Impact2020: June 11, 2020
In this Impact2020 briefing for Thursday, June 11, the RNC votes for a slimmed down convention with two locations, we explore the “pivotal time” for President Donald Trump less than five months from Election Day, and North Carolina’s legislature votes to expand mail voting despite opposition.
On the Ground
What’s staying, what’s leaving Charlotte
The Republican National Committee voted to hold a stripped down convention in Charlotte, N.C. and to move President Donald Trump’s acceptance speech to another location, Jim Morrill and Brian Murphy report for the Charlotte Observer.
An event that was once slated to have 50,000 attendees will now be greatly reduced. Now just 336 of the party’s nearly 2,5000 delegates will descend upon Charlotte in late August, but every delegate will still vote on the presidential and vice presidential nominations. Another notable change: the platform committee, so the platform approved in 2016 will remain for 2020.
Jacksonville, Fla. remains the front-runner to host Trump’s acceptance speech.
The Democrats have not changed the location of their national convention set for the week for Aug. 17. Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez said the event will still happen in Milwaukee even if he doesn’t know how many delegates will be on hand given the ongoing pandemic, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Bill Glauber reports. Perez stated “we will follow the science and we will not abandon Milwaukee.”
Turning it around
McClatchy’s David Catanese and Alex Roarty explore whether a dip in the polls and a trio of crises that “have suddenly recast … Trump as an undisputed underdog in the 2020 campaign” is a temporary low point for his campaign or whether it has fundamentally changed things for the president.
“Members of both major parties agreed that if the election were this month, Trump wouldn’t just lose, he’d get ‘clobbered,’ in the words of one former high-ranking Democratic official.” But there are five months until the election and we don’t know whether these recent events will have a longer lasting impact.
“The two scenarios could be the difference between a contest in which Trump might still ultimately prevail over Biden with slim margins in a few battleground states, and one where the president is in deep danger of suffering an electoral rout across the map,” write Catanese and Roarty.
Credit: Evan Vucci, AP
“This is a pivotal time,” said Brian Reisinger, a Wisconsin-based Republican strategist. “We’ll look back on Election Day and be able to say if this time is when Trump was able to start his comeback or if it’s when something more foundational changed.”
Listen to a discussion of this dynamic in the 2020 race on the new episode of our political podcast, Beyond the Bubble, that drops TODAY. Download it on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcasts.
Drama over NC voting expansion
An election bill to expand access to voting by mail that previously had bipartisan support in the North Carolina General Assembly broke down into partisan fighting Wednesday. The Raleigh News & Observer’s Will Doran explains that it “passed the House nearly unanimously last month, 116-3. But when it passed 35-12 in the Senate Wednesday, all of the Republicans supported it while the Democrats were split.”
The bill includes increased funding for elections and new rules that will make it easier for voters to request, fill out and track mail-in ballots. But “some Democrats said while they like those provisions, the bill doesn’t do enough to respond to the potential snares that could hit the November elections,” Doran writes .
One point of particular contention was the voter ID provision in the bill, which would loosen rules for voters needing to bring ID to the polls. Currently, voter ID laws in the state are blocked from taking effect, “after two different courts ruled that the laws appeared to have been written and passed with racially discriminatory intent.” Some Democrats accused their Republican colleagues of racist voter disenfranchisement.
But it’s not over yet. Those court cases haven’t ended and there is still a final chance for amendments to the bill.
Trail Mix
Election results
Jon Ossoff captured the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in Georgia and will face GOP Sen. David Perdue in November, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein reports.
Other Georgia primaries are headed for August runoffs, including the 13th District where Democratic Rep. David Scott faces a tough fight, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Tia Mitchell and Sarah Kallis write.
Election disruption
“Iowa Senate Republicans passed a wide-ranging election bill that would prohibit the secretary of state from mailing absentee ballot request forms without first receiving a request from a voter,” Ian Richardson reports for the Des Moine Register.
The number of new voter registrations in Florida plummeted in April by 60% compared to the April before the 2016 presidential election, reports Alison Ross of the Tampa Bay Times.
South Carolina election officials are promising to step up oversight of Richland County’s primary election after Tuesday’s vote featured long lines and incorrect ballots, but state Sen. Dick Harpootlian wants to see an investigation and “something in writing.” The State’s Bristow Marchant has the story.
The Raleigh News & Observer’s Will Doran reports that up to 80,000 North Carolinians may have been sent request forms for mail-in ballots that are illegitimate.
The Sacramento Bee’s Sophia Bollag reports that “initiative campaigns on sports betting and data privacy are suing California, arguing the state should modify deadlines to qualify for the ballot because the COVID-19 pandemic interfered with their ability to gather signatures.”
LeBron James is among black athletes and entertainers forming an organization to help safeguard African Americans’ voting rights, Cleveland.com’s Mary Kilpatrick reports.
Number of the Day
10
Trump’s national approval rating fell by 10 points, from 49% to 39%, in the last month, according to a new Gallup poll.
For Planning Purposes
June 11
Trump holds private fundraiser and a roundtable in Dallas
Biden holds a roundtable in Philadelphia followed by a virtual finance event
June 12
Vice President Mike Pence travels to Pittsburgh for a listening session with faith and community leaders, lunch at a local restaurant, and a tour of Oberg Industries
June 23
Kentucky and New York hold primaries
July 7
Delaware and New Jersey hold primaries
“They tested negative for voting”
Stephen Colbert had plenty to say about Georgia’s primary day chaos.
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This story was originally published June 11, 2020 at 1:08 PM.