Arizona election: When is the deadline to register to vote?
When does early voting begin in Arizona? Do you need to provide proof of citizenship to vote? The Briefing’s latest episode answers voting questions.
Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff called Arizona Republican Kari Lake perhaps the foremost election-denier in the country and, if elected to the U.S. Senate, she would help former President Donald Trump “tear down” the guardrails of American democracy.
As part of a tour of competitive races across the country, Schiff, who is also running for the U.S. Senate in California, urged Arizonans to reject Lake, whom he views as a threat to democracy itself. Much of his criticism focused on Lake’s baseless insistence that fraud riddled her 2022 gubernatorial loss.
“It’s hard to find outside of the former president himself a more prominent election-denier than Kari Lake,” Schiff said Friday during an interview with The Arizona Republic.
“In this day and age, the willingness to accept the results of an election would be a pretty good test of whether someone will uphold their oath of office, whether they are devoted to our constitutional scheme of governance or not. … She’s not willing to do that. She’s made that abundantly clear.”
Lake is running against Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., for the seat now held by the retiring Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz. Her campaign was not immediately available to respond to Schiff’s criticisms.
Since he led the former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2020, Schiff has served as one of the most prominent voices in his party’s warnings about Trump and his closest allies.
In 2021, he wrote “Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could” on the subject.
In 2023, after Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives, the GOP hit back on someone they view as unfairly alarmist about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and Trump’s conduct in general.
First, Schiff was removed from the House Intelligence Committee. Later, he was formally censured by the chamber for “saying there was evidence of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia.”
Schiff is now widely expected to defeat former Los Angeles Dodgers great Steve Garvey, a Republican, for a Senate seat in safely Democratic California.
As he hopes to join the Senate, Schiff isn’t backing away from his assessments of Trump or those who would help him in a second term.
“One of the reasons why Donald Trump was able to break down so many norms and tear down so many of our democratic guardrails is he had so many willing enablers in the House and Senate,” he said. “The last thing we need are more people in the Senate who will ignore their constitutional requirements because they support their party leader over anything else.”
In a bleak assessment, Schiff said American democracy after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and after a Supreme Court ruling granting presidents limited immunity from criminal prosecution is “more fragile than ever.”
Schiff praised Gallego as showing leadership on the floor of the House helping people put on gas masks during the riot and a willingness to fight for America as a Marine in the Iraq War.
“Ruben is extremely well-respected in the House as a thoughtful, serious voice on national security, on defense issues, on immigration issues,” Schiff said. “He’s someone that many of us look to on some of these incredibly difficult and sometimes divisive issues, like the border and he would provide and incredibly valuable voice.”
Schiff and Gallego have worked together on some matters in Congress. Perhaps most notably, they signed on to a 2022 letter urging the U.S. Justice Department to “work with states to restrict unnecessary access to election systems and ballots and work with election officials to strategically deploy DOJ monitors.”
That effort came after the Democratic-controlled Senate could not overcome a filibuster to pass voting rights legislation intended to override new restrictions passed in Republican-controlled states.
With Trump locked in a toss-up with Vice President Kamala Harris for the White House, Schiff is trying to help Democrats across the country fortify their numbers ahead of an election where the House of Representatives, the Senate and the presidency could all change hands.
Schiff has already traveled to New Mexico to help Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., and is planning similar stops for Sens. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev.; Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.; and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.
He’s raised more than $8 million on behalf of Democrats across the country, including Harris and his House colleagues in California, according to his campaign.
Gallego has already received the support of one of California’s U.S. senators. Two weeks ago, Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., helped prepare Mexican food with Gallego at a Phoenix event intended to boost turnout among Latinos for Gallego.
Source link : http://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=671d037fef2f4916a56dcc3463ba9291&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.azcentral.com%2Fstory%2Fnews%2Fpolitics%2Felections%2F2024%2F10%2F26%2Fcalifornia-us-rep-adam-schiff-calls-kari-lake-threat-democracy%2F75826726007%2F&c=12190829508092997827&mkt=en-us
Author :
Publish date : 2024-10-26 03:13:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.