Will abortion swing the first post-Roe presidential election?

• October 5, 2024

By Sofia Resnick, Stateline

Editor’s note: This series explores the priorities of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as they consider the upcoming presidential election. With the outcome expected to be close, these “swing states” may decide the future of the country.

Dr. Kristin Lyerly’s placenta detached from her uterus when she was 17 weeks pregnant with her fourth son in 2007. Her doctor in Madison, Wisconsin, gave the devastated recent medical school graduate one option: to deliver and bury her dead child. But she requested a dilation and evacuation abortion procedure, knowing it would be less invasive and risky than being induced. And she couldn’t fathom the agony of holding her tiny dead baby.

But Lyerly’s doctor declined, giving her a direct window into the many ways Americans lack real choice when it comes to their reproductive health decisions. At the time of this miscarriage, Lyerly was getting a master’s degree in public health before beginning her residency. She was able to get a D&E at the same hospital by a different doctor. As an OB-GYN, she soon would learn how much abortion is stigmatized and limited throughout the country, but also regularly sought after and sometimes medically necessary, including among her many conservative Catholic patients in northeastern Wisconsin.

And then, on June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ended federal abortion rights, prompting states such as Wisconsin to resurrect dormant abortion bans from the 19th and 20th centuries. Lyerly’s job changed overnight. She stopped working as an OB-GYN in Sheboygan and moved her practice to Minnesota. She became a plaintiff in a lawsuit over an 1849 Wisconsin feticide law being interpreted as an abortion ban, which has since been blocked.

When a congressional seat opened up in a competitive Wisconsin district this year, the 54-year-old mother of four joined the post-Dobbs wave of women running for office to restore reproductive rights, which this election cycle includes another OB-GYN and a patient denied abortion care. Lyerly’s decision to run is emblematic of the nationwide backlash against the Dobbs decision, which altered the reproductive health care landscape, with providers, patients and advocates turning to the ballot box to change the laws to restore and broaden access.

Wisconsin is among seven swing states expected to determine the country’s next president and federal leaders. And in many ways they’re being viewed as referendums on how much the right to have an abortion can move the needle in a tight presidential election.

“What we’ve seen in every election since the Dobbs decision is that abortion is at top of mind for voters — and it’s not just helping voters decide who or what to vote for. It’s actually a turnout driver,” said Ryan Stitzlein, vice president of political and government relations at national lobbying group Reproductive Freedom for All. The group is investing in down-ballot races in conservative districts such as Lyerly’s, buoyed by cash and momentum from Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ reproductive-rights-focused campaign.

Anti-abortion money is also flowing through the swing states, led by lobbying groups Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and Women Speak Out PAC. Some of their messaging, adopted by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and many GOP candidates, often paints Democrats as champions of infanticide, focusing on the rarest and most controversial type of abortions, those performed in the third trimester.

But aside from that rhetoric, many Republican candidates have been quiet on an issue that for years motivated their staunchest supporters.

SBA Pro-Life America declined an interview for this story but shared a press release outlining the organization’s strategy trying to reach 10 million voters in Montana, Ohio and all of the battleground states except for Nevada. The group endorsed 28 House candidates total this cycle, and six of them are in North Carolina. One of North Carolina’s endorsed candidates in a toss-up race is Republican GOP challenger Laurie Buckhout, who does not mention her abortion stance on her campaign website and did not return a request for comment.

“Our field team is talking to persuadable and low propensity pro-life voters to urge them to cast their votes against the party that endorses abortion in the seventh, eighth and ninth months,” said SBA national field team director Patricia Miles in the press statement.

But throughout this election cycle, polls in the swing states have shown bipartisan support for abortion rights, especially when voters are educated about what abortion bans do. Voters in more than half of the states expected to determine the presidential winner have, to varying degrees, lost access to abortion. And abortion-rights activists across these states told States Newsroom they are determined to protect that access, or to get it back.

Arizona sees backlash after GOP upholds Civil War-era abortion ban

In Arizona, the Dobbs decision resurrected a Civil War-era ban that allowed abortions only to save a pregnant patient’s life.

Legislators repealed the law, but abortion-rights supporters fought for more certainty. This fall, Arizonans will vote on a proposed ballot measure that would protect access until fetal viability, around 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Pro-abortion rights demonstrators rally in Scottsdale, Arizona on April 15, 2024. Fallout from a resurrected Civil War-era abortion ban and a citizen-led abortion-rights ballot measure have put the issue at the center of many critical races in Arizona. (Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)

Now, two of the judges who upheld the abortion ban — Justices Clint Bolick and Kathryn King — are up for reelection, in races infused with national cash by groups such as RFA and Planned Parenthood. Also on the ballot is Proposition 137, which would give lifetime appointments to state judges. The Republican-initiated measure has garnered controversy in part because it is retroactive to this year’s election, so if approved, any retention bids would be nullified even if the majority votes to unseat the judge.

Ballot organizers turned in more than 800,000 signatures, double the required number, and overcame opponents’ legal challenges to qualify the abortion-rights ballot measure, Proposition 139. Abortion is legal up to 15 weeks of pregnancy, but there are many state restrictions that the Arizona Abortion Access Act would eliminate, such as a ban on any abortions sought for fetal genetic abnormalities and a blocked law from 2021 granting personhood status to fertilized eggs.

Recent deaths reignite controversy over Georgia’s abortion ban

This month, ProPublica reported on the deaths in 2022 of two Georgia women who suffered rare complications after they obtained mifepristone and misoprostol for early-term medication abortions. Both were trying to navigate a new state law that banned abortions at about six weeks of pregnancy and threatened medical providers with up to a decade in prison.

In one case, doctors at an Atlanta-area hospital refused for 20 hours to perform a routine dilation and curettage, a D&C, to clear the patient’s uterus when her body hadn’t expelled all the fetal tissue. In the other, a woman who had ordered the pills online suffered days of pain at home, fearful of seeking medical care. Both women left children behind.

Georgia’s law permits abortion if the patient’s life is at risk, but medical providers have said the law’s language is unclear, tying their hands and threatening the health of patients who have high-risk pregnancies.

Their cases, which a state medical review committee found to be “preventable,” have galvanized activists in the state.

Harris spoke at length about the women, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, at a recent campaign event in Atlanta. She blamed their deaths on Georgia’s law, calling it “the Trump abortion ban,” because the former president appointed three justices he’d promised would overturn Roe v. Wade.

“This is a health care crisis, and Donald Trump is the architect of this crisis,” Harris said. “Understand what a law like this means: Doctors have to wait until the patient is at death’s door before they take action. … You’re saying that good policy, logical policy, moral policy, humane policy is about saying that a health care provider will only start providing that care when you’re about to die?”

Read more: Abortion rights opponents try to derail ballot initiatives

Trump has not commented on the deaths. He has repeatedly said this year that abortion access should be left to the states. He has dismissed the idea of a federal abortion ban, but during the presidential debate, he refused to say whether he would veto such legislation.

At a recent rally in North Carolina, Trump addressed “our great women” (a demographic he’s trailing among), saying, “you will no longer be thinking about abortion, because it is now where it always had to be, with the states, and with the vote of the people.”

Abortion was a driving concern in this spring’s qualifying process for Georgia’s 2024 legislative elections — the first opportunity for aspiring state lawmakers to jump on the ballot in response to their state’s severe abortion restrictions.

Melita Easters, the executive director and founding chair of Georgia WIN List, which endorses Democratic women who support abortion rights, was already calling this year’s general election “Roevember” back when President Joe Biden was still the party’s presumptive nominee.

