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Power Grab: How Georgia Republicans Are Trying to Undo Local Elections

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Power Grab: How Georgia Republicans Are Trying to Undo Local Elections
In a pair of Senate runoffs, the incumbents, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, are clinging to the lame-duck President, hoping his voters will turn out in January.Photograph by Anna Moneymaker / NYT / Redux

GOP lawmakers are targeting key boards and posts to remove Democrats.

A new wave of power grabs by Georgia’s Republican legislators is threatening to wrest control of key local government bodies where Democrats, often people of color, have recently been elected and currently hold governing majorities.

The Republican moves are an effort to consolidate political control after passing sweeping legislation in 2021 that limited popular early voting options, and allowed state officials to oust county election officials and possibly overturn results.

The latest power grabs are occurring under the umbrella of reconfiguring political districts after the 2020 census, and they target county commissions, school boards and prosecutors in the metro-Atlanta region and other areas where recent elections have left Republicans as political minorities.

“They are not waiting for the [next] election,” said Richard Rose, Atlanta NAACP president. “That’s not quick enough for the powers that run Georgia.”

“They used to believe in local control,” said Helen Butler, a civil rights activist who was purged from Morgan County’s Board of Elections by GOP legislation passed in 2021. “The legislature is now coming in and saying, ‘we don’t like the maps that local people put together,’ and they’re drawing their own maps… They want total control.”

Legislation that is now progressing includes Republican-drawn maps for county commissions in several metro-Atlanta counties, where numerous elected Democrats, who are Black, say they are being targeted for replacement by Republicans, who are white. In one of those counties, Gwinnett, home to the state’s largest school district and most diverse demographics, a bill would make its school board elections nonpartisan—masking a candidate’s party—and reschedule the election months before November, when voter turnout is lower.

The school board’s new chair, Tarece Johnson, speaking at a statehouse press conference on January 27, said the Senate-passed legislation was “targeting people of color and attempting to suppress the vote, erase their historical truths and censor diverse perspectives.” Republicans pressing for the change have attacked the board’s leadership, which only recently changed to control by elected Democrats, as incompetent.

That same charge, of managerial incompetence, has been used to justify legislation that passed in 2021 to remove local election officials, such as in Spalding County on Atlanta’s outskirts. It is also the rationale of another bill that would allow a newly created state panel to fire elected prosecutors, which is the latest development in a GOP effort to unseat Deborah Gonzalez, the state’s first Latina district attorney, who won after pledging to ignore low-level drug offenses.

“It was a very progressive platform, and I was very vocal about wanting to run to address systemic racism,” Gonzalez told the Marshall Project, a media outlet covering the justice system.

County-level partisan targeting often escapes coverage by national media. In Georgia, however, a national battleground state where demographic changes have evenly divided its electorate, the Republican takeover attempts follow 2021 legislation that rolled back early in-person and mail-based voting options, and empowered a GOP-run state board to purge election officials in eight counties. Voting rights advocates fear 2021’s legislation could set the stage for overturning election results. The latest power grabs worry but do not surprise advocates.

“We are hearing more and more that the worst abuses, the worst discriminatory redistricting and gerrymandering is playing out at the local level,” said Yurij Rudensky, a redistricting counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. “This is becoming an increasing concern in states that were formerly covered by [preclearance in] Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. This is the first redistricting cycle to occur without those protections.”

“In decades past, all of these sorts of changes, whether it is where district lines fall or the size of local governing bodies, county school boards, city councils, etc., would be assessed [by federal officials in Washington] for their tendency to diminish the influence of communities of color,” he said. “And there was certainly a deterrent effect because a legislature like Georgia’s legislature would know that what they were doing would have to pass muster.”

But outside of the Atlanta-based policy and activist circles that are tracking the power grabs, many Georgia voters are not yet aware of the Republicans’ latest moves, said Julius Johnson, who runs a democracy center in rural Hawkinsville—in mid-Georgia—that includes a food bank, meeting space, Black history museum and library, and hosts voter drives.

“Typically, locally, people don’t realize the importance of the local elections,” said Johnson, a Democrat who lost a 2020 bid for the state Senate. “We have to articulate very clearly what’s happening here—’Here is the Republican strategy to get these people in at the local levels’—so that we can get people to step up their game with participation and keep people voting.”

Deepening Structural Racism?

Many Democrats have described the latest GOP moves as the latest structural racism in Georgia politics. The bills to redraw local districts, change who serves on local boards, alter the timing of local elections, and expand ways to unseat locally elected officials are seen by these officials as imposing rules that will steepen the path for people of color to hold majority power. The latest bills come after Republicans in 2021 reversed policies that made early voting easier.

“They’re leveraging their power wherever they happen to have it,” said Ray McClendon, Atlanta NAACP political action chair. “If you look at all of these [voting] changes, it is not to take us back to Jim Crow where you have to count jellybeans in a jar to vote. All they need to do is just take off three, four or five percent of voter turnout and they will accomplish what they want.”

