Florida governor orders probe of agency whose CEO received nearly $5M in paid time off

Democrat Tiffany Carr

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has ordered an investigation following financial disclosures of a private anti-domestic violence agency, hired by the state, whose former CEO received an annual salary of more than $700,000 -- and who reportedly received a total of nearly $5 million in paid time off over a four-year period.
The contract of Tiffany Carr, who led the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence for two decades, granted her 50 paid days off per year since 2010, the Miami Herald reported, in addition to other perks such as a car allowance and time at "an executive retreat at the place of her choosing."
At least two staffers working under Carr also received lucrative time-off arrangements, according to the newspaper.
Carr stepped down from the job, citing a "significant health diagnosis," following a joint Herald and Tampa Bay Times investigation in July 2018 into her compensation and a subsequent order by the state Department of Children and Families to audit Carr's agency, the Herald reported.
Details of the agency's finances were finally revealed to state lawmakers Thursday, prompting the governor's call for an investigation.
"After many months of obstruction by the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence, the governor’s office received deeply disturbing information regarding the organization’s practices over the past several years,’’ DeSantis’ office said in a statement. “These practices include exorbitant compensation payouts, abuse of state dollars, withholding of information, and breach of public trust."
The Florida House also voted to subpoena Carr and the agency's board of directors as the state examines thousands of pages of newly released documents, according to the Associated Press.
DeSantis, a Republican who took office in January 2019, also ordered the head of the state's child welfare agency to review contracts with the domestic-violence organization, which distributes state and federal money to organizations that help victims of abuse.
“My administration will not tolerate wasteful or fraudulent spending, particularly by an organization that purports to serve the vulnerable victims of domestic violence,” DeSantis said.

“My administration will not tolerate wasteful or fraudulent spending, particularly by an organization that purports to serve the vulnerable victims of domestic violence.”
— Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at news conference in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Jan. 29, 2019. (Associated Press)​​​

“As to the measures that we're taking, they're extraordinary, I would say, but these are extraordinary circumstances,” Republican House Speaker Jose Oliva told reporters after the vote on subpoenas.
The House had been seeking more information about Carr's pay ever since the newspapers first raised questions in 2018, The Associated Press reported.
Scott Howell, the coalition's president of internal and external affairs, did not immediately respond to an AP message seeking comment.
During House floor debate, Democratic Rep. Anna Eskamani said Carr's salary was appalling.
“When we work at our local domestic shelters, we know that every penny counts, and when you have a CEO being paid that much money as survivors need support, it should be something that appalls each one of us,” she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Los Angeles mayor says he's the 'older, straighter' Mayor Pete: report

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti compared himself to 2020 presidential contender Pete Buttigieg Thursday, alluding to a handful of similarities between himself and the former South Bend mayor.
According to the Los Angeles Times, 49-year-old Garcetti said he is an "older, straighter Pete" during a Thursday speech.
Garcetti toyed with a White House run earlier in the election cycle, but he decided to stay out of the crowded presidential field early last year, saying Los Angeles is, "where I want to be and this is a place where we have so much exciting work to finish."

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti returned Ed Buck's donation in November of last year. (AP)

LOS ANGELES MAYOR GARCETTI SIGNS CITY's ENHANCED 'GREEN NEW DEAL
Garcetti also made a similar joke last month in The Atlantic, the newspaper pointed out.
The mayor raised his national profile in 2018 by campaigning and raising money for Democratic candidates and state parties around the country. His $2.5 million-plus in party fundraising included $100,000 each for the state parties in each of the first four presidential nominating states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. He made stops in several of those states and other longtime battlegrounds like Ohio, where he frequently talked about the city’s transit-building boom
Garcetti, according to The Times, is also a Rhodes Scholar and a piano player, like Buttigieg, and both have served in the U.S. Navy Reserve.
Garcetti has also defended the idea of a mayor as a presidential candidate, saying a mayor's experience as chief executive squared well with the job in the White House. Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is beginning to turn some heads in the Democratic primary with his aggressive spending in Super Tuesday states, while former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Miramar, Fla. Mayor Wayne Messam each ran unsuccessful campaigns and have dropped out of the Democratic primary.
When asked about his future plans early last year, Garcetti didn't rule out a different bid for higher office in the future.
“Who knows what the future is,” he said, adding later, “Life is long.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Prosecutors recommend nearly 5-year sentence for ex-Baltimore mayor in 'Healthy Holly' scandal

