Elections

Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican wunderkind running for his party’s presidential nomination, would like potential supporters to know he believes in the rule of law and the Constitution’s separation of powers — though his applications of such principles can seem selective.After intense study of the Constitution, Mr. Ramaswamy says he believes that the awesome powers of the presidency would allow him to abolish the Education Department “on Day 1,” part of an assault on the “administrative state” that his 2024 rival, Donald J. Trump, fell short on during Days 1 through 1,461 of his presidency. Never mind that the Constitution confers the power of the purse on Congress, and a subsequent law makes it illegal for the president not to spend that money.Mr. Ramaswamy also wants to eradicate teachers’ unions, though he concedes that they are governed by contracts with state and local governments.And he says he would unleash the military to stamp out the scourge of fentanyl coming across the Southern border, unworried by the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the use of the military for civil law enforcement.In short, Mr. Ramaswamy, a lavishly wealthy 37-year-old entrepreneur and author pitching himself as a new face of intellectual conservatism, is promising to go farther down the road of ruling by fiat than Mr. Trump would or could.Mr. Ramaswamy has already lent his well-appointed campaign more than $10 million, and he has said he will spend over $100 million if necessary. John Tully for The New York Times“I respect what Donald Trump did, I do, with the America First agenda, but I think he went as far as he was going to go,” Mr. Ramaswamy told a crowd of about 100 on Tuesday night at Murphy’s Tap Room in Bedford, N.H. “I’m in this race to take the America First agenda far further than Donald Trump ever did.”Mr. Ramaswamy, a Cincinnati-born son of Indian immigrants, would seem to be the longest of long shots: He has never held elective office and has vanishingly low name recognition. But he is playing to sizable crowds and exudes a confidence that can be infectious. He has already lent his well-appointed campaign more than $10 million and has said he will spend over $100 million if necessary. Recent polling, both nationally and in New Hampshire, shows him on the rise in the Republican field, though at no more than 5 percent.His overt shots at Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whom he labels a visionless “implementer” without the courage to venture into the hostile territories of college campuses or NBC News, are intended to clear what he sees as an eventual showdown with Mr. Trump. His brashest criticism of the former president is over Mr. Trump’s suggestion that he might skip primary debates, depriving Mr. Ramaswamy of the stage he says he needs to catch his rival.Mr. Ramaswamy sees a simple path to the White House: score respectably in the Iowa caucuses, win New Hampshire, vault to the nomination — and then triumph in a landslide that would exceed Ronald Reagan’s victory over Jimmy Carter in 1980.“Even as a freshman, he had a similar voice, confident, articulate, very sure of himself,” said Anson Frericks, a high school friend of Mr. Ramaswamy’s and a business partner at the asset management firm they founded to give investors financial options untethered to socially conscious corporations. “Confidence builds with success. It’s a virtuous cycle.”And though his promises may be legally problematic, they sound correct to many Republicans — or at least authoritative. Mr. Ramaswamy at Linda’s Breakfast Place in Seabrook, N.H., on Thursday. Recent polling, both nationally and in New Hampshire, shows him on the rise in the Republican field, though at no more than 5 percent.John Tully for The New York Times“He seems like he knows what he’s talking about,” said Bob Willis, a self-described “Ultra-MAGA Trump person” who was waiting for Mr. Ramaswamy to arrive on Wednesday in Keene, N.H.Confidence is Mr. Ramaswamy’s gift. His father, an engineer and a patent lawyer at General Electric, is, the candidate says, far more liberal than his son. His mother is a physician. He attributes his strict vegetarianism to his Indian roots. A piano teacher began Mr. Ramaswamy’s political journey with long asides on the evils of government and the wrongs of Hillary Clinton. At Harvard, he majored in biology and developed a brash libertarianism complete with a political rapper alter ego, “Da Vek.”Between graduation and Yale Law School, he worked in finance, investing in pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Before getting his law degree, he was already worth around $15 million, he said in an interview, during which he worried about wealth inequality.“I think it fuels a social hierarchy in our country that rejects the premise that we’re all coequal citizens,” he said.Mr. Ramaswamy, a Cincinnati-born son of Indian immigrants, has never held elective office and has low name recognition.John Tully for The New York TimesIndeed, Mr. Ramaswamy’s promises have an overarching theme that the nation — especially his generation and younger — has lost its spiritual center, creating what the mathematician Blaise Pascal called “a God-shaped vacuum in the heart.” That hole is being filled, Mr. Ramaswamy says, by “secular cults” — racial “wokeism,” sexual and gender fluidity, and the “climate cult” — which can be “diluted to oblivion” only with the rediscovery of the American ideals of patriotism, meritocracy and sacrifice. Mr. Ramaswamy can say things that stretch credulity or undermine his seriousness. He boasts on the campaign trail of his recent star turn jousting with Don Lemon just before Mr. Lemon was fired by CNN. But his statement in that exchange that Black Americans did not secure their civil rights until they secured their right to bear arms made little historical sense, since the civil rights movement was predicated on nonviolence. Indeed, the arming of the Black Panthers led to a deadly government crackdown.Mr. Ramaswamy accepts the established science that the burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet, but his answer is to “drill, frack, burn coal” and use more fossil fuels. That will supposedly unleash economic growth that will pay for mitigation efforts to shield everyone from climate change.He also says he is the first presidential candidate to promise to end race-based affirmative action, ignoring that this was the centerpiece of Ben Carson’s presidential run in 2016. Mr. Ramaswamy would end affirmative action by executive order, he says.He would not spend another dollar on aid to Ukraine but would use military force to “annihilate” Mexican drug cartels.Gregg Dumont, wearing a T-shirt picturing Mr. Trump in jail as a political prisoner, said Mr. Ramaswamy had his vote over the man on his shirt. John Tully for The New York TimesOn Wednesday night in Windham, N.H., Mr. Ramaswamy suggested he would name Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Democratic vaccine skeptic challenging President Biden, as his running mate. On Tuesday in Bedford, he was asked by a woman with a Black son-in-law and a mixed-race grandson to clarify the meaning of “anti-woke.”Mr. Ramaswamy — the author of “Woke Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam” — answered, “I’ve never used that word to actually describe myself,” as aides handed out stickers reading: “Stop Wokeism. Vote Vivek.”All of this can be somewhat mystifying to prominent people who worked with him. Mr. Ramaswamy’s real fortune comes from the pharmaceutical investment and drug development firm Roivant Sciences, founded after the entrepreneur had a “brilliant” idea, said Donald M. Berwick, a former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President Barack Obama.Pharmaceutical giants often abandon research efforts after concluding that even if they are successful, the medicinal product might not be profitable. Roivant would then pick up such ventures and bring them to market. Roivant’s advisory board eventually included Tom Daschle, the former Democratic senator and Senate majority leader; Dr. Berwick; and Kathleen Sebelius, a health and human services secretary in the Obama administration.Part of the appeal, Mr. Daschle said, was Mr. Ramaswamy’s commitment to bringing prescription drugs to market at affordable prices.