Elections

I have written that political debates have outgrown their utility, and I stand by that.They are now more about theater than substance. They are more about making moments than making points. The cameras and the commentators wait for the zingers and the flubs, the clippable, quotable passage, the 10 seconds that stand out for their dramatic effect rather than for their deeper meaning.Debates have become a choreographed dance of managing expectations, of setting individual hurdle heights for individual candidates, so much so that on debate stages the candidates cease to compete against each other and simply compete against the expectations set for themselves.Debates have been bastardized beyond belief.And debate prep has followed suit: Candidates are trained to remember and regurgitate attack lines — and ignore the rules.What’s the worst that can happen? You can be admonished, but only briefly, because every minute of admonishment detracts from precious live TV time.So there is no incentive to be an honorable actor other than to avoid appearing to viewers like a bully and bulldozer, and unfortunately, that works in a Donald Trump era.Republicans now want a fighter above all, even if the fighter is of questionable character and of loose allegiance to the truth. Aggression is attractive. You may be wrong, but if you’re loud, it returns you to right.Friday night’s debate between Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia and his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker, was no different. It was a stage play loosely based on policy. It didn’t change the fundamentals of the race — that Warnock is the only candidate of the two qualified to be a senator — nor should it have.And yet I am still stuck in the position of analyzing the debate because it is a major event in a race I care about. So I’ll begin with Warnock because his performance was the easier of the two to analyze.He didn’t answer directly when asked what limits he favored on abortion, whether he would back President Biden if he runs again in 2024 or whether he would support expanding the Supreme Court.The preacher has become a politician.And his wavering left him open to attack. When he didn’t answer directly, Walker made sure to mark the moments.Equivocation, as a strategy, was a miscalculation for the Warnock campaign, but it pales in comparison to the staggering ineptitude that Walker presented.First, we just must come at this directly: Herschel Walker is an absolute butcher of the English language.When challenged on reducing the cost of insulin, Walker responded: “I believe in reducing insulin, but at the same time, you got to eat right, because he may not know and I know many people that’s on insulin, and unless you have a eating right, insulin is doing you no good.”Say what? English translation: “Healthy diets can help treat and prevent Type 2 diabetes.” The nearly two million people suffering from Type 1 diabetes, not caused by diet and for which whom insulin is needed to stay alive? Oh, well.When Warnock accused Walker of pretending to be a police officer, Walker whipped out a badge and said, “You know what’s so funny? I am worked with many police officers.” A moderator then chastised him for bringing the “prop” to the event.At another point, Walker said: “Well right now, people have coverage for health care. It’s according to what type of coverage do you want because if you have an able-bodied job, you’re going to have health care. But everyone else have health care, it’s the type of health care you’re going to get. And I think that is the problem. And what Senator Warnock wants you to do is to depend on the government. What I want you to do is get off the government health care and get on the health care he’s got.”Huh? As a United States senator, Warnock’s health care is government health care.I could do this for the rest of the column, but I won’t. The point is this: I find myself straining to understand what he’s saying, my mind filling in the words he leaves out or fixing the ones he uses incorrectly.Walker is devastatingly inarticulate. That is the fact of the matter, and a disqualifying one. This is not a dialectic issue, of which I am more understanding. Regional and cultural dialects are real and not a measure of intelligence.That’s not what’s happening with Walker. With him, there is a base inability to convey his ideas in complete thoughts or sentences. And like a child, when his words fail, he fills in the gaps with energy and emotion, hostility and humor.This cheap rhetorical trick works for Republicans. They want the fighter more than the philosopher, the class jock over the class president. As long as the candidate is on their side, it doesn’t matter if he’s up to par, because at the end of the day, they are voting for the power over the person.They will elect a man without command of the English language or the issues if it gives them command of the seat and the Senate. Walker’s debate performance was just designed to allay their fears, to make them think better about doing the unthinkable.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 and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

