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Republican officials on Long Island kicked it Old School last week, as GOP supporters showed up at polling places on Election Day to cast their ballots even as record numbers of Democrats in Nassau and Suffolk relied on absentee voting.

Jesse Garcia, Suffolk's GOP chairman, and Joseph Cairo, head of Nassau's Republican Party, are old hands at getting out the vote.

Cairo did so for years, operating out of a strip mall storefront as he marshaled a cadre of runners to go here, go there or go anywhere to encourage the faithful to make their way to the polls.

Garcia also dispatched his troops as town Republican chairman in Brookhaven, before becoming the party's county leader.

Recently, both chairmen acknowledged the challenges of campaigning, fundraising and pulling out the vote during the coronavirus pandemic.

But neither ever lost confidence.

Garcia said he intended to bring Suffolk home for President Donald Trump, who won the county in 2016.

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"That's the plan," he said.

And, according to early unofficial results, that plan, thusfar at least, his plan is working.

Trump got a total of 333,100 votes on the Republican and Conservative Party lines, while Biden logged 258,007 votes on the Democratic and Working Families Party lines.

Margins are much narrower in Nassau, where Trump got 286,633 votes on the Republican and Conservative lines. Biden received 280,115 votes on the Democratic and Working Families lines.

There also are tens of thousands of absentee ballots yet to be counted.

In 2016, Nassau went for Democrat Hillary Clinton.

The GOP appears to have easily held on to U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin's seat in the 1st Congressional District, which extends roughly from Smithtown to the East End. And Republican Andrew Garbarino looks to have beaten Democratic opponent Jackie Gordon in the 2nd, which is split between Nassau and Suffolk.

But while the federal contests drew considerable attention, the GOP, in both counties, also were in a New York State of mind.

The goal was to take out as many freshmen Democratic state senators from Nassau and Suffolk as they could in a region that, not terribly long ago, had been home to the Long Island Nine of Republican state senators who, for decades, brought home the bacon for the region.

Until 2015, that group was unrivaled in channeling millions of dollars to Long Island's school districts, while also having a heavy hand in determining state policy, from clean water to homeland security issues, until the number of Democrats began to increase in the state Legislature.

Two years ago, Democrats won a clear Senate majority, as Democrats won six of Long Island's nine seats.

Cairo and Garcia echoing the state GOP party this year campaigned against those Democrats by painting them as too liberal for Long Island, and too beholden to New York City Democrats, whose interests, according to the party chiefs, do not align with those of Long Islanders.

Richard Schaffer, Suffolk's Democratic chairman, is well aware of the challenges of campaigning as a Democrat in Suffolk.

"It's like campaigning in a purple state," Schaffer said.

Things have changed in Nassau as well.

"It's not like years ago, when everybody was a Republican," said Cairo, whose tenure with the party stretches back to the 1970s, when Nassau's GOP was considered one of the nation's most powerful political machines.

Which is why messaging during campaigns matters.

"We go out with the goal of persuading every voter we can," said Jay Jacobs, who chairs both Nassau's and New York State's Democratic Party organizations.

Even more important, the party chairmen agree, is getting out the vote.

On Long Island, as in the nation, much of that came via absentee, for Democrats.

"We wanted to run up and bank as many votes as we could," Jacobs said,

On Long Island, as in the nation, much of that came in person, and on Election Day, for Republicans.

"Republicans like Election Day," Garcia said. "Republicans like to hold that ballot, and feed it into the machine."

Joye Brown has been a columnist for Newsday since 2006. She joined the newspaper in 1983 and has worked as a reporter, an editor, newsroom administrator and editorial writer.

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Brown: Long Island Republicans kicked it Old School on Election Day - Newsday

Democrats are gaining one seat on the Republican-dominated State Board of Education, while Republicans held on in the other races that Democrats had hoped to flip in the 2020 general election.

Democrat Rebecca Bell-Metereau, a Texas State University professor, has defeated Republican Lani Popp, a Northside Independent School District speech pathologist, in District 5, according to Decision Desk HQ. Incumbent Ken Mercer, a Republican who held the seat for 14 years, decided not to run for reelection in the district, which picks up communities along the Interstate 35 corridor between San Antonio and Austin and stretches into the Hill Country.

Republicans kept control of two other seats that Texas Democrats wanted to flip this year.

GOP incumbent Tom Maynard defeated Democrat Marsha Burnett-Webster, a retired teacher and college administrator, according to results from Decision Desk HQ. They competed for the District 10 seat, which runs northeast of Austin and includes suburban and more rural communities.

