Morning Headlines - Thursday, Nov. 10, 2022 | Recent News

U.S. and World Headlines

The results of Tuesday’s midterm elections are reverberating even as some important races — and control of Capitol Hill — remain in doubt.
Beyond those who simply won or lost their own races, here are some key figures who came out ahead, or behind, after voters cast their verdicts.

The head of the Senate Republican campaign committee pledged Wednesday to raise whatever money he can and begin an advertising blitz this week for Herschel Walker’s runoff in Georgia against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock.
But there’s one aspect Sen. Rick Scott of Florida won’t weigh in on: whether former President Donald Trump should stay out of the runoff in December.
GOP insiders faulted Trump, who has had a toxic relationship with popular Republican Gov. Brian Kemp even though he endorsed him the day before his re-election, for costing the party control of the Senate in two simultaneous runoffs last year, after Trump lost his re-election bid to President Joe Biden and then advanced false conspiracy theories about voting that led many Republican voters in Georgia to stay home.

Republicans inched closer to a narrow House majority Wednesday, while control of the Senate hinged on a few tight races in a midterm election that defied expectations of sweeping conservative victories driven by frustration over inflation and President Joe Biden’s leadership.
Either party could secure a Senate majority with wins in both Nevada and Arizona — where the races were too early to call. But there was a strong possibility that, for the second time in two years, the Senate majority could come down to a runoff in Georgia next month, with Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker failing to earn enough votes to win outright.

Some allies of President Trump are considering distancing themselves from his presumptive 2024 presidential campaign after Tuesday night's Republican disappointments across the map.
Trump's involvement in Pennsylvania's Senate race, which the GOP lost — plus his endorsement of hard-right House candidates who lost or are struggling — dented his aura as a power broker.
"Trump’s invincible … until he’s suddenly not," a former senior Trump administration official said.
"But after so many false alarms, no one knows when will be the time we look back at and say: 'In retrospect, it was over then — we just couldn’t know for sure in the moment.'"
Tuesday's quick disaster in Pennsylvania clouded what might be a more tolerable final outcome for Trump-endorsed candidates.

Democrats appeared to have staved off a Republican "red wave" as the dust settled from Tuesday's midterm elections, but overall control of Congress remains unresolved, with the GOP still within striking distance of taking the House and the battle for the Senate coming down to a handful of remaining races.
Democrats picked up a Senate seat in the key state of Pennsylvania, where CBS News showed Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman defeated Republican Mehmet Oz in the most expensive and closely watched Senate contest in the country. Fetterman will replace GOP Sen. Pat Toomey in the upper chamber, which currently has 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans.

Wisconsin Democrats scored a major victory in Tuesday's election when they staved off Republican hopes to win supermajorities that would have allowed them to legislate without fear of vetoes by a Democratic governor.
The Democrats remain a feeble minority in heavily gerrymandered Wisconsin. But they just managed to retain enough seats to prevent Republicans from the two-thirds majorities that could have overridden the vetoes that Gov. Tony Evers used frequently in his first term.
Republicans needed to flip five Assembly seats and one in the Senate. They got the Senate seat when Romaine Quinn defeated Kelly Westlund for an open seat in far northwestern Wisconsin.
But Democrats defended three of the six seats Republicans had targeted in the Assembly.

Wisconsin held true to its 'purple' label during the midterm elections, maybe even more so than in recent years. For the first time since 1998, Wisconsin voters split on the two top races, reelecting Democrat Governor Tony Evers and also reelecting Republican U.S. Senator Ron Johnson.
We asked TMJ4 viewers on Facebook if they were some of the voters that voted for both Evers and Johnson. Several of you reached out.
Matthew Ihlenfeldt from Green Bay said voting in this election was sort of like having to pick between his two least favorite football teams.

After a long election day that favored many incumbents, one congressional seat up for grabs flipped to Republican Derrick Van Orden.
After a race that was closer than many people expected, Van Orden won the congressional seat in Wisconsin's third district, a seat that has been held by a Democrat since 1997.
Van Orden ran for the same seat two years ago and lost to incumbent Ron Kind by three percentage points. Kind did not seek re-election. In recent years, the district has continued to trend more Republican, which helped lead to Van Orden's win over democrat Brad Pfaff.
During his campaign one of Van Orden's main focuses was economics. He says the current house has been too focused on party lines to make decisions that benefit the majority.

Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson has won reelection to a third term, narrowly defeating Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes.
The Associated Press called the race for Johnson at 11:46 a.m. Wednesday as the senator led Barnes by 27,374 votes. With 98 percent of votes counted, AP results showed Johnson defeating Barnes 50.5 percent to 49.5 percent. The AP called the race after Johnson claimed his win earlier in the morning and other national media outlets projected Johnson would win.
The lieutenant governor joined supporters in Milwaukee at noon to make remarks on the U.S. Senate race. Barnes did not officially concede the race Tuesday night or Wednesday morning as he waited for all the votes to be counted.
Prior to several outlets projecting him as the winner, Johnson, who will now serve his third six-year term, said in a written statement that the corporate media refused to call a race that is over.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, who won election four years ago with barely 1% of the vote, won a second term after defeating Republican challenger Tim Michels with 3% of the vote Tuesday, or about 89,000 votes.
Tim Michels conceded early Wednesday morning, just after midnight. He thanked supporters and said he fell short despite the feeling that there was widespread enthusiasm for his campaign during the final week heading into election day.
“In hindsight, looking back, I don’t know what we would have done differently. It was a very spirited effort,” Michels said in his concession speech. “The enthusiasm was just off the charts, but it wasn’t our night, and I thank everybody for all of your support.”
Michels trailed in the vote the entire night and under-performed in key Republican areas of the state, including the Milwaukee suburbs. He barely won in some of the Fox Valley counties, where he was expected to have a much wider margin.