McClendon said that the GOP’s 2021 election reforms were designed to discourage voting and disqualify votes cast early—which is when many working-class Georgians prefer to vote. Unlike the aftermath of the 2020 election when Donald Trump pressured top state officials to “find” enough votes for him to win, McClendon said the GOP’s strategy is for local officials to winnow votes.

“The combination of all of these [rule] changes on the mail-in ballot, no longer being able to have Sunday voting in certain cases because they stacked local election boards, the narrowing of the dates for early voting, the cutting back on the number of voting locations and drop boxes—they don’t sound like they are onerous provisions individually,” McClendon explained. “But when you take them collectively, and you take the fact that every one of these is in a state that is purple, these are steps that are intended to ensure minority rule.”

Data suggests McClendon’s analysis is correct. In November 2021’s municipal elections, the number of rejected absentee ballots increased 45-fold when compared to the percentage that were rejected in November 2020’s presidential election. The GOP’s 2021 law required that all ballot applications and returned ballots be accompanied by a photocopy of a voter’s ID.

Republicans, notably, have rejected the accusations of racism surrounding their voting reforms and county gerrymanders as “ugly” and “baseless.” They have defended their bills as efforts to make local government more representative, especially in parts of Atlanta where whites may now be in the political minority. (GOP sections of the city have repeatedly tried to secede.)

“I do believe that all of the communities in our county matter,” Rep. Bonnie Rich, R-Suwanee, whose map redrawing county commissioner districts in Gwinnett County passed her chamber, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “That is why I drew lines that represent those distinct communities.”

Rep. Houston Gaines, a Republican who represents a portion of Athens, a city about 70 miles east of Atlanta, told the newspaper that the legislature-imposed maps “protect the voice of every Athenian… [thus] ensuring greater opportunities for minority communities.”

Critics like the NAACP’s Rose say that rhetoric—portraying white Republicans as victims of discrimination after losing to people of color—is offensive. It also masks what is unfolding.

“It is a complete overhaul of the system that we know of,” Rose said. “They have to make sure that they control the elections, that they control the counting, that they control how absentee ballots are processed… And, in some counties, like Gwinnett, for example, where the county commission is all Democratic, they now want to change that. They want to change the school board… They feel they must change it if it does not allow them to maintain power.”

Georgia’s 2022 Primaries

There are many signs that Georgia’s upcoming primaries on May 24 will be chaotic for election officials, candidates, campaigns, and groups urging voters to turn out. The ballot will feature each party’s nominees for federal, state, and local office, including local judgeships. In short, the legislature’s election law and voting rule changes (and federal redistricting litigation) have left many issues unresolved, which makes it harder to inform voters about what will affect them.

In August 2021, the Georgia Association of Voter Registrars and Election Officials (GAVREO) passed a resolution in which they “implore[d]” the legislature to postpone 2022’s primary from May to June, because the officials needed time to make “complicated redistricting changes,” such as finalizing maps, allocating resources and related planning before candidates could file to run for office.

GAVREO’s plea was ignored, just as, several months before, a handful of counties with Black election officials (administrators and policymakers) were “blind-sided” when their lobbyists discovered that GOP legislators were drafting bills to fire them (by requiring they live in the county) or to purge election board members (who were Democrats), according to emails obtained by American Oversight, a progressive law group that has used public document requests to expose numerous anti-democratic effort by pro-Trump Republicans.

All of Georgia’s 159 counties are affected by the post-2020 legislation. But the counties that have been additionally targeted in specific legislation have notable populations of color. As a result, organizers like the NAACP’s McClendon or Helen Butler, who is executive director of the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, a civil rights group, have been scrambling to track the changes to help voters chart a path through what she says is intentional chaos.

“They’re throwing so much stuff at us that we just have to put things in place,” Butler said. “Our ‘Democracy Squads’ monitor boards of elections to see what they’re planning on doing with regards to the vote… We send people to meetings. We get their minutes. We basically try to get people to report to us in real time so that we know what’s going on.”

“The chaos is real,” McClendon said. “It builds on what they are already doing to marginalize a percentage of voters. They are creating so many whack-a-mole situations that all we are doing as activists is trying to beat down one thing after another and then another thing pops us.”

In the meantime, the NAACP and its allies from the 2020 campaign—which include professional associations in communities of color and data-driven grassroots campaign experts—are looking to revive those networks and stand up “democracy centers” across the state, so that ordinary Georgians have trusted sources for addressing local needs, including voting.

“We have talked about the issues to raise, and one has to be true patriotism,” Rose said. “You cannot support the insurrection of January 6, and if you’re a veteran you cannot support the Confederacy… We’re also going to talk about bread-and-butter issues like Medicaid expansion, because rural hospitals are closing. And education, because the GOP is losing its mind over critical race theory, which has never been taught in public schools.”

But while Rose is looking to reactivate the grassroots networks that led Georgia to elect a Democratic presidential candidate and two Democratic U.S. senators in 2020, the Republican-run state legislature is seeking to reconfigure state and county election districts and boards in Georgia’s blue epicenters—by finding ways to oust popularly elected representatives.

