Arizona’s election system may not be quick, but it is thorough, secretary of state-elect says
Arizona Secretary of State-elect Adrian Fontes said that although the election system in the state is not quick, it is thorough.
The state is expecting to release more results Monday night. Fontes thanked election officials across Arizona for the work they have done processing ballots since Election Day.
Fontes told CNN that as the new election chief, he does not plan to make changes to Arizona’s election system because “there’s no reason to.”
“Just because we’re living in a world of instant gratification doesn’t mean that we should sacrifice accuracy, accountability and security so that folks can, you know, click away,” he told CNN’s Erin Burnett. “Arizona’s election systems are solid, and we’ve been doing a real good job for a long, long time.”
The new elections chief added that the difference between recent years and past elections is the tight margins. This means it takes longer for races to be projected because not one candidate is winning by a large number of votes, he said.
Fontes, a Democrat, defeated Republican challenger Mark Finchem, a self-proclaimed member of the far-right extremist group the Oath Keepers, who called the 2020 election “irredeemably compromised.”
Though Fontes won the election, he said he doesn’t think the state is past the moment of people distrusting the vote counting system.
“This isn’t a one and done sort of an exercise. The cancer that is is election denialism, the disease that’s pervaded over the last couple of years for all the wrong reasons, has to be flushed out bit by bit. It’s going to take a long time for a lot of folks to regain confidence that they should never have lost in the first place in our election system,” he said.
“I’m proud to do that work as well as I can — working with the coalition of independents and Republicans who came forward in my campaign to help us bring reason and some truth into these processes,” Fontes added.
Some context: In Arizona, in addition to in-person voting, voters have the option to mail or drop off their ballots on Election Day. The state doesn’t even start the important process of signature verification on any of those ballots until the Wednesday after the election, according to officials.
Most states have some sort of signature verification system for their absentee and mail-in ballots, according to a tally from the National Conference of State Legislatures.
McCarthy pledges to kick Omar, Swalwell and Schiff off key committees if he becomes speaker
From CNN’s Melanie Zanona
House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy promised Monday that he would kick key Democrats off committees if his party gains control of the lower chamber.
McCarthy said that he would remove Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Democratic Reps. Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff from the House Intelligence Committee, according to a source in the room during a Republican conference leadership forum.
The California Republican is vying to become speaker of the House.
CNN has not yet projected which party will control the lower chamber, though Republicans appear on track to gain a narrow House majority.
Some context: The vote to elect the next speaker will take place in January at the start of the new Congress, but House Republicans are holding their internal leadership elections to pick a speaker nominee this week.
Republicans held a candidate forum Monday evening. It will be followed by leadership elections on Tuesday, according to a copy of the schedule shared with CNN.
Sen. Josh Hawley: “This election was the funeral for the Republican Party as we know it”
From CNN’s Ali Zaslav
GOP Sen. Josh Hawley on Monday said the midterm election “was the funeral for the Republican Party as we know it.”
“I think that this election was the funeral for the Republican Party as we know it,” he said at the US Capitol as he headed to vote. “The Republican Party as we have known it is dead –– and voters have made that clear.”
The Missouri senator added:
“We need to be thinking about what the future here is. I like a lot of what President Trump did as president. I think we’ve got a lot to talk about there. But we need to have a conversation about our core convictions to the party and clearly this party is going to have to, actually it’s going to have to be different, or we’re not going to be a majority party in this country.”
On whether he supports Trump running in 2024, Hawley said, “I’m not gonna give him advice, he’ll choose to do what he’s gonna do.”
Analysis: These Republicans admit the party has an extremism problem
From CNN’s Zachary B. Wolf
Confronted with an unexpected moment of reckoning, some moderate Republicans are pointing out that the party has some important decisions to make about its future:
Are they going to be the party of former President Donald Trump or a party that wins elections?
Are they going to be able to excise the “extremism” in their party that more Republicans are openly talking about?
First test: The first indication of where the party is headed will come this week when Republicans, anticipating they will ultimately hold a slim House majority, choose their nominee for speaker.
Some of the most Trump-aligned lawmakers want Rep. Kevin McCarthy to commit to a more combative stance against the Biden administration. While McCarthy expects to prevail, the unfolding drama will show what he has to sacrifice to keep Republicans in the House on the same page. CNN reported Monday that Trump has been quietly working to shore up support for McCarthy.
Moving beyond extremism: Two moderate Republican governors who will be handing over their jobs to Democrats next year are speaking out about how their party failed in a year when it should have romped.
“Voters, generally speaking, especially in battleground states, aren’t interested in extremism. They just aren’t,” Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview that aired Monday on “The Lead.” Baker, who will be replaced by Democratic attorney general Maura Healey in January, said Trump’s influence hurt Republicans on Election Day and is driving people from the party.
Third strike for Trump: Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, long a Trump critic, was more unvarnished in his criticism during an interview Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“Commonsense conservatives that focused on talking about issues people cared about, like the economy and crime and education, they did win,” Hogan told Dana Bash. “But people who tried to relitigate the 2020 election and focused on conspiracy theories and talked about things the voters didn’t care about, they were almost universally rejected.”
In that regard, American voters were sophisticated, splitting tickets to elect Republicans in certain races and Democrats in others.
Hogan, who will be replaced by Democrat Wes Moore in January, said this is the third straight election Trump has cost Republicans. “It’s like three strikes, you’re out,” he said, adding, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. And Donald Trump kept saying, ‘We’re going to be winning so much, we will get tired of winning.’ I’m tired of losing. I mean, that’s all he’s done.”
