Transcript: Election 2024: The Post Political Roundtable

MR. KANE: Oh, geez. Thanks, Sean. Always happy to be here.

MR. SULLIVAN: We could talk spring training, Phillies baseball, anything you want. You always have a home here.

But we should probably start with politics. P.K., as you know and maybe others in the newsroom as well, I have this gigantic magnetic map behind my desk here at the office. I've been looking up at that map a lot lately and looking at the state of Ohio, which is really, really interesting for various reasons. But I wanted to ask you about the Senate race in Ohio, which seems like one of the more intriguing ones this cycle and one that could potentially decide control of the Senate. What are you seeing in Ohio right now? Why is it interesting, and what are you looking at as you watch that state?

MR. KANE: Sure. If you want to pull back and think about it from this with a broad perspective of things, Democrats have 51 seats in the Senate right now in their caucus, 48 official Democrats and three independents. Republicans have 49. Joe Manchin is retiring in West Virginia, and that's a state that Trump has won by an average of 40 percentage points the last two elections. So that is a seat that Republicans are basically already counting in their column. Democrats understand that it is probably--there's almost no chance of winning that.

So you kind of are looking at a 50-50 Senate as your starting gun, and Republicans look at their next best opportunity to get to the majority is probably Ohio. And that's where Sherrod Brown has won three terms so far, and it is a state that used to be--my gosh, it used to be the swing state of all swing states.

You know, in 2004, John Kerry lost the presidential race. In large part, he used to sort of joke darkly that it was basically the size of an Ohio State football game. The crowd of that, if it had tilted in a different direction, he would have been president. Well, in the Trump years, he has really turned it pretty red. It is now a state that he's won by 8 percent the last two elections.

But deep down, the reality is, there are sort of mainstream Republicans, like Mike DeWine and Rob Portman, who still appeal to those sort of Trump MAGA voters, and they win by even bigger margins. They usually win by double digits.

And now what you have for the general election, what's happened is, Democrats and Trump, oddly, wanted the same candidate, Bernie Moreno, a car dealer without a lot of political background, some controversial statements, some controversial work ethic involved, work issues in his business operations. So he is the candidate that Trump wanted, that the Club for Growth, the far-right activist group wanted, and he's the candidate the Democrats wanted as well, because they think he is going to be the one candidate who Sherrod Brown can beat in a presidential election cycle in which they expect Trump to win by--again, to win Ohio probably by 10 or more points.

MR. SULLIVAN: Yeah, it's interesting that you point out how much of a swing state at the presidential level Ohio used to be. I'm old enough to remember, like, you know, turning the TV on, on election nights, and seeing as goes Ohio, so goes the nation. But obviously, now this is a firmly Republican state, at least at the presidential level, which leaves some intrigue about the Senate race. You mentioned Bernie Moreno. We've heard from Democrats who seem to be thrilled to be running against him. Can you talk a little bit more about why? Why is he the candidate that the other side says, great, this is the person we want to run against Sherrod Brown and how risky a move this was for Republicans to nominate this candidate in a state where they do have these natural advantages in a presidential year?

MR. KANE: Yeah, I think there's two things. One is Moreno himself is an untested candidate. He ran in 2022 in the Senate primary and just was not a gifted campaigner. He has some potential skeletons in his closet. So there's that.

But there's also the fact that the other candidate, Matt Dolan, longtime state legislator, he is from the Dolan family that made their money in the cable industry. They own--his family owns the Cleveland Guardians. It's opening day. So I've got to get a baseball reference in. And Dolan comes from that lineage of Ohio Republican, going back to sort of George Voinovich, who was the Cleveland mayor and then the Ohio governor and then an Ohio senator for two terms, and those are the type of candidates who don't just win in Ohio. They win by blowout margins.

