UAW Endorses Andy Levin for Labor Secretary: Election Update
Campaigning Moves to Georgia Senate Runoffs: Election Update
(Bloomberg) -- The United Auto Workers endorsed Michigan Representative Andy Levin to serve as President-elect Joe Biden’s labor secretary. Elections officials said the Nov. 3 election was the most secure in history. And Georgia’s secretary of state begins Covid quarantine.
Other Developments:
UAW Endorses Andy Levin for Labor Secretary
The United Auto Workers on Thursday endorsed Representative Andy Levin’s bid to become Biden’s secretary of labor.
The union is one of at least three to send letters backing the Michigan Democrat to the president-elect’s transition team, along with the Utility Workers Union of America and the Communications Workers of America. The UAW and UWUA sent letters Thursday, according to Brian Rothenberg, a UAW spokesman, and Erin Bzymek at UWUA.
Since the CWA first announced its support for Levin, a Michigan Democrat, on Monday, the presidents of the AFL-CIO’s largest two unions -- the American Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees -- have both endorsed a different contender, Boston Mayor and former building trades union leader Marty Walsh.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has been working to secure union support for an endorsement of Walsh, according to people familiar with the conversations. The union federation’s political committee is scheduled to meet on Friday. An AFL-CIO spokesperson declined to comment Thursday.
“While it’s an honor to be mentioned among the many highly qualified individuals being considered for a role in the Biden Administration, I am focused on my job as mayor of the City of Boston,” Walsh said in an emailed statement.
Levin, who union officials say has been making his case for the Labor secretary position to Trumka and other union leaders, said Sunday that he would “put all of my heart and soul” into helping Biden bolster workers’ strength. -- Josh Eidelson
Election Was Most Secure in U.S. History, Officials Say
State and federal election officials, along with experts in the private sector, said they had “utmost confidence in the security and integrity” of the Nov. 3 vote, as Trump continues to make unfounded claims of fraud and key security officials involved in protecting elections leave the administration or expect to be fired.
“The Nov. 3rd election was the most secure in American history,” the officials said in a statement Thursday. “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
The statement acknowledged the “many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections” and urged Americans to turn to election administrators and officials for accurate information.
The statement was signed by officials from the Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council, which shares information among state, local and federal officials, and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council, which includes election infrastructure owners and operators.
Among the 10 signatories were Benjamin Hovland, who chairs the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and Bob Kolasky, the assistant director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security.
Key officials at the cybersecurity agency, including its head, Christopher Krebs, are stepping down or expecting to get fired as Trump refuses to concede and makes unfounded claims that the vote was marred by widespread fraud. -- Alyza Sebenius
Georgia’s Top Elections Official Enters Quarantine as Recount Begins (4:52 p.m.)
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is in charge of the state’s presidential-ballot recount, is in quarantine and being tested for Covid-19 after his wife tested positive for the virus.
Raffensperger’s quarantine comes one day after he ordered counties across the state to complete a hand audit of more than 5 million ballots before a Nov. 20 deadline for certifying state results. Most counties will begin the process on Friday and work through the weekend.
Raffensperger, a Republican, has been under fire from his own party and from President Donald Trump to order the recount as Biden has pulled ahead in the state by a margin of more than 14,000 votes.
Raffensperger’s office said the quarantine will not affect the county-run recount.
Staff members who work out of Raffensperger’s Capitol office have been advised to also get tested and work from home. -- Margaret Newkirk
Biden, Second Catholic Elected U.S. President, Speaks With Pope (1:34 p.m.)
Biden, the second Roman Catholic to be elected U.S. president, spoke with Pope Francis on Thursday.
In a phone call, the president-elect “expressed his desire to work together” on issues such as helping the poor, addressing climate change and welcoming immigrants, according to a readout from the Biden campaign.
In one of his final speeches of the campaign, Biden quoted from Pope Francis’ latest encyclical, “Fratelli Tutti,” or “Brothers All,” which criticized what Biden called “this phony populism that appeals to the ‘basest and most selfish’ instincts.”
In September, the pope declined a requested audience from Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, under a policy of avoiding meetings that could be construed as political.
Trump and Pope Francis clashed at times, with the pope saying after a 2016 trip to Mexico that a person who “thinks only about building walls” and not building bridges is “not Christian.” Trump called the remark “disgraceful.”
Turnout May Be Highest in Over a Century (11:59 a.m.)
Voter turnout in November is on track to be the highest in more than a century.
Already, turnout has reached 63.9%, surpassing the previous high-water mark in the 1960 race between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, which hit 63.8%, according to data compiled by the Washington Post.
With ballots still being counted in several states, turnout is projected to reach 66.5% of the voting eligible population, which would beat the record set in the 1908 race between William Howard Taft and William Jennings Bryan, which hit 65.7%.
The voting eligible population was slightly different in that race, however, as women, Asian Americans and many Native Americans had not yet secured the right to vote, and many Black voters faced obstacles to casting ballots. The voting age was also lowered from 21 to 18 in 1971.
Apart from the high interest in the presidential race, turnout may also have gone up as more states expanded vote-by-mail and early voting options due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Influential Conservatives Turn on Trump’s Post-Election Fight (8:20 a.m.)
Although Republicans in Congress are mostly standing by Trump’s attempts to overturn the election results, some key conservative voices are speaking up.
Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma said that he will intervene if the Trump administration does not start offering President-elect Joe Biden intelligence briefings by the end of the week. Those briefings and other traditional transition efforts have been held up by Trump’s refusal to concede.
“There is no loss from him getting the briefings and to be able to do that,” Lankford told Oklahoma radio station KRMG.
Still, Lankford did not outright acknowledge Biden’s win, saying only that the briefings should go on “so that regardless of the outcome of the election, whichever way that it goes, people can be ready for that actual task.”
Only four Republican senators -- Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse and Susan Collins -- have congratulated Biden on his win. Senator Pat Toomey has said that “it’s not 100% certain but it is quite likely” that Biden will become the next president.
Meanwhile, Republican political consultant Karl Rove, who oversaw George W. Bush’s campaigns, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that Trump’s legal fights “are unlikely to move a single state from Mr. Biden’s column, and certainly they’re not enough to change the final outcome.”
Campaigning Moves to Georgia Senate Runoffs (4 a.m.)
Campaigning began in earnest in two Senate runoffs in Georgia as Senator Marco Rubio visited Cobb County to call on Republicans to turn out in January.
With Senate races in Alaska and North Carolina called for the GOP, Republicans now have 50 seats to the Democrats’ 48, but if Democrats win both seats in the Jan. 6 election, they’ll be able to have Vice President-elect Kamala Harris break the tie.
Even as President Donald Trump refuses to concede to President-elect Joe Biden, Republicans seemed ready to move on to arguing about life in a Biden administration.
Rubio did not mention Trump at all in his remarks Wednesday, instead warning the hundreds in attendance that Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff would take the country in a “radical direction” if elected, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. They are running against Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, both Republicans.
At the same time, Biden’s lead over Trump in the popular vote widened to 5 million, as the call in Alaska put the Electoral College at 290-217. Georgia, where Biden is 14,000 votes ahead in the presidential race, ordered a recount Wednesday that will end by Nov. 20. North Carolina also still hasn’t been called and in Arizona, Biden has been projected the winner by the Associated Press and Fox News but not by other major television networks.
The president-elect spoke with the leaders of Australia, Japan and South Korea Wednesday, and named longtime adviser Ron Klain as his White House chief of staff.
Coming Up:
Florida Senator Rick Scott will hold a fundraiser in Georgia for the Senate runoffs on Thursday.
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