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View from the polls / Philadelphia
The Guardian’s Ciara McCarthy has interviewed more Philadelphia voters about their preferences in the Republican race:
Name: Nancy Huston, 34
Employment: home healthcare aid
Voting for: Donald Trump
Philadelphia resident Nancy Huston said she voted for Donald Trump on Tuesday, and cited immigration as one of the most important issues for her in this election.
“Immigration I think it needs to be a little bit under control of who we let into this country,” Huston, 34, said. “I think there should be a way to help people that are not legal to get them legal, but I think our security needs to be a little more upped.”
Huston said she was in support of making it easier for immigrants to become citizens but said better background checks were necessary.
“I think he really does want America to be safe, I think he does have a good heart,” she said of Trump.
Name: Patrick Carroll, 31
Employment: real estate developer
Voting for: John Kasich
Patrick Carroll said he voted in Pennsylvania’s primary election “to send a message to the Republican party”.
“I voted for Kasich cause he’s not insane and I think it’s important to show to the Republican party that some people are voting for the non-insane people out there,” Carroll, a real estate developer, said after voting. “I am happy to have voted for the guy who seems alright.”
Carroll said that although he disagreed with some of Kasich’s positions on social issues, he was a “voice of sanity” compared to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.
Updated
View from the polls / Baltimore
Baynard Woods interviews Baltimore voters on their preferences in the Democratic race:
Name: Darius Taylor, 24
Employment: Applebee’s
Voting for: Hillary Clinton
I think they should be doing background checks on people who get guns. It should be more like, it should be harder for certain people to get guns because I have too many people I was really close to who died from gun violence. I had a friend just die last week, his funeral was yesterday. He was at a club and I guess some things happened and a guy shot him.
Name: Todd Mohr, 53
Employment: culinary instructor
Voting for: Bernie Sanders
Being a downtown resident [I’m concerned with] safety but [nationally] economic fairness, economic opportunity would be my main issue. I certainly think that economic issues directly correlate with safety issues when those people who don’t have opportunities, aren’t given opportunities, don’t take advantage of opportunities find other ways to express their frustration.
Name: Dylan Kinnett, 35
Employment: web developer
Voting for: Bernie Sanders
My major issue is equality but that’s a lot of things, the way crime is dealt with the way money is dealt with, housing. I think it is most important at the city level, that’s when the most change can happen quickest, but it’s also at the national level. [Sanders] addresses it directly and says it is important and addresses it in global terms. He gave a talk recently and somebody asked him why he was hanging out with the Pope and he said we agree on some things and it’s a global issue the way that civilization seems to be fixed on the acquisition of wealth as opposed to the development of humanity. That resonated with me. I’d be interested to see how that turns into policy.
Senate minority leader Harry Reid said today that fellow senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders does not have a path to the Democratic nomination, according to the Associated Press.
Sanders “has run a campaign that I think we’ve all recognized has been unique and powerful, and I think Bernie should do what he wants to do,” Reid said, but when asked whether Sanders has a path to the nomination, he was less generous. “No, I do not,” he said.
“Bernie is going to do what he feels is appropriate and I have every confidence that Bernie, his No. 1 issue is not him, it’s the country,” Reid added.
While most of the national media’s attention has been focused on the history-making Democratic and Republican presidential primaries playing out in Maryland (and Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware and Pennsylvania) today, there’s another potentially history-making primary going on as well: the Democratic primary for the Senate seat currently held by retiring Senator Barbara Mikulski.
The race between two sitting House members, Chris Van Hollen and Donna Edwards, is only potentially history-making because of Edwards: If she wins the Democratic primary in the heavily Democratic state of Maryland, she’ll almost certainly be only the second African American woman to ever serve in the US Senate come 2017.
The race hasn’t been an easy one for either candidate, though they are, by all accounts, remarkably similar on the issues. Van Hollen, who district starts in the center of the (wealthy) Washington, DC suburbs in Montgomery County, Maryland, and, since the redistricting in 2013, stretches up towards the Pennsylvania border is considered one of House minority leader Nancy Pelosi’s political proteges; Edwards was elected from the western (and majority African American) DC suburbs in Prince George’s County, Maryland after a long career as a liberal political and then anti-domestic violence activist.
