Politics
Why won't Pennsylvania voters have results on Election Night?
![Why won't Pennsylvania voters have results on Election Night? Why won't Pennsylvania voters have results on Election Night?](https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/08/GettyImages-2149320037.jpg)
Pennsylvania election officials – in a bid to avoid controversy in November – are telling voters ahead of time not to expect the results of the high-stakes presidential race to be ready by Election Night.
The battleground state is of such significant importance this election cycle that Vice President Harris visited Pennsylvania on Aug. 18, ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and former President Trump made back-to-back visits both on Aug. 17, when he returned to Wilkes Barre for the first time since facing an assassination attempt in that town, and again on Aug. 19 in York.
To avoid repeated controversy from four years ago, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt – a Republican appointed by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro in 2023 – is explaining to voters that state law prohibits county boards of elections from beginning to process mail-in ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day.
“The terminology is normally called pre-canvasing,” Schmidt, a former Philadelphia city commissioner who clashed with Trump online after the 2020 election, explained to Fox News Digital. “Plenty of other states allow the county boards to begin that process in advance of Election Day, whether it’s three days or seven days or however long. But in Pennsylvania, counties can only begin that process at 7 a.m. on election morning.”
ATTEMPTED TRUMP ASSASSIN SEEN WALKING AROUND PENNSYLVANIA RALLY HOURS BEFORE OPENING FIRE
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro speaks on Day 3 of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) at the United Center, in Chicago on Aug. 21, 2024. (REUTERS/Mike Segar)
By contrast, states like Florida, with nearly double the population size of Pennsylvania’s approximately 13 million residents, report their preliminary election results on Election Night.
“It is bologna that Florida, which has more citizens, Texas, which has more citizens and more voters by millions, are able to have their elections counted all in one day. But Pennsylvania is not,” Scott Pressler, a conservative activist leading a grassroots effort to get Republicans to register and vote early in Pennsylvania this election cycle, told Fox News Digital.
Pennsylvania is among seven states, including the fellow battleground of Wisconsin, where pre-canvassing is prohibited under state law.
It never posed a major issue until 2020, Dr. Dan Mallinson, a political science professor at Pennsylvania State University, explained to Fox News Digital.
Mail-in ballots used to be granted only under special circumstances, such as when a voter is sick or traveling around the time of the election. But in October 2019, former Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf signed what he championed as a “historic election reform bill” known as Act 77 into law, allowing most voters to apply for a mail-in ballot and vote by mail without needing to provide a reason or excuse.
The coronavirus pandemic saw a drastic surge in mail-in ballot use, and four years later, Mallinson said voting still looks similar in the Keystone State.
“There was a huge inflow of mail-in ballots in both the primary and the general in 2020,” Mallinson said. “Mail-in balloting has kept up in the 2022 cycle. I mean, it doesn’t look like it’s going to really slow down.”
More than 1.2 million Pennsylvanians voted by mail in the 2022 governor’s election.
Shapiro’s administration announced in June that mail-in ballot applications would be available two months earlier than in 2020, allowing voters more than eight weeks of additional time to apply for their ballot.
For the commonwealth to begin processing mail-in ballots before 7 a.m. on Nov. 5, Schmidt said the state legislature would need to send pre-canvassing legislation to the governor’s desk.
PRE-CANVASSING BILL ‘IMPASSE’
Schmidt said he has testified in front of the Pennsylvania state House and state Senate advocating for mail-in ballot pre-canvassing, and it is frequently added to election reform bills. Most recently, the Democratic-controlled state House passed an election reform bill that includes a pre-canvassing measure, but the bill so far has not been taken up by the state’s Republican-controlled Senate.
“We knew this was an issue in 2020. It was on display for anyone paying attention to election results in Pennsylvania in 2020 and puts Pennsylvania at a unique disadvantage,” Schmidt told Fox News Digital. “It’s a technical problem with a technical solution that does not benefit any candidate. It does not benefit any party. It just allows counties to begin processing mail-in ballot envelopes prior to Election Day.”
