In African politics, the rampant belief in witchcraft fortifies some and vexes others
'He looked at me and picked that piece of paper of the program. He folded it and greeted me,' Watira said. 'He's just afraid of me simply because I am not afraid of him.'
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Yahoo
12 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Pritzker, Klobuchar, Gallego flock to NH: Are they considering a run for president 2028?
Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Arizona, is set to visit New Hampshire Aug. 22, becoming the latest high-profile politician to fuel 2028 presidential race speculation by making a stop in the Granite State. "I'll be on the ground in New Hampshire... taking on the GOP's billionaire agenda and standing up for working families," Gallego, who was elected to the Senate last fall, said in a July 29 post on X. He follows Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who in April caught attention for delivering a searing speech in New Hampshire aimed at 'do-nothing' Democrats, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who in July campaigned for U.S. Senate candidate Chris Pappas. (Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., also visited New Hampshire in July, but then announced her run for South Carolina governor.) They join about a dozen Democratic politicians who have already begun to make moves seemingly towards a 2028 run. Former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg spoke about existential questions facing Democrats and the country at a veterans-focused forum in Iowa in May, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Kentucky Gov Andy Beshear, and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., have all trekked through South Carolina. Gallego's New Hampshire visit comes after he toured the Iowa State Fairgrounds on Aug. 8. He has also already visited states like Pennsylvania and Alaska. Gallego and other hopefuls are still being cagey about their intentions. (Gallego said it was "too early" to talk about 2028 in Iowa.) But they are 'testing the waters,' said Andy Smith, the Director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. 'And that doesn't mean the Atlantic,' said Smith. 'They're kind of brushing up their reasons to why they should be president, or should consider a run for president, and then trying those arguments out against people here in the state to go out and win an election.' Smith said that candidates often start visiting New Hampshire up to six years before the election year they're aiming for. Rather than trying to win votes, however, Smith said that the politicians are coming to the state to win the support of the people in the state that run campaigns. In New Hampshire, that would be people like Ray Buckley, the Chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party. 'They're more likely not to try to make their events open to the public widely, because, frankly, they're not pros at this yet,' Smith said. 'This is also a chance for candidates to come up here and try out their message with some small groups of voters and work on the stuff to make it better.' According to WMUR, Gallego is expected to make a Politics & Eggs address to the New England Council, join a town hall with U.S. Rep. Maggie Goodlander and stop at a fundraiser for U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas, who is running for U.S. Senate. New Hampshire should expect to see many more candidates in the months to come, Smith said. An open primary in 2028, on both sides The shadow campaign is leading up to a race that some political observers believe will be among the Democratic party's most consequential presidential primaries in decades. It comes at a time when the 'party's brand is in the toilet,' Matthew Dallek, a historian and professor of political management at George Washington University, told USA TODAY. The party is facing abysmal approval ratings, and the only way to improve it, said Dallek, is through the next presidential nominee. "The stakes, in that sense, are higher,' Dallek said. 'It's not just the presidency. It's not just the nomination. There's a sense among Democrats that they need to do this, and there's a big debate." With no real front runner on either side, Smith expects many Democratic and Republican candidates to join the fray. It will be a far cry from the 2024 race, when former President Joe Biden, former Vice President Kamala Harris and President Donald Trump froze out most Democratic and Republican candidates. While some have said that Vice President JD Vance appears to be the heir apparent to Trump on the Republican side, Smith cautions that line of thinking. He pointed to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was doing well in the 2024 polls early on but whose message didn't resonate with New Hampshire voters. 'You got to try yourself out on the road and see what voters actually think of you too, and also what the politicos, the people that have run campaigns, tell you whether or not you got a chance or not,' Smith said. 'Pretty evident when somebody comes up and tries to run campaign that may work for them in a different state or in a different environment, they come up to New Hampshire and try to use the same language that just crashes and burns.' Will NH be first in the nation again? Smith thinks it's likely that New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary status will be returned to the state in 2028. In 2024, the Democratic National Committee announced that South Carolina would be the first state to vote instead of New Hampshire to have a more diverse state lead the way. However, New Hampshire refused to break tradition and held an unsanctioned primary (before South Carolina's primary) where President Joe Biden's name was absent from the ballot. But through a write-in effort led by Democrats in the state, Biden won anyways, garnering almost 64% of the vote. Smith said that Biden dropping out of the race later in the year gives New Hampshire Democrats a case to argue that if Biden had run in a real primary in New Hampshire like usual, there may have been a different outcome. Contributing: Phillip M. Bailey This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Presidential hopefuls flock to NH: Are they eyeing a 2028 run?
