Benjamin Rosenberg | Vox

The long list of contenders for Kamala Harris’s Senate seat, explained

2020-11-24T12:59:22-05:00

California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Vice President-elect Sen. Kamala Harris visited the site of the Creek fire on September 15. | Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

Now that Kamala Harris has been elected vice president, the fight for her Senate seat is on.

A packed field of candidates is currently pitching California Gov. Gavin Newsom: Per the state’s laws on Senate vacancies, Newsom is able to appoint a new lawmaker to the job who will serve out the remaining two years of Harris’s term. Whoever’s picked will be able to run for the seat in 2022 as well.

“There’s a hundred chores that I’d prefer. I’m not kidding,” Newsom has previously said. “This is not something that I wish even on my worst enemy, because you create enemies in this process you know, not just friends. And it’s a vexing decision. It’s a challenging one.”

Thus far, there are more than 10 candidates who’ve expressed interest or been floated in reports, including California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, Rep. Karen Bass, and Rep. Barbara Lee.

There are also multiple campaigns aimed at swaying Newsom — most notably an effort from the state’s Legislative Black Caucus that is urging Newsom to appoint a Black woman, and another from the Latino Legislative Caucus calling for a Latino person.

“One argument is that this seat has been occupied by a Black woman, and it should be filled by one,” says California strategist Steven Maviglio. “Another is that this state is roughly 40 percent Latino, and it’s never had a Latino senator.”

Harris’s Senate seat is especially coveted because of the influence that the populous state has as a Democratic stronghold, and the likelihood that this appointee could serve for a long time. (Senior California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is 87, has now held her seat for going on 30 years.) The person chosen for the seat is expected to run for reelection — and potentially many terms after that.

Experts and organizers familiar with state politics said that Newsom is likely considering the representation that different candidates will bring, their electability, and their efficacy at the roles they’ve had. Newsom, too, will have his own legacy to weigh and has previously signaled that he hopes to make history with appointees.

“It’s a rare thing that a governor gets to appoint a senator who could stay in office for decades,” says Mindy Romero, the head of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the University of Southern California. Any candidate who isn’t selected for this opening could have another shot at a Senate seat if Feinstein does not pursue reelection in 2024. That opportunity, however, is still a full presidential election cycle down the line.

Two campaigns for the Senate seat, briefly explained

There is growing pressure for this appointee to provide much-needed representation in the very white and very male Senate: Some lawmakers and grassroots organizations are urging Newsom to choose a Latino person, while others would like him to choose a Black woman.

Many groups are focused on this Senate seat because of how rarely such opportunities come along in California, a diverse state with an extensive bench of Democratic talent that’s previously had to wait years for an opening. (Former Sen. Barbara Boxer, also a white woman, had held her seat for more than two decades prior to Harris’s election in 2016.)

Currently, Harris is the only Black woman serving in the Senate, and California’s state Legislative Black Caucus, as well as organizations including Democracy for America and Black Lives Matter, have said that her replacement should also be a Black woman.

“Kamala Harris has a legacy that she’s built, and it’s very important for Gavin Newsom’s legacy to honor that,” said Charles Chamberlain, the executive director of Democracy for America. Harris was the first Black and South Asian American senator that California elected, and only the second Black woman to serve in the Senate.

Black Lives Matter emphasized in a recent statement that it was “non-negotiable” for Newsom to appoint a Black woman as her replacement. “If there is not a single Black woman in the Senate, then the Senate is simply not a proper representation of the people,” the group wrote.

Both groups, and the legislative Black Caucus, have backed Reps. Karen Bass and Barbara Lee — two longtime California lawmakers — for the role.

“We are adamant that this position must go to an African-American woman as a result of our hard work in this last election, as well as our hard work in California and representing the Democratic Party,” Rep. Shirley Weber, chair of the legislative Black Caucus, said at a recent press conference.

Then there’s a set of lawmakers and organizers pressing for Newsom to appoint a Latino person, who would be California’s first-ever Latino senator — representation that some have described as “long overdue” in a state that’s about 40 percent Latino.

NALEO Educational Fund, a nonprofit that facilitates Latino participation in the American political process, is among those urging Newsom to do so along with the state’s Latino Legislative Caucus and the League of United Latin American Citizens.

“The Latino population of California, which is the largest of any state, should have a representative in the state that understands its priorities and needs as well as those statewide,” NALEO CEO Arturo Vargas said. “As we as a nation deal with the dual crises of Covid-19 and the economy, which have had a disproportionate impact on Latinos, we need to have someone in the Senate who has a keen understanding of that.”

In addition to Padilla and Becerra, Vargas mentioned Hilda Solis, a former US representative who was labor secretary during President Barack Obama’s first term and is now a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, as another contender.

“We’re united in, respectfully, asking our governor to recognize our community, its contributions and its needs,” said Assemblyman Robert Rivas, and vice chair of the Latino Legislative Caucus, at a recent press conference.

As Vox’s Teddy Schleifer has reported, a contingent of prominent women donors also wrote to Newsom this week urging him to choose a woman of color.

The list, explained

The list of people who’ve expressed interest for this seat — or been named in various reports — is a lengthy one, so much so that Newsom has joked about how many people have pitched him. “You may be the only one that hasn’t, unless you just did, and that is only a slight exaggeration,” he quipped to a reporter earlier this year.

California — given its size and prominence in Democratic politics — has quite a lot of options to choose from, with some lawmakers also reportedly in contention for roles in the Biden administration. “The good news for Newsom is that the bench is deep and wide,” says Maviglio. Here’s a list of some of the potential contenders for Harris’s Senate seat.

Alex Padilla, California secretary of state

Many experts believe California Secretary of State Alex Padilla is probably Newsom’s most likely pick to succeed Harris. Padilla, who is Latino, has a multitude of credentials working in his favor: He’s been elected to a statewide office, he’s from Southern California, and he recently did a strong job overseeing the state’s election processes.

Both of California’s senators have come from the San Francisco Bay Area since 1992, so some experts believe Newsom will pick someone from the Los Angeles area. Padilla, who grew up in Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, would fit that bill.

Padilla, 47, served on the Los Angeles City Council from 1999 to 2006, then in the state Senate from 2006 to 2014. Since 2015, he has held his current post of secretary of state, recently responding to the California Republican Party’s attempt to mislead voters by putting up fake ballot drop-off boxes and labeling them as official.

“We need not just racial, ethnic, and gender diversity, but we also need geographic diversity,” Vargas said. “The bulk of the Latino population being in the southern part of the state, it would be such an asset to have somebody in the Senate who understands that population, because they have lived those experiences.”

