Iowa swung fiercely to Trump. Will it swing back in 2020?

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Few states have changed politically with the head-snapping speed of Iowa.

In 2008, its voters propelled Barack Obama to the White House, an overwhelmingly white state validating the candidacy of the first black president. A year later, its Supreme Court sanctioned same-sex marriage, adding a voice of Midwestern sensibility to a national shift in public sentiment. In 2012, Iowa backed Obama again.

All that change proved too much, too fast, and it came as the Great Recession punished agricultural areas, shook the foundations of rural life and stoked a roiling sense of grievance.

By 2016, Donald Trump easily defeated Hillary Clinton in Iowa. Republicans were in control of the governor’s mansion and state legislature and held all but one U.S. House seat. For the first time since 1980, both U.S. Senate seats were in GOP hands.

What happened? Voters were slow to embrace Obama’s signature health care law. The recession depleted college-educated voters as a share of the rural population, and Republicans successfully painted Democrats’ as the party of coastal elites.

Those forces combined for a swift Republican resurgence and helped create a wide lane for Trump.

The self-proclaimed billionaire populist ended up carrying Iowa by a larger percentage of the vote than in Texas, winning 93 of Iowa’s 99 counties, including places like working-class Dubuque and Wapello counties, where no Republican since Dwight D. Eisenhower had won.

But now, as Democrats turn their focus to Iowa’s kickoff caucuses that begin the process of selecting Trump’s challenger, could the state be showing furtive signs of swinging back? Caucus turnout will provide some early measures of Democratic enthusiasm, and of what kind of candidate Iowa’s Democratic voters — who have a good record of picking the Democratic nominee — believe has the best chance against Trump.

If Iowa’s rightward swing has stalled, it could be a foreboding sign for Trump in other upper Midwestern states he carried by much smaller margins and would need to win again.

“They’ve gone too far to the right and there is the slow movement back,” Tom Vilsack, the only two-term Democratic governor in the past 50 years, said of Republicans. “This is an actual correction.”

Iowans unseated two Republican U.S. House members — and nearly a third — in 2018 during midterm elections where more Iowa voters in the aggregate chose a Democrat for federal office for the first time in a decade.

In doing so, Iowans sent the state’s first Democratic women to Congress: Cindy Axne, who dominated Des Moines and its suburbs, and Abby Finkenauer, who won in several working-class counties Trump carried.

Democrats won 14 of the 31 Iowa counties that Trump won in 2016 but Obama won in 2008, though Trump’s return to the ballot in 2020 could change all that.

“We won a number of legislative challenge races against incumbent Republicans,” veteran Iowa Democratic campaign consultant Jeff Link said. “I think that leaves little question Iowa is up for grabs next year.”

There’s more going on in Iowa that simply a merely cyclical swing.

Iowa’s metropolitan areas, some of the fastest growing in the country over the past two decades, have given birth to a new political front where Democrats saw gains in 2018.

The once-GOP-leaning suburbs and exurbs, especially to the north and west of Des Moines and the corridor linking Cedar Rapids and the University of Iowa in Iowa City, swelled with college-educated adults in the past decade, giving rise to a new class of rising Democratic leaders.

“I don’t believe it was temporary,” Iowa State University economist David Swenson said of Democrats’ 2018 gains in suburban Des Moines and Cedar Rapids. “I think it is the inexorable outcome of demographic and educational shifts that have been going on.”

The Democratic caucuses will provide a test of how broad the change may be.

“I think it would be folly to say Iowa is not a competitive state,” said John Stineman, a veteran Iowa GOP campaign operative and political data analyst who is unaffiliated with the Trump campaign but has advised presidential and congressional campaigns over the past 25 years. “I believe Iowa is a swing state in 2020.”

For now, that is not a widely held view, as Iowa has shown signs of losing its swing state status.

In the 1980s, it gave rise to a populist movement in rural areas from the left, the ascent of the religious right as a political force and the start of an enduring rural-urban balance embodied by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley and Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin.

Now, after a decade-long Republican trend, there are signs of shifting alliances in people like Jenny O’Toole.

