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The Tennessee Supreme Court today held that the Tennessee Republican Party and its State Executive Committee (Republican Party) did not violate the Tennessee Open Meetings Act (TOMA) when they determined that Mr. Robert Starbuck Newsom a/k/a Robby Starbuck (Mr. Starbuck) would not be added to the ballot in the upcoming primary election for the United States House of Representatives 5th Congressional District.

This case arose after Mr. Starbuck filed a nominating petition to run as a candidate in the Republican primary for Tennessees 5th Congressional District. The Republican Party determined that Mr. Starbuck was not a bona fide Republican. As a result, they directed the Tennessee Coordinator of Elections to exclude Mr. Starbuck from the ballot.

Mr. Starbuck filed suit in federal court seeking an order requiring the Republican Party to restore him to the ballot. However, he later dismissed that lawsuit after failing to obtain injunctive relief from the federal court. Mr. Starbuck then filed suit in the Davidson County Chancery Court (the trial court) alleging, among other claims, that the Republican Party violated TOMA, a law that generally requires meetings of governing bodies to be open to the public. Mr. Starbuck asserted that the Republican Party violated TOMA by determining in a non-public meeting that he was not a bona fide Republican. For this reason, Mr. Starbuck argued that he should be added back to the ballot. The trial court agreed and ordered state officials who were not parties to the Chancery Court action to include Mr. Starbuck on the ballot as a Republican candidate for the 5th Congressional District.

Seeking expedited review of the trial courts order, the Republican Party filed an application for extraordinary appeal in the Court of Appeals, as well as a motion in the Supreme Court asking the Court to assume jurisdiction over the case. The state officials responsible for preparing the official ballot, the Secretary of State and the Coordinator of Elections, also filed a petition requesting that the trial courts injunction be vacated. The Supreme Court granted the Republican Partys request for expedited review and its application for extraordinary appeal.

In a unanimous opinion, the Court held that the trial court erred when it determined that TOMA applied to the Republican Party under these circumstances. The Court concluded that, while TOMA applies to state primary boards, it does not apply to state executive committees. Because, by statute, a partys state executive committee decides whether a candidate is a bona fide member of the party, the Court concluded that the Republican Party was acting as a state executive committee when they determined that Mr. Starbuck was not a bona fide Republican. As a result, the Court vacated the trial courts order granting Mr. Starbuck a temporary injunction requiring him to be placed on the ballot and remanded the case to the trial court to resolve any other remaining claims.

To read the Supreme Courts opinion in Robert Starbuck a/k/a Robby Starbuck v. Tennessee Republican Party, et al., authored by Justice Jeff Bivins, visit the opinions section of TNCourts.gov.

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Tennessee Supreme Court Holds Tennessee Republican Party and Its State Executive Committee Did Not Violate the Tennessee Open Meetings Act Regarding...

GOP Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi just tested positive for COVID-19 for the third time in a year.

Wicker led the push to end mask mandates for public transportation before a judge struck it down.

He told Insider at a press conference in March that the mask mandates should've been lifted in April 2021.

Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi tested positive for COVID-19 for the third time in a year on Monday.

"Today Senator Wicker received a positive result for COVID-19 after taking a required test," Wicker's communications director, Phillip Waller, said in a statement. "He will be expected to miss votes and committee business this week until he is able to return in person to the Senate."

Wicker, who is fully vaccinated, previously announced a positive test in February 2022 and in August 2021.

Before a judge appointed by former President Donald Trump struck down mask mandates for planes and other public transportation in April, Wicker led the push in the Senate to end it via legislation.

In March, he and Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and James Lankford of Oklahoma held a press conference in support of a joint resolution of disapproval sponsored by Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky that would've repealed the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) mask mandate on airplanes and public transportation. The TSA mandate was enacted by the Biden administration in January 2021 in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19. That resolution ultimately passed the Senate by a 57-40 vote, but was not taken up by the Democratic-controlled House.

At the press conference, Wicker argued that lifting the mask mandates on airplanes was long overdue. When asked by Insider exactly when he thought the mandates should have been lifted, Wicker said April 2021 before vaccines were widely available and before the deadly Delta and Omicron waves would have been the appropriate time.

He cited congressional testimony from a public health expert that noted that airplanes can filter out 99% of the particles that cause the disease. But that expert noted in that same testimony that the filtration should be utilized "in combination with face masks" and that declining to use both measures "will not provide the adequate protection required" to stop the spread of the disease.

Story continues

"This has been a nonsensical rule at least for a year," declared Wicker at that press conference.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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Republican senator who led the push to end mask mandates on planes and public transport tests positive for COVID-19 for the 3rd time in a year -...

