| | | | |  | | By Brakkton Booker | With help from Rishika Dugyala and Teresa Wiltz
| 
Rhode Island Democratic Gov. Dan McKee delivers his State of the State address to lawmakers and guests in January in Providence, R.I. | AP Photo/Stew Milne | What up, Recast family! The DOJ and former President Donald Trump near an agreement on who will oversee the review of sensitive documents seized in the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago last month. Plus, the Justice Department issues some 40 subpoenas in Trump's orbit. First though, we focus on the final primary day of the 2022 cycle. Today is the beginning of the end: After a seemingly endless primary season, residents in Delaware, New Hampshire and Rhode Island cast their votes in what will be the last round of voting before the focus shifts to the fall midterms. It's not an especially big day on the election calendar. But a marquee Democratic primary contest on the docket is full of intrigue. An incumbent is in a heated three-way contest where one of his chief rivals is seeking to become the first Latina governor elected in New England — and the other competitor has the blessing of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee is seeking his first full term after taking over the post when two-term Gov. Gina Raimondo left to serve as President Biden's Commerce secretary.
| 
Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, center, waves while seated next to R.I. Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, right, while attending swearing-in ceremonies in 2017. | AP Photo/Steven Senne | McKee, who assumed office in March 2021, has not benefited from the presumed advantages of incumbency. While he plays up his role in shepherding the state through the economic recovery and signing a bill raising the minimum age to purchase handguns from 18 to 21, he's been unable to separate from the Democratic field. One thing that's surely not helping his chances: The ongoing FBI investigation into his administration awarding a multimillion-dollar contract to a consulting firm shortly after taking office. He maintains no wrongdoing will be uncovered by the probe. A Roger Williams University/WPRI poll released last month showed the race was a statistical tie with McKee registering at 28 percent, leading Nellie Gorbea, Rhode Island's current secretary of state, by just 3 percentage points. The survey also found that roughly a fifth of primary voters remained undecided. This is despite McKee winning the party's endorsement at its state convention in June. But even that victory among convention delegates was not convincing. He won exactly half of the possible vote with Gorbea finishing second. Watch: She could be the first Puerto Rican governor on the mainland
| 
| "I don't think the endorsement necessarily clears the field," Richard DelFino, chair of the Johnston, (R.I.) Democratic Town Committee, told The Recast. While he is backing McKee in the race, he acknowledges there was sizable support for Gorbea among conventioneers. For her part, Gorbea, the first Latina elected to any statewide office in New England, is hoping to make history again this fall. The Latino Victory Fund, a liberal-leaning super PAC aimed at electing Latinos, is boosting her campaign with TV ads in English and Spanish. "Think about how crazy it is — we will be increasing the number of Latina governors by 100 percent" Luis Miranda, chair of the PAC, told my POLITICO colleague Marissa Martinez last week. New Mexico's Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, is the only Latina governor currently serving. (In 2011, Susana Martinez, also of New Mexico, became the first Latina elected governor in the U.S.) Gorbea's stance on hiking corporate tax rates to generate revenue for housing development, assisting small businesses and creating universal pre-K, makes her an outlier among her chief rivals. Helena Buonanno Foulkes, another prominent Democratic hopeful, received a high-profile endorsement over the weekend from Pelosi, the top Democrat in the U.S. House. "As governor, she will not only be a job creator, she'll be a job attractor — of people, of companies, to Rhode Island, who respect her role — which is well acclaimed — in the private sector," the House speaker told a crowd in Providence on Sunday, according to WPRI.