The 48-year-old insurance industry employee from suburban Cedar Rapids stood on the edge of the scrum surrounding former Vice President Joe Biden last spring, trying to get a glimpse as he shook hands and posed for pictures.

“I was a Republican. Not any more,” O’Toole said. “I’m socially liberal, but economically conservative. That’s what I’m looking for.”

O’Toole is among those current and new former Republicans who dot Democratic presidential events, from Iowa farm hubs to working-class river towns to booming suburbs.

Janet Cosgrove, a 75-year-old Episcopal minister from Atlantic, in western Iowa, and Judy Hoakison, a 65-year-old farmer from rural southwest Iowa, are Republicans who caught Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s recent trip.

If such voters are a quiet warning to Trump in Iowa, similar symptoms in Wisconsin and Michigan, where Democrats also made 2018 gains, could be even more problematic.

Vilsack has seen the stage change dramatically. After 30 years of Republican dominance in Iowa’s governor’s mansion, he was elected in 1998 as a former small-city mayor and pragmatic state senator.

An era of partisan balance in Iowa took hold, punctuated by Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore’s 4,144-vote victory in Iowa in 2000, and George W. Bush’s 10,059-vote re-election in 2004.

After the 2006 national wave swept Democrats into total Statehouse control for the first time in 50 years, the stage was set for Obama’s combination of generational change, his appeal to anti-Iraq War sentiment and the historic opportunity to elect the first African American president.

“We were like a conquering army, prepared to negotiate terms of surrender,” said Cedar Rapids Democrat Dale Todd, an early Obama supporter and adviser.

Todd was one of a collection of Iowa Democratic activists who gathered at a downtown Des Moines sports bar last year to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of Obama’s historic caucus campaign.

Just across the Des Moines River in the state Capitol, there was a reminder of how much the ground had shifted since those heady days.

Republicans control all of state government for the first time in 20 years. Part of their wholesale conservative agenda has included stripping public employee unions of nearly all bargaining rights, establishing new voter restrictions and outlawing abortion six weeks into a pregnancy.

It was in line with Republican takeovers in states such as Wisconsin that were completed earlier, but traced their beginnings to the same turbulent summer of 2009.

On a Wednesday in August that year, throngs flocked to Grassley’s typically quiet annual county visits to protest his work with Democrats on health care legislation.

Thousands representing the emerging Tea Party forced Grassley’s last event from a community center in the small town of Adel to the town park, where some booed the typically popular senator and held signs stating, “Grassley, you’re fired.”

The events became a national symbol for uneasiness about the new president’s signature policy goal.

The previous April, Iowa’s nine-member Supreme Court — Democratic and Republican appointees — had unanimously declared same-sex marriage legal in the state. A year later, Christian conservatives successfully campaigned to oust the three Supreme Court justices facing retention, waving the marriage decision as their cause.

Four years later, Democrats had high expectations of holding the retiring Harkin’s Senate seat. But Democratic U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley lacked Harkin’s populist appeal, and was beaten by state Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iraq War veteran from rural Iowa who painted Braley as an elitist lawyer.

By 2016, Republicans had completed their long-sought statehouse takeover, in part by beating longtime Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal.

“We tried in many cases to win suburbia, but we just couldn’t lay a glove on it,” Gronstal said. “We just could not figure out how to crack it in Iowa.”

The answer for Democrats in Iowa is much the same as the rest of the country: growing, vote-rich suburbs.

Dallas County, west of Des Moines, has grown by 121% since 2000, converting from a checkerboard of farms into miles of car dealerships, strip malls, megachurches and waves of similarly styled housing developments.

It had been a Republican county. However, last year, long-held Republican Iowa House districts in Des Moines’ western suburbs fell to Democrats.

It was the culmination of two decades of shifting educational attainment with political implications.

Since 2000, the number of Iowans with at least a college degree in urban and suburban areas grew by twice the rate of rural areas, according to U.S. Census data and an Iowa State University study.

