Elections

Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, won his primary contest on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, defeating Alessandra Biaggi, a state senator who challenged him from the left.The race for the newly redrawn 17th District of New York was a high-drama, divisive affair that drew involvement from an array of national figures. Democrats including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former President Bill Clinton backed Mr. Maloney, while Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and a number of progressive organizations supported the state senator.“Tonight, mainstream won,” Mr. Maloney said on Tuesday night. “Common sense won. Democrats want candidates who get results and bring home the win.”Alessandra Biaggi, a progressive state senator, argued that the Democratic Party’s leadership had been too timid in the face of urgent threats to the country — including the overturning of Roe v. Wade.Mary Altaffer/Associated PressThroughout the race, Mr. Maloney cast himself as a pragmatic politician who understood the needs of the region intimately and had a record of delivering for the area. He campaigned on recent Democratic legislative victories and suggested that Ms. Biaggi was too far to the left for the district on issues like public safety.“If you look around the country, I think what’s clear is that the common-sense wing of the Democratic Party that is focused on working with people to get things done is on the rise, and the socialist wing is on the decline, and it’s about time,” Mr. Maloney said in an interview last week. (Ms. Biaggi does not identify as a democratic socialist.)A number of Mr. Maloney’s supporters argued that Ms. Biaggi’s past criticism of the police could become a liability in November. And some of her past remarks were used against her as outside money poured in against Ms. Biaggi from groups including the Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York, which endorsed former President Donald J. Trump in 2020.Ms. Biaggi, whose grandfather, Mario Biaggi, served in Congress, rose to prominence in New York politics in 2018 after defeating a powerful incumbent. She became a leader of the state’s left wing and ran an energetic campaign for the 17th District in the northern exurbs of New York City. Ms. Biaggi argued that the party’s leadership had been too timid in the face of urgent threats to the country — especially the overturning of Roe v. Wade — and positioned herself as a fighter, deriding her opponent as a “selfish corporate Democrat.”But she had just three months to introduce herself to voters in the newly configured district, where she only recently moved (though she grew up in the area), and Mr. Maloney, who is well-known in the Hudson Valley area, had huge institutional advantages, especially on the fund-raising front and through his extensive labor support.The race was set in motion after a messy redistricting process that split Mr. Maloney’s current district in two. Instead of running for a reconfigured version of his seat, Mr. Maloney chose to contest a slightly more Democratic-leaning district now held by Representative Mondaire Jones.Though Mr. Maloney noted that his Cold Spring home was within the lines of the district — which under new boundaries includes parts of Westchester County and the Hudson Valley — the move infuriated colleagues, who denounced it as a power grab from the man tasked with protecting the Democratic House majority.Mr. Maloney has said he could have handled the process better, even as he strongly defended his tenure as chair of the House Democratic campaign arm.“I understand people have concerns about it,” he said. “I’ve heard that, and I’m accountable for that.”He now heads into what is expected to be a competitive general election.Kristin Hussey contributed reporting. More

Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the powerful West Side Democrat and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, handily won a bruising primary contest on Tuesday, defeating his longtime congressional neighbor, Carolyn B. Maloney, according to The Associated Press.The highly charged summertime skirmish in the heart of Manhattan was unlike any New York City had seen in a generation and rivaled any intraparty House battle in recent memory. It pitted two committee chairs who have served side by side for three decades against each other and compelled some party faithful to pick sides.The star-crossed matchup emerged from a state court ruling that unexpectedly combined their districts this spring. Mr. Nadler and Ms. Maloney ultimately chose to run against each other in her 12th District, as talks to have one of them seek a neighboring seat went nowhere.Oddsmakers initially rated the contest a tossup, and Ms. Maloney doggedly trawled the district for votes. But Mr. Nadler quietly managed to assemble an enviable roster of endorsements, while capitalizing on his notoriety as a leading antagonist of former President Donald J. Trump in ways that proved impossible for his opponent to overcome.