North Carolina governor Pat McCrory just released this video statement through the official North Carolina governor’s office account announcing his concession:
Here are the reactions:
Democratic National Committee:
North Carolina Democratic Party:
Roy Cooper:
There are no statements yet from the Republican National Committee, the Republican Party of North Carolina, or the Republican Governors Association. This post will be updated if they make any public statements later.
According to most recent figures published last night as part of the Durham County recount ordered by the North Carolina State Board of Elections, of the 52,833 ballots counted, Roy Cooper picked up 3 votes, Pat McCrory lost 1 vote and the overvote tally dropped by 2. The recount continues on Monday morning.
Here are the two most recent tweets about it from Durham County Government:
Numbers should be coming in later, but based on these tweets, it’s not looking good for Pat McCrory.
As the race for chairmanship and other elected leadership posts in the Democratic National Committee heats up, candidates have begun putting out their platforms. Here are the ones that are out so far (Note that candidates with an asterisk next to their name are incumbents running for re-election):
DNC Chair Candidates
Sally Boynton Brown
Ray Buckley
Pete Buttigieg
Keith Ellison
Jehmu Greene
Jaime Harrison
Peter Peckarsky
Tom Perez
Sam Ronan
Robert Vinson Brannum
DNC Vice Chair Candidates
Michael Blake
Melissa Byrne
Mitch Ceasar
Maria Elena Durazo *
Liz Jaff
Lorna Johnson
Latoia Jones
Grace Meng *
Rick Palacio
Adam Parkhomenko
DNC Vice Chair of Civic Engagement and Voter Participation Candidates
Karen Carter Peterson
Melissa Fazli
Chris Reeves
Yasmine Taeb
Secretary Candidates
Ana Cuprill
Roberta Lange
Jason Rae
Stephanie Rawlings-Blake *
Treasurer Candidates
Joyce Amico
Bill Derrough
National Finance Chair Candidates
Henry Muñoz III *
Withdrawn/Did Not Run
Xavier Becerra (Opted not to run. Nominated Attorney General of California December 1.)
Howard Dean (Declared November 10. Dropped out December 2.)
Ilyse Hogue (Opted not to run December 21.)
Steve Israel (Opted not to run)
Martin O’Malley (Opted not to run)
Vincent Tolliver (Declared for Houston DNC Forum January 28, expelled from the race January 31.)
As more candidates get in the race and publish their platforms, they will be added to this list.
New York Senator Kristen Gillibrand (a potential 2020 presidential candidate) announced that she would oppose a waiver in order for retired General James Mattis’s nomination as Secretary of Defense to proceed.
At issue: the National Security Act of 1947, a longstanding federal law saying nominees for Secretary of Defense must have been retired from active duty for at least seven years. Mattis retired as a four-star general in 2013, meaning that he couldn’t be eligible for the position until 2020 as the law currently stands. Getting around this law would require a congressional vote granting him a waiver, so he can be considered and the Senate can give him an up-or-down vote.
Mattis and the Trump administration have run into a possible snag: Democrats could require a 60-vote supermajority to grant Mattis the waiver, meaning they could unilaterally block his nomination if their expected 48-member caucus holds together with at least 41 votes. Senate Democrats changed the rules in 2013 requiring only a simple majority to confirm executive branch nominees. Most Trump cabinet appointees could be confirmed on that rule change alone, but because the rule change did not apply to this potential vote on a waiver, the 60-vote threshold still stands. Gillibrand – who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee which would hold confirmation hearings for Mattis – will require a 60-vote threshold for the waiver, an aide told Politico.
Governor Howard Dean (D-Vt.) released this video for the Association of State Democratic Chairs meeting happening in Denver this weekend.
In addition to announcing his withdrawal from the race, he did not endorse another candidate and encouraged that whoever gets elected to the post take the job as a full-time position – a seeming reference to Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) who is a sitting member of Congress. Based on the number of endorsements he has accumulated, Ellison remains the front-runner in the race, but that doesn’t mean anything at this point. The winner has to receive the votes of at least 224 out of the 447 voting members of the Democratic National Committee.
Dean’s withdrawal leaves three confirmed candidates in the race (Ellison, New Hampshire Democratic Party chairman Ray Buckley, and South Carolina Democratic Party chairman Jaime Harrison) which creates some interesting dynamics.
There is still the possibility of other candidates jumping in the race, particularly Ilyse Hogue (president of NARAL Pro-Choice America) and Stephanie Schriock (president of Emily’s List).
Two leaks coming out of New York today that have some Democrats worrying:
Manchin’s office has denied the Politico report. Heitkamp was invited to meet with Trump tomorrow and accepted the invitation. According to CNN’s Manu Raju, she did not rule out accepting a job in the new administration.
Some context to this: first, both Heitkamp and Manchin are Democrats up for re-election in 2018 in states that Trump won easily and have become more Republican in recent years. Second, if one or both of them accepted, that would weaken Democratic opposition in the Senate, from the current 52-48 majority to 53-47 or 54-46. Why? Because the sitting Republican governors in North Dakota and West Virginia would be able to appoint their replacements, who would most certainly be Republicans.
CORRECTION: Earl Ray Tomblin, the current governor of West Virginia, is a Democrat. If Manchin were to accept a position in the Trump administration, he would nominate a Democrat as a temporary replacement, but Republicans would have the opportunity to win that Senate seat during the next election cycle.