Xavier Becerra, California Attorney General

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra — the first Latino person to hold this office — is among the candidates who would bring experience at both the federal and state levels if he’s chosen for the job.

Becerra, 62, had served in the House for over two decades before he was appointed as the state’s Attorney General when Harris vacated the position in 2016. He’s represented multiple Southern California districts near Los Angeles, given redistricting during his tenure, and also chaired the House Democratic Caucus. Becerra had also previously worked as as a deputy Attorney General for the state’s Justice Department and served one term as a member of the California assembly.

In his current role, he’s known for taking on Trump: Becerra has led more than 100 lawsuits against the administration including challenges to the travel ban and the president’s attempted rollback of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Barbara Lee, US House member, 13th District

Lee — a Black woman who’s represented part of the Bay Area for decades — shares some similarities with Harris but is viewed as more progressive than the vice president-elect.

Lee is a top choice among groups that would like to see a Black progressive woman appointed. A former co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Lee has represented Oakland and much of Alameda County in the House of Representatives since 1998, and previously served in the state legislature.

Her record is firmly on the left, and her votes on war powers have garnered attention: She was the only member of Congress to vote against the use of force against terrorists in 2001, and in 2019, GovTrack ranked her the furthest left of all US representatives. Her age, however, could be an issue — at 74, she is older than roughly 85 percent of current US senators.

Karen Bass, US House member, 37th District

Rep. Karen Bass, 67, saw her national profile go way up when she was considered one of the top contenders for Biden’s vice presidential pick earlier this year.

A former community organizer, Bass has represented a Southern California House district since 2011 and served as the state Assembly speaker prior to that. Bass — who was the first Black woman elected to that role — has been praised for her ability to work across party lines, while championing strong progressive ideas.

She’s currently the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and was a chief author of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a measure Democrats introduced to address police reform this past year.

Bass experienced some scrutiny during the vice presidential search, when footage emerged of her speaking favorably of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, comments she’s since walked back. During her time in the House, she has focused on criminal justice reform and child welfare policies — both areas she could continue to work on in the Senate.

Ro Khanna, US House member, 17th District

Ro Khanna is another pick that would satisfy many progressives. Khanna, like Harris, is of South Asian descent, as a child of Indian immigrants.

Khanna, 44, had not held elected office prior to being elected to Congress in 2016, in a district that includes much of Silicon Valley. He worked in the Commerce Department for two years during Obama’s first term. Notably, Khanna is among just six representatives who do not take campaign money from PACs or corporations, and he was a national co-chair for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign.

The Justice Democrats, a progressive PAC that helped fuel the rise of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has not endorsed a contender for the Senate seat. But the organization posted on Twitter that “[Khanna’s] voice in the Senate would be a major boost for our movement for justice.” Sanders himself also voiced support for Khanna, tweeting that he “has a bold vision for America and is a proven fighter for working people.”

Katie Porter, US House member, 45th District

Rep. Katie Porter — after serving in the House for one term — has established herself as a vocal progressive willing to take on Trump administration officials and business leaders.

Porter, who is a white woman, was among the wave of Democrats elected to the House in 2018, and she’s since successfully defended her battleground district, which covers part of Orange County.

Porter, 46, was a consumer protections attorney prior to joining the House, and now sits on the House Oversight and Financial Services Committees. She — and her whiteboard — have become synonymous with the pointed questioning of witnesses including CDC Director Robert Redfield and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Kathy Kraninger.

She’d also previously worked to help distribute relief to California families in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and is a tenured law professor at the University of California Irvine.

Robert Garcia, mayor of Long Beach

Long Beach may not be California’s most well-known city. But the port city just south of Los Angeles is among the 50 most populous in the country, and its mayor, the 42-year-old Peruvian American Robert Garcia, is on the Senate shortlist.

Garcia wouldn’t be the first mayor from a non-major city to make a name for himself this year — former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg outlasted most of the Democratic primary field in his presidential campaign. Garcia is openly gay, and he is both the first Latino and first gay mayor of Long Beach. He and his mother immigrated to the Los Angeles area from Lima, Peru, when he was 5. But Garcia may not get the nod due to lack of name recognition.

“I love Robert Garcia,” said Paul Mitchell, vice president at Political Data Inc. who also works at UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies. “But if you did a poll in LA of ‘who is Robert Garcia?’ or ‘who is the mayor of Long Beach?’ you’d get very few people who know who the mayor of Long Beach is.”

Hilda Solis, former US secretary of labor

Former Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, 63, would bring a wide range of credentials to the Senate.

Solis served in both houses of the state legislature between 1992 and 2001, then was in the US House from 2001 to 2009, representing the northeast portion of the Los Angeles area. Obama pulled her out of Congress to make her secretary of labor for four years, and since 2014, Solis has served on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

If appointed to the Senate, Solis is sure to make addressing climate change a top priority. She served on several environmentally focused committees while in the House, including the Committee on Energy and Commerce, the Committee on Natural Resources, and the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. A daughter of immigrants from Nicaragua and Mexico, Solis is also a major proponent of immigration reform.

London Breed, mayor of San Francisco

Mayor of San Francisco London Breed — the first Black woman to be elected to this role — has been highlighted as a strong leader during the coronavirus pandemic.

Breed, 46, won a special election in 2018 following the death of late San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee. Previously, she had served as the head of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, which works on areas including housing and infrastructure policy in the city.

Breed is a relative moderate in the heavily left-leaning city and has clashed with city officials over how to approach affordable housing measures. She’s been in the spotlight for the efficacy of her coronavirus response, which included a rapidly implemented stay-at-home order this past spring.

Clarification, November 24: This article has been updated to clarify the Justice Democrats’ stance on Rep. Khanna as a potential appointee for the California Senate seat.

The FAA says Boeing can fly 737 Max jets again

2020-11-18T13:09:04-05:00

A Boeing 737 Max jet plane sits at the company’s production facility in Washington state. The FAA approved the jets to fly again after they had been grounded since March 2019. | David Ryder/Getty Images

The Boeing 737 Max can take to the skies again.

The aircraft that gained worldwide notoriety after crashing twice in five months in late 2018 and early 2019 was finally cleared to fly again after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) decided Boeing’s technical changes and new protocols mitigated the safety concerns.

“Today we took the final steps to enable the Boeing 737 Max to safely return to commercial service,” FAA Administrator Stephen Dickson announced in a video. “And this morning, I signed an order rescinding the grounding order that the FAA issued on March 13, 2019.”

Boeing had already been projecting billions of dollars in financial losses due to the crisis, and that was before the Covid-19 pandemic drastically reduced the aerospace company’s revenue.

