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| Presented By Facebook |
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| Axios Sneak Peek |
| By the Axios Politics team · May 11, 2022 |
| Welcome back to Sneak. Smart Brevity™ count: 1,428 words ... 5.5 minutes. Edited by Glen Johnson. |
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| 1 big thing: GOP's Pa. panic |
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| Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios |
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| Influential Republicans in Washington and among the nationwide party elite are having a belated "oh s--t" moment over the previously unimaginable prospect that Kathy Barnette could win their party's nomination for the open Senate seat in Pennsylvania. Why it matters: In Barnette, who's been soaring in the polls ahead of Tuesday's primary, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell would be dealing with a general election candidate who'd be an opposition researcher's dream — potentially endangering the GOP effort to take back the Senate, report Axios' Jonathan Swan, Lachlan Markay and Andrew Solender. - McConnell has been fixated on ensuring the 2022 midterms are not a repeat of the 2012 or 2010 cycles.
- The Kentuckian said Republicans missed good chances to win the majority in those years because they nominated candidates who talked about things like "legitimate rape" or had to publicly assure voters they weren't witches.
- Barnette's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Barnette has surged after releasing a powerful video — "It wasn't a choice. It was a life." — in which she movingly talks about how her mother was raped when she was 11 and yet Barnette is the living, breathing byproduct of that horrific circumstance. - The video's hit a nerve with primary voters in Pennsylvania, a source close to one of Barnette's rivals told Axios, and gained resonance following the leak of a draft Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade.
- Barnette is also the uncommon Black Republican candidate.
At the same time, a cursory review of her Twitter account, @Kathy4Truth, turned up tweets like this one: "Just confronted a Muslim today." - She joins Missouri Senate candidate Eric Greitens — whose alleged misdeeds are numerous and graphic — on a list of potential Republican Senate nominees giving heartburn to GOP leadership.
- They not only create the potential of blowing winnable seats but being unmanageable for McConnell should he return as Senate majority leader next year.
Between the lines: The past few days have brought a wild scramble to destroy Barnette. Republican operatives were late to awaken to her political chances. Most had pegged Pennsylvania's Senate race as a two-man battle between celebrity TV doctor Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund CEO and Army veteran David McCormick. - Oz and McCormick — and their outside operations — have spent millions nuking each other with vicious commercials saturating Pennsylvania television.
- Oz has attacked McCormick as soft on China, and McCormick has hit Oz for his past comments that are supportive of abortion and gun control.
- That two-man ad war has hurt both candidates and provided a rare opportunity for Barnette to sneak up, ignored and untouched.
Keep reading. |
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| 2. Barnette's lose-lose scenario |
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| Photo illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios. Photo: Paul Weaver/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images |
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| A Barnette nomination next week would present a lose-lose for Republican leadership. - Worst case: She proves to be as big a liability as many fear and hands a competitive seat to the Democrats.
- Best case: She's elected and ends up a thorn in the side of Senate leadership. She's already signaled hesitancy about backing McConnell as the Republican leader.
- That potentially aligns her with candidates such as Greitens, who's said he won't back McConnell. The Greitens campaign says its internal polling has him leading his primary contest, despite potentially catastrophic general-election baggage.
What's next: Prominent Republicans are belatedly trying to kill Barnette's momentum. Ric Grenell, a Trump ally who's also endorsed Oz, has been spreading around a video of Barnette's past comments about "white racism." - GOP operatives have been passing around negative articles about her from Breitbart and the Washington Examiner.
- Pat Toomey, the Republican senator vacating the Pennsylvania seat, told Axios: "There's a lot ... voters don't know about her. A lot."
Nonetheless, it's awfully late in the game for Republicans to destroy Barnette. - Some heavy hitters also appear to be staying on the sidelines.
- One group with a massive bank account and the potential to affect GOP races — the McConnell-allied Senate Leadership Fund — has no plans to engage in the Pennsylvania primary, a source with direct knowledge of the group's plans told Axios on Wednesday.
