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Inside Politics

Dead Heat Race in Michigan Sees Second Highest Spending; Harris Launches New Targeted Ads in Two Michigan Cities; Cruz and Allred Face Off in Fiery Texas Senate Debate; Judge Pauses Rule Requiring Georgia to Hand-count Ballots; Former President Jimmy Carter Votes by Mail. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired October 16, 2024 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[12:32:43]

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT AND ANCHOR OF 'INSIDE POLITICS': If you want to know which states the candidates are most focused on, follow the money. Over the past two weeks, Pennsylvania is number one when it comes to ad spending. Number two is Michigan. Democratic groups have a narrow spending lead there, $21 million versus 15 million for Republicans. Now, another way to know which states matter most is to follow John King's travels and today, he is in Detroit. John, what are you hearing from Michiganders today there, 20 days out?

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's fascinating, Dana. We were just driving through Macomb County and Oakland County, two of the suburbs just north of Wayne County, which is where I am, in Detroit. And you see some houses where there's a Harris sign on the lawn and the next house has a Trump sign. [TECHNICAL DIFFICULTY] 2016 and 2020, and you see a lot of Trump signs there. So you can tell just from looking around, before you talk to anybody, that this is really close.

And then you start talking to people and everybody gets the sense that this is yet again, like 2016 and 2020, going to be a photo finish. I have a little treat for you on the road. We've never done this before, but here we are on the Detroit riverfront. I just want to show you, we're in Wayne County, right? That is Detroit. That is absolute key for Kamala Harris. Why did she come here to do 'Charlamagne tha God', because she needs to turn out the African American vote here in Wayne County.

But then you go from there into the suburbs and that's the complicated math. That's why we're on the road, trying to figure out can she match the Biden Coalition? Can she overperform where Hillary Clinton was in 2016? Will Donald Trump in his third time on the ballot. He's won in one in Michigan, won it in 2016, lost it in 2020. This is the tiebreaker.

BASH: OK, that's so cool. So you have the wall, but you have it in your hand. That's pretty awesome. OK, hold that thought because I want to play -- KING: I never have to come home.

(LAUGH)

BASH: OK, well, you do, but that's a whole different conversation.

(LAUGH)

BASH: I want to -- I want to play for you some of what voters there are seeing on their television screens, in the ads.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are the ones that sacrificed to allow these billionaires to make their billions. And Trump said he wanted to send our jobs out of Michigan for a lower paying wage, so we get desperate and beg for our jobs back. Donald Trump believes that my family doesn't deserve a livable wage. Kamala Harris has a history of fighting for the American worker.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:35:00]

BASH: So, those ads are targeting two key cities, Flint and Pontiac. What does that tell you and how does that jive with what you're hearing on the ground?

KING: So, let's walk through, first, the big picture. You see this blue, right? I'm circling all that blue to Detroit and then north and west out. You look at all that red on the Michigan map, right? Trump runs very strong in the rural areas. That's a surprise to nobody. That has been his building block since 2016. So you just mentioned Flint, right? Flint is in Genesee County, right there. Genesee County is absolutely key for Joe Biden. He got -- for Kamala Harris.

Now, Joe Biden got 54 percent there last time. He outperformed Hillary Clinton by just a little bit, by about two points. She lost; he won. Then you come down. Pontiac is in Oakland County. When I started doing this, it was red. It was a Republican suburb, but it is the blue suburb now. That again, Joe Biden won Pontiac -- look at Oakland, he won Oakland County with more than 56 percent of the vote, again, about two points better than Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton lost; Joe Biden won. This is a state and a race nationally that's going to be one on the margin.

So when you see these ads targeting different places, they're almost always running in places now where Harris is trying to match or exceed the Biden Coalition. Let's say, for example, that she does lose some black men in Wayne County. Can she make it up in the suburbs like Oakland County? That's what this is about. At the end of the campaign, everybody is trying to do the math within the narrow margins.

BASH: Real quick, has anything surprised you that you've heard on this trip there? KING: It's really interesting, the split among union members. We were here a couple weeks ago talking to young students, right? The Israel- Gaza conflict has animated them. Harris has made up some progress from where Biden was. She still hasn't made up enough, so she'd have to do some math elsewhere. That's what I'm trying to figure out, where is she losing and then where can she make it up? Right? And the same for Trump. Where is he losing? Where can he make it up?

In the union halls now, you hear a lot of people saying, Stellantis, which owns Chrysler and Jeep, just laid off about a thousand workers here. Kamala Harris has nothing to do with that. That's not good for her. You have workers going out -- blue collar workers going out saying, what just happened to my job? So we're always talking about October surprises Sometimes there's a big national dynamic. When a car company lays off 1,100 people and they're a little grumpy, that's one of the things. I try to do the math out here, but the union workers are interesting.

