Ballotpedia's Daily Presidential News Briefing - May 12, 2016
From Ballotpedia
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Thursday's Leading Stories
- In an interview with the Associated Press this week, Donald Trump said that he did not believe that he was obligated to release his tax returns before the general election. He added that there was “nothing to learn from them.” Trump later commented on the story, tweeting on Wednesday, “In interview I told @AP that my taxes are under routine audit and I would release my tax returns when audit is complete, not after election!" (Associated Press)
- Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney criticized Trump in a Facebook post on Wednesday for his unwillingness to release his tax returns now. “It is disqualifying for a modern-day presidential nominee to refuse to release tax returns to the voters, especially one who has not been subject to public scrutiny in either military or public service. Tax returns provide the public with its sole confirmation of the veracity of a candidate's representations regarding charities, priorities, wealth, tax conformance, and conflicts of interest. … There is only one logical explanation for Mr. Trump's refusal to release his returns: there is a bombshell in them. Given Mr. Trump's equanimity with other flaws in his history, we can only assume it's a bombshell of unusual size,” he wrote. (Facebook)
- Clinton also criticized Trump on Wednesday. She said during a campaign event in New Jersey, “What about his taxes? We will get around to that too. Because when you run for president, especially when you become the nominee that is kind of expected. My husband and I have released 33 years of tax returns, we've got eight years on our website right now. So you have got to ask yourself, why does he not release them?" (CNN)
- CNN reported on Wednesday that Trump released tax returns under audit in 2006 as part of an effort to develop casinos in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. (CNN)
- Trump also said in his interview with the Associated Press on Tuesday that he had narrowed his vice presidential short list to “five or six” names. According to Bloomberg, one of the potential candidates is former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R). (Bloomberg)
Polls
- Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders in Oregon, 48 percent to 33 percent, according to a poll released by OPB/FOX 12 on Wednesday. “Researchers tested two potential turnout scenarios, to see if the race might change if turnout is higher than expected. But even in a higher turnout race, Clinton led Sanders, this time 45 percent to 38 percent,” the pollsters noted. In a general election matchup against Donald Trump, Clinton also leads, 43 percent to 32 percent. (OPB)
- In a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday, Clinton and Trump were running far closer nationally, 42 percent to 41 percent. (Reuters)
Democrats
- Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on Wednesday that Hillary Clinton should re-nominate federal judge Merrick Garland for the U.S. Supreme Court if she is elected president and he does not get confirmed this year. (Politico)
- On Wednesday, ThinkProgress interviewed Elaine Kamarck, a member of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and a superdelegate in the last four presidential elections. Describing her experience as a superdelegate, Kamarck said, “For almost 20 years now, I have paid my own money and taken my own time to serve on the DNC. Four or five times a year I go to the meetings of the Rules Committee. It takes a lot of preparation. I pay for my own hotel. I help the party set out the rules for its convention. And in all four conventions I’ve been in, I’ve always voted for the nominee of the party and the nominee of the party has always been the person who got the most votes.” (ThinkProgress)
- DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said on Wednesday that she had encouraged both Clinton and Bernie Sanders to be aware of how language at this point in the primary could make party unity difficult for the general election. “Towards the end of any campaign, there's more pointed language used and candidates make sharper distinctions with one another. I've cautioned both to be mindful of the tone they use especially at this point. We’re going to need to be able to reunify,” she said. (The Hill)
Hillary Clinton
- On Wednesday, Hillary Clinton wrote an op-ed in The Washington Informer advocating for D.C. statehood, expanding early, absentee, and mail voting, and establishing automatic voter registration. (The Washington Informer)
- FBI Director James Comey said on Wednesday that he would describe his agency’s review of Clinton’s private email server an “investigation” and not a “security inquiry,” a term frequently used by Clinton and her team and one Comey said that he was “not familiar with.” He added, "We want to do it well and we want to do it promptly. I feel pressure to do both of those things.” (Politico)
- Clinton released a radio ad in Kentucky focusing on the “the hard truths of injustice and systemic racism.” Actor Morgan Freeman concludes the ad, saying, “She fought in the Senate to end racial profiling and discriminatory sentencing. So, if you want to know who will stand up for racial justice, look to someone who always has.” (Breitbart)
- Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro dismissed speculation on Tuesday that he was a potential vice presidential pick for Clinton, noting that he had hadn’t “heard from anyone” on Clinton’s team about being vetted. When asked if he would accept a spot on Clinton’s ticket, Castro said, “That's not going to happen." (CNN)
- U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also commented on vice presidential rumors on Wednesday. She said, “I love my job. I'm here in the United States Senate doing exactly what the people of Massachusetts sent me here to do. … For me, I'm going to keep doing my job every single day and I'm not thinking about another job.” (NBC News)
Bernie Sanders
- With the California Democratic primary quickly approaching in a few weeks, Bernie Sanders replaced California state director Michael Ceraso with Robert Becker this week. “I felt that we should be spending more on digital and more on the grassroots team. It just came down to a disagreement,” Ceraso said of his departure. (The New York Times)
- Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver sent an email on Wednesday to supporters arguing that if the Democratic Party nominated Hillary Clinton, it would be “courting disaster” in the general election. “We’re going to have a contested convention where the Democratic Party must decide if they want the candidate with the momentum who is best positioned to beat Trump, or if they are willing to roll the dice and court disaster simply to protect the status quo for the political and financial establishment of this country,” he wrote. (Salon)