| 
Democratic challenger for Rhode Island governor, former CVS Health executive Helena Foulkes speaks during a gubernatorial election forum on Sept. 8. | AP Photo/David Goldman | Foulkes, a forever executive with CVS Health, has seen a surge of momentum in the closing days of the campaign, The Providence Journal notes, following a strong debate performance last week. While at first blush the friendship between the California Democrat and the Ocean State businesswoman may seem odd. But the Pelosi-Foulkes connection goes back decades. Pelosi was longtime friends with Foulkes' late mother, Martha Dodd Buonanno, who Pelosi says was the first person she met in college. Meanwhile, the primary on the Republican side is not without its own drama. Ashley Kalus, a political newcomer who touts her business credentials, is taking on Jonathan Riccitelli, who was an also-ran in the 2018 election for lieutenant governor, which McKee, the now-current governor, won with 62 percent of the vote. Riccitelli, who then ran as an independent, was in the low single digits. Not helping his current gubernatorial campaign is a recent report in The Boston Globe , which details that Riccitelli, who is running on a pro-police platform, "has been arrested and admitted to criminal offenses ranging from obstructing police officers to assault, according to court records." Oh my! We'll keep tabs on how all this shakes out. Until then, we're glad we made it to the end of the primary season. All the best,
The Recast Team
| | | | 
| Power dynamics are changing. With The Recast, you'll get a twice-weekly breakdown of how race and identity are the DNA of American politics and policy. Was this forwarded to you by a friend? Subscribe to the newsletter here.
| | | MONKEYPOX STRATEGY SHIFT
| 
Event organizers received enough vaccine to give the shot to 2,000 people at Charlotte Pride earlier this month, but vaccinated 540. | Neil Redmond/AP Photo | This summer, when health officials first began offering the vaccine for monkeypox, appointments were being snapped up. In the months since, demand is drying up. That's forcing federal health workers to adopt new tactics in the quest to inoculate communities most at risk of contracting it. According to the World Health Organization , among the groups most impacted by it are men who have sex with men. Monkeypox is a viral disease that causes a number of symptoms including fever, chills, respiratory issues and painful sores. POLITICO's Megan Messerly and Krista Mahr report the Biden administration is creating another pilot program in which it will send vaccines to smaller venues and clinics. According to Messerly and Mahr's analysis of the CDC data from 34 states and New York City, some 461,049 doses of the vaccine have been administered so far. That may sound really good. But that's only a fraction – or 14 percent – of the 3.2 million doses U.S. officials estimate are needed to fully vaccinate the 1.6 million people the government deems are at high risk for monkeypox. Digging a little deeper into the numbers, a disturbing trend is emerging:
| 
| Moreover, the numbers demonstrate a precipitous drop in demand for the vaccine. The Department of Health and Human Services declared monkeypox a public health emergency in early August. A week later, some 86,816 shots were administered. By the end of the month, the week from Aug. 28 to Sept. 3, just 31,229 doses were doled out. Read more on the administration's hyperlocal strategy.
| | | OATH OF OFFICE In other political news, three new House members will be sworn in later this evening following their recent special election victories. Congressman-elect Joe Sempolinski (R-N.Y.) defeated Democrat Max Della Pia last month in a matchup to fill the seat of his former boss, Rep. Tom Reed. Reed resigned in May after facing allegations of sexual misconduct. Sempolinski served as Reed's district director. Congressman-elect Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.) who won a bellwether district in the Hudson Valley barely edging out Republican Marc Molinaro also gets sworn in. That seat had been held by Democratic Rep. Antonio Delgado, who stepped down to become lieutenant governor of New York.
| 
POLITICO Illustration/Photo courtesy of Mary Peltola | And those regular readers of The Recast will recognize Congresswoman-elect Mary Peltola (D-Alaska), our most recent Friday Q&A guest, who will also become a new House member. She defeated 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin in a race to succeed the late GOP Rep. Don Young, who died earlier this year after holding Alaska's at-large seat for nearly a half-century. The swearing-in is scheduled to begin just before 7 p.m. EDT.
| | | GOD SAVE THE QUEEN?