Others are not quite as direct, even if they’re saying some similar things.
No candidate announced a run against McCarthy for House GOP leadership, sources say
From CNN’s Manu Raju, Annie Grayer and Melanie Zanona
No candidate stood up to announce a run against House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy once he finished speaking and taking questions at a post-election Republican conference meeting Monday, according to two sources in the room.
A candidate can still stand up to run tomorrow when the leadership election is held.
Some context: The vote to elect the next speaker will take place in January at the start of the new Congress, but House Republicans are holding their internal leadership elections to pick a speaker nominee this week.
Republicans held a candidate forum Monday evening. It will be followed by leadership elections on Tuesday, according to a copy of the schedule shared with CNN.
McCarthy addressed Republican conference and got a standing ovation
From CNN’s Manu Raju
House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy addressed the Republican conference behind closed doors Monday and got a standing ovation at the first post-election meeting, according to a source familiar with the meeting.
“They don’t give out gavels in small, medium, and large — we have the majority and we have the gavels,” he said.
It was a call for unity, a source said, adding that McCarthy said, “We will win as a team — or we will lose as individuals.”
One member in the room said McCarthy was taking questions from lawmakers in the audience. Some members were standing up to show support, while others raised concerns to see what rule changes McCarthy will make.
Rep. Matt Gaetz asked McCarthy if he would try to solicit or accept speaker votes from any Democrats, according to a source in the room. McCarthy told him “no.”
Sources told CNN today that McCarthy allies had tried to convince moderate Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar to switch parties. The Texas congressman’s office said it was not an idea he would entertain.
Some context: The vote to elect the next speaker will take place in January at the start of the new Congress, but House Republicans will hold their internal leadership elections to pick a speaker nominee this week.
Republicans are holding a candidate forum on Monday evening, followed by leadership elections on Tuesday, according to a copy of the schedule shared with CNN.
McCarthy allies tried to convince moderate Democrat to switch parties
From CNN’s Daniella Diaz, Melanie Zanona and Manu Raju
With a razor-thin majority looking likely, allies of House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy recently attempted to convince moderate Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar to switch parties in hopes of padding their slim margins, according to two sources familiar with the conversation. But Cuellar flatly rejected the idea, the sources said.
McCarthy’s spokesperson said the Republican leader was not involved if these conversations took place and said this is not in any way part of their strategy for the majority or for his speakership bid.
“Anyone suggesting this is simply exercising in fan fiction,” said McCarthy spokesperson Mark Bednar. “Leader McCarthy is going to be elected Speaker by the current and newly-elected members of the House Republican Conference. Our efforts are exclusively focused on bringing our conference together and saving the country.”
Cuellar’s office did not confirm whether he spoke to any McCarthy allies about switching parties but made clear it was not an idea he would entertain.
“As a standard rule we do not discuss private conversations between members of Congress,” Cuellar’s office said. “However, Congressman Cuellar is a lifelong Democrat and will remain a Democrat. Period.”
The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the outreach to Cuellar.
“They don’t want extremes.” Outgoing Massachusetts GOP governor on the lesson from voters in the midterms
From CNN’s Eric Bradner
Charlie Baker, the moderate Republican governor of Massachusetts, said former President Donald Trump’s influence hurt their party in this year’s midterm elections as voters demonstrated they “aren’t interested in extremism.”
In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Baker said Trump “hurt the party’s chances on Election Day, not just here in Massachusetts and Maryland, but in many of those other battleground states.”
“The big message coming out of Tuesday — and I would argue the big message voters are going to send going forward — is you need to demonstrate in word and deed that you believe this is more, that this is always going to be about more, than just your party and your partisans,” Baker said.
In this year’s midterm elections, across key battleground states, including Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Trump endorsed candidates who embraced his lies about widespread election fraud. Most of those candidates lost.
Baker said Republicans need to learn as a result of the midterms that voters aren’t interested in extreme candidates — an implicit suggestion that Trump’s endorsements proved costly.
Baker, who is set to depart office after two terms in the deep-blue state’s governor’s office, said he thinks voters want “elected officials who are going to reach out, who are going to engage with the so-called other side and who are going to take seriously this idea that you are supposed to try to represent and hear the voices of all of the people that you serve.”
“I think in the midterms, one of the big lessons that the Republican Party nationally needs to take away from it is voters want collaborative elected officials. They don’t want extremes,” he added.
Congress can have a “great two years if we work together,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says
From CNN’s Ali Zaslav
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday said his plans for the Democratic majority in the next two years include working on accomplishing as much bipartisan legislation as possible.
“We can have a great, great two years if we work together,” he said, in remarks on the Senate floor as the chamber returned from recess.
“Let us move forward with the same spirit of cooperation and compromise that made the 117th Congress one of the most successful in recent history,” he said. “I say to my Republican colleagues including Leader McConnell: Work with us. We are willing to work with you to get things done,” he added.
CNN projected Saturday that Democrats will maintain their narrow Senate majority, after victories in close contests in Nevada and Arizona.
Speaking to his caucus, Schumer said “let us proceed in the next two years by putting people first and getting things done even if we have to compromise. We may not accomplish everything we want, but if we can get real things done that will measure how good a Congress we can be.”
“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” he added, pointing to the successful bipartisan gun and mental health deal as an example.