“This is a fixable problem that we’ve just been unable to fix, you know, as a way to head off the rhetoric about, ‘there’s something shifty going on with these mail-in votes,’” Mallinson added. “The option is either the Republican-controlled Senate passes the clean bill and the governor signs it, or the Republican-controlled Senate does what has happened in the past, and they add things that they want to it, and then it probably gets rejected in the House. So we’re still kind of stuck in this impasse…. These, sort of, poison pills that get added, have got attached to the bill in the past, and that’s made it impossible to pass.”
![Schmidt testifies before the Jan. 6 committee](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/08/1200/675/GettyImages-1402694635.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Al Schmidt, then a former Philadelphia city commissioner, testified during the House Select Jan. 6 Committee on June 13, 2022, in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
There was a brief period in September 2020 when it appeared the state legislature, controlled by Republicans in both chambers at the time, was going to be able to a pass a clean pre-canvassing bill before going out of session and lawmakers went home to campaign, but Mallinson said a measure to ban drop-boxes was tacked on, which the Democratic Wolf administration would not agree to, so the legislation failed.
“They were close in 2020 at a much later point than right now,” Mallinson said. “There’s time, but I don’t know if there’s the political will or push.”
A margin of tens of thousands of votes handed a win to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2016 in Pennsylvania. The Keystone State has 19 electoral votes, tied with Illinois for the fifth most.
FORMER VP SHORTLISTER JOSH SHAPIRO STOPS SHORT OF SAYING DEMS HAVE AN ANTISEMITISM PROBLEM
GOP STRATEGY SHIFT
Republicans, Mallinson noted, have shifted their strategy from emphasizing voter fraud concerns with mail-in ballots after the 2020 election to now encouraging their party to vote by mail.
Pressler, the founder of Early Vote Action, is leading those efforts in vying to get former President Trump elected in 2024.
Pressler told Fox News Digital he has been going county-to-county in Pennsylvania delivering letters asking board of election offices what officials are doing to ensure non-citizens are not registered to vote and that paper ballots do not run out on Nov. 5. Pike County officials have been responsive, he said, and Pressler wants to avoid a repeat of what happened in 2022 in Luzerne County, where they ran out of paper ballots during the midterm elections.
![Luzerne County controversy](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/08/1200/675/GettyImages-1255336405.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Ballots are dropped off at the Bureau of Elections in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on May 16, 2023. Primary elections were cast on write-in-paper ballots in Luzerne County after a paper shortage caused havoc during the elections in November. (Aimee Dilger/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Since the 2020 election, the state has seen “significant turnover of election administrators,” Schmidt said when asked if paper ballots were stocked this time around.
“In Pennsylvania, we’ve lost more than 80 senior election directors or administrators since 2020. We only have 67 counties,” Schmidt told Fox News Digital. “But many counties, including Luzerne, have had the election director replaced election after election after election. That issue, with not having enough ballots ready in advance of Election Day, it was one that’s obviously a great cause for concern.”
“We work closely with our counties to make sure that they’re prepared for Election Day,” the secretary added. “We provide guidance to them. We provide directives to them to make sure that they have an ample supply of ballots, whether they’re mail-in ballots or ballots cast at the polling place on Election Day, so that anyone can make their voice heard if they’re a registered voter.”
In Pennsylvania, every county has three commissioners, two are the majority party, one is the minority.
Schmidt was the only Republican of three Philadelphia city commissioners overseeing the 2020 election.
In June 2022, Schmidt testified before the Jan. 6 House Committee that he investigated and found no evidence of claims brought by Trump’s former adviser Rudy Giuliani that more than 8,000 mail-in ballots were submitted on behalf of dead people in 2020 in Philadelphia. Schmidt also told the Democratic-controlled committee that death threats against him and his family worsened after Trump tweeted his name.
![Pennsylvania ballots](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/08/1200/675/GettyImages-2149320037.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
An election worker flattens ballots during the 2024 Pennsylvania primary election at the City of Philadelphia’s Election Warehouse on Tuesday, April 23, 2024. (Hannah Beier/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
NON-CITIZEN VOTER CONCERNS
Pressler has implored Shapiro, who was briefly considered as Vice President Harris’ running mate, to enact an election integrity executive order to ensure non-citizens aren’t on Pennsylvania’s voter rolls.
In Virginia, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin said his administration had uncovered more than 6,000 non-citizens on the state voter rolls since he took office.
