The special election results give Democrats hope that they won’t be disappointed in November
Maybe the Democrats aren’t headed for a November offensive after all.
DEMOCRAT Pat Ryan defeated the republican Marc Molinaro in a special election in a swing seat in New York’s Hudson Valley, fueling Democratic hopes that voter anger over the overthrow of Roe v. Wade will help the party limit its losses in the November midterm elections.
Ryan, the Ulster County executive, was leading Molinaro, the Dutchess County executive, 52 percent to 48 percent early this morning. This is a slightly larger margin than the one by which Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in the district in 2020, though it may change slightly as each outstanding vote is tabulated.
Ryan will succeed the former Democratic congressman Antonio Delgadowho resigned in May to become lieutenant governor of New York.
Ryan campaigned heavily on abortion rights, making the race a test case for how swing district voters react to such a message. “Every indication we’ve had since the start of the campaign is that this is the central issue and that the energy around it is massive,” Ryan told The Early earlier this month.
Molinaro, meanwhile, said abortion should be left to the states and campaigned on crime and the economy instead.
Ryan’s victory follows special elections in Minnesota and Nebraska in the wake of Supreme Court rulings that Republicans won but in which Democrats overtook Biden’s margins in 2020.
The trend appears to have been maintained in another special election on Tuesday, this one to fill the seat vacated by the former MP. Tom Reed (RN.Y.). Republican Joe Sempolinski beat the democrat Max Della Pia 53 percent to 47 percent in a district Trump won by about 11 points in 2020, though the final margin could change.
Ryan, meanwhile, also won the Democratic nomination on Tuesday to run in a newly redistricted district that matches the one he will represent for the next four months. (The special election to fill Delgado’s seat was held under the old district lines.) He will face Colin Schmitta Republican state assemblyman, in November.
Lawmakers lose their seats
Two New York Democrats — one a committee chairwoman who has been in Congress for nearly three decades, the other a freshman — lost their seats Tuesday.
Rep. Jerrold Nadlerthe chairman of the Judicial Committee of the House of Representatives, defeated Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, the chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee, in surprisingly decisive fashion months after their districts were suddenly combined in redistricting. Nadler led Maloney 55 percent to 24 percent, with a third Democrat, Suraj Patelbehind with 19 percent.
AND Rep. Monday Joneswho moved to New York City to run for an open House seat after his district was redrawn by redistricting, failed to win enough Democrats in his new district. Dan Goldmana former federal prosecutor who was the top adviser to House Democrats during Trump’s first impeachment, defeated a state lawmaker Yuh-Line Niou 26 percent to 24 percent. Jones took third place with 18 percent.
Republicans and Democrats alike shunned candidates who threatened to become headaches in Congress if they won.
Rap Daniel Webster (R-Fla.) narrowly survived a primary challenge from Laura Loomera far-right activist whose anti-Muslim tweets in 2018 led Twitter to ban her. Cory Mills, an Army veteran, won the Republican primary to succeed Rap Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), state can Rep. Anthony Sabatini, who had vowed to oppose House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for speaker if Republicans win the House majority. (Republicans transformed Murphy’s swing seat into a redder district during redistricting.)
And ex Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), who called a reporter a pooping robot (using more colorful language) and compared the Tea Party to the Ku Klux Klan during his time in office, lost a recall bid for the seat that the democrat Rap Val Demings I am resigning to run for the Senate. Max Frosta 25-year-old activist, won the primary with 35 percent of the vote, with Grayson trailing in third.
Two Trump-endorsed candidates won their primaries.
Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) defeated TW Shannona former speaker of the House of Representatives in the first runoff election, guaranteeing that he will be elected in November to succeed the retiring Republican Sen. James M. Inhofe. (AJ Railwayschairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party, punished Mull and Shannon earlier this month for insisting that the 2020 election was stolen.)
AND Anna Paulina Lunaan Air Force veteran who challenged Rap Charlie Crist (D-Fla.) in 2020, won the Republican nomination to succeed him in a district that Florida Republicans made much redr in redistricting, paving her way to Congress.
More results from important races:
- Governor of Florida: Crist easily won the Democratic nomination to challenge the Republicans Governor Ron DeSantisbeating Nikki FriedFlorida agriculture commissioner, 60 percent to 35 percent.
