What Went Down In The 2018 Midterms

It’s not just candidates on the ballot today. As I wrote on Saturday, there are at least 150 ballot measures at stake, too. Here are some of the most interesting:

• Amendment 4 in Florida would restore the right to vote to 1.5 million felons — more than 10 percent of the state’s voting-age population — including 21 percent of the state’s adult black population. According to an analysis by The New York Times/Upshot, Amendment 4 could create about 300,000 new voters, and many of them are likely to be Democrats. Two recent polls have shown Amendment 4 at exactly the 60 percent support it needs to pass.
• Three states will vote on expanding access to voting. Michigan’s Proposal 3 would enact automatic voter registration, same-day voter registration, the ability to vote absentee without an excuse and straight-ticket voting. Nevada is also voting on automatic voter registration with Question 5, and Question 2 in Maryland would give residents the ability to register to vote on Election Day.
• Proposal 1 in Michigan and Measure 3 in North Dakota would legalize recreational marijuana.
• Washington’s Initiative 1631 would levy the first state-level carbon tax in the country.
• Three red states will vote on expanding Medicaid: Idaho with Proposition 2, Nebraska with Initiative 427 and Utah with Proposition 3. Montana’s Initiative 185 would also make the state’s about-to-expire Medicaid expansion permanent.

In case you missed this last night, the alliance between Fox News and President Trump, always strong, had a new moment last night. Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro appeared on stage with Trump at a rally in Missouri. I know that people assume Fox is conservative and MSNBC is liberal. But I doubt Fox News’s Chris Wallace will ever appear on stage with Trump at a rally — and I’m not even sure Tucker Carlson would. MSNBC would almost certainly not allow say, Rachel Maddow to campaign for Elizabeth Warren. I don’t want to use the term “state media” lightly here — but having one of your top anchors (Hannity) as basically a presidential surrogate is not typically what has happened in America.

It’s been a long midterm election season, so you’re forgiven if you forgot some of the Senate primary contests that set the tone for the general election. In an article earlier this week, I looked back at the past year and a half, which has been filled with Senate campaigns. Here’s the bit on some key primaries:

Spring 2018 brought primaries and some unexpected dynamics. Namely, many candidates tried to get a little outlandish in their campaigning. A little, dare we say it, Trumpian. Sometimes it backfired; sometimes it worked. West Virginia’s Republican contest to pick an opponent for Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin was particularly colorful — you might remember outsider candidate and former coal executive Don Blankenship, who stirred up a little trouble by referring to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as “Cocaine Mitch.” While mainstream Republican Patrick Morrisey won the race, GOP mudslinging might have helped Manchin shore up his position in the race. …

In Arizona, former Sheriff Joe Arpaio ran in the Republican primary. This is the man who was pardoned by Trump after his criminal contempt conviction for ignoring a court order in a racial-profiling case. Also in contention were Kelli Ward, a hardline conservative former state senator, and U.S. Rep. Martha McSally. Both Arpaio and Ward brought flavors of the more outlandish side of the activist right, and the three-way race divided media attention. Democratic candidate Kyrsten Sinema, a U.S. House member, got a few months of non-internecine-squabbling attention in the press. …

Some former Trump skeptics softened their stances on the president. McSally in Arizona and Leah Vukmir of Wisconsin, each the Republican Party’s eventual nominee in their state and each somewhat reluctant Trump supporters, ended up aligning more closely with the president. The slightly unnatural fits perhaps led to less-than-stellar performances during the general-election period.