as it seeks to maintain its control of the senate and a new jersey democrat senator bob menendez defeated his opponent republican bob huguenot he will keep his seat despite his indictment on corruption charges related to a campaign donor now this case did and in a mistrial but it seems to have an end as found a successful message during the campaign saying that a vote for huguenot is the same as a vote for trump now according to people i've spoken to they weren't exactly huge supporters of menendez but they absolutely were not supporters of trump so that's a win for democrats now here in new york democrat andrew cuomo is keeping his seat as new york governor as the polls are veal that he has beat republican mark molinari making this his third term holding the position but in other news it wasn't an easy day for voters here in new york many people experienced several issues while out voting today first of all was pouring rain the lines were extremely long and then on top of that there were several reports of broken voting machines all across the city several people reported that the ballot scanners were

malfunctioning and as of mid afternoon today the new york attorney general's office so that they received two hundred twenty five complaints and now the mayor mayor bill de blasio is calling for an election reform demanding that the board of election be changed before the two thousand and twenty alexion because he anticipates this will be the biggest election in history now city council speaker cory johnson also calling for the director of the city's independent board of elections to resign thanks so much judy we certainly appreciate you know it's so funny scotty and think you're going to head or i mean well we should say that we expect to get new information out of texas the whole nation has been watching the i suppose you could call the. phenomenon but it looks like iraq has come up just a little bit short it appears that we're about to make a call and that call will be for the longhorn state and that is the. ted cruz ted

cruz senator ted cruz will keep his seat as the senator representing the great state of texas scottie would you go about saying there's a lot of other issues besides taxes that's obviously a big one we are watching a lot closer a lot of money was poured into case in fact people thought why spend all this money obviously paid off for making these polls close what else have we had developed over the last thirty minutes. just said well it was huge ted cruz incumbent keeping his seat we also had north dakota kevin kramer looks like he's going to say don which is pretty big i mean and lichens now going over to the house there were a few other ones new york district eleven also it looks like republicans are starting to slowly lose the house unfortunately for them new york eleventh district already ninety eight percent and we can see that it's you see the numbers the democrats are leading here it's very close calls they're slowly slipping from the well here's one thing that

a lot of people are talking about the public and it's not only democrats beating incumbent republican there was a lot of people who were tired including paul ryan who stepped down and that's another reason why it's you had basically two for people running against each other that were new and so obviously that played a lot and why the republican turnovers happening what are we to expect probably in these next few thirty minutes what i read to see in the next half hour or it could be that the democrats take the house that is a prediction that a few networks have been saying florida twenty six twenty seven those were huge clips right there for florida should have been a bit longer did belong to republicans now belong to democrat so will be looking out for these numbers and yet you're still seeing in the florida race as you're seeing the both in the senate race as well as in the governor's race republicans still has a slight lead and yet there seems means possibly that people were voting based on that the candidate not necessarily the party lines this time right could be interesting in florida let's head over to talking about texas our texas reporter the texas on the site you actually know this state very. well what are we dealing

with ted cruz they don't work or be declared yet absolutely so it looks like ted cruz is going to take this state now this is has been a really interesting race to watch so far because he's taking it by about fifty one percent so that is such a close margin and it's really been interesting to watch paid or give him a run for his money quite literally by breaking records with fund raising but also by leading to a huge voter turnout i mean there were records broken with early voting and so it looks like a lot of texans have really wanted to make their voice heard that's what it's going to get texas he's a good cowboy boots you think of football and you think of republicans texas is very red the homes of the bushes so ted cruz should have done very well in this so i do think this is something that the democrats can say look if enough if we put this much energy into texas and got this close maybe it's something the momentum that can go on to twenty twenty definitely i think so i mean it looks like beta really played the card of the anti-establishment candidate and he really went all

out there i mean he called for gun restrictions he you know went against the lines that a lot of texans vote with when it comes to like border control and that kind of thing it was interesting to watch him really go against the status quo and it looks like it paid off to a certain extent even if he didn't take that's on the i'm going to get a little personal because i do have you had table having texas with your family was this something that i don't know if your family's all one party there were there kind of a divided family where there are people that possibly could have been republican the past that could be an attracted to what bedo had to offer you know it's really interesting to watch this because i think a lot of people may not necessarily be a fan of ted cruz but they want republicans to still stay in control and they're a little bit concerned about this you know candidate bedo coming in and really changing things up and so i think a lot of people voted with ted cruz maybe not necessarily because of ted cruz but also are biased as they wanted. exactly i guess at the party ok so i think i've got

