Elections

More from our inbox:Clarence Thomas’s EthicsPolitical NovicesDon’t Kill the LanternfliesIgnoring the Truth About Trump Karlotta FreierTo the Editor:Re “Life After Loss Is Awful. I Need to Believe It’s Also Beautiful,” by Sarah Wildman (Opinion, Aug. 27):I just read your essay, Ms. Wildman, about your daughter Orli, and I know everything you are saying and am crying with you and for you and for myself.I know what it is to look for your child everywhere, in a rainstorm, in trees and butterflies. I even looked for my son, Jack, in an exhibit of Goya paintings, seeing him in a young man of about his age and size, even though the clothes and setting were of another era.I used to pretend, as long as I could, that the person coming toward me on the trail near our house was Jack. When I hugged his friends, I’d pretend I was hugging him. Unlike you, we lost Jack suddenly, and we had him for what I think of as a third of a life, 26 years. He died skiing in an avalanche in Montana in 1999, almost as long ago as he got to live.That longing ache, the feeling of having failed him, that I should have tamped down his physical daring — I know those too. I am so sorry for your loss that nothing can make go away.We used to say: “We’ve been really good and grieved well. Can we have him back now?” I guess we were saying it to the universe.Bonnie GilliomChapel Hill, N.C.To the Editor:There is overwhelming grace and dignity to this piece and to its earlier companion in the aftermath of Sarah Wildman’s daughter’s death (“My Daughter’s Future Was Taken From Her, and From Us,” May 21).A palpable cascading sadness and grief, resting side by side with a longing to remain attached to what was beautiful in Orli’s universe and what remains so even now that she has passed. Two universes colliding, a mother trying to reconcile these impossibly irreconcilable differences.I am thankful that Ms. Wildman has allowed us into her world. That she has given us permission to see and feel what such devastating loss looks like, how it manifests itself, how to try to manage it even as it cannot be managed.There can be no greater pain, no greater loss than that of watching a child slip through one’s grasp as you try desperately to hold on. But Orli will remain forever present through the words of her mother.And though she may no longer be able to protect her daughter, Ms. Wildman has been able to preserve her and her memory. It is a mother’s last loving gift to her wonderful child.Robert S. NussbaumFort Lee, N.J.To the Editor:I have finished reading Sarah Wildman’s essays on the loss of her daughter. I too have lost a child, although he was 42 years old. I still weep at times that have no connection to losing him. He was my “baby,” and there are days when I can still feel his presence even though he died almost six years ago.Ms. Wildman’s articulation of the grief as ever-changing but everlasting was heartbreaking, but consoling as well. Just knowing that other parents have felt the soul-wrenching pain of this awful loss and continue on with their lives as I have feels like a warm hug.I don’t ever have to end this grieving of my loss. I can allow the memories I hold of him to live with me. I often want to tell family and friends that talking about my son doesn’t have to be off limits. Remembering him for the loving, sensitive and funny person he was is a way to honor and celebrate his memory.Patricia KoulepisPhoenix, Md.Clarence Thomas’s EthicsJustice Clarence Thomas had requested a 90-day extension for his financial disclosures.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Thomas Defends His Private Trips With Billionaire” (front page, Sept. 1):Justice and ethics both require adherence to what is morally right. In his flagrant disregard for such principles, Justice Clarence Thomas has done irreparable harm to a once respected institution.The Supreme Court may never regain the public trust it once held, but Chief Justice John Roberts could make a small beginning by urging Justice Thomas to resign. The perks that Justice Thomas and his wife, Virginia, have already enjoyed should be enough for a lifetime.He could do a great service to history and to his own legacy by doing the just, ethical and statesmanlike thing: a graceful resignation in the interest of the court and the country.Fran Moreland JohnsSan FranciscoThe writer is an author and activist.Political NovicesWhen asked about some past comments, Vivek Ramaswamy has denied ever making them or claimed to have been misquoted, even as those denials have been refuted.