A class of political newcomers with remarkable military records are challenging old ideas about interventionism — and the assumption that electing veterans is a way to bring back bipartisanship.In early 2019, as the Defense Department’s bureaucracy seemed to be slow-walking then-President Donald J. Trump’s order to withdraw all U.S. forces from Syria, Joe Kent, a C.I.A. paramilitary officer, called his wife, Shannon, a Navy cryptologic technician who was still in Syria working against the Islamic State.“‘Make sure you’re not the last person to die in a war that everyone’s already forgotten about,’” Mr. Kent said he told his wife. “And that’s exactly what happened,” he added bitterly.The suicide bombing that killed Ms. Kent and three other service members days later set off a chain of events — including a somber encounter with Mr. Trump — that has propelled Mr. Kent from a storied combat career to single parenthood, from comparing notes with other antiwar veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan to making increasingly loud pronouncements that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that the Jan. 6 rioters are political prisoners.In five weeks, Mr. Kent, 42, a candidate for a House seat in Washington State that was long represented by a soft-spoken moderate Republican, may well be elected to Congress. And he is far from alone.A new breed of veterans, many with remarkable biographies and undeniable stories of heroism, are running for the House on the far right of the Republican Party, challenging old assumptions that adding veterans to Congress — men and women who fought for the country and defended the Constitution — would foster bipartisanship and cooperation. At the same time, they are embracing anti-interventionist military and foreign policies that, since the end of World War II, have been associated more with the Democratic left than the mainline G.O.P. Alek Skarlatos, 30, a Republican candidate in Oregon, helped thwart a terrorist attack on a packed train bound for Paris, was honored by President Barack Obama and played himself in a Clint Eastwood movie about the incident. Mr. Skarlatos now says the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol has been used as an excuse “to demonize Trump supporters.”Eli Crane, 42, running in a Republican-leaning House district in Arizona, saw five wartime deployments with SEAL Team 3 over 13 years — as a sniper, manning machine-gun turrets and running kill-or-capture missions with the Delta Force against high-value targets, some in Falluja. Mr. Crane presses the false case that the 2020 election was stolen.And Derrick Van Orden, 53, who is favored to win a House seat in Wisconsin, retired as a Navy SEAL senior chief after combat deployments in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa and Central and South America. Mr. Van Orden was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, hoping to disrupt the certification of President Biden’s election.Derrick Van Orden at a rally hosted by former President Donald J. Trump in Waukesha, Wis., in August.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesBeyond their right-wing leanings, all share in common a deep skepticism about U.S. interventionism, borne of years of fighting in the post-9/11 war on terrorism and the belief that their sacrifices only gave rise to more instability and repression wherever the United States put boots on the ground.Where earlier generations of combat veterans in Congress became die-hard defenders of a global military footprint, the new cohort is unafraid to launch ad hominem attacks on the men who still lead U.S. forces.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Arizona’s Governor’s Race: Democrats are openly expressing their alarm that Katie Hobbs, the party’s nominee for governor in the state, is fumbling a chance to defeat Kari Lake in one of the most closely watched races.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but members of his party have learned to tolerate his behavior.“I worked for Milley. I worked for Austin. I worked for Mattis,” said Don Bolduc, 60, the retired brigadier general challenging Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, of Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the current and former defense secretaries Lloyd Austin and Jim Mattis. “Their concerns centered around the military-industrial complex and maintaining the military-industrial complex, so as three- and four-star generals, they can roll right into very lucrative jobs.”Mr. Austin and Mr. Mattis declined to comment. A defense official close to Gen. Milley said, “there isn’t a shred of evidence indicating Gen. Milley has been concerned with maintaining the military industrial complex and has no plans to seek employment in the defense industry after retirement.”No one has questioned these men’s valor, as some have questioned that of another pro-Trump House candidate, J.R. Majewski of Ohio, who appears to have exaggerated his combat record.But their pivots to the far right have confounded other veterans, especially those who have long pressed former service members to run for office as problem-solving moderates less vulnerable to shifting partisan winds. Organizations like New Politics, and With Honor Action were founded in the past decade on the notion that records of service would promote cooperation in government. That ideal is under assault.“When you think about the faith of the mission, listen, this is hard,” said Rye Barcott, founder and chief executive officer of With Honor Action. “I mean, the trends have certainly gotten worse.”Democratic veterans, however, see the newer veteran candidates’ willingness to embrace Mr. Trump’s lies as a precursor to totalitarianism, and in contravention of their service. “We all took the same oath,” said Representative Ruben Gallego, a former Marine who saw some of the worst combat of the Iraq war. “We all understand the Constitution of United States, and some of these men are really leaning into outright fascism.”The candidates insist their views were informed by their combat experiences and demonstrate wisdom, not radicalization.Eli Crane saw five wartime deployments with SEAL Team 3 over 13 years.Ross D. Franklin/Associated PressMr. Crane said that he witnessed overseas the lengths to which people would go to seize and hold power, and that this fed his belief that Democrats had somehow rigged the 2020 election in President Biden’s favor. “I think that we’re foolish if we’re not willing to be skeptical of our own system,” he said.For Mr. Kent, the journey to the Trumpian right was both long and surprisingly short..