Pete Buttigieg is stuck on a polling rollercoaster.
The South Bend, Indiana, mayor and 2020 candidate got good news over the weekend when a new CNN/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll put him at the top of the Democratic field in Iowa. But his high hopes promptly sunk with a new Quinnipiac University poll out Monday that shows him floundering in South Carolina.
Buttigieg racked up a respectable 6 percent support among likely voters in South Carolina, which will be the first southern state to hold a presidential primary next year. But when only black voters are taken into account, he earned the support of precisely 0 percent of them. Several other candidates also got negligible support among black voters, but Buttigieg has the highest percentage of white support in comparison and draws nearly all of his support from that demographic.
That dismal showing might have something to do with how 60 percent of black respondents said they hadn't heard enough about Buttigieg to decide if they found him favorable or not. Still, that total puts him around the midpoint for recognizability among all the candidates, meaning things haven't looked this bad for Buttigieg since his followers learned how to dance.
Quinnipiac surveyed 768 likely South Carolina Democratic primary voters via landline and cell phone from Nov. 13–17, with a margin of error of 4.8 percentage points. Kathryn Krawczyk
Virginia lawmakers handed a victory to gun-rights activists Monday, killing a key part of Gov. Ralph Northam's (D) gun-control agenda. The State Senate Judiciary Committee rejected the bill, which would have banned the sale of assault-style weapons and possession of high-capacity magazines, and handed the legislation over to the Virginia Crime Commission to be studied, saying "there were too many questions about the definition of assault weapon," The Washington Post reports.
Surprisingly, four of Northam's fellow Democrats sided with Republicans on the decision. As The Associated Press reports, "Virginia is the current epicenter of the country's heated debate over guns," especially as Democrats last year flipped the General Assembly blue for the first time in more than 20 years. Northam campaigned hard for increased gun control, and this bill was one of eight in a package he rolled out after a shooter killed 12 people in Virginia Beach last year.
Still, opposition to the proposed assault weapon ban has been fierce, with gun-rights activists numbering in the tens of thousands protesting at the state Capitol last month and "Second Amendment sanctuaries" popping up all over the state.
"Moderate Democrats in the state Senate have said for weeks they are uncomfortable passing legislation that would affect so many current gun owners," AP reports. Sen. L. Louise Lucas (D) called the Democrats who sided with Republicans on the bill a "bunch of wimps." Northam's spokeswoman, Alena Yarmosky, said "We will be back next year." Jessica Hullinger
More than 1,100 former Justice Department officials signed a letter released Sunday calling for Attorney General William Barr to resign, Time reports. The open letter came days after Barr's Justice Department overruled prosecutors and reduced a sentencing recommendation for President Trump's longtime confidant Roger Stone, who was convicted of lying to Congress and witness tampering. The DOJ officials who signed the letter said Barr was "doing the president's personal bidding."
"It is unheard of for the department's top leaders to overrule line prosecutors, who are following established policies, in order to give preferential treatment to a close associate of the president, as Attorney General Barr did in the Stone case," wrote the DOJ officials, who served in Democratic and Republican administrations alike. Barr has said Trump did not influence the decision to push for a lighter sentence for Stone. Harold Maass
Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred has faced quite a bit of criticism over his decision to not discipline any players over their role in what was mostly a player-orchestrated, technology-infused sign stealing scheme in 2017, the year they won the World Series. In a wide-ranging interview with ESPN's Karl Ravech about the cheating scandal published Sunday, he explained his reasoning behind that choice.
Manfred said he understands why opposing players and fans would like to see Astros other than former general manager Jeff Lunhow and former manager A.J. Hinch face consequences, but if players were suspended or disciplined in some way MLB would have had to deal with grievances from the Players' Association. Theoretically, in Manfred's view, the MLBPA would have argued Lunhow never fully articulated a 2017 MLB memo on the use of technology during games to the clubhouse.
"So we knew if we had disciplined the players in all likelihood we were going to have grievances and grievances that we were going to lose on the basis that we never properly informed them of the rules," he told Ravech.
Besides, he doesn't think it's fair to say the players were let off the hook because the scrutiny they're facing is harsh enough. "I think if you watch the players, watch their faces when they have to deal with this issue publicly, they have paid a price," he said. "To think they're skipping down the road into spring training, happy, that's just a mischaracterization of where we are." Read more at ESPN and watch Manfred's full 45-minute interview here. Tim O'Donnell