Rob Portman was in that same mold. Rob Portman in 2010 and 2016, in Senate races that were supposed to be really big battles that sort of helped determine the majority, Portman buried his opponents. With like a week or 10 days to go in 2010, the Democratic opponents, Rob Portman actually just sort of surrendered, took all the money that was left in his account and gave it to Ohio Democrats to spend it in other races, essentially saying, "I have no chance of winning."

And then in 2016, they had former governor Ted Strickland, a Democrat, running against Portman. It was supposed to be a great race. Instead, Portman beat him by more than 20 points. National Democrats basically pulled out all of their Super PAC money and their outside group money, pulled out with like six or eight weeks to go in the race. Those type of candidates are gold in Ohio.

But Ohio Republican voters are now starting to act as if they are sort of West Virginia primary voters. They like to choose the J.D. Vance types that are a bit more exotic for your Cleveland suburban, Columbus suburban, Cincinnati suburban voters, and it's a little bit more risky. You look back two years ago, Mike DeWine won reelection as governor by 25 percentage points, blowing out a mayor in his reelection. In that same election, Tim Ryan, a Democratic backbencher from the House of Representatives, gave J.D. Vance a run for all of his money, lost by 6 percentage points in a very close race, in a very expensive race. Democrats view that as the boilerplate for what they're going to try and do this time around, and they believe that Brown will have far more resources than Tim Ryan had. You've got a Democratic Super PAC that's already reserved something like $60-, $65 million in a story that our own Michael Shearer broke, $60- or $65 million in Ohio airwaves to defend Sherrod Brown. Tim Ryan never had that sort of support because his race was considered a sort of outreach--a reach race. This is not going to be a reach race. This is going to be the foundation of whether or not Democrats can hold their majority, and if they get--you know, if they can turn the tables and Biden can win the presidency, they need that Senate majority in order to confirm any new cabinet members, confirm any Supreme Court justices, and move his agenda.

MR. SULLIVAN: Yeah. And given all the big cities in Ohio, big expensive media markets, so we're probably going to see millions upon millions of dollars poured into this race. By the way, P.K., I'm glad we got our baseball reference in. I knew it was only a matter of time before we'd be able to bring baseball into the conversation, so thank you for doing that.

I want to switch gears to another Senate race in New Jersey--

MR. KANE: Yeah.

MR. SULLIVAN: --where there is also some drama but drama of a different kind, which you've also been reporting on. In that Senate race, what the heck is going on in New Jersey right now, P.K.?

MR. KANE: Well, boy, you know, you've got a lot to unpack here. You start off with the three-term incumbent Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat who was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a very powerful figure who had already ducked one--or two different FBI investigations, one of which did end up in charges, but it was a hung jury, so he was able to win reelection in 2018 and maintain his powerful perch.

Instead, now he is back under federal indictment, different charges involving him and his wife, Egyptian contractors, gold bars. It's really--it's really wild stuff, and so the state Democrats of New Jersey have basically pulled their support from him.

But all the establishment people lined up behind Governor Phil Murphy's wife, Tammy Murphy, who was 58 or 59 but had never really been in politics herself, and she had been a registered Republican up until about 10 or 12 years ago. She was donating to Republicans as recently as 10 to 12 years ago. She was a big donor to George W. Bush, but she is now a confirmed liberal Democrat. And she won the Senate seat and got all of the county support, the so-called "county line" in New Jersey, of North Jersey, the most populous counties there are for a Democratic primary.

But Andy Kim, this third-term congressman from the Philadelphia area, just across the Delaware River, said no. He wanted--he got into the race right away, and he said that he was basically running, you know, as somebody to provide a real challenge to this establishment of New Jersey, and he ran a very aggressive campaign. There are a bunch of counties in New Jersey that sort of give away this endorsement, the line, by convention, and there's a convention of like 500 to 1,000 activists in the county.

Andy Kim--there were 10 of those types of conventions. Andy Kim won nine of them, and it blew up the whole scenario inside New Jersey--is that she was going to walk to the Senate nomination and then a Senate seat because it's a deep blue seat, deep blue state for general elections. Instead, Andy Kim got all this energy behind him, and he was filing a lawsuit against this county line. The idea is, like, you would show up in your local ballot place, and you would see a whole sort of set of the top endorsed people from each county. And if you had to find somebody else who wasn't the county line, it might be far off on the way end of the ballot that people can't find or see.