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Inspired to join the Army at 13 by the Black Hawk battle in Somalia, he enlisted at 17 and applied for the Special Forces just before Sept. 11, 2001. Two years later he was in Iraq, where he fought in Falluja, hunted down members of Saddam Hussein’s government and briefed intelligence and State Department officers on the deteriorating war.By 2011, as U.S. forces were preparing to leave, he said, he told General Austin, then the Army commander in Iraq, that the United States’ support of “this Iranian-proxy, Shia government is going to result in Al Qaeda in Iraq.”But it was his wife’s death in Syria that pushed Mr. Kent, by then in the C.I.A., into the arms of Trumpism. “She was there because unelected bureaucrats decided to slow-roll” Mr. Trump’s withdrawal orders, he said. “You can disobey an order from a president fairly easily, because he’s so far up from the ground level, simply by dragging your feet. And that’s a lot of what happened.”Shannon M. Kent was killed during a suicide bombing in Syria.ReutersAt Dover Air Force Base, he met Mr. Trump, who was there to pay his respects to the bodies of those killed in Syria. Mr. Kent expressed his support for the president’s efforts to withdraw from the Middle East and Afghanistan. Within days, he was consulting with the White House and volunteering for Veterans for Trump.In a video he made for the Koch-funded Concerned Veterans for America decrying the post-9/11 wars, he appears as a bearded, longhaired grieving father.Today, clean-cut and square-jawed, he is seen by many as a right-wing radical, ready to connect what he calls the lies that dragged his nation into war and the stories he tells of stolen elections, political prisoners who attacked the Capitol, and the slippery slope to nuclear war that the Biden administration is on in Ukraine.“People can easily dismiss that and say, ‘Oh, he’s just a tinfoil hat conspiracy guy,’ but when you break down the nitty-gritty details of all of these different things, and the results that they’ve had on our country, I think it’s worth looking into,” Mr. Kent said.His former campaign manager, Byron Sanford, dismissed Mr. Kent’s candidacy as a “revenge tour” for the death of his wife — who, Mr. Kent said, was both more pro-Trump and more political than Mr. Kent was at the time she was killed.Mr. Kent had no problem with that. “If people want to characterize it as a revenge tour, yeah, I mean, I’d say it’s more of a populist uprising against the establishment,” he said. “But you know, call it what you will.”For Mr. Bolduc, the Senate nominee in New Hampshire, the ideological shift has been more dramatic. He was one of the first Americans to make contact with Hamid Karzai, who was installed as Afghanistan’s president shortly after the U.S. invasion, and was an outspoken defender of him. In 2018, just after Gen. Bolduc’s retirement, he decried the Trump White House in The Daily Beast for “exacerbating divisiveness by not demonstrating patience and restraint, not listening to experts, attacking people for their opinions, ruining reputations, threatening institutions, abusing the media, and leading people to question our position as a beacon for promoting democracy throughout the world.”Don Bolduc, center, with supporters at the American Legion in Laconia, N.H., in September.John Tully for The New York TimesNow, he tells voters the United States needs to avoid Iran, has done enough in Ukraine, and should undertake a wholesale re-evaluation of its posture in the world.Mr. Bolduc contends that the interventionist views of former Senator John McCain and successors like Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — a belief in projecting power to solve problems — arose from a belief in what he called “the military easy button.”“My generation of combat veterans think the exact opposite,” he said.Mr. Crane shares those views, especially on Ukraine, which he says President Biden is defending more vigorously than he is the United States’ southern border. And he, too, sees capitalism driving interventionism — a view once pushed by intellectuals on the left.“It’s foolish, even dangerous when the industrial-military complex is driving or heavily influencing policy,” he said in an interview. “They make a lot more money when we’re at war.”Not everyone in that generation is of the same mind.Zach Nunn, a Republican challenging Representative Cindy Axne of Iowa, has used his Air Force combat record to burnish his credentials, but after deployments in Afghanistan, North Africa and as an election monitor in Ukraine, he has not soured on the projection of force around the globe — or on bipartisan cooperation.Mr. Nunn speaks at length of a battle in Afghanistan in which he flew reconnaissance, providing “a canopy of freedom” for special operations forces by watching enemy positions and calling in airstrikes.“We ended up doing three midair refuelings, we were out there for over 18 hours, and by the end of it, we had multiple ridgeline strikes and had kept the Taliban at bay long enough that the Special Operations Forces team was able to evac,” Mr. Nunn said.What his experience did not do was breed cynicism or push him to the political margins of his party. Mr. Nunn speaks proudly of his work on cybersecurity in the Obama White House and working with the Biden administration to get allies out of Afghanistan after the military’s pullout. He says his combat experience gave him an appreciation for Americans from all walks of life and political beliefs.Zach Nunn with his family after winning the Republican nomination for Iowa’s Third Congressional District in June. Bryon Houlgrave/The Des Moines Register, via Associated Press“It didn’t matter what our political belief was, it was all about, hey, we’re going to protect each other’s six and complete this mission,” he said, using military jargon for watching a comrade’s back.Mr. Barcott, of With Honor Action, argued that the new crop of right-wing veterans should not be seen as representing the political attitudes of former