Violence colors final week of campaigns
NEW YORK » With Election Day looming, hate itself colored the campaign trail Tuesday as President Donald Trump sought to console a community shattered by anti-Semitic violence just hours after he unveiled a divisive immigration proposal that raised new questions about the definition of American citizenship.
Trump and first lady Melania Trump were visiting Pittsburgh as the first funerals were held for those killed in a weekend synagogue shooting that killed 11 people. With Election Day one week away, however, neither the president nor his adversaries took a pause from politics.
Before consoling those rattled by the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history, Trump lashed out at Democrats on social media as he endorsed vulnerable GOP House candidates.
He also unveiled a plan to end the constitutional right to citizenship for babies of noncitizens and unauthorized immigrants born in the United States, injecting new energy into his hardline conservative base.
Meanwhile, former Vice President Joe Biden condemned the surge in hatefueled violence in recent days as he rallied young voters in Wisconsin. The Democrat said “words matter” as he condemned Trump’s rhetoric against the media and his political adversaries.
“I am sick and tired of this administration,” Biden said. “I am sick and tired of what’s going on. I’m sick and tired of being sick and
tired, and I hope you are, too.”
A look at other midterm campaign developments Tuesday:
Green wave
The super PAC allied with House Speaker Paul Ryan says the fight for the House majority will come down to 20 races that remain too close to call.
But in those races, it’s warning that Republican candidates’ overall financial situation “remains alarming.” Democrats have outraised Republicans in 90 percent of the competitive House races, writes super PAC executive director Corry Bliss in a memo obtained by The Associated Press.
He notes that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who recently changed his party affiliation from independent to Democrat ahead of a possible presidential run, is giving tens of millions of dollars to Democrats’ midterm efforts.
Bomb threat?
Some Republican candidates are downplaying the threat from improvised explosive devices mailed to several Trump adversaries in recent days.
Republican Senate candidate Corey Stewart of Virginia retweeted a post
questioning the authenticity of pro-Trump stickers on the suspect’s van. He later deleted the tweet. Several prominent conservatives, including radio host Rush Limbaugh, have raised similar questions recently.
Virginia House candidate Denver Riggleman, a Republican, told a radio host that the devices “don’t much look like pipe bombs to me.”
Youth vote?
There are new signs that young voters are taking an unprecedented level of interest in this year’s midterms, compared to off-year elections of the past.
NextGen America, the group founded by billionaire Tom Steyer, has registered more than 250,000 young voters over 11 states, including more than 50,000 new young voters in Florida and more than 20,000 in Arizona, spokeswoman Olivia Bercow said Tuesday.
At the early voting site on the campus of Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, 503 people showed up to vote on the first day of early voting, Bercow said. The school’s enrollment is only 1,600 students. At Iowa State University, one of the state’s largest colleges, more than 1,800 have already voted, Bercow said, nearly double the number who voted in 2014.