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Ramaswamy’s Repeated Aversion to the Facts Mirrors Trump’s Pattern” (news article, Aug. 31):The idea has taken hold that a person with no government experience, particularly a successful businessman, can be president. You wouldn’t want a neophyte to remove your gallbladder or give you a haircut, but apparently a lot of people feel differently about picking a president.Donald Trump — with no legislative, foreign policy or executive branch experience, little knowledge of history or government, and little understanding of the powers of the president — was elected and is still wildly popular with his party.What Donald Trump taught us is that the skill and experience it takes to become president, to get the job, and the skill and experience it takes to be president, to do the job, are not the same. It isn’t that they are not exactly the same; it is that they are totally different. The Venn diagram circles, Mr. Trump has taught us, do not intersect. He has also taught us that the second skill doesn’t have to be on your résumé to get the job.At least one person, Vivek Ramaswamy, has learned this lesson. If this works, it is democracy’s Achilles’ heel.Clem BerneSouth Salem, N.Y.Don’t Kill the LanternfliesEncouraging the public to kill spotted lanternflies can help raise awareness of the problem while scientists seek a lasting solution, experts said. These lanternflies were flattened by a photographer.Ali Cherkis for The New York TimesTo the Editor:New York City’s lanternfly bloodsport is sending our children the wrong message. “Swatting and Stomping in a Lanternfly Summer” (news article, Sept. 3) encourages us to continue the killing despite its obvious futility.First, it’s absurd to think that we can control the pest population one stomp at a time. Second, you don’t have to be a follower of ahimsa (the ancient Indian principle of nonviolence) to see that encouraging our children to destroy a life is problematic, even, or especially, a small and annoying one. Third, it teaches our children that the lanternfly is the problem while ignoring the root problem: us.Humanity’s sprawling globalization, ignoring its effects on nature, created the pest by introducing it into a new environment. Perhaps a better lesson for our children would be to point out the lanternfly as an unintended consequence of human practices and to teach them to be a better steward of our planet than we were.Ari GreenbaumTeaneck, N.J.Ignoring the Truth About TrumpTo the Editor:Remember when we were kids and someone was going to say something that we didn’t want to hear? We’d stick our fingers into our ears or make a lot of noise to drown out the anticipated comment.Isn’t this essentially what Matt Gaetz and other Republicans are doing in their proposal to defund Jack Smith’s investigation of former President Donald Trump?Yeah, growing up can be hard. We often hear things we’d prefer to remain ignorant of. For some, ignorance is still bliss.Robert SelverstoneWestport, Conn. More

Rhode Island 2023 Special Primary Election: Live Results – The New York Times

Elections|Rhode Island Special Primary Election Resultshttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/09/05/us/elections/results-rhode-island.html More

Rhode Island 1st Congressional District 2023 Special Primary: Live Results – The New York Times

Elections|Rhode Island First Congressional District Special Primary Election Resultshttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/09/05/us/elections/results-rhode-island-us-house-district-1.html More

Utah 2nd Congressional District 2023 Special Primary: Live Results – The New York Times

Elections|Utah 2nd Congressional District Special Primary Election Results https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/09/05/us/elections/results-utah-us-house-district-2.html More

From 2h agoHere’s more from the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe on the sentencing of the two Proud Boys militia group members last Friday:Two members of the far-right Proud Boys militia group who took part in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol with the intention of keeping Donald Trump in the White House were sentenced to lengthy prison terms on Friday.Ethan Nordean, described by prosecutors as a leader of the extremist group, received an 18-year sentence for crimes that included seditious conspiracy, committed when thousands of Trump supporters overran the Capitol building.Dominic Pezzola, who attacked a police officer and was filmed using the officer’s shield to smash a window, got 10 years from the federal judge Timothy Kelly in Washington DC, following his conviction in May for assault and obstructing an official proceeding.Prosecutors had sought terms of 27 and 20 years, respectively, for Nordean and Pezzola.The pair, described by prosecutors as “foot soldiers of the right [who] aimed to keep their leader in power”, were part of a mob seeking to disrupt the certification by a joint session of Congress of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. Nine deaths have been linked to the riot, including law enforcement suicides.With Mark Meadows’s plea, all but one of the defendants in the Georgia election subversion case have pleaded not guilty and opted to skip tomorrow’s arraignment in Atlanta.The lone holdout is Misty Hampton, the former elections supervisor for