service members writ large. With Honor Action still asks veterans running for office to pledge to bring civility to Congress, participate in cross-partisan veterans groups, meet one-on-one with a member of the opposing party at least once a month and work with a member of the other party on one “substantial piece of legislation a year” while co-sponsoring other bipartisan bills.But finding veterans willing to make that pledge has become more difficult.By Mr. Barcott’s count, 685 veterans ran for the House or Senate this cycle. With Honor endorsed only 26 from both parties, many of them incumbents. Three Republican incumbents it had once endorsed, Representatives Mike Garcia of California, Greg Steube of Florida and Dan Crenshaw of Texas, were dropped for actions deemed out of keeping with the group’s mission.Several Democrats with national security backgrounds, like Representatives Abigail Spanberger and Elaine Luria of Virginia and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, are running explicitly on their service records to bolster their bipartisan bona fides.But more partisan veterans groups say this year’s candidates are pointing out a central fallacy: “People say if we just elect more veterans to Congress, things will be hunky dory, but there’s no precedent for that, no data that suggests veterans act different from anyone else,” said Dan Caldwell, an adviser to the conservative group Concerned Veterans for America.Mr. Kent was more cutting about organizations that ostensibly back veterans bound for bipartisanship but refused to back him.“It’s a gimmick,” he said, dismissing the groups as hawkish interventionists. “It’s just another way to get the neoconservative, neoliberal ideology furthered by wrapping it in the valor of service. Our service.” More

Politicians and political organizations offering empty, hand-waving support for family values while doing relatively little to actually deliver tangible support to families is a political cliché. But just when I thought I couldn’t be surprised by this sort of hypocrisy, I saw that FRC Action PAC (an affiliate of FRC Action, itself an affiliate of the Family Research Council) — an organization that says it “gives our members the ability to support deserving, pro-family statesmen” — endorsed Herschel Walker for Senate.If you missed it somehow, earlier this month, a woman reported to be the mother of one of Walker’s children said he’s hardly been a part of the child’s life, paid for her to have one abortion and urged her to get a second. In June, it was reported that Walker fathered two children he had not previously spoken about publicly. Walker’s adult son Christian recently tweeted, “You’re not a ‘family man’ when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence.”On his campaign website, Walker says he’s pro-family but doesn’t specifically cite any parent-friendly policies, like paid family leave, that he might champion. His family-friendly bona fides, apparently, are simply his professed “personal faith” and “pro-life” convictions.Yet he claims to “put Georgia families first.”This kind of contradiction can be jarring. It can make the 1992 contretemps between Vice President Dan Quayle and the character Murphy Brown seem almost quaint. Bottom line: This sort of thing isn’t new in American political history. For example, I was spelunking through The Times archives and found this short article from 1915: “KEEP ON BEING A MOTHER”: This Is Roosevelt’s Advice to Parent of 7 Little Ones, Facing Hunger.” And while I wouldn’t equate Walker with Theodore Roosevelt (win or lose in November, Walker’s image won’t be added to Mount Rushmore anytime soon), a thread of hollow family values talk connects them.According to that article, a Mrs. McHonney, whose husband had lost his job and had no means to support their large brood, wrote to Roosevelt, asking:Do you advocate raising children for country charges, the poor house, or what? I am a mother of seven children and feel that I have a right to ask. Perhaps you have never had the experience of raising seven children on $80 a month and then suddenly losing the position and have your house threatened with foreclosure.Roosevelt answered:We are, any of us, liable to run into hard luck, but that does not by any manner of means lessen our duties to ourselves and to society. I am sorry for Mrs. McHonney, who seems to be having a hard time through no fault of her own, or of her husband. It seems to me that the only answer to her question is to tell her to keep right on being a mother, the best, highest, most worthwhile job on earth, no matter what the temporary conditions that surround it may be.Unfortunately, you can’t feed a family with the sanctity of motherhood, which was a hobby horse of Roosevelt’s — specifically, the sanctity of white motherhood. In his 1905 remarks to the Mothers’ Congress, Roosevelt described the desire to have only two children as “race suicide” and said that if any man or woman chose not to have children, “such a creature merits contempt as hearty as any visited upon the soldier who runs away in battle.”If there’s doubt about what “race” meant in that context, the author Christopher Klein notes that more generally, “Roosevelt believed fundamentally that American greatness came from its rule by racially superior white men of European descent.” According to the historian Thomas Dyer, when Roosevelt left office, he counted a low fertility rate among this group as one of the “very big problems” the incoming president William Howard Taft would need to recognize. According to Dyer in his 1980 book, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race”:The fervor with which Roosevelt hawked the virtues of increased fertility for the better classes increased after he left the presidency. To the familiar calls for large families and the ceaseless invocations of women’s racial duties he now added diatribes against birth control, family planning and the “science” of