Election

Live analysis as the results come in from your favorite Spectator editors, staffers, columnists and contributors (and some you don’t like, for good measure).

In the clusters of billboards at intersections in Phoenix, positioned to grab the attention of drivers waiting for the lights to change, one candidate’s signs stand out. In a familiar red-white-and-blue collage of names, stars and stripes, the crisp bold-type white lettering on a black background reads: “BLAKE MASTERS FOR SENATE.” The monochrome placards are one of many conspicuous displays of disruption by Masters, the thirty-six-year-old Peter Thiel acolyte hoping to topple Arizona Democrat Mark Kelly. The video with which he launched his campaign last summer was starkly shot and melancholic: the Sonora desert at dawn and a synth-y soundtrack, not the in-your-face, truck commercial aesthetic that is par for the course on the right these days.

There is much that is uncertain about Tuesday’s elections, but it seems all but certain that the GOP will take the House. They may well do the same in the Senate. What the new majority will stand for, however, is far from clear, particularly on foreign policy — and it is foreign policy that will likely prove to be the most impactful area of the 118th Congress. With Biden in the White House, there is not much on the policy front that a GOP legislature can do beyond budgeting, but as the war in Ukraine drags on, the power to set budgets will be crucial. When the Congress is sworn in on January 3, Ukraine will be in the dead of winter, and — if Russia’s strategy remains the same — home to millions without access to heat and water.

Tim Ryan is cunning. Facing an ultra-tight race against J.D. Vance for Ohio’s US Senate seat, Ryan is hedging his bets by running as a Republican on the Democratic ticket. Ryan strikes me as willing to do and say whatever it takes to win — more so even than your average career politician (he is 49 years old, has served in the US House since 2003 and was in the Ohio State Senate before that). Lately, in an attempt to appear “moderate,” Ryan has been adopting Republican talking points and throwing his own party under the bus. But a trip down memory lane shows Ryan for what he really is: someone who voted “with President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi 100 percent of the time this Congress,” and only voted in line with President Trump 16 percent of the time.

Remember the outrage when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis sent 50 Venezuelan asylum seekers to Martha’s Vineyard? Apparently Florida Hispanics, many of whom arrived as asylum seekers themselves, aren’t feeling it. A recent Telemundo/LX News poll finds DeSantis with a seven-point lead over Representative Charlie Crist, and the same margin approves of his relocation of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard. Perhaps even more interesting, while Florida Latinos born in the United States back the decision by four points, Florida immigrants support the move by 11 points and independents by 18 points. DeSantis’s relocation scheme has inspired lawsuits, calls for a Department of Justice investigation, and pearl-clutching indignation in newsrooms across the country.

Seattle Some strange things have been happening here in the Pacific Northwest. We've had a freakishly warm and dry October, for one, and just the other day Seattle apparently boasted the worst air pollution in the world. That was thanks to the smog from all the nearby wildfires, though I’m pleased to report that more normal monsoon conditions have since returned. Elton John was in town for the fifth or sixth time as part of his interminable farewell tour, and in an unrelated development, hundreds of young people, many sporting wigs and dressed in their underwear — if even that — took to the streets to illustrate their role in the city’s annual LGBTQ+ zombie-apocalypse Halloween rave.

It is midterm election season, an important period on our political calendar as it marks that there's only two years to go until the next presidential election. And while something called the "blue wave" supposedly took hold last summer, the latest polling shows that Democrats are in trouble. How much trouble? You do hate to wish ill on a party running a campaign based on third-trimester abortion access and an imagined threat from brownshirts. But given the choice, here are eight Democrats we wouldn't mind seeing ousted this year. 8. Representative Jerry Nadler Nadler presided over both impeachments of Donald Trump and is a fairly reliable progressive. The New York rep is not the most inept Dem out there — but then he did almost dislocate his nose trying to remove a Covid mask.

San Francisco mayor London Breed held a press conference on October 5 concerning her city’s most deadly problem: the open air drug market in the Tenderloin neighborhood. The speakers included the police chief and two newly appointed allies of the mayor: the district attorney, Brooke Jenkins, and the supervisor for the district adjacent to the Tenderloin, Matt Dorsey. The message from each of them was clear: the police and the district attorney would no longer ignore open drug dealing and public drug use, which has become endemic in downtown San Francisco. “Let’s be clear: selling drugs is not legal,” the mayor said. “Using drugs out in the open is completely unacceptable.” The city could be forgiven for needing the reminder.