“I just assumed that because he was so interested in doing as much as he was to lower costs, social responsibility and corporate responsibility was part of his thinking,” Mr. Daschle said.Then, after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, Mr. Ramaswamy began publicly castigating corporations for speaking out on social issues like Black Lives Matter, voting rights and “E.S.G.” — environmental, social and governance investing. Opinion columns in The Wall Street Journal were followed by appearances on Tucker Carlson’s now-canceled Fox News show.“I was rather shocked,” said Dr. Berwick, who resigned from Roivant on Jan. 12, 2021. Within days, Mr. Daschle and Ms. Sebelius quit. Mr. Ramaswamy soon followed, to write three books, help start the asset management company with Mr. Frericks and run for president.Mr. Ramaswamy says he would not spend another dollar on aid to Ukraine but would use military force to “annihilate” Mexican drug cartels.John Tully for The New York TimesAt this very early stage of the campaign, Mr. Ramaswamy is open about the limits of his appeal. Evangelical Christians who dominate the Republican caucuses in Iowa will need to be brought along to his Hindu faith. His “war with Mexico” may go over well in South Carolina, but faces resistance among more libertarian voters in New Hampshire, he said.And New Hampshire cynics don’t quite know how seriously to take him. Victoria Gulla, 50, of Spofford, N.H., questioned whether he was part of a back-room deal with Mr. Trump to help take out Mr. DeSantis in exchange for a position in the next Trump administration, in the way she thinks Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, helped take down Senator Marco Rubio in New Hampshire in 2016.In a statement on Friday afternoon, Mr. Trump fueled that kind of speculation, saying he was “pleased to see that Vivek Ramaswamy is doing so well” in a recent poll and “seems to be on his way to catching Ron DeSanctimonious.”A hundred million dollars in self-funding could keep Mr. Ramaswamy in the race for a long time, and some voters were clearly persuaded by Mr. Ramaswamy’s nearly messianic appeal for a spiritual and social renewal.Gregg Dumont, 45, of Manchester, broke into tears in Windham as he praised the candidate for daring to save his children from moral decay and what he called the “racism” of identity politics.Mr. Dumont, wearing a T-shirt picturing Mr. Trump in jail as a political prisoner, said Mr. Ramaswamy had his vote over the man on his shirt: “All the policies with an upgrade, and none of the personality,” he said. “I’m sick of the narcissism.” More

Ron DeSantis, a likely contender for the Republican presidential nomination, must court far-right voters who consider him a tool of the Deep State.To some, he is “Ron DeSoros,” a puppet of the Democratic megadonor George Soros. To others, he is “Ron DeSatan,” a vaccine-supporting evildoer. And to still others, he is “Ron DePLANTis,” a “plant” of the so-called Deep State.As the governor of Florida — real name Ron DeSantis — explores a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, he has made overtures to supporters of former President Donald J. Trump. But he is finding that the conspiracy theories and outlandish attacks that Mr. Trump and his allies have aimed at rivals for years are coming for him as well.The attacks often nod to one of the many unfounded conspiracy theories floating around in far-right circles: election fraud, vaccine dangers, Mr. Soros and even QAnon, the online conspiracy movement that believes, among other things, in the existence of a fictional cult that preys on children.The attacks underscore the power that conspiracy theories continue to hold over Republican politics heading into the 2024 presidential election. To win the party’s nomination, Mr. DeSantis would probably need support from a Republican base that has produced many of the attacks against him. And while Mr. DeSantis enjoys broad support among Republicans, soaring to re-election victory just six months ago, the latest primary polls show Mr. Trump gaining a sizable lead.“It’s a tug of war over who is going to grab the all-important conspiracy constituency,” said Bond Benton, an associate professor at Montclair State University who has studied QAnon.The demeaning nicknames for Mr. DeSantis have spread widely on conservative social media, growing this year as Mr. Trump’s attacks increased. There were more than 12,000 mentions of “DeSoros” on social media and news sites since January, according to Zignal Labs, a media insights company. “DeathSantis,” a term progressives used when the governor began relaxing Florida’s Covid-19 restrictions that has since been adopted by some conservatives, received 1.6 million mentions over the past two years.In recent months, Mr. DeSantis has responded by adopting some themes popular among the conspiratorial set, opposing vaccines he once endorsed and raising doubts about the 2020 election even though Mr. Trump handily won Florida in that year’s vote.Mr. DeSantis’s office did not respond to requests for comment.Mike Lindell, the MyPillow executive and an election denier, said, falsely, that Florida was spared from widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election because Mr. DeSantis had a close relationship with Dominion Voting Systems.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesThe attacks have come from some of the loudest voices in Mr. Trump’s corner.Mike Lindell, the MyPillow executive and an election denier, quickly found a role for Mr. DeSantis in his elaborate election fraud narrative. Mr. Lindell said, falsely, that Florida was spared from widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election because Mr. DeSantis had a close relationship with Dominion Voting Systems, an election software company targeted by election deniers.“Ron DeSantis is a Trojan horse,” Mr. Lindell said in a recent interview with The New York Times.Mr. Lindell pointed to an appearance Mr. DeSantis had had with a Dominion lawyer shortly after the election as a sign that the governor had conflicting loyalties.The lawyer, Elizabeth Locke, was speaking with Mr. DeSantis on a panel about the dangers of defamation by mainstream media. She has also represented Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate.There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud anywhere in the 2020 election and no evidence that Mr. DeSantis had any special relationship with Dominion.In an email, Ms. Locke pointed to a podcast appearance where she called the claims “silly” and said that she had known Mr. DeSantis since before he entered politics.Kari Lake, a Republican who lost her campaign for governor of Arizona last year, once praised Mr. DeSantis on the campaign trail. But she turned on him in February, as Mr. Trump’s attacks grew.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesKari Lake, a Republican who lost her campaign for governor of Arizona last year, once praised Mr. DeSantis on the campaign trail. But in February, as Mr. Trump’s attacks grew, she shared a story claiming Mr. DeSantis was endorsed by Mr. Soros, calling it “the kiss of death.” (Mr. Soros had only said that Mr. DeSantis was likely to become the nominee.)“The broader narrative is that he is connected to the shadowy forces that seek to bring down Trump,” said Mr. Bond, the Montclair professor.Mr. DeSantis was forced to play catch-up, making broad appeals to conspiratorial groups within the Republican Party.Last year, he announced a crackdown on voter fraud, arresting 17 people for charges of casting illegal ballots in 2020. Many of the voters had received voter registration cards from the government.Mr. DeSantis had once endorsed Covid-19 vaccines and celebrated as Floridians were rapidly vaccinated. By late last year, though, he had impaneled a statewide grand jury to investigate vaccine makers for potentially misleading Floridians, reflecting a false belief among Trump supporters that the vaccine is dangerous.Believers of the QAnon conspiracy theory do not seem swayed by Mr. DeSantis’s appeals, said Josephine Lukito, a media professor at the University of Texas who studies the relationship between disinformation and violence. “For them, that is more indicative of what a faker they perceive DeSantis to be.” More