Flights on the Boeing 737 Max were grounded in March 2019 after two deadly crashes. The first came in October 2018, when a Lion Air flight taking off from Jakarta, Indonesia, crashed and killed all 189 passengers. Five months later, on March 10, 2019, an Ethiopian Airlines plane en route from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Nairobi, Kenya, crashed shortly after takeoff, killing all 157 people on board.

China, the European Union, and the United States quickly grounded all Boeing 737 Max 8 and 9 planes. Malaysia, Singapore, and Australia did likewise, and before long, the planes were grounded all over the world.

“Pilots have been notified, airlines have all been notified. Airlines are agreeing with this. The safety of the American people and all people is our paramount concern,” President Donald Trump said in March 2019 announcing the FAA’s order.

As Matthew Yglesias explained for Vox last year, Boeing executives blamed the crashes on a simple software problem that could be fixed by a new software upgrade. But the real issue is much bigger than that. A decade ago in the Great Recession, Boeing was also in financial trouble, and thought it could lose a large swath of the commercial aircraft market to its major competitor Airbus. The FAA, meanwhile, was eager to help them rush the new model to the market to compete with Airbus’s new planes, rather than look into potential problems with their aircrafts:

A major employer faced a major financial threat, and short-term politics and greed won out over the integrity of the regulatory system. It’s a scandal.

There were software problems, training problems, and “a whole host of other problems” related to the design. Still, airlines were eager to purchase the planes and start flying them, so Boeing went ahead and sent them along. And the FAA, as Seattle Times aerospace reporter Dominic Gates told Yglesias, “has over the years delegated increasing authority to Boeing to take on more of the work of certifying the safety of its own airplanes.”

Since the 737 Max planes were grounded, Boeing has changed the design of the jets, updated its training programs for flight crew members, and upgraded the MCAS software that was blamed for the crashes. Still, family members of the victims of the Ethiopian Airlines crash held a press conference ahead of the FAA’s announcement casting doubt on whether Boeing had taken enough steps to mitigate the safety concerns.

The FAA’s decision will likely be followed by similar rulings from regulators around the world. But even in the US, it may take several months before passengers are flying on Max jets again — the FAA still has not approved pilot training procedures for each US airline that operates the Max jets. American Airlines expects to be flying them before the end of 2020, United Airlines estimates the first quarter of 2021, and Southwest Airlines is aiming for the second quarter of next year.

The second White House coronavirus outbreak: Mark Meadows, the Secret Service, and more

2020-11-13T17:14:56-05:00

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows greets Trump supporters before a rally. Meadows was the first top official to test positive for the coronavirus during the second White House outbreak. | Mark Makela/Getty Images

The US Secret Service, which exists to protect the president and those closest to him, is being hit hard by the coronavirus — possibly from the White House itself.

President Donald Trump had been traveling extensively in the run-up to the election, and everywhere he went, he had Secret Service agents with him. Now, more than 130 of those agents are in quarantine or isolation, either because they tested positive for the virus or were around people who did, the Washington Post reported Friday.

Trump held multiple rallies per day in the weeks prior to Election Day, and at least part of the new White House outbreak may have come from those rallies, according to people the Post spoke with who were familiar with Secret Service staffing. Roughly 10 percent of the Secret Service’s core security team is now off duty, the Post’s Carol D. Leonnig and Josh Dawsey reported.

On November 1 and 2, just before Election Day, Trump had 10 rallies in seven different states, requiring a different group of Secret Service officers to be stationed at each location. The rallies featured attendees packed tightly together, many of them without masks, and sometimes in cold, dry weather conditions that help fuel the virus’s spread.

But as Leonnig and Dawsey report, the outbreak could also be coming from within the White House itself rather than from Trump’s travels.

White House staff largely eschew wearing masks, despite public health guidelines that they help contain the spread of the virus, and some Secret Service officers on duty at the complex have also been seen without them.

This is not the first coronavirus outbreak among the Secret Service. When Trump first resumed his campaign rallies in June, dozens of Secret Service agents came down with Covid-19. That outbreak happened after Trump’s ill-fated indoor rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and following a trip Vice President Mike Pence took to campaign in Arizona.

And it’s not just the Secret Service experiencing an outbreak, either. After Trump, several of his top officials, and many others in contact with them tested positive for the coronavirus in October, it appears the entire White House is dealing with another coronavirus cluster.

These are the White House officials who have tested positive for the coronavirus since Election Day

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was the first high-profile staffer to test positive in the Trump administration’s second outbreak. Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs reported that Meadows tested positive on November 4 after attending an election night event at the White House alongside hundreds of people without masks.

That news would be worrying enough on its own. But as Jacobs reported, Meadows’s infection was not widely known until she broke the news — reportedly two days after he tested positive:

A small circle of people were aware earlier in the week that Meadows had become infected but were told to keep it quiet, several people said.

Others in Trump’s inner circle who have tested positive include Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson and campaign adviser Corey Lewandowski. Carson was at the same large event on election night as Meadows, and he tested positive on Monday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. He told the Post that afternoon that he was experiencing a “fever of 101 [degrees], chills, muscle cramps, respiratory issues, and fatigue.”

Lewandowski was at the election night event as well, which took place in the East Room of the White House. He told CNN that the party was likely not the source of his infection, however, saying he believes he caught it in Philadelphia. Trump’s political affairs director Brian Jack, adviser David Bossie, and Republican National Committee chief of staff Richard Walters have also tested positive for the coronavirus.

The outbreak has also caught up with a number of other staffers and aides. As Jacobs reported, that list includes Nick Trainer, a senior Trump campaign aide; Cassidy Hutchinson, one of Meadows’s closest aides; and Charlton Boyd, an aide to senior Trump adviser Jared Kushner.

The full extent of the latest White House outbreak might not be known for some time.

The US as a whole is dealing with its third — and worst — spike in Covid-19 cases. Nearly every day this week has seen a new single-day record for most cases, and hospitalizations and deaths are on the rise as well.

The White House, it seems, is doing little better.

Report: Election officials find no evidence of widespread voter fraud

2020-11-11T14:46:57-05:00

Election officials in Gwinnett County, Georgia, sort absentee ballots. Despite the Trump campaign’s allegations, there is no evidence that widespread voter fraud helped Joe Biden win the election. | Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images

In almost every state in America, election officials say they have found no evidence of substantial voter fraud, according to a New York Times report.

