Tight Race in South Carolina, Heckling in Florida, New Poll in Texas: 7 Days to Go nyti.ms/2CNONO8
2/"Welcome to The Tip Sheet, a daily political analysis of the 2018 elections, based on interviews with Republican and Democratic officials, pollsters, strategists and voters. Republicans on defense in South Carolina. Want to know which party is playing defense a week before the
3/"election? Take a look at where the independent expenditure arm of the National Republican Congressional Committee is going on the air at the last moment in its bid to protect the G.O.P.’s 23-seat House majority: South Carolina’s First District. That would be the
4/"Charleston-area seat that is currently represented by Representative Mark Sanford and that has long been a bulwark of conservative strength. But Republicans are nervous that Katie Arrington, who defeated Mr. Sanford in the Republican primary after President Trump torpedoed him
5/"in the final hours, is proving to be a lackluster candidate. They don’t want to take any chances against a Democrat, Joe Cunningham, who has out-raised her. This district was not, to put it mildly, on anybody’s list of battleground races. But it includes a substantial number
6/"of urban and suburban voters, the slice of the electorate that is proving problematic this year for Republicans. Holder stands firm with heckler:
After a week that included a wave of mail bombs sent to top Democrats, allegedly by a vocal Trump supporter, and a wrenching
After a week that included a wave of mail bombs sent to top Democrats, allegedly by a vocal Trump supporter, and a wrenching
7/"massacre at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Republicans remain undeterred in framing the midterms as a referendum on a Democratic “mob” opposing the president. Some voters seem ready to amplify the message. At a campaign event on Monday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for Andrew Gillum,
8/"the Democratic nominee for governor, a man with a bullhorn interrupted the proceedings repeatedly as Eric Holder, the former attorney general under Barack Obama, stepped to the microphone to talk up Mr. Gillum. The heckler, who identified himself online as a contributor to the
9/"conspiracy-mongering website Infowars, recited Mr. Holder’s recent take on a famed Michelle Obama axiom: “When they go low,” Mr. Holder told a crowd earlier this month, “we kick them.” Calling back to the man from the stage, Mr. Holder suggested that his Republican critics
10/" were acting in bad faith. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said. “Why don’t you cut out the fake outrage, my man?” Democrats have occasionally struggled to calibrate their responses lately amid calls for “civility” in politics, attempting to portray Mr. Trump as uniquely toxic to the
11/"discourse while at the same time avoiding the perception that they are themselves escalating a partisan conflict. But Mr. Holder, who is weighing a run for president in 2020, appears to have demonstrated the emerging party template for such encounters: Don’t make an apology
12/"for its own sake, and don’t give an inch. Cruz still up in recent poll:
Everyone is monitoring the polls closely now, like scoreboard watching in the final weeks of a baseball season. A couple of new ones favor Republicans in closely watched races, but not by much.
Everyone is monitoring the polls closely now, like scoreboard watching in the final weeks of a baseball season. A couple of new ones favor Republicans in closely watched races, but not by much.
13/"• Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, leads Representative Beto O’Rourke, his Democratic opponent, by five percentage points, 51 to 46, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll.
14/"The result is one of the more encouraging public polls for Mr. O’Rourke lately — the last Quinnipiac survey earlier this month had him trailing by nine points among likely voters. But it reinforces the consensus among top officials in both parties that the state remains a
15/"reach for Democrats this year, despite Mr. O’Rourke’s prolific fund-raising and viral appeal to progressives. • In New York, the outlook was more tenuous for Representative Chris Collins, the Republican indicted on a charge of insider trading over the summer. A new New York
16/"Times Upshot/Siena College poll of New York’s 27th Congressional District showed Mr. Collins holding a narrow lead over the Democratic challenger Nate McMurray, 44 percent to 40 percent, within the survey’s margin of error.
17/"On paper, this Buffalo-area district — which voted more for President Trump than any other seat in New York in 2016 — shouldn’t be competitive. But the indictment of Mr. Collins changed that dynamic, even as only 39 percent of respondents in the district said they would
18/"prefer that Democrats win control of the House. Despite the tight race, Democrats have not invested as much money here as in other races,
19/"in part because strategists believe that even if Mr. McMurray were to win the seat, he would be unlikely to win re-election again in 2020." ~The Tip Sheet, Jonathan Martin & Matt Flegenheimer, NYT, 10/30/18