“End” this, “shut down” that, “annihilate” the other thing. A political newcomer promises to outdo Donald Trump.Vivek Ramaswamy, a 37-year-old entrepreneur and author running for president as a Republican, has never run for elective office before, but he has clearly picked up the art of the stump speech. Here are five of his most reliable applause lines over a few days on the trail in New Hampshire.“I will be the first presidential candidate to say I will end race-based affirmative action.”It is a questionable assertion, because Ben Carson made ending affirmative action central to his 2016 campaign. But to the overwhelmingly white audiences that Mr. Ramaswamy, the son of Indian immigrants, is addressing, the promise goes over well. It fits in with his broader criticism of group identity and of the praise for diversity that is fundamental to liberal politics. But his pledge to end racial preferences by executive order could be more complicated than he makes it sound.“I will shut down the fourth branch of government, the administrative state. You cannot tame that beast. You must end it.”Mr. Ramaswamy insists that he will go much further than former President Donald J. Trump did to “drain the swamp” of the “Deep State.” And he says he will do it unilaterally, ending Civil Service protections by executive order, imposing eight-year term limits on federal positions, shuttering the Education Department and replacing the F.B.I., the I.R.S., and other agencies. The notion that “those elected to government should actually run the government” is central to his campaign, which demonizes the unelected bureaucracy that he says runs Washington.“We will use our military to annihilate the Mexican drug cartels.”While in Keene, N.H., on Wednesday, Mr. Ramaswamy mused about using a local precision-weapons plant to elaborate on his threat of military action against organized crime across the southern border in Mexico. Never mind that such a strike would be against a U.S. ally and neighbor. Mr. Trump made similar threats but never carried them out. And Mr. Ramaswamy has conceded that among some libertarian-minded voters, the promise sounds disconcertingly bellicose.“How about a constitutional amendment to make the voting age 25, but you can still vote at 18 if you serve the country or pass the civics test my mother passed to become a citizen?”The proposal might not win the hearts of Generation Z, but it appeals to older Republican primary voters who believe the country has lost its sense of citizenship and purpose. It might also resonate with those who understand how lopsided the youth vote is in favor of Democrats.“Today we depend on our main enemy for our entire modern way of life. That is a problem. The Declaration of Independence that I will sign as your next president will be our Declaration of Independence from Communist China.”Mr. Ramaswamy says confronting China would be his top foreign policy priority, and it will entail short-term pain. He would prevent American businesses from expanding into Chinese markets unless “our demands are met” by Beijing. Those include more intellectual property protections and an end to required joint ventures with state-controlled businesses. Unwinding consumer dependence on China would be difficult and economically distressing, he concedes, but he said the endeavor would be the essence of citizen sacrifice and would forge national unity. More

It’s been 52 years since Congress passed, and the country ratified, a constitutional amendment — the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18 in the wake of the Vietnam War and the broader disruption of the 1960s. (The 27th Amendment, ratified in 1992, was passed in 1789.) It’s been 64 years since Congress added states to the union — Alaska and Hawaii, in 1959. And it’s been 94 years since Congress capped the size of the House of Representatives at 435 members.You might be tempted to treat these facts as trivia. But the truth is that they say something profound about American politics. For more than 50 years, the United States has been frozen in a kind of structural and constitutional stasis. Despite deep changes in our society — among them major population growth and at least two generational waves — we have made no formal changes to our national charter, nor have we added states or rearranged the federal system or altered the rules of political competition.One reason this matters, as Kate Shaw and Julie C. Suk observe in a recent essay for Times Opinion, is that “several generations of Americans have lost the habit and muscle memory of seeking formal constitutional change.” Unaccustomed to the concept and convinced that it is functionally impossible, Americans have abandoned the very notion that we can change our Constitution. Instead, we place the onus for change on the Supreme Court and hope for the best. Out with popular sovereignty, in with judicial supremacy.There is another reason this matters. Our stagnant political system has produced a stagnant political landscape. Neither party has been able to obtain a lasting advantage over the other, nor is either party poised to do so. The margins of victory and defeat in national elections are slim. The Republican majority that gave President George W. Bush a second term in the White House — and inspired, however briefly, visions of a permanent Republican majority — came to just 50.7 percent of the overall vote. President Barack Obama won his second term by around four percentage points, and President Biden won by a similar margin in 2020. Donald Trump, as we know, didn’t win a majority of voters in 2016.Control of Congress is evenly matched as well. Majorities are made with narrow margins in a handful of contested races, where victory can rest more on the shape of the district map — and the extent of the gerrymandering, assuming it holds — than on any kind of political persuasion. That’s the House. In the Senate, control has lurched back and forth on the basis of a few competitive seats in a few competitive states. And the next presidential election, thanks to the Electoral College, will be a game of inches in a small batch of closely matched states rather than a true national election.Past eras of political dynamism often came from some change in the overall political order. Throughout the 19th century, for example, the addition of states either transformed the terrain on which Americans fought partisan politics or opened avenues for long-term success for either one of the two major parties. States could be used to solidify partisan control in Washington — the reason we have two Dakotas instead of one — or used to extend and enlarge an existing coalition.Progressive-era constitutional transformations — the direct election of senators, women’s suffrage and Prohibition — reverberated through partisan politics, and the flood of Black Americans from Southern fields to Northern cities put an indelible stamp on the behavior of Democrats and Republicans.We lack for political disruption on that scale. There are no constitutional amendments on the table that might alter the terms of partisan combat in this country. There’s no chance — anytime soon — that we’ll end the Electoral College