The New York Times - USA (2020-10-17)

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THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALSATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2020 Y A


Election


The reliably Republican state
of Alaska has soured on Presi-
dent Trump’s job performance,
but Republicans still lead the
state’s races for president, Sen-
ate and U.S. House, according to
a New York Times/Siena College
poll released Friday.
Over all, Mr. Trump leads Joe
Biden, 45 percent to 39 percent,
with 8 percent supporting the
Libertarian candidate, Jo Jor-


gensen. Similarly, Dan Sullivan,
the incumbent Republican sena-
tor, leads the Democratic nomi-
nee, Al Gross, by 45 to 37, with 10
percent backing the Alaska Inde-
pendence candidate, John Howe.
In a rematch of 2018’s House
race, the Republican Don Young,
the longest-serving member of
Congress, leads the Democratic
nominee, Alyse Galvin, 49 per-
cent to 41 percent — about the
same margin as his seven-point
win two years ago.
Alaska has emerged as an
unlikely battleground in the late
stages of the campaign, as Dem-
ocrats and Republicans have
rushed to run advertisements in
both the House and Senate races.
The state has voted Republican
in every presidential election
since 1964, and Republicans
enjoy a significant advantage in


party registration and party
identification, according to the
survey. But many Alaskans have
turned against Mr. Trump after
backing him by 15 points against
Hillary Clinton four years ago,
creating a potential opening for
the Democrats in a state with an
independent streak.
Today, 47 percent of Alaskans
say they approve of how Mr.
Trump is handling his job as
president, while the same num-
ber disapprove.
Although Alaska remains a
long shot for Democrats, many
voters are backing a minor-party
candidate, so there is an unusual
amount of uncertainty. Demo-
crats can also hope that their
candidates will bolster their
standing over the final three
weeks; they remain less known
than the Republican incumbents
and enter the final stretch with a
significant financial advantage.
The G.O.P. challenge is cen-
tered in Anchorage, a once reli-
ably Republican city where all
three Republican candidates now
trail. The president won Anchor-
age by five points four years ago,
but Mr. Biden leads by nine in
the survey, 47-38. The city repre-
sents a larger share of its state’s
population than any other city
except New York City.
No one would confuse Anchor-
age for a part of the Sun Belt, but
politically there are surprising
resemblances. The city is rela-
tively well educated, diverse,
traditionally Republican, and it
has a large energy sector. As
with other parts of the country,
the president’s weakness is
driven by a significant deficit
among college-educated white
voters. Alaskans in that group
back Mr. Biden by almost 40
percentage points — one of his
largest leads among the group of
any Times/Siena poll so far.
Democrats have sought to
capitalize by nominating two

candidates, Ms. Galvin and Mr.
Gross, who describe themselves
as independents. The state has a
long independent streak, and
unaffiliated voters represent a
majority of the state’s electorate
— whether by registration or
self-identified party identifica-
tion. An independent candidate
won the governor’s race in 2014,
and 12 percent of voters backed a
variety of minor-party candi-
dates in the 2016 election. Mr.
Trump won only 51 percent of the
vote in 2016 — about the same
percentage as his tally in tradi-
tional battleground states like
Ohio or Iowa.
If Democrats were to prevail in
either race, it would offer the
party an unusual path to control
of the Senate and, less obviously,
the presidency. The U.S. House
will decide the presidency in the
event of an Electoral College tie,
with each state congressional
delegation receiving one vote.
Heading into the election, Repub-
licans enjoy a 26-23 lead in state
congressional delegations, with
two split evenly between the
parties. A Democratic win in
Alaska, which has only one con-
gressional district, would greatly

endanger the Republican path to
a majority of state delegations.
But a significant number of the
president’s detractors remain
hesitant to embrace the Demo-
cratic candidates. And while
Republicans have lost significant
ground in Anchorage, they have
maintained most of their support

elsewhere in the state, thanks to
overwhelming margins among
white voters without a degree.
Republicans also have surprising
strength among nonwhite voters
who did not identify as Alaska
Native or Native American, like
Hispanic or multiracial voters.
Part of the challenge for Dem-
ocrats might simply be the ballot
itself. The Alaska ballot, as well
as the Times/Siena poll, charac-
terizes Mr. Gross and Ms. Galvin
as “Democratic nominees”