Several news and political organizations have been reviewing and publicizing Rep. Keith Ellison’s writings about Zionism, Nation of Islam founder Louis Farrakhan, and slavery reparations from more than two decades ago. CNN did an in-depth review which you can read here. They became an issue during his first congressional run ten years ago. He has since disavowed his involvement with the Nation of Islam and has been defended by Jewish organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and J Street. His past writings and views are drawing renewed scrutiny since Ellison announced his candidacy for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee.
Ellison wrote this blog post on Medium explaining his background and the context for some of the issues at the time that are now being raised against him. It’s a start, but clearly he will have to address these issues from his past publicly and privately to convince DNC members to elect him as chairman.
UPDATE: Bad news for Ellison. The Anti-Defamation League has released a statement retracting its previous defense of Ellison, citing a recording of a 2010 speech – after he had been elected to Congress – which they describe as “deeply disturbing and disqualifying.” Here’s the relevant excerpt:
New information recently has come to light that raises serious concerns about whether Rep. Ellison faithfully could represent the Democratic Party’s traditional support for a strong and secure Israel. In a speech recorded in 2010 to a group of supporters, Rep. Ellison is heard suggesting that American foreign policy in the Middle East is driven by Israel, saying: “The United States foreign policy in the Middle East is governed by what is good or bad through a country of 7 million people. A region of 350 million all turns on a country of 7 million. Does that make sense? Is that logic? Right? When the Americans who trace their roots back to those 350 million get involved, everything changes.”
Rep. Ellison’s remarks are both deeply disturbing and disqualifying. His words imply that U.S. foreign policy is based on religiously or national origin-based special interests rather than simply on America’s best interests. Additionally, whether intentional or not, his words raise the specter of age-old stereotypes about Jewish control of our government, a poisonous myth that may persist in parts of the world where intolerance thrives, but that has no place in open societies like the U.S. These comments sharply contrast with the Democratic National Committee platform position, which states: “A strong and secure Israel is vital to the United States because we share overarching strategic interests and the common values of democracy, equality, tolerance, and pluralism.”
Read the statement in its full context here.
UPDATE II: Here’s Ellison’s response to the ADL statement.
Former California Assembly speaker John Perez – who announced yesterday he was considering a run for DNC chairman – announced he will be running for Congress. This just in from Democratic strategist Dave Jacobson:
Perez apparently sent out a press statement shortly after the Becerra news broke.
If Perez is going to run for Becerra’s seat in California’s 34th congressional district, that would presumably take him out of contention for the DNC chairman race.
The Los Angeles Times just sent out a news alert announcing Governor Jerry Brown has appointed Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) to be the next attorney general of California, taking over for outgoing Attorney General Kamala Harris who was recently elected to the U.S. Senate.
More details:
Becerra, 58, has served 12 terms in Congress and was making a bid to become the ranking Democrat on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee when Brown called him unexpectedly to offer the job.
“It’s a phenomenal opportunity,” Becerra said. “It means I get to be home a lot more.”
Becerra, who is the highest-ranking Latino in Congress, would be the state’s first Latino attorney general.
He worked in the Civil Division of the attorney general’s office from 1987 to 1990 before entering Congress. Becerra earned a law degree from Stanford Law School and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford University.
He said in an interview Thursday morning he had always wanted to return to the office.
Becerra, if confirmed, would be the first attorney general appointed by a governor since Thomas Lynch, who was tapped by former Gov. Pat Brown in 1964.
The choice will no doubt send political shock waves through California because Becerra was not on any of the widely circulated lists of picks. Before Nov. 8, the conventional wisdom had been that the governor would choose a caretaker, perhaps even a career staffer who would simply carry out the office’s functions through the 2018 elections.
Becerra must be confirmed by the state Senate and Assembly, both handily controlled by Democrats.
The office of attorney general is perhaps second only to the governor in power, with broad authority to file sweeping legal action and defend California law.
UPDATE: Here’s the statement from Becerra:
The North Carolina State Board of Elections ordered a machine recount of 90,000 votes in heavily Democratic Durham County, a request backed by Pat McCrory’s campaign and the state Republican Party. The board’s decision came down to a 3-2 vote on party lines.
More details on the 90,000 votes in question, from the Raleigh News & Observer:
The roughly 90,000 votes under scrutiny in Durham were added to the statewide tally around 11:30 p.m. on election night. McCrory, who is seeking a second term, appeared to be leading statewide until those votes were added to the total; Democrat Roy Cooper, North Carolina’s attorney general, has been leading in the count ever since.
Baker said the late shift could have reminded voters of fraudulent elections in which corrupt officials added to the vote count if their candidate was behind. He said that practice was once common in Madison County, a rural county near Asheville where he lives.
“I’m not saying that’s what happened here,” Baker said. “I personally don’t have any reason to doubt that any information entered was correct.”
Another Republican board member, Rhonda Amoroso of Wilmington, cited past election problems and staffing changes in Durham County as one reason to hold a recount. “I think right now we have a taint,” she said.
McCrory’s campaign said he won’t seek a statewide recount if the Durham votes are recounted. Election officials there said the recount would take about eight hours, so it’s possible the governor’s race could be settled by the end of the week.
In the latest numbers on Wednesday, Cooper’s lead was above 10,000 votes for the first time as the final counties were finishing counting absentee and provisional ballots. Several more counties are expected to finish their tallies by the end of the week; McCrory isn’t eligible for a statewide recount unless the margin is less than 10,000.
Reaction from the Cooper campaign:
What’s the end game in all this? According to News & Observer political reporter Colin Campbell:
politicalwilderness.com 