But Easters told States Newsroom that having Harris on the ticket instead has elevated the issue of reproductive freedom even more and “has breathed new life into down-ballot campaigns.” Easters said she is especially encouraged after a Democratic state House candidate in Alabama who ran on abortion rights flipped a Huntsville seat during a special election in March.

Michigan Democrats continue betting on abortion after 2022 successes

Michigan was one of the earliest states post-Dobbs to show that abortion rights could be a strong election-winning issue.

Months after the Supreme Court’s ruling, Michiganders overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to protect abortion rights in the state constitution; reelected Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who vowed to prioritize reproductive freedom; and voted for Democratic majorities in both chambers, giving the party a legislative trifecta for the first time in 40 years. In 2023, the legislature repealed a 1931 abortion ban that was still on the books and passed the Reproductive Health Act, expanding abortion access in the state.

This year, state and national abortion-rights groups have campaigned in toss-up congressional districts across Michigan, warning that a federal ban would supersede the state’s protections.

State judicial races, meanwhile, have attracted millions of dollars, as they could determine partisan control of the Michigan Supreme Court. Democrats secured a slim 4-3 majority on the state Supreme Court in 2020 after Republican-nominated justices controlled the court for most of the last few decades.

Nevada reproductive rights activists hope ballot initiative improves turnout

In Nevada, abortion remains legal through 24 weeks and beyond for specific health reasons. In 2023, the state’s Democratic-led legislature passed a law shielding patients and providers from out-of-state investigations related to abortion care; it was signed by Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo.

Read more: Helping a minor travel for an abortion? Some states have made it a crime.

Seeking to cement these rights in the state constitution, reproductive health advocates mobilized a ballot initiative campaign, which they hope will drive voter turnout that would affect the presidential and down-ballot races. Constitutional amendments proposed through an initiative petition must be passed by voters twice, so if voters approve Question 6 in November, they will have to approve it again in 2026.

In the state’s closely watched U.S. Senate race, Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen currently edges Republican Sam Brown, who has had inconsistent positions on abortion and reproductive rights but opposes the abortion-rights measure.

National anti-abortion groups Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and Students for Life of America have notably not focused on Nevada in their campaign strategies.

Growing Latinx voting bloc in North Carolina

In North Carolina many Democrats are campaigning in opposition to a 12-week abortion ban that the Republican-majority legislature passed last year after overriding Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto.

In a high-profile race for governor, Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein faces Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who has previously said he believes “there is no compromise on abortion,” according to NC Newsline. The lieutenant governor is now facing calls to withdraw from the race over comments made on a pornography website years ago, and Stein has started racking up endorsements from prominent state Republicans.

Iliana Santillan, a political organizer who supports abortion rights, has focused on mobilizing Latinos, a growing voting bloc in the state. The executive director of progressive nonprofit El Pueblo and its political sister group La Fuerza NC told States Newsroom she’s talked to many young women motivated to secure their own reproductive rights, including her college-age daughter. She said the Latinx community faces additional reproductive care barriers such as language and transportation, with immigrants in the country without legal authorization scared to cross state lines without a driver’s license.

Santillan also said there’s a misconception that all Latinos are against abortion because they’re Catholic, when in reality opposition to abortion skews among older voters.

“With older folks, the messaging that we’ve tested that has worked is: ‘We don’t want politicians to have a say in what we do with our bodies,’” Santillan said.

Motivated voters in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania, with its 19 electoral votes, is the largest swing state and considered essential to win the White House.

In a poll conducted this month by Spotlight PA and MassINC Polling Group, abortion ranked as the fifth most-important concern in the presidential race for likely voters, with 49% naming it as among their top issues.

The issue is far more important to Democrats, however, with 85% calling it a top issue compared with 17% of Republicans. Among those who aren’t registered with either major party, 49% called it a top issue.

In this file photo, Joanna McClinton, Pennsylvania House of Representives democratic leader, speaks at a “Bans Off Our Bodies” abortion rights rally at Old Bucks County Courthouse in Doylestown, Pennsylvania on September 29, 2022. The Dobbs decision ended federal abortion rights and spurred voters to the polls in 2022, sending enough Democrats to the Pennsylvania House to flip it blue, says Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)

In 2022, voters surprised pundits by sending enough Democrats to the state House to flip it blue. Voters were responding to the Dobbs decision, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro told Pennsylvania Capital-Star at a recent Harris campaign event.

Shapiro also won in 2022, and so far his administration has supported over-the-counter birth control pills and ended the state’s contract with a network of anti-abortion counseling centers. He said his administration would not defend a current state law that prohibits state Medicaid funding from being used for abortions.

Abortion isn’t protected under Pennsylvania’s state constitution, but it remains legal up to 24 weeks’ gestation, and clinics there have seen an influx of out-of-state patients.

Wisconsin abortion services resume

After more than a year without abortion access, reproductive health clinics in Wisconsin resumed abortion services in September 2023, shortly after a judge ruled that the 1849 state law that had widely been interpreted as an abortion ban applied to feticide and not abortion. A state Supreme Court race a few months earlier saw Justice Janet Protasiewicz win in a landslide after campaigning on reproductive freedom.

Seven months later when Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher announced his resignation, Lyerly threw her hat in the ring, running as the only Democrat in the 8th District. She now faces businessman Tony Wied. Although in the past it was considered a swing district, it has leaned conservative in recent election cycles. With the redrawn maps and national support, Lyerly said it’s a competitive race.

“We have the potential to really fix, not just reproductive health care, but health care,” Lyerly told States Newsroom. “Bring the stories of our patients forward and help our colleagues understand, build those coalitions and help to gain consensus that’s going to drive forward health care reform in this country.”

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Wied’s campaign website does not mention abortion or his policy proposals related to health care, though the words “Trump-endorsed” appear prominently and abundantly throughout the site. Wied hasn’t said much about the issue beyond it should be a state issue, but the two are scheduled to debate this Friday night. His campaign declined an interview.

Currently the only OB-GYNs who serve in Congress oppose abortion. If Lyerly wins in November, she would not only change that (potentially alongside Minnesota Sen. Kelly Morrison) but also could help flip party control in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Most Wisconsin voters oppose criminalizing abortion before fetal viability, according to a poll this year by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation.

Patricia McFarland, 76, knows what it’s like to live without abortion access. For more than 50 years, the retired college teacher kept her pre-Roe abortion a secret, having grown up in a conservative Irish Catholic family like many of her suburban Milwaukee neighbors.

McFarland told States Newsroom she has been politically active most of her life, but the Dobbs ruling dredged up the physical and emotional trauma from the illegal procedure she had alone in Mexico City. Now, McFarland rarely leaves home without her “Roe Roe Roe Your Vote” button, engaging anyone who will talk to her about the dangers of criminalizing pregnancy.

The mother and grandmother said she’s been canvassing and doing informational sessions with her activist group the PERSISTers, as well as the League of Women Voters. As she has warned fellow Wisconsities about the federal power over their reproductive freedom, she said the enthusiasm for abortion rights in her state is palpable.

“For women my age,” McFarland said, “we don’t want our grandchildren to lose their ability to decide when to become a mother.”

Sofia Resnick is a national reproductive rights reporter for States Newsroom, based in Washington, D.C. She has reported on reproductive-health politics and justice issues for more than a decade. Georgia Recorder’s Jill Nolin contributed to this report.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: [email protected]. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

​ Orange County Register 

When business is booming but daily living is a struggle

• October 5, 2024

By Kevin Hardy and Casey Quinlan, Stateline

Editor’s note: This series explores the priorities of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as they consider the upcoming presidential election. With the outcome expected to be close, these “swing states” may decide the future of the country.