Coffee county, Georgia, who was present when a Trump-aligned group sought to illegally access voting machines in search of fraud, and directed much of the group’s search.Mark Meadows, who served as Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff during the period when he lost re-election to Joe Biden, has pleaded not guilty to charges related to trying to overturn Georgia’s election result, Reuters reports.Meadows was among the 19 people indicted last month by Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis for the campaign to keep Biden from collecting the swing state’s electoral votes three years ago. By entering his plea, Meadows has opted to skip the arraignment scheduled for tomorrow in Atlanta. Trump, along with several other defendants including attorney Rudy Giuliani, have also entered not guilty pleas.Republican lawmakers have been on a losing streak lately, as judges strike down congressional maps drawn by the party that disadvantage Black lawmakers, the Guardian’s Michael Sainato reports:A judge in Florida has ruled in favor of voting rights groups that filed a lawsuit against a congressional redistricting map approved by Ron DeSantis in 2022. Voting rights groups had criticized the map for diluting political power in Black communities.In the ruling, Leon county circuit judge J Lee Marsh sent the map back to the Florida legislature to be redrawn in a way that complies with the state’s constitution.“Under the stipulated facts (in the lawsuit), plaintiffs have shown that the enacted plan results in the diminishment of Black voters’ ability to elect their candidate of choice in violation of the Florida constitution,” Marsh wrote in the ruling.The ruling is expected to be appealed by the state, likely putting the case before the Florida supreme court.The lawsuit focused on a north Florida congressional district previously represented by the Democrat Al Lawson, who is Black. Lawson’s district was carved up into districts represented by white Republicans.DeSantis vetoed a map that initially preserved Lawson’s district in 2022, submitting his own map and calling a special legislative session demanding state legislators accept it. Judge Marsh rejected claims from Florida Republicans that the state’s provision against weakening or eliminating minority-dominant districts violated the US constitution.“This is a significant victory in the fight for fair representation for Black Floridians,” said Olivia Mendoza, director of litigation and policy for the National Redistricting Foundation, an affiliate of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, in a statement.A three-judge federal court panel struck down Alabama’s new congressional map, saying the Republican-dominated state again violated the Voting Rights Act. The judges wrote that they were “deeply troubled” the state’s effort to redraw its map did not fix issues it identified.The supreme court had in June ruled that Alabama must draw a second majority Black congressional district, which would likely give Democrats another seat on the southern state’s congressional delegation. But rather than go along, GOP lawmakers attempted to sidestep the ruling by approving new maps that still included only one district where a majority of voters are Black – an effort the federal judges just rejected.Meanwhile, in Texas, the state senate will today begin considering whether to impeach attorney general Ken Paxton, a staunch conservative who used his office to try to stop Joe Biden’s 2020 election win but has now attracted the ire of his fellow Republicans over corruption allegations.Texas’s house of representatives impeached Paxton in May, and he’s been suspended without pay ever since. If a two-thirds majority of senators convicts him, he will be removed from his position, but they will need to take another vote to decide whether to permanently bar Paxton from office, the Associated Press reports.Here’s more from the AP on what we can expect from his trial, which is expected to last between two and three weeks:
Paxton is only the third sitting official in Texas’ nearly 200-year history to be impeached. The House vote suspended the 60-year-old from the office he used in 2020 to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn President Joe Biden’s electoral defeat of Donald Trump.
Paxton decried the impeachment as a “politically motivated sham” and said he expects to be acquitted. His lawyers have said he won’t testify before the Senate, but the trial remains fraught with political and legal risk.
The attorney general is under federal investigation for the same conduct that prompted his impeachment, and his lawyers say removal from office would open the door to Paxton taking a plea in a long-stalled state fraud case.
Here’s what Paxton is accused of and how the trial will work.
WHY WAS PAXTON IMPEACHED?
At the center of Paxton’s impeachment is his relationship with a wealthy donor that prompted the attorney general’s top deputies to revolt.