eugenics.So Roosevelt discouraged family planning, but even in his post-presidential fervor he seemingly had no practical solutions for Mrs. McHonney — though perhaps she didn’t fit his definition of the type of person he hoped would go forth and multiply.As with the incongruities of today’s politics, more than one person called out Roosevelt’s thinking — including his own children. His daughter Alice, who would have only one child, through an affair with Senator William Borah of Idaho, “rebelled against the humiliation of her father’s attitude toward, as she put it, ‘large families, the purity of womanhood and the sanctity of marriage,’” according to the biography “Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, From White House Princess to Washington Power Broker” by Stacy Cordery. Alice and three friends secretly founded a tongue-in-cheek “race suicide club,” Cordery writes, “so named because of T.R.’s speech condemning white Anglo-Saxon Protestant women who were derelict in their primary duty of producing sufficient numbers of children to keep America strong.”One woman gave a scathing riposte to Roosevelt’s callous advice to Mrs. McHonney, writing in an open letter: “Mr. Roosevelt’s teachings are rather horrible. Let us increase and multiply blindly until the country is overrun with a half-nourished, ignorant population, and then joyously take the slightest excuse to turn some of our surplus citizens into cannon’s meat.”While the historical details are fascinating — if revolting — I wish we didn’t have to keep repeating this tiresome cycle. In general, I try to remain hopeful about forward progress for America’s families, and no doubt things have improved since Teddy’s day. But sometimes the dissonance between “family values” and valuing families is so extreme — as many on the political right line up behind Walker despite report after report of abhorrent behavior toward his own family — that it’s hard to remain optimistic.There’s a line from Ann Crittenden’s book “The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued” that I quote in my forthcoming book, and which applies here: “All of the lip service to motherhood still floats in the air, as insubstantial as clouds of angel dust.”Mrs. McHonney, they’re still blowing smoke in your face.Tiny VictoriesParenting can be a grind. Let’s celebrate the tiny victories.My 4-year-old’s bedtime involved lots of cajoling and repeating myself: “Lay down, please” when she would rather be doing anything else. I eventually started voicing her round doughnut pillow to talk to her. “Waaaah! I’m so saaaad! I need a nice fuzzy head to lay on me!” Interested, she scooted right over and laid down. “Aaaah! A nice heavy head with lots of brains!” And the bonus is I only need to say it once.— Eric Schares, Ames, IowaIf you want a chance to get your Tiny Victory published, find us on Instagram @NYTparenting and use the hashtag #tinyvictories; email us; or enter your Tiny Victory at the bottom of this page. Include your full name and location. Tiny Victories may be edited for clarity and style. Your name, location and comments may be published, but your contact information will not. By submitting to us, you agree that you have read, understand and accept the Reader Submission Terms in relation to all of the content and other information you send to us. More

In a video shown to the January 6 committee, Roger Stone calls Donald Trump’s daughter an ‘abortionist bitch’ amid his fury at not being pardoned for his activities around the Capitol attack. The Republican operative also says Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s husband and, like her, an adviser to the former president in the White House, ‘has an IQ of 70’. The video was shot by Danish film-maker Christoffer Guldbrandsen and shown in Thursday’s dramatic hearing

Roger Stone slammed Ivanka Trump after not getting pardoned, video shows More

The top House Republican spent freely to try to block extreme candidates who could imperil the party’s chances of winning the majority or challenge his path to the speakership. Some won anyway.WASHINGTON — As the midterm election season enters a critical final phase, some far-right Republicans are facing headwinds in congressional races that once appeared to be prime opportunities for the party to win seats, complicating the plans of Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader who aspires to be speaker, and fueling Democratic hopes of cutting their losses in their fight to retain control of the House.Some of the candidates have risen despite the efforts of Mr. McCarthy, the California Republican who spent freely to defeat them in primaries and toiled to strike a balance between courting the mainstream and making peace with the ascendant extremists in his party’s ranks. Mr. McCarthy now faces possible losses in competitive districts — or the prospect of adding to the list of hard-right lawmakers in his conference who may be difficult to control if he becomes the House speaker next year.The situation underscores the growing influence of extremists styling themselves in the image of former President Donald J. Trump, and how the Republican Party’s core supporters continue to gravitate to such figures.