to go a day and day and tell me about what the races you're watching right now can a couple things have developed been on west virginia where joe manchin the democratic incumbent one that has been called well how close were we on this one while ninety percent of bit of it has been reported he had fifty percent more the morsy had forty five point eight so he got his for his second full term and west virginia is a state where president trump won handily in two thousand and sixteen with sixty nine percent of the vote and manchin votes with him sixty percent of the time so a lot of people would say he's on the right of the democratic party and he's basically aligned himself with even the republican party is a big supporter of gun rights he one of the things that really helped him is addressing the opioid crisis is a major part of his platform he also focused on maintaining preexisting conditions and health care and he had major support from unions one of the things maybe maybe

the biggest thing that helped him actually was he was the only senate democrat to vote to confirm brett kavanaugh centrist think that crossover once again people are not sticking to the party lines maybe that's something we're seeing. party ideologies are keeping with that remember president trump he went to what west virginia what three or three different rallies three in fact this past week i think he was there again campaigning against what people said to be someone i thought my mantra was his friend how much was the voter engagement this year to west where did west virginia turn out in twenty eighteen to vote yes absolutely west virginia came out to to show support and you know that's that's definitely what we saw. as you said president trump was in west virginia he was also recently in missouri that was actually his last campaign stop where he went to support the republican candidate josh how he and that's still a neck and neck race and we don't know exactly what's going to happen there it's too early to call. well that's interesting about keep up and keep it much in your

state because we know every hour that there is something new records you can tell party politics are not necessarily playing right here you're seeing a mix of a both sides republic ross cover maybe voting in our in one category and a d. in another or let's do this scotty let's see if we can try and set the table for our viewers as we look at the exactly what's going on here it's a night. as we had said earlier this evening it was extremely important for both parties to show the places where they would have their stronghold and for the republicans it was about keeping control of the senate they expected to do that and nobody expected in fact that they would lose control of the senate for the democrats it was about gaining the house and there was also talk of something called a blue wave where the democrats would actually not just take control of the house but do it in no uncertain terms well the real story for tonight is that it looks like it's been a little better showing for republicans and it has been for democrats albeit both

of those things that aforementioned described are coming through it is looking at this point that the republicans will keep control of the senate and it is also looking like the democrats will wrestle away control from the republicans in the house of representatives there are some interesting races by the way that we have been following and when you when you look at the at the numbers i'll just take you through some of these i think it might be somewhat illustrative the democrats have won colorado florida florida kansas minnesota these are districts of course new jersey new york pennsylvania and pennsylvania these are house seats that they were expecting to win however they needed to win many more at this point with some of the races that we're still waiting to see what the results are especially in the parts of the midwest and parts of the west itself it still really remains to. the

scene what a lot of folks were calling a trump referendum or what would be the trump referendum and for that we would be joined now by our panel who are coming in to help us shake things up first of all former state representative don jones evil don jones arizona green party candidate for the senate as well and steve morals work good enough to call us tonight well steve looks like your team is having a pretty good night although i think both teams tonight can claim some kind of victory yeah absolutely i predicted that for what it's worth it the the house would go to the democrats historically that that would be a shocker if it didn't happen and that the republicans would hold the senate i mean when you when you look at it again and to put it in perspective and i think it's so very important because the media painted this as a big referendum on trump and that if the democrats did have a blue wave or if they did take back both branches of whatever that oh my god this would be a rebuke like we've never seen before of course obama lost six senate seats and

sixty three house seats clinton in his first midterm lost fifty four house seats and nine senate seats so this is not a bad night for donald trump and the republicans at all when you put it in historical perspective it's got to well that's the thing and i got to bring an average crowd of me on the don right now let's go actually to these governors because you're an atlanta tell me georgia was out for play right now you had oprah coming down playing for campaign for the governor what was the feeling today and whether necessarily successful and what oprah would have wished. well we still remains to be seen we have three polling places that closed almost three hours after they normally closed because somehow there were glitches all throughout our voting system and it's just coincidental that stacy abrams is running against the secretary of state for governor who happens to run the elections but the energy here in georgia it's so high there were so many new voters and people who were