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp won his Republican primary with broad support, though former President Donald Trump backed a well-known challenger to the incumbent. John Bazemore/AP hide caption

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp won his Republican primary with broad support, though former President Donald Trump backed a well-known challenger to the incumbent.

Former President Donald Trump has been a near-constant presence in this year's Republican primaries. Candidates have eagerly sought his endorsement, with some making a pilgrimage to his Mar-a-Lago estate to ask for his support in person.

Trump has at times used his endorsement as a tool of revenge, in an attempt to take down GOP officeholders who have crossed him most notably those who did not support his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

But with several weeks of primaries now complete, a trend has emerged: Republican voters even those who maintain Trump was a great president are not marching in lockstep with him. Many are instead bucking his endorsements.

"Republican voters are not monolithic," veteran GOP strategist Dallas Woodhouse said. "They are not falling all over each other waiting to hear who Trump endorses to make their decision." Yes, it is a factor, Woodhouse added, "and it can be a big factor, but it's not necessarily the determinant factor."

Some voters undoubtedly have been waiting on Trump. Take Kathy Deal, for instance. When she spoke with NPR back in March, the resident of Lancaster, Ohio, was undecided and eager to hear from Trump on the state's Republican candidates for U.S. Senate.

"That would definitely seal it for sure, it would seal it," Deal said, weeks before Trump made a late endorsement of Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance, who would go on to win the nomination.

It was a very different story for one voter weeks later in Pennsylvania. Seventy-one-year-old Trump supporter Bob Rapp was not pleased that the former president had endorsed celebrity TV doctor Mehmet Oz in the GOP Senate contest there. Rapp told NPR in April that he doesn't think Oz is even a conservative.

"Some of his stances have been pretty liberal on his TV show," Rapp said. "I'm just concerned that he may be a RINO [Republican in name only]."

But that didn't mean being at odds with Trump over Oz had affected his strong admiration for the former president.

"No, because it's his prerogative," Rapp said. "You don't agree with your leaders 100% of the time." He maintained firmly that Trump's endorsement wouldn't sway him.

Oz did eventually win the nomination in an extremely close contest. Rapp told NPR later that he voted for businessman Dave McCormick, who conceded during a recount.

Though Mehmet Oz, a Trump-backed Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, narrowly won his primary, many conservative voters had doubts about him. Ted Shaffrey/AP hide caption

Taking a broad look at how Trump's endorsements have fared so far, his win-loss record is strong, but a lot of that is because mostly he backs popular incumbents or frontrunners, like Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, who didn't really need his support to secure a nomination.

In other contests Trump's record is more mixed.

"Trump's endorsement is not a magic wand or a silver bullet," said Sarah Longwell, a longtime GOP consultant and the publisher of The Bulwark website.

She's been watching the impact of Trump endorsements and notes that in certain situations it can provide a big boost, especially in highly competitive races with lots of candidates. In such contests, Trump's support can mean more press coverage and create momentum. Longwell says that's what happened in Ohio's U.S. Senate primary.

"Where there's a big group of Republicans, and they're all battling it out, and they're all telling the voters how terrible their opponents are, and people are kind of not sure who they like, and when Trump comes in with an endorsement, it tends to kind of elevate people in these races," she said.

Longwell says that laundry list of factors all aligned to help Vance win in Ohio.

But not all of Trump's picks get such a boost, especially when they are the challenger attempting to knock off an incumbent with high name recognition and a track record.

Take Georgia, where Trump put his credibility on the line by endorsing challengers to a pair of Republican incumbents Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Both men crossed Trump when they rebuffed his requests that they use their power to overturn Trump's loss in Georgia in the 2020 election. Trump based his endorsements in these races entirely on his lie that the 2020 election was stolen, and that these two elected officials betrayed him by not supporting him in that falsehood.

But there was a problem for Trump in these contests: Kemp and Raffensperger each had a broad base of support among GOP voters, and each had a record of accomplishment that could compete with Trump's bid for vengeance.

Longwell has been conducting regular focus groups with Trump supporters. In a session with Georgia voters, she heard from people like Laura (focus group members are only identified by their first name), who was still undecided about her vote, but who still had good things to say about the governor.

"I like what Brian Kemp has done," Laura said, "and I liked how he handled COVID." Then for emphasis, she added: "The state seems to be running smoothly to me."

It's not known who Laura eventually cast her ballot for, but it is known that Kemp won reelection by a margin of more than 50 percentage points. Raffensperger won his primary too, also by a substantial margin of 19 points.

Then there's an example in North Carolina, where even a Trump endorsement couldn't save scandal-plagued Congressman Madison Cawthorn in his primary.