In 2020, the group reported their boss to the FBI, saying Paxton broke the law to help Austin real estate developer Nate Paul fight a separate federal investigation. Paul allegedly reciprocated, including by employing a woman with whom Paxton had an extramarital affair.
Paul was indicted in June on federal criminal charges that he made false statements to banks to get more than $170 million in loans. He pleaded not guilty.
Paul gave Paxton a $25,000 campaign donation in 2018 and the men bonded over a shared feeling that they were the targets of corrupt law enforcement, according to a memo by one of the staffers who went to the FBI. Paxton was indicted on securities fraud charges in 2015 but is yet to stand trial.
The eight deputies who reported Paxton — largely staunch conservatives whom he handpicked for their jobs — went to law enforcement after he ignored their warnings to not hire an outside lawyer to investigate Paul’s allegations of wrongdoing by the FBI. All eight were subsequently fired or quit and four of them sued under the state whistleblower act.
Paxton is also accused of pressuring his staff to intervene in other of Paul’s legal troubles, including litigation with an Austin-based nonprofit group and property foreclosure sales.
Jury selection has started today in the trial of Peter Navarro, a former aide to Donald Trump who was indicted for contempt of Congress after defying subpoenas from the January 6 committee, Politico reports:Last week, a judge rejected Navarro’s argument that Trump had asserted executive privilege in the case, clearing the way for him to stand trial.Trump confidant Steve Bannon was convicted of similar charges last year, after declining to cooperate with subpoenas from the committee investigating the insurrection at the Capitol. He is appealing the verdict.Yesterday, the White House announced that first lady Jill Biden had tested positive for Covid-19, but the president appears to have avoided the virus.“This evening, the first lady tested positive for Covid-19. She is currently experiencing only mild symptoms. She will remain at their home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware,” her communications director Elizabeth Alexander said in a statement.“Following the first lady’s positive test for Covid-19, President Biden was administered a Covid test this evening. The president tested negative. The President will test at a regular cadence this week and monitor for symptoms,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said minutes later.Both Joe and Jill Biden came down with Covid-19 in the summer of 2022, and recovered without side effects.Here’s more from the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe on the sentencing of the two Proud Boys militia group members last Friday:Two members of the far-right Proud Boys militia group who took part in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol with the intention of keeping Donald Trump in the White House were sentenced to lengthy prison terms on Friday.Ethan Nordean, described by prosecutors as a leader of the extremist group, received an 18-year sentence for crimes that included seditious conspiracy, committed when thousands of Trump supporters overran the Capitol building.Dominic Pezzola, who attacked a police officer and was filmed using the officer’s shield to smash a window, got 10 years from the federal judge Timothy Kelly in Washington DC, following his conviction in May for assault and obstructing an official proceeding.Prosecutors had sought terms of 27 and 20 years, respectively, for Nordean and Pezzola.The pair, described by prosecutors as “foot soldiers of the right [who] aimed to keep their leader in power”, were part of a mob seeking to disrupt the certification by a joint session of Congress of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. Nine deaths have been linked to the riot, including law enforcement suicides.Good morning, US politics blog readers. The comeuppance continues today for the the Proud Boys, a rightwing militia group whose members are blamed for organizing and perpetrating some of the violence on January 6, and have been convicted of serious federal crimes. The Proud Boys former leader Enrique Tarrio will be sentenced today after being found guilty of seditious conspiracy, and prosecutors are asking he receive a 33-year prison term.Last week, a judge handed down an 18-year sentence to Ethan Nordean, a leader of the group, and a 10-year term for Dominic Pezzola – both penalties that were less than prosecutors had requested. We’ll see if that pattern continues when Tarrio goes before a judge in Washington DC.Here’s what else is going on today:
The first big book providing an insider account of Joe Biden’s presidency is out today, and appears to be full of scoops.
