The Washington Post - USA (2020-08-03)

A6 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, AUGUST 3 , 2020

election 2020

ocratic ticket that includes a Black woman will result in Black turnout that exceeds Obama’s num- bers in that community. The decision will automatically elevate whichever woman is selected, either making history by installing her as the first female vice president or giving her a head start for the 2024 campaign should the ticket fail — which is a key reason that the stakes are so high. The Biden campaign has been tight-lipped about its contenders. But that hasn’t stopped allies and friends from speculating. “If I had to bet my life on who would be the candidate, I’d still bet Harris,” said Rendell, who is raising money for Biden and fre- quently talks to his top campaign officials. “She has the least nega- tives, she’s the most polished. She’s the person who can take on [Vice President] Pence in a campaign debate.” But he also made it clear how volatile the process has been. “The buzz the in the last three weeks — not this week — but the last few weeks, the buzz was Susan Rice,” Rendell said last Thursday. Her demeanor on television fu- eled the speculation, he said. “She was smiling on TV, something that she doesn’t do all that readi- ly,” Rendell said. “She was actually somewhat charming on TV, something that she has not seemed to care about in the past.” The interview process for these women has been unusually public. Nearly all of the women in contention have headlined a fundraiser with Biden and appeared during at least one virtual event with his wife, Jill — a strong signal that Biden will closely con- sult his wife as he makes his decision. The exchanges give each poten- tial vice president some time to develop a rapport with Biden. On Friday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D- Mass.) headlined a grass-roots fund raiser for him and at one point Biden apologized for going on too long. “No! Don’t be sorry,” Warren said. “I love everything you had to say.” [email protected]

media post. Biden’s timeline for picking a vice president has slipped signifi- cantly. He initially said he would make the decision by Aug. 1, then said it would be the first week of August. Now the campaign is sig- naling that it will likely wait until the second week of August. In an interview, Clyburn said Biden has only told him that he will make up his mind “before the convention.” In 2008 and 2012, vice presidential candidates were announced just days before the convention. Clyburn also said he believes it would be a “plus” for Biden to select a Black woman, but added the former vice president does not like being told what to do — and he provided some hint that he can’t endorse one of the candidates. “Of the 12 names out there, with one exception, I know all of them,” Clyburn said in an interview with The Post. “There’s one person that I don ’t know.” Clyburn declined to say who on the list is unknown to him. (He made a similar comment on MSNBC last week, leading to speculation that he was throwing shade at former national security adviser Susan E. Rice, but Clyburn balked at that interpretation. “I know Susan Rice very, very well,” Clyburn said.) He said that he’s trying to approach Biden carefully with his advice. “Ultimatums are not good,” Clyburn said. “I’m not going to tell the vice president what he must do.” He warned that pushing Biden too hard can backfire. “No- body wants to be forced,” Clyburn said. Others are taking a far different approach in the final days. The Rev. William Barber, a leader of the Poor People’s Campaign, and roughly 50 other leading Black clergy members sent an open letter to Biden’s campaign Friday “insisting” that he select a Black woman. “We are writing to caution the Democratic party that it takes Black enthusiasm, the key deter- minant for turnout, for granted at its own peril” according to the letter, which predicts that a Dem-

supporting her candidacy. Be- hind the scenes, powerful allies like Glenda Baskin Glover, the head of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority and president of Tennes- see State University, wrote to Bide n’s ve tting team urging them to select Harris — a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. And Harris attempted to use the attacks on her “ambition” as a weapon. “There will be a resistance to your ambition,” she said Friday during Black Girls Lead 2020, a virtual conference for young Black women. “There will be people who say to you, ‘You are out of your lane,’ because they are bur- dened by only having the capacity to see what has always been in- stead of what can be. But don’t you let that burden you.” She also received an assist from Biden campaign manager Jenni- fer O’Malley Dillon that came soon after Dodd’s comment. “Am- bitious women make history, change the world, and win,” O’Malley Dillon said in a social