engaged it truly was an indication of the blue way but whether or not that blue wave was successful is going to remain to be seen until the end of the night well that's the thing with don is that yes he said rather may be successful is the kind of start of something moving forward now that they see a couple of a couple of little wind maybe they go maybe that's the reason why they want to stay engaged are georgia voters as well as other democrats going to say is this is that kind of the beginning of something new for them i think so particularly when we compare it to last gubernatorial elections where there was just not nearly as much energy there was not as much money race there was not as much national attention we know part of that is because they see a prince maybe the first african-american woman governor in the entire united states but also is because she had an excellent ground game here in georgia we have two different parts you have atlanta metro area and the rest of georgia is stacy abrams was really adept at making sure he touched on the doors of every georgia and i think that has been the push behind this blue wave that we haven't seen before

here steve let me go to you with this question. save the bravado i have to ask you as a republican whether you start to really get concerned when you see when you see the states like texas and states like. georgia and maybe even to a certain extent nevada. it's not one by democrats it's almost. extremely tight considering the kind of results we've seen there in the past always very much pro-republican the start to concern you a little bit. it does certainly especially when you talk about the states that you mentioned but i got to tell you if things hold the way they are and the governorship goes the republican in florida the governorship remains republican in georgia and the democrats pick the republicans pick up maybe four seats in the senate this is set up perfectly going forward i think that you're going to have

a congress a democrat congress that's going to really alien eight its own party because you have two factions you have a candidate in kansas for instance who won tonight a democrat to pick up a seat for the democrats who swore he would not vote for nancy pelosi for speaker so you have kind of the mainstream democrats that are going to support pelosi and you have the radical leftist socialist progressive democrats and it's good they're going to be fighting their own little war between themselves and i think in two thousand and twenty you're going to see a different picture presidential election more turnout on the republican side i think the democrats have really pushed at this time and i don't think you're going to see more people who haven't voted this time around come out next time so i think that that the republicans are setting themselves up for a big victory in two thousand and twenty for donald trump and you know the house and senate you know what i'm thinking and thinking is as i'm listening to all of

this because i could give a hoot about the politics i don't i really don't give a crap who wins but i will tell you this as an american as an american i want to ask you this question scotty as an american i actually believe that divided government is what the doctor asks for right now for americans i mean it seems like if if we agree that one of the greatest. things about our system is the fact that we have checks and balances than what could be better than two parties fighting it out for the truth rather than any one of these party whether it's the blue or the red in control but here is the problem that we have to look at how are they going to fight are these politicians when they're on the hill are they going to act like children and todd thirds like we've seen them do the last two years and previous when they fight because they are setting the example on how we handle political discussion and discourse in this country there below or are they going to me that's the problem are we now and i agree i like having a divide as long as we stop looking at them as republican versus democrat i want to

have them looking at it as issue versus issue and what is best for our country but as long as you do have things like high as you have lobbyist and political issues and money involved in these campaigns as much because when you have to stand i think of one point six billion dollars around is what we have spent on the house and senate seats and that's up until yesterday we had not even reported so as long as there is that much money and at least that's the one thing they all can agree on is that they want as much money as they can get for themselves not necessarily the people in their district i just want to make sure that going forward this does not encourage more discourse more anger by a division between the two parties and that they don't have it all down to in the two parties i disagree with you i want there to be as much division between these two parties as an american as we could possibly get in fact i would prefer they do nothing because as far as i'm concerned it's very difficult in the last five ten years to see anybody do anything in washington that has actually benefited the american people that i got i don't trump. have been benefited a lot in this country but as far as people like my mother and my father and my

family very little has been done either by democrats or republicans for the american people so as far as i'm concerned if they spend the next two years doing nothing but fighting amongst themselves and nothing gets done how will you but then i think steve for the hour for regular and then steve you can help me out with this for the last two years you have seen four million new jobs added on by president tribe you're going to see republicans opposed to the unemployment. lowest in sixty nine because they did all get along where there was this stalemate was what we saw where our country was very divided i agree i like to have contention but i want to make sure it's respectful contention i want to make sure that they're not tary they're not acting like children on the house floor and calling names and encouraging the hate that isn't in our country right now and that it's justifiable for people to attack others at dinner with their family because they politically disagree or take a gun out to a baseball field that's got to stop and it stops with those on capitol hill so you can have contention but we have not had the right type of contention in these conversations. and so i've got to go to steve on that one miles for what he what do

