The under-the-radar political issues of 2024

Watch these under-the-radar political issues in 2024

It will be a big year in many ways, as we noted in yesterday’s newsletter. The November elections, four criminal trials against former president Donald Trump, two wars raging overseas and the economy will persist as issues voters care about.

We’re also interested in the stories that aren’t front and center. So we surveyed a group of influential people across the political spectrum about what’s on their minds beyond the big headlines as we head into 2024.

But first, a caveat. Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) perhaps put it most succinctly, telling us that “politics is the Wild Wild West right now. Who the hell knows anything?” 

Marc Short, who was a top aide to former vice president Mike Pence, said he’s closely watching third-party candidates.

• Short notes that Trump won around 46 percent of the vote in both 2016 and 2020. In the election Trump won — 2016 — third-party candidate Gary Johnson won more than 3 percent of the vote, Short said. (Between them third-party candidates won 5.7 percent of the vote in 2016 compared to 1.8 percent in 2020, according to the Cook Political Report’s popular vote tracker.)
• “Trump benefits [with] multiple candidates in the race,” Short said, because anti-Trump Republicans who won’t vote for Biden will have an alternative. A third-party candidates that can pull 4 or 5 percent “changes everything,” Short said. 

Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic operative, said older voters are going to be key this election cycle. 

• “While everyone is rightfully focused on the key path with younger voters, don’t sleep on the older ones. Seniors are seeing lower prescription drug prices from Biden and are increasingly scared that Trump’s return to power would put everything they’ve fought for over their lifetime at risk,” Ferguson said. “There’s a reason Democrats have overperformed in recent special and off-year elections — seniors want the stability of Biden, and Trump is too much of a risk.” (Trump won voters 65 and older by nine points in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center. He won them by only four points in 2020.)

Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist who worked on Sen. Tim Scott’s (R-S.C.) presidential campaign, said he’s thinking about the “debate over presidential debates.” 

• “Do debates in a general actually happen and does either candidate want to actually do them?” Gorman pondered. 

Senate and House elections

Christie Roberts, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said she’s watching the “amount of GOP Senate candidates who are just rich guys with tenuous connections to the states they are running in.” (Tim Sheehy in Montana and Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania are two self-funders running in 2024 who lived outside their states.)

Jason Thielman, the executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said the party that wins control of the Senate in 2024 could control the upper chamber for the remainder of the decade based on the political map. 

• “There are three red states held by Democrats that are up in 2024 — West Virginia, Montana, and Ohio. But there are zero red states held by Democrats that are up in 2026 and 2028. Conversely, Maine is the only blue state held by a Republican that is up before 2030,” Thielman said. 

Jack Pandol, communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said he’s amped up about “the diversification of the GOP.” 

• Candidate recruitment and the party expanding its appeal to minority voters are two ways the Republican Party continues to expand the tent, Pandol said. “These voters have refashioned the map and allowed Republicans to play offense in places we have never before,” he added. 
• He points to diverse candidates running for House seats, including Mazi Melesa Pilip, an Ethiopian immigrant running to replace George Santos in New York, and Prasanth Reddy, an Indian American oncologist and Air Force veteran running in Kansas. 

C.J. Warnke, communications director for House Majority PAC, the super PAC tasked with electing House Democrats, is also watching GOP recruitment, but for a different reason. 

• Warnke says House Republicans “nominated some of the most extreme, out-of-touch candidates in races across the country. In 2024, they’re doubling down on that strategy.” Warnke points to J.R. Majewski in Ohio and Joe Kent in Washington state, both of whom are running again after losing last cycle, and Rob Mercuri, who is running against Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.). (“Democrats use insults and ad hominem attacks because they can’t defend their record,” Kent said in a statement in response.)

Derrick Johnson, the NAACP president and CEO, said NAACP is “laser focused” on ballot access and participation. 

• “Democracy is broken and it’s up to us to fix it. In the face of coordinated attacks on our access to the ballot box and attempts to spread mis- and disinformation through the use of AI [artificial intelligence], NAACP is laser focused on ensuring that every eligible voter has an opportunity to cast an effective ballot in 2024,” Johnson said. 

Rep. Annie Kuster (D-N.H.) said she’s focused on the economy — but much more than just inflation. She said people are worried about costs, specifically of child care and housing — which are two “looming issues for middle class families.”

• “We need more housing, and we’ve got to get the interest rates coming down in order for that to happen,” Kuster said. 

Former congressman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said the expiring Trump tax cuts will be a critical issue this year. 

• Some of the tax breaks prized by businesses have already narrowed or started to phase out, such as bonus depreciation and the net interest deduction. Other are set to expire at the end of next year, such as the pass-through income deduction. Lawmakers have been discussing a deal to extend them in exchange for an expanded child tax credit.
• While the fight over whether to extend those breaks — as well as the individual tax cuts included in the law — largely won’t happen until after the 2024 election, lobbyists are already working to build support for saving some provisions.
• How does Congress “alter [the cuts] with what again will be a very small margin in the House and Senate?” Upton asked.

Nadeam Elshami, policy director at law and lobbying firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, said he’s watching AI legislation.

• Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has been leading a bipartisan effort to discuss how to regulate artificial intelligence, and it’s possible lawmakers could reach bipartisan agreement on a bill this year.
• “I would not discount some action on AI by Congress,” Elshami said. 

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) bets that his bipartisan legislation with Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), the Kids Online Safety Act, to address social media use by young people, which has 46 co-sponsors, will pass this year. 

• “Everybody talks about our teen mental health crisis; everyone talks about social media; everyone talks about algorithms and AI. This bill gives us a chance to do something about it,” Blumenthal said. 

Biden returned to the White House Tuesday night from St. Croix. There’s nothing on his public schedule until he heads to Delaware on Friday.

On Saturday, Biden will deliver a campaign speech in Valley Forge, Pa., on the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

“Biden will speak near a site where a group of militias gathered to form a coalition to fight for democracy — and where George Washington established headquarters during the Revolutionary War — as a way to invoke the core theme of his presidential campaign some 250 years later,” our colleague Matt Viser writes: 

• “On Monday, Biden is scheduled to visit Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., where nine people were fatally shot by a white supremacist in 2015.”
• “The two events — as well as a trip to South Carolina by Vice President Harris on Saturday — signal a reinvigorated campaign from the likely Democratic ticket just as Republicans begin their nomination process with the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15.”

We’re watching how Biden and the Republican presidential candidates respond to a federal appeals court ruling on Tuesday that “Texas hospitals and doctors aren’t obligated to perform abortions under a long-standing national emergency-care law, [which dealt] a blow to the White House’s strategy to ensure access to the procedure after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022,” our colleagues Dan Diamond and Caroline Kitchener write:

• “The federal law ‘does not mandate any specific type of medical treatment, let alone abortion,’ the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit concluded, faulting the Biden administration’s interpretation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA.”
• “The law ‘does not govern the practice of medicine,’ the court added.”

The ruling comes weeks after the Texas Supreme Court blocked Kate Cox, a mother of two who “sought an abortion after learning that her fetus had a fatal genetic condition and that carrying the pregnancy to term could jeopardize her future fertility,” from getting an abortion.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley called for “compassion” but declined to criticized the Texas Supreme Court’s decision, while former New Jersey governor Chris Christie told the Associated Press he thought the ruling was wrong.

We are watching to see if Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) announces that he won’t run for reelection.

Menendez is facing new allegations of bribery in a superseding indictment that was unsealed Tuesday. The indictment — which doesn’t include new charges — alleges the former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman also accepted bribes from Qatar. He has already been charged with taking bribes from Egypt.

Menendez, who is up for reelection this year, has resigned his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and has not announced if he will run again.  

Trump towers over a fierce battle for second as Iowa caucuses near

Our colleague Hannah Knowles takes a look at the state of play in Iowa ahead of the state’s caucuses on Jan. 15. 

The frenzy of activity in the final stretch before the Iowa caucuses, which includes back-to-back CNN town halls in Iowa on Thursday and then a debate in Iowa on Jan. 10, “belies a growing sense among political veterans across this state that the basic outcome is set and a Trump victory is all but assured,” Hannah writes. “Although the state has a history of photo finishes and some warn against coronating Trump just yet, many Republicans have set their sights on several subplots that underscore the unusual dearth of drama and intrigue over who will win.”

Among them: What would a victorious Trump’s winning margin be — and can anyone else claim momentum in the long-shot effort to stop him from winning the nomination?

All about Trump’s favorite right-wing news site

Our colleague Sarah Ellison is out this morning with a look at Gateway Pundit, a right-wing news site that was founded in 2004 by Jim Hoft, credited by podcast host and former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon as being among “the best at creating a right-wing echo system.”

The site, which is run out of Hoft’s home and “averages more than a million visits each month,” continues to promote false claims of voter fraud even as it faces defamation lawsuits over its coverage of the 2020 election and as rival outlets like Fox News and Newsmax pull back their own coverage. 

• “The outlet’s reporting was a favorite of Trump’s as he clung to the presidency more than three years ago, aides said, and it has become a key amplifier of his continued fraud claims as he campaigns to return to the White House,” Sarah writes.

“Hoft created Gateway Pundit in 2004, inspired by the role that bloggers played in debunking a ‘60 Minutes’ segment on George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard,” Sarah reports. “Bloggers had been the first to point out that ‘60 Minutes’ had unwittingly relied on falsified records in telling its story; CBS ultimately retracted the piece.”

“In the nearly two decades since its founding, Hoft’s website has spread debunked conspiracy theories on a wide range of topics — for instance, casting doubt on then-President Barack Obama’s birth certificate and suggesting that student survivors of the 2018 Parkland, Fla., school shooting were part of an anti-Trump plot.” 

• Two GOP operatives prepare to admit to foreign lobbying charges. By Devlin Barrett and Josh Dawsey.
• Trump appeals Maine’s decision to ban him from the primary ballot. By Patrick Marley.

• Who would lend millions to Hunter Biden? Meet the Hollywood lawyer who has. By the Los Angeles Times’s Matt Hamilton and Stacy Perman.
• How the right toppled Harvard’s president. By Politico’s Calder McHugh.

Thanks for reading. You can also follow us on X, formerly known as Twitter: @LACaldwellDC and @theodoricmeyer.