Democrat

Prosecutors reportedly recommended 57 months in prison Thursday for former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh who pleaded guilty last November to conspiracy and tax evasion linked to her self-published "Healthy Holly" children’s books.
Pugh was indicted for allegedly running a multiyear scam using her books to boost her political career and pad her coffers.
In a 37-page sentencing memorandum, U.S. Attorney Robert Hur wrote, Pugh's scheme was “a recurring pattern of well-executed steps that built on each other, becoming more audacious and complex leading up to the mayoral election,” according to WJZ-TV.
Prosecutors said her plan to rip off nonprofits and taxpayers began in 2011 when she was a state senator.
Among other things, the indictment against Pugh accused her of claiming taxable income in 2016 of $31,020, with $4,168 tax due, "when in fact, Pugh's taxable income was $322,365, with an income tax due of approximately $102,444."
Pugh's books have included "Healthy Holly: Exercising is Fun" and "Healthy Holly: Fruits Come in Colors like the Rainbow." Most were sold directly to nonprofits and foundations that did – or tried to do – business with the state or with Baltimore.
Prosecutors said Pugh arranged fraudulent sales of her books to schools, libraries and a medical system to pay for her mayoral bid as well as to buy and renovate a house in Baltimore City.
The memorandum also says Pugh used a business she co-owned to launder a $20,000 check into her campaign from a donor who had already given the $6,000 limit, WJZ reported.
Pugh also lied to FBI agents, according to the memorandum, when they came to her house for her personal cell phone. She said she didn’t have it and gave them a work phone but agents heard it ringing from under a pillow in her bedroom when they called it a short time later, according to the station.
“Almost immediately, the agents heard a vibrating noise emanating from her bed. Pugh became emotional, went to the bed and began frantically searching through the blankets at the head of the bed. As she did so, agents starting yelling for her to stop and show her hands,” prosecutors wrote, the Baltimore Sun reported.
“The facts establish that Pugh deliberately engaged in a broad range of criminal acts while serving as Maryland State Senator and Mayor of Baltimore City,” Hur added.
“As an educated businesswoman and successful politician, Pugh had countless opportunities for self-reflection, occasions when she could have checked her moral and ethical compass and chosen to change course," he said. "She did the opposite, and chose to double down on a path of rampant criminal deception to fulfill her ambitions."
Specifically, Pugh pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States and two counts of tax evasion. The four counts collectively carried a maximum sentence of decades behind bars.
She did not plead guilty to seven individual counts of wire fraud.
“The chronology of events since 2011, comprising Pugh’s seven-year scheme to defraud, multiple years of tax evasion, election fraud, and attempted cover-ups, including brazen lies to the public, clearly establishes the deliberateness with which she pursued financial and political gain without a second thought about how it was harming the public’s trust,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorneys Martin J. Clarke and Leo J. Wise, according to the Sun.
Pugh resigned last May. She had been under investigation since February 2017.
Her defense said they strongly disagree” with the recommendation and said their position "as to a fair and appropriate sentence will be laid out in a sentencing memorandum which will be made public pending order of court,” WJZ reported.
She is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 27.
Fox News' Barnini Chakraborty contributed to this report. 

Democrat Party Implosion Cartoons

AP Exclusive: Pro-Trump effort raises over $60M in January

WASHINGTON (AP) — Pro-Trump groups raised more than $60 million in January and have more than $200 million on hand for this year’s general election, shattering fundraising records on the path toward a goal of raising $1 billion this cycle.