The Times’s Nick Corasaniti, Reid J. Epstein, and Jim Rutenberg contacted election officials in every state, both Democrats and Republicans, and of the 45 who responded directly, none reported any major issues with voting. For four other states, the Times “spoke to other statewide officials or found public comments from secretaries of state; none reported any major voting issues.” Texas was the only state not to respond to the Times’s inquiries, but the paper spoke with an election official in the state’s largest county: Harris County, which includes the city of Houston and has a population larger than many states.

Even as Texas Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced a $1 million reward for voter fraud tips, the Harris County official told the Times that they “had a very seamless election.”

Steve Simon, Minnesota’s Democratic secretary of state, told the Times, “I don’t know of a single case where someone argued that a vote counted when it shouldn’t have or didn’t count when it should. There was no fraud.”

A spokesperson for Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a Republican, offered a similar assessment in an email to the Times, saying, “Kansas did not experience any widespread, systematic issues with voter fraud, intimidation, irregularities or voting problems. We are very pleased with how the election has gone up to this point.”

To be sure, there were some minor issues scattered across the country. As Corasaniti, Epstein, and Rutenberg report:

Some states described small problems common to all elections, which they said they were addressing: a few instances of illegal or double voting, some technical glitches and some minor errors in math. Officials in all states are conducting their own review of the voting — a standard component of the certification process.

But the Times’s review found nothing rising to the level President Donald Trump and his orbit have alleged. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, baselessly alleged Saturday in Philadelphia — in the parking lot of a landscaping company — that elections there were full of fraud, but the office of state Attorney General Josh Shapiro told the Times that the elections in Pennsylvania were “fair and secure.”

Even as the president and his allies have continued to cast doubt on the election, the country’s democratic processes appear to have worked well.

America’s voting infrastructure seems to have worked well

America’s democracy is not without its flaws. Voter suppression is an issue in this country, most of it propagated by the Republican Party. In 2016, more than 20 percent of potential Black voters in four states were disenfranchised due to a felony conviction.

But voter fraud is nowhere near as big a problem as many Republicans claim. And 2020 was no different.

In fact, the Trump administration invited international election observers from the Organization of American States (OAS) to look into early voting, campaign activities, and Election Day voting, and they found no evidence of widespread fraud that affected the election’s outcome. Though the OAS’s preliminary report notes the organization’s work was limited because of the Covid-19 pandemic, they found no reports of voting irregularities.

And where they have been claiming otherwise, the stories have quickly fallen apart. In Pennsylvania, the state that pushed President-elect Joe Biden over the 270 electoral vote threshold, a postal worker had claimed that a postmaster in Erie — a politically heterogenous city in the northwest part of the state — had ballots backdated to be postmarked in time to be counted. But Erie Postmaster Rob Weisenbach called the allegations “100 percent false,” and the postal worker himself recanted his claims on Tuesday.

Then there is the bevy of pending lawsuits the president and his allies are using to continue to cast doubt on the outcome of the election. But by and large, they are not about actual voter fraud and will not change the result.

Take the Trump campaign lawsuit to stop 592 absentee ballots from being counted in Montgomery County, in suburban Philadelphia. There, the campaign is trying to have the ballots revoked because those voters didn’t handwrite their full address in a specific place on the outer absentee ballot envelope — something that the respondents point out is not a mandatory requirement. And as the Trump campaign’s lawyers admitted to a judge Tuesday, there is not currently any reason to believe there is any fraud connected to these votes. (Even if the suit is successful, it won’t go very far toward overturning the election — Biden won Montgomery County by more than 100,000 votes.)

As Vox’s Ian Millhiser explained, many of these lawsuits “rest on minor complaints that are unlikely to matter.” Trump’s campaign filed a suit to stop counting ballots in Michigan, for instance, where Biden was comfortably ahead. If you’re still in doubt, check out BuzzFeed News’ database investigating allegations of voter fraud — many are labeled as fake, false, or misleading.

As Biden prepares to take office on January 20, the president and his party are actively undermining American democracy. Trump’s attempts to discredit the results of an entirely fair election are highly unlikely to prove fruitful.

50 million world Covid-19 cases: The biggest outbreaks, explained

2020-11-09T13:56:50-05:00

A family mourns a deceased relative during a mass burial of coronavirus victims in Parque Taruma cemetery on May 19 in Manaus, Brazil — a city in the Amazon region hit hard by the virus. | Andre Coelho/Getty Images

Last New Year’s Eve, a hint of what the world might be in for in 2020 arrived in the form of an Associated Press story about 27 people in Wuhan, China, who had fallen ill with a mysterious strain of viral pneumonia. This was the first news of the new illness reported outside of China.

Less than 11 months later, 50 million people worldwide are confirmed to have been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes the Covid-19 disease. And more than 1,250,000 Covid-19 deaths have been reported.

It’s a grim milestone, one that reflects the coronavirus’s contagiousness as well as a global failure to contain its spread.

Ten highly populated countries account for about two-thirds of confirmed coronavirus tests since the pandemic began, including the United States, Brazil, and Russia. And the high case counts are not just because they have more people than the average country, though a lack of testing in some regions makes direct comparisons more difficult.

But the virus is now spreading faster and further than ever detected before, with new case records being set regularly in Europe and North America. As Vox’s Julia Belluz reported, European hospitals are once again filling up. The continent’s leaders are reimplementing strict social distancing rules, with curfews and other restrictions imposed in Spain, Italy, and other countries. More sweeping lockdowns have been ordered in some places, including France, Greece, the Czech Republic, and parts of the UK.

The spread is more under control in Australia and New Zealand, as well as much of East Asia and Africa. India and parts of the Middle East, however, have also seen wide disease spread.

And the US has driven up the world’s new case numbers in the past few weeks, due in no small part to a lack of national leadership and a reluctance to implement well-established public health measures like testing, contact tracing, and wearing masks.

How the US became the world’s worst failure in containing Covid-19

The US has the most reported Covid-19 cases and deaths of any country in the world — more than 10 million confirmed cases and more than 237,000 confirmed deaths as of November 9, according to Johns Hopkins University’s tracker. Controlling for population, the United States still has one of the worst outbreaks anywhere.

The actual numbers, both globally and in the US, could well be a lot higher, said Eric Toner, a senior scientist at Johns Hopkins’s Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“The 50 million cases globally, we know is an underestimate, probably by a factor of 10 to 20,” Toner said. “There are many, many more people who have been infected than those confirmed cases. Same thing is true for deaths. So we don’t really know how bad it has been, but it’s certainly the worst thing we’ve seen in 100 years.”

President Donald Trump was briefed on the coronavirus beginning in January, but he has continued to downplay the virus’s threat throughout the pandemic.