| 
Queen Elizabeth II may have been on the throne to witness the dismantling of the empire. But she was also monarch for the brutal subjection of the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya in the fifties. | Christophe Ena/AP Photo | In an essay for POLITICO Magazine, Kehinde Andrews, a professor of Black Studies at the School of Social Sciences at Birmingham City University in the U.K., unpacks why Black and brown Britons have complicated feelings about Queen Elizabeth II. He writes: It is a peculiar sensation to live in a nation plunged into mourning when you cannot comprehend the feelings of loss. Whilst the news of Queen Elizabeth's death sparked concern, sadness and even panic in many of my white colleagues at work last week, I looked on mostly bemused. I am not alone in this feeling of detachment; most of my Black family and friends here feel the same. Yes, it is sad when anyone dies. But none of us knew the Queen; she was not a family member, friend or even acquaintance. She was an image, a figment of the nation's collective imagination that we were told we must adore. For the children of the British Empire, those of us who were born here and those of us who were born in the 15 nations of the "commonwealth," the Queen is the number one symbol of white supremacy.
| 
| African American intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois best captured this feeling of disconnection when he wrote, "it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others." Being both Black and American, Du Bois noted, was to be constantly yoked to "this peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness" with conflicting perspectives on life in the nation. To be Black and in Britain also means grappling with double-consciousness. The only real difference between Black Brits and Black Americans is that Britain offshored its racist violence to the colonies. This meant that Britain could believe the mirage that the nation did not have the same racial problems as the U.S., which enslaved millions of Africans within its own borders. But you cannot detach Britain from its empire; the colonies were just as, if not more, important to making the nation "great" as anything that took place on these shores. Queen Elizabeth II may have been on the throne to witness the dismantling of the empire. But she was also monarch for the brutal subjection of the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya in the '50s. And she was Queen when the government supported the Nigerian suppression of the Biafran separatists that led to a million children starving to death in the late '60s. The power of the nation and symbolic strength of the monarch have been inseparable from the empire. Read more here.
| | | ICYMI @ POLITICO
| 
President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama, followed by first lady Jill Biden and former first lady Michelle Obama on Sept. 7. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo | A Complicated Friendship – A week ago, Washington was abuzz after detailing long-standing tensions between the Obama and Biden camps. POLITICO Magazine contributor Gabriel Debenedetti breaks down the complex relationship even further … and reveals one of the few things the two men don't talk about: the next presidential election. Scott on GOP Candidate Electability – Speaking of 2024 … South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott was asked on "Fox News Sunday" about Republican candidates' electability this cycle and whether the current crop of nominees will face a difficult time in the general election. Football season is back … so he used a gridiron metaphor. Pending Jan. 6 To-do List – It's only September, but in reality there are very few weeks left before the Jan. 6 committee dissolves. POLITICO's Nicholas Wu and Kyle Cheney break down what tasks remain for the special panel.
| | | THE RECAST RECOMMENDS Did you check out the Emmys Monday night? We did, and we were blown away by "Abbott Elementary" star Sheryl Lee Ralph's acceptance speech/song for outstanding actress in a comedy series. After you've watched that, listen to this Fresh Air interview, where the "Dream Girls" diva talks about how she almost quit acting.
| 
| "Squid Game '' made history at the Emmys. Lee Jung-jae, snared the top acting prize, the first Asian lead actor to win an Emmy for a non-English language show. In this encore presentation, NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour unpacks the brilliance of the Netflix blockbuster. RIP – Tina Ramirez, founder of the famed dance troupe, Ballet Hispánico, dies at 92. She trained generations of dancers. On our reading list: Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi's "Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions: A Novel in Interlocking Stories." Beninese diva Angélique Kidjo brings it home for the 1,000th NPR Tiny Desk Concert.
| 
| Venezuelan brothers, Manuel and Felix Lara/aka The Lara Project are the producing and songwriting talent behind some of Bad Bunny's El Último Tour Del Mundo. They're out with a single of their own, "Altas Horas." In this mini-movie, "Três," Brazilian singer Iza Brazilian fantasizes about Beyonce-esque fame and finds – and loses – love on the subway.
| 
| TikTok of the Day: Bad Bunny is always a vibe.
| 
| | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
Comments
Post a Comment