Yahoo
41 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Erin Stewart takes early fundraising lead in GOP battle for CT governor
With only nine months left before a nominating convention, Connecticut Republicans are gearing up for a political battle to face Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont. New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart has gained an early advantage by raising more than $300,000 in small contributions on her way toward qualifying for public financing against Lamont, a wealthy Greenwich entrepreneur who has spent millions to self-fund his statewide campaigns. Stewart has been campaigning for months in the race against state Sen. Ryan Fazio, a fiscal conservative who recently formed an exploratory committee and whose supporters say will catch up in the fundraising battle. Without explicitly saying that both Lamont and Fazio live in wealthy Greenwich, Stewart says her campaign contributors are trying to make ends meet in hardscrabble towns across the state. 'People are investing because they're looking for a leader that fundamentally understands their concerns and worries — someone who, like them, understands the financial difficulties of raising a family in Connecticut, someone who comes from a community like theirs,' Stewart said. State Republican Chairman Ben Proto is remaining neutral in the race that also includes Westport First Selectman Jennifer Tooker and perennial candidate Peter Lumaj of Fairfield, who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate in 2012, secretary of the state in 2014, and governor in 2018. Proto said he is not even thinking about a primary in August 2026 and instead says the next step is for the candidates to make their case to the 1,200 delegates leading up to the state convention next May. 'It's a long way between now and May,' Proto said Tuesday. 'Erin, with her announcement, if she's not there, she will have reached qualifying dollar amounts for [public financing], I suspect some time in September. So, I think that gives her a huge advantage over everybody else. There's a lot of money that has to be raised by Ryan, Jen Tooker, and anyone else who gets in the race. I think that gives Erin a leg up on the money side.' But Fazio and his supporters say he has a solid base of support across the state and has the ability to raise money to catch up to Stewart. Fazio notes that he won an expensive and difficult race for state Senate in 2024 by about 2,000 votes in a fast-changing district where Democrat Kamala Harris defeated Republican Donald J. Trump by 17 percentage points. Fazio has won three straight elections after losing in 2020 to Democrat Alex Kasser. 'It's been better across the state than I could have expected or asked,' Fazio said of his recent support. 'It's time for a change. It's time for common sense, and it's time for balance in the state government. … I feel a great deal of confidence in our ability to win the convention, win the primary, and win the general election.' Fazio's name recognition has increased statewide as one of the primary voices against rising electric prices and the successful decision by the state legislature to move some of the 'public benefits' charges off the bills of electric ratepayers, a key issue for Republicans. Former state Democratic Chairman John F. Droney said that Republicans are battling among themselves but will not defeat a well-funded, two-term Democratic governor who has had high poll ratings since leading the state during the coronavirus pandemic. 'I think Stewart wins the primary hands down if there is one,' Droney told The Courant in an interview. 'I think she's the most formidable candidate the Republicans have for governor, but she can't beat Lamont.' As a strong supporter of then-U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, Droney worked hard against Lamont in 2006 during the Democratic and the general election. But he has now come around to be a solid supporter of Lamont. 'I think he's been a damn good governor,' Droney said. 'I voted for him, and I intend to vote for him again. I'm proud that he is our governor of Connecticut.' Lamont, Droney said, does not face much of a challenge from state Rep. Josh Elliott of Hamden, a liberal Democrat who is running against Lamont from the left in a race that Droney calls 'a waste of time' for Democrats. 'The guy can't win,' Droney said of Elliott. 'He'd be better off running for mayor of New York City. … The Democratic party in Connecticut is not a socialist party. It's a party that leans left, like most Democrats do now, but people who are firebrands and AOC types are not going anywhere in Connecticut.' He was referring to U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, a nationally known liberal who represents portions of the Bronx and Queens in New York City. The Democratic party, he said, has shifted left in Connecticut. 'I was there in the Bill O'Neill days,' Droney said, referring to the former governor from the 1980s. 'I was a John Kennedy Democrat. I was a Scoop Jackson Democrat. I was a Bill O'Neill Democrat. That's when we were the party of the working man and the party of rational behavior. And we were very successful in Connecticut at every level. That party doesn't exist anymore nationally. It's a bunch of left-wing psychos from the various universities and a bunch of socialists and people who are troublemakers, and they're going nowhere. They couldn't make the sale at the national level, and they're not going to make the sale in Connecticut.' On the Republican side, Fazio's supporters believe that he can defeat Stewart in a primary. He is expected to raise money for public financing, but he could also benefit from third-party political action committees that are not officially connected to his campaign but can be funded by wealthy Greenwich and New Canaan residents who have supported him in previous campaigns. Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