On February 10, while campaigning in New Hampshire, the president claimed the virus would “miraculously go away.” But three days before, he had already privately told journalist Bob Woodward that Covid-19 was more deadly than the flu.

“What we’ve seen is the absolute failure of effective emergency health communication, which has basic principles that are straightforward,” says Dr. Tom Frieden, who led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under President Barack Obama. “Be first, be right, be credible, give people practical, proven things to do. The US government completely failed on all of those components.”

Trump named Vice President Mike Pence to lead the government’s coronavirus response on February 27. On March 11 — the same day the sports world began to shut down and many schools announced plans for remote learning — the president announced travel restrictions from Europe, after restrictions on travel from China the previous month.

Experts disagree on how effective travel restrictions from Europe and China were, especially because by March the virus was already spreading quickly in areas including New York, Washington state, and California. Moreover, Trump did little with the time that travel restrictions may have bought, ignoring the federal government’s botched development and rollout of coronavirus testing.

It took until March 16 for Trump to introduce social distancing guidelines, and on March 19, he admitted to Woodward that he was purposely downplaying the virus to avoid “creating a panic.” He also acknowledged that younger people were susceptible to Covid-19 as well.

Trump has admitted publicly he has pressured officials to “slow down” testing, not wanting revealed Covid-19 cases to set back reopening of the country.

Equivocation around mask-wearing has been one of his most notable other failures in the pandemic response. In early April, the CDC along with the country’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recommended that Americans wear masks “in public settings when around people outside their household, especially when social distancing measures are difficult to maintain.”

Trump, however, wore a mask in public for the first time in mid-July, and repeatedly mocked his Democratic opponent in the 2020 election, Joe Biden, for wearing one.

“The general measures are wear a mask, watch your distance, and wash your hands, as well as strategic closures,” Frieden said. “You have to call on people’s collective sense of responsibility, that we’re all in this together. The lack of recognition that we’re all connected, and the lack of acting on that recognition, has been very problematic.”

States that were reluctant to issue mask mandates or close down nonessential businesses again when cases rose did not help matters, although a lack of federal aid may have played a role in those decisions.

Now, the US is in its third — and worst — wave of surging infections, this time across nearly every region. On November 5, the country set a new single-day record with more than 120,000 new cases reported.

As Vox’s German Lopez explained, those rising numbers are “partly due to more testing exposing more cases. But that can’t be the full explanation, because hospitalizations and the overall rate of positive tests are trending up.” It doesn’t have to stay this way — but it probably will:

Cities, counties, states, and the federal government — or, short of all that, the public — could take social distancing seriously again. Governments could mandate masks, and the public could opt to wear them without a mandate. Bars and restaurants could close, voluntarily or not. Places that do open, such as schools, could try to adopt aggressive testing-and-tracing regimes to try to keep the coronavirus under some control.

Without that, America’s coronavirus epidemic will keep getting worse.

How the rest of the world has handled the virus

Other than the US, Europe and Latin America have struggled the most to contain Covid-19. Italy and Spain had the biggest outbreaks to be initially detected in Europe. Italy had just 566 new daily confirmed cases on March 1, but that number rose to more than 6,000 by March 26. A strict lockdown successfully contained the disease, but it came back with a vengeance in the fall.

This time, it was Spain that first showed the alarming resurgence on the continent. The country had followed a similar trajectory, with an initial spike in March and a lockdown that almost totally suppressed the virus.

As Spain reopened, however, social distancing rules and enforcement were lax in some areas, and the disease burden shifted more toward younger people with generally less severe cases. At the same time, the keys to controlling epidemic spread — test, trace, and isolate — were underutilized by a public health system that had deteriorated with a decade of fiscal austerity. Cases began to spike again in July, and some more drastic restrictions such as closing restaurants and bars in Catalonia did not come until October.

Spain now has more than 20,000 confirmed cases per day, and continues to record some of the highest numbers of new cases per million people on the continent.

Meanwhile, some European countries were slow to react to Spain’s case surge and impose measures of their own.

As Julia Belluz explained in September, France soon went down the same path as Spain:

In July, cases started increasing in a way that couldn’t be explained by testing alone — albeit slowly, doubling every two weeks instead of every 3.5 days, like in March. A rise in hospitalizations didn’t follow immediately.

It’s become clear that was because younger people were catching the virus. By mid-August, “the virus started to affect older people, and then a few weeks later, hospitalizations have started to increase,” said [Edouard Mathieu, the Paris-based data manager of Oxford University’s Our World in Data project]. By September 10, the French public health ministry reported that new Covid-19 hospitalizations were growing in all but one region of the country.

As outbreaks have spread across the continent again, several countries have returned to full or partial lockdowns to combat the new surge, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic.

Before Europe’s coronavirus resurgence, South America’s outbreaks had begun to spiral out of control, and the hardest-hit has been Brazil. President Jair Bolsonaro, the country’s far-right populist and a Trump ally, has waved off the virus in much the same way as Trump. He ignored a growing outbreak in the Amazon region in the spring, and touted hydroxychloroquine as an effective treatment for Covid-19 despite a lack of evidence that it helps at all. His government continues to endorse questionable treatments for the virus.

Bolsonaro himself tested positive for the virus in July. He has opposed mask mandates and social distancing measures, and sought to reopen the economy almost as soon as regional restrictions were imposed in March.

Brazil has had by far the most confirmed cases in Latin America, with nearly 5.6 million, though new cases are on a downward trend. Other countries in the region have been hit hard, too: Argentina and Colombia each have more than a million cases, and Peru will likely join them soon. Central America has seen wide disease spread in some countries as well, and Mexico in particular has been criticized for insufficient testing to accurately determine the scope of community transmission.

Other regions have so far done a better job containing the spread, including Africa, despite dire predictions early on about potential spread on the continent. Africa is home to 17 percent of the world’s population but accounted for just 3.5 percent of reported Covid-19 deaths, as of early October. Africa has a younger population compared to other continents, and Covid-19 is most severe in older people.

But that’s likely not the only reason behind the relatively fewer confirmed deaths and cases: Many African countries, including Kenya and Lesotho, acted quickly in issuing health guidance and social distancing measures. And the experience of countries on the continent with previous epidemics may have helped officials and the public prepare better for this one.

Around the world, the places that have struggled most in controlling the virus are those with the least social cohesion. Fighting Covid requires a common understanding that we’re all in this together.
— Dr. Tom Frieden (@DrTomFrieden) November 6, 2020

Parts of Asia have also fared well. China, where the virus originated, initially sought to hide information about the virus. But officials soon changed course, locking down cities and ordering widespread testing. The country — of more than 1.4 billion people — still has fewer than 100,000 confirmed cases, according to Johns Hopkins data.

