Election Day dawned Tuesday (Nov. 8) with former TV personalities in the political spotlight.
The highest-profile of those, former reality TV figure and ex-President Donald Trump, was hinting Monday at a big announcement coming Tuesday evening, likely that he would be running again in 2024.
It was unclear what effect, if any, the hinting at that announcement would have on Republican races in the midterms beyond taking some of the spotlight away from them and putting it on Trump, who clearly revels in the attention.
Meanwhile, the bid of one of the Republican candidates Trump has endorsed, doctor and syndicated TV talk show personality Mehmet Oz, for the open Senate seat against Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a recovering stroke victim, which could well determine which party gets control of the Senate. Given that Republicans appear to be pretty much of a lock to regain the House, that race could help determine whether Republicans take both House and Senate.
Political handicapping site FiveThirtyEight gives Oz a slight edge (a 57 in 100 chance) to defeat Fetterman given that while it is essentially a dead heat, he has been picking up momentum in recent weeks, erasing what had been a three-point lead two weeks ago.
If Republicans win the House as expected, TV will likely continue to be a political player as they have vowed to hold their own high-profile oversight hearings after Democrats held televised hearings on Trump's impeachments and the January 6 Capitol insurrection.
In Arizona, the governor’s race has drawn national attention for the rise of former TV anchor Kari Lake, a big Trump supporter. who is leading Democrat Katie Hobbs by a couple of percentage points in an average of over a dozen polls.
While she was a successful TV anchor for over two decades at Fox's KSAZ Phoenix — she only quit in March of last year — the outspoken Lake has gained attention for repudiating the media in which she worked for two decades.
Lake was on leave from KSAZ and made a video explaining her exit. She said the media needed a wider range of viewpoints and she no longer felt proud as a member of the media. She thanked the station even as she suggested she was being asked to report news that was not “fully truthful” or only told “part of the story.”
“The fake news media is going down,” she said at a recent campaign event. “Nobody is listening to you anymore,” she said, adding that the media was “pushing lies and propaganda” and “losing all its power.” ▪️