How did we get all this gerrymandering? A short history of the Republican redistricting scheme
The gerrymandering wars are back. Perhaps they never really went away. Extreme GOP gerrymanders have remade American politics over the last 15 years. They have locked Republicans into office in state legislatures nationwide, even in purple states when Democratic candidates win more votes. They have delivered a reliable and enduring edge to the GOP in the race for Congress. Perhaps most importantly, they have entrenched hard-right lawmakers and insulated them from the ballot box, allowing them to enact conservative policies on reproductive rights and public education that are rejected by majorities of voters. Now Texas Republicans, spurred by Donald Trump, have readied a brazen mid-decade power grab that would award them as many as five additional seats in Congress. This would be a dramatic boost heading into the midterms, since the GOP only holds a three-seat majority. California has threatened to retaliate with a mid-decade redraw of its own. Other blue state governors are talking tough as well. But Republicans have more targets. They won't stop in Texas. They will probably redraw Ohio, Missouri, Indiana and Florida as well. How did we get here? How did gerrymandered lines, rather than voters, gain the power to determine winners and losers? *** While politicians have gerrymandered since the dawn of the American experiment – even before it got its name from then Massachusetts governor Eldridge Gerry's party crafting state senate districts around Boston that looked like salamanders – the modern story really begins in 2008 with the election of Barack Obama and a blue wave that delivered Democrats trifecta power and even a US Senate supermajority. On television that election night, even the sharpest Republican analysts spoke of unbreakable emerging coalitions and demographic changes that could provide Democrats with majorities for a generation. It didn't exactly work that way. A handful of savvy Republican strategists recognized that while 2008 may have been historic, 2010 could be much more consequential. It would be a census year. And after every census, the nation redistricts every state legislature and US House seat. A lightbulb went off at the Republican state leadership committee (RSLC). Executive director Chris Jankowski recognized the opportunity first: target states where the legislature controls redistricting. Pour millions into underfunded state legislative races. Drown Democratic incumbents. Flip as many chambers as possible. Redraw the lines. If Republicans could pull it off, they would go from demographically challenged to the catbird seat for a decade. 'We should do this,' Jankowski remembered, in an interview for my book Ratf**ked. 'I think we can get millions – and you don't have to do anything other than what you were going to do anyway.' They called this Redmap, short for the Redistricting Majority Project. It transformed the nation. Karl Rove laid out the plan in a March 2010 Wall Street Journal op-ed that laid out the specific small towns in Indiana, Pennsylvania and Ohio where national Republicans would come gunning for small-town Democrats. His message: control redistricting, control Congress. 'Republican strategists are focused on 107 seats in 16 states. Winning these seats would give them control of drawing district lines for nearly 190 congressional seats.' Despite Rove's announcement, Democrats never saw it coming. The 2010 Tea Party wave placed all those seats and more in the GOP column. Republicans took over in Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Indiana, Alabama, Wisconsin and Ohio, among others, adding them to trifecta control in states like Texas and Florida. The following year, the RSLC paid master GOP mapmaker Thomas Hofeller to draw new lines in crucial states. New computer mapping software and voluminous new voter data turned redistricting into a video game. Republicans won, voters lost. It all paid off with a high score in 2012. Obama won re-election by a slightly smaller margin than 2008, but Democrats added seats in the US Senate. Republicans, thanks to their new lines, held the House and it wasn't close. They won 234 seats to the Democrats' 201 – even though Democrats won 1.4m more votes nationwide. Or look at the impact this way. Obama carried Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. Republicans drew congressional lines in those states and won 64 of 94 seats. *** The modern, technologically enhanced gerrymanders held throughout 2014 and 2016. Even when Democratic candidates won more votes, they could not budge the state legislature in Michigan, for example, or an astounding 13-5 edge in Pennsylvania's congressional delegation. This futility and frustration at the ballot box turned into a national grassroots campaign to end gerrymandering. In 