or radically expand the size of the House, moves that could change the national political calculus for both parties. There are no prospects, at this point, for new states, whether D.C., Puerto Rico or any of the other territories where Americans live and work without real representation in Congress.There’s nothing either constitutional or structural on the horizon of American politics that might unsettle or shake the political system itself out of its stagnation. Nothing that could push the public in new directions or force the parties themselves to build new kinds of coalitions. Nothing, in short, that could help Americans untangle the pathologies of our current political order.The fact of the matter is that there are forces that are trying to break the stasis of American politics. There’s the Supreme Court, which has used its iron grip on constitutional meaning to accumulate power in its chambers, to the detriment of other institutions of American governance. There’s the Republican Party, which has used the countermajoritarian features of our system to build redoubts of power, insulated from the voters themselves. And there is an authoritarian movement, led and animated by Trump, that wants to renounce constitutional government in favor of an authoritarian patronage regime, with his family at its center.Each of these forces is trying to game the current system, to build a new order from the pieces as they exist. But there’s nothing that says we can’t write new rules. And there’s nothing that says that we have to play this particular game.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

Nikki Haley drew a rally crowd’s applause with a reference to Don Lemon’s remarks about women and age as she struggled to gain ground against Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis in the Republican field.Nikki Haley’s supporters are quick to repeat a theme that has become central to her campaign: She has been underestimated before.So when Ms. Haley, the former South Carolina governor and ambassador to the United Nations, recounted on Thursday evening what the former CNN anchor Don Lemon had said about her during a recent broadcast, the crowd of hundreds who had gathered to hear her speak erupted in applause.Ms. Haley, who has couched her campaign message in a call for “a new generation of leaders,” encouraged the crowd to “leave the drama of the past” behind — a thinly veiled allusion to former President Donald J. Trump’s administration. And she repeated her calls for term limits and mental competency tests for elected leaders, adding that she was willing to be flexible about age ranges.“We’ve got to make sure that these people are ready to fight — and I don’t care if you do it for ages 50 and over,” she told the crowd in Greer, in the northwest corner of South Carolina. “Because yes, I am in my prime.”She added: “God bless Don Lemon. I just want to say, ‘Who’s in their prime now?’”Ms. Haley, 51, was alluding to a moment in February when Mr. Lemon said that he was “uncomfortable” about Ms. Haley’s raising the question of age and mental competency among political leaders.Ms. Haley “isn’t in her prime, sorry,” Mr. Lemon said. “A woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s and 30s and maybe 40s.”Mr. Lemon later apologized for the remarks. He was ousted from CNN last week.The energy that Ms. Haley can capture on the campaign trail contrasts with her struggle to build national momentum.Meg Kinnard/Associated PressThe line resonated in particular with women in the crowd, and several attendees said they saw Ms. Haley’s response to Mr. Lemon as a creative means of pointing out — and making fun of — a moment of sexism.Yet, the energy that Ms. Haley can capture in a room like the one in Greer contrasts with her struggle to build national momentum in an increasingly crowded Republican primary field. She will most likely soon have to contend with the entry of a fellow South Carolinian, Senator Tim Scott, into the race, as well as with the two candidates who are garnering the most attention and the bulk of the support in polls: Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.After her stump speech, as Ms. Haley greeted supporters and took photos with them, Rachel Dankel, a real estate agent in her 50s who is based in Greenville, S.C., said she had told Ms. Haley how much she appreciated her pushing back on Mr. Lemon’s words. When she first heard about his comment, she said, “I wanted to throw up.”“I thought that was, to me, the worst thing that somebody could say,” she said. “That’s so degrading. You have men in their 80s, and they’re not over — they’re not too old?”Ms. Haley, who was the first Republican presidential candidate to challenge Mr. Trump in the current campaign, has aimed to separate herself from the pack by taking early stances on issues like age limits among political leaders. Last week, she suggested in an interview with Fox News that President Biden, who is 80, would not live until the end of his second term if re-elected.Ms. Haley has also raised money off Mr. Lemon’s comments. Her campaign website sells a beverage koozie that reads: “Past my prime? Hold my beer”Ms. Haley’s campaign is counting on her in-state bona fides — she was a longtime State House member in a district close to the State Capitol and the first woman to serve as governor — to bolster her standing in the Palmetto State. The South Carolina primary is third on the Republican calendar, after Iowa and New Hampshire, and it is the Haley campaign’s belief that her home-state electorate will propel her to the top of the primary field.And while she is polling in the low single digits in most national surveys, an April poll conducted by Winthrop University showed her with her 18 percent support in her home state, well behind Mr. Trump but within striking distance of Mr. DeSantis.“There’s a certain segment out there that’s very excited about her running, and then there’s the hard-core Trumpists who are mad at her for running,” said Chip Felkel, a South Carolina Republican political strategist.At the rally on Thursday, Christy Willis, 50, a teacher who is still undecided about whom she will support in 2024, said she had not heard about Mr. Lemon’s comments before hearing Ms. Haley repeat them on Thursday at the Cannon Center, an event space. After learning of the context, she said she had found the back-and-forth intriguing.“It does open a discussion about ageism and sexism and feminism,” she said, referring to Mr. Biden’s age. “He’s allowed to do things that a woman probably would not be able to do.” More

After a promising start, he has become bogged down in issues that have divided and hurt Republicans in the past.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has fallen sharply in the polls.