Impact2020: May 4, 2020
Welcome to your Impact2020 briefing for Monday, May 4. Six states may swing the 2020 presidential election, Kansas’ record primary turnout fuels mail voting debate, and Joe Biden’s accuser speaks out to her former local paper.
On the Ground
Six months to go
We are now six months away from the 2020 presidential election. The coronavirus pandemic has thrown much of the campaign into flux, but that hasn’t prevented the battleground map from solidifying.
McClatchy’s David Catanese writes that leaders in both parties and officials with President Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s campaigns see six states at the center of the fight: the former “blue wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the traditional swing states of Florida and North Carolina, and the emerging battleground of Arizona.
Other states will receive attention too, but the election is likely to come down to the results in those six. One common thread among them: they are all states Trump carried in 2016, but he currently trails in many of the polls there.
Catanese also broke down the state of the electoral battlefield on the latest episode of the Beyond the Bubble podcast, which you can listen to here.
Get the latest 2020 presidential campaign news from David Catanese via text. Impact2020 subscribers, sign up here.
Turnout surge
Meanwhile, the Democratic presidential primary is still technically playing out. Biden easily won the Kansas primary over the weekend with 77% of the vote, meaning he will take majority of the state’s 41 pledged delegates, the Kansas City Star’s Bryan Lowry reports.
Credit: Chris Ochner, Kansas City Star
But the big story of the election was voter turnout. Kansas switched from a caucus to a primary this year, which was conducted entirely by mail due to the COVID-19 crisis.
That all resulted in “a participation record with 146,873 ballots cast and an overall turnout rate of 34.7 percent,” Lowry writes. “The more than 300 percent increase over the 2016 caucus turnout has helped fuel the national debate about expansion of mail voting for the November election, when COVID-19 will continue to be a concern.”
‘Step down’
Tara Reade, who has accused Biden of sexually assaulting her when she was a Senate staffer in 1993, told the San Luis Obispo Tribune’s Matt Fountain that the presumptive Democratic nominee should “step down” from the 2020 race.
“I would say stand up and take full account for what you’ve done and for your past treatment of women,” Reade said in a phone interview Friday afternoon, when asked what she would like to say to her former boss. “He holds himself up as a champion of women, but the fact remains that his personal life did not reflect his public life.”
Reade’s comments came after Biden publicly denied the allegations for the first time last Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Reade added that she does not plan to vote for any presidential candidate in November.
“The fact that we have two men running for the highest office in the land, both with a history of misogyny and sexual misconduct, says more about our culture than anything,” she said.
Trail Mix
Battleground state watch
The Arizona Republic’s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Ronald J. Hansen write that Trump is looking to Arizona to help reverse his sagging political fortunes with his visit on Tuesday.
Biden’s campaign “criticized the ‘stunning’ racial disparity of coronavirus patients in Georgia, saying the disproportionate number of African-Americans hospitalized by the disease highlights stubborn inequalities he’ll address if he defeats … Trump,” Greg Bluestein reports for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Jonathan Tamari notes that while Biden, Trump and their allies are pouring millions on Pennsylvania’s airwaves, they aren’t spending big in the pricey Philadelphia market yet.
Biden and Trump are tied at 43% in Texas, according to a new Dallas Morning News/University of Texas at Tyler poll.
Election disruption
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Craig Gilbert previews the next “pandemic election” in Wisconsin’s 7th congressional district, set for May 12.
A third lawsuit seeks to expand voters’ rights to cast absentee ballots in South Carolina’s June 9 primary and November general election, alleging that “racial bias in S.C. laws and history make it difficult for African Americans to vote, especially during the threat of the coronavirus pandemic,” John Monk and Emma Dumain report for The State.
A federal judge has ruled against a conservative group’s lawsuit that sought to block Nevada’s planned all-mail primary election on June 9, Riley Snyder reports for the Nevada Independent.
The Idaho Statesman’s Hayley Harding examines some of the problems counties have been experiencing after the state made the May 19 elections all-absentee.
Veepstakes
Biden wrote a joint op-ed with Elizabeth Warren for McClatchy newspapers calling for greater oversight of coronavirus relief funds.
Number of the Day
67%
The number of Americans who say it’s likely that COVID-19 will significantly disrupt voting in the presidential election in November, according to Pew Research survey results.
For planning purposes
May 5
Trump visits a Honeywell facility in Phoenix, Ariz.
May 6
Jill Biden holds virtual events in Michigan
May 12
Nebraska primary
May 19
Idaho and Oregon primaries
May 22
Hawaii primary
“My head is so not there”
Samantha Bee tries to get Kamala Harris to spill the beans on whether she’s at the top of Biden’s shortlist for VP… or attorney general for that matter.
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