The Senate is back to work for the first time since July, and will today consider Philip Jefferson’s nomination as vice-chair of the Federal Reserve
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and national security adviser Jake Sullivan brief reporters at 1pm eastern time. More

Republicans failed to comply with a court order to create a second majority-Black district or something “close to it,” the judicial panel said.A panel of federal judges rejected Alabama’s latest congressional map on Tuesday, ruling that a new map needed to be drawn because Republican lawmakers had failed to comply with orders to create a second majority-Black district or something “close to it.”In a sharp rebuke, the judges ordered that the new map be independently drawn, taking the responsibility away from the Republican-controlled legislature while chastising state officials who “ultimately did not even nurture the ambition to provide the required remedy.”The legislature had hastily pushed through a revised map in July after a surprise Supreme Court ruling found that Alabama’s existing map violated a landmark civil rights law by undercutting the power of the state’s Black voters. The revised map, approved over the objections of Democrats, increased the percentage of Black voters in one of the state’s six majority-white congressional districts to about 40 percent, from about 30 percent.In its new ruling, the district court panel in Alabama found that the legislature had flouted its mandate.“We are not aware of any other case in which a state legislature — faced with a federal court order declaring that its electoral plan unlawfully dilutes minority votes and requiring a plan that provides an additional opportunity district — responded with a plan that the state concedes does not provide that district,” the judges wrote. Responsibility for a new map now falls to a special master, Richard Allen, a longtime Alabama lawyer who has worked under several Republican attorneys general, and a cartographer, David Ely, a demographer based in California. Both were appointed by the court. The decision — or the independent map to be produced — can be appealed. State officials have said that a new congressional map needs to be in place by early October, in order to prepare for the 2024 elections.The litigation has been closely watched in Washington and across the country, as several other states in the South face similar voting rights challenges, and control of the U.S. House of Representatives rests on a thin margin. Prominent lawmakers in Washington — including Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California and Democrats in the Congressional Black Caucus — have kept careful tabs on the redistricting effort.At least one nonpartisan political analysis has predicted that at least one Alabama district could become an election tossup with a new map, given that Black voters in Alabama tend to vote for Democratic candidates.The decision was joined by Judge Stanley Marcus, who was nominated by former President Bill Clinton; and by Judges Anna M. Manasco and Terry F. Moorer, both named to their posts by former President Donald J. Trump. (Judge Marcus typically sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta.)For Alabama, the ruling caps off nearly two years of litigation, marking yet another instance in the state’s tumultuous history where a court has forced officials to follow federal civil rights and voting laws.Two decades ago, a lawsuit forced the creation of the Seventh Congressional District, the state’s sole majority-Black district, in southwest Alabama. (Under the Republican-drawn map rejected on Tuesday, the share of Black voters in that district dropped to about 51 percent from about 55 percent.)“It’s really making sure that people who have consistently been kept at the margins or excluded as a matter of law from politics have a chance — not a guarantee — but a realistic chance of electing candidates of choice,” said Kareem Crayton, the senior director for voting and representation at the Brennan Center for Justice and a Montgomery, Ala., native. “The fact that we’re having to fight over that principle is really sad in 2023.”After the 2020 census, which began the process of setting district lines for the next decade across the country, the Alabama legislature maintained six congressional districts with a white Republican incumbent. A group of Black voters challenged the map under a landmark voting rights law, given that more than one in four residents of Alabama is Black.The Birmingham court said the map would need to be redrawn, but the Supreme Court intervened and said a new map could not be put in place so close to the primary races ahead of the 2022 election. In doing so, the Supreme Court unexpectedly affirmed the key remaining tenet of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which bars any voting law that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race.” The court had gutted much of that landmark civil rights law a decade earlier, and many had expected a similar result with the Alabama case.But in a weeklong special session, Republicans refused to create a second majority-Black district, and shielded their six incumbents from a potentially brutal primary at a moment when the party has only a slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.Republicans defended their revised map, calling it a fair attempt to keep counties and communities with similar economic and geographic issues together, while adhering to the Constitution. Democrats and the Black voters who brought the challenge called it a squandered opportunity to provide equal representation to a historically disenfranchised bloc of voters.At a hearing in August, the panel of judges sharply pressed the state’s attorneys on whether the revised map had done enough to adhere to their guidance on how to address the voting rights violation, making their skepticism clear.“What I hear you saying is that the state of Alabama deliberately disregarded our instructions,” Judge Moorer said at one point. More