Van Hollen, the son of a US ambassador and a CIA officer who holds degrees from Swarthmore, Harvard and Georgetown and spent much of the 90s serving in the state legislature, was described by Maryland senate president Thomas Miller in his endorsement as “a leader who has been born to the job”. Edwards, a single mother for whom non-profit work was a second career and public service a third, took exception to the statement (in a fundraising email, of course): “The fact is, our country’s systems and institutions have largely been led by people who have always looked like that senior elected official, not like me ... I don’t believe anyone in this country was born to anything.”
The most potent criticism Edwards has faced has been about her Congressional office’s track record with constituent service, which perhaps has more resonance in a state, like Maryland, with so many federal workers. But polls have been variable: A month ago, she was way up; last week, she was very, very far down.
One thing that has remained consistent though: Black women voters tend to back Edwards (most recently, by more than 50 points), while white male voters tend to lean Van Hollen. And EMILY’s List controversially backed Edwards in the primary, despite Van Holen’s strong record on women’s issues: The organization, which is dedicated to electing pro-choice women to office, said that they backed her because of her record and because she would bring “a voice and perspective that are rarely heard on the Senate floor.”
In other words, perhaps, because she wasn’t born to the job.
Bernie Sanders has released a particularly feisty fundraising email to his supporters, telling them that Hillary Clinton’s campaign has “used language reserved for traitors to our country” to describe the Sanders campaign.
“Over the past few days, Hillary Clinton’s campaign and some of its top supporters have launched an odd new line of attack against people like you who stand with Bernie,” the email reads. “They are saying that by continuing to campaign and fight for every vote, for every delegate, that we are helping Donald Trump.”
Included in the email: A photograph of Clinton with Trump at his wedding.
“Let me be clear, there is one candidate in this Democratic primary who Donald Trump said would make a ‘great president,’ and it’s not Bernie Sanders,” the email continues.
“Bernie is going to fight through the narrow path we have to the nomination because there is also only one candidate who believes health care should be a right for everyone in this country, that kids of all backgrounds should be able to go to college without crushing debt, and that we cannot transform a corrupt system by taking its money.”
Realtalk: This is the kind of email one releases on the eve of a five-state loss.
Vermont senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders will not be running as an independent candidate for president - no matter what Donald Trump suggests.
That’s what Sanders’ wife Jane told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer this afternoon.
“I think we’ve been very clear right from the beginning that we will not play the role of spoiler,” Jane Sanders said. “Bernie will not be running as an independent.”
.@janeosanders responds to Donald Trump: "Bernie will not be running as an independent" https://t.co/6OZtrfIwim https://t.co/5RLWPlv1zA
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) April 26, 2016
Trump had said earlier today that Sanders “has been treated terribly by the Democrats” and “should show them, and run as an Independent!”
Texas senator Ted Cruz may have his eyes set on the White House, but a fellow Republican lawmaker has floated another potential job for the least-popular man in the senate: The chance to fill the vacant seat on the supreme court.
When asked about a potential “unity ticket” with Cruz and billionaire Republican frontrunner Donald Trump joining together, House majority whip Steve Scalise told Fox Business Network that the supreme court exit strategy idea might kill two birds with one stone. “I think it’s possible, whether it’s Trump and Cruz or, you know, Cruz could be the Scalia replacement,” Scalise said. “Look, if he’s not our nominee, I think he would be a great replacement for Scalia.”
Cruz, who served as Texas’ solicitor general before being elected to the senate, might not be too keen on the idea - he told CBS News in March that a justiceship is “not the job I’m interested.”
Ben Carson: Putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill makes her the face of 'debt slavery'
Retired pediatric neurosurgeon and onetime presidential candidate Ben Carson has written an op-ed in Independent Journal arguing that putting Harriet Tubman’s face on the $20 bill would make the woman “the new face of American debt slavery.”
