But i think there that was clearly the question that was asked and when they came back after the break he went in a completely different direction. I surmised thats what happened in the moment. Thats why you need pros in the courtroom watching these things for us to explain it to dopes like me. Barbara mcquade, former u. S. Attorney in meche mitch. Thank you so much, barb. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. I even got to ride in an elevator with brandon van grek. Did you really in the Counterespionage Prosecutor guy . I did. Did you say hi to him . I did. Its been great fun. I love your life. Thanks, barb. That does it for us tonight. We will see you again tomorrow. May we all someday have the opportunity to ride in an elevator with a veteran Counterespionage Prosecutor when were in a position to know who that is. Imagine the thrill. Now its time for The Last Word with lawrence odonnell. Good evening, lawrence. Good evening, rachel. And imagine the thrill for Rachel Maddow viewers who finally have you back. I have a message from your fans, rachel, from coast to coast, from massachusetts to california. Please dont ever take a
Analysis and discussion of the days top stories and compelling issues from Lawrence ODonnell. Evolve as we push through this part of the testimony for sure. And theres going to be a lot more. And we have to get straight from you to Steve Kornacki with about one second in between because its too close to call, as you know. Right on. Thanks, man. Thanks, rachel. It is too close to call in ohios 12th Congressional District. And that means joining us now with the latest on the Ohio 12th Congressional Race is Steve Kornacki. Steve, where are we . Almost everything is in, lawrence. Right now we are almost entirely down to one county, basically its this. Danny oconnor, the democrat, just in the last two minutes before i came on here, he took the lead in the overall count. You can do the math there at home. 201 votes is the lead for Danny Oconnor. Now, thats the good news for democrats. The bad news for democrats is he did it by basically exhausting what was left in Franklin County. Franklin county, it looks tiny on your screen but its a third, at least a third of the vote thats going to be cast tonight in this district. This is densely populated columbus. Very near columbus suburbs right here. And Danny Oconnors been
were worse. There were certainly some that were worse. I think balderson oh, wlaushs, let me just do the math right here. We just got a burst. We went from 66 to 82. About half the outstanding vote came in as i was talking. It took it to about 3,900 votes districtwide. Countywide. And that does put balderson back in the league by. 4 of a Percentage Point. That is a margin, 677 741. 741 votes is the margin right now. 741 votes is baldersons lead. 17 of the vote still to be counted in Delaware County. And just making sure we didnt get any updates here. Still a sliver here in Franklin County. Im curious to see what they are. And then look. Theres two things to keep in mind here. And i want to just get the countywide up here. Number one, state law in ohio, if you are within. 5 of a point
thats a recount. Its. 4 right now. Thats one thing to keep in mind. The other is we say this when theyre this close at the end of the night. Provisional ballots. Were trying to dig up some statistics here. We do think that democrats are likely to do better than the republicans in the provisional ballots. About 2 . If you looked in 2016, about 2 of the countys totals here ended up being provisional ballot. So there is probably a couple thousand that might be floating around there. We would expect the democrats to do a little better. That could be a source there for oconnor. Its really got to be in the hundreds of votes for that to kick in. It might be, though. Weve got to see what comes in here in Delaware County and whats remaining if they happen to be good precincts for oconnor, he can keep that margin where it is right now, squeeze a little bit more out of here. Hed be within that. 5 and wed be talking provisionals. Obviously, if youre a republican youre feeling better now than if youre a democrat about where this is going to land. But this is still this is still a little suspense here, lawrence. Steve, what is that name at the bottom of the ballot thats pulling 1 of that vote, and who does that affect . Thats manchik. Thats the Green Party Candidate. You can theorize all you want. You would certainly say the Green Party Candidate on the left, the sort of obvious thing youd say is the Green Party Candidate more likely to draw votes from a democrat than a republican. You could also make the case, know, that hey, are there republicans out there, they dont like donald trump, they dont like the Republican Party of donald trump and they dont want to vote democratic, do they just use the other name thats on the ballot. But obviously when you get this close that becomes the question. 