“It’s untethering policymaking from public will and from voter preference in response to changing demographics and the political changes and policy preferences changes that go along with that,” said the Brennan Center’s Rudensky. “It’s very concerning because it really cuts to the heart of what our system is supposed to be about.”


By Steven Rosenfeld is the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has reported for National Public Radio, Marketplace, and Christian Science Monitor Radio, as well as a wide range of progressive publications including Salon, AlterNet, the American Prospect, and many others.

This article was produced by Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute to publish on Telegraf.

 

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Public Hype Over Indonesia VP Candidate Gibran After ‘rude’ Gesture Against Opponent in Live Debate

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Public Hype Over Indonesia VP Candidate Gibran After ‘rude’ Gesture Against Opponent in Live Debate
Vice presidential candidate number 2 Gibran Rakabuming Raka (right) expressed his views during the Fourth Debate for the 2024 Presidential Election at the Jakarta Convention Center (JCC), Jakarta, Sunday (21/1/2024). ANTARA PHOTO/M Risyal Hidayat

The performance of Indonesian vice-presidential candidate Gibran Rakabuming Raka who is also the son of incumbent President Joko Widodo – has come under fire for his seemingly rude antics during a live debate over the weekend.

It was a stark contrast to the buzz generated by him last month following a second debate organised by Indonesia’s General Election Commission (KPU) that saw Gibran stacking up against his more experienced rivals, with some netizens now calling the antics of the president’s eldest son as cringe.

The debate on Sunday (Jan 21) was the fourth in a series of five debates where presidential candidates and their running mates try to lure voters to the polling booth by promising what they could do should they be elected as Indonesia’s next leaders in the upcoming election on Feb 14.

Sunday’s debate saw the vice-presidential candidates discuss issues such as energy, carbon tax, environment as well as agrarian matters among others.

During the debate involving the three vice-presidential candidates, Gibran – who is the running mate of defence minister Prabowo Subianto made a “ducking” gesture and pretended to search for a lost item, in response to an answer that was given by his rival, Mahfud MD.  Mahfud is running in the election alongside former Central Java governor Ganjar Pranowo.

The third vice presidential candidate is Muhaimin Iskandar a seasoned politician who has paired up with former Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan.

Gibran had earlier quizzed Mahfud about how greenflation can be dealt with in the country. Greenflation refers to inflation caused by green initiatives.

In response, however, Mahfud spoke about the green economy instead of greenflation.

“I was looking for Prof Mahfud’s answer. I was looking for (the answer but) how come I couldn’t find (it)?” asked Gibran while making the “ducking” gesture.

“I asked about the issue of green inflation, but you explained the green economy instead.”

Mahfud then claimed that Gibran was “(making) things up out of thin air”.

“If an academic asks a question like that, it’s not worth answering. There is no point in answering,” he retorted.

On social media platform X, a post featuring videos of the interaction gained over 2.5 million views in less than a day.

 

 

 

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Trump mocks Nikki Haley’s first name. It’s his latest example of attacking rivals based on race

“You have to dissect politics as politics. It’s not personal,” said Scott. “He’s not intending to demean her or degrade her in any way. He’s just doing that to garner votes.”

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Trump mocks Nikki Haley’s first name. It’s his latest example of attacking rivals based on race
Nikki Haley Not a tough question. Photographer: Sophie Park/Getty Images

Donald Trump used his social media platform Friday to mock Nikki Haley ‘s birth name, the latest example of the former president keying on race and ethnicity to attack people of color, especially his political rivals.

In a post on his Truth Social account, Trump repeatedly referred to Haley, the daughter of immigrants from India, as “Nimbra.” Haley, the former South Carolina governor, was born in Bamberg, South Carolina, as Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. She has always gone by her middle name, “Nikki.” She took the surname “Haley” upon her marriage in 1996.

Trump, himself the son, grandson and twice the husband of immigrants, called Haley “Nimbra” three times in the post and said she “doesn’t have what it takes.”

The attack comes four days before the New Hampshire primary, in which Haley is trying to establish herself as the only viable Trump alternative in the Republicans’ 2024 nominating contest.

Trump’s post was an escalation of recent attacks in which he referenced Haley’s given first name — though he’s misspelled it “Nimrada” — and falsely asserted she is ineligible for the presidency because her parents were not U.S. citizens when she was born in 1972.

The attacks echo Trump’s “birther” rhetoric against President Barack Obama. Trump spent years pushing the conspiracy theory that the nation’s first Black president was born in Kenya and not a “natural born” U.S. citizen as required by the Constitution. That effort was part of Trump’s rise among Republicans’ most culturally conservative base ahead of his 2016 election that surprised much of the U.S. political establishment.

Haley has dismissed Trump’s latest attacks as proof that she threatens his bid for a third consecutive nomination.

“I’ll let people decide what he means by his attacks,” Haley told reporters in New Hampshire on Friday when asked about Trump’s false assertions that her heritage disqualifies her from the Oval Office. “What we know is, look, he’s clearly insecure if he goes and does these temper tantrums, if he’s spending millions of dollars on TV. He’s insecure, he knows that something’s wrong.”