“The story of the last seven years is Kevin McCarthy slowly realizing they’ve lost control of the party that is now dominated by Trump and the voters who love him and love candidates like him,” said Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump Republican political strategist. “Trump controls the base, but the base is large enough to dictate the outcomes of primaries.”In New Hampshire, recent polling has shown the unpopularity of Karoline Leavitt, the 25-year-old ultra-MAGA challenger to Representative Chris Pappas, a Democrat. In a Saint Anselm College Survey Center poll conducted late last month, only 39 percent of voters had a favorable view of Ms. Leavitt, who has repeated Mr. Trump’s election lies, compared with 45 percent who regarded her negatively. Recent polls showed her trailing Mr. Pappas by 8 percentage points, although an AARP New Hampshire poll released last week showed the race to be neck-and-neck.A super PAC aligned with Mr. McCarthy spent $1.3 million to back Matt Mowers, a former Trump administration official, over Ms. Leavitt, and an additional $1 million during the primary attacking Mr. Pappas. Since winning the primary, Ms. Leavitt has not tacked to the middle, appearing on “War Room,” the podcast hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, two days after her victory.Karoline Leavitt initially said she would back Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio over Mr. McCarthy for House speaker, though she has since changed her position.Charles Krupa/Associated PressIn North Carolina, the McCarthy-affiliated group spent nearly $600,000 to try to stop the nomination of Sandy Smith, a self-described entrepreneur and farmer who has proudly admitted that she marched on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But Ms. Smith won the primary, prompting political prognosticators to rate her district in North Carolina, which had previously trended only slightly toward Democrats, more decisively blue.In central New York, Mr. McCarthy poured $1 million into the campaign of Steve Wells, a former criminal prosecutor and businessman who was more of a known quantity, over Brandon Williams. Mr. Williams had called the overturning of Roe v. Wade — the Supreme Court decision that had established abortion rights in 1973 — a “monumental victory” and suggested that there were instances when a woman’s life should be sacrificed to deliver her unborn child.Mr. Williams is ahead in most general election polling, but the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter that analyzes elections, still rates the race a tossup. Mr. McCarthy and the super PAC he is aligned with, the Congressional Leadership Fund, are now fully behind Mr. Williams.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Arizona’s Governor’s Race: Democrats are openly expressing their alarm that Katie Hobbs, the party’s nominee for governor in the state, is fumbling a chance to defeat Kari Lake in one of the most closely watched races.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but members of his party have learned to tolerate his behavior.When Republicans have bemoaned issues with “candidate quality,” they have mostly been talking about Senate races, where the influence of Mr. Trump helped contribute to a roster of candidates that has struggled in competitive races. In the House, Republicans have prided themselves on entering the general election with a diverse set of candidates that includes people of color, veterans and women, and on quietly thwarting the ascendance of some far-right candidates who leaders feared would alienate independent voters and cause problems if elected.Those efforts were led in large part by the Congressional Leadership Fund, which is competing in 53 races across the country.But the contests in which the minority leader and other top Republicans failed to block more incendiary candidates reflect the enduring influence of the far right and the challenge that Mr. McCarthy is likely to face should he succeed in winning back the majority. In a very narrow battlefield, even a handful of losses could make the difference between an operational majority and an utterly dysfunctional House.Some hard-right Republican candidates are facing headwinds in races that once appeared to be prime opportunities for their party to win House seats.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times“The House majority will be won district by district, and running with the weakest and most extreme candidates in swing districts will cost the G.O.P.,” said Tommy Garcia, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Mr. Mowers, who lost his primary to Ms. Leavitt, defended Mr. McCarthy’s track record and said it would not hurt Republicans’ chances at taking the House.“No one can bat a thousand,” he said. “And while a few candidates from outside the mainstream have emerged that will have challenges winning a general election, the playing field is more than wide enough to recapture a majority.”In a few cases, the candidate whom Mr. McCarthy failed to defeat is thriving, and the outcome of the primary might not affect Republicans’ chances in the general election. Recent public polls have shown Mr. Williams, for instance, ahead of Francis Conole, the Democrat competing for an open seat in a competitive district in upstate New York.Mr. McCarthy’s super PAC often spends in places where its favored candidate is struggling, so it is not surprising that even with the outside boost of funds, some of those candidates still lost. Overall, the Congressional Leadership Fund sees its primary spending as a success story. The group helped several Republican incumbents fend off challenges from more extreme candidates in competitive districts, including Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania, David Valadao and Young Kim in California and Andrew Garbarino in New York.“By recruiting strong candidates and supporting them through their primaries, we were able to make our own luck,” said Dan Conston, the organization’s president. “Candidate quality matters, and proactively engaging put us in a dramatically better position not to just win the majority, but to elect stars that will be the future of the party.”But elsewhere across the country, right-wing candidates whom Mr. McCarthy tried to knock out have prevailed, bolstering Democrats’ chances of winning a seat.In Arizona, Kelly Cooper, who has refused to acknowledge the 2020 election results and called for the immediate release of people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, defeated Tanya Wheeless, the granddaughter of a Mexican immigrant whom Mr. McCarthy’s PAC endorsed and helped fund.In the Third Congressional District in Washington, a group aligned with Mr. McCarthy, Take Back the House 2022, donated to Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler, who was one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump. But she was defeated in her primary by Joe Kent, who has said he would oppose Mr. McCarthy for the speakership if elected.Ms. Leavitt initially said she would back Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a hard-right Republican, over Mr. McCarthy for speaker; she has since changed her position and said she would support Mr. McCarthy.