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesAt the beginning of the year, Ron DeSantis looked as if he might be the answer to all of the Republican Party’s problems.For the first time in decades, a conservative politician rose to national prominence on issues that unified the party’s populist base with its beleaguered establishment — and without triggering a Resistance from Florida Democrats. He seemed to offer Republicans a path beyond the divisions and defeats of the last 15 years.Mr. DeSantis does not seem like the answer anymore. His poll numbers are cratering. His strength as a general election candidate is being questioned. This is partly because he’s fallen flat on the national stage, but it’s also because he’s slowly devolved into an older kind of Republican — the kind without answers to the party’s problems.He’s been bogged down in the very issues that divided and hurt Republicans in the past, like abortion, entitlements, Russia and the conduct of Donald J. Trump. Against Mr. Trump and without Democrats as a foil, his instinct to take the most conservative stance has pushed him far to the right. He’s devolved into another Ted Cruz.Mr. DeSantis will probably never be an entertainer like Mr. Trump, an orator like Ronald Reagan, or someone to get a beer with like George W. Bush. But to compete for the nomination, he will at least need to be who he appeared to be a few months ago: a new kind of conservative, who can appeal to the establishment and the base by focusing on the new set of issues that got him here: the fight for “freedom” and against “woke.”Mr. DeSantis’s varying campaigns against everything from coronavirus restrictions to gender studies curriculums weren’t extraordinarily popular, at least not in terms of national polling, but it was a type of political gold nonetheless. It let him channel the passions of the Republican base and get on Fox News without offending bourgeoise conservative sensibilities on race, immigration and gender. In fact, many elite conservatives disliked “woke” and coronavirus restrictions just like the rank-and-file. Even some Democrats sympathized with his positions. As a result, he won re-election in Florida in a landslide. Democratic turnout was abysmal.This combination of base and elite appeal made him a natural candidate to lead an anti-Trump coalition. In the last presidential primary, in 2016, Mr. Trump held the center of the Republican electorate and left his opposition split on either side. To his right, there was Mr. Cruz and the orthodox conservatives. To his left, there was Marco Rubio, John Kasich and the relatively moderate, business-friendly establishment. None of these factional figures stood a chance of unifying those two disparate groups, but for a fleeting moment after the midterms last year, Mr. DeSantis seemed to assemble all of the various not-necessarily-Trump factions under his banner.Since then, Mr. DeSantis’s coalition has unraveled. His superficial struggles on the campaign trail might be evident to most, but what is more easily overlooked is an overarching struggle to balance the competing needs of an ideologically diverse coalition in a Republican primary.His challenge has two halves. First, his instinct to move to the right has been more fraught in a Republican primary than it was when “woke” liberals were his foil. After all, there’s plenty of room to line up to the right of “woke” without alienating anyone on the right. Trying to be to the right of Mr. Trump, on the other hand, involves greater risk regarding both the general electorate and his relatively moderate supporters.Perhaps surprisingly, Mr. DeSantis actually fares best among moderate voters in Republican primary polling. This probably says more about which Republicans are most skeptical about Mr. Trump than it does about Mr. DeSantis, but it nonetheless means that his conservative instincts routinely put him at odds with his own base.In some cases, the tension between Mr. DeSantis and his base is unavoidable — and his moderate supporters will sometimes lose. A politician can’t always please every constituency. Abortion, for instance, poses a legitimate problem for Mr. DeSantis — and every Republican nowadays.But Mr. DeSantis has not always seemed cognizant of the delicate balancing act ahead of him and has committed errors as a result. His relatively soft position on Russia regarding Ukraine, for instance, overlooked that the elite, hawkish, neoconservative right not only cares deeply about containing Russia but would also inevitably be part of any successful anti-Trump coalition. Mr. DeSantis doesn’t need to be a neocon to hold this support against Mr. Trump, but it does seem he needs to support defending Ukraine.The second half is that the fights for “freedom” and against “woke” have not been a glue that’s held his fractious coalition together. So far this year, he’s struggled to make the race about these issues at all. Instead, abortion, entitlements, Russia and Mr. Trump have dominated the conversation.Of all the things that have happened to Mr. DeSantis so far this year, this might be the most troubling and telling. Tactical mistakes can be fixed, but if fighting for “freedom” and against “woke” isn’t a powerful, organizing theme, then he’s not especially different from any other Republican.This might not be entirely Mr. DeSantis’s fault. The coronavirus pandemic is over — at least for political purposes. The peak of “woke” might have come and gone as well: The arc of new left culture fights seems to have bent into a reactionary phase in which debate centers as much or more on proposed Republican restrictions on books, drag shows and A.P. history curriculums as on the latest controversy about the excesses of the left. Mr. DeSantis’s renewal of a year-old fight against Disney — the exact origins of which I suspect would stump even many regular readers of this newsletter — is a telling indicator that his campaign against “woke” is struggling for oxygen.At the same time as Mr. DeSantis’s new issues have faded, the old issues have come roaring back. The Supreme Court and Vladimir Putin made sure of it. So did Mr. Trump, who attacked Mr. DeSantis for old statements on cutting entitlements. And while all of these issues make Mr. DeSantis vulnerable in various ways, there are few opportunities to attack Mr. Trump as too woke.The devolution of Mr. DeSantis, in other words, is partly due to forces beyond his control. But if “freedom” or “woke” is not enough, he will probably need a new set of issues to unite open-to-anyone-but-Trump voters. More

The building began convulsing at 4:17 a.m. Firat Yayla was awake in bed, scrolling through videos on his phone. His mother was asleep down the hall.The region along Turkey’s border with Syria was known for earthquakes, but this apartment complex was new, built to withstand disaster. It was called Guclu Bahce, or Mighty Garden. Mr. Yayla’s own cousin had helped build it. He and his business partner had boasted that the complex could withstand even the most powerful tremor.So, as the earth heaved for more than a minute, Mr. Yayla, 21, and his 62-year-old mother, Sohret Guclu, a retired schoolteacher, remained inside.At that very moment, though, Mr. Yayla’s cousin, the developer, was leaping for safety from a second-story balcony.Sohret Guclu, a retired schoolteacher, was asleep in her home in Antakya, Turkey, when the quake hit.via Firat YaylaWhat Mr. Yayla and his mother had not known was that the system to ensure that buildings were safely constructed to code had been tainted by money and politics. That system prioritized speed over rules and technical expertise.A New York Times investigation found that a developer won zoning approval for the project after donating more than $200,000 to a local soccer club, where the mayor is an honorary president. Then, when residents raised alarms that the blueprints did not match what had been built, they received no satisfying reply from the local government. The building inspector said that, even after the project had failed its inspection, the developers used political influence to get the doors open.The apartment complex, in the southern Turkish city of Antakya, was a concrete and stone representation of a patronage system that has flourished under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as he has propelled a construction boom across Turkey for the past two decades.Undeterred by warnings that the breakneck development lacked sufficient engineering oversight, officials in the capital, Ankara, gave local politicians more power to issue construction licenses for large projects without scrutiny from independent professionals.Basic suggestions never took off — that civil engineers should have to pass a certification exam, for instance.Rescue workers at the site of the collapsed Guclu Bahce building. About 65 people died there.Emin Ozmen for The New York TimesThat building spree turned middle-class landowners like the Guclus, for whom the Guclu Bahce complex was named, into developers and landlords. Mr. Erdogan, who will stand for re-election on May 14, used construction as a vessel for economic growth and a symbol of Turkey’s progress. Local politicians from all parties benefited from the jobs, housing and off-the-books payments that commonly flowed from it all.Mr. Erdogan’s office referred questions to the environmental ministry, which did not respond to requests for comment.The Feb. 6 earthquake revealed the shaky foundation on which so much growth was built. More than 50,000 people died as buildings toppled, crumbled or pancaked. Guclu Bahce, the mighty earthquake-proof complex, was among them. An estimated 65 people died there.