Trump’s campaign did not reply to an inquiry about his comments.

Since Monday’s Iowa caucuses — which Trump won by 30 points over Ron DeSantis, who placed second — Haley has aimed to portray the rest of the GOP primary battle as a two-way race between Trump and herself despite her narrow third-place finish. Haley’s campaign is aiming for a stronger showing in New Hampshire, hoping for a springboard into her home state South Carolina, which holds the South’s first presidential primary next month.

For his part, Trump bounces between declarations that the nominating fight is already effectively over and blasting Haley as if the two are indeed locked in a tight contest. Trump still criticizes his other remaining rival, DeSantis, but his preferred pejoratives for the Florida governor, “Ron DeSanctimonious” or “Ron DeSanctus,” have nothing to do with race or ethnicity. DeSantis is white.

Trump’s focus on Haley’s name comes as far-right online forums have for months been littered with mentions of her given name alongside racist commentary and false “birther” claims. Haley’s name and family background also have become talking points on the left. Some widely circulating social media posts have called her a hypocrite for saying America was “never a racist country” when she likely experienced racism herself.

Pastor Darrell Scott, a Black man who has led a diversity coalition for Trump’s previous campaigns, defended the former president’s latest attacks as “slings and arrows” that come in election season.

“You have to dissect politics as politics. It’s not personal,” said Scott. “He’s not intending to demean her or degrade her in any way. He’s just doing that to garner votes.”

Scott said Trump “has a compassionate side that most people don’t see” and defended his aggressive approach as a “goose-and-gander situation” for a public figure constantly “under attack for everything.”

Tara Setmayer, senior adviser to the Lincoln Project group that opposes Trump from within the conservative movement, agreed that Trump’s rhetoric works in a Republican primary. But she said that’s a damning reality for the party and does not excuse his behavior.

“These are the rantings of an incredibly, almost pathetically insecure man who has demonstrated over his entire career his racism and bigotry,” said Setmayer, who is multiracial and calls herself a former Republican and now a conservative independent. “Why would anyone expect it to be any different now, when an entire political party has enabled this level of morally questionable behavior?”

Amid the fallout Friday, Trump won the endorsement of South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the Senate’s only Black Republican and formerly a presidential candidate himself. Haley appointed Scott to the Senate in 2012, during her first term as governor.

Trump has a long history of using race, ethnicity and immigrant heritage as a cudgel.

For years, he has referred to Obama as “Barack Hussein Obama,” putting an obvious emphasis on the 44th president’s middle name. Obama was the son of a white American mother and a Black father from Kenya. He was born in Hawaii, though Trump spent years asserting Obama had manufactured the story and a birth certificate to support it. Trump eventually admitted his claims were false but then, during the 2016 general election, said he did so only to “get on with the campaign.”

When David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, encouraged Republican primary voters to back Trump in 2016, Trump responded in a CNN interview that he knew “nothing about David Duke, I know nothing about white supremacists.”

Trump is also among many Republicans who deliberately mispronounce Vice President Kamala Harris’s name. Rather than the correct “KA’-ma-la,” Trump sometimes says, “Ka-MAH-la.” Harris, who is of Indian and Jamaican descent, is the first woman to become vice president and the third non-white person as either president or vice president, following Obama and Charles Curtis, Herbert Hoover’s vice president who had Native American ancestry.

Leading up to Trump’s 2017 inauguration, civil rights icon John Lewis, then a Black congressman from Georgia, said he would not attend Trump’s inauguration because he considered him an illegitimate president. Trump reacted by blasting Lewis’s Atlanta-based district as being in “horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested).” The district includes downtown Atlanta, Coca-Cola’s world headquarters, the Georgia Institute of Technology and principal sites of the 1996 Olympic Games, among other attributes.

During his presidency, Trump questioned during a meeting with lawmakers why the U.S. would accept immigrants from Haiti and “shithole countries” across Africa instead of countries like Norway. He did not explicitly mention race but the White House followed disclosure of his comments with a statement explaining that Trump supported granting access to the U.S. for “those who can contribute to our society.”

He also has said that four congresswomen of color should go back to the “broken and crime infested” countries they came from, ignoring the fact that all of the women are American citizens and three were born in the U.S.

Trump’s mother was born Mary Anne MacLeod in Scotland and came to the United States between the two world wars. His paternal grandfather, Frederick Trump, was a Barvarian-born immigrant from Germany in the 1880s. Trump’s first wife, Ivana Zelníčková before their marriage, was born in what is now the Czech Republic. His third wife, former first lady Melania Trump, was born Melanija Knavs in what is now Slovenia. That means four of Trump’s five children also are children of immigrants.

Haley frames her family’s story as proof that the U.S. “is not a racist country.” She sometimes highlights her role in taking down the Confederate battle flag from South Carolina statehouse grounds after a racist massacre in her state — though she had sidestepped requests to remove the banner earlier in her term. And Haley has for years navigated Trump’s penchant for racist rhetoric.