Joe Biden got 56 percent of union households in 2020 here. Can Kamala Harris match that or come really close? It's critical. And Donald Trump has, you see it, you feel it and you hear it. He's made inroads with those blue collar union auto workers, some pipeline workers around here. So, we're in a fight to the end. 20 interesting days ahead to say the least.

BASH: To say the least. Thank you. Thanks for the world premiere of the -- what are you calling it? The map on the road?

(LAUGH)

KING: This is the mini magic.

BASH: Mini magic, OK, there you go.

(LAUGH)

BASH: Perfect. See you soon, back here.

(LAUGH)

KING: All right (ph), maybe.

BASH: Coming up with Texas Senate showdown, Senator Ted Cruz and Congressman Colin Allred take the stage in an intense debate.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TED CRUZ, (R-TX): Four times. He has come out for men playing in women's sports.

REP. COLIN ALLRED, (D-TX) SENATE NOMINEE: When Ted Cruz starts talking about team sports, you got to watch out, because the only position he ever played was left out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Is this the year Democrats win statewide again? We'll talk Texas next.

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[12:42:45]

BASH: It was spirited but also substantive as the two men vying for a Texas Senate seat took the stage in their first and only debate. Senator Ted Cruz sparred with his Democratic challenger, Congressman Colin Allred on everything from abortion to transgender rights to the border.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CRUZ: Colin Allred is Kamala Harris. Their records are the same. I've served with both of them. They voted in favor of open borders over and over and over again.

ALLRED: What he wants you thinking about is kids in bathrooms, so you're not thinking about women in hospitals.

CRUZ: Congressman Allred was an NFL linebacker. It is not fair for a man to compete against women.

ALLRED: You can't be for the mob on January 6th and for the officers, you can't. And it's not funny, because you're a threat to democracy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: With less than three weeks to go, that race is close. A Marist poll out this week has Cruz just narrowly ahead among likely voters, 51 to 46, just outside the margin of error.

Our brilliant panel is back. And Nia, you wrote about this race.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yeah.

BASH: And more broadly about the Senate, but specifically about this race, arguing that this was -- this is likely more competitive than people think. Or you said, could this be the year where Democrats don't have their hearts broken over and over? You wrote, if anyone can beat Cruz and start to turn Texas blue, it's Allred, a confident orator and former football star in a football crazy state, who has shown his political mettle by beating an incumbent Republican in a swing district.

HENDERSON: Yeah. And of course, that was Pete Sessions in 2018. He's a really compelling guy with a compelling story. And he stands on past investments in Texas, right? This battleground Texas, millions of dollars spent there. And then Beto O'Rourke, right? He comes after Beto O'Rourke, ran in two different cycles, first for Senate and then for governor. And they're also doing something different this time, which is they have a basically a statewide race, right? So it isn't just Colin Allred on his own, it's all of the Democrats, up and down the ticket.

He has to distance himself from sort of the National Democratic Party, from Biden's policies on immigration in particular, and he started doing that back in January. But listen, I do think it'll probably end up being Ted Cruz.

[12:45:00]

But at some point, Democrats have to play successfully in a state like Texas and in a state like Florida, particularly if they're going to lose states like West Virginia, the Montana race looks like it might be a goner. So they've got to learn to play in these states that have their base there, right?

BASH: Yeah.

HENDERSON: You think about Texas, black voters, Africa -- Latino voters as well.

BASH: And the changing demographic beyond that.

HENDERSON: Exactly.

BASH: People moving to Texas who are --

HENDERSON: Yeah.

BASH: -- maybe less conservative.

HENDERSON: Exactly.

BASH: And of course, Texas has one of the strictest abortion bans anywhere in the country. So you would think that if people are going to come out, particularly women, maybe vote for him or vote for Beto (ph), vote at all (ph) in a way that they hadn't before, it could be in a place like Texas.

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL, CO-AUTHOR, THE WASHINGTON POST EARLY BRIEF: Yeah. Texas is always a place that just breaks Democrats' hearts, right? Like democratic activists always want Democrats to win Texas. And it's so close, like when Beto ran a few years ago. But talking to Republicans and Democrats and they both admit that the race is extremely close and out of the long-shot Senate races, that this is probably the closest of them. And -- oh, what I was going to say, excuse me, was that Colin Allred is also doing extremely well. He outraced Ted Cruz just in the latest FEC filings posted last night, $13 million to $30 million. So he's raising a ton of money, so he has the money to do it. But the -- if Ted Cruz heads to Cancun in the next three weeks --

(LAUGH)

CALDWELL: -- people think he could absolutely lose, but it's still going to be very difficult.

