Elections

Representative Dan Newhouse of Washington, one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach President Donald J. Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, will advance to the November general election to seek a fifth term after finishing in the top two in a crowded primary, according to The Associated Press. He will face Doug White, a Democratic businessman, who narrowly trailed him as of Friday night.Under Washington election laws, the top two candidates in the primary, regardless of party, advance to the general election. The race in Washington’s Fourth Congressional District featured seven Republicans, including Mr. Newhouse, and one Democrat, Mr. White.Mr. Newhouse, 66, drew the ire of Mr. Trump and local Republicans after supporting his second impeachment.A hops and alfalfa farmer, Mr. Newhouse had been vice chairman of Mr. Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign in Washington State. But after the impeachment vote, six Republican county chairmen in his district called on him to resign.Mr. Newhouse — who, like his father, served as a state legislator — resisted those demands, saying he remained a conservative Republican and urging the party instead to focus on holding the Biden administration accountable.He was supported by the Defending Main Street super PAC, which ran an advertising campaign worth about a half-million dollars, according to AdImpact, an advertisement tracking firm.The super PAC’s most-watched TV spot attacked Mr. Newhouse’s Trump-endorsed challenger, Loren Culp, over an unpaid corporate tax bill and accused him of “padding his own pockets” with campaign donations.Mr. Culp, a former police chief of Republic, Wash., made disputing Mr. Trump’s defeat in 2020 one of his top campaign issues, and also pledged to dissolve the Education Department and fight vaccine mandates. He was the Republican nominee in the 2020 governor’s race, a contest he never conceded despite losing to Gov. Jay Inslee by more than 13 percentage points.Mr. Culp had raised just $310,700 as of July 13, according to campaign finance reports. That was a fraction of the $1.6 million collected by Mr. Newhouse and also trailed another Republican, Jerrod Sessler, who raised $508,900.Mr. Sessler, a Navy veteran and former NASCAR driver, invested more than $350,000 of his own money in the race. He has said he attended Mr. Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6 and marched to the Capitol with thousands of other supporters, but didn’t enter the building.“I’m running because our rights, right now, for the people alive today in America, are being stolen,” Mr. Sessler told The Spokesman-Review. “Literally. I think the 2020 election was the biggest heist in world history.”Mr. White, who raised $390,700, has described himself as a moderate politician who was motivated to seek federal office after the Capitol riot. Running in the heavily Republican district, Mr. White didn’t mention his party affiliation in his lone TV spot, which he used instead to promote a platform that included reducing costs, reforming immigration and “making our communities safer.”Other Republican candidates were Corey Gibson, a marketing executive; Benancio Garcia III, a former state Agriculture Department loan specialist; Jacek Kobiesa, a mechanical engineer; and Brad Klippert, a state representative and deputy in the Benton County Sheriff’s Office. More

Of the roughly three dozen states that have held primary elections this year, Arizona is where Donald Trump’s conspiratorial fantasies about the 2020 election seem to have gained the most purchase.This week, Arizona Republicans nominated candidates up and down the ballot who focused their campaigns on stoking baseless conspiracy theories about 2020, when Democrats won the state’s presidential election for only the second time since the 1940s.Joe Biden defeated Trump in Arizona by fewer than 11,000 votes — a whisker-thin margin that has spawned unending efforts to scrutinize and overturn the results, despite election officials’ repeated and emphatic insistence that very little fraud was committed.The most prominent winner in Tuesday’s Republican primary for governor was Kari Lake, a telegenic former news anchor who became a Trump acolyte. There’s also the G.O.P. pick for secretary of state, Mark Finchem, a cowboy-hat-wearing state lawmaker who marched at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.They are joined by Blake Masters, a hard-edged venture capitalist who is running to oust Senator Mark Kelly, the soft-spoken former astronaut who entered politics after his wife, former Representative Gabby Giffords, was seriously wounded by a gunman in 2011.There’s also Abraham Hamadeh, the Republican nominee for attorney general, along with several candidates for the State Legislature who are all but certain to win their races. It’s pretty much election deniers all the way down.Another notable primary result this week: Rusty Bowers, the former speaker of the