“I will not stop until we fight a man that chooses not to disavow the KKK,” Haley said during the 2016 primary campaign after she had endorsed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio over Trump. “That is not a part of our party; that is not who we want as president.”

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AP/Bill Barrow

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Donald Trump’s Grip on Republican Politics is Put to The Test in Ice-Cold Iowa’s Caucuses

Donald Trump’s rally was briefly interrupted by protesters in Iowa Sunday— the first time it’s happened in years. “You’ve taken millions!” a woman shouted as Trump was mid-rally, prompting the crowd to respond with a “Trump!” chant to drown her out. (Jan. 14)

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Donald Trump’s Grip on Republican Politics is Put to The Test in Ice-Cold Iowa’s Caucuses
Republican candidate former President Donald Trump. AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

Voting is set to begin Monday night in icy Iowa as former President Donald Trump eyes a victory that would send a resounding message that neither life-threatening cold nor life-changing legal trouble can slow his march toward the Republican Party’s 2024 nomination.

The Iowa caucuses, which are the opening contest in the months-long Republican presidential primary process, begin at 8 p.m. EST. Caucus participants will gather inside more than 1,500 schools, churches and community centers to debate their options, in some cases for hours, before casting secret ballots.

While Trump projects confidence, his onetime chief rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is fighting for his political survival in a make-or-break race for second place. Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, the only woman in the race, stands in DeSantis’ way. The two have competed aggressively in recent weeks to emerge as the clear alternative to the former president, who has alienated many Americans and could end up being a convicted felon by year’s end.

“I absolutely love a lot of the things (Trump) did, but his personality is just kind of getting in his way,” said Hans Rudin, a 49-year-old community college adviser from Council Bluffs, Iowa. He said he supported Trump in the past two elections, but will caucus for DeSantis on Monday.

Polls suggest Trump enters the day with a massive lead in Iowa as Haley and DeSantis duel for a distant second. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson are also on the ballot, as is former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who suspended his campaign last week.

With the coldest temperatures in caucus history expected and dangerous travel conditions in virtually every corner of the rural state, the campaigns are bracing for a low-turnout contest that will test the strength of their support and their organizational muscle. The final result will serve as a powerful signal for the rest of the nomination fight to determine who will face Democratic President Joe Biden in the November general election.

After Iowa, the Republican primary shifts to New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina over the coming weeks before moving into the rest of the country this spring. The ultimate nominee won’t be confirmed until the party’s national convention in July, but with big wins in the opening contests, Trump will be difficult to stop.

Trump’s political strength heading into the Iowa caucuses, which come 426 days after he launched his 2024 campaign, tells a remarkable story of a Republican Party unwilling or unable to move on from him. He lost to Biden in 2020 after fueling near-constant chaos while in the White House, culminating with his supporters carrying out a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol. In total, he faces 91 felony charges across four criminal cases, including two indictments for his efforts to overturn the election and a third indictment for keeping classified documents in his Florida home.

In recent weeks, Trump has increasingly echoed authoritarian leaders and framed his campaign as one of retribution. He has spoken openly about using the power of government to pursue his political enemies. He has repeatedly harnessed rhetoric once used by Adolf Hitler to argue that immigrants entering the U.S. illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country. And he recently shared a word cloud last week to his social media account highlighting words like “revenge,” “power” and “dictatorship.”

Republican voters have been undeterred.

“Trump is a Christian. He’s trustworthy. He believes in America. And he believes in freedom,” said 71-year-old Kathy DeAngelo, a retired hospital administrative employee waiting in subzero weather to see Trump on Sunday. “He’s the only one.”

The final Des Moines Register/NBC News poll before the caucuses found Trump maintaining a formidable lead, supported by nearly half of likely caucusgoers, compared with 20% for Haley and 16% for DeSantis. Haley, the former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor, and DeSantis, the Florida governor, remain locked in a close battle for second. Trump is also viewed more favorably than the other top contenders by likely caucusgoers, at 69% compared with 58% for DeSantis and just 48% for Haley.

On the eve of the caucuses, Trump predicted he would set a modern-day record for an Iowa Republican caucus with a margin-of-victory exceeding the nearly 13 percentage points that Bob Dole earned in 1988. He also sought to downplay expectations that he would earn as much as 50% of the total vote.

Whether he hits that number or not, his critics note that roughly half of the state’s Republican voters will likely vote for someone not named Trump.

“Somebody won by 12 points and that was like a record. Well, we should do that,” Trump said Sunday during an appearance at a Des Moines hotel. “If we don’t do that, let ‘em criticize us, right? But let’s see if we can get to 50%.“

“Brave the weather and go out and save America,” he later added.

The temperature in parts of Iowa on Monday could dip as low as negative 14 degrees Fahrenheit (negative 26 degrees Celsius) while snow drifts from Friday’s blizzard still make travel hazardous across the rural state where unpaved roads are common.

Forecasters warned that “dangerously cold wind chills” as low as 45 degrees below zero Fahrenheit were possible through noon Tuesday. The conditions, according to the National Weather Service, could lead to “frost bite and hypothermia in a matter of minutes if not properly dressed for the conditions.”