1,102 votes. It is less than 1,102 votes that are separating Danny Oconnor and Troy Balderson. Zplt green party once again possibly making a difference in the outcome of democrat versus republican. Its starting to look that way. Steve, thank you very much. Were going to come back to you as this develops. Were joined by amanda wurtz. Democratic strategist and Vice President of the Remington Road Group and a Political Consulting group based in ohio. David jolly, a former republican congressman from florida. November. And democrats have a lot of reason to be optimistic. Cornell belcher, what are you seeing in the Ohio 12th Tonight and what do you think it means to democrats if the Green Party Candidate in effect snatches away a victory tonight for democrats . I want to underline whats just been said here. Look, there are 60plus seats that are more competitive than this one. And if im sitting at the Republican Congressional Campaign committee, ive got to hit the panic button. Right . This is not a seat that should in fact be close at all. This is not a seat that has even been competitive. But i think youre seeing the pattern that were seeing in other places. And i think governor kasich, republican governor kasich, hit on this. Donald trump can fire up the base of the Republican Party. But you need moderate republicans, especially in those suburban, sort of upscale suburban seats. You have a lot of moderate women, collegeeducated women. And you see the pattern of this, sort of these especially women, especially collegeeducated women breaking hard away from the Republican Party. Even hard grert Republican Party this year than we saw in 2006 which puts a lot of districts like this, makes a lot of districts like this competitive. And if you carry that trend over where you see these upwardly mobile suburban districts breaking away from republicans at this clip its kind of time to hit the panic button and as a republican you have to choose, do i want to save the Republican Party or do i want to stick closely with donald trump, right . Youre going to have to choose between the two because this is a Panic Button Sort of moment. Lets go back to the numbers. Were going to go back to the numbers with Steve Kornacki. Its changing by the minute. Steve, what do we have now . Yeah. So i can tell you what the situation is. First of all, just again, the margin were looking at is 743 votes right now for balderson. Youll note it still says too close to call. Why does it say too close to call . Look, you get into these situations when theyre this close and, you know, nine times out of ten the party that ends up losing starts saying
provisional ballots, provisional ballots, provisional ballots. But this is so close right now and what we know about provisional ballots and were still learning a little about it suggests we need to understand how many provisional ballots there are in this district because we expect them to break more for the democrat than for the republican. Its 743. There are still some precincts, not many at all, but there are still some precincts in Franklin County where oconnors been rung up the score. So with whatever is left there you would expect him to make a small but eat into that 743. What else is left . Only one thing in tonights vote. 18 of the vote still to come in delaware. The way things are going that would be padded a little bit for balderson. You would expect that. You would expect that. And then the question then is provisional ballots. What we have is the counties are starting to tell us. Thats why our Decision Desk is not changing this from too close to call because we are finding out what is out there and we know whats happened in the past. We have a sense of it. The counties are telling us one by one how many provisional
ballots they have. Weve only got two. Its not very useful right now because theyre very small numbers. These are very small places. Morrow is there are 68 provisional ballots here. But morrow is rural. The entire population of this county, population is 34,000. But there are 68 provisional ballots there. Muskingham you can come close to doubling it again. Small but this is baldersons neck of the woods. 117. But what we want to know really this is the heart of the district pb these three counties account for 80plus percent of the population. In Franklin County, in Delaware County, in loink county, how many were there. If you look at the math for these things in the past they break in the congressional race heres what i mean. The last time you had a congressional race where we could track these things a little bit the republican candidate did 17 points worse on the provisional ballots than he did in the overall vote. So there was a pretty big dropoff there. Thats why were looking at it this way. The other thing i said is again,
if youre within half a point, 0. 5 , there is a state law on the books that says thats, it youre going to a recount, were not calling a winner, we cant call a winner. Theyre within that right now. Theyre signature at 0. 4. Thanks, steve. Well come back to you as you have more developments there. Amanda wurst, you were about to Say Something as we went to steve. Go ahead. In terms of republicans hitting the payne button, these two have to match each other again in november. And we have all five statewide Executive Offices on the ballot as well as a u. S. Senate race. And each one of those candidates going to have to look at this race and say how do i thread that very delicate needle, by embracing president trump, thats critical to securing my base, and incorporating grofsh john kasich, whos growing to help me with moderates and swing voters. Troy balderson has frankly faltered every time trying to thread that needle. Amanda, just to go back to
