RICHMOND, Va. — Nine months ago, Democrats at every stratum in Virginia called on Gov. Ralph Northam to resign over a racist photograph on his medical school yearbook page.
MIDLOTHIAN, Va. — Renae Erskine hates how disrespectful late-night comedians, the media and congressional Democrats are toward President Donald Trump. As a Trump supporter, she feels elites are disrespecting her, too. “We tolerated their choice, why can’t they tolerate ours?” she demanded.
ROCK HILL, S.C. — Addressing a conference of African American church congregations in this vote-rich city, Pete Buttigieg quoted scripture Sunday morning and extolled his “Douglass Plan” to combat racial inequities in the U.S., one of several attempts this weekend to confront his strikingly low support among black voters.
As the 2020 Democratic candidates descend Tuesday on Westerville, Ohio, a northern suburb of Columbus, for the fourth presidential debate, here are 12 fast facts about politics and the economy in the Buckeye State that could help shape the upcoming election.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — As Morgan Harper campaigned at the Prestige Cuts & Styles barbershop here, Joe Copeland, a retired school principal, said he had never heard of the young woman mounting an insurgent primary challenge of a Democratic member of Congress. But he thought of a comparison.
CLINTON, Iowa — On the day House Democrats opened an impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump last week, Pete Buttigieg was being grilled by Iowa voters on other subjects: how to loosen the grip of the rich on government, how to restore science to policymaking, how to reduce child poverty.
NEWTOWN, Pa. — Diane LeBas, a 71-year-old substitute teacher attending the Newtown Democrats’ summer picnic Sunday, recounted how she was tear-gassed protesting the Vietnam War. No one could question her progressivism.
EL PASO, Texas — As 20 Democrats debated on national television, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and his wife, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz, texted each other a running critique of the candidates.
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — While his 2020 rivals mingled with large friendly crowds at a Democratic fish fry in South Carolina on Friday night, Mayor Pete Buttigieg found himself somewhere very different, wading into an emotional knot of protesters at the South Bend Police Department, some of whom cursed him, interrupted and shouted a list of demands through a megaphone feet from his face.
The shooting of the 54-year-old man revived long-standing mistrust by some black residents of the city police and of Buttigieg, and it has presented the mayor, a Democratic presidential candidate, with a national leadership test just a week before the first primary debates.
The case has revived scrutiny of Buttigieg’s history of sometimes strained relations with black residents in South Bend. The issue is echoing in the Democratic primary as Buttigieg, who is in his second term, seeks to improve his support among African American voters.
The downshift from national campaigning comes at a time when Buttigieg has risen to the top tier of 2020 Democratic candidates. But he has struggled to win over African American voters in early-voting states like South Carolina.
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — In May 2016, David Betras, a Democratic Party leader in the heart of industrial northeast Ohio, sent a memo warning Hillary Clinton’s campaign that it was on the verge of losing Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan because she was not connecting with blue-collar voters. These states “should be easy wins for us,’’ he wrote.
A federal court on Friday tossed out Ohio’s congressional map, ruling that Republican state lawmakers had carved up the state to give themselves an illegal partisan advantage and to dilute Democrats’ votes in a way that predetermined the outcome of elections.
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Pete Buttigieg, the young Midwestern mayor whose presidential bid has been an unlikely early focus of attention from Democratic voters and donors, kicked off his campaign Sunday and proclaimed his hometown’s revival was the answer to skeptics who ask how he has the “audacity” to see himself in the White House.
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