ROCKY MOUNT, N.C. — The signs on the empty historic buildings envision an urban utopia of sorts, complete with street cafes, bustling bike lanes and a grocery co-op.

“IMAGINE What Could Be Here,” gushes one sign outside the empty, Neoclassical post office. “IMAGINE! A Vibrant Downtown,” reads another mounted on the glass front of a long-ago closed drug store.

In a place like Rocky Mount, North Carolina, it’s not such a stretch: Just across the street, white-collar workers peck away at laptops and sip lattes at a bright coffee bar lined with dozens of potted tropical plants. A few blocks away, a mammoth events center routinely brings in thousands of visitors from across the country. And alongside a quiet river nearby, a meticulously redeveloped cotton mill would be the envy of any American city, with its modern breweries, restaurants and loft living.

An industrial community long in decline, Rocky Mount is slowly building itself back. But in this city of about 54,000, sharply divided by race and class, many residents struggle to cover the basic costs of groceries, housing and child care.

North Carolina reflects the duality of the American economy: Unemployment is low, jobs are increasing and businesses are opening new factories. But high housing and food costs have squeezed middle-class residents despite the gains of rising wages.

“The economy stinks,” said Tameika Horne, who owns an ice cream and dessert shop in Rocky Mount.

Her ingredient prices have skyrocketed, she said, but she can’t continuously raise prices on ice cream cones or funnel cakes. She said last month was her slowest ever, with only $2,000 in sales.

It’s not just the slow sales at her store: Only a few years ago, she paid $700 a month to rent a three-bedroom apartment. Now, her similarly sized rental home costs her $1,350 a month.

Aside from the ice cream shop, Horne also runs a cleaning business with her family and just started a job delivering packages for FedEx.

“It’s just hard right now,” she said.

The economy, a top issue for voters during any election, is particularly important this presidential cycle: Prices of necessities such as groceries aren’t rising as fast as they were, but years of post-pandemic inflation have soured voter attitudes.

And across the country, millions of families are struggling with rising housing costs. In four of the seven swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada — more than half of tenant families spend 30% or more of their income on rent and utilities, according to the 2023 American Community Survey.

In North Carolina, voter anxiety about the soaring rents and grocery bills could tip the scales.

“In terms of its political influence, it’s not actually your personal financial situation that is important, it’s your vision of the national economy,” said Matt Grossmann, a political science professor at Michigan State University. “So if I get a raise, I tend to credit myself. If I see higher prices, I tend to blame the government or the current situation.”

Around the corner from Horne’s ice cream store in downtown Rocky Mount, Kristie Hilliard greets a steady flow of customers to her new shop, Kristie Kandies. An armed cop, a nurse in scrubs and waist-high kids trickle in to grab a sweet treat.

After getting tired of her manufacturing job at the local Pfizer plant, Hilliard started making confections at home. As her following grew, she got a concession trailer and now has a storefront selling candied grapes, plums, kiwis and pickles.

Hilliard’s treats have attracted attention on social media, causing some buyers to drive in from as far away as Pennsylvania, she said.

A Democrat, she said she still hadn’t made up her mind on the presidential race. But she doesn’t believe either a Harris or a Trump administration would drastically change much for her business.

“They ain’t doing nothing for me now,” she said. “So, what would change?”

A community divided looks to the future

About 60 miles northeast of the state capital, Rocky Mount lies between the prosperous Research Triangle area and North Carolina’s scenic beach communities.

Railroad tracks and a county line slice through the middle of downtown. On the one side is the majority Black and lower-income Edgecombe County. On the other, the more prosperous and whiter Nash County.

The setting sun’s glow reflects off a building near the intersection of SW Main Street and Sunset Avenue in Rocky Mount, N.C. The railroad tracks that run down the center of Main Street also serve as a dividing line between Nash and Edgecombe counties, and have historically split the city by race and class. (Kevin Hardy/Stateline/TNS)

While some officials say long-standing attitudes centered on division are fading, the county line has for decades provided a clear delineation of class, race and politics.

Edgecombe County is a Democratic stronghold, but the more populous Nash County is a bellwether of sorts. It was among the 10 closest of North Carolina’s 100 counties in the last presidential election, and one being closely watched this cycle. With 51,774 ballots cast, President Joe Biden took Nash County by 120 votes.

Around Rocky Mount’s downtown area, stately red brick churches and banks line the wide streets. But just a few blocks away, weeds overtake vacant lots, glass is smashed out of abandoned buildings, and razor wire tops the fencing of no-credit-needed car lots and used tire shops.

While the nearby Raleigh metro area has experienced explosive suburban growth, Rocky Mount Mayor Sandy Roberson said his community has seen an erosion of its middle class with the loss of corporate headquarters and factory jobs.

But he’s optimistic.

Young business owners are investing in downtown. Industries with operations in the Raleigh area are moving east. And both Republicans and Democrats just celebrated the news that Natron Energy plans to build a $1.4 billion electric vehicle battery plant nearby that will employ more than 1,000 people.

“We’ve got a lot of great things that are happening,” the mayor said. “But the key is, how do you build and retain a middle class? Because that’s who does the living and the dying and the investing in a community.”

The mayor’s position is nonpartisan, but Roberson is a Republican who in 2022 ran in the Republican primary for a congressional seat here. This election, however, is a difficult one for him.

Roberson said the economy and his financial position were unquestionably better during former President Donald Trump’s term, but the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and the chaos of the last Trump presidency make him hard to support. At the same time, Roberson worries about Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris’ economic policies; he believes the current administration has accelerated inflation by pumping too much money into the economy.

“At some levels, it feels like I’m voting for somebody who wants to either be a dictator or somebody who wants to create a socialist state,” Roberson said. “And I’m not in either place.”

A former cotton mill built and once operated by slave labor, Rocky Mount Mills closed in 1996, reopened in 2015, and is now home to breweries, restaurants and dozens of high-end apartments. (Kevin Hardy/Stateline/TNS)

‘Nobody is immune’

In North Carolina and other swing states, Trump’s television ads hammer the vice president over high prices and “Bidenomics.”

Nash County Republican Party volunteer Yvonne McLeod said the economy, along with immigration, are the top concerns locally. Businesses still struggle to hire, rents have soared and food prices are still up, she said.

“Economically, we’re hurting,” she said.

Democrats must be honest about the financial pressures facing voters, said Cassandra Conover, a former Virginia prosecutor who now leads the Nash County Democratic Party. She noted that Harris ads running in North Carolina speak directly to middle-class concerns.

“Nobody is immune from what’s going on,” Conover said. “She’s telling all of us who are hurting, ‘I know, and we’re working for you.’”

Read more: Low-wage states with cheap housing dominated the post-pandemic jobs boom

Polling has shown voters are sour on the economy, with 63% saying the economy was on the wrong track in a Harvard-CAPS-Harris poll released this month. Republicans take a far dimmer view than Democrats.

“From past experience, we would expect Harris to inherit some of the blame or credit for the current economy, but so far in the polls, I would say there has been a surprising willingness of voters to not extend the blame for inflation that they had for Joe Biden onto Kamala Harris,” said Grossmann, the Michigan State University professor.

Housing anxiety

Housing costs have outstripped income gains in the past two decades, but those challenges have intensified since the COVID-19 pandemic, when demand increased, construction costs soared and interest rates spiked.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re a buyer or a renter,” said Molly Boesel, an economist at CoreLogic, a financial services information company. “You’re seeing your housing costs increase.”