“Harriet Tubman, one of America’s truest and most revered freedom fighters, deserves a far more fitting tribute than to be sacrificed on the altar of political expediency by placing her on the twenty dollar bill,” Carson wrote. “The effort to rush this through under the current Obama administration is nothing short of national disgrace – an empty gesture designed to mask a much more fundamental problem: the burgeoning US debt, and the declining significance of the US dollar.”
Like Tubman, Carson wrote, Americans today are “also being enslaved by their own government,” in the form of “a burgeoning national debt.”
“Harriet Tubman would likely be turning over in her grave if she knew she would be the new face of American debt slavery,” Carson wrote. “She would revile the cheap trick being pulled on African Americans in getting them to support this nearly bankrupt symbol of American debt. It is amazing how, just as the currency dwindles down to near worthlessness – all of a sudden the Government wants to invoke Harriet Tubman as a symbol on the twenty dollar bill.”
A super-PAC supporting Ohio governor John Kasich has released a campaign advertisement from the not-too-distant future - one where, through the action of 1,237 “brave Americans” at the Republican National Convention saved the Republican party from the clutches of the candidates who have won 37 out of 38 nominating contests.
“And the GOP nomination for president goes to... John Kasich!” a lush voiceover says, as if she were opening an envelope with the winner of an Academy Award printed on the inside. “What a long, fascinating trip it’s been,” the voiceover continues.
“Running for president isn’t about the establishment - it’s about the delegates. And the delegates decided this election was about winning the presidency, and only John Kasich could beat Hillary Clinton.” In this once-and-future political ad, the 1,237 delegates who ended up voting for Kasich “overcame tremendous personal pressure and did the right thing. They nominated the only candidate who could win the only election that mattered.”
Earlier this morning, billionaire Republican candidate Donald Trump fired back at Girls creator and co-star Lena Dunham after she threatened to move to Vancouver, British Columbia, if he were to be elected president.
“Well she’s a B actor and, you know, has no mojo,” Trump told Fox & Friends during a phone interview. “I heard Whoopi Goldberg said that too. That would be a great, great thing for our country.”
As the hosts egged Trump on, naming Rosie O’Donnell as another critic who has promised to flee the county in the event of his election, Trump said that it made him all the more eager to win.
“We’ll get rid of Rosie, oh, I love it,” Trump said. “Now I have to get elected, because I’ll be doing a great service to our country.”
Updated
Donald Trump has declared that Bernie Sanders should run as an independent:
Bernie Sanders has been treated terribly by the Democrats—both with delegates & otherwise. He should show them, and run as an Independent!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 26, 2016
Maryland is one of five states with primary elections Tuesday. In Baltimore, there is an added sense of importance as the candidates court votes.
Maryland is one of five states with primary elections Tuesday. In Baltimore, the state’s largest city, there is an added sense of importance since the election falls on the eve of the first anniversary of the protests that followed the funeral ofFreddie Gray on 27 April, who died of several spinal injuries he sustained during an arrest. When 25-year-old Gray died, his life, plagued by poverty and lead poisoning, became a symbol for what was wrong with this city.
In December 2015 when Sanders toured Sandtown, the neighborhood where Gray was arrested, he compared it to a “third-world country”.
In his Saturday speech at Royal Farms Arena, he called poverty “a death sentence”.
“I am here today in Baltimore, Maryland, in the richest country in the history of the world, one out of every four people lives in poverty,” Sanders said. “If you are born in Baltimore’s poorest neighborhood, your life expectancy is almost 20 years shorter than if you were born in its wealthiest neighborhood. Fifteen neighborhoods in Baltimore have lower life expectancy [than] North Korea. ...Baltimore teenagers between 15 and 19 face poorer health conditions and a worse economic outlook than those in distressed cities in Nigeria, India, China and South Africa.”