“They’ve struggled to paint true Trump believers in a negative light, because that’s where the base is, particularly in the South,” said David Wasserman, an election expert with the Cook Political Report. “They have to find other ways to try and disqualify these candidates.”J. R. Majewski’s candidacy in Ohio has been buffeted by accusations that he lied about his military service.Gaelen Morse/ReutersThen there are the races that Mr. McCarthy stayed out of, where extreme candidates have prevailed and are now imperiling the party’s chances. In Ohio, J.R. Majewski, a Trump-backed Air Force veteran who was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and has expressed sympathy for QAnon conspiracy theorists, emerged as the surprise winner from a primary in which the Congressional Leadership Fund did not back any candidate.Mr. McCarthy then embraced Mr. Majewski, campaigning with him in the state, where he declared, “We have a candidate that understands what Ohio needs.”Mr. Majewski’s candidacy has since been buffeted by accusations that he lied about his military service, undercutting his challenge to longtime Representative Marcy Kaptur. The National Republican Congressional Committee, the party’s campaign arm, canceled about $1 million in advertisements to help his campaign.In the general election, Mr. McCarthy has embraced the entire gamut of Republican candidates, striving to avoid appearing as though he is trying to purge the party of its Trumpist wing. He is now vocally backing Ms. Leavitt, and the National Republican Congressional Committee praised Ms. Smith after her victory.That mirrors Mr. McCarthy’s approach in Washington, where he has elevated some of the more extreme members of his conference, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. The minority leader has made room for some of Mr. Trump’s favored elected officials even as he worked to defeat others he viewed as unelectable.“He’s living in a space where he has to conduct two parallel realities,” Ms. Longwell said. “He can say, ‘I’m knocking out some of these really crazy characters that are making us look bad,’ and he’s playing ball with some of Trump’s people.”Rachel Shorey More

In a wild governor’s race, an independent candidate is siphoning Democratic votes and a billionaire Nike co-founder is pouring in money — giving an anti-abortion Republican a path to victory.MONROE, Ore. — Democrats haven’t lost a governor’s race in Oregon in four decades. Two years ago, Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the state by 16 percentage points. The only Republican to win a statewide election since 2002 died before finishing his term.And yet this year’s race for Oregon governor is now among the tightest in the country, illustrating both frustration with one of the nation’s most progressive state governments and the power of a single billionaire donor to shape an election to his whims. The Republican candidate, Christine Drazan, has a real path to victory, despite promoting anti-abortion views that would ordinarily be a political loser in a state that has become a refuge for people who can no longer get abortions in their home states.The contest is so close in part because a quirky Democratic-turned-independent candidate running as a centrist has drawn a sizable bloc of support away from the Democratic nominee, Tina Kotek, leaving her struggling to stitch together a winning coalition. The Democrats’ predicament has now ensnared President Biden, who is visiting Portland this weekend to hold events for Ms. Kotek and the state party.Republicans are salivating at the prospect of breaking up the Democratic lock on the West Coast — Alaska is the only state on the Pacific Ocean where the G.O.P. holds a statewide office — and relishing the news that a sitting president is required for a Democratic rescue mission.“The only thing you can say about that is they are scared, they are desperate,” Ms. Drazan told a crowd of hunters at a campaign rally this week in the eastern foothills of Oregon’s Coast Range.Ms. Drazan’s candidacy received another jolt of momentum in recent days from Phil Knight, the billionaire co-founder of the sports giant Nike, Oregon’s largest company. In the early months of the campaign, he sent $3.75 million to the coffers of the independent candidate, Betsy Johnson, a former helicopter pilot who spent two decades as a thorn in Democrats’ side in the Oregon State Legislature before finally leaving the party last year.But as polls showed Ms. Johnson lagging well behind Ms. Kotek and Ms. Drazan, Mr. Knight, frustrated with what he described as a lurch too far to the left in the state’s government, switched his loyalty this month, sending $1 million to Ms. Drazan.Ms. Drazan’s campaign received a boost this month when Phil Knight, the billionaire co-founder of Nike, decided to back her.Leah Nash for The New York TimesMs. Drazan has highlighted her conservative credentials, including opposition to abortion and an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association.Leah Nash for The New York TimesMr. Knight, Oregon’s richest man, is now the largest single contributor to both Ms. Johnson and Ms. Drazan. His largess has helped turn the race into a tossup, forcing Democrats to divert money in a bid to retain the governor’s office.Mr. Knight, who rarely speaks with reporters, said in an interview on Thursday that he would do whatever he could to stop Ms. Kotek from becoming governor, describing himself as “an anti-Tina person.” He said he had never spoken with Ms. Drazan.