South Korea quickly contained an early outbreak. And Australia and New Zealand — it helps being islands — have been among the best in the world at suppressing the virus.

The reasons behind disease spread are complicated, and not every country’s situation can be easily compared.

But these seem to be key factors in stemming the tide of an outbreak: Quick action, clear health guidance, public trust, robust testing and surveillance systems, and thorough contact tracing. Many countries in the Pacific have managed all of these.

“Certainly, we can point to Taiwan, to Singapore, to South Korea, to Japan,” Toner said. “But also places like Vietnam have done a very good job. Certainly, Australia and New Zealand have been great examples. They’ve done a really good job with messaging and containment.”

Greg Gianforte flips Montana governorship to Republicans

2020-11-04T01:44:05-05:00

Rep. Greg Gianforte has flipped Montana’s gubernatorial seat for Republicans. | William Campbell/Corbis via Getty Images

Rep. Greg Gianforte has won the gubernatorial election in Montana, bringing an end to 16 years of Democratic leadership in a state that skews heavily Republican at the presidential level.

Gianforte will replace Steve Bullock, who led Montana for the last eight years before deciding this year to challenge Republican Sen. Steve Daines. Brian Schweitzer, another Democrat, served as governor from 2005 to 2013.

But this year, Montana has decided to go in a new direction, choosing Gianforte over Bullock’s lieutenant governor, Mike Cooney. Cooney is a fourth-generation Montanan whose children all also live in the state, and he tried to paint the multimillionaire Gianforte as not sufficiently Montanan — an approach that ultimately was not successful.

Gianforte was first elected to Congress in a special election in 2017, held after President Donald Trump appointed the previous officeholder, Ryan Zinke, as secretary of the interior. Gianforte won his 2017 election by 6 points, though his next race was closer.

The night before that election, Gianforte made national news when he body-slammed a reporter from The Guardian. Gianforte was charged with misdemeanor assault, but that didn’t stop Trump from praising him at a 2018 rally in Montana, saying “any guy who can do a body slam, he is my type!”

In early October, Emerson Polling showed Gianforte with a 13-point lead over Cooney, though other polls had the race much closer. Sara Rinfret, a Montana pollster and a professor at the University of Montana, told Vox the race was tight going into election season. Montana is reliably red in presidential races, but as Rinfret explained, it’s actually fiercely independent — down-ballot races are usually much more competitive. Entering the 2020 election season, Montana had one US senator from each party, a Republican US House member, and a Democratic governor.

“I often categorize Montana as purple, and definitely very independent,” Rinfret said. “You might vote for a Republican in one race and a Democrat in another. It’s very individualistically driven. People vote depending on what’s going on at the time.”

Montana is the fourth-largest state in the US by area, and as Kathleen McLaughlin explained in the Washington Post, political attitudes frequently vary by location. Bozeman, home to Montana State University, has shifted to the left as it has grown, while the northwestern town of Kalispell and its surroundings has become more conservative.

Gianforte’s victory comes despite declining approval ratings for his job in Congress. Montana has a statewide mask mandate in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, but Gianforte has attended several events without a mask, including a concert in early October where he was around people who later tested positive.

With Gianforte in office, Republicans will now control both branches of the state legislature and the governor’s mansion — possibly putting moderate policies on issues like health care, funding for public schools, and labor protections at risk.

Ben Ray Luján’s win holds New Mexico’s open Senate seat for Democrats

2020-11-04T01:16:36-05:00

Rep. Ben Ray Lujan wins New Mexico’s open Senate seat and will become the fifth Latino senator in the new Congress. | Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images

Rep. Ben Ray Luján, a Democrat representing New Mexico’s Third Congressional District, defeated Republican Mark Ronchetti to win the Senate seat vacated by retiring Democrat Sen. Tom Udall.

Most polls had Luján coming into Election Day with a significant lead, some even showing him ahead by double digits. The Senate Majority PAC, a super PAC dedicated to helping Democrats retake the Senate, reportedly bought $100,000 worth of TV ads to support Luján, all of which aired during the final week of the campaign. He also had outraised Ronchetti by nearly 6 to 1 by mid-July.

New Mexico was reliably Republican not too long ago — the state went red in every presidential election from 1968 to 1988 — but New Mexico has chosen Democrats each cycle following, except 2004, starting with Bill Clinton’s first presidential victory in 1992. As Vox’s Katelyn Burns explained, “a state that was once considered a long-stretch pickup for Republicans has simply drifted blue as time and circumstances went on.”

Luján will be just the fifth current Latino senator, joining Democrats Bob Menendez of New Jersey and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, and Republicans Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida. He is now the highest-ranking Latino in the House, representing the state with the highest proportion of Latino voters, at about 40 percent. An Albuquerque Journal poll from late August and early September had Luján with a 59-31 percent lead among Hispanic voters.

Luján has served in the House since 2009. He is the chair of the House campaign subcommittee, and in 2019 became the assistant House Democratic leader. Luján’s priorities include improving the Affordable Care Act, fighting for criminal justice reform, expanding Social Security, and strengthening unions.

He also supports funding for Covid-19 testing and contact tracing, as well as support for families, small businesses, and state and local governments to get through the pandemic. Daily new cases in New Mexico were at record highs in the weeks leading up to Election Day.

“So many people want to ignore the realities that are impacting communities across the entire United States of America,” Luján told Vox in early October. “The first thing that has to be done to address inequalities and injustices when it comes to access to health care, educational opportunities, economic opportunities, challenges with housing, whatever it may be, is admitting that they exist.”

Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper is reelected in North Carolina

2020-11-17T18:14:58-05:00

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper defeated his Republican challenger Dan Forest. | Gerry Broome/AP

Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has won reelection in North Carolina, fending off a challenge from his Republican lieutenant, Dan Forest.

Cooper’s seat was one of Democrats’ highest-priority governor’s offices to defend this cycle, but the result wasn’t particularly surprising. Although North Carolina is a battleground state and had tilted Republican in the last few election cycles, most polls showed Cooper in the lead. Forest was cutting into that margin as the election approached — Emerson polling had Cooper up by 4 percentage points in mid-October, down from 8 in a previous poll — but some other polls showed Cooper leading by double digits.

North Carolina entered the 2020 election with a divided government, with Republicans in control of everything except the governor’s mansion. The GOP controlled both houses of the state legislature, both US Senate seats, and nine of North Carolina’s 13 US House seats.

The governor’s race was overshadowed by the presidential race in North Carolina as well as a hotly contested US Senate race between Republican incumbent Thom Tillis and former state Sen. Cal Cunningham, a Democrat. But in terms of how the state continues to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, the governorship was just as important, if not more so.