whats going to happen in ohio, this is a Special Election. Special elections for congressional seats dont carry you any further than the end of that particular congress. So this seat is going to be up again in november. Do you expect the same two candidates to run . Do you expert loser tonight to run for this seat in november . So we had a very unique process in that the primary for both the special and the general took place in may. These two absolutely will have a rematch in november. And Troy Balderson has been greatly supported by the republican establishment apparatus. Millions of dollars have been spent to support his candidacy. Thats frankly just not going to be an option as the map expands and theres more fires to put out for National Republicans. David, thats a very important point that amanda makes, is that the thing about safe seats is you that dont have to spend money on them and the party counts on not spending money on safe seats so that they can spend their money on the
contested seats on the difficult pickups. If they have to spend money, as they did in this campaign, the Special Election, if they spend this kind of money again, around ohio 12th in november. To amandas point, theres not going to be the resources for it. I was the productive a Special Election, and god bless these two candidates but particularly their supporters who are probably arriving at the finish line exhausted and put their Heart And Soul into it. Novembers going to be very different. Its not going to have the national focus. Nor is it going to have the resources. Whats going on at the National RepublicanCongressional Committee in real time right now is they are looking at their current incumbents and already having conversations about which ones theyre going to write off, which ones they know are going to lose in november and then they shift resources away from those resources to the races they have to save. Were in an environment going into november where youre wondering where the cut line is. Is it incumbent republicans favored by three or four or five . How high does the water in the
blue wave actually reach . Thats what theyre trying to assess right now. And at some point very soon three months out now the National Republicans are going to begin to cut their losses, Move Resources away from certain races. This may simply be one of them that they cant continue to spend on a race that should not be competitive. Joining our analysis now is Democratic NationalCommittee Chairman tom perez. Chairman perez, what are you seeing in Ohio 12th Tonight . Its amazing, lawrence, that were having this conversation. As youve pointed out, 35 years or so since a democrat has won this seat. Its gerrymandered beyond all get out by john boehner on behalf of one of his friends in congress. And here we are in a dead heat. And whoever wins theres going to be a rematch in 91 days. And what excited me, and i was out in ohio last week, what excited me was the unity of purpose on the democratic side. Danny oconnor had six opponents in the primaryll. And after that primary everybody
came together. Everybody was united. The local indivisible chapter supported one of his opponents and they were all in. The swing left. The labor movement. The d triple c. The dnc. The Ohio Democratic party. Everybody together. And that is why we got so close. And well see what happens here. If ever we need yet another reminder of the importance of getting out there and voting, here we are in another nailbiter. Thats why its so important for people to exercise their right to vote. And frankly, thats why republicans like the republican Secretary Of State in ohio engage in such constant shenanigans to make it harder for people to vote. Were going to have to go right back to Steve Kornacki with the latest numbers. Yeah, lawrence, we just got a bunch of them. Im processing it with you. Baldersons lead has expanded in basically all get this. This is Delaware County. So basically awful Delaware County there is still some left but almost all of its in. Balderson you can see hes expanded his lead. This has been trump got 55. Hes sitting at 54. 96 of the vote is in in Delaware County. What thats done districtwide is its put him up by 1,680 votes. The lead for oconnor is 1,685. That is 0. 8 . What is sorry, i just spilled some water. What is left here is a very tiny sliver of flaink, a scattering small scattering of precincts in delaware, but also this. Im not kiding when i say absentees and provisionals. Were tracking these. What we have right now that we know of, and we know of the counts for everything outside of the two major the two biggest counties here. Delaware and franklin account for 60 of the population. We dont have any counts on whats still to be counted there in terms of absentee and provisional. Outside of that, though, we are sitting at 3,730. This is in 40 of the district populationwise. 3,730. What are they . About 1,000 of them are provisional ballots. And we do expect on the whole districtwide those to break democratic. The other 2,730 are absentee. A very, very, very small portion of that we expect to be military ballots. Those we assume would break republican. This is the question. Those other Absentee Ballots, are they early votes, are they votes a huge church, of votes in this district were cast early and oconnor won the early vote by a very large margin. Folks who were watching earlier saw this as it played out. He won the early vote very big. 3,730 in the rural part of the district. When you add whatever we get out of franklin and delaware y