At Penn North, the busy intersection at the heart of the Sandtown-Winchester area where a CVS pharmacy was burned down during protests last year, people were lined up on Monday to get free food – loaves of white bread at one table and vegetarian food provided by the activist group Food Not Bombs at another.
“That ain’t true,” said Lisa Taylor, sitting in the bus shelter with a plate of food, of Sanders’ claim that poor people don’t vote. “Because I’m poor and I’m going to vote.”
The New York Times editorial board has come out with another anti-Donald Trump editorial, using comparisons to Eliza Doolittle and Pygmalion to lambast his de facto campaign manager’s description of the candidate’s previous antics as “a part he’s been playing.”
“Trump knows that to do well in Tuesday’s primaries he still needs those ‘motivated voters’ who want him to say what other politicians won’t,” the editorial board wrote. “Yet the Trump on the stump is the true man. However copiously applied, cosmetics cannot obscure his brutish agenda, nor the narcissism, capriciousness and most of all, the inexperience paired with intellectual laziness that would make him a disastrous president.”
“Whatever persona or good manners Mr. Trump chooses to display from now on, he can’t hide his unfitness for the presidency,” it concludes.
From the “you can’t make this stuff up” files comes the trailer for Weiner, the documentary about the ill-destined mayoral campaign of disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner.
Are you comfortable sharing who you vote for?
Valerie Lapinski and Mike Barry go head to head and explain why they do (or don’t) share who they vote for. Whose argument are you siding on?
In an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo on New Day, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders told the host that although his path to the Democratic nomination is “narrow... we do have a path.”
Sanders told Cuomo that he will remain in the race for the nomination until at least June 7, when the party’s final primary is held. (Previously, Sanders’ team had said that they plan to fight for the nomination up to the convention.)
“The idea that we should not contest in California - our largest state, let the people of California determine what the agenda of the Democratic Party is and who the candidate for president should be - is pretty crazy,” Sanders said.
“I think we stand a very good chance to win some of the states today,” he continued. “I think we have a shot in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island. Maybe Delaware. I think Maryland’s going to be tougher for us. We have won 16 states so far and I’m looking forward to winning a number more.”
Could Donald Trump, the actor, win the election for Donald Trump, the candidate?
Enter Paul Manafort, Trump’s new campaign guru, who helped elect the last Republican television celebrity host who vaulted into the White House: Ronald Reagan.
Last week, Manafort peeled back the curtain for members of the Republican National Committee meeting in Florida. “What’s important for you to understand,” Manafort told the Republican establishment about Trump, is “that he gets it, and that the part he’s been playing is evolving”. (Trump privately said more or less the same thing to the editorial board of the New York Times months ago.)
To get a sense of how that evolution might play out – how Manafort might again parlay a TV persona into a president – I spent the last week watching a lot of old episodes of The Apprentice and watching clips of Reagan on the two shows he hosted in the 1950s and early 60s, General Electric Theater and Death Valley Days.
As hosts, the two couldn’t be more different. Reagan, from host to president, always remained the sunny optimist. He had an infectious geniality, whether he was pitching Borax soap or the actress starring in the upcoming episode. He had 16 seasons to refine his signature likeability.
As host of The Apprentice (and Celebrity Apprentice), it’s all about winning. Trump said as much when he explained his formula for success on reality television: always be interesting, speak simply, show flexibility and be able to make a change, never give up – and win.
The prospect of a Donald Trump nomination has labor leaders scrambling to hold the line as the Republican frontrunner’s appeal to disaffected working-class voters threatens to upset the traditional political calculus, reports the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino and Jana Kasperkevic.
The majority of America’s almost 15 million unionized workers can be usually be relied upon to back the Democratic candidate in a presidential year, but leaders are concerned by Trump’s populist message on trade and jobs – and his insistence that union workers are just one of many groups on a long list of those he claims “love” him.
“We can’t be fooled,” Richard Trumka, president of AFL-CIO, America’s largest federation of labor unions, implored his 12.5 million members at the organization’s annual convention in Philadelphia this month. “Trump isn’t interested in solving the problems he yells and swears about. He delivers punch lines, but there’s nothing funny about them.”