rather than as independents,
which some Democrats fear
could undermine their appeal to
unaffiliated voters. Perhaps as a
result, many of the state’s inde-
pendent voters say they will
back Mr. Howe, the Alaska Inde-
pendence candidate, for Senate.
Polls taken well before an
election tend to overstate the
eventual support for minor-party
candidates at the ballot box, but
Alaska’s long history of support-
ing minor-party candidates at
least raises the possibility that
these candidates will retain an
unusually large share of support.
If the minor-party candidates
do see their support fade down
the stretch, as has happened
many times before, it is not obvi-
ous whether Democrats or Re-
publicans would be poised to
benefit.
In the presidential race, Ms.
Jorgensen’s supporters split
evenly on the president’s job
performance, but they say they
backed Mr. Trump by a three-to-
one margin four years ago.
Based on job approval num-
bers, Mr. Howe appears to have a
more Republican-friendly group
of supporters. They say they

voted for Mr. Trump by a two-to-
one margin in 2016, and they
approve of his performance by a
wide margin as well.
The two Alaska incumbents,
Senator Sullivan and Represent-
ative Young, appear to have
particular strengths. Unlike the
president, Mr. Sullivan has a
positive favorability rating, with
48 percent favorable and 39
percent unfavorable. He wins 10
percent of voters who disapprove
of the president.
Mr. Young has an advantage of
his own: unusual support from
the state’s far-flung Alaska Na-
tive and Native American com-
munities, who represent around
half of the state’s nonwhite vote.
Alaska Natives have a long
record of splitting their tickets in
favor of incumbent Republicans,
like Mr. Young, but they can be a
challenge for pollsters to reach.
Many communities do not have
internet or road access.
The Times/Siena survey of 423
likely voters in Alaska was con-
ducted from Oct. 9-14 on landline
and cellular telephones. An anal-
ysis indicates that the survey
had success in reaching Alaska
Natives in the outlying western
parts of the state. It had less
success with voters on the North
Slope, in towns like Utqiagvik —
formerly known as Barrow. In
terms of the poll result, the sur-
vey could be biased if Alaska
Natives on the North Slope are
significantly different from those
in the western and southwestern
parts of the state, though the
results by precinct in the 2016
election suggest the two regions
are similar enough for the pur-
pose of political survey research.
Over all, Alaska Natives made
up 13 percent of likely voters in
the poll. Mr. Young led among
the fairly small sample of 45
Alaska Natives or Native Ameri-
cans who participated in the
survey, even though the same
voters backed Mr. Biden and Mr.
Gross.

A Reliably Red State,


Alaska Could Become


A Late Battleground


Based on a New York Times/Siena College poll
of 423 likely voters from Oct. 9-14.
THE NEW YORK TIMES


Biden 39%

Trump 45%

Jorgensen 8%

Other/Undecided 8%

New York Times/Siena College
Poll of Likely Voters in Alaska


By NATE COHN

Dan Sullivan, center, the incumbent G.O.P. senator, has a more favorable rating than the president.

ASH ADAMS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

As the presidential election
headed into the final stretch in late
summer, counties in Ohio and
Pennsylvania worried that a del-
uge of absentee ballot requests
would swamp their printing ca-
pacity. So dozens of them con-
tracted with Midwest Direct, a
Cleveland mailing company.
But when it came time to print
and ship Ohio ballots early last
week, it was Midwest Direct that
was overwhelmed. Several Ohio
counties that expected absentee
ballots printed by the company to
land in voters’ mailboxes are now
scrambling to print them them-
selves or find a last-minute contin-
gency plan less than three weeks
before Election Day.
In Pennsylvania, for instance,
nearly 30,000 ballots sent to vot-
ers in Allegheny County, which in-
cludes Pittsburgh, went to the
wrong addresses.
The counties had provided the
company with lists of tens of thou-
sands of requests weeks in ad-
vance. The company’s inability to
meet demand has underscored
the stress that mail voting has put
on the nation’s election process as
the coronavirus pandemic cur-
tails in-person voting. Midwest
Direct is the primary outside
provider of absentee ballots for 16
Ohio counties, though many also
have their own in-house opera-
tions.
Midwest Direct is owned by two
brothers, Richard Gebbie, the
chief executive, and James Geb-
bie, the chairman. This summer
they began flying a Trump 2020
flag above Midwest Direct’s head-
quarters on the west side of Cleve-
land. It was a curious juxtaposi-
tion — a company in the business
of distributing absentee ballots
through the mail showing a pref-
erence for a president who has
spent months denigrating the
practice of voting by mail.
“We have freedom to vote for
who we want and support who we
want,” Richard Gebbie said in an
interview last month. “We fly a
flag because my brother and I own
the company and we support
President Trump.”
Mr. Gebbie said he didn’t “have
an opinion” on Mr. Trump’s false
claims that voting by mail was
corrupt and rife with fraud, but he
emphasized that the ballots his
company mailed met strict securi-
ty standards.
“The security in the vote-by-
mail process both in how we
process and how the counties han-
dle the ballots is very secure,” he
said.
Distribution of the ballots is an-
other matter. When it came time to
actually ship the forms, the Geb-


