Ballotpedia's Daily Presidential News Briefing - May 9, 2016
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Monday's Leading Stories
- Bernie Sanders was awarded 49 additional delegates in Washington after the district-level results of last month’s caucuses were finalized. Hillary Clinton received 18. In the Guam caucuses held on Saturday, Clinton was the victor, claiming 60 percent of the vote. She won four delegates; Sanders took the other three. (NBC News)
- Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) said on Sunday that she will do anything she can to aid the primary opponent of House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Paul Nehlen, because Ryan declined to support Trump last week. "[Ryan's] political career is over but for a miracle because he has so disrespected the will of the people, and as the leader of the GOP, the convention, certainly he is to remain neutral, and for him to already come out and say who he will not support is not a wise decision of his," Palin said. (CNN)
Polls
- According to a poll released by WSB-TV/Landmark on Friday, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are nearly tied for support in Georgia with 42 percent and 41 percent, respectively. (WSB-TV)
- In West Virginia, Bernie Sanders leads Hillary Clinton, 47 percent to 43 percent, according to a MetroNews poll. "The key, of course, for Sanders is a high turnout with young voters, while Clinton’s support is generally older, those with a college degree or post-graduate degree and upper income Democrats,” said Rex Repass, the director of the poll. (MetroNews)
Democrats
- Last week, several supporters and former staffers of Bernie Sanders established Brand New Congress, a super PAC dedicated to "recruiting organizers and selecting a set of more than 400 candidates — from across the political spectrum, apparently — who conform to the Sanders brand of political integrity, and by January 2017 they’ll begin a hard push to the midterm elections in November 2018.” (National Memo)
- On Saturday, the Maine Democratic Party voted to reduce the power of its superdelegates. Beginning in 2020, votes by superdelegates from Maine will reflect the preferences of the state’s primary voters. (The Burlington Free Press)
Hillary Clinton
- Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign is expected to assemble a "Republicans for Hillary” group in the coming days. When The New York Times reported on the new effort on Friday, it noted that a top adviser to U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Mark Salter, had already announced last week that he would support Clinton after Trump became the presumptive nominee. (The New York Times)
- On Sunday, Clinton said that she has not yet been contacted by the FBI to schedule an interview regarding her private email server. "I made it clear that I’m more than ready to talk to anybody, anytime, and I’ve encouraged all of my assistants to be very forthcoming,” she added. (The New York Times)
- Jacob Hajdu, a former executive director of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, has been named Clinton’s general election state director in Wisconsin. Gillian Drummond will join him as Clinton’s communications director in the state. She previously worked as the Wisconsin press secretary for President Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign. (The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
- Some donors on Wall Street who previously supported Republican presidential candidates have now shifted their support to Clinton. "An analysis by the nonpartisan organization Crowdpac found that more than 500 donors, including many Wall Street executives, who gave more than $200 to a Republican who later dropped out, including Messrs. Bush and Rubio, have since given to Mrs. Clinton. More than one-third of the money that business interests have donated to presidential campaigns has gone to Mrs. Clinton’s coffers,” The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. (The Wall Street Journal)
- Clinton wrote an op-ed in The Charleston Gazette-Mail on Sunday to address the challenges faced by coal-dependent communities. She expressed support for the Mine Safety Protection Act, "stronger ‘rule of origin standards’ so that Chinese steel doesn’t have a backdoor into American markets,” transforming abandoned mine lands into industrial parks, and improving programs that respond to substance abuse. (The Charleston Gazette-Mail)
Bernie Sanders
- On Friday, Bernie Sanders sent an open letter to Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, to condemn the composition of the national convention’s Rules and Platform Committees. He warned Wasserman Schultz, "If the process is set up to produce an unfair, one-sided result, we are prepared to mobilize our delegates to force as many votes as necessary to amend the platform and rules on the floor of the convention.” (Bernie Sanders for President)
- In an interview on MSNBC on Friday, Sanders said that the "American people are sick and tired of establishment politics and economics.” He recommended one solution to address the control of "corporate media” would be for the Democratic Party to begin "funding the equivalent of Fox television.” (The Huffington Post)
- In an op-ed in The Pacific Daily News, Jane Sanders wrote, "My husband believes that the people of Guam have the right to self-determination. He supports the efforts of Guamanians to hold a binding referendum on their desired political status. The people of Guam are the people who are affected by their lack of representation, by their lack of ability to vote for president. And it is the people of Guam who should make the decision on their own political standing, without government intervention.” She also noted Sanders’ work on a $2 billion bipartisan bill to reform the Veterans Administration given the large number of veterans in Guam. (The Pacific Daily News)
Republicans
- On Friday, Juliana Bergeron won a spot on the Committee on Contests, which determines which delegates can be seated at the Republican National Convention. (The Wall Street Journal)
- In a Facebook post on Friday afternoon, former presidential candidate Jeb Bush (R) announced that he would support neither party’s frontrunner in the general election. He wrote, "In November, I will not vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, but I will support principled conservatives at the state and federal levels, just as I have done my entire life. For Republicans, there is no greater priority than ensuring we keep control of both chambers of Congress. I look forward to working hard for great conservatives in the Senate and House in the coming months.” (Facebook)