So Murphy eventually realized where this all was headed, and it was going to take probably tens of millions of dollars of her husband's own money--that he was a former Goldman Sachs executive--to run this campaign and use the sort of power of the county bosses to try and steamroll Andy Kim, and that wasn't even a guarantee that she would have been able to win.

And so Sunday, she stunned the world and basically backed out, and now Andy Kim is pretty much--you know, nothing's guaranteed in politics, but he is overwhelming front-runner, having taken down the New Jersey Democratic machine.

MR. SULLIVAN: This sounds like the plot of a political thriller, P.K.

MR. KANE: Yeah. Like, you know, 20-25 years ago, I was here in D.C. writing for The Record of Hackensack, New Jersey, and that's when I got my education on New Jersey county lines. And, you know, nobody ever beat the line, you know? You would do the math, and if this person got these three or four or five counties, they just knew there was enough votes that they would win. It was--you know, it was determinative.

And Andy Kim just blew up that process that's been in place for decades and decades. You know, he is just experienced enough and had run in a Republican seat five--six years ago in 2018. He's just got enough experience that he thought he could do it, and he's just naive enough that he didn't back out.

Anybody else with more experience in New Jersey would have said, whoa, I can't beat the line. And instead, he was the guy to do it.

MR. SULLIVAN: Well, we got to leave it right there, P.K. Two fascinating races to watch, New Jersey and Ohio. Thank you so much. I won't put you on the spot for a World Series prediction. We'll do that next time, but Paul Kane--

MR. KANE: Phillies-Mariners.

MR. SULLIVAN: There you go.

MR. KANE: Phillies-Mariners.

MR. SULLIVAN: Very diplomatic answer.

Thank you for joining the program. Don't be a stranger. We'll have you back in at some point in the summer. We can revisit the World Series predictions then.

MR. KANE: Sure. See you, Sean.

MR. SULLIVAN: Okay. I want to continue the program right now with two more of my colleagues, Hannah Knowles, national politics reporter here at The Post, and Brianna Tucker, who is the deputy campaign editor. Welcome back to the program to both of you.

MS. TUCKER: Good to be back.

MR. SULLIVAN: Okay. So before we start the discussion, I got to give you our trivia question. No Googling, no--stay off Wikipedia for a second. But here's our question, okay? Forty-three years ago this week--this is before any of us were alive, I think--a president's cabinet debated invoking the 25th Amendment and transferring power to his vice president. Why? Okay. I'll ask for your answers at the end of the conversation. Again, stay off Google and all that sort of stuff. I'll give you some time to think about it.

In the meantime, I do want to talk about some election stuff. Hannah, I want to talk to you to start. We are sort of in general election mode right now between Biden and Trump, and there is a lot of focus on fundraising and money and having the resources you need for a general election. And it seems like we're seeing, at least at this early stage, that Biden and the Democrats do have a decided advantage over Trump and the Republicans. What are you seeing in this breakdown in this money chase right now, and how do you think this could factor in to the November election?

MS. KNOWLES: So by the end of last month, Biden's campaign had reported more than $70 million, and that was more than double what Trump's campaign had reported. And the number--the gap has just kept growing, and Biden is going to be with former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton tonight for a fundraiser that's expected to net another $25 million. And the Democrats are billing this as the most successful political fundraiser in political history, right?

And so, you know, Trump's disparity there is getting worse, not better.

MR. SULLIVAN: And, Brianna, what about the legal bills that the various Trump vehicles have had to shoulder? A lot of money being spent on legal bills. How has that factored into some of the struggles that Trump has experienced when it comes to stockpiling the money that he needs for the general election?