bies’ company found an array of
counties angry that they did not
receive ballots as promised.
There is no evidence Midwest
Direct has done anything improp-
er with the ballots. Election secu-
rity experts said there was little
any vendor could do to tamper
with the integrity of absentee bal-
lots.
Tammy Patrick, a senior advis-
er for elections at the public policy
foundation the Democracy Fund

and a former elections adminis-
trator in Arizona, said ballots are
printed without regard of which
voter will receive them, and mai-
lers like Mr. Gebbie’s company do
not have access to the partisan at-
tributes of specific voters.
When Midwest Direct failed to
deliver promised ballots to some
of its Ohio clients, Frank LaRose,
the Ohio secretary of state, recom-
mended that counties begin print-
ing ballots in-house or “develop a
contingency plan,” said Jon Kee-
ling, Mr. LaRose’s spokesman.
“They overpromised and un-
derdelivered,” said Diane Noo-
nan, the director of the Butler
County Board of Elections. “We
would get different answers from
different people we talked to. Was
I happy with it? No I was not.”
With Midwest Direct unable to
deliver ballots to Butler County, a
suburb of 383,000 people north of
Cincinnati, Ms. Noonan on Tues-
day decided to print and ship the
rest of her county’s ballots in-
house.
Ohio is once again a battle-
ground state, after Mr. Trump car-
ried it by eight percentage points

in 2016. A poll conducted last week
for The New York Times and Si-
ena College found former Vice
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. with
a one-point lead over Mr. Trump.
The counties with the biggest
volume of delayed absentee bal-
lots are urban and suburban coun-
ties with large populations. Sum-
mit County, encompassing Akron,
and Lucas County, which includes
Toledo, were two of just eight Ohio
counties to back Hillary Clinton in


  1. Butler County, a historically
    Republican county, gave 61 per-
    cent of its vote to President
    Trump.
    Cuyahoga County, which in-
    cludes Cleveland and is Ohio’s sec-
    ond-largest county, also has an ab-
    sentee ballot contract with Mid-
    west Direct but has had no prob-
    lems getting its ballots printed
    and shipped, according to Mike
    West, a spokesman for the Board
    of Elections there.
    But some Cuyahoga County
    voters have reported ballot delays
    similar to those in other counties.
    Pam Ogilvy, a high school social
    studies teacher from Parma, Ohio,
    said she requested an absentee
    ballot in mid-September. The Cuy-
    ahoga Board of Elections website
    first said her ballot would be
    shipped by Oct. 6, the first day
    Ohio ballots could be released. A
    subsequent update said it would
    be shipped by Oct. 12. Her ballot
    finally arrived Friday — 10 days
    after it was first supposed to be
    mailed.
    Ohio ballots can be counted if
    they are postmarked by Nov. 2,
    the day before Election Day. They
    can also be returned in person to a
    county board of elections before
    the polls close Nov. 3.
    Richard Gebbie declined to be
    interviewed this week. In a state-
    ment released to clients Thursday,
    he said the delays occurred be-
    cause counties underestimated
    the amount of ballots they would
    need printed.


