It’s time for the 2014 midterm elections. Political Junkie Ken Rudin takes a look at some of the more competitive races around the nation.
We start off with Republican Vin Weber and Democrat Anna Greenberg laying out what’s at stake on November 4th, and what it might mean for the final two years of the Obama presidency.
And then we go into the specific races. Greg Giroux of Bloomberg Politics helps walk us through the key Senate battles at stake on Tuesday, aided by on-the-scene reports by Jeremy Alford of LaPolitics.com in Louisiana, Kathie Obradovich of the Des Moines Register on Iowa, and Steve Kraske of KCUR on Kansas.
After that, we head to the three dozen gubernatorial races on the ballot, shepherded by Reid Wilson of the Washington Post. And we head out to Florida, to hear from Adam Smith of the Tampa Bay Times; Illinois, with Amanda Vinicky of WUIS; and Texas, with Wayne Slater of the Dallas Morning News.
And we go back 50 years, to a critical moment in the conservative movement. It was the speech given in Los Angeles, by an actor named Ronald Reagan, on behalf of the presidential candidacy of Sen. Barry Goldwater. But Reagan spoke on issues near and dear to conservatives, from intrusive governments to fighting communism to protecting liberties. The speech didn’t elect Goldwater that year — he got routed by President Lyndon Johnson — but it alerted voters about Reagan, who two years later was elected governor of California in a landslide and by 1980, he unseated Jimmy Carter, the president of the United States.
Join us for a preview of the 2014 midterm elections! Sunday, November 2 at 7:00 p.m. on WRVO Public Media.