Affordability is “the No. 1 issue” among voters in Nevada this year, said Mario Arias, the Nevada director of the Forward Party, a centrist political party founded by former Democratic presidential hopeful Andrew Yang.

A resident of the Las Vegas area, 30-year-old Arias said housing is his biggest financial concern. Throngs of Californians have moved into Nevada to lower their housing costs, but it’s driven up costs for everyone else, he said.

“If you want to get out of being a renter, you have to be in not just a good financial situation, but in a very stable financial situation,” he said.

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates last week for the first time in four years, which could open the housing market to more homebuyers as mortgage rates ease in the coming months.

The Biden administration has proposed several housing-related policies, including incentives to loosen zoning regulations and capping rent increases from corporate landlords. Harris has announced a proposal to provide up to $25,000 in housing assistance for a down payment to some potential first-time homeowners and promised tax incentives that she say’s would lead to 3 million more housing units by the end of her first term, if she’s elected.

Trump has not waded far into the details of how he would address the affordability issue in a second term. He has said he plans to bring down prices by barring immigrants in the country without legal authorization from getting mortgages. But his proposed immigration policies could further reduce the labor force for building homes. Previously, Trump’s administration talked about trying to cut state and local housing regulations, and it suspended federal regulations on fair housing.

If I get a raise, I tend to credit myself. If I see higher prices, I tend to blame the government or the current situation.– Matt Grossmann, a political science professor at Michigan State University

In North Carolina, more than a quarter of the state’s households are cost burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs. It’s particularly challenging for renters, nearly half of which are cost burdened, according to the North Carolina Housing Coalition, a nonprofit affordable housing organization.

Stephanie Watkins-Cruz, housing policy director at the coalition, noted that the federal government’s calculation of fair market rent in North Carolina has shot up 14% in just one year — and 38% over the past five years.

“So unless everybody and their mama’s getting 14 to 20 to 38% raises, the math begins to not math,” she said.

It’s a familiar challenge in every swing state.

Read more: Rent is eating up a greater share of tenants’ income in almost every state

Wendy Winston, a middle school math teacher in Grand Rapids Michigan, said that though no one political candidate is responsible for the state of the economy, the cost of groceries and housing is hard to ignore.

“I don’t think the economy is terrible. It is sometimes difficult to make ends meet,” Winston said. “I don’t believe that it’s the fault of the government or policies of the government. I feel like it’s the individual corporations trying to make profit off the backs of the middle class.”

The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Grand Rapids is about $1,550 a month, according to rental site Apartments.com. Though Michigan ranks fairly average compared with other states for rent prices, the state saw some of the steepest rent increases in the country in recent years, and wages have not kept up. Residents unable to rent new, “luxury” apartments find themselves short of options for places they can afford.

“It’s not just cost, it’s availability,” Winston said. “There are a lot of new housing developments. Apartments and condos and things are being built, but I’m priced out of them. And I have a college degree, so I don’t think that’s helping our families.”

Hoping for revival

Back in North Carolina, near the banks of the Tar River, Rocky Mount Mills has a healthy waiting list for the apartments and the revamped homes it rents.

A former cotton mill built and once operated by slave labor, the campus closed in 1996, reopened in 2015 after a $75 million renovation, and is now home to breweries, restaurants and dozens of high-end apartments.

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Chapel Hill native and entrepreneur Cameron Schulz never had Rocky Mount on his radar. But the development’s brewery incubator helped him launch HopFly Brewing Co., now one of the state’s largest self-distributing breweries.

After outgrowing its original space, HopFly relocated to Charlotte, but still operates a taproom in Rocky Mount. The Mills project has reinvigorated the city, Schulz said.

“Rocky Mount’s got one of the most beautiful, quintessential downtown strips that I’ve ever seen anywhere,” he said. “We’ve just got to fill it up with cool places to go, and people to go into those places.”

Main Street suffered for decades after the arrival of malls and a highway bypass. Over at Davis Furniture Company, two employees keep watch over an empty storeroom of sofas, beds and home decor.

Co-owner Melanie Davis said business has been good, though she believes customers are anxious about the presidential election. Pointing down the sidewalk to new restaurants and some loft apartments overlooking the railroad tracks, Davis said she’s bullish on the trajectory of downtown.

“I do feel like we’re on an upswing,” she said.

Kevin Hardy covers business, labor and rural issues for Stateline from the Midwest. Casey Quinlan is an economy reporter for States Newsroom, based in Washington, D.C. Michigan Advance’s Anna Liz Nichols contributed reporting.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: [email protected]. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

​ Orange County Register 

Mater Dei football responds to challenge from Santa Margarita with strong second half

• October 5, 2024

MISSION VIEJO — The Trinity League delivered on its reputation Friday night. You might be forgiven if you thought America’s toughest high school football league would have included a rout. If you looked at the rankings and the records, and the adversity faced by one of the teams, a blowout looked imminently possible.

But when push comes to shove, there aren’t going to be many Friday nights that are easy.

Sure, top-ranked Mater Dei went home with a 40-18 victory over Santa Margarita. But not without getting knocked around a bit.

Not without clinging to a 16-10 halftime lead. Not without getting shut down at the goal line and having to kick a field goal. Not without reinserting Oregon-bound running back Jordon Davison to score a TD with 28 seconds remaining to buff up the score.

“We knew Santa Margarita was going to come out pretty strong,” said Mater Dei coach Raul Lara. “They have nothing to lose. We’re going to take everyone’s best shot, and we have to match that intensity.

“Give a lot of credit to the coaches over there, rallying their guys and making them play hard.”

That much was evident. Arguably the Eagles’ best player, receiver Trent Mosely, was out with an injury. Their head coach, Anthony Rouzier, was out after being placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation into incidents within the football program.

And the Eagles did play hard. Very little of what Mater Dei (5-0, 1-0) gained looked like it came easy or without paying a physical price. The Eagles (3-3, 0-1) were tough, they flew to the ball, and they never gave up.

And they shocked the Monarchs right out of the box. Their first play from scrimmage was a 52-yard bomb from John Gazzaniga to Sean Embree, and the next play Gazzaniga scored from 2 yards.

There were times when Gazzaniga looked like he was summoning his inner Johnny Stanton as he took on the Mater Dei defense, dishing out as much as he took. He finished with nine carries for 41 yards, and completed 13 of 20 passes for 114.

And the Eagles defense was physical and pressured the quarterback.

Eventually, talent won out. Mater Dei’s offensive line was stout, the defense was stiff, and they took advantage of a golden opportunity presented them.

Mater Dei took control – and pulled away – in the second half after a bad snap on a punt gave it possession at the Eagles 17; Monarchs quarterback Dash Beierly immediately connected with Gavin Honore on a beautifully thrown pass and catch at the back of the end zone to make it 26-10 with 4:48 left in the third quarter

Beierly completed 14 of 21 passes for 130 yards and two touchdowns. His second TD was a highlight-worthy 2-yarder to Kayden Dixon-Wyatt, which made it 33-10 with 11:52 left in the game.

Dixon-Wyatt finished with five catches for 52 yards.

Before wearing out the Eagles in the second half, Mater Dei had relied on the big-play ability of Davison. When yards were hard to come, Davison’s elusiveness paid dividends twice. He peeled off a 64-yard scoring run with 3:53 left in the first quarter to match Margarita’s first score, and a 26-yard run around the right side for a 16-7 lead with 57 seconds left in the first quarter.

Though Beierly threw for two TD passes, it was Davison who was the offensive star.

