Politics

In 2024 cycle, election workers face ‘incomprehensible’ threats

Published

2 years ago

November 11, 2024

In 2024 cycle, election workers face ‘incomprehensible’ threats

In Texas last week, a man wore a Make America Great Again hat inside a polling location in San Antonio. Asked to remove it, the man allegedly ended up throwing several punches at a 69-year-old election worker.

Fortunately, the local precinct worker wasn’t seriously injured, and the suspect was arrested. But the incident served as a timely reminder about the kind of conditions election workers are facing in the United States this year. The New York Times reported on the “rising wave of threats to election workers.”

On Monday, the Justice Department unsealed a complaint against a man in Philadelphia who had vowed to skin alive and kill a party official recruiting volunteer poll watchers. On Tuesday, the police in Tempe, Ariz., arrested a man in connection with shootings at a Democratic campaign office, which resulted in no injuries, and other acts of political vandalism. On Wednesday, prosecutors charged a 61-year-old man from Tampa, Fla., with threatening an election official — on top of pending charges over menacing messages sent in the past five years. And on Thursday, police officers in Phoenix arrested a person in connection with a mailbox fire, damaging some 20 ballots in a Democratic stronghold.

“Our elections are made possible by the hard work and patriotism of election workers in communities across the country who are also our neighbors, relatives and friends, and they deserve to do this important work without being subjected to threats,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement last week. “The fact that election workers need to be worried about their security is incomprehensible and unacceptable.”

That’s true, but these are nevertheless the circumstances we find ourselves in as Americans in 2024. NBC News published a report last week noting that election officials nationwide are ramping up their security measures at polling places, “from beefing up law enforcement presence to donning bulletproof vests to deploying drones for surveillance amid an increasingly hostile environment.”

A few days earlier, The Wall Street Journal published a report out of Maricopa County, Arizona, where the local election headquarters “has become a fortress.”

On Election Day, as workers tabulate ballots behind new fencing and concrete barriers, drones will patrol the skies overhead, police snipers will perch on rooftops and mounted patrols will stand ready. Across the state, election workers have gone through active-shooter drills and learned to barricade themselves or wield fire hoses to repel armed mobs. At the ready are trauma kits containing tourniquets and bandages designed to pack chest wounds and stanch serious bleeding.

It’s difficult to fully appreciate the degree to which Donald Trump has poisoned American politics, but these reports are a good place to start.

As Rachel noted via Threads, highlighting the report out of Arizona, “Pop this in the time capsule for when it comes time to tell future generations about how awesome the Republican Party’s Trump years were.”

Steve Benen

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

Politics

Top GOP groups scale back North Carolina spending

Published

31 minutes ago

October 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Leading Republicans are pulling back from the North Carolina Senate race, sending a clear message: What was a top-tier battleground at the start of the cycle is no longer worth the money.

The foremost Senate GOP super PAC, Senate Leadership Fund, is pausing its future spending in North Carolina and instead launching a seven-figure ad buy in deep-red Kansas, according to one person familiar with the move. The news was first reported by Semafor.

The dramatic change in strategy — less than four weeks before the midterms — comes after SLF previously spent more than $30 million to boost GOP nominee Michael Whatley. It also comes as public polling has continued to show Whatley unable to close the gap against popular former Gov. Roy Cooper, the Democratic candidate.

Republicans are now deprioritizing a state that President Donald Trump carried in all three presidential runs, and that Democrats haven’t won in the Senate since 2008.

“We are all clear-eyed about where North Carolina stands,” said one national GOP operative working on Senate races, who like others in this article was granted anonymity to speak candidly.

SLF isn’t the only major GOP group shifting away from North Carolina as Republicans focus on other must-win seats and deep-red states, amid the Iran war, high fuel prices and other economic fallout of the war in Iran.

Earlier Friday, the Koch-aligned Americans for Prosperity Action left North Carolina off its $22 million list of future spending across key Senate contests, as POLITICO reported. Another major Republican group focused specifically on boosting Whatley — Old North Action — removed $6.5 million in ad reservations from North Carolina’s Senate race last month.

“Michael Whatley is a good man who took one for the team — but with states like Alaska, Kansas, and Texas requiring continued resource commitments, there is only so much,” said another national GOP operative working on midterm races. “Especially against a very popular former Governor in Roy Cooper.”

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is currently running coordinated ad reservations with six of its battleground candidates. Whatley in North Carolina is not one of them, according to data from advertising tracking service AdImpact.

NRSC regional press secretary Nick Puglia said in a statement that “Whatley will put North Carolina families first by cutting taxes and keeping criminals locked up.”

Whatley for months has struggled to boost his name ID against the much better-known Cooper. Some recent public polls show Cooper leading Whatley by double-digit margins. Private polling has also hardly budged, despite the recent influx of spending, according to a person working on the race.

In a statement, Whatley spokesperson DJ Griffin said the team feels “confident we have the resources” to win in November.

“Roy Cooper recently said about federal elections in North Carolina, ‘Democrats are often ahead until they are not,’” Griffin said. “Undecided Voters who break late decide the election in North Carolina and the majority of those Late-Breakers typically go Republican.”

AFP Action and Old North Action did not immediately respond to a request for comment about North Carolina. SLF declined to comment.

SLF’s decision came as a shock to some, but not all, North Carolina Republicans — mostly because Senate Majority Leader John Thune has been scheduled to be in North Carolina for an event with Whatley on Thursday night. Thune ended up joining the event virtually, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

For weeks, top Republicans acknowledged North Carolina may be slipping away. One Republican who attended a donor meeting with Senate Majority Leader John Thune and SLF during the Dallas convention told POLITICO that holding the state would be “tough.”

“The map has shifted a little bit, and to be fair, we knew that was going to be a tough one from the beginning,” said one GOP operative working on Senate races, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the landscape.

Democrats are not letting up, recognizing that the contest in the purple state could still be close.

“A Democrat has not won statewide federal office here in nearly two decades, and North Carolina is a 50-50 state,” Cooper campaign manager Jeff Allen said in a statement.

“We’re building a campaign to earn every vote and make sure North Carolinians know that Roy Cooper will fight for them, while Michael Whatley will continue to enrich himself at their expense,” Allen said.

One North Carolina GOP strategist said that while Whatley has been a “fine” candidate, the current political climate coupled with Cooper’s long record in the state may be too much to overcome. And while Republicans have repeatedly hammered Cooper on crime, he still has strong favorability ratings from his time as governor.

“He’s really kind of hard to paint as a radical, ’cause, you know, he’s like Aunt Martha. She’s just been there forever. And so it’s just very difficult to get any traction on that, because, you know, people say, ‘well, Roy’s okay,’” they said.

When told that SLF was moving money from North Carolina to Kansas, the strategist responded: “$6.50 diesel fuel will kick your ass.”