Over the weekend, signs positioned on key roadways warned motorists in large flashing orange letters: “TRAVEL NOT ADVISED.”

And the winter weather, intimidating even for Iowa, will make an already unrepresentative process even less representative.

Many elderly Iowans, who are the backbone of the caucus, are wondering how they will make it to their sites. And only a tiny portion of the participants will be voters of color, given Iowa’s overwhelmingly white population, a fact that helped convince Democrats to shift their opening primary contest to South Carolina this year.

Iowa’s caucuses are also playing out on Martin Luther King Day, which is a federal holiday.

Last month, some presidential campaigns were expecting close to 200,000 Republican voters to participate in the caucus. On the eve of the contest, many now wonder whether the 2024 turnout will exceed the 118,411 Republicans who showed up in 2012.

Still, each of the campaigns is claiming a powerful get-out-the-vote operation that will ensure their supporters show up.

Haley rallied a room packed with Iowans and out-of-state volunteers on Sunday in Ames, drawing frequent cheers from the pink necklace and boa-clad “Women for Nikki.”

The 51-year-old former South Carolina governor repeated her frequent call for GOP voters to elect her as a “new generational leader that leaves the negativity and the baggage behind and focuses on the solutions of the future.”

Nearly 200 miles away in Dubuque, DeSantis dismissed questions about his position in the polls as he courted voters.

“I like being underestimated. I like being the underdog,” the Florida governor said. “I think that that’s better.”

Meanwhile, not all voters were excited about their options.

Jake Hutzell, 28, hasn’t participated in a caucus before, and he isn’t sure that he will Monday, either. He follows politics, but he said he’s part of a generation that’s skeptical any of it makes a difference.

“There’s never been anyone I feel strongly about,” the Dubuque resident said. “If I’m going to throw my name behind who I think should be the president, I would like to very feel very strongly about it.”

_____

AP

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Are Indonesia’s Presidential Hopefuls Ganjar and Anies Ganging Up on Prabowo?

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Are Indonesia’s Presidential Hopefuls Ganjar and Anies Ganging Up on Prabowo?
Presidential candidate Ganjar Pranowo is a former governor of Central Java province. ANTARA/Aditya Pradana Putra

Pollsters have put Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto as the strongest contender for Indonesia’s upcoming election on Feb 14, with an electability of more than 40 per cent.

Indonesian presidential frontrunner Prabowo Subianto was jointly attacked by his two opponents again in another televised election debate, in a tag-team move that has appeared to lower the defence minister’s winning chances.

But analysts are split on whether the seemingly uncoordinated offensive by ex-Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan and former Central Java governor Ganjar Pranowo would pay off for them in shaving Prabowo’s lead in time for the Feb 14 presidential election, or if it might even backfire.

In the third of a five-debate series, the candidates were grilled on Sunday night (Jan 7) on the topics of defence, security, international relations and geopolitics.

It’s familiar territory for Prabowo, 72, who has been Indonesia’s defence minister for almost five years, though that did not stop his two rivals from criticising his performance at the ministry, such as accusing him of mismanaging defence procurement.

Prabowo was notably upset and said at a press conference after the debate that his rivals were not citing accurate data.

“I was a little disappointed with the quality (of the debate), especially the narratives conveyed by the other candidates. In my opinion, first of all, their data is wrong,” said a visibly sullen-looking candidate.

“Secondly, (they want to) use the issues of defence to score political points, which, in my opinion, is not permissible for statesmen.”

Political analyst Ujang Komarudin from the University of Al Azhar Indonesia said Prabowo is being attacked because he is the frontrunner.

“Those were hard and continuous attacks because Prabowo is considered a common enemy given his high electability.

“All surveys have put Prabowo on the first spot and far ahead of the electability of Anies and Ganjar. Therefore, to bring down Prabowo, he must be attacked during the debate.”

On Saturday, pollster Indikator Politik Indonesia, for example, released its latest survey. It shows that Prabowo’s electability is 46.9 per cent.

Anies came in second with 23.2 per cent, while Ganjar secured the last spot with 22.2 per cent.

However, a survey by the daily newspaper Kompas after Sunday’s debate showed that 79.7 per cent of its 210 respondents nationwide were satisfied with Ganjar’s performance.

A total of 71.4 per cent were satisfied with Anies’ performance, while only 48.9 per cent were satisfied with Prabowo’s performance.

NOT THE FIRST ATTACK

During the first debate on Dec 12 which covered areas in law, human rights, eradication of corruption, governance, improving public service, strengthening democracy, tackling disinformation, and managing civic harmony, Anies also focused his criticisms on Prabowo while Ganjar was more reserved.

The second debate was for the vice presidential candidates – Muhaimin Iskandar, who is teaming up with Anies, Gibran Rakabuming Raka who is Prabowo’s running mate and Mahfud MD who is the vice presidential candidate of Ganjar.

The third debate was for the presidential candidates again, and Anies and Ganjar took aim at Prabowo’s military procurement strategy as defence minister.

Anies criticised Prabowo, who is vying for the presidency for the third time in a row, for procuring billions of dollars for weaponry, while many Indonesian military personnel do not own a house.