“So many died because they were told that the safest place was inside, and they should not try to leave during an earthquake,” said Fatma Oguz, whose sister died in the collapse.For the Guclu family, several of whom lived in the building, the collapse created a fatal rift. Survivors have turned on each other amid a lawsuit, a criminal investigation and a bitter search for answers:Were the buildings doomed to fall by nature of a powerful earthquake? Or did someone cut corners? Who can be held accountable in a system in which blueprints cannot be trusted and nobody agrees on whether the building passed inspection? The inspector says somebody forged his signature. It is unclear if the final project was up to code, and the developers cannot agree on who actually built anything.As the building shook in February, Mr. Yayla called out to his mother to stay in her room and get on the floor next to her bed. He did the same. They would ride this out safely.Then came a fierce thud, and the columns holding up the bedroom ceiling snapped.‘Money From Our Friends’Family members say the land, covered in fig trees, had been theirs for three generations.By 2015, buildings were popping up all around, a testament to a Turkish economy that had been growing about 7 percent a year.Mehmet Guclu, a young developer with a civil engineering degree, approached his relatives with a plan. Look around, he told them. Somebody’s going to develop this parcel. Better to keep it in the family, to be landlords, to make money.“He convinced us that he’d build the most magnificent project in our family name,” said Yusuf Guclu, another cousin who lived in the complex. He said that Mehmet had promised to protect against the earthquakes everyone in the region knew to expect.Mehmet Guclu, then in his 30s, was a charismatic striver with a luxe aesthetic, known for incorporating sleek finishes and expensive materials like marble. He had already built some of the tallest buildings in Antakya.The extended family had dreamed of exactly this opportunity for years.The complex was to be a centerpiece of the community — five towers, complete with luxury apartments, retail shops, a pool and a high-end gym.Mehmet’s career had taken off quickly, in part because of Turkey’s low barriers to entry for civil engineering graduates. Unlike in the United States and United Kingdom, graduates in Turkey do not need to pass certification exams or complete on-the-job training to become an engineer. Architectural trade groups have called for such requirements for years.The Guclu Bahce complex in May 2020, before residents moved in. The development attracted doctors, teachers, judges and politicians, some of whom bought multiple properties as investments.Google Maps“University educates you. It doesn’t train you,” said Mustafa Erdik, an earthquake engineering professor at Bogazici University in Istanbul. “We have to bring in professional engineering.”Getting a project started often hinges on unwritten rules that can be as important as technical expertise. In this part of southern Turkey, for example, contractors have known for years that a donation to the local soccer club can move a project along, said Hikmet Cincin, the former head of the soccer club. Antakya’s mayor at the time, Lutfu Savas, serves as the club’s honorary president.After discussions with that mayor, Mehmet Guclu gave the club more than half a million lira, more than $200,000 at the time, according to a person involved in the construction process who spoke on condition of anonymity because of an ongoing investigation.Mr. Savas denied profiting from Guclu Bahce’s construction and said the donation had not been tied to the project. “If we ask for money from our friends,” he said of gifts to the soccer club, “it’s for the benefit of everyone.”He called himself an honest politician in a corrupt system. He said developers commonly made payments to circumvent bureaucratic approvals. Most build whatever they want and assume it will be approved, he said. He blamed Mr. Erdogan and his political party for fostering this culture.But Mr. Savas, himself a former member of Mr. Erdogan’s party, was adamant that was not the case with Guclu Bahce.Mr. Savas says he has little memory of the particulars. What is clear is that the project rolled along in the following years, and the foundation was laid in summer 2017.But the earth in that part of Turkey is not ideal for building, particularly in an earthquake zone, said Serkan Koc, a member of the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects.“These areas shouldn’t have been turned into construction zones,” he said. Soft soil, for example, will amplify an earthquake. Mr. Koc said Turkish environmental officials should have assessed the whole area before the building boom.“Although the ministry had the authority to inspect, they didn’t” he said. The environmental ministry did not respond to requests for comment.As Mr. Guclu’s new project moved forward, the only limitations seemed to be financial. Soon after the foundation was poured, his money dried up. He turned to a prominent developer, Servet Altas, to help see it through.Mr. Altas became the public face of the project. His initials, in red and blue, would later adorn the low wall ringing the complex.Sales PitchSohret Guclu had been eager for a steady income to supplement her modest state pension. So she swapped her land deeds for ownership of six apartments and a retail storefront.She had raised two boys in an old, crumbling apartment building. Her new home was to be a four-bedroom unit with an airy living room and kitchen — one of the largest in the complex.Guclu Bahce’s apartments were among the region’s most expensive, costing as much as $160,000. But Mr. Altas promised upscale amenities and unparalleled safety, former residents said.“If there were an earthquake right now, I would run inside,” Mr. Altas repeatedly said, recalled Ertugrul Sahbaz, a building manager for the complex.Guclu Bahce attracted doctors, teachers, judges and politicians. Songul Oguz and her husband bought a $117,000 apartment after a sales agent said that the building’s strong foundation and reinforced steel bars could withstand even a 10-magnitude earthquake, Ms. Oguz’s sister recalled. It would take 10 days for Ms. Oguz’s body to be pulled from the wreckage.Mr. Altas, wearing a plaid jacket and bow tie, joined government officials for a jubilant opening ceremony in late 2019. They smiled and posed with a pair of 10-foot gold scissors that were later recorded by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest. Mr. Altas thanked Mr. Guclu for his engineering work and his own son for working as one of the architects.Servet Altas, center, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony during the opening of the apartment complex.Mehmet Bayrak/Hatay-IhaFew have argued that these developers knowingly put people in deadly buildings. Mr. Guclu’s own family lived there, after all, as did Mr. Altas’s son. Turkey deemed Mr. Guclu a qualified engineer, and the local government — measured by the number of officials at the grand opening — supported the project.But the chest-thumping and fanfare were premature. The buildings failed a final inspection, according to court testimony. The nature of the violations is murky, but Ismail Ozturk, a building inspector, testified this year that his company had raised concerns with the local