Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) told WFPL that he lost his race for reelection because the Democratic Party “harvested votes in urban communities.”
Said Bevin: “The left, those who think of a different ideological bent, they are getting so good at harvesting votes in the urban communities. They were able to go into urban communities where people are densely populated on college campuses and public housing projects.”
Greg Sargent: “John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, won reelection as governor of deep-red Louisiana on Saturday by a comfortable 40,000 votes — after President Trump had repeatedly campaigned for his Republican opponent. Worse for Trump, this came after he positively begged voters to support the Republican, casting it as a referendum on himself by saying: ‘You got to give me a big win, please.'”
“Yet Edwards won, in large part, by also stressing his implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion in the state during his first term. Indeed, Edwards’s lead pollster, Zac McCrary, told me during an interview that no single issue was more important in driving the governor’s victory.”
“All of which underscores an important truism about the Trump era, one often neglected by pundits: A key reason Democrats have been racking up wins in Trump country may be the president’s embrace of conventional GOP plutocratic economics.”
Jonathan Bernstein: “Democratic operatives in Louisiana seem to think so. And Trump’s overall lack of popularity certainly hurts Republican candidates everywhere, even in places where he remains popular. But it’s also possible that this is a typical case of political winners looking savvy after the fact and losers looking guilty of poor electioneering choices. It’s more likely that the rallies had little or no direct effects.”
“What matters to Trump’s reputation, however, is what Republican party actors believe. It’s possible they’ll believe his outlandish and evidence-free boasts about these elections — that, for example, he single-handedly rescued Kentucky’s Republican governor from a huge polling deficit and managed to help him to a narrower-than-expected loss. More likely, however, they’ll be more skeptical about his reputation for electoral clout.”
“If you had any doubt that Trump was a human repellent spray for suburban voters who have a conservative disposition, Republicans getting wiped out in the suburbs of New Orleans, Louisville and Lexington should remove it.”
— GOP strategist Tim Miller, quoted by the New York Times.
“Our shared love for Louisiana is always more important than the partisan differences that sometimes divide us. And as for the president: God bless his heart.”
— Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D), quoted by the New York Times in his victory speech last night.
“President Trump campaigned hard in three conservative Southern states this fall, aiming for a string of gubernatorial wins that would demonstrate his political strength heading into impeachment and his own reelection effort,” Politico reports.
“The plan backfired in dramatic fashion.”
“The latest black eye came on Saturday, when Trump’s favored candidate in Louisiana, multimillionaire businessman Eddie Rispone, went down to defeat. The president went all-in, visiting the state three times, most recently on Thursday. Earlier this month, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin lost reelection after a similar presidential effort on his behalf. Of the candidates Trump backed, only Tate Reeves in Mississippi won.”
Louisiana’s John Bel Edwards (D) stuns the GOP and wins reelection to a second term as the Deep South’s only Democratic governor, the AP reports.
Baton Rouge Advocate: “Rarely have presidents been so involved in a state-level race. Trump visited Louisiana three times to rally Republican and rural voters to head to the polls and ‘fire’ Edwards, calling him ‘a radical.’ Trump told Louisiana voters they could send a message to national Democrats that they stood behind him by voting for Rispone.”
The polls in Louisiana’s race for governor close at 9 p.m. ET.
Leave your reactions in the comments as election results are tallied.
New York Times: “The crucial cultural dividing line in Louisiana has always been north-south. Those who live in north Louisiana are mostly Protestant, speak with a familiar Southern twang and, in the modern era, voted heavily Republican. But rural South Louisiana is more Catholic, the accent is like nothing else (as anyone knows listening to the L.S.U. football coach Ed Orgeron on Saturdays) and the politics has tended more Democratic.”
“Yet as Louisiana voters go to the polls Saturday to decide the highly competitive runoff for governor between Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, and Eddie Rispone, his Republican challenger, the traditional regional divide is giving way to an urban versus rural political chasm that is shaping elections across the country. Republicans are dominating the countryside across much of the state, while Democrats are running up large margins in the cities in both the north and south while gaining strength in the suburbs.”
Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) conceded the race for governor Thursday, ending more than a week of speculation over whether he would contest the results of the Nov. 5 election, which he narrowly lost to Andy Beshear (D), the Lexington Herald Leader reports.
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Politico: “The Republican National Committee is pouring another $1 million into the Louisiana governor’s race ahead of Saturday’s runoff — a move that comes amid mounting GOP concerns about losing a second major election in a conservative state in as many weeks.”
“Trump had bet that a GOP sweep in three gubernatorial races this fall would project political strength in the face of impeachment. But after Republican Gov. Matt Bevin’s apparent defeat in Kentucky last week, and with Rispone locked in a neck-and-neck race, the president is facing the possibility of losing two out of three.”
With just a few days until the election, a new Cygnal poll in Louisiana shows Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) narrowly leading challenger Eddie Rispone (R), 50% to 48%, with 2% of voters still undecided.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told WFPL that it appears Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) has lost his bid for reelection, even though Bevin still hasn’t conceded the race.
Said McConnell: “I’m sorry Matt came up short, but he had a good four years and I think all indications are — barring some dramatic reversal on recanvass — that we’ll have a different governor in three weeks.”
A new Mason-Dixon poll in Louisiana finds Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) with a slim lead over challenger Eddie Rispone (R) in this weekend’s runoff election, 48% to 46%.
Daily Yonder: “There was a 22.5 percentage point difference in the Democratic vote between Louisville and the state’s most rural counties in 2015. This week, the gap was 29.6 points.”
JMC Analytics notes that early voting in the Louisiana governor’s race, which ended last night, was the highest ever for a non-presidential election.
Key takeaway: “Whatever the turnout levels are from election cycle to election cycle, black voters (who are almost unanimously Democratic) tend to show up in greater numbers on the last day. But very rarely do they turn out to the extent that they did yesterday: a whopping 40% of the last day early voters were black (blacks represent 31% of Louisiana’s registered voters). As further illustration of how unprecedented black participation this strong is, in the 116 days of available data for in person early voting going all the way back to 2008, only four other times has the black early vote as a percentage of the total vote ever hit 40% (and three of those times were in 2008, when Barack Obama was first elected).”
“Conservative political activist Frank Simon, a longtime supporter of Gov. Matt Bevin (R), is sending robocalls asking Kentuckians to report suspicious activity or voter fraud to the State Board of Elections before Nov. 14 — the day of Bevin’s requested recanvass,” the Louisville Courier Journal reports.
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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