“Here’s the thing: I’m a New Yorker, just like Bella Abzug, Ted Weiss and Bill Fitts Ryan,” Mr. Nadler told supporters after his victory, referencing liberal lions who represented New York in Congress. “We New Yorkers just don’t know how to surrender.”He was winning the contest with a commanding 56 percent of the vote, compared with Ms. Maloney’s 24 percent, with 90 percent of the vote counted. A third candidate, Suraj Patel, earned 19 percent, siphoning crucial votes away from Ms. Maloney, whom he nearly beat two years ago.An old-school progressive first elected in 1992, Mr. Nadler, 75, is expected to easily win a 16th full term this fall in the overwhelmingly Democratic district. But with his advancing age and noticeably halting debate performances, questions are likely to accelerate about who might succeed him in representing one of the nation’s wealthiest congressional seats.Given those uncertainties and the ideological similarities between Mr. Nadler and Ms. Maloney, the outcome offers relatively little insight into the future direction of the Democratic Party.For Ms. Maloney, 76, the defeat is likely to spell a painful end to a pathbreaking career in elected office. A former teacher and legislative aide, she first won a seat on the City Council from East Harlem in 1982 and a seat in Congress representing the East Side’s famed “Silk Stocking” district a decade later, eventually rising to become the first woman to lead the House Oversight and Reform Committee.In the shadow of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Ms. Maloney campaigned aggressively on her record of fighting for feminist causes. She pointedly accused Mr. Nadler of trying to take credit for her legislative priorities, like the Second Avenue Subway, and ran a television ad for weeks telling New Yorkers, “You cannot send a man to do a woman’s job.” And as she veered toward defeat in recent days, her campaign fanned questions about Mr. Nadler’s physical health and mental acuity.A third candidate, Suraj Patel, 38, tried to make the race about generational change, arguing that the Democratic Party needed fresh leaders rather than failed “1990s politicians” like Mr. Nadler and Ms. Maloney.Neither frame ultimately proved persuasive to voters, though, or at least not enough to overcome the enthusiastic base of support that turned out for Mr. Nadler on the Upper West Side.On the campaign trail, the congressman cast himself as a consistent warrior for civil rights and civil liberties whose experience is needed as the former president and his acolytes shake some of the foundations of American government.Mr. Nadler sought to galvanize voters in what may be the most Jewish district in the country around his status as the last remaining Jewish congressman in New York City. As the race stretched on, he also went on the attack against Ms. Maloney, accusing her of poor judgment when she voted for the Iraq War (he voted against) and when she helped amplify questions about debunked ties between vaccines for children and autism. A shadowy super PAC that has yet to disclose its donors picked up on the attack and spent more than $200,000 on television ads driving it home.But above all, Mr. Nadler played a deft inside game, calling on decades-long relationships to build a stable of powerful supporters, including Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, New York’s Working Families Party and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, who was the only member of the state’s congressional delegation to wade into the race. More

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Florida Democrats chose Representative Charlie Crist as their nominee for governor on Tuesday, betting that the former Republican governor who campaigned on a return to political decency was their best bet to try to defeat Gov. Ron DeSantis, the polarizing Republican incumbent.Mr. Crist’s blowout victory sets up the general election against Mr. DeSantis as a contest between a centrist and a hard-right conservative, with Democrats believing that the well-known and peaceable Mr. Crist can attract independent voters and Republicans who are fed up with Mr. DeSantis’s aggressive right-wing policies.“They want a governor who cares about them, who solves real problems, who preserves our freedom,” Mr. Crist told supporters gathered in his hometown, St. Petersburg, as he pivoted quickly to attacking Mr. DeSantis. “Not a bully who divides us and takes our freedom away.”But Mr. DeSantis is a formidable foe, having built his national profile during the coronavirus pandemic as a Republican eager to fight public health experts. His political rise has made him a favorite to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 and helped him amass more than $130 million for his re-election campaign, an eye-popping amount that Democrats are not expected to come close to matching.Mr. DeSantis did not face a primary challenger but still campaigned for down-ballot candidates and started a series of highly produced television ads, including a national spot on Monday inspired by the film “Top Gun,” with Mr. DeSantis, clad in a pilot jacket, “dogfighting” against “the corporate media,” which he frequently portrays as his foil.He has also reminded Floridians at every turn that he refused to impose coronavirus lockdowns for very long in 2020, a position that thrust Mr. DeSantis into the national spotlight.