MS. TUCKER: Yeah. I mean, they're mounting, right? Just to put this in perspective--so in one of his cases, he was owed almost a half a billion--or owed a half-a-billion-dollar bond in his New York civil fraud case, right? Last year, one of his cases--or not one of his cases, but one of the PACs supporting him had already spent $40 million by the end of the summer. So even in that case of New York, where now it's been--his lawyers have said it would be practically impossible to pay, that actually has been lowered to $175 million. We started to see some pretty unusual kind of unconventional tactics from the Trump campaign and Trump himself that I think speaks to what kind of crunch he's in. He's been selling his mugshot on digital trading cards. He started selling cologne for $100. He was at Sneaker Con in Philadelphia selling $400 tennis shoes. And now, this week, he started to sell Bibles for $60. So we're seeing these kind of unconventional projects, and by no means is Trump someone who's shy to license his brand. But it's very clear that he is in a bit of a hole, and it's a big question mark of how much money that he'll be having to dole out to these fees, what the PACs might have to pay, and how much he can fundraise in this general election.

MR. SULLIVAN: Yeah, it's an interesting question.

Sticking on the fundraising front, Hannah, you and your colleagues had a really interesting story this week about Ron DeSantis and some fundraising and money news related to him. I know he's not in the race anymore, but can you talk a little bit about what you all found in that reporting?

MS. KNOWLES: Yeah. And it's still relevant because he is still the governor of Florida, and he has a lot of folks and companies there who have an interest in his decisions as the leader of the state. And so what we found was that as his campaign goes on and his chances really get much grimmer, he's leaning more heavily on these Florida donors who, in some cases, the biggest donors to his super PACs, had benefited from official decisions by DeSantis' administration or they had reason to potentially benefit in the future. And so, you know, DeSantis seems like kind of an old story to some people at this point, but we felt like it was still worth tracking all of that money.

MR. SULLIVAN: Yeah, we'll be writing about DeSantis for a long time because, as you mentioned, still the governor of a big state and has a lot of influence in that job. So we'll continue to ask you about DeSantis, Hannah.

Okay. I want to turn to a viewer question now that we got about President Biden not doing as well or struggling with younger voters, and so Margaret Houy from Arizona asks the following question: “How can Biden convince young voters to vote for him?” So, Brianna, I want to put a version of that question to you. What are we seeing in our reporting about what the Biden campaign is trying to do to break through with young voters? And at the same time, what are some of the challenges and some of the headwinds that his campaign is encountering as they try to win what is--or what has been, I should say, a pretty reliable voting bloc for Democrats?

MS. TUCKER: Yeah. I mean, it's a tough one because young voters--and talking about voters under 30--are frustrated at a lot of things with the Biden campaign that have been present since before the war in Gaza. They've been presently frustrated with the lack of action on immigration, definitely the support of Israel. We've seen that manifest in the Michigan primary where a huge portion of the vote was uncommitted, and that was a very organized effort to show that there was a frustration and discontent with Biden as an option. His age continues to be a concern, and a lot of young voters are also just frustrated at this prospect of another rematch between Trump and Biden. But we've seen the Biden campaign, especially, also campaign with Vice President Kamala Harris more often. She's done different tours, also at HBCUs. We've seen her on the trail going to specific groups, Latino groups in Arizona, younger voters specifically. And then Biden himself and the campaign have also been trying to draw a contrast with Trump.

One of the big strategies that I think they're trying to do right now is make sure that they can continue to reinforce the message of democracy at stake and really make sure that they are making this comparison between themselves and the Trump campaign, pointing out some of the rhetoric and policies that come from the Trump campaign, draw these comparisons of authoritarianism and other criticisms of Trump, and just make sure that they can keep that separation of what's at stake in November to them.

MR. SULLIVAN: Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned that contrast comparison, Brianna, that the Biden campaign is trying to do. Well, the Trump campaign is also trying to draw a contrast with President Biden. And, Hannah, you had this great story recently about an element of that, which is Trump essentially putting forward this question to voters of are you better off than you were four years ago, the implication being that they're not and that they should vote for him. But what did you find in this reporting that you and your colleague did about that very question and where this country was four years ago versus where it is now?