you think i think respectful discourse is gone i just think it's a poisoned well and i don't see it coming back and he said any time soon i think the country is so divided that it's almost impossible to expect it to come back and as far as the government not doing anything in two years i mean you talk about mom and pops people who don't have deductions could double the standard deduction that's going to mean the money back in their pocket after they file their income taxes and is scotty alluded to the unemployment rate is down hispanic unemployment at a record low black unemployment that women's unemployment. benefit to this country let me just stop you for a minute those tax breaks that you referred to for the average person are going to last about a year and a half for rich people are going to last for the rest of their lives so let's not because they live by the jobs provide the jobs so everything for the rich and nothing for the poor no no i don't i don't every one of the rich i would question that strategy but i thank you for sharing your philosophy with us i think we're

going to go over the of a sudden you guys which go absolutely quick are breaking out date from florida asking what do you have for right now ninety nine percent of the vote for both the gubernatorial race and the senate races and we're still waiting on not was there a hanging chad yet so rick scott is still leading at fifty point four percent bill nelson has about forty nine point six votes for the senate for the gubernatorial race we have run that dissent has at forty nine point nine percent just a one percent ahead of andrew now i want to mention something i didn't mention before descent has has faced a lot of criticism for racist rhetoric that he's put out there especially when it came to galen shortly after gillum won his primary the sentence that just said on fox news that voters should not quote monkey this up by electing him now guillen has spoken out against this and called us. and to see a racist something that we do you know from voting today on the ballot there were

several issues and one of the biggest issues on there was very storing voting rights for felons not something that a lot of people have been advocating for not just in florida but all over the country that actually passed by fix the four percent and scottie has you know this could potentially change the game when it comes to voting in the near future and that's incredible in fact that's a great question i want to pose to the dawn right now with her back to direct as the dawn do we see that going to be spreading to other states. absolutely we know in and in america florida and california often leads friends on a legal train and so seeing that overwhelming majority support the fact that felons should be able to have their rights restore is something that hopefully will pass through our legislatures where there's a via referendum or just by being presented it was presented in georgia last year and i expected to come back during this legislative session ala don let me ask you a question there seems to be there seems to be

a lot of sensitivity at least on the part of democrats in terms of voter suppression and i think the most blatant case that we saw was in the state of georgia where there are really you know a lot of questions whether you know certain actions and even laws are being passed to keep certain types of people who are predictably democratic voters away from the polls we saw the same thing obviously in florida historically where are you on this at this point in time and do you feel like we're starting to finally get a handle on this or nah. so it's on both sides so we know that we're only fifty years away from some of the worst voting laws that we have particularly in the south and we've been able to watch a pattern of the laws that have been put forth that were intended to suppress the votes in particular areas of georgia in particular areas of the south so we know

for a fact by looking at history that many of the intents of the law were intended to suppress those however i will say we do have some wind so for example in georgia we had three people voting precincts that were predominantly democrat many of them predominantly minority were voting just wasn't right and they someone was able to come in the end of the a.c.l.u. and file lawsuits today and have those voting precincts left open for a couple of more hours so that's progress right we would not have seen that in the sixty's that's progress because people are given the opportunity through the checks and balances that you just mentioned to make sure that they have the opportunity to vote but the sad part is just recently we still have people trying to find backdoor way supreme fodor's why is it necessary to prevent someone like me who has a capital letter in their name from voting because there may or may not be a space on my voter registration versus my id that doesn't make sense and it's obviously targeted to a small group of people and it simply has to stop i'm so glad the court spoke up in

this case do you think at times as we look at elections like tomorrow and all things considered i think we can pretty much chuck the conversation about the blue i mean i don't think the blue wave is going to be happening do you attribute this to a certain respect to the fact that oftentimes the democratic party overreach is tries to be too much to everybody it would just seem from the outside looking at it that guys like steve are so much resolute in their arguments they go in expecting to do nothing but win and it seems sometimes like democrats are somewhat wishy washy if not downright conciliatory your comment on the. it but you know what i will it's funny because stacy abrams before she was running for governor set me in her office when i was a state representative as i contemplated whether i should be an independent or not and what she told me was very profound she said you know many republicans are

republican because they believe in their particular values but there are a lot of democrats who are democrats simply because they are not republicans and so when you have a broad audience like that of people who care either about social justice or economic justice you're going to get that mixed bag and it's much harder to have a defined message like the republicans. well that's thanks a lot i have to tell you since you were a former legislator we did see something else happen this year with a bunch of women they got involved i think on the state level three thousand three hundred thirty nine women ran for state office that's just like you did following your example do you think that now you're going to see the start we've talked about different groups to for minority groups now we're going to see women that that's going to be the more of the target the motivations to more like focus going for twenty twenty and making sure that people who turn out to vote. absolutely you're going to see this election the election of donald trump and then following that showed women that they can get involved there are a lot of other things that are in place that have previously kept women from