“I broke a lot of tackles,” he said. “I thought this was my best game of the season.”

He rushed 13 times for 155 yards and three scores, including the one with 28 seconds remaining after the second-unit took the ball down to the goal line. He admitted he was surprised he went back into the game to seal the deal.

Steven Fifita, the Santa Margarita defensive coordinator who was thrust into the role of interim head coach in Rouzier’s absence, shouldered much of the blame – probably unnecessarily so.

“I just didn’t have answers for some of the things they did in the second half,” he said. “Mater Dei’s a good team. They executed and did a really good job. We knew it would be an uphill battle, but I still thought we had a chance to win. We never gave up, we never turned on each other.

“The situation wasn’t ideal from a coaching perspective, but we tell the kids the next guy has to be ready. I thought our staff did a great job adjusting on the run.”

And then Fifita let out a long sigh that reflected the entire week. After giving a good account of itself, it’s finally over.

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​ Orange County Register 

QB Tommy Acosta’s passing leads Capistrano Valley football to victory over Western

• October 5, 2024

MISSION VIEJO — The Capistrano Valley football team used a herculean effort by quarterback Tommy Acosta to defeat Western 35-25 on Friday night at Capistrano Valley High.

Acosta threw for 368 yards and four touchdowns and added a rushing touchdown as the Cougars improved to 5-1 overall by winning its Delta League debut.

“I thought he did a good job spreading the ball around and managing the game,” Capistrano Valley coach Sean Curtis said. “there were some good pockets provided by the O-line, so (Acosta) had some time. The receivers have been itching to get the ball and he does a good job of keeping them all happy.”

Three different receivers scored for Capo Valley. Talon Spencer had six catches for 123 yards and a score, Hudson Campbell had 105 yards and a touchdown catch and Kaden Hunter scored two touchdowns to go with 88 yards receiving.

Western took the opening drive to the Capo Valley 8-yard line but was unable to get any points on the board.

The Pioneers (3-3, 0-1) opened the scoring when Chance Thomas connected with Maxwell Young on a 22-yard reception that saw Young beat double coverage and come down with the ball for the 6-0 lead.

Thomas had 329 yards passing and three touchdowns and Young was his favorite target. Young caught nine passes for 204 yards and two touchdowns, including an 81-yard TD that brought the Pioneers within 10 points.

Western also had huge contributions from wide receiver Christian Rojas (three receptions, 102 yards, TD) and running back Malachi Alatorre, who who ran for 101 yards and a score.

The Cougars got a crucial touchdown catch from Izaiah Bennett just before halftime and also scored to open the second half with a 23-yard pass from Acosta to Spencer.

“Luckily we won the toss because we wanted our defense to go first and have the ball to start the second half,” Curtis said. “We knew if we could get an extra possession going into halftime that would be huge against this offense.”

The only turnover of the game proved to be a costly one.

The Pioneers were down 28-18 late in the third quarter and driving downfield when Alatorre was hit by Ryan Kron, who jarred the ball loose for Reily Walker to recover.

“Ryan (Kron) came in and made a big play,” Curtis said. “Their #32 (Alatorre) is awesome, he’s a great player and I don’t know if he’s even fumbled at this point in the season. So for Ryan to come in and punch the ball out for us to recover was a big play in the game.”

Western coach Dan Davidson confirmed that it was a rare turnover by Alatorre.

“Malachi hasn’t fumbled since the semifinals in his sophomore year,” Davidson said. “It was the first time he’s put it on the ground (this season), and it was a big turnaround and they got some momentum from that.”

The Cougars used that turnover to pull away. Acosta found Hunter for a 37-yard TD strike that made the score 35-18.

Western answered with a scoring drive that was sparked by Thomas’ scrambling ability. Thomas got the Pioneers to the 2 but took a big shot as he attempted to slide just before the goal line.

Alatorre finished the drive with a 2-yard run and Noah Giddens replaced Thomas for the remainder of the game after that big hit.

The Cougars defense collected six sacks on the night as they were pressuring Thomas for most of the contest.

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​ Orange County Register 

In the tightest states, new voting laws could tip the outcome in November

• October 5, 2024

By Matt Vasilogambros, Stateline

Editor’s note: This series explores the priorities of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as they consider the upcoming presidential election. With the outcome expected to be close, these “swing states” may decide the future of the country.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Some voters are already casting early ballots in the first presidential election since the global pandemic ended and former President Donald Trump refused to accept his defeat.

This year’s presidential election won’t be decided by a margin of millions of votes, but likely by thousands in the seven tightly contested states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

How legislatures, courts and election boards have reshaped ballot access in those states in the past four years could make a difference. Some of those states, especially Michigan, cemented the temporary pandemic-era measures that allowed for more mail-in and early voting. But other battleground states have passed laws that may keep some registered voters from casting ballots.

Trump and his allies have continued to spread lies about the 2020 results, claiming without evidence that widespread voter fraud stole the election from him. That has spurred many Republican lawmakers in states such as Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina to reel back access to early and mail-in voting and add new identification requirements to vote. And in Pennsylvania, statewide appellate courts are toggling between rulings.

“The last four years have been a long, strange trip,” said Hannah Fried, co-founder and executive director of All Voting is Local, a multistate voting rights organization.

“Rollbacks were almost to an instance tied to the ‘big lie,’” she added, referring to Trump’s election conspiracy theories. “And there have been many, many positive reforms for voters in the last few years that have gone beyond what we saw in the COVID era.”

The volume of election-related legislation and court cases that emerged over the past four years has been staggering.

Nationally, the Voting Rights Lab, a nonpartisan group that researches election law changes, tracked 6,450 bills across the country that were introduced since 2021 that sought to alter the voting process. Hundreds of those bills were enacted.

Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, cautioned that incremental tweaks to election law — especially last-minute changes made by the courts — not only confuse voters, but also put a strain on local election officials who must comply with changes to statute as they prepare for another highly scrutinized voting process.

“Any voter that is affected unnecessarily is too many in my book,” he said.

New restrictions

In many ways, the 2020 presidential election is still being litigated four years later.

Swing states have been the focus of legal challenges and new laws spun from a false narrative that questioned election integrity. The 2021 state legislative sessions, many begun in the days following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, brought myriad legislative changes that have made it more difficult to vote and altered how ballots are counted and rejected.

The highest-profile measure over the past four years came out of Georgia.

Under a 2021 law, Georgia residents now have less time to ask for mail-in ballots and must put their driver’s license or state ID information on those requests. The number of drop boxes has been limited. And neither election officials nor nonprofits may send unsolicited mail-in ballot applications to voters.

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp said when signing the measure that it would ensure free and fair elections in the state, but voting rights groups lambasted the law as voter suppression.

That law also gave Georgia’s State Election Board more authority to interfere in the makeup of local election boards. The state board has made recent headlines for paving the way for counties to potentially refuse to certify the upcoming election. This comes on top of a wave of voter registration challenges from conservative activists.

A ‘Wait Here To Vote’ sign is seen in a polling location as voters check in to cast ballots on May 21, 2024 in Atlanta. Georgia is among the battleground states that since the 2020 presidential election has enacted new laws that could restrict voting access. (Photo by Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)

In North Carolina, the Republican-led legislature last year overrode Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto to enact measures that shortened the time to turn in mail-in ballots; required local election officials to reject ballots if voters who register to vote using same-day registration during early voting do not later verify their home address; and required identification to vote by mail.

This will also be the first general election that North Carolinians will have to comply with a 2018 voter ID measure that was caught up in the court system until the state Supreme Court reinstated the law last year.