has meant that many of the candidates who would traditionally be considered for this role, like Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), are off the table. There’s been no speculation about Andrew M. Cuomo, even as the New York governor’s star rose during his daily coronavirus brief- ings. Vanquished contenders like former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee or former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg have also faded from the national conversation as the spotlight shifted to women. And many noted that the com- petition to become the second- most-powerful person in the country is always going to be fierce. “It’s natural that it’s com- petitive,” said Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) “It’s historic regardless of who he chooses, so that proba- bly adds to the intensity of it.” For her part, Harris allies have been lobbying the Biden team in public and in private. Top racial justice lawyer Ben Crump, who represents the family of George Floyd, penned an op-ed for CNN

mentioned every day as being in the search.” “It is messier than it should be because somebody is trying to create a story,” Clyburn added. In recent days the negative attention has focused on Bass, who has gone out of her way to stress that she is unable to “envision” herself as president. In 2 008, former president Barack Obama told Biden to view the vice presidency as the “capstone” of his career, and Biden has said that he sees his relationship with Obama as a model. The Daily Caller published a piece about a 2010 speech Bass gave at the ribbon cutting for a new Scientology facility that opened in Los Angeles, in which she seemed to praise the organiza- tion. The Atlantic published a lengthy article examining her past visits to C uba and warm words for former leader Fidel Cas- tro, and how it could cost votes in the key state of Florida. The Trump campaign immedi- ately seized on Bass’s history with Cuba. “Joe Biden and Karen Bass Would Invite Castro’s Commu- nism into America,” read a head- line on a Trump campaign news release. Sen. Marco Rubio (R- Fla.), in a press call with reporters, warned that if selected she’d be “the highest-ranking Castro sym- pathizer in the history of the Unit- ed States government.” Bass went on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday to show how she’d address those accusations, saying “I don’t consider myself a C astro sympathiz- er” and she characterized her position on Cuba as “really no different than the position of the Obama administration.” She’s also pushed back on the notion that she and Harris should be compared with one another. Bass and Harris spoke privately at a memorial service for the late congressman John Lewis last week. “It was good,” Bass said of the conversation during a Friday interview on “The Breakfast Club.” “She said ‘We ain ’t doing that.’ It was fine.” Bass added: “I’m not the anti-Kamala.” Biden’s decision to eliminate men from the selection process

ing, because many of these attacks

... are being made by Democratic
men who should know better.”
“I would hope that in this selec-
tion process, we are mindful that
Black women — and women of
color — deserve respect,” she add-
ed.
The increasing nastiness is fu-
eled by a sense, even among
Biden’s closest advisers, that
Biden is entering the final phase
of the search without a clear fa-
vorite. Rather than a t raditional
“shortlist” of three candidates,
people close to the process expect
him to interview five or six final-
ists for the position.
Several people interviewed
said the delay has intensified cur-
rents, many of them sexist, that
have been swirling for weeks. The
resulting backbiting risks inflam-
ing divisions within the party that
complicated the 2016 campaign —
but that Biden has worked to
coalesce since locking down the
nomination in the spring.
In recent days a Politico report
surfaced that former senator
Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who is
on Biden’s vice-presidential vet-
ting panel, told donors that Sen.
Kamala D. Harris “had no re-
morse” for her attacks on Biden
while on a debate stage. One do-
nor implied to CNBC that Harris
has too much “ambition.” And
former Pennsylvania governor Ed
Rendell, a l ongtime Biden friend,
told CNN that Harris can “rub
people the wrong way.”
Some of the comments are be-
ing made by high-ranking Demo-
crats pushing alternative candi-
dates such as Rep. Val Demings
(D-Fla.) and more recently Rep.
Karen Bass (D-Calif.), making
some worry that women of color
are being forced to kneecap one
another.
“It bugs me that people want to
pit these two Black women
against the other,” said Rep.
James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), a key
Biden confidant, referring to the
burgeoning Bass vs. Harris narra-
tive. “Nobody is trying to pit Sen.
Elizabeth Warren against [Michi-
gan Gov. Gretchen] Whitmer. And
both of their names are being

BIDEN FROM A

Allies worry Biden’s running mate process pits women against one another

MIKE BLAKE/REUTERS Comments by Biden confidants have cast Sen. Kamala D. Harris, right, as being too ambitious in a bid to ele vate other possible running mates, such as Reps. Val Demings and Karen Bass.