Cooper received praise for his response to Covid-19. He closed restaurants and bars on March 17 and has generally provided solid leadership; a Spectrum News/Ipsos poll taken in October showed a 20-point difference between his approval and disapproval ratings (53 to 33 percent). Forest, meanwhile, has been holding in-person events for much of the year, many of them indoors with few masks and little or no social distancing.

“From the get-go, Dan Forest established himself as someone that was going to take issue with every single thing that Governor Cooper has done,” a spokesperson for Cooper’s campaign told Vox in October. “That is totally his campaign strategy: Pretend like the pandemic doesn’t exist.”

Cooper’s top priorities for his second term include expanding access to Medicaid and raising wages for public school teachers, as well as continuing to address the Covid-19 crisis.

His win, however, will not mean much for next year’s redrawing of North Carolina’s heavily gerrymandered congressional and state legislature maps. The state legislature is in charge of drawing the district boundaries, and the governor does not have veto power.

Here’s when the polls close in every state

2020-11-03T15:39:57-05:00

People cast absentee ballots in Lansing, Michigan. | Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images

While we may not know the results for a few days or even weeks after Election Day, the deadline to cast a ballot will be Tuesday evening. Results will start to come in once the polls close — but even within some states, that’s not at the same time.

The first polls close in parts of Indiana and Kentucky at 6 pm ET, but only the parts of those states that lie within the Eastern time zone. Polls in the Central time portions of Indiana and Kentucky close at 7 pm ET, or 6 pm local time. In fact, 13 states are split between two time zones, and polls will close an hour apart in 11 of them.

The first big wave happens at 7 pm ET, when seven states will have all of their polls close, including states with interesting Senate races like Georgia and South Carolina. The next — and biggest — wave will be at 8 pm ET, when more than 20 states will have polls closing in part or all of their territory. (Vox has live results you can follow for the presidential race, Senate races, and House races.)

If you are headed to the polls on Tuesday, Vox has a guide to your voting rights. You can check your polling place here.

Some other things to keep in mind: In certain states, you may be entitled to paid time off from work to vote. And if you are in line when the polls close, you should still be able to cast your vote.

Here’s the list of when polls close in every state chronologically:

6 pm ET: Indiana (Eastern time region), Kentucky (E)
7 pm ET: Florida (E), Georgia, Indiana (Central time region), Kentucky (C), New Hampshire (varies by municipality), South Carolina, Virginia, Vermont
7:30 pm ET: North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia
8 pm ET: Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida (C), Illinois, Kansas (C), Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan (E), Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire (varies by municipality), New Jersey, North Dakota (C), Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota (C), Tennessee, Texas (C), Washington, DC
8:30 pm ET: Arkansas
9 pm ET: Arizona, Colorado, Kansas (Mountain time region), Louisiana, Michigan (C), Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota (M), South Dakota (M), Texas (M), Wisconsin, Wyoming
10 pm ET: Idaho (M), Iowa, Montana, Nevada, Oregon (M), Utah
11 pm ET: California, Idaho (P), Oregon (P), Washington
Midnight ET: Alaska (Alaska time region), Hawaii
1 am ET: Alaska (Hawaii-Aleutian time region)

Alphabetical listing

And in case you’re just looking for your state, here’s each state and its poll closing times, in alphabetical order.

Alabama: 8 pm ET (7 pm local)

Alaska: Midnight ET (A), 1 am ET (H); 8 pm local

Arizona: 9 pm ET (7 pm local)

Arkansas: 8:30 pm ET (7:30 pm local)

California: 11 pm ET (8 pm local)

Colorado: 9 pm ET (7 pm local)

Connecticut: 8 pm ET/local

Delaware: 8 pm ET/local

District of Columbia: 8 pm ET/local

Florida: 7 pm ET (E), 8 pm ET (C); 7 pm local

Georgia: 7 pm ET/local

Hawaii: 12 am ET (7 pm local)

Idaho: 10 pm ET (M), 11 pm ET (P); 8 pm local

Illinois: 8 pm ET (7 pm local)

Indiana: 6 pm ET (E), 7 pm ET (C); 6 pm local

Iowa: 10 pm ET (9 pm local)

Kansas: 8 pm ET (C), 9 pm ET (M); 7 pm local

Kentucky: 6 pm ET (E), 7 pm ET (C); 6 pm local

Louisiana: 9 pm ET (8 pm local)

Maine: 8 pm ET/local

Maryland: 8 pm ET/local

Massachusetts: 8 pm/local

Michigan: 8 pm ET (E), 9 pm ET (C); 8 pm local

Minnesota: 9 pm ET (8 pm local)

Mississippi: 8 pm ET (7 pm local)

Missouri: 8 pm ET (7 pm local)

Montana: 10 pm ET (8 pm local)

Nebraska: 9 pm ET (8 pm local for CT, 7 pm local for MT)

Nevada: 10 pm ET (7 pm local)

New Hampshire: 7 or 8 pm ET/local (varies by municipality)

New Jersey: 8 pm ET/local

New Mexico: 9 pm ET (7 pm local)

New York: 9 pm ET/local

North Carolina: 7:30 pm ET/local

North Dakota: 8 pm ET (C), 9 pm ET (M); 7 pm local

Ohio: 7:30 pm ET/local

Oklahoma: 8 pm ET (7 pm local)

Oregon: 10 pm ET (M), 11 pm ET (P); 8 pm local

Pennsylvania: 8 pm ET/local

Rhode Island: 8 pm ET/local

South Carolina: 7 pm ET/local

South Dakota: 8 pm ET (C), 9 pm ET (M); 7 pm local

Tennessee: 8 pm ET (8 pm local for ET, 7 pm local for CT)

Texas: 8 pm ET (C), 9 pm ET (M); 7 pm local

Utah: 10 pm ET (8 pm local)

Vermont: 7 pm ET/local

Virginia: 7 pm ET/local

Washington: 11 pm ET (8 pm local)

West Virginia: 7:30 pm ET/local

Wisconsin: 9 pm ET (8 pm local)

Wyoming: 9 pm ET (7 pm local)

The 3 biggest governor races to watch in 2020

2020-11-02T10:54:41-05:00

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (R) greets supporters during a campaign rally at a gun store in Lees Summit, Missouri, on October 25. | Charlie Riedel/AP

As much change as the 2020 election might bring on a national level, it’s unlikely to shake up many states’ leadership: Of the 11 states with governor races in 2020, nine have incumbents running for reelection, many of whom are expected to coast to victory.