authorities.Mr. Ozturk testified that the contractors had leveraged “close connections” in the city government to overcome the failed inspection. The city mayor at the time, Ismail Kimyeci, who belongs to Mr. Erdogan’s party, denied any special treatment. He said the government’s final approval had been a formality. “The inspection firm plays the most important role here,” Mr. Kimyeci said.Mr. Ozturk’s signature does appear on a certification document. Through his lawyer, he said it had been forged.In a functioning system, there would be no ambiguity about who had approved a project. But Turkey’s system is built on ambiguity. The Erdogan government has, for decades, weakened independent, expert construction oversight and fought proposals to toughen standards.Turkey’s chamber of civil engineers, for example, has argued for years that experienced engineers are stretched too thin to adequately supervise construction projects. The group has called for every project to get a dedicated engineer. That idea, which could have slowed down construction, went nowhere. The Erdogan government sued the group in 2015, blocking it from issuing its own, stricter certifications for engineers.Lawmakers also privatized the building inspection process, sidelining Turkey’s engineering and architectural union. And while the government in 2019 eliminated a rule allowing contractors to pick their inspectors, mayors still hold power to push past potential issues.Guclu Bahce’s opening was delayed. Discrepancies existed between the blueprints and what was built, Mr. Ozturk said in testimony after the earthquake. Some former residents, too, said that they had picked up on such differences and sent a letter to the city raising concerns.One resident said the dispute centered on the very building in which Mr. Yayla slept the night of the earthquake — the first to collapse. The resident said that the building had featured an extra floor, a penthouse with a terrace that had not appeared in the plans.The resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid being dragged into a criminal and civil dispute, said he had helped broker a meeting between Mr. Altas and the city’s current mayor, Izzettin Yilmaz, to find a solution.Mr. Yilmaz, a member of Mr. Erdogan’s party, acknowledged in an interview that he had met with Mr. Altas. But he said the purpose was to tell the contractor that he was not interested in taking bribes. Gossip was swirling, he said, and he wanted to make things clear: “I told him: ‘No one requested a payment from you.’”Through his lawyer, though, Mr. Altas, denied meeting with the mayor. What’s more, Mr. Altas — who took credit at the opening ceremony for building the complex — now denies involvement with the construction or the planning. That was Mehmet Guclu’s responsibility, he said.Despite claiming no involvement, Mr. Altas said he was certain that the complex matched the blueprints.There is no indication in Mr. Ozturk’s testimony that anything was done to assess the design changes. Residents said the city promised to investigate, but they never heard back.Whether this discrepancy played any role in Guclu Bahce’s collapse and whether the inspection was adequate are among many questions being asked in the government’s criminal investigation and a family lawsuit.But the city ultimately awarded occupancy permits and residents finally moved into their apartments in 2021. Guclu Bahce sprang to life, with a health club, a home goods store and a chicken shop.For almost two years, nobody looked back or gave further thought to the construction process.Cries in the DarknessLying on the floor next to his bed, Firat Yayla thought immediately of his cousin’s assurances about the building’s sturdiness. His confidence lasted less than a minute, though, until he heard the sound of crumbling concrete.The wall next to him was caving in.As the 7.8-magnitude earthquake continued for about 90 seconds, the building fell sideways. Steel bars knifed out from the concrete, and he began slipping toward them.The lights went out, and Mr. Yayla was sure he was going to die.The next thing he registered was the sound of car alarms. His foot was wedged in a crack and he couldn’t move under the weight of a giant wall. He could barely breathe but managed to call into the darkness.“Mom!” he shouted. “Are you OK?”She called back. “Firat! Firat! Firat!”But her cries weakened, and then went quiet.“Please help me!” he shouted over and over.A resident helped free Mr. Yayla from the rubble. He survived without serious injuries. Mehmet Guclu survived his jump from the balcony with little more than an injured finger.Firat Yayla, 21, was rescued without serious injuries from the ruins of Guclu Bahce. His mother did not make it.Emin Ozmen for The New York TimesSohret Guclu died, along with more than five dozen other residents.Members of the Guclu family have sued the contractors and the inspection company, alleging construction flaws. Among those they accuse of wrongdoing is Mehmet Guclu, the cousin on whom they had pinned so many hopes.Sohret’s brother, Yusuf Guclu, said family members were angry at a system of back-scratching and favor-trading that had papered over potential problems.That system had worked in his family’s favor. The Guclus had lived the Turkish dream, converting their land into a cash cow thanks to a relative’s expertise and connections. Now, Yusuf’s sister was dead and his family was accepting donated clothing.“We’ve lost everything,” he said.Mr. Altas was arrested and jailed pending the outcome of the investigation. He has not been charged with a crime. Through his lawyer, he said he had only bankrolled the project.Mr. Ozturk, the inspector, has also been arrested but not charged. He denies signing off on the project.And, in a meeting with The Times, Mr. Guclu appeared shellshocked. He said he would consider speaking publicly about the building, the lawsuit and his family.But with a warrant out for his arrest, Mr. Guclu soon stopped returning messages.The last time he was in contact, he was working on a government construction project — part of Mr. Erdogan’s well-publicized plan to rebuild the region swiftly.The Guclu Bahce complex, which fell sideways, after the quake. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesBeril Eski More

It’s been 23 years since a Democrat was elected governor of Mississippi and 41 years since a Democrat was elected one of the state’s U.S. senators. The Republican lock on the state — along with the policies and noxious traditions that have kept it in the basement among U.S. states for most indicators of social health — sometimes seems impenetrable.Mike Espy, the former Democratic congressman from Mississippi and U.S. agriculture secretary, tried twice to become senator, in 2018 and 2020, but never got more than 46 percent of the vote. Jim Hood, then state attorney general, did a little better in the 2019 governor’s race, getting nearly 47 percent of the vote, but the current Republican governor, Tate Reeves, prevailed.This year, with Mr. Reeves up for re-election in November, there are once again hopes that Mississippi could take a few steps up from the bottom and elect a governor willing to make a break from the past. And even though Donald Trump won the state by more than 16 percentage points in 2020, there are reasons to think it could happen.For one thing, thanks to a significant scandal involving the misappropriation of welfare funds, Mr. Reeves is extraordinarily unpopular for an incumbent Republican, with 60 percent of voters saying they would prefer another candidate, according to a Mississippi Today/Siena College poll that came out last week. For another, he has a promising and energetic Democratic opponent named Brandon Presley who has been polling fairly well and is making a strong case that the state desperately needs a change, advocating a series of popular policies that could make a real difference in the lives of Mississippians, particularly