“They have opposed every decision I’ve made to keep this state open,” Mr. DeSantis said of Democrats on Tuesday. “To save their jobs. To keep kids in school. To save businesses.”In the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, Representative Val B. Demings of Orlando, who had only nominal opposition, handily won the nomination to face off against Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican.In Florida’s congressional primaries, far-right Republicans won in a number of races on Tuesday night. Many are now favored to win in November; Mr. DeSantis and Republicans in the State Legislature redrew House districts this year to strongly favor the G.O.P., leaving few competitive general election contests in a state known not long ago for its abundance of them.Representative Matt Gaetz from the Florida Panhandle defeated Mark Lombardo, a Marine Corps veteran and retired FedEx executive. Cory Mills, an Army veteran and conservative commentator won in a suburban Orlando district that the Republicans are expected to win in the fall. And the Republican primary in Mr. Crist’s district in the Tampa Bay area, which was redrawn to favor the G.O.P., was won by Anna Paulina Luna, who was endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump.In one bright spot for progressives, Maxwell Alejandro Frost, a 25-year-old activist from Orlando, bested nine other Democrats, including former Representatives Corrine Brown and Alan Grayson, in an open district in the Orlando area. Mr. Frost, who is Afro-Cuban, would be the first Gen Z member of Congress.Florida Democrats went into Tuesday knowing that their candidates for governor had raised far less money than Mr. DeSantis and that their party infrastructure was far from robust compared with Republicans.Nikki Fried speaks to the press after conceding to Charlie Crist in the Democratic primary on Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2022.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesMr. Crist won a resounding victory over Nikki Fried, the state’s agriculture commissioner, who had cast herself as a fresh option in a state where Democrats have fallen short in election after election and felt little optimism about their chances in November. Unofficial results showed Mr. Crist leading by such a wide margin that the race was called when the final polls in the state closed at 8 p.m.“Nobody ever broke the glass ceiling on the first pitch,” Ms. Fried said in Fort Lauderdale after conceding to Mr. Crist. “We are going to make Ron DeSantis a one-term governor and a zero-term president of the United States.”Florida has trended more and more Republican since President Barack Obama won the state twice by building a massive organization that no candidate or party leader has been able to replicate. President Biden lost Florida by more than 3 percentage points, the biggest margin in a marquee race since 2004.The last incumbent Florida governor to lose re-election was Bob Martinez, a Republican, who conceded to Lawton Chiles in 1990. No Democrat has won the governorship since Mr. Chiles secured re-election in 1994.Mr. Crist has lost two statewide races since he was first elected governor in 2006, including one as an independent before he switched to the Democratic Party in 2012. But some Democrats think a centrist like Mr. Crist would have succeeded against Mr. DeSantis in 2018, had voters nominated Gwen Graham, a former congresswoman, in the primary. Instead, Democrats chose Andrew Gillum, who captivated them with his progressive platform and charismatic personality but lost the general election by about 32,000 votes.“There is a pragmatism from the Democratic perspective that says, ‘Yes, we want to fall in love, but we’d rather win,’ and at this point that is the main calculus driving people,” said Fernand R. Amandi, a Democratic pollster based in Miami.Democrats see a narrow path to defeating Mr. DeSantis, in trying to cast him as a divisive leader who plays up his policies as promoting freedom despite restricting the rights of women, Black and Hispanic Floridians and the L.G.B.T.Q. community.They also hope to persuade voters that Mr. DeSantis is to blame for the rising costs of living, especially when it comes to housing, electricity and insurance — issues that Democrats say have been ignored as Mr. DeSantis and Republican lawmakers have fought cultural battles.“I no longer recognize the leaders of the Republican Party,” Mr. Crist said on Tuesday night. “They’re extremists. They want to turn back the clock on our freedom. They’re trying to undermine our democracy in ways no one could have imagined.