Last year, a third of urban and suburban Iowans had a college diploma, up from 25% at the dawn of the metropolitan boom in 2000. Rural Iowans had inched up to just 20% from 16% during that period.

“The more that occurs, the more you get voter participation leaning toward Democratic outcomes than has historically been in the past,” Swenson said, noting the higher likelihood of college-educated voters to lean Democratic.

Since 2016 alone, registered Democrats in Dallas County have increased 15%, to Republicans’ 2%. Republicans still outnumber Democrats in the county, but independent voters have leaped by 20% and for the first time outnumber Republicans.

“There is now a third front,” Gronstal said. “We can fight in those toss-up rural areas, hold our urban base, but now compete in those quintessentially suburban districts.”

Though Trump’s return to the ballot in 2020 shakes up the calculus, his approval in Iowa has remained around 45% or lower. A sub-50 rating is typically problematic for an incumbent.

Another warning for Trump, GOP operative Stineman noted, is The Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa Poll’s November finding that only 76% of self-identified Republicans said they would definitely vote to re-elect him next year.

With no challenger and 10 months until the election, a lot can change.

“Still, that’s one in four of your family that’s not locked down,” Stineman said.

There are also signs Iowa Democrats have shaken some of the apathy that helped Trump and hobbled Clinton in Iowa in 2016.

Democratic turnout in 2018 leaped from the previous midterm in 2014 from 57% to 68%, according to the Iowa Secretary of State. Republican turnout, which is typically higher, also rose, but by a smaller margin.

Overall turnout in Iowa, as in more reliably Democratic-voting presidential states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, was down in 2016, due mostly to a downturn in Democratic participation.

“The trend was down, across the board,” said Ann Selzer, who has conducted The Des Moines Register’s Iowa Poll for more than 25 years. “So it doesn’t take much to create a Democratic victory in these upper Midwestern states.”

“I think the success in the midterms kind of made people on the Democratic side believe that ‘we can do it,’” Selzer said.

Perhaps, but Trump has his believers, too.

Adriana Cohen: Trump deserves credit for strong economy – ‘expert’ predictions of disaster were all wrong

It's time to fire the so-called experts.
You know the ones. They're the liberal economists with overpriced Ivy League degrees who told us that if Donald Trump were to get elected president in 2016, the economy would crash.
Fast-forward to today: More than $17 trillion in value has been added to the global stock market in 2019, with the U.S. reaping the biggest gains, according to a recent analysis by Deutsche Bank. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500 and the Russell 2000 have all seen massive growth in the Trump economy -- more than 20 percent this year -- with American tech companies leading the pack.
This is a sharp contrast to what a gamut of left-leaning "experts" predicted including The New York Times chief economist Paul Krugman, who told us after Trump won the 2016 election: "So we are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight. I suppose we could get lucky somehow. But on economics, as on everything else, a terrible thing has just happened."
Huh? Krugman ought to take a bite of this apple: One of the world's most valuable companies, Apple Inc., saw an 80 percent increase in its stock value in 2019. While Amazon announced a record holiday shopping season. Software giant Microsoft reaped a 55 percent increase this year, while Facebook soared 57 percent in value -- just to name a few U.S. companies whose employees and shareholders are enjoying a golden age of prosperity under the current administration.
Same goes for all Americans who are benefitting from historically low unemployment -- including minorities and women -- and the jobs bonanza, which is lifting millions out of poverty and revitalizing the American dream.
Under the current administration, we've seen a rate increase of 3.1 percent for wages year over year. Fox Business reported, "Average hourly earnings are $28.29 with a week of take-home pay averaging $973.18 compared to $943.59 in November 2018."
That means labor workers and the middle class are benefitting -- not just the 1 percent -- like Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., falsely claim on the campaign trail.
We've also seen the creation of 500,000 manufacturing jobs, new and better trade deals on the horizon with China, and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the last of which is estimated to create 176,000 jobs and add $68.2 billion to the U.S. economy, according to a study by the U.S. International Trade Commission this year.
If that's not enough winning for you, also consider the relentless surge in consumer optimism. Bloomberg's Consumer Confidence Index reported an increase to 62.3 percent in the week ending Dec. 22, up from 61.1 percent. "Record stock prices, unemployment at a five-decade low and steady wage gains continue to lift spirits, putting the 2019 average sentiment level on track for the best since the 1999-2000 dot-com boom," reported Bloomberg the day after Christmas.
Translation: It's time to uncork the champagne and celebrate America's unrivaled prosperity.
Needless to say, it's a good thing that the 63 million Americans who voted for Trump in the last presidential cycle didn't listen to the "experts" -- or the bottomless pit of naysayers in the media -- whose predictions about the economy and other topics proved worthless.
After all, these are some of the same "experts" who told us Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 election, Brexit wouldn't happen, and that Trump and his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia, a conspiracy theory that's since been debunked by multiple congressional and Department of Justice investigations including a 22-month special counsel probe that found no such evidence.
Bottom line: With the 2020 election approaching, the American people should continue to trust their own instincts, pay stubs and 401(k)s rather than the "experts." That's a far more reliable barometer, wouldn't you say?