- New York’s 17th District: democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman, easily dispatched his primary challenger, Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, 67 percent to 33 percent. Biaggi was supported by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y.).
- New York’s 23rd District: Nick Langworthychairman of the New York State Republican Committee, defeated Carl Paladino, the 2010 Republican gubernatorial nominee with the ability to make inflammatory comments 52 percent to 48 percent. The loss of Paladino is a blow to Rap Elise Stefanik (RN.Y.), the No. 3 House Republican, who supported his candidacy despite his history of inflammatory and racist comments.
More coverage from The Post:
- Democrats nominate established candidates; gain a new appeal to abortion. From The Post’s Colby Itkowitz AND David Weigel.
- Four data from primaries in New York and Florida. From The Post’s Amber Phillips.
The FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago followed months of resistance, delay by Trump
“Mar-a-Lago is a big problem”: Our colleagues Josh Dawsey, Carol D. Leonnig, Jacqueline Alemany AND Rosalind S. Helderman detail Trump’s reluctance to cooperate with National Archives and FBI investigators that led to this month’s search of Mar-a-Lago. Here’s what happened:
- In 2021: “Following the end of Trump’s term in January 2021, Archives officials identified various high-profile items that had not been sent to their collection and requested that they be located and returned.”
- It’s Jan. 17: Almost a year later, “Trump returned to the National Archives 15 boxes of newspaper clippings, presidential documents, handwritten notes and miscellaneous memorabilia… The boxes arrived without any writing or inventory to describe their contents… [and] instead, it contained a trove of documents, including some that didn’t even come from Trump’s time in the White House. But some of the White House records had clear signs that they were classified.”
- February-March: The archives referred the case to the FBI in early February. The FBI interviewed “several Archives officials about the returned classified documents and their interactions with the Trump team,” according to our colleagues.
- On April 12: The archives sent emails to Trump’s lawyers, informing them that the FBI would begin reviewing sensitive documents that Trump turned over in January.
- On May 10: Acting Archivist Debra Steidel’s wall “described the weeks of resistance that followed the April 12 email,” in a letter to Trump’s lawyer Evan Corcoran. “It has been four weeks since we first informed you of our intention to provide the FBI with access to the box so that it and others in the Intelligence Community could conduct their own reviews,” Steidel wrote. Wall.
- “The May 10 letter said government lawyers had concluded that executive privilege is held by the current president, not a former president.and she President Biden had delegated to Steidel Wall the decision whether the FBI should be allowed to look at the records. “I have therefore decided not to honor the former President’s ‘protective’ claim of privilege,” she wrote, indicating that she would allow the FBI to begin looking at the records within two days.
- “The May 10 letter said government lawyers had concluded that executive privilege is held by the current president, not a former president.and she President Biden had delegated to Steidel Wall the decision whether the FBI should be allowed to look at the records. “I have therefore decided not to honor the former President’s ‘protective’ claim of privilege,” she wrote, indicating that she would allow the FBI to begin looking at the records within two days.
- May 11: “Trump’s lawyer accepted a grand jury subpoena seeking any classified records at Mar-a-Lago.”
- June 3: Trump’s lawyer Christina Bobb and “Corcoran met with a senior Justice Department official and three FBI agents, turning over the data they had collected.”
- June 22: The Justice Department issued a new subpoena to the Trump Organization, which owns Mar-a-Lago, seeking “surveillance video to help show who may have been coming and going from the storage area where Corcoran and Bobb had showed boxes of records taken from the White House were being kept. The footage showed various people entering and leaving the room.”
- August 8: The FBI searched Mar-a-Lago.
President Biden is returning from Rehoboth Beach, Del., this morning and is expected to announce his long-awaited decision on whether to cancel up to $10,000 in student loan debt — a policy that some Democrats have championed, some have dismissed as insufficient and bold and still others have warned that it could worsen inflation.
Biden has repeatedly extended the temporary, pandemic-driven moratorium on student loan repayments, which is set to expire on August 31.
Looking ahead: Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg will deliver remarks next month kicking off the Texas Tribune Festival.
New photos of Webb just came out 😍
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