Roll Call

I yield back.

From Washington, this is Political Theater, Roll Call's review of the spectacle of politics on Capitol Hill and across the country.

I'm Jason Dick.

welcome back to political theater uh we are finally at the end of the primary season for this midterm election cycle delaware the first state was last uh in primaries at least this earlier this week uh that we were speaking and i just think this is a good time as we're transitioning to the general election some candidates already have because they didn't really have that much of a race and sometimes their their march primary enabled them to start the general election early but nathan gonzalez our our friend and colleague the editor and publisher of inside elections and roll calls campaigns experts is is back on the on the podcast to talk about this nathan welcome back

yeah it's great always great to be here and it's remarkable that i believe the general election ballots went out in north carolina before delaware finished their primary so which is i mean i get it they were state states and and local officials handle the elections but that's pretty remarkable when you take a step back

Well, and, you know, again, the first primary was the first week of March.

And, you know, we have had some special elections, some runoffs.

You know, we're just focused really on Congress, you know, you and me in our roles at Roll Call and Inside Elections.

Other administration efforts to expand federal involvement in voter records and election administration remain active.

For further information, see US District Court for the District of Columbia, Associated Press, and Roll Call.

Well, hello to our listeners in India.

It's a thrill to have you join our global audience, tuning in from over seventy countries around the world.

[upbeat music] And welcome back to the CQ Budget Podcast.

I'm David Lerman, the budget team editor at CQ Roll Call, and Congress is now back for a very abbreviated fall session as lawmakers prepare to leave town again soon to campaign for re-election.

For this week's show, we wanna let you hear part of a webinar that was conducted Monday for CQ subscribers that outlines the fall agenda.

In that conversation, moderated by CQ Roll Call managing editor Peter Cohn, reporters Savannah Behrmann and Aidan Quigley assess the legislation that could make headway in coming weeks, how lawmakers are positioning themselves for the midterm elections, and how much of the legislative agenda may get punted to a lame duck session after the midterm races.

Here now is part of that discussion.

[upbeat music] Thanks for being with us today.

It was the white kids, the young white people that had the connections, the parents that had campaign contributions to give their bosses.

They were the ones featured in Roll Call and The Hill most often, Congressional Quarterly.

We weren't.

But BET was a safe haven for that for us.

I love stories.

I get just as excited when we break a story today as I did at Brilliant News or at Roll Call and, and, and that, that's invigorating.

Um, and so, you know, now, yes, I guess we're, we...

It is our second, uh, we also have Axios HQ, so maybe third company and, you know, y- but I'm still running it.

Some House members, though, already looking to next year.

Roll call reporting.

By the time Brittany Peterson's son was six months old, he'd taken 24 flights.

The Colorado Democrat's son is no world traveler.

As the House considers potential rules changes for next Congress, Peterson and other members spoke Wednesday at a rules committee hearing in support of proxy voting for new parents.

Under her proposal, members would be allowed to tap a colleague to cast floor votes on their behalf for up to 12 weeks after they or their spouse have given birth.

Reporting from Roll Call, here is the congresswoman on Wednesday.

This place does not work for for parents.

Both Gingrich and Dick Armey, as well as the Clinton administration, are opposed to controlling legal immigration at all, and our beloved neoconservative friends are militantly opposed to any reform.

Indeed, as Morton Kondracke wrote in his column in Roll Call last year, it was William Kristol, now editor of the neoconservative Weekly Reader, excuse me, I mean the Weekly Standard [audience laughing] who, who, who persuaded Jack Kemp and Bill Bennett that it would be a terrific idea for them to come out against one eighty-seven on the eve of the election.

It was, in fact, a terrific idea, because more than anything else, the Kemp Bennett denunciation of one eighty-seven led to the collapse of their political careers.

As an encore, the same three have been pushing the Colin Powell ca-candidacy, which has now turned out to be even more of a bigger bomb for them than their earlier brainstorm.

So my first job in Washington, D.C. was at Congress Daily covering the Energy and Commerce Committee, writing about lobbies and campaign finance.

And every few days when Roll Call came out, I'd get scooped by these two guys at Roll Call, Jim Bandai and John Bresnan.

And so I decided that in order to be a good reporter, I needed to go to Roll Call.

So I spent a couple years trying to write Roll Call-type stories to get myself to Roll Call.

I finally got there, and you left and went to the journal.

So then I decided, shit, I need to go to the journals.