| | | |  | | By Ali Bianco | | Presented by |  | | | With help from Eli Okun, Bethany Irvine and Rachel Umansky-Castro Good Saturday morning, and welcome to November. I’m Ali Bianco. Send me your thoughts.
|  | DRIVING THE DAY | | | 
With just days left until Election Day, there are concerns on the ground that Mikie Sherrill’s and Jack Ciattarelli’s campaigns have not done enough to reach Latinos in northern New Jersey. | Matt Rourke/AP | DISPATCH FROM PASSAIC COUNTY: Both candidates in the New Jersey governor’s race have something to prove here in Passaic. It’s ground zero for the inroads President Donald Trump made with Latino voters last year — Trump won this plurality-Latino county last year, the first GOP presidential candidate to do so in decades — and it offers the first big litmus test of whether the Latino shift toward the GOP in 2024 will stick without Trump on the ballot. That is, if Latino voters show up. With just days left until Election Day, there are concerns on the ground that Democrat Mikie Sherrill’s and Republican Jack Ciattarelli’s campaigns have not done enough to reach the hyperlocal and swingy communities of Latinos in this northern pocket of New Jersey. Strategists and local leaders told Playbook they’ve witnessed a lack of enthusiasm in Passaic County, where campaign messaging and activation around Latino voters is falling flat. “It’s not as proactive as they needed to be,” a Democratic strategist with roots in Passaic, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, told Playbook. Around Passaic, where your Playbook author spent the past week, there’s a resounding recognition among Latino leaders and some organizers that this bellwether bloc of voters may not vote this year. Latino voters, like other minority groups, historically have lower levels of engagement in off-year elections. “I’m asking you, please, do not stay home,” Passaic Mayor Hector Lora told a crowd of Sherrill voters at a campaign rally in Paterson on Sunday. “New Jersey is watching Passaic County, and the nation is watching New Jersey,” Christine Tiseo, a local councilmember, said at the same rally. The signs of lagging enthusiasm are evident on the ground. A trip up Main Avenue, which cuts through the city of Passaic heading into Clifton and Paterson, is devoid of campaign postings or early voting signs. The only noticeable sign of life from either campaign during the past week came by way of canvassers from Make the Road New Jersey, who’ve been in the city of Passaic for months campaigning for Sherrill and speaking to thousands of residents to remind them to vote. During their third round of door-knocking Thursday in Passaic, which Trump carried with 52 percent last year, two canvassers noted the lack of visibility for either campaign in the neighborhood. “It’s like they’re literally trying to get people not to vote,” Lori Gonzalez, a volunteer with Make the Road, told Playbook. Gonzalez estimated that of 60 voters her group connects with, about 40 will stay home. Knocking on doors of midsize residential buildings in Passaic on Thursday in the pouring rain, a consistent trend emerged: The decided voters — usually younger, all who have already prepared to vote — said they’re going for Sherrill. But many were unsure, and most of the others said they weren’t planning to hit the polls.
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Learn more at optum.com/stories. | | | | That trend is also playing out across the area: Passaic County’s early voting numbers are lagging behind, with Democratic turnout at 13.4 percent — six points below the state average, with a similar lagging trend for mail-in ballots. It’s the manifestation of anxieties ruminating within Latino strategists and local politicians that the community just hasn’t been rallied or motivated enough to vote. Democrats’ theory of the case is that many voters in Latino strongholds like Passaic County had election fatigue in 2024; the right messaging didn’t reach them, so they chose Trump as a change agent who would help their pocketbooks or they simply stayed home. Winning Passaic back would not only chip away at Republicans’ gains, but also provide Democrats a battle-tested message to take into midterms. Republicans are betting that their success with Latino voters last year wasn’t just a Trump effect, but rather a budding realignment of Latinos and working-class voters nationwide with whom they share values. Latinos are “waking up to the fact that the current policies have failed us, but also, the Democratic Party has been taking them for granted,” Ciattarelli told Playbook on his tour bus after his rally in Clifton last Saturday. The strategy: Ciattarelli’s campaign has spotlighted him at practically every Latino parade in the state, connecting with Latino churches and small-business owners, said Kennith Gonzalez, who leads the campaign’s Hispanic outreach. Sherrill’s campaign has focused on connecting with local Latino leaders and groups, who can channel her message into their communities, campaign vice chair Patricia Campos-Medina said. Despite the millions of dollars in investments in Spanish ads and media outreach, the strategists and local leaders said Sherrill’s campaign has not spent enough time effectively connecting with hyperlocal Latino communities. A Democratic strategist granted anonymity to speak candidly said Sherrill’s running a suburban campaign with Latinos: “It’s like they took the strategy that you apply to the suburbs and try to take it statewide.” That comes amid general concerns in the final weeks about the enthusiasm surrounding Sherrill’s campaign, as POLITICO’s Madison Fernandez and Daniel Han reported. Immigration is also bubbling as a flashpoint. Of the Passaic residents who spoke with Playbook about the election, all named immigration — ICE raids and deportations, more specifically — as their chief concern. The county is around 42 percent Latino, but cities like Passaic are up to 70 percent Latino, immigrant-dominated areas with some of the biggest concentrations of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and Peruvians anywhere in the U.S. Ciattarelli has toed a delicate line by aligning himself with MAGA while softening on some immigration issues, but recent polling suggests that Trump’s sway with Latino voters generally is dropping. “It’s the first meaningful temperature check since the last election,” Carlos Odio, a Latino analyst and pollster with Equis Research, told Playbook. “And it’s fitting that it be here, because this is where you saw the biggest shifts from ’20 to ’24.”