“That stops here,” he continued. “That stops now. And it stops with our Florida.”Ms. Fried initially struggled to home in on an effective message, though it crystallized after the Supreme Court eliminated federal protections for abortion rights. No woman has ever been elected Florida governor, and Ms. Fried ran on the belief that a female nominee would offer voters a clearer contrast against Mr. DeSantis.But with limited money to advertise in the state’s expensive, urban television markets, Ms. Fried was unable to introduce herself to enough Democratic voters. Mr. Crist made her task more difficult when he cast her as a business lobbyist who was cozy with Republicans. Both questioned each other’s liberal bona fides, though the contest was defined less by sharp ideological differences and more by contrasts in style.Mr. Crist led the Democratic race from the start, declaring his candidacy before Ms. Fried, the only Democrat currently holding statewide elected office. He devoted himself to reaching out to county and state leaders, and the early work paid off: Mr. Crist amassed more endorsements from Democratic officials, labor unions and local newspapers than his rival. During campaign stops, he posed for photos with people who greeted him simply as “Charlie.”Michael Joseph, a city commissioner in North Miami Beach, endorsed Mr. Crist after the congressman traveled to see him last year, knowing that he needed the support of the Haitian American community that Mr. Joseph represents.“He’s very personable and he remembers your name,” Mr. Joseph said. “I’ve never seen DeSantis reach out to different communities. Charlie didn’t have to come to my neighborhood to have a burger — but he did.”Maggie Astor and Jennifer Medina contributed reporting. More

Representative Matt Gaetz, the far-right Republican who easily won his primary on Tuesday in Florida’s First Congressional District, will face a Democratic challenger in November who made national headlines early in the coronavirus pandemic.Rebekah D. Jones, a former data manager for the Florida Department of Health, defeated Peggy Schiller in the Democratic primary, according to The Associated Press, after a confusing legal back-and-forth over whether Ms. Jones was eligible to appear on the ballot.Just a day before the primary, a Florida appeals court ruled that Ms. Jones could remain on the ballot. That reversed the decision of a lower court judge who had said that she was ineligible because state law requires a candidate running in a partisan primary to sign an oath declaring membership in that party for at least the previous year.During a daylong trial this month, lawyers for Ms. Schiller had showed that Ms. Jones switched her party registration from Democrat to unaffiliated for two months in 2021, while she was briefly living in Maryland after clashing with the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida over coronavirus statistics.That clash put a spotlight on Ms. Jones in 2020, when she claimed that she had been fired from her government job for refusing to suppress virus data from the public. In what became a monthslong saga, Ms. Jones filed a whistle-blower complaint, turned into a vocal critic of Mr. DeSantis and was eventually criminally charged with accessing a state computer and downloading a file without authorization.The criminal case against Ms. Jones is pending. In May, an inspector general for the Department of Health found that three allegations that Ms. Jones had made against several health officials were “unsubstantiated.”Ms. Jones returned to Florida from Maryland in July last year. She filed to run for Congress against Mr. Gaetz in his heavily Republican district in the Panhandle.A three-judge panel from the state First District Court of Appeal ruled on Monday that the candidate oath signed by Ms. Jones could not be enforced because the law “provides no express authority to disqualify a party candidate if she was not in fact a registered party member during the 365-day window.”In the ruling, Judge Rachel E. Nordby, who was appointed by Mr. DeSantis, acknowledged that the decision “could invite bad actors to qualify for the ballot using false party affiliation statements to inject chaos into a party’s primary.”The ruling allowed any votes cast for Ms. Jones to count, and preliminary results showed she defeated Ms. Schiller. More

As the midterm primary season enters the homestretch, candidates endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump continue to rack up primary wins.That is partly by design: Of the more than 200 Republicans Mr. Trump has endorsed this year, many ran unopposed or faced little-known, poorly funded opponents. He has also waited to make some endorsements until a front-runner emerges, strategically picking the candidates most likely to win — as with his last-minute endorsement of Tudor Dixon in Michigan’s primary for governor.Several of his endorsed candidates were defeated in early primaries, including in Georgia and North Carolina. But for candidates like J.D. Vance in Ohio and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump’s support was crucial to securing victory. His choices have also won in large numbers in the most recent races, including in two swing states, Arizona and Michigan.Here is a look at Mr. Trump’s endorsement record.Big losses for pro-impeachment RepublicansIn Wyoming, Representative Liz Cheney, by far the most prominent of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, fell to her Trump-endorsed challenger Harriet Hageman in a landslide of more than 35 percentage points.Another of the 10, Representative Peter Meijer of Michigan, lost his primary to Mr. Trump’s preferred candidate, John Gibbs.And in Washington State, Joe Kent defeated a third pro-impeachment Republican, Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler.In one exception to the trend, Representative Dan Newhouse, who also supported Mr. Trump’s impeachment, advanced over his Trump-endorsed opponent, Loren Culp, thanks largely to