In Ohio, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose last week announced that nearly 600 non-citizens were found to be registered to vote, including about 100 who actually voted. He, therefore, ordered an annual audit of the state voter rolls to scan for and remove anyone found to be unlawfully registered to vote.
Mallinson, meanwhile, said officials are wary of cleaning the rolls during an election year to avoid disenfranchising eligible voters.
Schmidt said that non-citizens on the voter rolls shouldn’t be a cause of concern in Pennsylvania, stressing that voter registration in the commonwealth requires a Social Security number.
Asked directly if he could guarantee there are no non-citizens currently on the voter rolls, Schmidt said it was “encouraging to see states like Virginia and Ohio catch up with Pennsylvania,” crediting himself for bringing the issue of non-citizens registering to vote in Philadelphia to the attention of then-Pensylvania Secretary of State Pedro Cortés in 2016, and the “Motor Voter” program loophole was “resolved a few years ago.”
![Schmidt with a mask during 2020 election](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/08/1200/675/GettyImages-1283885527.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
City Commissioners Lisa Deeley and Al Schmidt speak to the media about the vote counting process on Nov. 4, 2020, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
“When you register to vote in Pennsylvania, you have to provide a Social Security number, and you have to prove or provide a driver’s license number along with your name and the address where you reside,” Schmidt said. “So, any vulnerability in the system that I’ve encountered as a Republican election commissioner in Philadelphia for ten years is not one where non-citizens would be able to register to vote, especially ones that are here in a sort of undocumented status.”
The Shapiro administration in December canceled a $10.7 million contract to update the Pennsylvania voter roll system to avoid making the change during a presidential election year. The current system, known as the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors (SURE), is two decades old and described as outdated by election administrators who use it to check voter registration and track mail-in ballots.
More than a year ago, however, Schmidt said his department began providing new hardware and software upgrades to counties, insisting that the SURE system is reliable for getting through the presidential race.
“It’s very dangerous to change an election system in a presidential election cycle with heavy turnout and all the rest,” Schmidt said.
The state has an open request for bids out to build a replacement system, which Schmidt hopes will be “more user-friendly for our county partners.”
He stressed that the SURE system is essentially “the database of all registered voters in Pennsylvania” and is “unrelated to voter tabulation.”
“The Shapiro administration has taken many steps to prepare for this election – from setting up a training team to train new election directors to setting up an election threat task force in the event that we encounter any of the ugliness that we encountered in 2020 with threats of violence or intimidation targeting our election officials or our voters,” Schmidt said. “It’s important to be prepared for the coming election. It’s a presidential election. Everyone is going into it with eyes wide open and, working closely with our county partners, I’m confident that we will have a free and fair and safe and secure election in Pennsylvania in 2024.”
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Politics
Opinion: Ignore my brother Bobby, Max Kennedy says
![Opinion: Ignore my brother Bobby, Max Kennedy says Opinion: Ignore my brother Bobby, Max Kennedy says](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/db0335a/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3955x2076+0+282/resize/1200x630!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Ff2%2Fe7%2F1a4186234885999e0382ed7a94a0%2Felection-2024-trump-62595.jpg)
I’m heartbroken over my brother Bobby’s endorsement of Donald Trump.
I think often about my father and how he might have viewed the politics of our time. I’m not sure what he would have thought about TikTok or AI, but this much I know for sure: He would have despised Donald Trump.
Trump was exactly the kind of arrogant, entitled bully my father used to prosecute. Robert F. Kennedy’s life was dedicated to promoting the safety, security and happiness of the American people. That is why he would have so admired another former prosecutor, Kamala Harris. Her career, like his, has been all about decency, dignity, equality, democracy and justice for all.
Trump is the enemy of all that. The only thing he seems to be for is himself and, disturbingly, autocrats such as Vladimir Putin, whom my father would have regarded as an existential threat to our country.
Yet my brother now endorses Trump. To pledge allegiance to Trump, a man who demonstrates no adherence to our family’s values, is inconceivable to me.
Worse, it is sordid. Earlier this month, as Harris surged in the polls, my brother offered her his endorsement in exchange for a position in her coming administration. He got no response.