And in Arizona, the Republican-led legislature pushed through a measure that shortened the time voters have to correct missing or mismatched signatures on their absentee ballot envelopes. Then-Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed the measure.

“Look, sometimes the complexity is the point,” said Fried, of All Voting is Local. “If you are passing a law that makes it this complicated for somebody to vote or to register to vote, what’s your endgame here? What are you trying to do?”

Laws avoided major overhauls

But the restrictions could have gone much further.

That’s partly because Democratic governors, such as Arizona’s Katie Hobbs, who took office in 2023, have vetoed many of the Republican-backed bills. But it’s also because of how popular early voting methods have become.

Arizonans, for example, have been able to vote by mail for more than three decades. More than 75% of Arizonan voters requested mail-in ballots in 2022, and 90% of voters in 2020 cast their ballots by mail.

This year, a bill that would have scrapped no-excuse absentee voting passed the state House but failed to clear a Republican-controlled Senate committee.

Read more: More states consider voter ID laws amid conflicting research on their impact

Bridget Augustine, a high school English teacher in Glendale, Arizona, and a registered independent, has been a consistent early voter since 2020. She said the first time she voted in Arizona was by absentee ballot while she was a college student in New Jersey, and she has no concerns “whatsoever” about the safety of early voting in Arizona.

“I just feel like so much of this rhetoric was drummed up as a way to make it easier to lie about the election and undermine people’s confidence,” she said.

Vanessa Jiminez, the security manager for a Phoenix high school district, a registered independent and an early voter, said she is confident in the safety of her ballot.

“I track my ballot every step of the way,” she said.

Ben Ginsberg, a longtime Republican election lawyer and Volker Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the think tank Hoover Institution, said that while these laws may add new hurdles, he doesn’t expect them to change vote totals.

“The bottom line is I don’t think that the final result in any election is going to be impacted by a law that’s been passed,” he said on a recent call with reporters organized by the Knight Foundation, a Miami-based nonprofit that provides grants to support democracy and journalism.

Major expansions

No state has seen a bigger expansion to ballot access over the past four years than Michigan.

Republicans tried to curtail access to absentee voting, introducing 39 bills in 2021, when the party still was in charge of both legislative chambers.

Two GOP bills passed, but Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vetoed them.

The next year, Michigan voters approved ballot measures that added nine days of early voting. The measures also allowed voters to request mail-in ballots online; created a permanent vote-by-mail list; provided prepaid postage on absentee ballot applications and ballots; increased ballot drop boxes; and allowed voters to correct missing or mismatched signatures on mail-in ballot envelopes.

Voters check-in at a polling location for the Michigan primary election at Oakman Elementary School on Feb. 27, 2024, in Dearborn, Michigan. Michigan was one of the swing states that greatly expanded voter access since 2020. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images/TNS)

“When you take it to the people and actually ask them about it, it turns out most people want more voting access,” said Melinda Billingsley, communications manager for Voters Not Politicians, a Lansing, Michigan-based voting rights advocacy group.

“The ballot access expansions happened in spite of an anti-democratic, Republican-led push to restrict ballot access,” she said.

In 2021, then-Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, signed into law a measure that transitioned the state into a universal vote-by-mail system. Every registered voter would be sent a ballot in the mail before an election, unless they opt out. The bill made permanent a temporary expansion of mail-in voting that the state put in place during the pandemic.

Nevada voters have embraced the system, data shows.

In February’s presidential preference primary, 78% of ballots cast were ballots by mail or in a ballot drop box, according to the Nevada secretary of state’s office. In June’s nonpresidential primary, 65% of ballots were mail-in ballots. And in the 2022 general election, 51% of ballots cast were mail ballots.

Last-minute court decisions

Drop boxes weren’t controversial in Wisconsin until Trump became fixated on them as an avenue for alleged voter fraud, said Jeff Mandell, general counsel and co-founder of Law Forward, a Madison-based nonprofit legal organization.

For half of a century, Wisconsinites could return their absentee ballots in the same drop boxes that counties and municipalities used for water bills and property taxes, he said. But when the pandemic hit and local election officials expected higher volumes of absentee ballots, they installed larger boxes.

After Trump lost the state by fewer than 21,000 votes in 2020, drop boxes became a flashpoint. Republican leaders claimed drop boxes were not secure, and that nefarious people could tamper with the ballots. In 2022, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, then led by a conservative majority, banned drop boxes.

But that ruling would only last two years. In July, the new liberal majority in the state’s high court reversed the ruling and said localities could determine whether to use drop boxes. It was a victory for voters, Mandell said.

With U.S. Postal Service delays stemming from the agency’s restructuring, drop boxes provide a faster method of returning a ballot without having to worry about it showing up late, he said. Ballots must get in by 8 p.m. on Election Day. The boxes are especially convenient for rural voters, who may have a clerk’s office or post office with shorter hours, he added.

“Every way that you make it easy for people to vote safely and securely is good,” Mandell said.

After the high court’s ruling, local officials had to make a swift decision about whether to reinstall drop boxes.

Read more: Swing states prepare for a showdown over certifying votes in November

Milwaukee city employees were quickly dispatched throughout the city to remove the leather bags that covered the drop boxes for two years, cleaned them all and repaired several, said Paulina Gutierrez, executive director of the City of Milwaukee Election Commission.

“There’s an all-hands-on-deck mentality here at the city,” she said, adding that there are cameras pointed at each drop box.

Although it used a drop box in 2020, Marinette, a community on the western shore of Green Bay, opted not to use them for the August primary and asked voters to hand the ballots to clerk staff. Lana Bero, the city clerk, said the city may revisit that decision before November.

New Berlin Clerk Rubina Medina said her community, a city of about 40,000 on the outskirts of Milwaukee, had some security concerns about potentially tampering or destruction of ballots within drop boxes, and therefore decided not to use the boxes this year.

Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell, who serves the state capital of Madison and its surrounding area, has been encouraging local clerks in his county to have a camera on their drop boxes and save the videos in case residents have fraud concerns.

A risk of confusing voters

Many local election officials in Wisconsin say they worry that court decisions, made mere months before the November election, could create confusion for voters and more work for clerks.

“These decisions are last-second, over and over again,” McDonell said. “You’re killing us when you do that.”

Arizonans and Pennsylvanians now know that late-in-the-game scramble too.

Read more: New voter registration rules threaten hefty fines, criminal penalties for groups

In August, the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated part of a 2022 Arizona law that requires documented proof of citizenship to register on state forms, potentially impacting tens of thousands of voters, disproportionately affecting young and Native voters.

Whether Pennsylvania election officials should count mail ballots returned with errors has been a subject of litigation in every election since 2020. State courts continue to grapple with the question, and neither voting rights groups nor national Republicans show signs of giving up.

Former Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar, who is now president of Athena Strategies and working on voting rights and election security issues across the country, said voters simply need to ignore the noise of litigation and closely follow the instructions with their mail ballots.

“Litigation is confusing,” Boockvar said. “The legislature won’t fix it by legislation. Voter education is the key thing here, and the instructions on the envelopes need to be as clear and simple as possible.”

To avoid confusion, voters can make a plan for how and when they will vote by going to vote.gov, a federally run site where voters can check to make sure they are properly registered and to answer questions in more than a dozen languages about methods for casting a ballot.