He even went beyond by highlighting Prabowo’s personal wealth.

“While half of our soldiers do not have official residences, its minister owns 340,000 ha of land,” said Anies, claiming to cite the data President Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, used during the 2019 presidential debate when the latter ran against Prabowo.

The defence minister denied Anies’ claim, but the latter continued his criticism of Prabowo on another front.

During Prabowo’s tenure, the government introduced a programme called food estate, which is coordinated by the defence ministry and aimed to establish large-scale agricultural plantations in several parts of Indonesia to ensure food security nationwide.

Depending on the location of the plantation, the crops were supposed to be rice, cassava and potato.

But Anies claimed the defence ministry’s food estate is a failed project because cassavas can barely grow on the hundreds of hectares of land procured for the scheme.

Meanwhile, Ganjar highlighted the defence ministry’s budget, saying it should account for at least 2 per cent of the gross domestic product.

However, he noted it only accounts for 0.7 per cent, and that Prabowo should have pushed for a bigger budget that included soldiers’ welfare.

“Your planning is too reckless, and you are not serious about managing the domestic defence industry,” said Ganjar. “I am doubtful about how you manage the defence budget in Indonesia.”

Both Anies and Ganjar also criticised Prabowo’s move in the past few years, where he has bought used military equipment, claiming it was a waste of money.

However, Prabowo said it is not an issue. “When it comes to military equipment, it is not about whether it’s not new or used. But it is about the age (of the equipment).”

For example, if it is a plane, it is the flying hours, he said. Prabowo claimed the flying hours of the equipment he procured are still good.

At one point, Anies and Ganjar seemed even to be targeting Prabowo jointly.

When it was Anies’ turn to ask Ganjar a question, he asked him how he would rate the performance of the defence ministry.

Ganjar gave a five out of 10, which Anies said is too good.

“It is 11 out of 100,” said Anies, whose laughter prompted the audience to follow suit.

THE FRONTRUNNER IS THE COMMON ENEMY

Analysts spoke to said the attacks by Anies and Ganjar will continue until the last debate involving the presidential candidates set to take place on Feb 4.

“I think this pattern (of attacking other candidates) will continue to be repeated to expose the rivals’ weaknesses as part of efforts to seek public support, especially swing voters,” said Wasisto Rahajo Jati, a political expert with the Indonesian National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN).

However, political analyst Ray Rangkuti from the Jakarta-based think tank Lingkar Madani told, that Anies and Ganjar were just taking advantage of the fact that Prabowo is the current defence minister.

“Because Prabowo’s argument so far has always been it is not necessary to talk much (to the public and media). What is important is to work, work, work,” said Rangkuti.

“But when the two other candidates asked about his work, he couldn’t explain himself.”

While there is a pattern that Prabowo is being attacked by the other two, Wasisto from BRIN is doubtful about its effectiveness.

“I think it depends on the public perception because, basically, the attack is part of an effort to attract the public’s attention towards the capabilities and problem-solving abilities of each presidential candidate,” he told.

Ujang from the University of Al Azhar Indonesia thinks the attacks on Prabowo have left the debate with no winner.

“Regarding the attacks, no one won the debate because the method was not elegant. An elegant way is a soft way, a good way, a way that is pleasant for people to hear and see,” he said, adding that the offensive against Prabowo could even backfire for Anies and Ganjar.

Ujang cited, for example, how Ganjar’s electability according to opinion polls has decreased each time he and his party PDI-P criticise Prabowo.

However, Rangkuti from Lingkar Madani believes Anies and Ganjar should continue attacking Prabowo if they want to win as it would show their stance.

“For Anies, there is no other way because his stance is different (from Prabowo’s). Therefore, he needs to show that. In comparison, Ganjar’s stance is more moderate,” he said.

Prabowo is campaigning to continue Jokowi’s programme, while Anies wants a change. On the other hand, Ganjar wants to continue what he believes are good programmes under Jokowi while introducing his own schemes.

Rangkuti believed Prabowo was probably also eager to counter-attack his opponents during the debate but did not have much material to do so since the former governors have never been involved in defence matters.

Citing the Kompas post-debate survey showing how Prabowo was deemed to have fared poorest, Rangkuti also thinks attacking the defence minister would not hurt Anies and Ganjar.

“The election debate can be very influential because, according to surveys, almost 30 per cent of potential voters are still undecided,” the analyst added.

____

CNA

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Indonesia Presidential Frontrunner Under Fire as Rivals Attack Defence Plans

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Indonesia Presidential Frontrunner Under Fire as Rivals Attack Defence Plans
Indonesia's Defence Minister and presidential candidate, Prabowo Subianto speaks during a televised debate with his opponents Ganjar Pranowo and Anies Baswedan, at the Istora Senayan stadium in Jakarta, Indonesia, January 7, 2024. REUTERS/Ajeng Dinar Ulfiana

Indonesian presidential frontrunner Prabowo Subianto suffered a barrage of attacks in a heated election debate on Sunday, with his two opponents taking aim at his military procurement strategy as defence minister, calling him reckless and wasteful.