GOP strategist Woodhouse says Trump may have actually helped Cawthorn in what was a very tough primary from a conservative challenger. At the very least, Woodhouse said, "Nobody is going to blame the president for Cawthorn's loss because Cawthorn had had a long series of self-inflicted wounds."

Still, he says, it does help demonstrate how a Trump endorsement has limits.

Woodhouse says a key part of all this is the overall makeup of the races in Republican primaries this year and likely into the near future.

In contest after contest, voters are not choosing between a Trump-endorsed candidate and an anti-Trump candidate. Most every GOP hopeful runs on a pro-Trump list of issues. Sometimes that includes support for the lie that Trump really won in 2020, but it also always includes support for Trump's positions and rhetoric on issues like building a southern border wall and getting tough with China on trade with lots of cultural issues thrown in.

"I mean, any candidates going forward are going to adopt those core issues that were part of the America First agenda," Woodhouse said.

So even if his candidate loses, Trump's issues are very much on the winning side in these primaries.

And there's another potentially significant impact Trump is having in the primaries: He's endorsing candidates far down the ballot, for local races, something unheard of for a former president.

Longwell said that allows Republicans to increase their presence in key local offices that don't typically get a lot of attention on Election Day, "which allows people who are totally unknown, and maybe even in many cases running unopposed for offices that people pay almost no attention to, to raise some money, to gain some profile."

For the GOP, she said, it's a matter of building a deep bench of officeholders "to really fill that with people who are very much in Donald Trump's image."

And that could end being Trump's biggest impact on the 2022 elections.

More here:
Some Trump voters buck the former president in GOP primaries - NPR

Rep. Chris Jacobs (R-N.Y.) criticized the increased polarization of both political parties on Sunday after he dropped out of his reelection race following his voicing support for gun control proposals.

Appearing on CNNs State of the Union, Jacobs told co-anchor Dana Bash that he is the only sitting Republican lawmaker in favor of an assault weapons ban, comparing himself to Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), the only anti-abortion Democrat in the House.

Our parties are very polarized right now, Jacobs said. And I dont think thats good for the parties. I dont think thats good for democracy, and I think thats one reason why Washington is not working.

Jacobs had announced his support for an assault weapons ban in the wake of high-profile mass shootings at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas and a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., which is close to Jacobs district.

In the days after voicing his support for such a ban, GOP officials who endorsed Jacobs rescinded their support. Jacobs announced he would not run for a second term about a week later.

Jacobs said on Sunday he supports an assault weapons ban because proposals put forth by his Republican colleagues felt hollow.

Last week, Jacobs bucked his party by voting for both gun control packages put to a vote on the House floor by Democrats.

The first package, dubbed the Protecting Our Kids Act, included provisions to raise the minimum purchasing age for semi-automatic weapons from 18 to 21 and to ban civilians from using high-capacity magazines.

Jacobs also voted in favor of the Federal Extreme Risk Protection Order Act, which would create a national red flag law, alongside four other Republicans.

Those bills wont pass the Senate, but Jacobs on Sunday said he was hopeful that a bipartisan group of senators that has been meeting in recent days could find common ground on a gun-related package.

Jacobs told Bash that the longtime debate over gun control has broken down over a lack of trust between gun owners and lawmakers favoring more regulation, arguing gun control is an urban-rural debate.

Theres not a trust right now between those people and others on this discussion, because its been so heated,

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NY Republican decries polarized parties after dropping out of reelection race - The Hill

In Ohio, state-level candidates have raised $39.6 million between Jan. 1, 2021, and Apr. 13, 2022. Democratic candidates have raised $9.5 million and Republican candidates spent $29.4 million.

In the 2022 election cycle, 172 state-level Democrats have filed campaign finance reports with the Ohio Secretary of State. Here are the 10 Democratic candidates who have raised the most.

During the same time period, 197 Republicans have filed campaign finance reports with the Ohio Secretary of State. These are the 10 Republican candidates with the highest reported donations for the 2022 election cycle so far.

In some states, officeholders may accept donations to their campaign accounts when they are not up for election. Those donations are included in candidate campaign finance numbers.

The data above are based on campaign finance reports that active Ohio candidate PACs submitted to the Ohio Secretary of State. Transparency USA publishes campaign finance data following major reporting deadlines. State or federal law may require filers to submit additional reports.

This article is a joint publication from Ballotpedia and Transparency USA, who are working together to provide campaign finance information for state-level elections. Learn more about our work here.

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Ohio Republican candidates have raised $19.9 million more than Democrats Ballotpedia News - Ballotpedia News