Meanwhile, Republican Will Hickman, an intellectual property lawyer, defeated Democrat Michelle Palmer, an Aldine ISD history teacher, according to Decision Desk HQ. They ran for the District 6 seat vacated by Donna Bahorich, a Houston Republican and former board chair. The district stretches from West Houston to the northwestern edge of Harris County.

The board determines what millions of Texas public school students learn in classrooms and is responsible for adopting textbooks, changing curriculum standards and approving new charter school operators. In past years, board meetings have been a lightning rod for national attention due to dramatic debates about racist ethnic studies textbook proposals, abstinence-focused sex education standards and creationist biology standards.

Currently, the 15-member education board seats 10 Republicans and five Democrats with eight seats in play this year.

Experts say the boards political dynamic will still remain conservative after this election, though less radical than in decades past. The board continues to be a problem-solving board and doesnt split toward ideological lines like it did toward the 90s or the first decade of this century, said David Anderson, an education lobbyist at HillCo Partners who has watched the board for years. This has been the best elected board we have had in 45 years.

Of the eight seats in play this year, four Republican incumbents stepped down and four incumbents ran for reelection, including three Republicans and one Democrat. Incumbents Keven Ellis and Sue Melton-Malone beat their challengers to keep their seats, according to results from Decision Desk HQ. Georgina Prez, a Democratic incumbent, also beat her opponent in District 1, according to Decision Desk HQ.

Republican Audrey Young, a Nacogdoches ISD administrator, had no Democratic challenger in District 8 and will replace fellow Republican Barbara Cargill, who stepped down.

According to Decision Desk HQ, Republican Jay Johnson, a retired dentist and former Pampa ISD board member, defeated Democrat John Betancourt, a former Amarillo ISD board member, in District 15, where Republican Marty Rowley stepped down.

The District 5 race brought unwanted attention to the board earlier this year when conspiracy theorist Robert Morrow almost beat Popp in the Republican primary. Every member of the board rallied against Morrow, who has a long history of racist and sexist comments, and he lost the runoff.

Mercer, the outgoing incumbent whose conservative record has included arguments for teaching abstinence as the main form of contraception in health lessons, endorsed Popp, who has been an educator for almost three decades. Popp also picked up the support of Texas Values, a conservative statewide advocacy group, which recently urged the board to adopt abstinence-focused sex education.

Bell-Metereau unsuccessfully ran against Mercer in 2010, 2012 and 2016. "It's really all about demographics," she told The Texas Tribune Tuesday afternoon. "We've had so many people move into the area, and they've tended to be better educated, younger and more diverse."

Her priority is to include more climate science in the standards schools must teach students, since the issue is "life and death for the planet" and controversial on the board. "My goal is to try and convince the board to look at some of these details and make sure that we get the best curriculum that we can manage," she said.

The board is weeks away from revising Texas' sex education policy, its first attempt to do so since 1997. The newly elected board will be responsible for adopting new health and sex education textbooks and other instructional materials based on that policy, which school districts may opt to use.

Disclosure: HillCo Partners has been a financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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Texas education board remains in Republican control - The Texas Tribune

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Some thought it might happen as early as 2014 and then 2016, and, of course, in 2018.

When all those elections proved disappointing, Texas Democrats said 2020 would be the year, given record voter turnout, a once-in-a-century pandemic that grew out of control under Republican leadership and a highly controversial president.

But 2020 proved another disappointment for the states minority party as Republicans remained dominant in Texas, appearing poised to maintain victories in all statewide offices and both chambers of the Legislature. In what has become a familiar refrain, Texas Democrats pointed to 2020s narrow losses as symbolic victories signs that the state will one day change in their favor.

Though the margins in the presidential race were narrower than they have been in years, Democrats underperformed the high expectations they had set for themselves, particularly in a hotly contested battle for dominance in the Texas House. And a number of potential pickups for Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives seemed increasingly unlikely as the night wore on.

With his reelection still uncertain, Donald Trump carried Texas on Tuesday. The last Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state was Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Republican John Cornyn handily won reelection to his seat in the U.S. Senate, soaring past combat veteran MJ Hegar to notch a victory despite a late Democratic spending blitz on her behalf. Republicans held big leads in other statewide races for Railroad Commission, Texas Supreme Court and Court of Criminal Appeals.

And the contest some in-state operatives had focused on as Democrats best hope the battle for a majority in the Texas House appeared to end with a narrow victory for Republicans, leaving intact the partys advantage in the chamber.

As has become habit, Texas Democrats described their losses on Tuesday not as disappointments but as hopeful omens for next time.

With every election, we're getting one step closer to that change, said Ed Espinoza, executive director of Progress Texas.