| | | | A message from Optum: Optum Rx supports 62 million Americans with transparent real-time pricing and personalized care, showing up when it matters most. Learn more at optum.com/stories. | | | | Canvassing continues as the final days approach. Ciattarelli’s campaign is knocking doors this weekend in Paterson and nearby Woodbridge, while Make the Road said they’ll keep going for Sherrill in Passaic through Tuesday. Sherrill is headed for a get-out-the-vote rally in Clifton today. But the campaigns will find out if they walked the walk with Latino voters on Tuesday. Sherrill, for her part, is talking the talk, at least. In a high school gymnasium in Paterson last Sunday, surrounded by Latinos volunteering for her campaign, Sherrill made a heartfelt plea to the community. “Necesito su voto, familia,” she told the crowd in Spanish: I need your vote. ZOOMING OUT: In all of the marquee 2025 races, Trump is “all but ensuring defeat for Republicans, and his party is doing next to nothing about it,” POLITICO’s Jonathan Martin writes from Hamilton, New Jersey, this morning. “The mere fact of his election last year handed Democrats a powerful turnout lever in blue-leaning New Jersey and Virginia, but Trump has further undermined GOP hopes in the two states with his conduct and has seemingly abandoned California Republicans.” Ciattarelli and Winsome Earle-Sears in Virginia “have embraced Trump in states he’s never won in three consecutive presidential elections. On its face, such a posture is confounding. But the two Republicans, as with every GOP candidate in this era, fear the president. It’s what Trump has wrought: To even gingerly step away from him is to risk a thunderbolt from the White House that would drive days of news and risk depressing a MAGA base that’s hard enough to turn out when the president isn’t on the ballot.” FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — Investment portfolio: Majority Democrats — a group of mostly center-left Democrats chaired by Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.) — bundled over $710,000 for Sherrill’s campaign and more than $780,000 for Abigail Spanberger’s Virginia gubernatorial campaign.
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➡️ Subscribe to West Wing Playbook | | | | | 9 THINGS THAT STUCK WITH US 1. SNAP BACK: With federal food aid due to expire today because of the shutdown, a federal judge yesterday determined that the Agriculture Department legally must tap emergency funds to cover the shortfall, per NBC. District Court judge John McConnell said USDA must release the money “as soon as possible” and requested an update by Monday at noon. In a separate case, District Court judge Indira Talwani did not yet issue a ruling on whether USDA has to use emergency money for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, but said it probably does. She also asked for a Monday update. But but but: Despite McConnell’s order, Trump posted on Truth Social, “Our Government lawyers do not think we have the legal authority to pay SNAP with certain monies we have available, and now two Courts have issued conflicting opinions on what we can and cannot do. … Therefore, I have instructed our lawyers to ask the Court to clarify how we can legally fund SNAP as soon as possible.” With the future of the program still uncertain, SNAP recipients across the country are fearful and frustrated, NBC’s Aria Bendix and colleagues report. “When you’re talking about SNAP, if you look it’s largely Democrats,” Trump told reporters yesterday. “They’re hurting their own people.” The takeaway: Almost 42 million people are losing their food aid today, POLITICO’s Grace Yarrow and Marcia Brown report. Eyes on the skies: The shutdown’s air-travel pain only continues to expand. Still unpaid, air traffic controllers were in short supply yesterday at roughly half of the country’s top airports — at least 35 facilities in all, per Reuters. Four-fifths of controllers were out in the NYC area. Thousands of flight delays and hundreds of cancellations resulted. And the air traffic controllers union’s leader became the latest figure to call for Democrats to fold and pass a “clean” continuing resolution, per POLITICO’s Sam Ogozalek. The shutdown showdown: A month into the shutdown, the White House is feeling frustrated by the stubbornness of Democrats they thought would give in weeks ago, POLITICO’s Myah Ward and colleagues report. Trump still has no intention to open talks with Democrats before they reopen the government. 2. BATTLE FOR THE BALLOT: “Federal judge rules Trump can’t require citizenship proof on the federal voting form,” by AP’s Ali Swenson and Nicholas Riccardi: “She ruled that the proof-of-citizenship directive is an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers … It says the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which has been considering adding the requirement to the federal voter form, is permanently barred from taking action to do so.” 3. RED-LIGHT REDISTRICT: Virginia Democrats pushed forward a gerrymandering plan to counter Republicans’ redrawn maps in other states, passing it through the state Senate, per the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Dave Ress. Now it’s a step closer to going before voters next year if Dems control Richmond. Meanwhile, Welcome PAC is throwing its support behind an expected comeback bid by former Rep. Ben McAdams in Utah, hoping a new map can put some wind in moderate Dems’ sails, POLITICO’s Natalie Fertig and Samuel Benson report. 