The Republican National Committee and President Donald Trump’s campaign have raised more than $525 million since the start of 2019 together with two joint-fundraising committees. The RNC and the Trump campaign provided the figures to The Associated Press. The January haul coincided with most of the Senate’s impeachment trial, which resulted in the Republican president’s acquittal earlier this month.

RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said, “We already have 500,000 volunteers trained and activated, and this record-breaking support is helping us grow our grassroots army even more.”

Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, said Democrats’ “shameful impeachment hoax and dumpster fire primary process” have contributed to the “record-breaking financial support” for Trump’s reelection.

“With President Trump’s accomplishments, our massive data and ground operations and our strong fundraising numbers,” Parscale said, “this campaign is going to be unstoppable in 2020.”

The pro-Trump effort said it has gained more than 1 million new digital and direct mail donors since Democrats launched their push to impeach Trump in September 2019. The investigations proved to be a fundraising boon for Trump’s campaign, even as the president was personally frustrated by the scar it will leave on his legacy.

The Trump team’s haul and cash on hand were twice that of former President Barack Obama’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee at the same point ahead of his 2012 reelection.

Sudanese gov’t reaches settlement deal with USS Cole victims

CAIRO (AP) — Sudan’s transitional government said Thursday it has reached a settlement with families of the victims of the 2000 attack on USS Cole in Yemen, in a bid to have the African country taken off the U.S. terrorism list and improve relations with the West.

The settlement is the latest step from Khartoum to end its international pariah status. Earlier this week, Sudan’s provisional rulers said they had agreed to hand over longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir to the International Criminal Court to face trial on charges of war crimes and genocide during the fighting in the western Darfur region.

Also, Sudan’s interim leader, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, earlier this month met in Uganda with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who announced that Israel and Sudan would normalize relations after decades of enmity. Observers and Sudanese officials have said that the settlement with the USS Cole victims was among the last hurdles faced by Sudan on its path to being removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terror.

At the time of the Oct. 12, 2000 attack in the Yemeni port of Aden that killed 17 sailors and wounded more than three dozen others, Sudan was accused of providing support to al-Qaida, which claimed responsibility for the attack.

Today, Sudan’s interim authorities are desperate to have its listing by the U.S. as a state sponsor of terror lifted, in order to receive an injection of badly needed funds from international lending institutions. Sudan’s justice ministry said that the agreement was signed with the victims’ families last Friday but its statement gave no details of the settlement.

There was no immediate comment from Washington.

Sudan’s information minister and interim government spokesman, Faisal Saleh, told The Associated Press over the phone that Justice Minister Nasr-Eddin Abdul-Bari had traveled last week to Washington to sign the deal, which included compensations for both those wounded and the families of those killed in the attack.

He said the figures could not be disclosed because the Sudanese government is still in negotiations to reach a similar settlements with families of victims of the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. More than 200 people were killed in the attacks and more than 1,000 were wounded.

Saleh said, however, that the American side is free to disclose the amount if it wishes to do so.

The initial figures on the table had been in the billions, he said, but Sudan’s interim government had “inherited an empty treasury.” He said he hoped the international community would be sympathetic to the country’s situation.

“We expect the United States and the world to understand and to be supportive instead of imposing more obstacles,” he said.

For Sudan, being removed from the U.S. terror list will end the country’s economic isolation and allow it to attract much-need loans from international financial institutions in order to rebuild the economy after the popular uprising last year that toppled al-Bashir and installed the joint civilian-military sovereign council.

The new Sudanese rulers say they were not responsible for the attack on USS Cole and that they had negotiated the deal out of their desire “to resolve old terror claims inherited from the ousted regime” of al-Bashir.

In the USS Cole attack, two men in a boat detonated explosives alongside the U.S. destroyer as it was refueling in Aden. The victims’ families, along with the wounded sailors, had sued the Sudanese government in U.S. courts demanding compensations.

In 2012, a federal judge issued a judgment of nearly $315 million against Sudan but last March, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that ruling on the grounds that Sudan had not been properly notified of the lawsuit.

Andrew C. Hall, a lawyer who represents survivors of the attack, said at the time that the victims, though disappointed with the ruling, would continue the case, along with a second related case filed by family members of the 17 sailors who died in the attack.