Although we came up short, Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa said of the U.S. Senate race, I am hopeful because we are marching towards victory.

The work we did will move our state forward for years to come, Hegar said.

Republicans, meanwhile, were not shy about celebrating their wins.

Gov. Greg Abbott, who was not on the ballot himself but had been deeply involved in Texas House races, even knocking on doors over the last few weeks, celebrated on Twitter: Texas DID stay Red.

Earlier this week, he had made a prescient, if provocative statement: Democrats dreams will be crushed again.

Abbotts top political strategist, Dave Carney, was blunter in an interview late Tuesday night. He said Democrats were massively underperforming expectations because they buy their own bullshit.

Heres the best standard operating procedure for any campaign: Stop bragging, do your work and then you can gloat afterward, Carney said, contrasting that approach with bragging about whats gonna happen in the future and being embarrassed.

Why anybody would believe what these liars would say to them again is beyond belief, Carney added. How many cycles in a row do they claim Texas will turn blue? Its crazy.

Cornyn, speaking to media after declaring victory Tuesday night, dismissed Democratic spending in Texas, saying Democrats "had more money than they knew what to do with, so they ended up investing in a long shot in places like Texas."

Days before the election, polls showed a close race between Biden and Trump here though neither candidate campaigned as if Texas were a battleground. Kamala Harris, Bidens running mate, made a last-minute swing through the state late last week, but neither presidential candidate had been in Texas in months.

The results Tuesday night showed a close presidential contest in Texas. Trumps lead in Texas was in the mid-single-digits early Wednesday morning, according to Decision Desk HQ smaller than his 9-point 2016 margin, and about a third of Mitt Romneys 16-point victory here in 2012.

Even as Biden performed well in large suburban counties that used to be reliably Republican, he failed to notch wide margins of victory in some critical Democratic strongholds, massively underperforming Hillary Clinton in the mostly Hispanic Rio Grande Valley. For example, Trump was leading in unofficial results in Zapata County where Clinton won with 66% of the vote in 2016.

Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, an assistant dean and politics expert at the University of Texas' Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, pointed to two major reasons for Bidens relative underperformance in the Valley: lower name ID compared with Clinton and limited door-to-door campaigning due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Valley is old school, and you need that grassroots mobilization, she said. And there wasnt grassroots work, at least on the Democratic side, because of the pandemic. And arguably the GOP did have at least a bit more grassroots work because they had a different vision of public health.

That to me explains the Biden underperformance: He really wasnt known, and then he didnt have the time to make it up, she added.

Trump, meanwhile, launched a Latino outreach initiative for his 2020 bid, she noted.

Republicans had hoped their willingness to knock on doors during the pandemic would give them an edge over Democrats, some of whom leaned on remote campaigning methods.

As expected, lesser-known and less controversial Republicans did better than Trump on the statewide ballot in Texas. Republicans running for seats on the states two high courts, and the board that regulates oil and gas, each looked poised to win by a healthy margin. For the first time in years, Democrats had run contested primaries for most statewide races, including a crowded 12-candidate primary for the U.S. Senate race and competition for the nomination for nearly every judicial seat.

Democrats were also falling far short of expectations in U.S. House races. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had targeted 10 GOP-held seats this fall in Texas, though by midnight, they had no pickups to tout.

In one race to replace retiring Rep. Will Hurd, R-Helotes Democratic party leaders had started the cycle brimming with confidence that the seat would flip to them, especially after Republicans had to go through a seemingly endless nomination process. But before the night was over, the campaign of the Republican nominee, Tony Gonzales, was declaring victory.

Not only did they underestimate me, I think they underestimated the district, Gonzales said in an interview late Tuesday night. District 23 is just different it is. You have to work your tail off to win the trust of the constituents and you have to work your tail off to keep that trust. TV ads, blanketing the airwaves, isnt enough.

But perhaps the most striking rebuke to Democrats hopes on Tuesday night was their failure to regain a majority or even move the needle much in the 150-member Texas House, where they needed to pick up nine seats.

Even before the chambers majority party had been determined, optimistic Democrats had declared their candidacy to lead it as speaker.

"Before the day is done, Democrats will take the Texas House, one candidate, El Paso Democrat Joe Moody, said Tuesday morning. By early Wednesday morning, it seemed clear they would not.

Democrats will get another chance to test their hopes in 2022, when statewide offices like governor and attorney general will appear on the ballot. It remains to be seen whether they can increase their power in the state.

Is Texas on the route to becoming blue, or is Texas on the road to becoming a perennial battleground? Thats a question I dont know the answer to, DeFrancesco Soto said. But I do feel confident saying we are moving in the purple direction, and we may just stay stuck at purple.

