Republican presidential contenders are hitting back at Democrat Hillary Clinton on voting rights after she targeted four current and potential candidates by name for restrictions on voting in their states in a scathing speech Thursday.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich accused her of using “demagoguery” to try to “divide” Americans with the attacks, while New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie suggested she just wanted opportunities to commit voter fraud.
“First of all, I think it’s demagoguery, and secondly, if she wants to sue somebody, let her sue New York,” Kasich, who’s openly contemplating a bid for president, said on Fox News Friday morning.
Kasich has signed into law a number of restrictions on Ohio voting in recent years, including a measure eliminating an early voting period during which voters could register and cast an in-person ballot on the same day.
Clinton’s campaign lawyer, in a move unrelated to her campaign but reportedly supported by it, is leading a lawsuit seeking an injunction against those and similar measures in other states because critics say they disproportionately affect minorities and young voters.
But on Friday, Kasich defended his state’s voting laws, and suggested New York, where Clinton once served as senator, was worse.
“I like Hillary, but I got to tell you, the idea that we’re going to divide Americans and we’re going to use demagoguery, I don’t like it,” Kasich said. “Now I haven’t said a word about Hillary, but to come into the state of Ohio and say we’re repressing the vote when New York has only one election day and we have 27 days … come on, that’s just silliness, you know? I’m disappointed in her, frankly.”
During her speech at the historically black Texas Southern University, Clinton backed universal voter registration, expanded access to polling places, keeping them open for at least 20 days and offering voting hours on evenings and weekends. She also took aim at Kasich, Christie, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on voting rights, telling them to “stop fear-mongering about a phantom epidemic of voter fraud.”
“All of these problems voting just didn’t happen by accident,” she said. “And it is just wrong — it’s wrong — to try to prevent, undermine and inhibit Americans’ right to vote.”
The speech was seen as a clear play for African-American voters, a bloc she’ll need to turn out for her in 2016 if she hopes to be successful and one that eyed her warily in her primary faceoff with then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2008.
Christie dismissed her attacks to reporters in New Hampshire on Thursday night, saying he’s “not worried about her opinion,” and suggested Clinton had negative motivations for wanting looser voting laws.
“Secretary Clinton doesn’t know the first thing about voting rights in New Jersey or in the other states that she attacked,” Christie said, according to the Bergen Record. “My sense is that she just wants an opportunity to commit greater acts of voter fraud around the country.”
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, meanwhile, said her proposals were “extreme” in a statement from his campaign.
“Hillary Clinton’s rejection of efforts to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat not only defies logic, but the will of the majority of Americans. Once again, Hillary Clinton’s extreme views are far outside the mainstream.”
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry defended his state’s voter identification law, which Clinton said “a federal court said was actually written with the purpose of discriminating against minority voters.” He on Fox News on Friday that it “makes sense” to have to show a photo ID to vote, noting he has to do so to board a plane, and charged that Clinton was “taking on” Texans, rather than Perry, by targeting the law, “because that was a law that was passed by the people of the state of Texas.”
“She just went into my home state and dissed every person who supports having an identification to either get on an airplane or to vote. It’s highly popular,” he said.
Perry also said the law wasn’t discriminatory.
“As a matter of fact, when you look across the state of Texas and you see what [we’ve] done in that state to really empower minorities — as a matter of fact, the highest high school graduation rate for African-Americans in America is in the state of Texas,” he added. “The highest Hispanic graduation rate is in Texas. Those are empowerments … and they want to be protected when they get on an airplane as well.”