Third-time candidate Prabowo, a former special forces commander, has held a strong lead in opinion polls for the Feb. 14 election, but his military modernisation drive drew flak in a second televised face-off focused on security and geopolitics.

Former Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan denounced Prabowo’s plans to procure used military equipment, including a fleet of Mirage 2000-5 fighter jets from Qatar, and accused his defence ministry of failing to protect itself from hackers who last year threatened to leak confidential information.

“Ironically, defence ministry was hacked,” Anies said. “The 700 trillion rupiah ($45.13 billion) budget cannot be used to contain it. Instead, it is used to buy second-hand military equipment.”

Dressed for the debate in an air force-style bomber jacket, the ruling party’s candidate Ganjar Pranowo said the jets deal, which the government has delayed over budget issues, was “reckless planning”.

Southeast Asia’s biggest economy has for the past decade lagged regional peers in defence spending as a share of gross domestic product.

Prabowo justified the strategy to buy used hardware as essential in modernising the armed forces, adding the 15-year-old jets had a 25 to 30 year lifespan.

“The narrative about using used equipment, I think, is misleading. The important thing is flying hours,” he said.

“In reality we need equipment to cover the current gap,” he said, adding new jets take longer to arrive and not all defence confidential data can be divulged to the public.

President Joko Widodo on Monday was quoted by local media as saying that the data is confidential “because it’s related to the nation’s big strategy,” adding that people were disappointed by the personal attacks launched in the debate.

The president did not mention who launched such attacks.

Most polls have Anies neck-and-neck with Ganjar, though far adrift of leading candidate Prabowo, who has picked as running mate Gibran Rakabuming Raka, the son of the popular two-term President Joko Widodo.

Anies said that choice showed Prabowo had “compromised ethics standards”, after Gibran was only beneficiary of an acrimonious court ruling that changed eligibility rules just days from election registration.

The candidates were also asked how they would address long-running disputes over the South China Sea.

Prabowo said Indonesia needed better technology to defend its territory, while Anies said it should become a dominant leader in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), to ensure a common position.

Ganjar proposed a review of the bloc’s much-criticised decision making approach and said a 2002 agreement between China and ASEAN countries to avoid maritime disputes had failed.

“We can take the initiative through temporary agreements to avoid higher risks,” Ganjar said, without elaborating.

____

REUTERS

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Indonesia’s Presidential Hopefuls Face Off in Debate

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Indonesia’s Presidential Hopefuls Face Off in Debate
Indonesia's Defence Minister and presidential candidate, Prabowo Subianto speaks during a televised debate with his opponents Ganjar Pranowo and Anies Baswedan, at the Istora Senayan stadium in Jakarta, Indonesia, January 7, 2024. FILE/Telegraf

Indonesia’s presidential candidates held a second debate on Sunday, where they discussed defense, geopolitics, and diplomacy.

Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto, former Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo, and former Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan will compete in a Feb. 14 election to lead the world’s largest archipelagic nation.

Nearly 205 million people are eligible to cast their ballots in the vote, aiming to determine the successor of President Joko Widodo after his 10-year tenure.

Frontrunner Subianto stated that if elected, he would strive to maintain positive relationships with all global powers in line with Indonesia’s “non-aligned” foreign policy.

“With good relations with all powers, we can secure our national interests,” Subianto said in the debate broadcasted across Indonesian television screens. “A thousand friends are too few, one adversary is one too many. We will pursue a good neighbor policy.”

The former special forces general emphasized the importance of bolstering military power to defend independence as he expressed concern about situations akin to the challenging circumstances faced by Gaza during the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Indonesia is a staunch supporter of Palestinian independence. It has called for a resolution to the conflict based on internationally agreed parameters set by the United Nations, which include a two-state solution.

Pranowo outlined a proposal for a temporary agreement on the disputed South China Sea, underlining Indonesia’s status as a non-claimant in the region.

He said the temporary agreement was necessary in light of China’s ongoing military modernization, expected to be finalized by 2027.

“[The resolution efforts] have been more than 20 years, and there has been no progress,” he said.

He also pitched the need to strengthen patrols by the Indonesian navy.

“We need floating tankers that can be used by our Navy to patrol. This makes logistics very cost-effective,” he said.

Baswedan raised the issue of non-traditional threats such as a rise in hacking incidents, pledging the establishment of a cyberdefense structure.

“The key doesn’t solely lie in the technology itself. The essence lies in the comprehensive involvement of everyone,” he said.

He also said that he would make Indonesia a decisive leader in the global setting, not “merely a spectator,” through its soft power such as the arts.

“Through these efforts, we aim to make Indonesia both a gracious host in its own land and a charming guest in other countries,” he added.

Subianto is ahead of his rivals in opinion polls since choosing Gibran Rakabuming Raka, the president’s eldest son, as his vicepresidential candidate.

Pranowo is far behind in second place.

Recent surveys suggest that Baswedan, in third place, might have a chance to beat Pranowo and be in the second-round runoff vote.

____

AFP

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