It wasn’t clear when the 76-year-old al-Bashir could be handed over to the international court in the Netherlands. He faces three counts of genocide, five counts of crimes against humanity and two counts of war crimes for his alleged role in leading the deadly onslaught on civilians in response to a rebel insurgency in Darfur. The indictments were issued in 2009 and 2010, marking the first time the global court had charged a suspect with genocide.

Saleh also told the AP that the U.S. administration has set the overhaul of the country’s security apparatus as another condition to remove Sudan from the terror list.

“The Americans believe the Sudan’s support for terror was carried out through its security apparatus,” Saleh, said. “So they want to be assured that there has been a radical change” in the way it operates.

Trey Gowdy: Dems' demands for Barr resignation 'about the dumbest damn thing I've ever heard'

Former House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy responded Thursday to the outrage by many Democrats over President Trump's defense of Republican political consultant Roger Stone and his agreement that the Justice Department should revise its sentencing recommendation against Stone.
"I’ve had the same position whether it was Barack Obama or Donald Trump: I do not think the chief executive should be weighing in ongoing investigations or criminal prosecutions," Gowdy told "The Story."
On Tuesday, Trump offered "congratulations" to Attorney General Bill Barr after the Justice Department submitted an amended filing seeking a lighter sentence for the former Trump campaign adviser than prosecutors initially recommended -- a move that comes as Democrats accuse the White House of politicizing the department and followed the withdrawal of all four prosecutors from the case in apparent protest.
Democratic lawmakers, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal, called on Barr to resign Wednesday, while the House Judiciary Committee announced it'll grill the attorney general during a March 31 hearing over his handling of the sentencing.
"I can tell you this: Bill Barr was aware of this recommendation before President Trump ever tweeted a single syllable, a single character. So the notion that Barr was somehow motivated to move because of this tweet is just factually wrong," said Gowdy, a Fox News contributor.
"The notion that Barr should resign is about the dumbest damn thing I've ever heard," Gowdy added.
"If a United States Senator really believes that the head of the Department of Justice cannot weigh in on what a proportional sentence is..." Gowdy trailed off, adding that "there are child pornographers, people who rob banks who do not get nine years."

"The notion that Barr should resign is about the dumbest damn thing I've ever heard."
— Trey Gowdy, "The Story"

"Let the judge decide, I think two or three years is about right," he continued.
Trump's critics accused the president of hypocrisy over his handling of the case after he criticized former President Bill Clinton for potentially interfering with the Hillary Clinton email investigation during a 2016 meeting with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
"The president has the power to commute Roger Stone's sentence. He has the power to pardon him, he can pardon him right now if he wants to," Gowdy fired back.
"He could do it by tweet tonight. He's the head of the executive branch and people have a chance in November if they want a different one."
With that said, Gowdy reiterated his belief that the president should steer clear of ongoing investigations for the time being.
"I am being consistent," he said. "I do not think presidents should weigh in on prosecutions."

Roger Stone jury foreperson's anti-Trump social media posts surface after she defends DOJ prosecutors