Matt Vasilogambros covers voting rights, gun laws and Western climate policy for Stateline. He lives in San Diego, California. Arizona Mirror’s Caitlin Sievers and Jim Small, Nevada Current’s April Corbin Girnus and Pennsylvania Capital-Star’s Peter Hall contributed reporting.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: [email protected]. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

​ Orange County Register 

The issues and states that will determine who wins the White House

• October 5, 2024

By Kevin Hardy, Stateline

Editor’s note: This five-day series explores the priorities of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as they consider the upcoming presidential election. With the outcome expected to be close, these “swing states” may decide the future of the country.

It’s been a wild few months in the presidential race: President Joe Biden dropped out and Vice President Kamala Harris captured the Democratic nomination. Former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania and was targeted again at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Despite the historic lead-up to Election Day, the race has now settled into familiar territory: Much like 2020’s contest, top political strategists on both sides of the aisle expect control of the White House could come down to just a few thousand votes in a handful of battleground states.

“This is not going to be an election where you will see a landslide. It’s going to be won in the margins in six to seven swing states,” Democratic strategist Donna Brazile told a crowd of state lawmakers from across the country last month.

Brazile, who ran Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, shared the stage with Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway, who managed Trump’s 2016 campaign and advised him in the White House.

Unsurprisingly, the pair disagreed on much.

But while speaking at the National Conference of State Legislatures in Kentucky, the two senior strategists framed the race similarly to the 2020 contest, when fewer than 50,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin separated Biden and Trump from an Electoral College tie.

“It is a different race. It has turned in very short time, but the issue set hasn’t changed at all,” Conway said. “And I think that’s what’s important here.”

Like last cycle, the two campaigns are pouring millions into Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

In “The Deciders” series, States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization, explores the political issues and groups of voters that could make the difference in those seven states and, consequentially, in the race for the White House.

Unsurprisingly, economic issues — namely, stubbornly high prices — are proving central for many voters across the swing states. But voters also are concerned about immigration, abortion access and the future of the Supreme Court.

Read more: Swing states prepare for a showdown over certifying votes in November

In states such as Michigan and Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, labor unions could prove instrumental for Harris after years of significant gains by organized labor.

In Georgia and North Carolina, Black voter turnout could make the difference, while Latino voters are closely divided in Nevada after helping propel Biden to victory there four years ago. In every swing state, campaigns are focused on all-important suburban voters.

The election’s outcome also could be shaped by the work of officials who have been debating who can vote and which votes should count since the mayhem of the last presidential contest.

Four years ago, a false narrative that questioned the security and integrity of elections took hold in some legislatures. New laws changed ballot-counting practices and made it more difficult to vote in many states, including swing states. In states such as Michigan and Wisconsin, there is broad concern that despite the checks and balances built into the voting system, local Republicans tasked with certifying elections will be driven by conspiracy theories and refuse to fulfill their duties if Trump loses again.

Fears that these efforts could sow chaos and delay results is not unfounded: Over the past four years, county officials in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania have refused to certify certain local elections.

With such a close race, voter turnout and motivation will be key in all the battleground states.

As in other swing states, North Carolina’s 16 Electoral College votes could hinge on how political independents vote, said Carter Wrenn, a longtime Republican strategist who has worked on many campaigns.

And those independents can be unpredictable in North Carolina: Their votes helped both Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and Trump carry the state in the last two general elections.

“It’s the independents that are up for grabs, and they don’t mind splitting a ticket at all,” Wrenn said. “Ultimately, in the general election, that’s the key group.”

The economy

In every state this year, the economy is a central issue.

As Trump tries to fault Harris and Biden for the high costs of everyday living, polling shows voters blame Harris less for the situation than they did Biden — though likely voters profess more confidence in Trump’s ability to manage the economy.

For her part, Harris has unveiled plans to lower prices of rent, homebuying and groceries, arguing she will remain focused on the middle class from Day One, contrasting her ideas with what she characterizes as Trump’s catering to billionaires.

In Georgia, Republicans and Democrats alike have found success in recent statewide campaigns by highlighting similar kitchen table issues. After attending a Harris rally in Savannah last month, Georgia voter Sarah Damato said she doesn’t believe Trump will fight for the middle class.

At the event, the vice president told listeners she would lower costs by fighting corporate price-fixing and touted her proposal for a “care economy,” a set of progressive proposals including benefits for parents of newborns and credits for first-time homebuyers.

“Kamala Harris made it very evident today that the American family is the most important thing on her mind these days, and she’s going to make it easier for each one of us to have a brighter future,” Damato said.

Read more: Harris unveils plan to curb price gouging, boost child tax credit, tackle rent hikes

In Kenosha, Wisconsin, meanwhile, Republican Party volunteer Sharon Buege said she supports the GOP ticket because she sees the race as a matter of “good versus evil.” Speaking outside a news conference by Trump running mate J.D. Vance, Buege said she opposed “the whole left agenda,” adding that her top issues in the race were border security, the economy, human trafficking, homelessness and “indoctrination” in public schools.

At that same news conference, a man who would only give his name as “John” said the economy and inflation mattered most: “I don’t need a reminder of why to support Trump. I can get that every time I go to the gas station or grocery store.”

Groups of voters

With Republicans looking to run up margins in rural parts of the battleground states and Democrats banking on big leads in cities, the suburbs remain pivotal.

In Georgia, diverse and growing suburbs have helped move the state from reliably red to purple.

In the state’s two largest suburban counties of Cobb and Gwinnett, Biden picked up more than 137,000 votes in 2020 over 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, according to data from the Georgia Secretary of State’s office. The same year, Trump boosted his total by just under 32,000 votes over his 2016 performance.

The Trump campaign boasts a mighty in-state operation: nearly 15,000 volunteers signing up between mid-July and the end of August, nearly 300 events scheduled for September, and 4,000 neighborhood organizers and canvassers — known as Trump Force Captains — joining the cause in July and August.

But Team Harris says they are running the largest Georgia operation of any Democratic presidential campaign cycle, with more than 200 campaign staff in 28 offices. Harris’ recent visit to the more conservative south side of the state marked her 16th trip to Georgia since becoming vice president and her seventh trip this year.

Harris is hoping to fire up the young, diverse Democratic base, but her team also is hoping she can hang onto or expand on Biden’s coalition of older, affluent, educated and largely white suburbanites.

“Those are the people who are actually kind of pivotal and who will modify or change their behavior,” said University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock.

“These people are largely Republicans, but they can’t bring themselves to vote for Donald Trump or for Republicans who are closely associated with him,” Bullock said.

Larry Ceisler, a Philadelphia public affairs executive and political analyst, said the four suburban Philadelphia counties surrounding Pennsylvania’s largest city are key to winning that state. Once a Republican bastion, the so-called collar counties of Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery have swung strongly in the other direction since 2016.

That complicates messaging for both campaigns, Ceisler said. Trump’s anti-abortion stance and Harris’ effort to back away from her earlier statements against fracking — both positions that appeal to rural and western Pennsylvania voters — are potential liabilities in suburbs.

Democrats have a 343,000-voter registration advantage over Republicans in Pennsylvania. But the state has been decided by narrow margins in the last two presidential elections.

Daniel Mallinson, an associate professor of public policy and administration at Penn State Harrisburg, noted that the Trump campaign has paid attention to Black and Latino voters.

“One of the weaknesses that Biden had as a candidate was he had weakening support among African American voters. And then Trump has actually done fairly well, particularly in some other states, like in Florida, with Latino voters,” Mallinson said, adding that Harris’ nomination changes the equation somewhat.

After Democrats seemingly all but wrote off Arizona for Biden, the contest there is proving more winnable for Harris. Biden narrowly won Arizona in 2020, but he had been hemorrhaging Latino support this year.

In the manufacturing-heavy upper Midwest, labor unions could prove consequential in not only persuading voters but also motivating them to the polls.