Washington State’s open primary system.A sweep in ArizonaA former local television news host, Kari Lake, won the Republican primary for governor with Mr. Trump’s endorsement, narrowly defeating Karrin Taylor Robson, the choice of establishment Republicans. Ms. Lake has forcefully promoted Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.Blake Masters, a venture capitalist who has pushed a version of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, won his Senate primary and will challenge Senator Mark Kelly, a vulnerable Democrat, in November.State Representative Mark Finchem, who is affiliated with the far-right Oath Keepers militia group and said before the primary that he would not concede if he lost, won the Republican nomination for secretary of state, a position in which he would oversee Arizona elections.And David Farnsworth won a State Senate primary against Rusty Bowers, the Arizona House speaker who drew Trump supporters’ fury for resisting efforts to overturn the 2020 election and for testifying before the Jan. 6 congressional committee.Mixed results in WisconsinMr. Trump’s preferred candidate, Tim Michels, won the Republican primary for governor, defeating former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch.But Robin Vos, the powerful speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, fended off a challenge — barely — from Adam Steen, a Trump endorsee who had called for eliminating most absentee and early voting in the state and for decertifying the 2020 election.In Georgia, several losses and one victoryGov. Brian Kemp easily defeated former Senator David Perdue, Mr. Trump’s handpicked candidate, in the Republican primary for governor. Mr. Kemp became a Trump target after he refused to overturn the president’s loss in the state in 2020. He will face Stacey Abrams, the Democrat he narrowly defeated four years ago.Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who refused Mr. Trump’s demand to “find” additional votes after his 2020 loss, also defeated a Trump-endorsed challenger, Representative Jody Hice.In a primary runoff for an open seat in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District, Rich McCormick, a physician and retired Marine, defeated the Trump-backed candidate Jake Evans, the former chairman of the state’s ethics commission and the son of a Trump administration ambassador.The former professional football star Herschel Walker, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump, dominated a Senate primary and will face Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, in the general election.Victories in PennsylvaniaAfter a close race that prompted a recount, Mehmet Oz, Mr. Trump’s choice, won a Senate primary, narrowly defeating David McCormick.Doug Mastriano, a state senator and retired Army colonel who has promoted false claims about the 2020 election and attended the protest leading up to the Capitol riot, won the Republican nomination for governor. Mr. Trump had endorsed him just a few days before the primary.Two wins and a loss in North CarolinaRepresentative Ted Budd won the Republican nomination for Senate, and Bo Hines, a 26-year-old political novice who enthralled Mr. Trump, was catapulted to victory in his primary for a House seat outside Raleigh.But Representative Madison Cawthorn crumbled under the weight of repeated scandals and blunders. He was ousted in his primary, a rejection of a Trump-endorsed candidate. Voters chose Chuck Edwards, a state senator.A split in South Carolina House racesRepresentative Tom Rice, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump, was ousted by his Trump-backed challenger, State Representative Russell Fry, in the Seventh Congressional District.But Representative Nancy Mace defeated her Trump-endorsed opponent, the former state lawmaker Katie Arrington, in the First Congressional District. Ms. Mace had said that Mr. Trump bore responsibility for the Jan. 6 attack but did not vote to impeach him.A win for election deniers in NevadaAdam Laxalt won a primary to face Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, who is seen as one of the most vulnerable Democrats this fall. Mr. Laxalt, a former attorney general, was endorsed by Mr. Trump and had helped lead his efforts to overturn the presidential election results in Nevada.Joseph Lombardo, the Las Vegas sheriff, won the Republican nomination for governor and will face the incumbent, Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat.Victories in Maryland and Illinois, with outside helpDan Cox, a first-term state legislator who embraced Mr. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, handily defeated Kelly Schulz — a protégé of Gov. Larry Hogan, a leader of the Republican Party’s anti-Trump wing — in the party’s primary for governor in Maryland. Mr. Cox benefited from more than $1 million in advertising from the Democratic Governors Association, which helped his primary campaign in hopes that he would be easier to defeat in the general election.State Senator Darren Bailey, who received a last-minute endorsement from Mr. Trump, won the Republican primary for governor in Illinois after similar spending by Democrats, including Gov. J.B. Pritzker.Also in Illinois, Representative Mary Miller, endorsed by Mr. Trump months ago, won her House primary against fellow Representative Rodney Davis after redistricting put them in the same district.Victories in OhioThe Senate candidate J.D. Vance defeated a field of well-funded rivals, nearly all of whom pitched themselves as Trump-like Republicans. Mr. Vance, an author and venture capitalist, had transformed himself from a self-described “never-Trump guy” in 2016 to a Trump-supported “America First” candidate in 2022.Max Miller, a former Trump aide who denied assault allegations from an ex-girlfriend and was later endorsed by Mr. Trump, won his House primary.Mr. Trump also endorsed Madison Gesiotto Gilbert, a lawyer who had been a surrogate for his presidential campaign. She won a seven-way primary for a congressional seat.A loss in IdahoGov. Brad Little overcame Mr. Trump’s endorsement of the state’s lieutenant governor, Janice McGeachin, who was challenging him in the Republican primary.A victory in West VirginiaRepresentative Alex Mooney prevailed over Representative David McKinley in a newly drawn congressional district. Mr. Trump’s backing was seen as the decisive factor.How Trump’s Endorsements Elevate Election Lies and Inflate His Political PowerThe former president’s endorsements have been focused more on personal politics than on unseating Democrats.Alyce McFadden More

The recent notion that Democrats will hold the Senate might be wrong. Here’s why some Democratic strategists are nervous.It has recently become conventional wisdom that Democrats have a pretty good chance of clinging to the Senate — despite a national political environment that has looked dire for their party throughout most of this year.I’ve written about this a fair bit myself. And even Mitch McConnell, the once and possibly future Senate majority leader, has taken to complaining lately that Republicans have a “candidate quality” problem.McConnell’s deputies use other words in private that cannot be printed here — a reflection, in part, of the tensions between his camp and the network around Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who is officially running the G.O.P.’s Senate campaign efforts. In the view of McConnell’s team, it should be Scott’s responsibility to clear the field of fringe candidates who can’t win general elections, and he failed to do so in many of the biggest Senate races. Adding to those tensions is the fact that Donald Trump has openly feuded with McConnell and threatened to muscle him out of the role of Senate leader in favor of Scott.So when McConnell complains about “candidate quality,” he’s also taking a shot at his own rival, Scott.With those caveats out of the way, let me say this: Republicans might very well do better than the pundits expect. And that is keeping some Democratic strategists up at night.This is true for two main reasons: a flood of outside money that is about to hit the airwaves on Republicans’ behalf, and polling that indicates that the political environment remains a problem for Democratic candidates, despite their party’s recent string of accomplishments.First, the moneySenate Democrats have been able to outspend and out-fund-raise Republicans so far this year.That’s partly a function of incumbency. G.O.P. candidates have spent the bulk of their money and energy attacking one another and vying for Trump’s favor, and Democrats have well-established email lists and national infrastructure to support them.With the primaries wrapping up, however, that’s about to change in a big way. Outside groups are tooling up tens of millions of dollars in ad spending on behalf of Republican candidates, according to public reports. And television advertising still matters a great deal with the older voters who traditionally dominate midterm elections.There’s the Senate Leadership Fund, a group close to McConnell, which has announced $141 million in advertising reservations. That compares with just $106 million announced by Senate Majority PAC, the counterpart on the Democratic side.Already, the leadership fund has ramped up its spending in key states, adding more than $9 million in spending in Georgia, $20 million in Ohio and at least $1 million in Pennsylvania.Another group affiliated with McConnell, One Nation, lifted its spending by nearly $2.6 million in Georgia, $1.24 million in Wisconsin and a little over a quarter-million dollars in Nevada.Outside conservative groups are flush with cash, too, with the Senate Leadership Fund reporting $104 million on hand as of late June. In contrast, the liberal Senate Majority PAC is wheezing a bit, reporting just $72 million cash on hand as of late July.Raising money outside the official campaign apparatus has frequently been an advantage for Republicans, who tend to have a much easier time enticing single megadonors to cut large checks. Democrats have plenty of megadonors of their own, of course. But liberal funders are often pulled in multiple directions, driven by causes like climate change, women’s rights or L.G.B.T.Q. issues rather than electoral politics.Whether Republicans will see their usual monetary advantage is more in question this time. In the past, Republicans have relied on individual billionaires like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers to bankroll super PACs and other kinds of groups. But Adelson died in 2021, and his wife, Miriam, has not indicated the same level of interest in financing politics. The Koch brothers have loudly declared that they are no longer as engaged in donating to political campaigns and would prefer to work on issues like criminal justice reform. More