4. APPOINTMENT TELEVISION: Trump is going back on CBS. The president will be on “60 Minutes” this weekend, having conducted an interview with Norah O’Donnell yesterday, the network announced. He hasn’t given an interview to the network in five years; this follows his settlement with parent company Paramount, which paid $16 million in a much-criticized decision. It comes as “CBS is in the midst of a deliberate repositioning aimed, at least in part, at gesturing to the center and the right,” Semafor’s Max Tani notes. 5. TOP TALKER: “Nancy Mace Curses, Berates Confused Cops in Airport Meltdown: Police Report,” by Wired’s Jake Lahut: “According to an incident report obtained by WIRED under South Carolina’s Freedom of Information Act, [Rep. Nancy] Mace cursed at police officers, making repeated derogatory comments toward them. … ‘She repeatedly stated we were “Fucking incompetent,” and “this is no way to treat a fucking US Representative,”’ the report states.” Mace’s staff responded, “Our security procedures are based solely on legitimate safety concerns, and any attempt to politicize this reality is both dangerous and reckless.” 6. THE CRACKDOWN: Border Patrol operations intensified in the Chicago area and led to violent confrontations with protesters, the Chicago Tribune’s Jonathan Bullington and colleagues report. “In Albany Park, they fired pepper-spray balls to disperse an angry crowd and arrested two U.S. citizens. In Evanston, one repeatedly pointed his weapon at protesters while another knelt on a man’s back and punched him in the head. They grabbed workers at an apartment complex in Hoffman Estates, landscapers, house painters and laborers in Edison Park, Skokie and Niles.” And an appeals court reaffirmed that the force’s leader, Gregory Bovino, does not have to appear before a judge for daily check-ins, per the Chicago Sun-Times. Coming tomorrow: A federal judge said she’ll issue her next ruling on the deployment of National Guard troops in Portland, Oregon, as her temporary block is due to expire tomorrow, per The Oregonian. Capital punishment: The U.S. Park Police wants to hire some 300 more officers in D.C., roughly doubling its force in the city to help surge federal law enforcement as part of Trump’s crackdown, WaPo’s Olivia George and Hannah Natanson report. Immigration step back: Across the country, ICE’s new policy of mandatory detention for anyone facing possible deportation, even non-criminals, has now faced some 200 adverse rulings from more than 100 federal judges, POLITICO’s Kyle Cheney reports.
| | | 7. MORE PRESS RESTRICTIONS: “White House restricts media access in key area of the West Wing,” by WaPo’s Scott Nover and Andrew Jeong: “The White House said Friday that reporters could no longer access an area in the West Wing known as ‘Upper Press’ that houses the offices of key communications staff members, triggering pushback from White House correspondents, who said the move would hurt the press’s ability to cover the president. The White House said the decision to restrict access to Room 140 was grounded in national security.” 8. THE DRUMBEAT OF WAR: Trump told reporters yesterday that he is not considering launching land strikes in Venezuela, denying both press reports and his own previous comments that this could be the next step in his pressure campaign against President Nicolás Maduro, per Bloomberg. The boat strikes: Top senators from both parties on the Armed Services Committee warned yesterday that the Trump administration has yet to furnish details and legal justifications for its deadly strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats, per Reuters. And despite the major U.S. buildup in the Caribbean near Venezuela, CNN’s Natasha Bertrand and Zachary Cohen report that the Pentagon has now changed its focus to attacking boats in the Pacific because that’s the more common route for cocaine. 9. PAUSE, BABY, PAUSE: “White House removes Atlantic from oil lease consideration after political backlash,” by POLITICO’s Ben Lefebvre: “The Interior Department has removed the federal waters off the Atlantic coast from President Donald Trump’s upcoming offshore drilling plan after Republicans in the region pressed to keep oil and natural gas rigs away from their shores … The five-year leasing plan, aimed at reopening areas long closed to drilling, will still seek to allow rigs off the California coast.” CLICKER — “The nation’s cartoonists on the week in politics,” edited by Matt Wuerker — 18 funnies