- In an analysis of the Sanders campaign’s spending published on Thursday, Fortune found that its largest expenses were air travel ($3.34 million), campaign paraphernalia ($6.56 million), payroll ($5.89 million), postage, printing and mailing ($4.8 million), site rentals ($1.7 million.), digital ad buys ($13.2 million), and media buys ($30.3 million). (Fortune)
Republicans
- House Republicans met with Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Wednesday to discuss his planned meeting with Donald Trump. Several congressmen, including U.S. Reps. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) and Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), have called on Ryan to support Trump in order to bring unity to the party. Others have expressed a desire for Paul to pin down Trump’s positions on budget issues, abortion, and entitlement reforms. Following the meeting on Wednesday, Ryan said, “To pretend we are unified without actually unifying means we go into the fall at half-strength. This election is too important to go into an election at half-strength." (CNN)
- On Wednesday, the senatorial campaign of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) submitted a letter to the Federal Election Commission stating that Cruz was “no longer a candidate for President of the United States” and that he was reactivating his Senate campaign. (CNN)
- On Thursday, a Spanish-language radio ad from People for the American Way was released which uses Trump to target U.S. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) for opposing the nomination of Merrick Garland. The narrator asks, “Is it because they want to see Donald Trump — the man who called Mexican immigrants rapists and drug dealers — get to name our next Supreme Court justice?” (The New York Times)
Donald Trump
- Donald Trump has several meetings with Republican leaders on Capitol Hill scheduled on Thursday. They include three different sessions with U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus, U.S. House Republican leadership, and U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his leadership team. (ABC News)
- Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) spoke against Trump’s candidacy on the Senate floor on Wednesday. “I can't think of a worse idea than placing the power of the next Supreme Court justice in the hands of this unhinged individual. He calls Latinos rapists and murderers,” he said. Reid continued, “Republicans want to put the Supreme Court in the hands of an unbalanced, egomaniac. Senator [Chuck] Grassley and his colleagues say they want the future of the highest court to be determined by an anti-woman, anti-Latino, anti-middle-class billionaire who demeans women every day." (CBS News)
- Eli H. Miller, who previously worked as the deputy finance director of Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign, has joined Trump’s campaign as its chief operating officer for finance. (The New York Times)
- Politico reported on Wednesday that Trump’s presidential campaign reached out to CNBC host Larry Kudlow and Heritage Foundation analyst Stephen to consult on how to revise Trump’s tax platform and reduce the cost. According to Kudlow, the new plan he devised would increase the federal deficit by $3.8 trillion rather than $10 trillion, but Trump has not yet approved the revisions. (Politico)
- In a series of tweets on Wednesday, Trump called Bernie Sanders “crazy.” He wrote in one: “I don't want to hit Crazy Bernie Sanders too hard yet because I love watching what he is doing to Crooked Hillary. His time will come!" (Business Insider)
- Trump said on Wednesday that he was considering establishing a commission on immigration steered by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. (Politico)
- T. Boone Pickens, an oil billionaire who previously donated $100,000 to a super PAC supporting Jeb Bush last year, said on Wednesday that he now supports Trump. “I’m ready to take a chance on it. And just in case it’s a mistake, [I’ll] be gone,” Pickens said. (The Wall Street Journal)
Third Party Candidates
- Ballotpedia federal desk editor Sarah Rosier appeared on NPR’s “Here and Now” on Wednesday to discuss the ballot access issues independent presidential candidates face this late in the election cycle. She noted that although some states’ early filing deadlines will soon pass, there was precedent to challenge them in court. (WBUR)
- On Wednesday, Bustle reported on the concept of vote swapping where voters in solid red or blue states agree to vote for a third-party candidate while a fellow voter in a battleground state votes for a major-party candidate. Vote swapping is being promoted by VotePact as a way for “disenchanted” voters to raise the profile of third-party candidates without contributing to a perceived “spoiler effect.” (Bustle)
Jill Stein (Green Party)
- In an interview with Truthout published on Wednesday, Jill Stein discussed the state of the 2016 presidential election, climate change, the Black Lives Matter movement, and other domestic and foreign policy issues.
- On criminal justice reforms: “We are calling for police review boards so that communities are controlling their police and not the other way around. We demand full-time investigators readily available for communities to examine all cases of death and serious injury in police custody. It shouldn't require an act of God to get the Department of Justice to investigate a murder at the hands of the police. We've been there in the border towns where people have not only been fighting for immigrant rights, but just for plain old civil liberties. Along the border, the cops can just violate your civil liberties at will. Civil rights don't really exist.”
- On improving working-class living standards: “To start with, even before we get to the big systemic solution, we should immediately raise the minimum wage nationally to $15 an hour, so that it's a living wage, not a poverty wage. We can repeal the Taft-Hartley Act that prohibits unions from conducting sympathy strikes and really exerting their power in solidarity with other groups of workers. We must stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership and renegotiate NAFTA, which play a role in sending our jobs overseas. These are just the first steps to start putting people over profit.”
- On a potential collaboration with Bernie Sanders: “Bernie has been very consistent over many years. In fact, the Green Party has been reaching out to him since 2011 to explore collaboration, especially around a presidential campaign. We have yet to have a phone call returned or an e-mail responded to. But who knows – after the beating that he's getting, the very unfair treatment he's getting from the Democratic Party, perhaps he'll change his mind. We'll see! It can't hurt to extend an olive branch.” (Truthout)
See also
- Presidential election, 2016
- Presidential candidates, 2016
- Presidential debates (2015-2016)
- Important dates in the 2016 presidential race
- Polls and Straw polls
- 2016 presidential candidate ratings and scorecards