those on the lower economic rungs. The contest is already turning into one of the most interesting races of 2023.Mr. Presley, 45, is one of three elected members of the state Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities, and is the former mayor of Nettleton, a small town in the bright-red northeast section of Mississippi. He talks energetically about the need to expand Medicaid and save rural hospitals, and why it’s important to eliminate the extremely regressive state grocery tax, and would rather discuss the lives of poor families than his own family ties to a certain popular singer of the same last name from Tupelo, up the road from Nettleton. (Elvis was his second cousin.)His most effective tactic is his unrelenting attack on Mr. Reeves and the welfare scandal that has swirled around him and the previous Republican governor, Phil Bryant. A 2020 state audit found that as much as $94 million in federal anti-poverty money was improperly diverted to two nonprofit groups that used it for favors to lobbyists, celebrities and some lawmakers. The celebrities included Brett Favre, the former N.F.L. quarterback, who, according to text messages uncovered by the nonprofit news site Mississippi Today, arranged to spend $5 million in welfare funds for a volleyball stadium at the University of Southern Mississippi, his alma mater. At the same time, the state was rejecting a large majority of requests from families for Mississippi’s meager $170 a month in welfare payments.Mr. Reeves was lieutenant governor when all this was going on, and several people at the center of the scandal have been his friends and supporters. Last summer, his administration fired the lawyer who had been officially assigned to investigate the scandal and recoup the money, after the lawyer issued a subpoena to the university’s athletic foundation regarding the volleyball money. Though Mr. Reeves hasn’t been implicated in the diversion of most of the money, Mississippi Today published text messages in August showing that the former state welfare director, who pleaded guilty to federal and state fraud and theft charges last fall, said he was acting on behalf of Mr. Reeves when he siphoned $1.3 million of the welfare money to a fitness program run by the governor’s longtime personal trainer, Paul LaCoste.That was all Mr. Presley needed.“I got in this when I saw, as all Mississippi did, millions of dollars aimed at working families got diverted by Tate Reeves and his cronies,” he told me last week. “His own personal trainer, who taught Tate Reeves how to do jumping jacks, got a $70,000 vehicle and was paid $11,000 a month, while we’ve got children going hungry in Mississippi. Well, it made me want to puke.”Mr. Presley is funny and garrulous and is often described as the best natural politician in the state, with an easygoing manner that appeals to voters of all types. He grew up as the son of a low-income single mother and speaks with real empathy about the tens of thousands of poor families, Black and white, who can’t get clean drinking water, proper health care or broadband internet after decades of largely racist neglect by the state.His most significant plan is to fully expand Medicaid in Mississippi, which Mr. Reeves — along with Republicans in nine other states, mostly in the South — refuses to do. As The New York Times recently reported, health care is in a serious crisis in the state, where five hospitals have closed since 2005 and 36 percent of the remaining rural hospitals are at risk of closing from lack of funds. Mississippi’s stubbornness has cost it about $1.35 billion a year in federal funds to hospitals and health care providers, money that could be used for 100,000 poor adults who now have no guaranteed health coverage.“This will go down in history one of the dumbest decisions ever made in this state,” Mr. Presley said. “Our health care system is on fire because Tate Reeves is not willing to help working Mississippians, just because of some petty, cheap, childish politics.”The state has a $3.9 billion budget surplus and could easily afford its 10 percent share of the expansion cost, but Mr. Reeves would rather use the money to help prosperous earners by getting rid of the income tax, which most low-income people do not pay. Mr. Presley, on the other hand, is campaigning to eliminate the grocery tax, which at 7 percent is the highest in the nation and hurts poor people the most. Though he is too politic to say so, the grocery tax is yet another legacy of Mississippi’s structural racism, which helps explain why there is more hunger in the state than in any other.Polling shows that nearly 60 percent of state voters say they will support only a candidate for governor who wants to get rid of the grocery tax, and 55 percent will support only a candidate who wants to expand Medicaid. But that same poll shows Mr. Reeves ahead of Mr. Presley by 11 points. (The Presley campaign says its internal polling shows the race to be within the margin of error.) To a large degree, that contradiction can be explained by rote party identification in the state, but it’s also because nearly two-thirds of voters don’t know enough about Mr. Presley yet, particularly in African American areas.“In those neighborhoods, he’s still a white guy that nobody knows,” said State Representative Robert L. Johnson III, the House Democratic leader, who is Black and has been supportive of Mr. Presley. “But he’s not afraid to embrace the African American vote in this state. He’s made commitments to do things that other candidates don’t do. It’s early yet, but the governor has been so bad that I think this time might be different.”Mr. Presley has won the endorsement of Bennie Thompson, the Democratic congressman from Jackson who carries a lot of weight among Black voters, and he has one new advantage: In 2020, voters abolished the Jim Crow-era requirement that candidates for governor have to win not only the popular vote but also the most votes in a majority of the 122 state House districts, a law intended to keep Black candidates out of statewide offices. (Mr. Reeves did not support the repeal.)“I think he can win,” Mr. Espy told me. “He’s very likable, a good retail politician, and Tate Reeves is so very, very unpopular. But he’s got a big job. He needs to raise the money and do more Black outreach.”Mr. Presley said his campaign would do everything possible to get a high turnout among Black voters, noting that the issues he cares about, particularly Medicaid and the grocery tax, resonate well in those precincts.One thing that he doesn’t bring up that much, unless asked, is his support for Mississippi’s extremely restrictive abortion law, which bans abortion unless the mother’s life is in danger or the pregnancy was caused by rape. That law has an outsize effect on low-income women who can’t afford to travel outside the state for an abortion.Mr. Presley described himself as “pro-life and Christian.” But he quickly said that to him, being “pro-life” means being pro-hospital, pro-doctor and pro-emergency room, supporting full funding of the state education budget and ending the scams that have prevented federal and state welfare money from going to the families who need it.His position on abortion and his support for gun rights will not win him many friends in the national Democratic Party, but Mississippi is not like the rest of the nation. Winning there and finally beginning to reverse the detestable policies of the past — an enormously difficult task — will require a candidate who can bring together an unusual coalition of voters with very different interests, and Mr. Presley may be the one to do it. It’s been done next door in Louisiana, where Gov. John Bel Edwards is a Democrat in a similar mold, and if it can happen in Mississippi, it might bring hope to thousands of other voters who have ceaselessly struggled for better lives in the Deep South.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More