Former Memphis City Schools Board President Tomeka Hart revealed Wednesday that she was the foreperson of the jury that convicted former Trump adviser Roger Stone on obstruction charges last year -- and soon afterward, her history of Democratic activism and a string of her anti-Trump, left-wing social media posts came to light.
Hart even posted specifically about the Stone case before she voted to convict, as she retweeted an argument mocking those who considered Stone's dramatic arrest in a predawn raid by a federal tactical team to be excessive force. She also suggested President Trump and his supporters are racist and praised the investigation conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which ultimately led to Stone's prosecution.
Meanwhile, it emerged that U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson had denied a defense request to strike a potential juror who was Obama-era press official with admitted anti-Trump views -- and whose husband worked at the same Justice Department division that handled the probe leading to Stone's arrest. And, another Stone juror, Seth Cousins, donated to former Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke and other progressive causes, federal election records reviewed by Fox News show.
The revelations came as Trump has called the handling of Stone's prosecution "ridiculous" and a demonstrably unfair "insult to our country." They raised the prospect that Stone's team could again seek a new trial, especially if Hart provided inaccurate responses under oath on her pretrial questionnaires concerning social media activity.
The drama began when Hart confirmed to CNN and other media organizations Wednesday that she had written a Facebook post supporting the Justice Department prosecutors in the Stone case who abruptly stepped down from their posts on Tuesday, saying she "can't keep quiet any longer." The prosecutors apparently objected after senior DOJ officials overrode their recommendation to Jackson that Stone face up to 9 years in prison.
"I want to stand up for Aaron Zelinsky, Adam Jed, Michael Marando, and Jonathan Kravis -- the prosecutors on the Roger Stone trial," Hart wrote in the post. "It pains me to see the DOJ now interfere with the hard work of the prosecutors. They acted with the utmost intelligence, integrity, and respect for our system of justice."

