Just around the political corner

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: the midterms at the national level.

WORLD’s Carolina Lumetta covers the 2022 races from her base in Washington, D.C. She joins us today to talk about what makes this election year different.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Welcome, Carolina!

CAROLINA LUMETTA, REPORTER: Hi! Thanks for having me.

REICHARD: Well, the latest cover story of WORLD Magazine featured your work along with a whole team of reporters. Something stuck with me from that report. One of your sources said this election isn’t typical in that it runs against conventional wisdom. Is that an exaggeration?

LUMETTA: Right. It sounds like one of those really overblown phrases, but it was actually a political strategist. His name is Matt Klink, who told me that he's been working on political campaigns for 30 years and he said he's never seen anything like this year. The 2022 midterms, he told me, are shaping up to be one of the most unique elections in American history. Part of the reason for that is because of former President Donald Trump's influence on it. And I actually have his quote pulled up here, he told me that “it runs counter to decades of American political history. He went on to explain midterm elections are almost always a referendum on the incumbent. This year, that would be President Joe Biden. And the party in power has to defend. But Donald Trump and his desire to remain in the news has many Republicans sync with him when it's to their advantage and distance themselves when it's not.” So this is a pretty different than usual year.

REICHARD: Let’s talk about that “Trump factor. ” You wrote that Trump endorsed 176 candidates in the ­primaries, and most of them won. How big a deal is that, and whose campaigns are most affected?

LUMETTA: Right, so it's a really shocking number when you think about it. However, this doesn't necessarily make him the kingmaker that he claims to be. A lot of analysts notice that most of the candidates that Trump endorsed were already running in pretty safely Republican districts or running unopposed. So this kind of cuts down on the kingmaker status. The really interesting thing is then how candidates align or distance themselves after the primary. One example of this is JD Vance, who is running for U.S. Senate from Ohio. And he won Trump's endorsement pretty early on, but is now in this balancing act of whether to follow along with a lot of really controversial claims about whether there was election fraud in 2020 or whether to pivot to a more moderate base. In Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano is running for governor and he has not pivoted at all. He has stuck to lots of election fraud claims, very critical of COVID-19 vaccines, and has set himself up as the most MAGA candidate he can be. Others are distancing themselves from Trump. For example, Tutor Dixon in Michigan is starting to back off of her election fraud claims. More interesting in Arizona, Blake Masters used to bill himself as a 100% pro life candidate. He got Trump's endorsement, and then just after the primary, he scrubbed a lot of that language from his website, probably to appeal to more voters, but it is this big shift.

REICHARD: Setting aside the former president, what did your research tell you about other hot topics on voters minds other than him?

LUMETTA: Right, so abortion really is one of the most divisive issues in politics right now. My colleague, Leah Savas included some great reporting about Mark Molinaro, a New York Republican congressional candidate who really just avoided this hot topic. He said he wanted common sense legislation. But other than that just avoided the topic, which is really different for the Republican party this year, who's kind of known as the pro-life party. By contrast, his Democratic opponent, Pat Ryan, made his entire platform about pro about being pro-abortion, and he swept the field.

REICHARD: It seems likely that Democrats will lose control of at least one of the houses of Congress. What’s that mean for the next two years of President Biden’s presidency?

LUMETTA: Right, so conventional wisdom has said that there's probably going to be what's called a red wave this year where Republicans will win a lot of congressional seats. If this still happens, then they've promised to hold a lot of hearings on Democrats, mostly regarding Hunter Biden and his business dealings, regarding the administration's handling of inflation, also investigating the committee already investigating January 6th. So they plan a bit of pushback from the past two years of the Biden administration. If Republicans take the Senate, they can use their majority to block a lot of Biden's judicial nominees. He's been on a sprint in that regard, but that might come to a standstill if they win a majority.

REICHARD: Assuming Democrats lose one or both houses, what does it mean for their plans in the presidential election in two years, in 2024?

LUMETTA: This is the big question of the year. And I have asked every strategist and an analyst what was going to happen in 2024. And they almost all tell me we'll have to wait and see. It's really hard to predict right now. But if Democrat losses are contained, then that will help with Biden's overall popularity. It might give him the boost he needs to announce that he will run again in 2024. If, however, they lose a lot of seats, then that's pretty crippling to his efficacy as president. We included Paul Westcott, who's the executive vice president of a nonpartisan voter data firm in the article, and he said that if this happens, then Biden might just have to declare himself a lame duck president, which speeds up the clock. Most second term presidents don't do much after the midterms. But there's a possibility this could happen to Biden after just two years in office.

REICHARD: Last question, Carolina. This, about the security and integrity of our elections. Lots of questions arose in 2020 about voter fraud and claims of a stolen election. Is our electoral system ready for November 8th?

LUMETTA: Right. So this year, I've talked to a lot of election officials who are sort of the middleman on the ground in this political battle. They're busier than ever, simply just explaining their processes. There have been a lot of investigations over the past two years over whether there was enough voter fraud in 2020 that the election was stolen. None of these investigations have proven that that was the case. But voters still have questions. And some voters are also really angry about this. So election officials have been bombarded with phone calls. For example, one department I talked to from Pennsylvania said that they spent weeks combing through voter rolls because callers were demanding that they check and make sure that there weren't any deceased people still registered as an active voter. They didn't find any, but that took a lot of time. It's really factored into this broader story that roughly one in five election officials are expected to resign by 2024. Mostly because they are overworked. They feel attacked and worn out. This cycle, a lot of counties are trying to get ahead of that by putting out a lot of just information on how the voting process works. For example, the Iowa Secretary of State office has rolled out a lot of videos and fact sheets, explaining mail-in voting, explaining how to get to your polling location. On the one hand, it boosts transparency. On the other, it's also wearing the offices out.

REICHARD: Carolina Lumetta is our political reporter from WORLD’s Washington Bureau. Carolina, thanks so much!

LUMETTA: You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.