Homelessness crisis: From houseboats to boulders, unconventional methods used to tackle problem in 2019

Fox News Digital embarked on an ambitious project to chronicle the toll progressive policies have had on the homeless crisis in four west coast cities: Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore. In each city, we saw a lack of safety, sanitation, and civility. 

Outrage. Frustration. Fear. Those are some of the words residents used in 2019 to describe the growing homelessness problem across the United States. There were numerous cases of harassment, rampant drug use and disturbing displays of mental illness that shined a light on the harsh reality that America's once-containable homeless problem had morphed into a modern-day crisis.
In Los Angeles, Heidi Van Tassell said a homeless man pulled her out of her car, dragged her into the middle of the street and dumped a bucket of feces on her head.
In Oakland, the soaring stats are still affecting the way retailers like Mika McCants operate their small businesses. Things soured so much in Seattle that Father Michael Ryan of St. James Cathedral sent a letter to congregants asking that they pray the city and church finds "the balance we need in order to not only be a welcoming place, but a safe place." The letter was in response to a homeless man storming the church and smashing a 200-year-old wood carving of Mary with a large rock. It wasn't an isolated incident and the church now has a uniformed police officer present during all weekend Masses. Sadly, there have been similar complaints popping up across the nation.
Fox News spoke with more than 100 homeless men and women, advocates and residents who said that they'd lost faith in their elected officials' ability to solve the crisis especially after most cities and states had spent hundreds of millions of dollars to address the problem only to watch it get worse.
Fed up, residents started taking matters into their own hands and have tried everything from dumping car-sized logs in front of businesses to pitching plans to pack party buses with the homeless, handing them some cash, driving them across the border and abandoning them. While some suggestions have their foot firmly planted in fantasy, other proposals could actually work.
Here are some of the unconventional ways people came up with in 2019 to help curb the current homelessness crisis.
CRUISE SHIPS
The homeless situation in Oakland, Calif., is pretty grim. The city has seen a 47 percent increase in homelessness in the past two years and elected leaders like Councilman Noel Gallo say the situation is only getting worse.
Currently, city council members are considering a proposal that would house 1,000 homeless people living in the Bay Area on a cruise ship. The idea was introduced by City Council President Rebecca Kaplan who said her plan "could be a great way to house a lot of people quickly" and added that "cruise ships have been used for emergency housing after natural disasters and for extra housing for things like the Olympics."
Kaplan is expected to present her full proposal to the council in January and claims her plan will be at "no or low" cost to the city because the people on aboard would pay for their rooms based on their income. Kaplan said she's been contacted by numerous cruise ship companies about providing a vessel for emergency housing.
HOUSEBOATS
Jonathan Warmund believes the Bay Area needs a "property option" that can help address the growing number of homeless men and women who are battling drug addiction and mental health issues.
He believes that barges or houseboats could be set up quickly and adds that the "vessels can support the critical wraparound services necessary to assist with these complex issues, along with many other unique property features."