FILE - In this Nov. 12, 2019 file photo, Roger Stone, a longtime Republican provocateur and former confidant of President Donald Trump, waits in line at the federal court in Washington. A Justice Department official tells the AP that the agency is backing away from its sentencing recommendation of between seven to nine years in prison for Trump confidant Roger Stone. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Hart added: "As foreperson [of the jury], I made sure we went through every element, of every charge, matching the evidence presented in the case that led us to return a conviction of guilty on all 7 counts."
Independent journalist Mike Cernovich, not CNN, then first reported that a slew of Hart's other publicly available Twitter and Facebook posts readily suggested a strong political bias. Some of Hart's posts were written as Stone's trial was in progress.
Hart, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress as a Democrat in 2012, quoted someone in an August 2017 tweet referring to Trump as a member of the KKK.
In January 2019, she retweeted a post by pundit Bakari Sellers, who noted that "Roger Stone has y'all talking about reviewing use of force guidelines," before suggesting that racism was the reason for all the attention Stone's arrest had received from conservatives.
In August 2019, Hart called all Trump supporters "racist."
"Gotta love it!" Hart wrote on Jan. 13, 2018, in response to a news report that a vulgarity had been projected onto the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
A week later, on Jan. 21, 2018, she shared an opinion piece entitled, "What’s so extremely, uniquely wrong about Trump’s presidency."
On March 24, 2019, Hart shared a Facebook post saying that Republicans who complained about Mueller's probe were deliberately "ignoring the numerous indictments, guilty pleas, and convictions of people in 45’s inner-circle," referring to Trump.
And, on Nov. 15, 2019 -- the day she voted to convict Stone on seven counts of obstruction, witness tampering and making false statements to Congress -- Hart tweeted two "heart" emojis, followed by two pump-fist emojis. (None of Stone's charges accused him of engaging in a criminal conspiracy with Russia or any other actors concerning election interference; instead, his offenses related to his statements concerning his contacts with WikiLeaks and others.)
Hart's tweet linked to a Facebook post that has since been taken down from public view.
If Hart have provided misleading answers on her jury form concerning her political or social media activity, her views on Trump and the Russia probe, or other related matters, there could be grounds for Stone's team to seek a new trial, legal experts told Fox News.
Hart did not immediately respond to Fox News' request for comment. The Memphis Commercial Appeal noted that she was a native of the city and had served a term as the president of its school board.
Hart's posts surfaced the same day that Jackson, who oversaw the Stone case, unsealed her order from earlier this month denying Stone's request for a new trial.
Stone's team argued that an unnamed juror had misled the court concerning his or her exposure to the media during the case, and also had some potential bias because of his or her work with the IRS, which sometimes has interfaced with the DOJ on criminal matters.
But, Jackson shot down the motion for a new trial, saying the juror's potential bias was not demonstrated -- and even if it were, it wasn't significant enough to warrant the drastic step of calling for a new trial.
Courts allow for a new trial, Jackson noted, when "a serious miscarriage of justice may have occured." Bias is a permissible reason to remove a juror or call for a new trial only in "extreme situations where the relationship between a prospective juror and some aspect of the litigation is such that it is highly unlikely that the average person could remain impartial in his deliberations under the circumstances."
Jackson, who was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama, also took a shot at Stone's team for failing to uncover the information sooner.
"The defense could have easily conducted the same Internet search included in the instant motion and could have raised concerns at that time," Jackson wrote.
Fox News reported earlier Tuesday that top brass at the DOJ were "shocked" that prosecutors handling the Stone case had recommended Monday night that Jackson sentence the 67-year-old Stone to between 87 and 108 months in prison. The prosecutors asserted in the Monday filing that Stone's conduct post-indictment -- including violating the judge's social media gag orders -- merited a sentence much longer than the 15 to 21 months that the defense said was actually advisable under the federal sentencing guidelines.
In a new, amended filing Tuesday afternoon, the DOJ told Jackson that the government "respectfully submits that a sentence of incarceration far less than 87 to 108 months' imprisonment would be reasonable under the circumstances," but that the government "ultimately defers to the court as to the specific sentence to be imposed."
Government officials wrote in the amended filing that while it was "technically" possible to argue that Stone deserved the severe federal sentencing enhancement for threatening physical harm to a witness, such a move would violate the spirit of the federal guidelines.
It would place Stone in a category of the guidelines that "typically applies in cases involving violent offenses, such as armed robbery, not obstruction cases," the government argued, noting that Stone's "advanced age, health, personal circumstances, and lack of criminal history" also counseled against the harsh penalty.
Specifically, prosecutors said that although Stone allegedly had threatened witness Randy Credico's therapy dog, Bianca -- saying he was "going to take that dog away from you" -- it was important to recognize that Credico, a New York radio host, has acknowledged that he "never in any way felt that Stone himself posed a direct physical threat to me or my dog."
The government continued, "If the court were not to apply the eight-level enhancement for threatening a witness with physical injury, it would result in the defendant receiving an advisory guidelines range of 37 to 46 months, which as explained below is more in line with the typical sentences imposed in obstruction cases."
A senior DOJ official confirmed to Fox News that senior leadership officials there made the call to reverse the initial sentencing recommendation, saying the filing on Monday evening was not only extreme, but also substantially inconsistent with how the prosecutors had briefed DOJ leadership they would proceed on the case. The "general communication" between the U.S. Attorney's Office and the main DOJ had led senior officials to expect a more moderate sentence, the official told Fox News.
“It's surprising that would be the line in the sand -- an amended filing," a senior DOJ official told Fox News, adding that the problem with the original sentencing recommendation was it told the judge that the only way to serve justice was a lengthy sentence.
“We're backing off from, 'It has to be this,'" the DOJ source told Fox News. “The amended filing says it's a serious crime, and prison time is appropriate; we're just saying it doesn't have to be 87 to 108 months."
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Trump said he stayed out of internal DOJ deliberations, but strongly opposed their initial sentencing recommendation.
"I stay out of things to a degree that people wouldn't believe," Trump said. He added that the initial recommendation was "ridiculous" and called it "an insult to our country."
Later, Trump took a shot at Jackson, writing on Twitter: "Is this the Judge that put Paul Manafort in SOLITARY CONFINEMENT, something that not even mobster Al Capone had to endure? How did she treat Crooked Hillary Clinton? Just asking!"
Fox News' Jake Gibson and Alex Pfeiffer contributed to this report.

Lazy Liberal Cartoons

AP VoteCast: Young, liberal voters key to Sanders’ NH win

WASHINGTON (AP) — Bernie Sanders won the young, the liberal and the disaffected in New Hampshire. Their votes were enough to deliver him a victory in Tuesday’s Democratic primary, while Pete Buttigieg earned a slight edge among more moderate and conservative voters, with Amy Klobuchar close behind.

The New Hampshire Democratic primary revealed a mountainous ideological divide among Democrats, as voters try to identify which candidate will be most effective in challenging President Donald Trump in November’s general election.

