News Clips

Julia Vaughn, executive director of Common Cause Indiana, a government accountability group, said it's "unusual" for a candidate to spend that much money on a new vehicle. "Certainly a state wide candidate, we've seen them use campaign money to support transportation costs, but typically it's a more measured approach — they lease a vehicle, enter into some sort of long term rental," Vaughn told IndyStar. "To buy a vehicle for $43,000 in June when you know you won't be using it for campaign purposes after the first Tuesday in November, is a very curious decision to make." Vaughn added that it "looks like this vehicle could turn into a personal vehicle," but according to Morales' campaign, he plans to sell the car after the election, reverting those funds back to the campaign fund.

Aaron Scherb Common Cause Director, Legislative Affairs: Scherb co-led an umbrella advocacy group made up of 240 organizations to push for passage of the For the People Act, a comprehensive voting-rights package that Republicans opposed.

Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, a watchdog group, said Mr. Adams never should have hesitated in deciding to release his tax returns. “This is not a gotcha question from the press — this is the sort of thing that real people on the street pay attention to,” she said. “The mayor shouldn’t be playing cat and mouse with something that should be an obvious transparency measure.”

Common Cause Florida, FairDistricts Now and five individual voters filed a motion late Tuesday asking 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Allen Winsor to recuse himself from the lawsuit the groups filed March 11, asking the federal court to set the new congressional districts. Winsor, who was appointed to the federal bench by former President Donald Trump, is one of three judges named by Chief Judge William Pryor to a panel to handle the case. Also on the panel is U.S. District Judge M. Casey Rodgers, a George W. Bush appointee, and U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan, a Barack Obama appointee. “Irrespective of his ability to remain evenhanded, Judge Winsor’s extensive advocacy and litigation efforts in Florida’s last redistricting cycle on behalf of the Florida House of Representatives ... raise legitimate questions about his role in deciding Florida’s congressional district plans in this redistricting cycle,’’ the motion states. ... “Judge Winsor’s work as the longstanding Florida House’s legal counsel, and his efforts to defeat those redistricting standards, would make it difficult for an informed lay observer to have confidence in his fair resolution of this matter,’’ they said.

“At the heart of the map that the governor is pushing, is to dismantle a district that has given Black communities in northern Florida the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice. The governor’s actions are an effort to bully the Legislature or the courts into adopting a map that takes away people’s voting rights and is unconstitutional,” said Kathay Feng, the national redistricting director for Common Cause, a nonpartisan pro-democracy watchdog group. “Florida voters overwhelmingly adopted some of the strongest anti-gerrymandering protections in the nation — both against racial and partisan gerrymandering. The governor is ready to shred the Florida Constitution and the will of the people to advance his hyper-partisan, anti-Black ideology,” said Feng.

Voter rights groups are suing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, his secretary of state and lawmakers in a bid to throw out redrawn congressional districts, saying the governor inappropriately influenced the once-a-decade process. The lawsuit was filed Friday in federal court in Tallahassee by Common Cause Florida and Fair Districts Now, two non-partisan groups advocating for good government. The complaint states DeSantis overstepped his executive powers to propose his own maps to favor Republicans. It says his plans violate state and federal laws protecting the redistricting process against partisan gerrymandering. DeSantis’ plans would likely eliminate two Black plurality districts. The lawsuit says his first plan also weakened one Hispanic district, favoring Republican candidates.