Patrick Svitek contributed reporting.

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Texas Republicans again sweep the ballot, crushing Democratic hopes - The Texas Tribune

In the hours and days since polls officially closed, President Donald Trump has made multiple calls for vote counting to stop, alleging that Democrats would use mail-in ballots to steal the election.

The Trump campaign has also taken legal action in an attempt to halt vote counts in several battleground states, including Michigan and Pennsylvania, so that campaign observers can watch the ballots being opened and counted. Trump supporters have gathered in both states, calling to "stop the count."

Trump has said, baselessly, that he would win the election if only the "legal" votes were counted and the "illegal" were not, and he has suggested that the lead he held in key states on election night was subverted by "magical" dumps of ballots, which he tried to cast as late-arriving and, most importantly, suspect.

In 21 states, the law permits mail-in votes received after Election Day to be counted toward the final tally, according to data from the National Council of State Legislatures. They include three battlegrounds where ABC News has yet to project a winner: Nevada, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. In most of the states that allow late counting, absentee ballots must be postmarked by Election Day.

The president's comments have sparked "Count the Vote" protest marches across the country, and political leaders, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., have called his rhetoric "undemocratic."

Children and adults take part in a display of the "Count Every Vote" slogan during a Count Every Vote demonstration at the Pennsylvania State Capitol on Nov. 5, 2020 in Harrisburg, Penn.

But this isn't the first time that Trump has demanded an end to voting counts.

2018 Florida midterms

Two years ago, during midterm elections, the gubernatorial and Senate races in Florida both fell within a 0.5% margin -- automatically triggering a recount.

Results showed Republicans slightly ahead in both races. In the Senate race, former Florida Gov. Rick Scott led incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson by a 0.15% margin, while in the race for governor, GOP Rep. Ron DeSantis led Democrat Andrew Gillum by a 0.41% margin. Gillum even walked back a concession, replacing it with "an unapologetic and uncompromised call to count every vote."

With the tallying underway, the president claimed, without citing evidence, that Democrats were engaged in voter fraud, rhetoric that mirrors almost exactly Trump's claims in the 2020 general election.

"All of a sudden, they're finding votes out of nowhere," the president said. "I say this: [Gov. Scott] easily won, but every hour, it seems to be going down. I think that people have to look at it very, very cautiously."

He took to Twitter to falsely claim that ballots in Florida's Senate and governor's race were "massively infected" and demanded an end to recounts and that both Republican candidates be declared the winners of their respective races.

Then-Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi also called for an investigation into any possible election misconduct. The Florida Department of State requested a federal investigation into altered voter forms, which voters who use mail ballots use to correct problems with signatures accompanying their ballots.

Ultimately, the votes were recounted, and the Republican candidates went on to win. An 18-month investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement found no evidence of fraud with altered voting forms, Politico reported.

Arizona midterms

That wasn't the only election that year to elicit accusations of voter fraud and calls to stop vote counts. In Arizona, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema was in a close race against Republican Martha McSally for an open Senate seat left by outgoing Republican Sen. Jeff Flake.

Votes were still being counted in the days after the election, which is not uncommon, when Trump claimed without evidence that they were "all of a sudden" finding votes "out of the wilderness." Sinema had a slight lead at that point.

As tallying was underway in the competitive race, Arizona Republican leaders also sued, seeking an injunction to limit counts in urban counties that allowed voters more time to cure (or correct) mail-in ballots, the Associated Press reported. The counties in question were considered strongholds of support for Sinema.

Democratic leaders challenged the lawsuit, claiming it was an attempt to "silence thousands of Arizonans who already cast their ballots," while the GOP parties argued that they wanted consistency in counting votes.

The American Civil Liberties Union intervened in the case on behalf of the defendants, filing a brief that argued that "the court should not remedy the failure of some Arizona counties to provide voters with due process by prohibiting all Arizona counties from doing so," the organization noted in a report on voting rights.

The lawsuit was settled, with rural counties given more time to verify ballots.

Six days after the election, McSally conceded, and Sinema won the race -- the first time in 30 years that a Democrat won a Senate seat in the state.

History repeating

Fast-forward to the 2020 presidential election, and Trump is repeating allegations of voter fraud and calls to stop vote counts.

"STOP THE COUNT!" he tweeted Thursday morning.

"ANY VOTE THAT CAME IN AFTER ELECTION DAY WILL NOT BE COUNTED," he added shortly after, prompting Twitter to flag the message as potentially misleading.