BASH: I don't see that happening.

CALDWELL: No. BASH: I don't see any -- I don't see any images of him wheeling his own little suitcase in the airport. We heard a little bit about, in that sort of mash-up about the trans issue. It's also running on the air in ads like gangbusters. We've talked about it more broadly being something that Donald Trump has really seized on. He thinks it helps with suburban voters, with African American voters, other sort of more conservative voters of color. How do you think this is playing? Because Colin Allred has pushed back on it.

HANS NICHOLS, POLITICAL REPORTER, AXIOS: Yeah.

BASH: He went straight to camera.

NICHOLS: That's the -- that's the point I was going to make, is it's always interesting to look at a candidate's reaction when they're hit and whether or not they ignore it or whether or not they address it head on. And this one seems serious enough that Colin Allred felt compelled to address it head on, and as you said, looked directly into the camera and tried to refute the argument, which tells you that he thinks it might be stinging in exacting a bit of price.

We saw something similar back to Michigan where John King is with the Elissa Slotkin response on electric vehicles, where she's getting hit on electric vehicles and she goes out and says directly to camera, they're going to lie about my stance on electric vehicles. That usually tells you when you get a response like that, that the ad is effective. Let's leave aside how fair, just it is. But it usually tells you it is effective and it is exacting a price.

BASH: Such a good point. Thank you guys. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with more "Inside Politics."

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[12:52:15]

BASH: A big court ruling yesterday in Georgia about how the state's votes will be counted. A state judge paused a controversial new rule from the Georgia Election Board, which is controlled by Trump allies. That rule would require hand counting all ballots. CNN's Sara Murray is following this decision. Explain the significance.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the significance is that this was a rule that was going to be coming into place in late October and the judge basically said, look, this is too much, too late. He said this would cause administrative chaos, and he is putting it on pause while it's being litigated on a number of fronts, including as you pointed out in a hearing today. You also pointed out there's no training in place, there's no protocols on how to implement this. So for now, this seems paused. It may be appealed, but we are just getting so close to actual election day that it's hard to imagine you could move forward with something like this, again, without any training, without any rules in place around It.

BASH: So close to election day, and they're voting right now in election, not counting them, but actually voting. I want to show you an interesting Marist poll about when Americans will vote. 56 percent of voters who plan to vote in person on election day say they will vote for Trump. On the other hand, 75 percent of people who plan to vote by mail support Harris. That's a difference that could matter while we are all watching the returns come in.

MURRAY: Yeah, I think the biggest thing for people to keep in mind is what you see when you go to bed, the way a certain state is trending may be different than what you see when you wake up in the morning, and that does not mean that the machines are flipping votes. It does not mean that there is stealing of the election happening. It does not mean there's widespread voter fraud. It just means that these states are still counting and they do it in different ways. And in some states, the counties do it in different ways in terms of if they start processing mail ballots and absentee ballots first, if they start processing day of ballots first.

So in Arizona, officials have already warned that right after the polls close, it's going to look bad for Republicans because they're going to process these early votes first, and those are going to be more Democratic. And as the night goes on, it may start looking better for Republicans. In a state like Pennsylvania, we saw last time around, the whole Red mirage. That was the big thing, people went to bed thinking Trump was winning the state, and when they woke up, Biden was actually the one who was leading. And this could happen again in Pennsylvania or it could look totally different.

BASH: And it has nothing to do with anything other than how they count the votes.

MURRAY: Just how they count the votes. They're going to get through as much of that early vote as they can and report it when the polls close, then they're going to deal with the day of vote. If we have a ton of mail-in ballots again in Pennsylvania, we may see another batch of blue votes, or we may not. It's just about how they count and report the results. Again, no big fraud, no big stealing.

BASH: Thank you so much for all of your important reporting on this, which we'll continue. Also want to say that the two of us are wearing pink like so many of our colleagues for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Thank you.

[12:55:00]

MURRAY: Thanks, Dana.

BASH: Before we go, the oldest living president has cast his vote. Former President Jimmy Carter voted early and by mail today in his native Georgia, a spokesman says, 15 days after celebrating his 100th birthday. His grandson shared earlier this year that Carter was "Only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris." I don't know, at this point, we'll probably see him voting in 2028 and beyond. Let's hope.

Thank you so much for joining "Inside Politics." "CNN News Central" starts after the break.

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