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Kevin Necessary- DavidPepper.substack.com | GREAT WEEKEND READS: — “Donald Trump’s Plan to Subvert the Midterms Is Already Under Way,” by The Atlantic’s David Graham: “Our election system is reaching a breaking point.” — “The DEA said it arrested 171 ‘high ranking’ Sinaloa Cartel members. A Spotlight investigation found that’s not true,” by The Boston Globe’s Andrew Ryan, Hanna Krueger and colleagues in Franklin, New Hampshire: “[T]he government misrepresented the stature of its targets in New England at a time when the Trump administration was seeking to justify deadly strikes on alleged cartel boats in the Caribbean Sea.” — “In the Trump Presidency, the Rules Are Vague. That Might Be the Point,” by Matthew Purdy in the NYT Magazine: “The U.S. has long believed that unspecific laws threaten democracy. So why is the administration being so vague?” — “The Therapy That Can Break You,” by N.Y. Mag’s Rachel Corbett: “Internal Family Systems is a widely popular trauma treatment. Some patients say it’s destroyed their lives.” — “Can Anyone Rescue the Trafficked Girls of L.A.’s Figueroa Street?” by Emily Baumgaertner Nunn in the NYT Magazine: “Inside the effort to pull minors from ‘the Blade,’ one of the most notorious sex-trafficking corridors in the United States.” — “How NDAs keep AI data center details hidden from Americans,” by NBC’s Natalie Kainz: “Big Tech companies use secrecy agreements with local governments to keep communities from knowing who is building in their backyards.” — “A narrow Pacific waterway is at the heart of U.S. plans to choke China’s vast navy,” by Reuters’ Karen Lema and colleagues: “The U.S. has deployed troops and anti-ship missiles into the northern Philippines as part of almost continuous, joint war drills throughout the country. One goal is to block the Bashi Channel and deny Chinese warships access to the Pacific Ocean if Beijing launches an attack on Taiwan.”
| | | | POLITICO’s Global Security briefing connects the policies, deals, and industrial shifts shaping the global defense landscape. From Washington to Brussels, we follow who’s funding what, what’s being built, and how power moves across continents. Subscribe now for the free preview. | | | | | | | TALK OF THE TOWN | | JD Vance dressed up as the viral distorted meme of himself for Halloween. Michael Froman, head of the Council on Foreign Relations, dressed up as the reciprocal tariffs. HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) and Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) … Apple’s Tim Cook … Charles Koch … David Bossie of Citizens United … Senate Chaplain Barry Black … Katie Walsh Shields … Vanessa (Morrone) Ambrosini … NYT’s Carlos Lozada … Megan Wilson … Jess Andrews … Business Roundtable’s Liz Dougherty … DOD’s Suzanne Zurn … Grace Bellone … Chloe Taylor of HawkPartners … Bill Deere of the UNRWA … Leslie Pollner … John Stipicevic … CNN’s Marshall Cohen … Alex Byers … former Rep. Bruce Poliquin (R-Maine) … Liz Bowman … Cami Bissen … American Conservation Coalition’s Lucero Cantu … Sarakshi Rai of The Hill … Matthew Palmisano … Prolegis’ Gregg Nunziata and Kendra Morgan … Peter Durkin … Anthony DeAngelo … Frederick Bell … Tyler Hernandez … Clare Steinberg THE SHOWS (Full Sunday show listings here): POLITICO “The Conversation”: Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) … Jane Coaston. FOX “Fox News Sunday”: Speaker Mike Johnson … Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.). Panel: Guy Benson, Francesca Chambers and Juan Williams. CNN “State of the Union”: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent … House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries … Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.). Panel: Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.), Kristin Davison, Bill De Blasio and Ashley Allison. NBC “Meet the Press”: California Gov. Gavin Newsom … Steve Kornacki. Panel: Adrienne Elrod, Matt Gorman, Jonathan Martin and Melanie Zanona. MSNBC “The Weekend: Primetime”: Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) … Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-Va.) … Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) … Jonathan Karl. CBS “Face the Nation”: Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) … Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey … Juan Andrade. ABC “This Week”: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy … Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) … Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) … Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) … Jack Ciattarelli. Panel: Donna Brazile, Chris Christie and Molly Ball. NewsNation “The Hill Sunday”: Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) … Virginia state House Speaker Don Scott … John Reid … Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.). Panel: George Will, Robert Draper and Jessica Taylor. Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. Send Playbookers tips to playbook@politico.com or text us on Signal here. Playbook couldn’t happen without our deputy editor Garrett Ross and Playbook Podcast producer Callan Tansill-Suddath.
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