Arizona House, who offered emotional congressional testimony in June about the pressure he faced to overturn the election, was easily defeated in his bid for a State Senate seat.To make sense of it all, I spoke with Jennifer Medina, a California-based politics reporter for The New York Times who covers Arizona and has deep expertise on many of the policy issues that drive elections in the state. Our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, is below.You’ve been reporting on Arizona for years. Why are many democracy watchers so alarmed about the primary election results there?It’s pretty simple: If these candidates win in November, they have promised to do things like ban the use of electronic voting machines and get rid of the state’s hugely popular and long-established vote-by-mail system.It’s also easy to imagine a similar scenario to the 2020 presidential election but with vastly different results. Both Lake and Finchem have repeatedly said they would not have certified Biden’s victory.Some might say this is all just partisan politics or posturing — that Finchem, Lake and Masters just said what they think they needed to say to win the primary. What does your reporting show? Is their election denial merely loose talk, or are there indications that they truly believe what they are saying?There’s no reason to think these candidates won’t at the very least try to put in place the kinds of plans they have promoted.Undoubtedly, they would face legal challenges from Democrats and from nonpartisan watchdog groups.But it’s worth remembering that despite losing battle after battle in the courts over the last two years, these Republicans are still pushing the same election-denial theories. And they’ve stoked those false beliefs among huge numbers of voters, who helped power their victories on Tuesday.A polling location in Tucson, Ariz., on Tuesday.Cassidy Araiza for The New York TimesWe saw evidence of that this week with the surge of Republicans going to the polls in person on Election Day instead of voting by mail, as they had for years, after repeatedly hearing baseless claims that mailed-in ballots are rife with fraud. This was especially true of Lake backers.There’s no way to know what these candidates truly believe in their hearts, but they have left no room for doubting their intentions.What’s your sense of whether these Republicans are capable of pivoting to the center for the general election? And what might happen if they did?We haven’t seen much, if any, evidence that these candidates have plans to pivot to the center, aside from minor tweaks to some of the language in Masters’s TV ads.They have spent months denouncing people in the party they see as RINOs (“Republicans in name only,” in case you’ve forgotten). In Arizona, that list has included Gov. Doug Ducey, who refused to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, as Trump demanded, and the now-deceased Senator John McCain, who angered many conservatives and Trump supporters by voting against repealing the Affordable Care Act.So even if these candidates do try to tack toward the center, expect their Democratic opponents to point to those statements and other past comments to portray them as extremists on the right.I do wonder how much the Republicans will continue to focus on the 2020 election in the final stretch of this year’s campaign. More moderate Republican officials and strategists I’ve spoken to in Arizona have repeatedly said they worry that doing so will weaken the party’s chances in the state, where independent voters make up roughly a third of the electorate.Do Katie Hobbs, the secretary of state who won the Democratic nomination for governor, and Senator Mark Kelly, the Democrat who is up for re-election in the fall, talk much about election denial or Jan. 6 when they’re out with voters?Hobbs rose to widespread prominence in the days after the 2020 election when she appeared on national television at all hours of the day and night assuring voters that all ballots would be counted fairly and accurately, no matter how long that took. So it’s not an exaggeration to say that her own fate is deeply tied to the rise of election denial.But even as her closest supporters have promoted Hobbs as a guardian of democracy — and she has benefited from that in her fund-raising — it is not a central piece of her day-to-day campaigning. Many Democratic strategists in the state say they believe she would be better off by focusing on issues like the economy, health care and abortion.And that line of thinking is even more true in the Kelly camp, where many believe the incumbent senator is best served by focusing on his image as an independent who is willing to buck other members of his party.In March, for instance, Kelly referred to the rise in asylum seekers crossing the border as a “crisis,” language Biden has resisted. Kelly has also supported some portion of a border wall, a position that most Democrats adamantly oppose.As a political issue, how does