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Arizona’s Governor’s Race: Democrats are openly expressing their alarm that Katie Hobbs, the party’s nominee for governor in the state, is fumbling a chance to defeat Kari Lake in one of the most closely watched races.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but members of his party have learned to tolerate his behavior.“One of the political cartoons after our legislative session had a person snorting cocaine out of a mountain of white,” Mr. Knight said. “It said, ‘Which of these is illegal in Oregon?’ And the answer was the plastic straw.”Ms. Kotek, a former State House speaker, is in trouble because of a cocktail of political maladies and a backlash against Gov. Kate Brown, who polls show is the country’s least popular governor. Next week, Ms. Kotek’s own conduct in Salem will be scrutinized by a legislative committee after one of her former caucus colleagues accused her of making threats to win support for legislation she wanted to pass.Ms. Kotek’s opponents have focused on widespread homelessness and safety fears in Portland, which set a record for murders last year and could surpass that number this year. Ms. Kotek helped usher into law new restrictions on what Oregon’s cities could do to remove homeless people from their streets at the same time that a new law, enacted in a 2020 referendum, decriminalized small amounts of hard drugs like cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine. More

Damian Dovarganes/Associated PressLos Angeles was rocked by news that three City Council members took part in a secretly recorded conversation involving racist comments. Faced with swirling public condemnation, including from President Biden, the Council president, Nury Martinez, resigned, while the other two officials have so far stayed put. More

Roger Stone slammed Ivanka Trump after not getting pardoned, video showsRepublican operative calls Trump an ‘abortionist bitch’ in video released by film-maker who provided footage to January 6 panel00:29In video released by a Danish film-maker who provided footage to the January 6 committee, Roger Stone, furious he will not be pardoned for his activities around the Capitol attack, is seen to call Ivanka Trump an “abortionist bitch”.Could Trump testify? Subpoena sets up prospect of dramatic political spectacleRead moreThe Republican operative also says Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s husband and like her an adviser to Donald Trump in the White House, “has an IQ of 70”.The video was shot by Christoffer Guldbrandsen, whose footage of Stone was shown in Thursday’s dramatic January 6 hearing. Then, Stone was shown saying: “I say fuck the voting, let’s get right to the violence.”The clip in which Stone rants about Ivanka and Kushner was selected but not shown by the committee. First reported by the Daily Beast, the clip shows Stone on the phone in the back of a car on a highway, visibly shaking with anger.“Jared Kushner has an IQ of 70,” he says. “He’s coming to Miami. We will eject him from Miami very quickly; he will be leaving very quickly. Very quickly.”Like Donald Trump, Kushner and Ivanka Trump moved to Florida after their time in Washington, rather than move back to New York.Stone continued: “He has 100 security guards. I will have 5,000 security guards. You want to fight. Let’s fight. Fuck you.”Stone added: “Fuck you and your abortionist bitch daughter.”Gulbrandsen, the Beast said, said there was “no doubt” who Stone was talking about.Stone is a strategist, author and self-confessed dirty trickster. He has long been associated with Donald Trump, through the businessman’s many flirtations with politics and since his election win in 2016.In 2019, Stone was indicted during the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.Stone was convicted on seven counts of lying to Congress, obstruction of justice and witness tampering. The charges related to his links to Trump’s campaign and to WikiLeaks, which released Democratic party emails obtained by Russian hackers on the same day Trump was shown to have bragged about assaulting women.Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison. In December 2020, Trump granted him clemency.Gulbrandsen told the Beast the clip of Stone ranting on his phone was from 20 January 2021, the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration.Stone’s activities around the Capitol attack and links to the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, far-right groups involved in the riot, have been scrutinised by the January 6 committee. Stone appeared in front of investigators but invoked his fifth-amendment right against self-incrimination.06:25Gulbrandsen told the Beast: “Roger Stone has been holding out for a pardon till the very last minute. He had first written up a memo … with a plan about encouraging Trump to pardon the lawmakers who had voted against certifying [Biden’s win], and Roger Stone, and some of his clients.”The film-maker said Stone reduced his wishlist to pardons for himself and Bernie Kerik, a close associate, but was “very upset” when no pardon came.Gulbrandsen said: “Aside from Donald Trump [Stone] also held Jared Kushner responsible as being the guy who was the point man on the pardon.”The Beast has also reported that Gulbrandsen recorded Matt Gaetz, the Republican congressman from Florida, telling Stone “the boss still has a very favorable view of you”.Stone said: “I’ll go down hard, though. I’ll fight it right to the bitter end.”Gaetz said: “Yeah, but I don’t think you’re going to go down at all at the end of the day.”Guldbrandsen’s documentary, A Storm Foretold, has been extensively trailed and examined – but not yet released.TopicsRoger StoneUS Capitol attackJanuary 6 hearingsIvanka TrumpJared KushnernewsReuse this content More