As Hillary Clinton looks to push away the threat from Bernie Sanders with further wins in a slate of Democratic primaries across the Northeast on Tuesday, organized labor is planning a multi-pronged assault on Trump in an effort to undercut his appeal and derail his presidential bid to the White House.
“Trump has some appeal at this point, there’s no question about that,” said Steve Rosenthal, former political director for AFL-CIO. “But when you cut through it and begin to focus on his record – from his talk about trade agreements, to manufacturing abroad to offshoring jobs – Donald Trump is not going to appeal to union members.”
Poll: Donald Trump reaches 50% support nationally
For the first time, billionaire Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has won the support of a majority of his party’s voters, according to a new survey released this morning by NBC News/SurveyMonkey.
The four-point jump from the survey’s previous poll shows Trump chipping away at the second- and third-place standings of Texas senator Ted Cruz and Ohio governor John Kasich, respectively.
In an extended edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe breakfast television show – Americans generally don’t use the term, but we’re hungry so we like the ring of it – Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders told political analyst Mark Halperin that “there are many women who would be qualified” for the job of vice-president, singling out Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren as “a real champion in standing up for working families, taking on Wall Street”.
Although Sanders said that it’s still “a little bit early” to begin running-mate speculation, “there are other, you know, fantastic women who have been active in all kinds of fights who I think would make great vice presidential candidates”.
Happy 'Acela Primary' Day
Good morning, and welcome to our campaign liveblog on the day of the so-called “Acela primary”, a quintet of presidential nominating contests that run along Amtrak’s Acela line: Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.
Polling trends from those states show clear advantages for the frontrunners in both the Democratic and Republican primaries, with the potential for five-state sweeps by both former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and billionaire businessman Donald Trump. But as both Clinton and Trump have learned to their cost, a statewide win does not always translate into an unassailable lead in the delegate count.
As we know, polls aren’t perfect, but here’s a quick rundown of the standings going into the contests tonight:
- Connecticut: The RealClearPolitics polling average has Trump leading by a whopping 27 points, with Clinton ahead nearly 6 points.
- Delaware: Relying on only a single poll here, but Trump – as today’s trend will likely be – has a seemingly unsurmountable polling lead of 55%, 37 points higher than Ohio governor John Kasich’s 18%. In the same poll, Clinton leads Vermont senator Bernie Sanders 45 to 38.
- Maryland: The RCP average has Trump up by 27 points and Clinton leading by 24.
- Pennsylvania: This is tonight’s big prize, rich in delegates for both parties – and a bit of a potential pitfall for Trump, since most of its delegates will not technically be bound to the statewide winner at all. (Expect much kvetching about the Keystone State’s delegate apportionment being “rigged”.) With that caveat in mind, Trump still leads in Pennsylvania by nearly 22 points, while Clinton is up 16 points.
- Rhode Island: The nation’s smallest state by area features one of the biggest leads of the day as well as the smallest, with Trump ahead by nearly 30 points on average and Clinton squeaking by at 2.5 points over Sanders.
In addition to the primaries themselves, we have a few scheduled stops on today’s train ride: Clinton will campaign in Indiana before hosting an election night event (read: victory party) in Philadelphia; Sanders has moved on to friendlier territory with a speech in Huntington, West Virginia, this evening in lieu of a victory party; Texas senator Ted Cruz will host a rally in Knightstown, Indiana; and Trump will host a party (and probable victory lap) at Trump Tower in New York.
Of course, our crack team of reporters, editors, commentators and bloggers will be covering today’s Acela primaries from stem to stern. Sabrina Siddiqui will be with Clinton in Philadelphia, Ben Jacobs will join Cruz in Indiana, Megan Carpentier will be in Maryland with voters in that state’s surprisingly tight downballot primaries, and Lauren Gambino will be at Trump Tower. And coming at you live from the Guardian’s newsroom in downtown Manhattan, Tom McCarthy and I will bring you up-to-the-second updates along the way.
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