WHITE HOUSE
Postelection press conference on tap
President Obama will hold a press conference on Wednesday, the White House said Tuesday as the nation voted in midterm elections.
Mr. Obama will talk to reporters Wednesday in the East Room of the White House at 1 p.m., his office said in a statement.
In his last press conference on Sept. 10, Mr. Obama addressed the role of Islam in U.S. society, and defended his economic policies in the face of rising unemployment and a sluggish economic recovery from the recession.
Mr. Obama’s Democrats faced a day of reckoning Tuesday as voters headed to the polls in an election likely to see Republicans seize control of the House of Representatives and gain broad new powers to attack his agenda.
Democrats feared heavy losses as well in the Senate, but analysts forecast they would cling to a narrow majority, dividing power in Washington and setting the stage for a superheated political war ahead of the president’s 2012 re-election bid.
DELAWARE
Elections head hears complaints
DOVER | Supporters of Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell were apparently being a little too enthusiastic in support of their candidate.
Delaware Elections Commissioner Elaine Manlove said Tuesday that she received three complaints from voters about O’Donnell supporters impeding access to Kent County polling places. The Delaware Democratic Party issued a statement about the activity, which it called “voter intimidation.”
Miss Manlove said she was told the supporters were traveling ahead of Miss O’Donnell to polling places where she planned to appear. Miss Manlove said they were complying with a requirement to stay at least 50 feet from the polling places, but they were apparently too loud and could be heard within the 50-foot perimeter.
Miss Manlove said she called Miss O’Donnell’s campaign and asked them to stop the loud demonstrations and the campaign agreed to do so.
HOUSE
Pelosi cites Giants reliever
With the game on the line, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says it might be time to follow the example of “Fear the Beard” Brian Wilson. He’s the San Francisco Giants reliever who pitched the last inning of the Giants’ World Series-clinching win over the Texas Rangers on Monday night.
Mrs. Pelosi asked reporters if they thought she should walk out wearing a beard Tuesday night when election returns roll in.
Mrs. Pelosi, who represents a San Francisco district, said that while she was watching Monday’s game, she made about 60 or 70 calls to members across the country to discuss their campaigns.
Mrs. Pelosi, who became the first female speaker four years ago, is in danger of losing that job if Republicans capture the majority in the House.
NEW YORK
Internet, mobile leads coverage
NEW YORK | News organizations unleashed a multimedia blizzard of widgets, apps, dashboards, Twitter tie-ins and iPad doohickeys for Tuesday’s elections.
More than ever, the online and mobile offerings aren’t merely supplementary to Tuesday night’s TV viewing, but can function as primary sources for following the election results.
The 2008 presidential election, when Web traffic reached record levels, was something of a coming-out party for the Internet. The Web’s encore came at the Inauguration, when streaming video had its most dramatic day up to that point. The 2010 midterm elections, as experienced online, aren’t likely to provide the same technological turning point. But two years later, the Web-savvy coverage of Tuesday’s election highlights the growing sophistication of interactive media, social media and mobile apps.
ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, the New York Times and even PBS all offered live webcasts Tuesday night. New media partnerships helped pave the way: ABC News with Facebook; CBS with Google; and NBC is embedding their video coverage on Twitter.
HOUSE
Boehner offends Cash daughter
NEW YORK | The daughter of the late country singer Johnny Cash on Tuesday took offense at one of House Minority Leader John A. Boehner’s stump speech lines.
The Ohio congressman invites his audience to hark back to the 1980s when Ronald Reagan was president, Bob Hope was still cracking jokes and Johnny Cash was still singing.
Now, Mr. Boehner says, we have Barack Obama in the White House and “no Hope and no Cash.”
Though the line usually gets a laugh from Mr. Boehner’s listeners, singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash doesn’t think it’s very funny.
“John Boehner: Stop using my dad’s name as a punch line you (expletive deleted),” she said on her Twitter account.
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