Now he has offered that same deal to Trump. His is a hollow grab for power, a strategic attempt at relevance. It is the opposite of what my father admired: “the unselfish spirit that exists in the United States of America.”
It is all the more tragic because of our brother’s name. To carry the name Robert F. Kennedy Jr. means a special legacy within a legacy. It would strongly imply a desire to carry on our father’s work. But Bobby’s alliance with Trump puts this in jeopardy.
Let me go through the record.
My father was an anti-racist who joined the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in common cause, and forged a powerful bond with African Americans everywhere he went in 1968.
Donald Trump is a lifelong racist whose entire career has been shaped by his dislike of people with a different skin color.
My father believed in expanding legal immigration because he came from an immigrant family and knew how much talent and drive hard-working families bring if we open our doors to them.
Donald Trump stirs up hatred of immigrants, whom he mischaracterizes as criminals and drug addicts.
My father believed in the rule of law, as a prosecutor, and as the attorney general of the United States.
Donald Trump has contempt for the law, as evidenced by his attempts to overthrow the 2020 election and his ongoing legal struggles. He is the first felon to run as a serious candidate for the presidency.
My father believed in bringing Americans together. He said, “I don’t think that we have to shoot at each other, to beat each other, to curse each other and criticize each other, I think that we can do better in this country.”
Donald Trump’s entire campaign is about stoking division.
My father loved the priceless inheritance of our land and water and surely was an environmentalist in his way, even if the term did not catch on until later.
It feels especially hypocritical that Bobby, a genuine environmentalist, has thrown in with the most anti-environmental president in our history, who promises to “drill, baby, drill” if elected.
My father was against the “mindless menace” of gun violence. Donald Trump is against any meaningful form of regulating guns.
My father believed in democracy. Donald Trump does not.
My father believed in the truth. Donald Trump does not.
At the University of Kansas, on March 18, 1968, my father said, “[W]e as a people, are strong enough, we are brave enough to be told the truth of where we stand. This country needs honesty and candor in its political life and from the president of the United States.”
The truth is essential to democracy. And truth is essential inside a family, too. For all of these reasons, the truth requires me to set the record clear. I love Bobby. But I hate what he is doing to our country. It is worse than disappointment. We are in mourning.
Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would be motivated to write something of this nature. With a heavy heart, I am today asking my fellow Americans to do what will honor our father the most: Ignore Bobby and support Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic platform. It’s what is best for our country.
As my father said, in a campaign of his own, “I want all of us, young and old, to have a chance to build a better country and change the direction of the United States of America.”
Max Kennedy is an author, an attorney and the ninth child of Ethel and Robert Kennedy. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Vicki.
Politics
Walz faced another accusation of misrepresentation in unearthed, blistering letter: 'Remove any reference'
![Walz faced another accusation of misrepresentation in unearthed, blistering letter: 'Remove any reference' Walz faced another accusation of misrepresentation in unearthed, blistering letter: 'Remove any reference'](https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/08/403ad5f5-tim-walz.jpg)
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is facing another accusation of misrepresenting his background after a Nebraska Chamber of Commerce letter from 2006 resurfaced amid Walz’s campaign for vice president.
When Walz first ran for Congress in Minnesota, he touted on his campaign website that he received an award from the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce in 1993 for his work with the business community, according to a 2006 article from the Post Bulletin.
He never received such an award, however, which was outlined to him in a blistering letter from the then-president of the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce, Barry L. Kennedy.
“We researched this matter and can confirm that you have not been the recipient of any award from the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce,” the letter addressed to Walz on Nov. 1, 2006, reads.
FLASHBACK: OBAMA WAS ONE OF EARLIEST BIG-NAME DEMS TO ENDORSE WALZ AT DAWN OF HIS POLITICAL CAREER
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz takes the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Aug. 21, 2024. (Reuters/Mike Segar)
“I am not going to draw a conclusion about your intentions by including this line in your biography. However, we respectfully request that you remove any reference to our organization as it could be considered an endorsement of your candidacy. It should be pointed out, however, that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has endorsed your opponent, Congressman Gil Gutknecht, for his support of small business issues,” Kennedy continued.
The letter was unearthed by Minnesota outlet Alpha News last week, after the controversy gained traction locally in 2006.