Florida and New York are on the clock: A series of primaries on Tuesday, some fiercely competitive, are posing the latest test of each state’s efficiency at counting votes and reporting timely results.New York is holding its first primaries since it streamlined its process for counting mail-in ballots, which election experts say should reduce delays. And Florida makes few exceptions for accepting absentee ballots after in-person voting ends, so relatively few votes will remain uncounted after polls close.But close races could upend the timely reporting of results, those experts cautioned.In Florida, most of the polls close at 7 p.m. Eastern time, but voting ends an hour later for parts of the Panhandle in the Central time zone.A half-hour after the polls close, election supervisors in the 67 counties are required to report to the state early voting and vote-by-mail results that they have received by that point, said Mark Ard, a spokesman for the Florida Department of State.The first results should appear on the state’s election website shortly after 8 p.m. Eastern time, with counties required to release updates every 45 minutes until they have completed their counts, he said.Absentee ballots must be received by the counties by 7 p.m. local time, except for those from military and overseas voters. The number of uncounted ballots after Election Day should be relatively small, according to Mr. Ard, who said the state would track those totals.About 98 percent of the vote in Florida is typically counted on Election Day, said Stephen Ohlemacher, election decision editor for The Associated Press.In the 2020 general election, 100 percent of Florida’s precincts had reported election results as of 1:02 a.m. Eastern time the morning after the election, according to The A.P.In New York, in-person voting ends statewide at 9 p.m. Eastern time. Under a new state law, counties must start processing mail-in ballots within four days of receiving them and may begin tabulating those results an hour before the polls close, Mr. Ohlemacher noted. In the past, he said, the counting of mail-in ballots did not start until a week after the election.The change already had a major effect during the June 28 primaries in New York, which hosted intraparty contests for governor and the State Assembly, the lower chamber of the Legislature. Just 1 percent of the vote remained uncounted after Election Day. In the 2020 general election, it was 23 percent, according to The A.P.But New York continues to lag behind other states in providing information about the number of mail-in ballots cast, Mr. Ohlemacher said, adding that this could delay The A.P. from determining who wins close races.Counties will start to post results in real time on the state’s election results website around 10 p.m. Eastern time, said Jennifer Wilson, a spokeswoman for the New York State Board of Elections. More

It is Primary Day in Florida, where Democratic voters will choose challengers to Gov. Ron DeSantis and Senator Marco Rubio, both Republicans, for the fall.Here is what to know about voting in the state:How to voteThe deadline to register to vote in the primary election was July 25. Not sure if you are registered? You can check here.The mail-voting period has ended in Florida, and it is too late to return a mail or absentee ballot by mail for this election.Polls close in most of the state at 7 p.m. Eastern time, and an hour later in the western counties in Florida’s panhandle that are in a different time zone.Voters who requested an absentee ballot but have not returned it yet can vote in person at a polling place, or can deliver it by hand to their county elections offices. You can find the location of your elections office here.Do not forget to bring valid photo identification with you to the polls. Examples of acceptable forms can be found here. If you forget your ID, you can still cast a provisional ballot. If the signature on that ballot matches the signature on your registration file, officials will count the ballot.Where to voteYou can find your voting location on your county’s website. A list of counties with links to their sites is available here.Who is on the ballotNikki Fried, who is Florida’s commissioner of agriculture and consumer services, and Representative Charlie Crist, who was a Republican while he served as governor from 2007 to 2011, are among the candidates vying for the Democratic nomination to challenge Mr. DeSantis in November.Representative Val B. Demings leads the Democrats competing for the chance to take on Mr. Rubio. Neither Mr. Rubio nor Mr. DeSantis is facing primary challengers.Kevin Hayslett, a former prosecutor, and Anna Paulina Luna, a conservative activist and Air Force veteran, are locked in a competitive Republican primary in the House district that Mr. Crist currently represents. Former President Donald J. Trump endorsed Ms. Luna, giving her an advantage in the district, which became more conservative during redistricting earlier this year. More