5 MIDTERMS STORIES THAT CAUGHT OUR EYES
By Lisa Desjardins, @LisaDNews
Correspondent
 
With three weeks to go until Election Day, midterm stories and ads are flying like the current storm of historic campaign spending. At the PBS NewsHour, we’ve been watching the national parties, the big campaigns and local newspapers. This seemed like a good time to highlight a few good reads that didn’t light up Twitter, but perhaps should have.
 
1. Trumpism has found its leading lady. The Atlantic
 
Why it’s worth your time: The Republican candidate for Arizona governor, Kari Lake, is making waves and starting to garner national attention. In this story, the reporter got very little access, but found plenty of other insights into Lake’s approach.
 
Stand-out quote: “Win or lose, Lake’s political trajectory seems set to stretch well beyond the November election. Her success so far has unlocked glittering possibilities … Whatever happens, Kari Lake is here to stay.”
 
2. More Nevada Dems are going R than Rs going Dem, but many more indies are switching to Dem than R.The Nevada Independent
 
Why it’s worth your time: This write-up reads like a riddle but gets to some critical facts beneath the furious battle for Nevada – Democrats are gaining, if by small numbers, in new voter registrations. (This does not, however, indicate that they will win the big contests.)
 
Stand-out quote: “The Dems have been extending their lead over the GOP in Clark [County] over the last six weeks.”
 
3. CNN called Native voters ‘something else.’ Tribal leaders say those voters can sway elections. The Arizona Republic
 
Why it’s worth your time: Indigenous voters are key in several pivotal states, including Arizona, New Mexico and Alaska, and they are increasingly focused on the effects of redistricting and the power of voting in bloc.
 
Stand-out quote: “‘I don't trust the government any more than the next person, but I know that this government in place makes decisions that impact the lives and lands of our people.’”
 
4. Alaskans need to put 84 cents of postage on their by-mail ballots. Anchorage Daily News
 
Why it’s worth your time: Alaskans are deciding two statewide races that could affect control of Congress: their Senate seat and their at-large House seat. Residents have no-excuse absentee voting, but the largely rural state does not pay for postage, which requires at least two stamps. This piece got us thinking about the relative ease – or difficulty – of voting across the country.
 
Stand-out quote: “The two-stamps requirement for Alaska by-mail voters sparked frustration and confusion online over the weekend as absentee ballots started to be delivered across the state.”
 
5. An AirTag leads to a dumpster with stolen political signs in Chester County. Daily Local News in West Chester, Pa.
 
Why it’s worth your time: In the modern era of venomous politics, there is something old-fashioned about classic sign-stealing – and something impressive about a person who cracks a case by using an AirTag. It doesn’t hurt that Chester is an important swing county in a swing state. This is our favorite story of the midterms so far.
 
Stand-out quote: “There is no identification of a suspect in the mass theft, although because all of the signs taken were for Democratic candidates … suspicion would fall on someone who votes Republican.”

WE WOULD LIKE TO HEAR FROM YOU!

Do you have questions about voting or the political process ahead of this year’s midterm elections? Voting rules can be confusing, especially after a sea of changes enacted on the local and state level over the last two years. Submit your questions here.
 
Your questions can help guide our coverage in the next several weeks.

By Joshua Barajas, @Josh_Barrage
Senior Editor, Digital
 
Several prominent Republican candidates on the ballot this year have made Christian nationalist ideals a major part of their campaign messages.
 
Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, alongside Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia and Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida, among others, have embraced Christian nationalist rhetoric, which is built on the beliefs that America was founded by and for white Christians and that the government’s laws and policies ought to be built on Protestant ideals.
 
This ideology isn’t new but regaining prominence – the tenets stretch all the way back through American history, as far back as the Puritans in the 17th century, said Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor at Calvin University.
 
“What we're looking at today really is a modern manifestation that is, in the postwar era, really linked with the rise of the Christian right, the idea that Americans have to preserve and actually restore a lost Christian heritage,” Du Mez said. This also led to “the idea that something had gone wrong, particularly in the 1970s, that secular impulses – that feminism, or secular humanism, even in some cases the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement – were seen as disruptive forces.”

This culminated in the goal among conservative Christians to unite and “restore Christian America, and to do that through voting, through policy and asserting their influence over the government,” she added.


#POLITICSTRIVIA
By Matt Loffman, @mattloff
Politics Producer
 
Midterm elections are notoriously bad news bears for incumbent presidents.
 
Since 1934, the incumbent president's party has lost an average of 26 seats in the House during his first term. A few presidents have bucked this trend, including, most recently, George W. Bush in 2002 when Republicans gained eight seats in the House.
 
Our question: In the past 100 years, what is the greatest number of House seats won during midterm elections by the party of the sitting president?
 
Send your answers to [email protected] or tweet using #PoliticsTrivia. The first correct answers will earn a shout-out next week.
 
Last week, we asked: How many states do not have statewide income taxes?
 
The answer: Nine. Those states are: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming.
 
Congratulations to our winners: Keith Currens and Barry Weinstein!
 
Thank you all for reading and watching. We’ll drop into your inbox next week.