MS. KNOWLES: Well, the hope from the Trump campaign is that I think people think generally in terms of their own, you know, daily lives and personal spending power, right? And inflation is still higher than it was back in Trump's term, and so I think that's what they were going for.

But the week that he posted that on Truth Social, his social media site, if you go back four years ago, that was the final year of Trump's term. That's when he was just starting to respond to this global crisis of the coronavirus, and a lot of people have forgotten how chaotic that response was. And it was seen as one of the reasons that Trump was not reelected and voters really did fault him for his handling of that crisis, according to polling.

MR. SULLIVAN: Yeah. And you mentioned the economy. Brianna, I wanted to ask you about that. I mean, we have seen some objective indicators of an improving economy, but we've also continued to see that Biden has often struggled to convince voters that they are doing better economically. We see poll after poll showing that people don't have--a lot of people don't have faith in his stewardship of the economy. They blame him for a lot of the problems that are happening.

MS. TUCKER: Yeah.

MR. SULLIVAN: Why is that? How do we square those things right now between some actual improvements in the economy and a lot of Americans who genuinely don't feel it, don't believe it, and don't really give Biden much credit for economic gains in the country right now?

MS. TUCKER: Yeah. I mean, Hannah is correct. Like, we have treasury data. There's economic data that shows us right now that gas prices are falling. The employment rate has fallen. Wages are starting to increase, but a lot of voters are still experiencing high grocery costs, higher bills, higher cost of living, rent, whether they want to buy a house or a car. I'm sure we can all walk into a grocery store right now and think of something that looks a little bit more expensive or the cereal that's more expensive than we remember it being.

And so Republicans especially, they've been honing in on that narrative and really trying to push this as an issue of failure for Biden, and economists have also just argued that, you know, it's something that voters feel this right now and it will resolve in time. It's more of a wait-and-see, but I think that's where a lot of the disconnect comes in. It's between the actual economic performance, but public sentiment is that we don't see these specific costs in grocery or perhaps in your bills or day-to-day expenses.

MR. SULLIVAN: Yeah, that will be an interesting dynamic to watch.

I want to go back to the down-ballot races for a minute. We talked with P.K. in the last segment about Ohio and New Jersey. But, Hannah, I want to ask you about another fascinating state, and that is North Carolina, where there is a really interesting gubernatorial race happening right now and a Republican candidate in Mark Robinson that has been one of the most polarizing of this cycle. Can you talk a little bit about this race and about Mark Robinson? You've done a lot of great reporting and a lot of groundbreaking reporting in this space. Who is this guy? Why is he so polarizing, and why is it that some Republicans even are worried about the candidate that they nominated in this race?

MS. KNOWLES: Yeah. Well, so first of all, North Carolina, it is going to be one of the most closely contested governors' races this year, and so, you know, the polling shows that it is still really tight. And, you know, both sides think it's going to be a hard campaign.

But Republicans and Democrats alike feel like on the GOP side, they really nominated a candidate who has huge vulnerabilities. He was this--he was a longtime factory worker, and he sort of burst onto the political scene in 2018 with this speech he made at a city council meeting where he talked about gun rights, and it went viral. He became this star on the right and very quickly rises up the ranks of GOP politics, but he's not well known. And it turns out that he has this just long, long record of making very inflammatory comments on social media, some comments that are just outright bigoted and, you know, homophobic and offensive to a lot of different communities. And so, of course, you know, Democrats have dug that all up. We're still learning more about, you know, what all he said in the past, but he's offended a lot of different communities over the years.

MR. SULLIVAN: Yeah, definitely a race to watch and one that looks like both parties are focused on.