The Trump campaign later amended the message to be that all "legal" votes should be counted while those that are "illegal" should not (as opposed to merely stopping the count because he was ahead on election night and ballots counted later started to change that).

"We believe the American people deserve to have full transparency into all vote counting and election certification, and that this is no longer about any single election," the campaign said in a statement Friday. "This is about the integrity of our entire election process."

Trump supporter Michael Breitenbach screams outside the Pennsylvania Convention Center as ballot counting continues inside for the presidential election, on Nov. 6, 2020, in Philadelphia.

In return, former Vice President Joe Biden has urged Americans to "stay calm."

"Each ballot must be counted, and that's what we're going to see going through now, and that's how it should be," the Democratic presidential candidate said Thursday.

Several of the Trump campaign's legal attempts have been rejected, with judges in Michigan and Pennsylvania denying injunctions to halt vote counting.

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Trump and Republicans have asked states to stop counting votes before - ABC News

Prominent Republicans and conservative commentators have joined the condemnation of President Donald Trump's baseless claim that he had won reelection.

Trump in the early hours of Wednesday morning gave a short speech at the White House in which he said "frankly, we did win this election."

No winner was clear when he made the remarks, however, and millions of votes were yet to be counted.

Trump described the fact that not all votes had been counted on election night a normal aspect of US elections as a "major fraud on our nation" and repeated without evidence his claim that mail-in voting had led to voter fraud.

The claim was not unexpected; a report last week by Axios indicated that Trump was planning to declare victory on election night if it appeared that he was "ahead" in early results.

Numerous prominent Republican figures lined up to condemn Trump early Wednesday morning.

"I was very distressed by what I heard the president say," former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania said.

"The president is prone as we know to bluster and fits of pique and being upset about how he's being treated," he told CNN. "I don't have any problem ... I think Joe Biden said similar things, 'I think I won,' and that's fine. You think you won, that's great.

"But the idea of using the word fraud, and fraud is being committed by people counting votes, is wrong."

He added: "I understand the president's frustration because some of the states weren't called as early as he'd like, but at the same time he complained about one of those states being called, Arizona. I understand that the president feels like it's a grievance against him and somehow or another this is another example of the media not treating him fairly, and I'll just say that I could not disagree more in this case."

He was echoed by Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, who told ABC News that speaking "not as a former governor but a former US attorney" there was "just no basis to make that argument tonight."

He said: "All these votes have to be counted that are in now. In Pennsylvania, the counting won't even start until tomorrow or Thursday or Friday because the Pennsylvania Supreme Court extended for three days when you can accept ballots. I understand that there could be an argument on that based on Pennsylvania law, but that argument is for later. Tonight was not the time to make this argument."

Asked whether Trump's premature claim of victory was a political move, Christie said: "It is, but it's got to be bigger than that."

He added: "I think that by prematurely doing this, if there is a flaw in it later, he has undercut his own credibility calling attention to that flaw.

"I think it's a bad strategic decision, it's a bad political decision, and it's not the kind of decision you'd expect someone to make tonight who holds the position he holds."

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida became the first sitting Republican senator to appear to publicly criticize Trump's statement later Wednesday, tweeting: "The result of the presidential race will be known after every legally cast vote has been counted."

John Bolton, the former national security advisor to Trump, said the president's comments "were some of the most irresponsible comments that a president of the United States has ever made."

He told Sky News: "He has cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral process purely for his own political advantage. It's a disgrace."

The Republican election lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg told CNN that "for a president to say we're going to disenfranchise legally cast ballots is really extraordinary," adding, "It's a distressing moment for me as a longtime Republican."

The Fox News host Chris Wallace said Trump's separate reference of plans to go to the Supreme Court, the basis of which is unclear, was "extremely inflammatory, and frankly I don't think it's something that the courts would allow."

He said: "This is an extremely flammable situation, and the president just threw a match into it.

"He hasn't won these states. Nobody is saying he has won these states. The states haven't said that he's won.

"This goes right back to what Joe Biden said which is the president doesn't get to say that he's won states the American people get to say it, the state officials get to declare it."

The right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro tweeted that Trump's victory claim was "deeply irresponsible."

The contest was too close to call at the time of writing, with Joe Biden projected to win 227 Electoral College votes and Trump projected to win 213. The outcome was expected to hinge on results in the key battleground states Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Joe Biden's campaign manager, Jen O'Malley Dillon, on Wednesday morning described the president's statement as "outrageous, unprecedented, and incorrect" and a "naked effort to take away the democratic rights of American citizens."

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Republicans have condemned Trump's false claim to have already won the election - Business Insider - Business Insider