TIM WALZ SLAMMED AS ‘POLITICAL CHAMELEON’ AFTER DITCHING FORMER PRO-SECOND AMENDMENT STANCE
The Post Bulletin, a Minnesota newspaper based in Rochester, reported in 2006 that Walz’s congressional campaign updated its website to reflect Walz did not win a Nebraska Chamber of Commerce award, but had won an award from the Nebraska Junior Chamber of Commerce, known as the Jaycees. The then-campaign manager passed off the issue as a “typographical error,” the outlet reported at the time.
When approached by Fox Digital about the 2006 controversy, the Harris-Walz campaign said Walz frequently speaks “openly and off the cuff.”
“Governor Walz speaks the way real people speak – openly and off the cuff. The American people appreciate that Gov. Walz tells it like it is and doesn’t talk like a politician, and they appreciate the difference between someone who occasionally misspeaks and a pathological liar like Donald Trump,” the campaign said.
![U.S. Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz hold a campaign rally in Milwaukee](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/08/1200/675/DNC-Kamala-Harris-Chicago-Day-2_51.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, hold a campaign rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Aug. 20, 2024. (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)
The claim follows a long history of people accusing Walz of misrepresenting himself and his history, most notably a bevy of veterans accusing the Gopher State Democrat of misrepresenting his military career.
Walz served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring in 2005, when he launched a successful congressional campaign and served as a member of the U.S. House representing Minnesota from 2007 until 2019.
Following Vice President Kamala Harris naming him as her running mate, Walz has been slammed by a number of veterans for allegedly misrepresenting his service in the military, including identifying himself to the public as a retired “Command Sergeant Major.”
TRUMP CAMP SAYS HARRIS-WALZ ‘DANGEROUSLY LIBERAL’ TICKET IS ‘EVERY AMERICAN’S NIGHTMARE’
Walz was promoted to the command sergeant major rank following a deployment to Italy in 2004, but he did not complete coursework with the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy to retain the rank in retirement. Walz instead retired as a master sergeant, one pay grade below command sergeant major.
“For 20 years, they let this guy go by with a lie that he deployed to Iraq, which he didn’t, and that he retired as a command sergeant major, which he did not. I mean, that’s just blatant lies,” Republican Virginia Senate candidate Hung Cao, a retired Navy captain, told The New York Post this month of Walz.
![Tim Walz speakimg](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/08/1200/675/403ad5f5-tim-walz.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz speaks during a campaign rally at Temple University on Aug. 6, 2024, in Philadelphia. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The battalion commander of Walz’s former Minnesota Army National Guard unit also issued a scathing message to Harris’ running mate earlier this month regarding him portraying himself as a “retired Command Sergeant Major.”
VAN JONES: WALZ NEEDS TO ADMIT HE EXAGGERATED MILITARY RECORD SO DEMS CAN ‘MOVE ON’
“He did not earn the rank or successfully complete any assignment as an E9,” John Kolb, who served as a lieutenant colonel of the 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery from 2005 to 2007, wrote in a social media post this month. “It is an affront to the Noncommissioned Officer Corps that he continues to glom onto the title. I can sit in the cockpit of an airplane, it does not make me a pilot. Similarly, when the demands of service and leadership at the highest level got real, he chose another path.”
The “retired Command Sergeant Major” rank was promoted by the Harris campaign until earlier this month, when it changed Walz’s biography on the campaign’s website to read that he “served as a command sergeant major.”
Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.
Politics
Column: Kamala Harris put California at the center of politics. Will that help or hurt her?
![Column: Kamala Harris put California at the center of politics. Will that help or hurt her? Column: Kamala Harris put California at the center of politics. Will that help or hurt her?](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/2bb195f/2147483647/strip/true/crop/5472x2873+0+388/resize/1200x630!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fe7%2F2b%2F73a5aee743ae8624f9cc0262f162%2F1472058-la-pol-dnc-rcg1037.jpg)
When Kamala Harris was formally installed as the Democratic presidential nominee, her home-state delegation had the best seats in the house, right up front.
Visions of the Golden State and a parade of its personalities filled the convention’s four-day program, and passes to California’s after-parties — featuring appearances by John Legend, the Killers and Oakland’s Tony! Toni! Toné — were among the hottest tickets in Chicago.