Biden was the first sitting president to visit a picket line when the United Auto Workers last year took on the “Big Three” Detroit automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — by going on strike. That effort led to significant increases in pay and benefits for workers.

UAW members protest in support of the union strike at the Ford Assembly Plant on the South Side on October 7, 2023 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)

The UAW, which in August announced a national campaign to motivate its 1 million active and retired members to vote for Harris, says its membership accounted for 9.2% of Biden’s 2020 votes in Michigan alone.

“To me, this election is real simple,” UAW president Shawn Fain told a crowd of about 15,000 people last month at a rally in Detroit for Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. “It’s about one question. It’s a question we made famous in the labor movement: Which side are you on?”

Political weaknesses

While Democrats are more motivated than when Biden was the presumptive nominee, they still face internal conflicts, the most high-profile of which has been about the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Dee Sull, a Las Vegas attorney who works in immigration and family law, is a registered Democrat who said she would never vote for Trump. Yet she doesn’t really want to vote for Harris, leaving her “very torn” this election.

“I believe our foreign policy in Gaza is completely ridiculous. I’m very disturbed,” she said of U.S. military aid to Israel. “If we’re going to spend money, I want it spent on my kids here — on my neighbors’ kids here.”

Sull said both parties have silenced the voices of those who protest the death and destruction in Gaza. And she was irritated that Palestinian American activists were not allowed to speak at the Democratic National Convention last month.

Sull won’t sit out the election, but said she would prefer to vote for a third candidate with a viable shot at winning.

“Probably like a lot of Americans would if they had that opportunity,” she said.

For Trump, voters’ overwhelming support for abortion rights could prove a huge liability in swing states.

While Trump has wobbled in recent months on whether he would veto a national abortion ban, the Supreme Court justices he appointed dismantled abortion access across the country in 2022 — an unpopular position even in red states such as Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio that since have voted to expand abortion rights.

In Wisconsin, Planned Parenthood stopped offering abortions at its health clinics after the court’s Dobbs decision because of an 1849 “trigger” state law that immediately took effect. Wisconsin women lost all abortion services there for a year and a half, until a court re-interpreted the state law.

This summer’s shakeup has reset the race, said Amy Walter, publisher of The Cook Political Report, an independent, nonpartisan newsletter that analyzes elections. So far, likely voters in the swing states view Harris more favorably than Biden, she said. But with Trump benefiting from an electorate skeptical of the state of the economy, the newsletter characterized the race as “a battle of inches.”

The campaigns both face a lot of voters who are disenchanted with politics altogether, or else unhappy with their options.

Amy Tarkanian, a conservative television commentator who once lauded Trump to national audiences and was chair of the Nevada State Republican Party in 2011-12, said she’s at “a complete loss” this year. She remains a Republican, even after the state party heavily criticized her when, two years ago, she endorsed a pair of Democratic candidates for state offices.

“I’m not happy, or necessarily sold on Kamala,” Tarkanian said. “… But I absolutely do not want to vote for Donald Trump.”

Kevin Hardy covers business, labor and rural issues for Stateline from the Midwest. Arizona Mirror’s Jim Small, Michigan Advance’s Anna Liz Nichols and Jon King, Nevada Current’s Hugh Jackson, NC Newsline’s Galen Bacharier, Pennsylvania Capital-Star’s Peter Hall and John Cole, Georgia Recorder’s Ross Williams, and Wisconsin Examiner’s Ruth Conniff and Henry Redman contributed reporting.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: [email protected]. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

​ Orange County Register 

Crean Lutheran football’s Jacob Maiava again denied temporary restraining order against CIF

• October 5, 2024

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SANTA ANA — Crean Lutheran football player Jacob Maiava received compassion from Orange County Superior Court judge David Hoffer on Friday but not the decision he was seeking in his legal fight to play this season.

Hoffer denied Maiava’s request for a temporary restraining order against CIF, which ruled the senior offensive lineman ineligible this season for following an assistant coach in transferring to Crean Lutheran from Santa Margarita.

“This is a big deal as I see it,” Hoffer told Maiava, who appeared in the hearing with his attorney Michael Caspino. “The court is sympathetic.”

Hoffer, however, sided with the CIF’s enforcement of its eligibility rules and handling of the transfer case.

The CIF-SS ruled that Maiava made an athletically motivated transfer in following former Santa Margarita assistant Ryan Porter to Crean Lutheran in the offseason. The ruling, made on August 27, was upheld by a CIF state appeal officer on Thursday.

Maiava, 18, has argued that he moved to Crean Lutheran for academic reasons.

He said Friday that the section’s initial ruling against his eligibility case “hit me hard” but he has grown in acceptance.

“It’s not the end of the world,” Maiava, who is committed to SMU, said of the decision. “I still have football ahead of him. When the right time is the right time.”

“I’m just going through God’s plan,” he added.

Caspino said he plans to seek a preliminary injunction hearing for the case. A conference was scheduled Tuesday.

“We are going to keep fighting,” Caspino said

Maiava’s first attempt for a restraining order against CIF was dismissed Sept. 23 because the result of the CIF appeal was still pending.

Crean Lutheran principal Daniel Moyer on Friday clarified his stance on Maiava’s appeal.

In an email to the CIF State office, he wrote, “Our school’s position not to appeal does not indicate a lack of support for a student-athlete independently pursuing an appeal; rather, it alludes to the value and regard we have for CIF and the rules established by CIF.”

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​ Orange County Register 

OCVarsity football wrap-up: Friday’s stories, scores, photos and more

• October 5, 2024

This is the place to find all of OCVarsity’s scores, game stories, photos and more from the Week 6 football games.

Come back Saturday afternoon for our extensive roundup filled with highlights and stats from other games and lists of the Week 6 stats leaders and top performers.

FRIDAY’S GAMES

SCORES

High school football: All of the scores from Friday’s Week 6 games

PHOTOS & VIDEO 

High school football: Top photos from Friday’s biggest games, Oct. 4

High school football: Scores, highlights, interviews, video recap from Friday night

GAME STORIES

Mission Viejo football rumbles to victory over Long Beach Poly at SoFi Stadium

Freshman QB Koa Malau’ulu rallies St. John Bosco past Orange Lutheran in Trinity League thriller

Servite football wins battle with JSerra in Trinity League opener

Crean Lutheran football beats Foothill to make strong first impression in new league

Mater Dei football responds to challenge from Santa Margarita with strong second half

San Juan Hills football survives big rally by Corona del Mar to win Bravo League debut

QB Tommy Acosta’s passing leads Capistrano Valley football to victory over Western

THURSDAY’S GAMES

Undefeated Yorba Linda football rolls past Villa Park in Bravo League opener

Estancia football improves to 5-1 with victory over Rancho Alamitos

El Modena football does everything well in Delta League win over Trabuco Hills

La Habra football starts a new league with emphatic win over El Dorado

High school football: Scores from the Week 6 games Thursday, Oct. 3

Did you see this?

Mission Viejo football embraces chance to play at SoFi Stadium

Vander Ploog leads football, and family legacy, to new heights at Troy

Santa Margarita football coach Anthony Rouzier placed on administrative leave

Crean Lutheran football player Jacob Maiava loses eligibility appeal with CIF State

Los Amigos football coach Romel Guess and son Xzavior cherish their time together

Orange County football season stat leaders through Sept. 28

Orange County football: Michael Huntley’s players to watch in Week 6

Ex-Mater Dei and Newport Harbor QB Cole Leinart throws three TDs in debut with Redondo

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​ Orange County Register