A majority of voters who considered themselves “very liberal” supported Sanders, according to AP VoteCast. The 78-year-old Vermont senator, who has championed universal government health care and high taxes on the wealthy, also won support from voters younger than 45 and had a slight advantage among those without a college degree. Roughly 3 in 10 of those who deemed the U.S. economic system “very unfair” favor Sanders to oversee the world’s leading financial power.

But about 6 in 10 New Hampshire Democrats identified as moderate or conservative. Buttigieg, the 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, held a slight advantage with this group of voters. Roughly another quarter of moderate voters went with Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, while about 1 in 10 went for former Vice President Joe Biden.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sanders are avowed liberals.

AP VoteCast is a wide-ranging survey of more than 3,000 Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago.

The scrum of conflicting ideologies could set up a bruising round of election contests in the weeks ahead as Democratic voters choose whether it is better to lean into an overtly liberal contender or embrace a more moderate challenger. And once the nominee is picked, it is unclear whether the Democrats can fully set aside their differences and bond back together.

Only 15% of New Hampshire Democrats said they were “very confident” that the process for picking a presidential nominee would be fair, a sign of possible doubts lingering in voters’ minds at the state’s Tuesday primary.

The trouble tabulating results in last week’s Iowa caucuses, an issue that has yet to be fully resolved, may have rattled the faith of some voters amid uncertainty about who is the Democratic front-runner. The skepticism was clearest among Sanders’ backers, with about 6 in 10 saying they had little or no confidence in the Democratic primary process. Majorities of voters for every other top Democratic contender described the primary process as fair.

The results from AP VoteCast suggest that Sanders’ younger and generally more liberal supporters distrust their fellow Democrats, a potential reflection of the Vermont senator losing the 2016 nomination to Hillary Clinton.

Matthew Gage, a 40-year-old EMT attending a Sanders party in Manchester, New Hampshire, said he was angered by the use of super delegates in the 2016 election and remains “suspicious” that the process is fair this time around.

This year, he said, “I have more confidence only because there’s more eyes watching them and they know they can’t hide stuff.”

Yet after months of campaigns and debates, New Hampshire voters are still settling on the ideal moderate choice. Of the state Democrats who made a decision in the days before the primary, about half went to Buttigieg and Klobuchar.

The only clear candidate on the outs in a state that is largely white and older was Biden. He departed Tuesday for South Carolina, where there is a significant population of African American voters who will test which candidate appeals most to a diverse electorate that was largely absent from the opening two contests.

Voters see liabilities in many of the Democrats vying to run against Trump. About 6 in 10 said a candidate with strongly liberal views would have difficulty competing with the incumbent president, evidence that Sanders and Warren may be struggling to make the electability argument outside their base of supporters. But roughly 6 in 10 also said a gay nominee — Buttigieg — would face greater hardship in the general election.

Still, New Hampshire Democrats say they are willing to rally around their party’s nominee. At least 6 in 10 said they would be satisfied with Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Sanders or Warren as their presidential candidate. Fewer — half — said they would be pleased if Biden became the nominee.

Broader questions about fairness in U.S. society have been a central concern for the Democratic candidates.

An overwhelming share of New Hampshire Democrats — nearly 8 in 10 — view the economy as unfair. But there is little consensus on which candidate would do the best job of stewarding the world’s largest economy.

Yet among the roughly 2 in 10 who believe the economy is fair, there was an opening for a Democrat whose name was not on the ballot in New Hampshire. These voters gave a slight edge on leading the economy to Mike Bloomberg, the former New York City Mayor with a personal fortune in excess of $60 billion.

___

Associated Press writer Kathleen Ronayne in Manchester, New Hampshire, contributed to this report.

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AP VoteCast is a survey of the American electorate conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for The Associated Press and Fox News. The survey of 3,111 voters in New Hampshire was conducted for seven days, concluding as polls closed. Interviews were conducted in English or Spanish. The survey is based on interviews with a random sample of registered voters drawn from the state voter file. The margin of sampling error for voters is estimated to be plus or minus 3.0 percentage points.