Getting it done, though, could be an uphill battle. Warmund said he's tried reaching out to nonprofits and local government officials but hasn't had much luck.
"I suspect there's fatigue with what appears to be an intractable situation but I'm sensing or speculating that there may also be resistance to new ideas from current folks on the frontlines," he told Fox News.
PARTY BUSES
Gene Gorelik knows a thing or two about pushback from local officials. He angered a lot of people when he suggested Oakland's homeless should be put on party buses stocked with alcohol, driven over the border and stranded in Mexico.
He has other ideas that make the Mexico one look conservative. Gorelik told Fox News he thinks the city should pay homeless drug addicts $100 to fill potholes and says "filling potholes needs to be more profitable than robbing cars. Two birds. One stone. Done."
Gorelik also tried unsuccessfully in 2019 to bribe the homeless to leave Oakland.
LARGE LOGS 
Someone in Oakland started putting car-sized logs in front of businesses this year In an effort to deter transients from parking their RVs or dilapidated vehicles in front of businesses. While the motive was clear, no one person or group has come forward to say they are behind the long line of logs.
Sean Maher, a spokesman for Oakland's Public Works Department, said he considers the logs an "intentional obstruction of the public right of way," but admits the department hasn't reached out to local businesses to get to the bottom of the mystery.
BOULDERS
In September, a group of neighbors in San Francisco's Clinton Park caused quite a commotion after paying to place two dozen large boulders along the sidewalk to keep homeless people from setting up tents in the area.
There was an immediate backlash and neighbors said they were threatened and harassed by activists who pushed the rocks off the sidewalks. The tug-of-war continued and public works employees were called by residents three times in one week to put the boulders back.
Ultimately, though, the neighbors backed down after they said they received death threats from people online sympathetic to the homeless.
PLYWOOD WALL
In October, a resident in San Francisco's Ingleside neighborhood erected a plywood wall in an alleyway to keep drug dealers and the homeless out. The neighbor told local media the city had approved the plywood wall but about three days after it went up, other neighbors complained and it came down.
"I did not agree with the blockade at all," Miles Escobedo, vice-chair of the Ocean Avenue Association, told ABC7. "That was a very nuclear decision and that was the big issue. Why board it up? That's a circumstance of fear, which is almost worse. We should not be scared. We should be able to contact our local authorities."
FENCES AND PLANTERS
Los Angeles has been struggling for years to clear encampments and get a handle on its homeless problem. It hasn't worked. In fact, it's gotten worse. The number of homeless in Los Angeles County has risen for the third time in four years. The most recent count released in June by the Los Angeles County Homeless Services Authority shows that there are nearly 60,000 homeless people living without permanent shelter on any given night.
Ticked off by the uptick in numbers, residents and business owners have been using their own methods to manage the problem. In South L.A., business owners built chain-link fences around buildings while others planted thorny rosebushes and pointy cacti to keep unwanted visitors out. In Venice, large planters were installed to discourage the homeless from sleeping on the sidewalks. Advocates protested and in August the planters were removed.

Jason Riley: GOP Sen. Murkowski using 'Democratic talking points' on Trump impeachment trial

Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski wrongly used "Democratic talking points" when she criticized Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's comments about how he would run President Trump's pending impeachment trial, Fox News contributor Jason Riley said Thursday.
Murkowski took exception to comments McConnell, R-Ky., made during an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity earlier this month, in which he promised to be in "coordination" with the White House, should House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., submit the two articles of impeachment to the Senate.
"When I heard that, I was disturbed,” Murkowski told KTUU in an interview that aired Tuesday evening. “To me, it means that we have to take that step back from being hand in glove with the defense. And so, I heard what Leader McConnell had said, I happened to think that that has further confused the process."
Riley, a Wall Street Journal editorial board member, said on "Special Report" that Murkowski indeed has been known for her "independent streak" as a more-moderate GOP senator.
"Murkowski is not up for reelection. She is quirky, she does have an independent streak. We saw that in the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, we saw that in the ObamaCare repeal vote," he said. Murkowski bucked her party to oppose Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court last year.
Riley continued, "I do wish she would stop using Democratic talking points to make the argument that she is making. The fact of the matter here is that the House's job is done and this idea that they should have any say in how the Senate conducts this trial just is not supported by what is written in black-and-white in the Constitution."
Riley pointed to the fact that no House Republicans voted with Democrats to impeach Trump, not even retiring lawmakers such as Reps. Will Hurd, R-Texas, and James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., who he said had "nothing to lose" if they broke with their party.
"The idea that Mitch McConnell isn't going to be bipartisan enough or objective enough, that is not his job. I expect him to be as bipartisan as Nancy Pelosi was and as Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler were," he added, referring to the speaker and the two committee chairmen who presided over impeachment hearings in a manner widely criticized on the right.
In other remarks, Murkowski said she was "totally good" with being viewed as someone who wasn't a Republican "rubber stamp."
"For me to prejudge and say there's nothing there or on the other hand, he should be impeached yesterday, that's wrong, in my view, that's wrong," she said. "If it means that I am viewed as one who looks openly and critically at every issue in front of me, rather than acting as a rubber stamp for my party or my president, I'm totally good with that."
However, Murkowski also criticized top Democrats for their rushed schedule, which she said appeared to be aimed at impeaching Trump before the holiday break. "Speaker Pelosi was very clear, very direct that her goal was to get this done before Christmas," Murkowski said.
Ultimately, she added, "How we will deal with witnesses remains to be seen."
On "Special Report," Charlie Hurt also reacted, saying Murkowski's comments wouldn't mean much in the big picture, and that the Democrats will still target her seat during her presumptive reelection bid in 2022.
Hurt called the Alaska lawmaker a GOP "outlier" but predicted her state will vote resoundingly to reelect Trump in 2020.
Fox News' Bret Baier and Ronn Blitzer contributed to this report.

Gavin Newsom Cartoons

China’s November soybean imports rise after US trade deal

BEIJING (AP) — China’s imports of soybeans surged in November following the announcement of an interim trade deal with the United States.

Imports rose 53.7% over a year earlier to 5.4 million tons, according to customs data.

Imports of U.S. soybeans more than doubled from the previous month to 2.6 million tons, according to AWeb.com, a news website that serves the Chinese farming industry.

China cut off purchases of American soybeans, the country’s biggest import from the United States, after President Donald Trump raised import duties on Chinese goods in a dispute over Beijing’s technology ambitions and trade surplus.

The two governments announced an interim “Phase 1” agreement in October but have yet to release details. U.S. officials say it might be signed as early as January.

U.S. officials said as part of that deal, Beijing will buy more American farm exports. Chinese officials have yet to confirm the possible scale of purchases.

Chinese government spokespeople said in September importers were placing orders for American soybeans but no details of purchases have been announced.

Chinese buyers use soybeans as animal feed and to crush for cooking oil.

Beijing bought more Brazilian soybeans, but no other supplier could fully replace the large scale of American supplies. That added to the strain on Chinese pig farmers who are struggling with an outbreak of African swine fever that has devastated herds.

Liz Cheney undecided, Lummis dominates Wyoming Senate race

In this Dec. 16, 2019, photo, former Republican U.S. Rep. Cynthia Lummis poses for a picture in Cheyenne, Wyo. She is so far the only major candidate to replace retiring Republican Sen. Mike Enzi, of Wyoming. U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, of Wyoming, plans to announce in early 2020 whether she will run for the Senate seat. Cheney succeeded Lummis in Congress after Lummis stepped down in 2017. (AP Photo/Mead Gruver)

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP)

While Liz Cheney considers whether to run for an open U.S. Senate seat, the race so far has only one well-known candidate: Cynthia Lummis, a fellow Republican and one of only three women to hold Wyoming’s lone U.S. House seat.

The 1976 Miss Frontier — who used horse-riding skills to become a top ambassador for the famous Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo — Lummis went on to a political career that included 14 years in the Wyoming Legislature, two terms as state treasurer and four terms as congresswoman.

