s Daniella Diaz
GOP Sen. Rick Scott, who is the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, called for a delay in the Senate leadership election scheduled for Wednesday, saying it “doesn’t make any sense” to have them this week.
“What is our plan, what are we running on? What do we stand for? What are we hellbent … to get done? There’s no plan to do that,” Scott said on Fox News. “The leadership in the Republican Senate says you cannot have a plan, we’re just gonna run against how bad the Democrats are. And actually they cave into the Democrats. Now they want to rush through an election. We haven’t even finished what’s happened in Georgia.”
He added: “They want to rush through an election because they don’t want to do any assessment of what we’ve done wrong. Insanity is doing the exact same thing and thinking you’re gonna get different results. We won’t.”
Scott also said “a lot of people” have asked him to run for minority leader.
“A lot of people have called me to see if I’ll run,” Scott said. “Here’s my focus, is: We still got to win Georgia. I’m not going to take anything off the table.”
Some background: Several Republican senators in addition to Scott are calling for a delay in next week’s Senate GOP leadership elections, arguing the party needs to regroup after lackluster midterm results and with a Georgia runoff still underway.
While Mitch McConnell is widely expected to easily win the top spot again, making him the longest Senate party leader in history, he is facing some dissension in the ranks. That includes a campaign against his candidacy by former President Donald Trump.
Here are candidates CNN projects will make history this midterm cycle
Several candidates made historic runs this midterm cycle and CNN projects that many will win their respective races.
In New York and Arkansas, Democrat Kathy Hochul and Republican Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be the first elected female governors in their respective states.
In Alabama, Republican Katie Britt will be the first woman elected to serve as a senator.
In Maryland, Democrat Wes Moore will be the first elected Black governor in the state.
In Oklahoma, Republican Markwayne Mullin will be the first Native American senator from the state in 100 years.
In Ohio, Rep. Marcy Katpur will become the longest-serving woman in congressional history, once she’s sworn in next year.
View more history-making candidates here:
Correction: An earlier version of this post included the wrong political office for Katie Britt. She is the projected winner of Alabama’s Senate race.
Trump adviser: Former president will announce his 2024 campaign at Tuesday event
From CNN’s Kristen Holmes
Trump adviser Jason Miller said in a podcast appearance that the former president will announce his 2024 presidential campaign at an event Tuesday.
Speaking on Steve Bannon’s podcast Friday, Miller added that the announcement would be “very professional, very buttoned up,” and that Trump’s team ran through the logistics on Friday of last week.
Miller said he spoke to Trump and the former president told him “there doesn’t need to be any question. Of course I’m running. I’m going to do this and I want to make sure people know that I’m fired up.”
Some advisers continue to try and persuade the former president to hold off on any sort of announcement, but most acknowledge their pleas aren’t likely to have an impact on Trump’s decision.
Amid backlash over lackluster midterm results and poor performances by many Trump-endorsed candidates, Trump has recently reminded those around him that Republicans and some conservative media turned their backs on him in 2016 and he still won.
However, many are concerned he doesn’t have the same magnetism that swept him into the White House six years ago, particularly as he continues to focus on promoting conspiracies around elections, a strategy that largely fizzled last Tuesday.
It remains unclear who will be in attendance at Tuesday’s event. Some of Trump’s biggest supporters like Reps. Elise Stefanik, Matt Gaetz and Jim Banks will be wrapped up in their own House leadership elections in Washington that day.
Jayapal dodges questions about whether the House Progressive Caucus will support Pelosi for speaker
From CNN’s Daniella Diaz
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, dodged a question Sunday on whether the caucus would support House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for a leadership position in the new Congress, as well as a question about her own political future.
“We always consider all the people who are running very carefully and we usually have a set of things that we ask for as the progressive caucus as part of those negotiations, and we’re looking forward to seeing what that looks like,” Jayapal said at a press conference with progressive members-elect this morning.
Asked about her political future, Jayapal side-stepped the question.
“I am so basking in the power of the progressive caucus,” she said with a laugh.
She was later asked whether she planned to stay chair of the caucus.
“I’m basking in what the progressive movement has done and what we can do,” she said.
On priorities for the caucus during the lame duck session, Jayapal said the group will hold an executive board meeting Monday to decide primary goals, but she cited the debt limit, child tax credit and the DREAM Act among top issues.
Election deniers lost secretary of state races in these key battleground states
From CNN’s Fredreka Schouten
The latest midterm results show that voters in crucial battleground states rejected secretary of state candidates who have denied the 2020 election results and had pledged to overhaul voting procedures in their states ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Here are the results from several of those races:
- In Nevada, Las Vegas Democratic attorney Cisco Aguilar defeated former state lawmaker Jim Marchant to become the first Latino election chief in the Silver State, according to CNN’s projection Saturday night. Marchant, the Republican nominee, had called for doing away with vote-tallying machines and organized a coalition of like-minded “America First” candidates. Their goals included ending most mail-in voting, expanding voter identification laws and promoting the “aggressive” cleanup of voter rolls.
- In Arizona, CNN projected that Democrat Adrian Fontes, the former top election official in Maricopa County, defeated the Republican nominee, state Rep. Mark Finchem, who lobbied to toss out the results of the 2020 election in some of state’s largest counties and co-sponsored legislation that would have allowed lawmakers to set aside election outcomes.
- In Michigan, the Democratic incumbent Jocelyn Benson — a leading national voice defending the legitimacy of the 2020 election — defeated Kristina Karamo, CNN projected. Karamo, a member of Marchant’s “America First” slate of candidates, has falsely claimed that former President Donald Trump won two years ago and signed on to an unsuccessful Supreme Court lawsuit that challenged President Joe Biden’s victory.
- In Minnesota, Democratic Secretary of State Steve Simon won a third term, CNN projected — defeating Republican lawyer Kim Crockett. Crockett has cast the 2020 election as “illegitimate” because of pandemic-related changes to voting procedures that year.
One secretary of state candidate in the America First coalition did succeed. CNN projected that Republican Diego Morales won the race for secretary of state in Indiana. During the GOP primary, he disputed the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
The full breakdown from CNN’s Daniel Dale on how election deniers fared can be found here.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/election-results-congress-senate-house-11-13-2022/index.html