- Senate Minority Whip John Thune, asked if the establishment is putting its thumb on the scale in the Pennsylvania Senate race, told Axios, "In this case, no, we're not. ... We're going to let the voters vote their will" — although he added he hasn't been paying close attention to the race.
Keep reading. |
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| 3. Roe reshapes political landscape |
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| Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios |
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| Abortion's biggest political impact this year may play out in a handful of Republican-held House races in blue-state suburbs, Senate contests in Nevada and New Hampshire and governor's races in swing states with GOP-led legislatures, consultants and activists tell Andrew and Axios' Alexi McCammond. Why it matters: Democrats and Republicans are studying the midterm map to gauge in which races an anticipated Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade could cause the greatest disruption. The big picture: Democrats see a general-election opportunity to regain footing after Republicans have seized advantage on inflation, crime, immigration and some cultural issues. - But the issue won't have an equal impact in every race.
- And abortion also plays a role in primary contests — including in Pennsylvania, Texas and North Carolina.
The state of play: In New York — where redistricting lines are still up in the air, adding to the uncertainty — two GOP-held seats in Long Island, the 1st and 2nd districts, could be most vulnerable. In Orange County, California, GOP incumbent Reps. Young Kim and Michelle Steel also could be top targets for Democrats in November, strategists said. - Districts with large university populations, including North Carolina's 13th District (now held by Republican Rep. Ted Budd); Michigan's 7th (Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin); and Oregon's 4th (Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio) also may be impacted if students register and turn out locally.
- Among this year's competitive Senate contests featuring vulnerable Democratic incumbents, analysts said New Hampshire and Nevada stand out. That's because they're strongly pro-choice states where Roe politics could help those incumbents.
- In governors' contests, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin are three battlegrounds where Democrats anticipate the politics of abortion will be at the forefront through November.
Keep reading. |
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| A message from Facebook |
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| 4. Charted: A look at abortion views |
 Pew Research Center; Chart: Thomas Oide/Axios Views about abortion highly correlate with frequency of religious service attendance, according to new Pew Research Center data provided to Axios' Sophia Cai. Why it matters: The leaked draft Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade has raised questions about the social and political fallout it will create, including among those whose faith does — or does not — express a view about abortion. - About one-third of U.S. adults say religion played a "very" or "extremely" important role in shaping their abortion views.
By the numbers: 30% of adults who attend religious service weekly or more frequently say abortion should be legal either in all cases or in most cases — compared with 76% of adults who seldom or never attend religious services. - Views of those who attend religious services monthly or a few times a year fell in between.
- Meanwhile, 22% of adults who attend services at least weekly said abortion should always be illegal, with no exceptions — compared with 8% of all U.S. adults and 3% of adults who rarely or never attend services.
Methodology: Pew Research Center conducted this study to examine the U.S. public's attitudes about abortion. The center surveyed 10,441 U.S. adults from March 7-13, 2022. |
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| 5. Worthy of your time |
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| House Speaker Nancy Pelosi welcomes Jordan's King Abdullah II to the Capitol today. He will meet with President Biden on Friday. Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images |
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| ❌ Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) broke with all other senators in his party to vote against advancing legislation to block state abortion bans. The bill failed 49-51, Andrew also writes in tonight's Sneak roundup. 📄 The president authorized the National Archives and Records Administration to release another tranche of Trump White House records to the Jan. 6 select committee, according to the Washington Post. 💥 The House Democrats' campaign arm is sending out ads, flagged by Politico, playing up hypothetical matchups between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and President Biden and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — snubbing House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and former President Trump in the process. 🏛️ Vice President Kamala Harris cast her 20th tie-breaking Senate vote today. She's cast the third most tie-breaking votes of any vice president, after John Adams and John C. Calhoun, both of whom held the role for two terms. 🗺 DeSantis plans to appeal a ruling by a state judge he appointed that his proposed congressional maps are unconstitutional because they dilute the power of Black voters in northern Florida in violation of the state Constitution. |
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| 6. Pic du jour |
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| Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images |
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| President Biden carried a mask and cellphone with a partial presidential seal on its case as he walked to Marine One for a trip to Illinois. |
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| A message from Facebook |
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