It’s a weakness that could manifest itself as low Democratic turnout even if Trump and Republicans don’t gain among those groups.President Biden is underperforming among nonwhite voters in New York Times/Siena College national polls over the last year, helping to keep the race close in a hypothetical rematch against Donald J. Trump.On average, Mr. Biden leads Mr. Trump by just 53 percent to 28 percent among registered nonwhite voters in a compilation of Times/Siena polls from 2022 and 2023, which includes over 1,500 nonwhite respondents.The results represent a marked deterioration in Mr. Biden’s support compared with 2020, when he won more than 70 percent of nonwhite voters. If he’s unable to revitalize this support by next November, it will continue a decade-long trend of declining Democratic strength among voters considered to be the foundation of the party.Democratic share of major party vote among nonwhite voters More

The vote on Tuesday will almost certainly determine who will succeed former Representative David Cicilline, and could hold clues to what voters are looking for in the run-up to 2024.Days before a Democratic primary that will almost certainly decide who represents her in Congress, Linda Vaughan Dubois of Rumford, R.I., still had not decided on a candidate.“There’s so many,” she said at a recent meet-and-greet at an East Providence sports bar for Gabriel Amo, a Rhode Island native who worked in the Biden and Obama administrations and is one of 11 Democrats competing in the race to represent this deep-blue district in the country’s smallest state.Not wanting to “waste” her vote on a candidate who had no chance of winning, Ms. Vaughan Dubois, an intensive care nurse for infants who described herself as a moderate, said she was tracking down each of her top candidates to see what they were like in person.As Rhode Islanders return from their state’s well-loved beaches after the long Labor Day weekend, they will cast votes on Tuesday in a special primary election to determine who will replace former Representative David N. Cicilline, the seven-term Democrat who stepped down in May to become president of the Rhode Island Foundation.Gabriel Amo speaking to Linda Vaughan Dubois at a campaign event last week. Ms. Vaughan Dubois said she was tracking down each of her top candidates to see what they were like in person.Sophie Park for The New York TimesHis resignation, a surprise to much of the Rhode Island political world, gave rise to a crowded and chaotic contest during an otherwise sleepy summer political season. With 11 Democrats and two Republicans comprising a historically diverse field, the candidates regularly bump into one another at community festivals, ice cream socials, meet-and-greets and more as they try to prove themselves to voters.“It was like with the Patriots when Tom Brady left,” said Rich Luchette, a political strategist who advised Mr. Cicilline for almost a decade. “Everybody who was sitting behind Tom Brady felt like they should be the starting quarterback.”The fate of the seat in Rhode Island’s solidly blue First Congressional District almost certainly will not change the balance of power in the House, now controlled by Republicans. But the outcome of the election, which has pitted factions of the Democratic Party against each other, could hold clues about what Democrats are looking for in the run-up to next year’s elections, particularly in a state where former president Donald J. Trump over-performed in 2020.The race — and its diverse field — “reflects the rapidly changing nature of the Democratic Party nationally,” said Wendy Schiller, a professor of political science at Brown University. “There are a lot of groups that have been excluded from power that are now vying for power successfully, and you wonder how it can all be harnessed” to drive voter turnout next year.While there has been no independent public polling indicating who is favored to win, two candidates have emerged as leaders after a series of controversies that have shaken the race.Aaron Regunberg, a progressive former state representative widely seen as the front-runner, is backed by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. Mr. Amo, a more centrist Democrat who is seen as a top alternative to Mr. Regunberg, has been endorsed by the Congressional Black Caucus, the former White House chief of staff Ron Klain and former Representative Patrick J. Kennedy, who represented the district before Mr. Cicilline.Senator Bernie Sanders headlined for Aaron Regunberg, to the right of Mr. Sanders, at a rally last week.Sophie Park for The New York TimesState Senator Sandra Cano has attracted a broad range of local endorsements. And Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos, who began the race as the only candidate who had won a statewide election, may still be in contention despite a scandal related to forged signatures on the