We've only got a couple minutes left. Brianna, I wanted to ask you about another interesting topic that we haven't delved into, which is the third-party candidates in the presidential race. We saw one of them introduce a running mate this week. How, in the aggregate, do you feel like the third-party candidacies of an RFK or a Cornel West or a Jill Stein are factoring into this campaign right now, and have they gotten the attention of the Biden and Trump campaigns?

MS. TUCKER: Kennedy, especially, after he dropped out as a Democrat and decided to run as an independent, he certainly started picking up more traction, and we can attribute that to a lot of things, and voters have told us the same things. He's got a famous last name. He's a Kennedy, you know, part of the family dynasty. And now he has a running mate. It's kind of a perfect opening at this point where voters are very discontent with two, you know, nominees--or presumptive nominees, I mean. And so it shows in our polling as well that he does have a higher favorability among Republicans and an ability to pull from both of those parties. So it's interesting.

I mean, a latest poll that was Quinnipiac, I believe, just had him at 13 percent, which is pretty sizable. Historically, third parties don't make a major splash in general elections, but for a third-party candidate to be making 13 percent support from voters is huge. We haven't seen that since Ross Perot in 1992.

And so he actually acknowledged that at his vice-presidential announcement earlier this week that he was aware his campaign is a spoiler for Biden and Trump when he announced his vice president. She has also been wealthy, and there's probably--is probably able to help him get more ballot access, which is an expensive feat to do.

But the other third-party candidates, such as Jill Stein and Cornel West, have not seen that kind of traction or polling. That latest poll I just mentioned, Jill was at 4 percent, and then Cornel West was also at 3 percent. So it's really interesting that he's starting to get this support.

The Trump campaign hasn't seemed to acknowledge this as a real threat. They haven't doled out any kind of resources or really, you know, started to attack him on the offense the way Biden has started to prepare for that. The Biden campaign has started to dole out strategists and think about consultants to really kind of attack Kennedy. But as far as Trump, they don't really see him as a threat to their campaign at this point.

MR. SULLIVAN: That's all very interesting and a lot to watch moving toward November.

Okay. We've got time for one more question, and it's going to be the trivia question, which I will remind us of again one more time, which is that 43 years ago this week, a president's cabinet debated invoking the 25th Amendment and transferring power to his vice president. Why? Either of you want to take a shot at that bit of history?

MS. KNOWLES: No.

MS. TUCKER: I feel like this is one about--were they sick, or it's some kind of illness where they wanted to transfer power to a healthier pick? [Laughs]

MR. SULLIVAN: Not quite, but sort of in that zone.

Hannah, did you want to--did you want to venture a guess?

MS. KNOWLES: No, I--yeah. I was trying to do the math in my head, and yeah--no, I'll just--

MS. TUCKER: Yeah.

MS. KNOWLES: I'll just hear the answer, please.

[Laughter]

MR. SULLIVAN: Okay. Well, on March 30th, 1981, Ronald Reagan was shot outside the Hilton Hotel here in Washington. Here you see him leaving the hotel moments before John Hinckley shot him and three others, and while undergoing surgery and with Vice President Bush on Air Force Two returning to the Capitol from Texas, the cabinet at the time discussed and ultimately decided not to invoke the 25th Amendment. So that is the answer to our trivia question. Yes, we do have to go back a ways in time to--

MS. TUCKER: Before my time. Okay.

MR. SULLIVAN: Before all of our times.

MS. TUCKER: Yeah. [Laughs]

MR. SULLIVAN: Okay. Well, thank you both for joining us, Hannah Knowles, Brianna Tucker. Really great to have you on the program. Unfortunately, we're out of time. We'll have to leave it there, but don't be a stranger. Come back on the program soon.

MS. TUCKER: Great. Thanks for having us.

MR. SULLIVAN: And thanks to all of you for watching. For more of these important conversations, sign up for a Washington Post subscription, and actually, you can get a free trial by visiting WashingtonPost.com/live. That’s WashingtonPost.com/live.

Thank you again for joining us. I'm Sean Sullivan, and we will see you next time.

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