That makes Montana, where current Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock is leaving the seat open to run for US Senate, one of the cycle’s most contested gubernatorial races. Bullock’s lieutenant, Mike Cooney, is running against the current US House member in Montana’s at-large congressional district, Republican Greg Gianforte.

The race is interesting on its own merits. The two men represent sharply different political styles: Cooney is a longtime state official who embraces retail politics and classic Montanan issues; Gianforte, a conservative who’s aligned himself with President Donald Trump, is perhaps best remembered for the night in 2017 before he won his special election, when he body-slammed a reporter from the Guardian and was charged with misdemeanor assault.

Montana, however, isn’t the only race worth keeping an eye on.

North Carolina is one of three states where the governor and lieutenant governor belong to different parties. The race there is between Democratic incumbent Roy Cooper and his Republican lieutenant Dan Forest. Most polls show Cooper in the lead, but an upset is certainly possible, especially if Trump and Republican Sen. Thom Tillis perform well.

Missouri, meanwhile, is sort of the opposite of North Carolina: There’s a Republican incumbent — one of six running for reelection in 2020 — but unlike many of his peers, Mike Parson is in for a tougher-than-expected fight. Parson took office in 2018 after Eric Greitens resigned, so this is his first true election. His opponent, Nicole Galloway, is the state auditor, the only woman and the only Democrat currently holding statewide office in Missouri. Trump is expected to carry Missouri comfortably, but Parson might not have the same luck, due in large part to his botched response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Eight other states have gubernatorial elections this year, but few hold surprises. Republicans hold a 26-24 edge in control of governors’ mansions around the country, and many of their six incumbents up for reelection this year are expected to win. Hillary Clinton won Vermont by 27 points in 2016, but Republican incumbent Gov. Phil Scott is a heavy favorite. A similar situation is playing out in New Hampshire, where Republican Chris Sununu is comfortably leading in the polls. Republicans are expected to easily hold seats in Utah, North Dakota, West Virginia, and Indiana; Democratic incumbents in Washington and Delaware are also safe.

Here are the governor races to watch.

Missouri: Mike Parson (R) vs. Nicole Galloway (D)

A lot of money has gone into this race — the Republican Governors Association, seeing Missouri as a must-hold, has given $11 million to a pro-Parson PAC, while the Democratic Governors Association has spent $4.35 million on the race, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Parson is leading in the polls, but by a significantly narrower margin than the nearly 19-point margin Trump carried the state in 2016. Galloway, the state auditor, has run an inspired campaign — Christina Amestoy, a spokesperson for the DGA, told The 19th* that “you could write down a dream candidate on paper, and Nicole Galloway would still be better.”

Parson was among the last governors to institute a lockdown in the spring due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and among the first to reopen. Missouri never had a mask mandate, and Parson and his wife tested positive for Covid-19 in September. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

“The governor has taken a very hands-off approach to dealing with this pandemic,” a spokesperson for Galloway’s campaign told Vox. “Most governors have looked at this crisis and taken action and put in place a mask mandate, and used their bully pulpit to lead. Parson has been very reluctant to do that.”

Missouri’s Covid-19 situation has worsened significantly since the summer. On July 1, the state saw 320 new cases, but by July 31, that number skyrocketed to 1,403. Despite occasional periods of improvement, the situation has only deteriorated: As Vox’s Dylan Scott wrote earlier this week, “hospitals in Kansas City, Missouri, are reportedly turning away ambulances because they don’t have any beds available.”

Galloway has outlined a detailed plan for combating Covid-19 — she would implement a statewide mask mandate, cooperate with other states to purchase rapid testing supplies, use a data-driven approach to reopening schools, and form an emergency medical task force.

Montana: Mike Cooney (D) vs. Greg Gianforte (R)

At the presidential level, Montana consistently votes Republican. But down-ballot races can be more competitive; Sara Rinfret, a Montana pollster and a professor at the University of Montana, told Vox the state is strongly independent.

“I often categorize Montana as purple,” Rinfret said. “We don’t register for party in this state, so during the primary, you get both ballots and you pick which one you want to vote for. People vote depending on what’s going on at the time.”

Case in point: Montana has had a Democratic governor, Steve Bullock, for the past eight years, and a Democratic US senator, Jon Tester, since 2007. Bullock is now running for the other US Senate seat, against incumbent Republican Steve Daines, leaving an opening in the governor’s mansion.

According to Rinfret, Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney and US Rep. Greg Gianforte are in a dead heat. Gianforte was elected to Congress in a 2017 special election — the night after he body-slammed a reporter. Trump praised him for doing so, saying at a 2018 rally in Montana that “any guy who can do a body slam, he is my type!”

Cooney, a fourth-generation Montanan whose children all live in the state, has worked to paint Gianforte, a multimillionaire who was born in San Diego and lived for several years in New Jersey, as not sufficiently Montanan. The Gianforte campaign could not be reached for comment.

As Kathleen McLaughlin wrote for the Washington Post, the race could have big implications for a state where “political attitudes often vary starkly by location”:

Democrats have occupied the governor’s office for the past 16 years, yet with a Republican-controlled legislature likely to hold, a Republican governor could undo more moderate policies on health care, public schools funding and labor protections.

North Carolina: Roy Cooper (D) vs. Dan Forest (R)

The presidential and Senate races in North Carolina are both expected to be tight, and the governor’s race, where incumbent Democrat Roy Cooper is fighting off a challenge from his own second-in-command, should be close, too. Director of Emerson polling Spencer Kimball said their most recent survey of the state shows Cooper leading Dan Forest by 4 points, down from eight in a previous poll.

Cooper received positive reviews for his response to Covid-19. He closed restaurants and bars on March 17 and has generally provided solid leadership. Forest, meanwhile, has been holding in-person events for much of the year, many of them indoors with few masks and little or no social distancing.

“There’s well over 50 [campaign] events at this point,” a spokesperson for Cooper’s campaign told Vox. “Just a total lack of regard for any safety measures at all, and it’s been really sort of reckless and crazy to see. That is totally his campaign strategy — pretend like the pandemic doesn’t exist.”

Forest’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment, but he has said he will prioritize getting North Carolinians back to work, reopening schools, and supporting law enforcement.

North Carolina has a divided government, with Republicans in control of both houses of the state legislature. Both US senators are also Republicans, as are nine of 13 US House members (one district is currently vacant). President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden have both campaigned extensively in North Carolina, and with an important Senate race between incumbent Republican Sen. Thom Tillis and Democrat Cal Cunningham, voter turnout is expected to be high, which could help Cooper maintain his post.