“It is fair to say today that no
one — not the various boards of
elections, not Ohio’s secretary of
state, not our company — antici-
pated the staggering volume of
mail-in ballot requests that has ac-
tually occurred,” he said. “The es-
timates provided to us from the
counties were not what ended up
as the reality.”
The Trump flag is no longer fly-
ing over its headquarters this
week.
In Summit County, ballots from
Midwest Direct were delayed un-
til Oct. 10, with the rest of the ini-
tial batch of 95,000 not mailed un-
til Oct. 12, according to Tom Bev-
an, a Democrat who sits on the
Board of Elections.
In Lucas County, 60,000 ballots
that Midwest Direct promised to
send on Oct. 6 were not mailed un-
til a week later, said Pete Gerken,
a county commissioner.
And in Pennsylvania, 28,
voters in Allegheny County, home
to the state’s second-largest con-
centration of Democratic voters,
were sent incorrect ballots as part
of a batch of more than 32,000 bal-
lots that were mailed beginning
Sept. 28, according to the county
Board of Elections.
Mr. Gebbie has in recent years
made small donations to Republi-
cans running for federal and state
office. He gave to Mr. LaRose and
Dave Yost, the Ohio attorney gen-
eral.
Online, Mr. Gebbie has written
several public Facebook posts
questioning the potency of the co-
ronavirus and he criticized Taylor
Swift after she accused Mr. Trump
of seeking to dismantle the Postal
Service.
Local officials said Midwest Di-
rect offered a variety of explana-
tions for why the promised absen-
tee ballots were slow to be deliv-
ered, from mechanical break-
downs to a higher volume of ballot
requests than anticipated. Mr.
Gerken, the Lucas County com-
missioner, said there was little
communication from Midwest Di-
rect about why absentee ballots
were not Toledo-bound.
“We have lost nine to 10 days in
the process and those days are not
recoverable,” Mr. Gerken said.
For Ohio, the delays in shipping
absentee ballots come as Mr.
LaRose, the Republican secretary
of state, has forbidden counties
from installing more than one
drop box to deposit absentee bal-
lots. The delay in receiving re-
quested ballots has driven more
voters to early-voting sites, which
are also limited to one per county.
“It’s completely insufficient for
a county of this size,” said Repre-
sentative Marcy Kaptur, an Ohio
Democrat whose district includes
Toledo. “This year voting was sup-
posed to be so much more simple
but it’s more complex.”

Ballots Delayed After Demand Overwhelms Ohio Printer


A Trump campaign flag flew over Midwest Direct, a Cleveland
mailing company that has had issues getting ballots to voters.

ANGELO MERENDINO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

By REID J. EPSTEIN

Several counties now


scrambling to fill their


botched orders.


Nick Corasaniti contributed re-
porting.


men — and both parties — have
on issues that affect women,
including women’s reproductive
rights.

FACT CHECKMr. Trump is
known for his sexist remarks,
and the clips the ad shows are
real. Mr. Biden, on the other
hand, has long styled himself a
champion of women. He still
refers to the Violence Against
Women Act as his proudest
legislative achievement and he
said months before he selected
Ms. Harris as his running mate
that he would name a woman to
his ticket.

WHERE IT’S RUNNINGA slightly
modified 60-second version of
the ad is running nationally on
Fox News, MSNBC and CNN,
according to Advertising Analyt-
ics. It began airing on Thursday
morning.

THE TAKEAWAYThe 2016
Democratic presidential nomi-
nee, Hillary Clinton, ran a similar
ad four years ago. It did not
work.
And the Lincoln Project is a
group of Never Trump Republi-
cans founded almost exclusively
by men, so this ad has a tone
somewhat equivalent to when
men stand up and say “as a
father of daughters” to denounce
bad behavior by other men.
Still, the juxtaposition between
the two candidates is powerful
and likely to resonate with voters
who are tired of Mr. Trump’s
rhetoric. SYDNEY EMBER

President Trump’s rude and
demeaning comments to and
about women are no secret. Just
last week, he called Senator
Kamala Harris, the Democratic
vice-presidential nominee, a
“monster.” A new ad from the
Lincoln Project urges voters to
consider what it would be like to
have a different kind of president
— a man, it suggests, who
actually respects women.

THE MESSAGEThe ad sharply
contrasts Mr. Trump with Joseph
R. Biden Jr., elevating Mr. Biden’s
selection of Ms. Harris as his
running mate as proof that he
“doesn’t just value a female
voice but chooses one to be his
right-hand woman.”
The 90-second ad opens with
two directives: “Imagine a young
girl looking in the mirror, search-
ing for role models in the world
to give her hope that one day
she, too, can make a difference.
Now imagine how she feels when
she watches women being
verbally attacked.” Cue a series
of clips that show Mr. Trump
belittling women, including
female reporters. “Your daugh-
ters are listening,” the ad says.
Then as the music soars, the
ad encourages viewers to “imag-
ine a different future for her” —
one with Ms. Harris as Mr. Bi-
den’s “right-hand woman.” It
closes with a note of hope that
doubles as a warning: “Your
actions on Nov. 3 will define who
she sees.”
The ad does not cover the
sharply divergent views both

‘Your Daughters Are Listening’:


Hitting Trump Over Sexist Remarks


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An unusual amount


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