nomination forms she filed to run.That was just one measure of the turbulence of the race. Don Carlson, another Democrat who had sought the nomination, dropped out just nine days before the primary. He suspended his campaign after an investigative report by WPRI, a Providence news station, found that Williams College had asked him not to return to teach there after he was accused of sending a text to a student in which he “suggested a relationship modeled on a website where people can pay to go on dates.” He has sought to clarify his conduct.Whoever wins the most votes in the Democratic primary on Tuesday is virtually assured of winning the general election. But with so many candidates dividing the vote, and no independent public polling, political observers say it’s difficult to predict how the election may go and how close it will be. Mr. Cicilline has stayed out of the contest, declining to throw his support behind any candidate.“It’s been rough,” Ms. Matos said. “I knew this was going to be a tough campaign. It has been really hard. But you know, it is worth it.”Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos saw her campaign slump after criminal investigations were opened into fraudulent signatures on her nomination papers. Sophie Park for The New York TimesIn East Providence, Ms. Vaughan Dubois said she was deciding between Mr. Amo and Mr. Regunberg, and above all was looking for someone who had “some experience” and could “play with the big boys — who don’t play nice.”That is at the heart of Mr. Amo’s pitch to voters, which emphasizes his professional background and his Ocean State roots. He frequently brings up his experience serving two presidents in the White House and former Gov. Gina Raimondo, now the U.S. secretary of commerce, in the Rhode Island State House.“People here in Rhode Island deserve a congressperson who can get the job done,” Mr. Amo said in an interview. “They want people who are not running to make a point. They want effectiveness.”Mr. Amo, a more centrist Democrat, is seen as a top alternative to Mr. Regunberg.Sophie Park for The New York TimesHe said that Mr. Regunberg would “go to Washington and grandstand to make a political statement.”Mr. Regunberg dismissed the attacks as expected in the final week before an election. He has criticized Mr. Amo for accepting contributions from corporate lobbyists.Mr. Regunberg has pledged not to accept corporate PAC or lobbyist money, and, as a former state legislator and activist, has made the case that he would be a liberal leader in Washington in the mold of Mr. Sanders, who headlined a rally for him last weekend.“This is a district that can support someone who’s actually going to organize” and push progressive policies in Washington, Mr. Regunberg said at the rally, where he addressed around 650 attendees — including young families, people donning “Bernie” merch and supporters from nearby Massachusetts — who had lined up on the sidewalk outside a historic theater in Providence to see him and Mr. Sanders.Although there has been no independent public polling indicating who is favored to win, Mr. Regunberg is widely seen as the front-runner.Sophie Park for The New York TimesLike Mr. Cicilline, who led the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust, Mr. Regunberg said corporate power was at the root of numerous political and economic crises, from climate change to prescription drug pricing, and the main issue for the Democratic Party to show voters it is taking on in order to win back control of Congress and re-elect President Biden in 2024.“2024 is an existential-threat-to-our-democracy kind of election,” Mr. Regunberg said in an interview at a vegan bakery in Pawtucket, R.I. “Substantively, we need to be taking on corporate power. But I also think, politically, it’s really important that we be showing that we’re the party that’s standing up for regular people.”But Mr. Regunberg also faced controversy during his campaign after his father-in-law, a top executive at the investment firm Janus Henderson, created and invested $125,000 in a super PAC on his behalf.Ms. Matos filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, accusing Mr. Regunberg of violating campaign finance law by coordinating with the super PAC. Mr. Regunberg has denied any wrongdoing.Ms. Matos, a moderate once seen as the front-runner in the race, saw her campaign slump after she was engulfed this summer in multiple criminal investigations into the fraudulent signatures on her nomination papers. Still, she maintains support from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and a number of local unions.The race has spurred several historic bids, including seven candidates who would be the first person of color to represent a state whose Hispanic or Latino population increased 40 percent from 2010 to 2020, and three who would be the first Democratic woman.State Senator Sandra Cano has attracted a broad range of local endorsements.Sophie Park for The New York TimesMs. Cano, a Colombian American state senator who has worked her way up through local government, said the diversity reflects “the progress that our community is making” and is “something that we need to celebrate.”Ms. Cano immigrated to the United States from Colombia under political asylum, an experience she said has been at the core of her desire to be involved in politics.“My democratic values have always carried with me,” she said, “because I came from an unhealthy democracy.” More