2018, grassroots movements in Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Utah and Colorado established citizen commissions or other nonpartisan processes to draw lines. Meanwhile, the same technology that allowed partisans to crack and pack voters with such precision also allowed data scientists and courts to see through extreme gerrymanders. Voters and public interest law firms won new maps in states including Florida (ahead of 2016) and Pennsylvania (2018), and won lower-court decisions in Ohio, Michigan, Maryland, North Carolina and Wisconsin that struck down extreme maps. This helped Democrats take back the House in 2018 without actually defeating the gerrymander: almost three-quarters of the seats they won were drawn by commissions or courts, or arose from new maps won via litigation. In states such as Wisconsin, the gerrymanders held strong: in 2018, Democrats swept the US Senate, governor's offices in every statewide race and 53% of the state assembly vote. Republicans won 64% of the seats with just 45% of the vote. Polls showed that huge majorities of voters across party lines despised gerrymandering. Reform efforts won in red states and in blue states with big majorities. And in federal courts, judges appointed by presidents of both parties believed that they had all the tools they needed to strike down maps that decimated true political competition, and took aim at the radical outliers drawn by both parties. Reformers and voters had real momentum. *** Enter John Roberts. In 2019, the chief justice – whose antipathy to voting rights has been central to his life's work ever since he arrived in Washington in 1982 as a young aide in Reagan's Department of Justice – destroyed hopes that the federal courts would help defend voters and create a national standard. In a case from North Carolina called Rucho v Common Cause, a 5-4 majority ruled that partisan gerrymandering was a nonjusticiable political issue. The decision, written by Roberts, closed the federal courts to future claims at the precise moment that they'd become the most important part of the solution. After all, politicians have long proven unwilling to reform the very process that elected them and helped entrench them in office. Roberts, however, said the federal courts could no longer be involved, because there was no clear and manageable standard. Multiple federal judges, of course, pointed to multiple clear standards. And even if Roberts didn't find a standard to his liking, nothing required him to leap to making the issue nonjusticiable. The decision signed the death warrant for reform. Without the threat of a national, court-enforced standard, states had no reason to behave themselves. In 2021, Democrats – now fully awakened to the problem – claimed seats in Illinois (14 of 17) and Maryland (seven of eight) and took extra seats in Oregon, Nevada and New Mexico. Republicans, already enjoying an edge, claimed four in Florida then worked the margins in Texas, Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, Georgia and Utah. According to the nonpartisan Brennan Center, the GOP had a 16-seat advantage this decade thanks to gerrymandering. While some suggested that the national congressional map had become much more balanced, this is misleading: any balance in the national map arrived because many more state maps had been gerrymandered, harming more voters, everywhere. Both parties knew increasingly partisan state courts were unlikely to block partisan power plays. In New York, a Democratic court allowed Democrats to remake the map before 2024. In North Carolina, the state supreme court upended a fair map and reversed a year-old decision banning partisan gerrymandering as soon as they took partisan control. Given free rein, the GOP drew themselves three extra seats and a 10-3 advantage. Those three seats, by the way, match the margin of the GOP House majority. That's the power of one state map. The absence of any federal deterrence also encouraged state lawmakers to defy courts, commissions and state constitutions. In Ohio, lawmakers stiff-armed the state supreme court when it attempted to enforce anti-gerrymandering provisions enacted decisively by 75% of voters in a 2018 initiative. In Arizona, Republicans gamed the independent commission by stacking the commission that selects the supposedly nonpartisan chair who controls the tie-breaking vote. Utah simply ignored the 2018 vote establishing a nonpartisan commission. They all got away with it. default *** Which brings us to the current moment. Trump kickstarted this new redistricting arms race when he demanded that Texas flip Democratic seats to the GOP. California and New York have talked tough about suspending their commissions and retaliating with gerrymanders of their own. That's a long and complicated road, however: California voters would need to agree this fall. New York's constitution couldn't be amended before the 2028 cycle. Meanwhile, Democrats have few other likely targets, and Republicans look likely to continue their push into Ohio, Missouri, Indiana and Florida – and even Kansas, Kentucky and New Hampshire, if they choose. Frustrated Democrats have few appealing options. Such are the ongoing consequences of falling asleep 15 years ago and failing to counter Redmap. It has done precisely what the Republicans said it would do – with greater success and a longer lifespan than they ever could have imagined.