Recently she’s had the ear of President Donald Trump, discussing best livestock-grazing practices on public lands in the U.S. West while interviewing in person, twice, for Interior secretary, a job she didn’t get.

“I raised the issue of how important it is, that grazing is a very, very important enhancement to plant and soil quality,” Lummis said in a recent Associated Press interview. “What’s fun is, he let me explain it to him. And he seemed interested.”

She marveled at how a girl nervous about showing cattle in 4-H competitions would grow up to talk to the president in the Oval Office.

Few would try to beat Lummis, 65, and her long political experience, but those who might include Cheney, who plans to announce in early 2020 whether she will run for Senate.

Cheney has risen quickly to the third-highest GOP leadership position in the U.S. House since her election to Wyoming’s lone House seat in 2016, 38 years after her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, got that job.

Barbara Cubin became Wyoming’s first congresswoman in 1995. No woman has been elected to the U.S. Senate in Wyoming.

It was Lummis who cleared Liz Cheney’s way to office by stepping down from Congress to attend to her family’s ranching and other businesses interests following her husband’s death in 2014.

“There was a lot — a lot — of unfinished business I was trying to attend to in Washington during my last term,” Lummis said. “It was a challenge. It was also exhausting.”

Four-term Republican Sen. Mike Enzi announced his retirement a few weeks before her father, Doran Lummis, died in May at 91.

Her father encouraged her to run for the open seat, she said.

“He said, ‘You’ve got to do this. You’ve got to run for that Senate seat,’” Lummis said. “I looked at it carefully, and decided the timing was right.”

A former member of the fiscally conservative Freedom Caucus in the House, Lummis said another big motivation is to try to reduce the federal deficit.

“I was a fiscal hawk. I will be a fiscal hawk, in an environment where fiscal hawks are getting fewer and fewer, quite frankly,” Lummis said.

She said she would also advocate for more state and local involvement in decisions affecting public lands in the West and promote energy development on those lands.

Lummis announced her campaign in July. So far, the only other candidates are geologist Mark Armstrong and Wyoming Army National Guard veteran Joshua Wheeler, both little-known Republicans.

Lummis said she’s enjoyed the past several months of low-pressure campaigning. She’s taken time to catch up with old friends from the Wyoming Legislature, soak in hot springs in the resort town of Thermopolis and visit her farm in western Wyoming’s Star Valley.

While Cheney could be the favorite due to her profile, Lummis too will have a solid base of supporters in Wyoming, said University of Wyoming political science professor Jim King.

“With Lummis, we already have a big name in there,” King said Thursday.

Other potential big-name Republican candidates include investor and national GOP donor Foster Friess, who said in a recent email he overcame scant name recognition in 2018 to finish a strong second in a six-way gubernatorial primary.

“Last time around, we entered the race with 119 days to go — so it wouldn’t surprise anyone if my decision comes later,” Friess wrote.

Former Gov. Matt Mead, a Republican who left office in early 2019, won’t be in the mix, saying he’s content with looking after his southeastern Wyoming ranch.

Lummis seemed undaunted by potentially facing Friess or Cheney, noting she has beaten better-funded opponents before. She added she would concentrate less on State Department and national defense issues than Cheney does.

“My focus is very much more Wyoming and domestic American focus — natural resource-oriented, of course. Those are the issues I know and love,” Lummis said.

Cheney declined to even hint at her future plans in a recent news conference, but spokesman Jeremy Adler said in an email Wyomingites are “deeply patriotic” and want to strengthen national defense, support U.S. troops and care for veterans.

“Our delegation in Washington is small, and anyone who can’t — or won’t — handle national security and foreign policy issues won’t be able to effectively represent the people of Wyoming in the House or Senate,” Adler wrote.

Election officials learn military mindset ahead of 2020 vote

SPRINGFIELD, Va. (AP) — Inside a hotel ballroom near the nation’s capital, a U.S. Army officer with battlefield experience told 120 state and local election officials that they may have more in common with the military strategists than they might think.

These government officials are on the front lines of a different kind of high-stakes battlefield — one in which they are helping to defend American democracy by ensuring free and fair elections.