Suddenly, California is at the center of politics, in a way the nation’s most important and populous state hasn’t been since former Gov. Ronald Reagan was in the White House.
A California Democrat sits atop the party’s presidential ticket for the first time in history, thanks in good part to the machinations of another California Democrat who helped elbow the incumbent — and nominee-in-waiting — aside.
“California is having a moment,” said Don Sipple, a political strategist who helped elect several of the state’s governors, because of “the woman who opened the door and the woman who walked through it.”
(Though, it should be noted, the door-opening woman, Nancy Pelosi, and Harris have never been close. The former House speaker publicly spoke of an “open process” to replace President Biden before endorsing his vice president as the best alternative after Biden gave up his reelection bid.)
With heightened attention comes greater scrutiny, and with that added scrutiny comes a fight to define California — and, by extension, Harris — for the rest of America.
The outcome could very well determine who wins in November.
Is California a sun-kissed incubator of innovation and opportunity that continues to beckon doers and dreamers from the world over, as it has for well over 150 years?
Or is it an overburdened and overstretched collection of struggling communities that fail to provide even the basics — safety, clean shelter, sustaining livelihoods — for a shamefully large portion of its population?
Yes and yes.
“There is plenty of evidence” to support both views, said Jack Pitney, a former Republican operative and professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. He paraphrased Walt Whitman.
“California is large. It contains multitudes,” Pitney said. “It is possible for two things to be true at once.”
Red and blue America. Prosperous and failing California. Two ways of seeing the same thing.
Bill Carrick, longtime political advisor to the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, scoffed at the notion that Harris’ home state will hang like a millstone around the vice president’s neck.
“Ultimately, a presidential campaign is about picking someone who you think will make your life better,” said Carrick, who has worked extensively in national politics. It’s not, he said, about a candidate’s return address.
Sure, Carrick went on, “there are some ideological Republicans who are devoted to Trump” and who eagerly lap up the California-as-hellhole narrative — but “we’re not going to get them anyway.”
Most voters, or at least those who are open to supporting Harris, know very little about the vice president. That, Carrick said, gives her an opportunity to introduce herself — and her home state — on her own terms, “as opposed to the Republican cartoon characterization.”
Maybe so.
But Trump and his fellow Republicans, abetted by Fox News and other sympathetic media, will make a case that California is a case study in what goes wrong when Democrats are put in charge. They will hold up Harris, a statewide officeholder for more than a dozen years, as the prime example of its destructive ruling class.
That vastly overstates her power and influence, first as attorney general and then for a relatively brief stint as one of California’s two U.S. senators. But that detail will surely be lost in the fog of campaign warfare.
Harris is, however, an exemplar of her home state in one significant way.
There’s no doubting she reflects the politics and makeup of modern California, just as the two presidents the state yielded, Reagan and Richard M. Nixon, embodied the California of their day and age.
The two men rose to power at a time when California was mostly white and reliably Republican, with a broad and deep conservative streak. By the time Harris arrived in Sacramento after being elected attorney general in 2010, the state was solidly Democratic, increasingly liberal and had more Black and brown than white residents. Not least, there were also significantly more opportunities for a woman in politics.
In that way, Harris and Reagan serve as perfect bookends to the state they represented.
Given the changes of the last 30-plus years, it’s surprising California Democrats haven’t managed to put one of their own in the White House, said Jim Newton, a biographer and state historian.
“We think of it as such an exceptionally blue place,” he said, “and it’s produced so many national Democratic leaders.”
Among them, the legendarily powerful Rep. Phillip Burton, Pelosi (who succeeded Burton’s widow in representing San Francisco in Congress), and Feinstein. But until Biden chose Harris as his running mate, no California Democrat had come remotely near the White House, though several tried.
Of course, Harris wouldn’t have this shot at the presidency but for a unique set of circumstances. If Biden hadn’t performed so terribly in that June debate, if Democrats hadn’t panicked afterward, if Pelosi and other party leaders hadn’t maneuvered to shove the president aside, the vice president could very well have been out of a job come January.
That still might happen. But give Harris her due for getting where she is. After 20 years in politics, she stands within hailing distance of the White House and making further history from a geographic standpoint.
In politics, as so often in life, timing is everything.
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