- The South Carolina Republican Party held its state convention on Saturday with low turnout. Even with alternates seated, only 57 percent of delegate seats were filled. Six of the state’s counties had no representation. According to The State, attendees were divided on whether they would follow the lead of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and refuse to support Trump. (The State)
- CNN’s Jake Tapper reported on Sunday that officials in Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign were attributing Trump’s success in the primary to Marco Rubio’s rejection of a "unity ticket” in March. According to Tapper’s source, "Rubio thought the notion of two senators from Washington, D.C., teaming up against Trump would fit all too easily into the Trump outsider narrative. Second, Rubio was concerned that as a fellow Cuban-American freshman senator, he didn't think he complemented Cruz particularly well. Lastly, Rubio felt that the nominee should have the freedom to pick whomever he or she wants at the convention to help win in November and not be bound to a short-term decision made in the thick of the primaries. The lack of bounce after Cruz attempted such a move with Carly Fiorina reinforced his belief that he was right.” (CNN)
Donald Trump
- During a rally in Oregon on Friday, Donald Trump accused Hillary Clinton of enabling former President Bill Clinton’s adultery. "She's been the total enabler. She would go after these women and destroy their lives. She was an unbelievably nasty, mean enabler, and what she did to a lot of those women is disgraceful,” Trump said. (NBC News)
- U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel scheduled Trump to testify in a Trump University lawsuit several weeks after the general election on November 28. (Fortune)
- Trump is scheduled to meet with U.S. Rep. Ryan and other House Republicans on Thursday "to begin a discussion about the kind of Republican principles and ideas that can win the support of the American people this November.” (CNN)
- At a rally on Saturday in Washington, Trump said, "Hillary Clinton wants to abolish the Second Amendment. She wants to abolish it. Hillary Clinton wants to take your guns away, and she wants to abolish the Second Amendment. She wants to take the bullets away.” A spokesman for Clinton, Jesse Lehrich, tweeted in response that "it must be liberating to just have no regard for facts whatsoever.” (The Hill)
- In an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd which aired on Sunday,Trump discussed several domestic policy issues and current tensions in the Republican Party over his status as the presumptive nominee:
- On Paul Ryan’s lack of support: "I like Paul Ryan. I think he's a very good guy. He called me three weeks ago, and he was so supportive. It was amazing. And I never thought a thing like this. I got blindsided by this.”
- On Mitt Romney opposing his candidacy: "I helped Mitt a lot. I raised a lot of money for him. I ruined the carpet in my apartments, I had so many people come. … And I did robocalls. I did speeches for him. I did everything during the primary season. … He was ungrateful. Which is okay. A lot of people are ungrateful. But he was ungrateful.”
- On tax policy: "The thing I'm going to do is make sure the middle class gets good tax breaks. Because they have been absolutely shunned. The other thing, I'm going to fight very hard for business. For the wealthy, I think, frankly, it's going to go up. And you know what, it really should go up. … But the middle class has to be protected. The rich is probably going to end up paying more. And business might have to pay a little bit more [than his proposal due to negotiations with Democrats]. But we're giving a massive business tax cut.”
- On eliminating a federal minimum wage: "I don't know how people make it on $7.25 an hour. Now, with that being said, I would like to see an increase of some magnitude. But I'd rather leave it to the states. Let the states decide. Because don't forget, the states have to compete with each other.”
- On whether he will release his tax returns before the general election: "Sure. If the auditors finish. I'll do it as fast as the auditors finish. Remember this, I've already given my financials. And my financials show I'm worth more than $10 billion by any stretch of the imagination. Has tremendous cash. Tremendous cash flow. You don't learn much from tax returns. But I would love to give the tax returns. But I can't do it until I'm finished with the audit.” (NBC News)
- Former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) said on Sunday that she would be "willing to serve” as Trump’s vice president or "in any capacity” to help him. (The Arizona Republic)
- Sarah Palin, however, said that she did not believe she would be the right person to join Trump’s ticket. "I want to help and not hurt, and I am such a realist that I realize there are a whole lot of people out there who would say, 'Anybody but Palin.' I wouldn't want to be a burden on the ticket, and I realize in many, many eyes, I would be that burden," Palin said. (CNN)
- Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) announced last week that he would not be endorsing Trump or attending the Republican National Convention in July. "I'm not going to Cleveland. That's not where I should spend my time. I should spend my time working for the people of Illinois," he said. (The Chicago Tribune)
Third Party Candidates
Jill Stein (Green Party)
- Jill Stein won nine delegates at the state convention for the Maine Green Party on Saturday. She now has 101 of the 202 delegates needed to clinch her party’s nomination. (Green Party Watch)
Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party)
- In an interview on ABC on Sunday, Gary Johnson presented himself as an alternative to voters dissatisfied with the "polarizing figures” of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. "At the end of the day, 50 percent of Americans say they're independent. Well, where's their representation? I think it happens to be Libertarian,” Johnson added. (ABC News, Reason)
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