running for office that are gone we have the bernie sanders twenty seven dollars fund raising we have social media that obama took off and helped to blow up campaigns in a completely different way opening the door for more candidates and frankly you just have the has to take me to passion let women realize that if we want to make a difference we have to step in and run it and it is very inspiring and i am excited to see what the numbers look like at the end of the night i want to go back to one thing i think that the host said that the blue wave is over it is not over because i saw in my own neighborhood people who were out knocking on doors for the first time these are people who could have done it during the obama era but it means they were pushed and they were pushed by that blue way that's going to take us on to the next election well let me rephrase the for you the blue way did not cold tonight doesn't mean there's not a hope for it i suppose to your regard in the future thank you guys so much for for joining us for that discussion ok so now one thing that we were missing this time

was a lot of the third party candidates something we heard a lot about in the twenty six thousand election let's talk about that as we have arizona green party can't force an end to the green and i want to thank you for joining us today and talk about looking at this election do you think that there is now a ripe opportunity for a third party candidate to start to start kind of making waves within their different communities and rising up the ranks. absolutely one hundred percent i really think this is a race that opens people's eyes and gives them an opportunity to see new choices and these were that was the main thing that a lot of third party candidates are doing is and that's what they want to do they're wanting to express their views and their ideals and things like that for for arizona it's not over and the nation people are tired of the red and blue we were here to try to make another choice for arizona and you know for our country so absolutely one hundred percent but we've seen this before we have seen this story i mean we obviously people are feeling that they're not happy with their party but

they want to actually make their vote counted not just see it as a spoiler how does a third party change in two thousand and twenty and actually be able to win and organize enough to win bases the problems they've had in the past. that's a great question and that's one that i would love to address especially after this election and that's one thing that i was looking at is rank choice voting i don't know if a lot of people have heard about it maine has just started doing it there's other states that are looking into it and to me that is the one thing that would really make a difference in our nation are voting and how things are done because the two party system is broken it's obvious and with and i've learned that after running in this race i wasn't as upset about who won in two thousand and sixteen as i was about how divided our country our nation had become and then it's showing again in these primaries and these midterm elections where you're seeing a lot of these people that are you know these these candidates that are running

these two party candidates and the third party candidates are being left out of you know media coverage were being left off of debates were not considered true candidates and that's and that's very unfair and unfortunate to the arizona people as well as the nation american voters in general we should be able to have the choice to know who our candidates are all candidates that are on the ballot they deserve a chance to to let people know and if you're losing unfortunately as a third party candidate in this winner take all elections it doesn't help rake choice voting with eliminate that and it would eliminate the nonsensical you know. beating each other up back and forth between two different candidates in boxing between the two when there's three we can talk about what people plan on doing versus what they've done in the past that have caused the problems that we're having and why their party candidates are standing up and saying like me standing

up and saying we need better laws and better policies and i'm willing to stand up and be the voice of those people but if you're denying them then they know who represent your point. you very well and you represent what many americans agree with you on that should be a third maybe a fourth maybe a fifth maybe a sixth choice like they have in so many other countries of the world thank you so much for joining us and sharing that perspective let me just set the table having me my pleasure our pleasure let us just set the table one more time as we're coming up on the top of the hour once again and that is that it by all indications it looks like it's going to be a very good night for republicans and it's also going to be a good night all things considered for democrats if the goal for republicans tonight was to make sure they held on to the senate and had a good showing and when it comes to congress then in fact that's exactly what has happened and that for democrats it's also not bad news as

a matter of fact what we're seeing for the democrats is that as expected they're going to keep or challenge and take the house of representatives but they're not going to do it with that expected blue wave scottie that we've heard so much about well and i agree and to start to both the same time with it with every movement it starts with just a little bit of reports and i think the democrats did get this interesting thing i want to see is tomorrow morning who's going to be taking the biggest victory lap and is that a good thing because the republicans or the democrats both are going to say they declared victory and that what happened was what exactly was expected and the win loss for both sides it well here we are once again it's the top of the hour it's eleven o'clock let me just check around where i am right there it's about eleven o'clock on the east coast of the united states we welcome you all of you watching us all over the world here in america as we like to say democracy rules and has continued to work at least in terms of what we expect to get in the next year.