BY DAVID WEIGEL AND PAUL KANE

liberal, kan. — A n army of
identical men in suits marches
across the screen in the cam-
paign ad. A Senate candidate
floats through the Washington
“swamp” in a cartoon canoe as a
narrator praises his outsider ri-
val.
“Mitt Romney Republicans
and Never Trumpers are coming
for Kris Kobach,” the voice warns.
“They think Kobach’s too conser-
vative.”
Republicans aren’t airing that
ad. It’s one of four placed by
Sunflower State PAC, created by
Democrats to help Kobach, Kan-
sas’s former secretary of state
and one of his party’s most divi-
sive figures, power through Tues-
day’s GOP primary against two-
term Rep. Roger Marshall.
Democrats consider Kobach
the easier candidate to beat, but
the primary unfolding across the
state looks like Trump-era prima-
ries everywhere: a Republican
family feud over who would de-
liver more for the president.
“I meet with the president
whenever I’m in D.C.,” Kobach
told a room full of Republicans in
this small city on July 26, near
the end of one of the “Constitu-
tion 101” town halls he mixes
with traditional campaign
events. “I talk to him on the
phone all the time. I’ve been
advising him on immigration
policy since 2016.”
But two years ago, Kobach ran
for governor and lost to Demo-
crat Laura Kelly, a striking result
in this conservative state. Images
from that campaign still appear
in his TV ads, suggesting the
blessing of a president who has
not weighed in on the race.
Without an official intervention,
national Republicans have creat-
ed a PAC of their own to stop
Kobach, often recycling attacks
— as the candidate never fails to
note — that originated with liber-
al magazines or think tanks. The
upshot, every time, is that there
is only one candidate in the race
who has fumbled away an elec-
tion.
Kansas is one of two states
with GOP Senate primaries this
week that have a back-to-the-fu-
ture outlook, with Tennessee vot-
ers similarly choosing between
an establishment-backed candi-
date and an insurgent conserva-
tive trying to lay claim to the true

ideological mantle. There, Bill Hagerty, most recently ambassador to Japan, has the full backing of President Trump and appeared to be cruis- ing to a victory in the primary, which would make him the pro- hibitive favorite to win the general election given Tennessee’s conservative lean. But Manny Sethi, a trauma surgeon who runs a h ealth-care nonprofit, has caught a l ate burst of momentum in the race that drew the attention of Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.), both of whom endorsed Sethi. Cruz and Paul are backing candidates that they believe em- body the more true version of Trumpism, more ideologically root ed as anti-immigration. But their moves also give a hint of how, if Trump loses in November, this constellation of conservatives hope to re-create the same sort of ideological chal- lenges to Republicans that domi- nated primaries in 2010, 2012 and 2014. With the president focused on his own teetering reelection campaign, these forces have felt more freedom to challenge candidates that Trump has endorsed or other establishment figures are supporting. On Thursday, former senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) — who re- signed in 2012 to take over the Heritage Foundation, trying to refashion it into an anti-establishment force — jumped back into the political fray to support Kobach. “There’s no doubt that @KrisKobach1787 has a proven record we can trust to fight to stop amnesty, secure our borders, and advance pro-life policies. We need him in the Senate,” DeMint said Thursday, tweeting his endorsement. That prompted an immediate denunciation from one of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McCon- nell’s top political advisers, who blamed DeMint’s work early last decade for helping nominate candidates who were too conservative to win in the general election. “The guy who was single- handedly responsible for Repub- lican minorities in the Senate for two cycles has entered the chat,” Josh Holmes, McConnell’s 2014 campaign manager, said. McConnell (R-Ky.) is b acking

Hagerty. In Kansas, while he and the National Republican Senato- rial Committee have not officially endorsed a candidate, close allies have spent millions of dollars on ads to benefit Marshall. McConnell and his allies thought they had vanquished this crowd after winning every primary i n 20 14 and then finally claiming the majority. McConnell used the 2017 Alabama special election, in which Sen. Doug Jones (D) defeated a wounded anti-establishment figure, Roy Moore, as a teaching moment for Trump, who ever since has most- ly supported candidates backed by McConnell and House Minori- ty Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Ca- lif.). But now, with Kobach possibly winning the nomination Tues- day, Trump has fallen silent, of- fering no endorsement. And the cycle of nominating ideological flame throwers, who take relatively safe Senate seats and put them in play, might be about to repeat itself. Waiting in the wings is state Sen. Barbara Bollier, who left the Republican Party in 2018 and with the Democrats’ blessing, has raised more money than Kobach and Marshall combined. As of

