The Arizona Math Problem

Today’s notice: Hard problems. Harris vs. the math in Arizona. Loyalty vs. decency for Republicans after another racist Trump tirade. Using hurricanes to make a political point vs. politicizing them.

The Math vs. the Vibes

Arizona has been a psychically validating state for Democrats in recent years as the place they can point to and say MAGA politics just don’t work, look at Kari Lake. But it looks like the state might be a lot more stressful for Dems this time around. NOTUS’ Jasmine Wright reports that despite massive spending, multiple appearances and a huge ground operation, an operative close to Kamala Harris’ team says: “If you would rank the seven battleground states, people think it’s the least likely she wins” Arizona.

The biggest challenge is math. “Republicans now have more than 250,000 more registered voters than Democrats. And independents now have more than 100,000 more registered voters than Democrats, a shift from 2020 when Democrats surpassed indies by 20,000,” Jasmine finds. Local strategist Stacy Pearson explains: “There is just a mathematical complication in Arizona that other states don’t have. None of the other swing states have lost Dems the way Arizona has.”

The math must be met by outreach and eventually by vibing with some significant number of conservatives. Republican Harris surrogates like Stephanie Grisham are popping up all over Arizona telling Republicans outraged enough by MAGA to keep Lake from winning have to vote for, gasp, a California Democrat — two words that carry extra meaning in the state that often compares itself to its western neighbor.

There are other challenges, too, like Harris’ lagging numbers with Latino men and other base groups. She’s running well behind Ruben Gallego (who is facing Lake) in polling, though he doesn’t put a ton of stock in it. “It’s not fair to compare it to me,” he told Jasmine.

Read the story here.

The Coming Political Fight Over Disaster Area Voting?

The state board of elections in North Carolina announced emergency guidelines for counties running the general election in the area of the state devastated by Hurricane Helene. The rules amount to “changes that loosen absentee and in-person voting rules for those in affected areas,” NOTUS’ Calen Razor and Anna Kramer report. “Previously, the board also voted to allow exceptions to voter ID laws.”

With a terrifyingly busy hurricane season upon us, the kinds of emergency tweaks officials are calling for in North Carolina could become a significant part of balloting this year. As could the kind of pushback already happening in the state.

The chair of the GOP in Buncombe County — home to Asheville and one of the hardest hit by the disaster — told NOTUS he’s skeptical of the changes. “As soon as you give people an excuse, it’s an excuse,” he said of changes to voter ID rules. He also called for an “extra watchdog eye” on the county board of elections because its chair, like all of them in the state, is appointed by Roy Cooper, a Democrat.

It remains to be seen how noisy this new front in the war over voting will be. A GOP member of the state board said at the meeting, “I think this is very important that it is being crafted to avoid any detrimental effect on the integrity of the election and the security of the ballots, and I think this resolution does that.” Voting in North Carolina begins on Oct. 17.

Read the story here.

Front Page

• Kamala Harris Has a Numbers Problem in Arizona: On the ground in a battleground state with a tough climb for the vice president.
• Florida, Already Badgered by Storms, Is Now Inundated by Storm Politics: The Senate candidates are refocusing their campaigns.
• North Carolina Adapts to a Post-Hurricane Election. Not Everyone Is On Board: A local GOP leader from a county ravaged by the storm is resistant to changing election rules.

Trump’s ‘Bad Genes’ Tirade

There are plenty of GOP strategists who bemoan Donald Trump’s most virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric, as NOTUS has repeatedly reported. In short, it’s not helping him court swing voters, they say.

That advice apparently isn’t getting very far with Trump, who on “The Hugh Hewitt Show” suggested that immigrants who commit crimes do so because “it’s in their genes.”

“Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States,” he said. “You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”

Trump has ventured into this territory before: He told Elon Musk last month that the migrants entering the country are “nonproductive,” and he said last year that migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” Of course, he opened his 2016 presidential campaign when he said Mexico was sending “rapists.”

Quotable

“The Democratic priority was Ukraine funding and the Republican priority was this border militarization funding and asylum restrictions,” Rep. Greg Casar told NOTUS Monday of the Senate’s dead bipartisan border bill. “That bill doesn’t even really apply anymore in the next Congress because the Ukraine money is already done.”

Casar is the likely successor to Rep. Pramila Jayapal as chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (no one else has yet thrown their hat). He told NOTUS where he wants immigration negotiations to start in the next Congress: the 2013 immigration reform bill then-Speaker John Boehner didn’t bring to the floor under pressure from his right flank. “A bill like that would have many things in it that I wouldn’t love,” Casar said. “But if it was a truly comprehensive bill that helped take care of the people that have been here for a long time and set up legal pathways for immigration — and then included some of the Republican priorities that progressives don’t like — then we actually have a conversation going, rather than a nonstarter.”

—Claire Heddles

Not Us

We know NOTUS reporters can’t cover it all. Here’s some other great hits by … not us.

• Seven photojournalists at The New York Times describe the images from Israel and Gaza they can’t forget.
• Trump’s getting credit for pandemic stimulus checks in Michigan, the Detroit Free Press reports.
• Ron DeSantis won’t take Kamala Harris’ call in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, per NBC News.
• New York magazine explores the Eric Adams machine — and how long it can last.
• The Huffington Post gets behind the Teamsters’ controversial non-endorsement this presidential cycle.

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