“Everyone in this room is part of a bigger effort, and it’s only together are we going to get through this,” the officer said.

That officer and other past and present national security leaders had a critical message to convey to officials from 24 states gathered for a recent training held by a Harvard-affiliated democracy project: They are the linchpins in efforts to defend U.S. elections from an attack by Russia, China or other foreign threats, and developing a military mindset will help them protect the integrity of the vote.

The need for such training reflects how elections security worries have heightened in the aftermath of the 2016 election, when Russian military agents targeted voting systems across the country as part of a multi-pronged effort to influence the presidential election. Until then, the job of local election officials could had been described as something akin to a wedding planner who keeps track of who will be showing up on Election Day and ensures all the equipment and supplies are in place and ready to go.

Now, these officials are on the front lines. The federal government will be on high alert, gathering intelligence and scanning systems for suspicious cyber activity as they look to defend the nation’s elections. Meanwhile, it will be the state and county officials who will be on the ground charged with identifying and dealing with any hostile acts.

“It’s another level of war,” said Jesse Salinas, the chief elections official in Yolo County, California, who attended the training. “You only attack things that you feel are a threat to you, and our democracy is a threat to a lot of these nation-states that are getting involved trying to undermine it. We have to fight back, and we have to prepare.”

Salinas brought four of his employees with him to the training, which was part of the Defending Digital Democracy project based at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. The group has been working actively with former and current military, national security, political and communications experts — many of whom dedicate their time after work and on weekends — to develop training and manuals for state and local election officials. Those involved with leading the training asked for anonymity because of their sensitive positions.

The project’s latest playbook focuses on bringing military best practices to running Election Day operations, encouraging state and local election officials to adopt a “battle staff” command structure with clear roles and responsibilities and standard operating procedures for dealing with minor issues. The project is also providing officials with a free state-of-the-art incident tracking system.

Eric Rosenbach, co-director of the Belfer Center and a former U.S. Army intelligence officer who served as chief of staff to Defense Secretary Ash Carter in the Obama administration, told the group gathered for the training that it “shouldn’t be lost on you that this is a very military-like model.”

“Let’s be honest about it,” Rosenbach said. “If democracy is under attack and you guys are the ones at the pointy end of the spear, why shouldn’t we train that way? Why shouldn’t we try to give you the help that comes with that model and try to build you up and do all we can?”

Instructors stressed the need for election officials to be on the lookout for efforts to disrupt the vote and ensure that communications are flowing up from counties to the state, down from states to the counties, as well a s up and down to the federal government and across states.

Piecing together seemingly disparate actions happening in real-time across geographical locations will allow the nation to defend itself, said Robby Mook, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager in 2016. Mook co-founded the Defending Digital Democracy project with Matt Rhoades, Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign manager.

“Find a way to input data in a consistent, efficient and reliable way to ensure you know what is going on and prevents things from falling through the cracks,” Mook told the election officials. “You got to rise above just putting out fires.”

At the training were officials from California, Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, West Virginia and other states. In one exercise, election officials were paired up as either a state or county under an Election Day scenario, charged with logging incidents and trying to piece together what turned out to be four different coordinated campaigns to disrupt voting.

“One of the big takeaways was just how the lack of one piece of information moving up from the counties to the state or moving from the states to counties, if either of those things don’t happen, it can have a significant impact,” said Stephen Trout, elections director for Oregon.

Trout said he would move quickly to acquire, customize and implement the incident tracking system, which would be an upgrade from the paper process currently in use. Dave Tackett, chief information officer for the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office, said he will recommend some structuring changes at his state operations center, including bringing key personnel into the room and incorporating elements of the incident tracking system like mapping and the ability to assign individuals to specific incidents.

“Events like today are helping us zero in on how to structure ourselves better, how to really think in a different mindset so that we can carry out all the different tasks that have to be done with elections,” said Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the North Carolina Board of Elections. “(It’s) the importance of communications, the importance of having standard operating procedures in place so all the i’s are dotted and the t’s crossed ahead of time and you are prepared for the unknown.”