July 15, she had $4.2 million left to spend, while Marshall was down to $1 million and Kobach less than $150,000. In Tennessee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has endorsed James Mackler, an Army veteran who fits the mold of the successful 2018 House candidates. Neither of these states would normally appear on a Democratic target list. Kansas hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932 and Trump won the state by more than 20 percentage points in 2016, but Kobach’s candidacy has provided a p otentially big opening. Trump won Tennessee by more than 25 percentage points; a Sethi victory would at least prompt the DSCC to closely watch Tennessee. In an interview, Bollier, who is also a physician, did not say whom she’d prefer to run against, arguing that any Republican woul d have to answer for the policies that alienated Kansas two years ago. “The farmers are struggling under the power of Trump, and they want to be able to have good jobs and good economics. And they want their day-to-day needs met by someone who will listen

to them,” she said. Marhsall is trying to drill home something that Democrats and Republican establishment figures all agree on: Kobach’s controversial past makes him beatable in the general election. “He’s a failed candidate who failed President Trump and failed the Kansas people,” he said in an interview. “It’s nothing personal. But there was a poll in Kansas about 18 months ago — it was called the governor’s election. He lost that, and now we live with the consequences of a Dem- ocrat as governor, whether it’s wearing masks or closing our schools or closing our business- es.” When it comes to restrictive immigration policies and hunt- ing, if often in vain, for voter fraud, Kobach is arguably the most influential Republican of his generation. The Harvard, Yale and Oxford- educated candidate captured the secretary of state’s of fice in the 2010 tea party wave. Capitalizing on the controversies around ACORN, a community organizing group with an expansive voter reg istr ation program, Kobach obta ined new powers for his office and began tightening voter

registration rules and pursuing lawsuits to punish suspected voter fraud. At the same time, he shaped Arizona’s SB1070 immigration law, which gave police new powers to detain undocu- mented immigrants and barred “sanctuary” policies. When Trump arrived in Wash- ington, Kobach had already writ- ten much of his agenda; when Trump created a short-lived panel to investigate “voter fraud,” Kobach was on it. And then, back home in 2018, he lost. He doesn’t dispute the criti- cisms that he raised too little money, hired the wrong staff and led a disorganized campaign. But he points out that he got 20, more votes than Sam Brownback, the last Republican governor, got in 2014. He argues that Brown- back’s unpopular education cuts powered the Democrats’ campaign and helped them in the suburbs of Kansas City. “If you win a race, you virtually never go back and analyze what you did right or wrong. You think, ‘Oh, we did everything perfectly,’ ” K obach said. “After 2010 and 2014, we didn’t go back through and analyze every little detail. But in 2018, we did. And we looked exactly [at], ‘Okay, where should we have gotten more votes? What could we have done differently?’ The Democrats very effectively used the K- spending issue as a sledgeham- mer against Republicans, and they would have done that to any nominee.” Marshall, a p hysician who represents the 63-county “Big First” District, started in politics by ousting a flamboyantly conservative incumbent, Tim Huelskamp, in a 2016 primary. But Marshall, who supported former Ohio governor John Ka- sich’s presidential bid, arrived in Washington with Trump. He questioned the cost of the president’s border wall proposal in 2017 but flipped that position after Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) announced his plan to retire, creating an open Senate seat. In a final debate last month, Marshall said he “will always support the president’s policy on immigration.” In an interview, Marshall gave Trump an “A+” for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. [email protected] [email protected]

Kan., Tenn. races stoke GOP’s fear of November losses

JOHN HANNA/ASSOCIATED PRESS The GOP h as not endorsed U.S. Senate candidates in Kansas and Tennessee. E stablishment figures say the controversial past of Kris Kobach, left, makes him beatable in Kansas in the general election.

“I would hope that in this selection process,

we are mindful that Black women — and women

of color — deserve respect.” Donna Brazile, former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee

The Washington Post - USA (2020-08-03)

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