election denial play with voters versus, say, jobs or the price of gas and groceries?We don’t know the answer yet, but whether voters view candidates who deny the 2020 election as disqualifying is one of the most important and interesting questions this fall.I’ve spoken to dozens of people in Arizona in the last several months — Democrats, Republicans and independents — and few are single-issue voters. They are all worried about things like jobs and gas prices and inflation and abortion, but they are also very concerned about democracy and what many Republicans refer to as “election integrity.” But their understanding of what those terms mean is very different depending on their political outlook.Is there any aspect of these candidates’ appeal that people outside Arizona might be missing?Each of the winning Republican candidates we’ve discussed has also focused on cracking down on immigration and militarizing the border, which could prove popular in Arizona. It’s a border state with a long history of anti-immigration policies.Two demographic groups are widely credited with helping tilt the state toward Democrats in the last two elections: white women in the suburbs and young Latinos. As the state has trended more purple, the Republican Party is moving further to the right. Now, whether those voters show up in force for the party this year will help determine the future of many elections to come.What to read this weekend about democracyPro-Trump operatives are flooding local officials with public records requests to seek evidence for the former president’s false stolen-election claims and to gather information on voting machines and voters, Reuters reports.Black, Hispanic and young voters are the most afraid about facing violence at the polls, according to a new poll from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.The New Republic takes a critical look at independent state legislature theory, which is now headed to the Supreme Court.The Atlantic looks at the congressional effort to overhaul the Electoral Count Act and asks a simple question: How do you actually stop the steal?postcard FROM DALLASThe lobby of the Hilton Anatole hotel, which hosted the Conservative Political Action Conference began on Thursday.Emil Lippe for The New York TimesSeven hours at CPACIs there such a thing as a heat index in Texas? Outside the Hilton Anatole hotel in Dallas, it felt like 105 degrees on Thursday.But inside the cavernous hotel, the air conditioning was cranked up full blast as Mike Lindell, the election-denying pillow mogul who has branched out into coffee and slippers, was moving through the media row at a gathering at the Conservative Political Action Conference. A swarm of Republicans approached, angling for selfies and handshakes while they voiced their approval of his efforts and spending to overturn the 2020 presidential election.Beyond the conservative media booths, each resembling a Fox News set, I wandered through an emporium of “Trump won” and “Make America Pro-Life Again” merchandise. My N95 mask made me conspicuous, but each person I asked for an interview obliged.There was Jeffrey Lord, who was fired by CNN in 2017 for evoking — mockingly, he said at the time — a Nazi slogan in a convoluted Twitter exchange. He told me that he had just attended a private gathering with Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister revered by many American conservatives. Orban is misunderstood, Lord told me, noting that Ronald Reagan was once accused of being a warmonger. I asked whether conservatives like Lord would put Orban in a similar category as Reagan.“In terms of freedom, and all of that, I do,” he said. “It’s a theme with President Trump.”In the media area inside the hotel’s main ballroom, right-wing news outlets had medallion status. A prime seat in the front row was reserved for One America News, the pro-Trump network. Two seats to my right, a woman with a media credential was eating pork rinds from a Ziploc bag.Seven hours later, I emerged from the hotel, doffing my N95, which left an imprint on my face. It was only 99 degrees.Thanks for reading. We’ll see you next week.— BlakeIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected]. More

Three months after John Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senate nominee, was sidelined by a stroke, he is planning to return to the campaign trail with a rally next Friday.Mr. Fetterman, the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, announced on Friday that he will hold the rally in Erie, Pa., his team said. He is facing Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor and Republican nominee, in one of the nation’s marquee Senate battles.Pennsylvania may offer the Democrats their best chance at picking up a U.S. Senate seat, and Mr. Fetterman’s general election debut, on the cusp of the intense fall campaign season, will be closely watched. For weeks after the stroke in May, he remained largely out of the public eye, releasing brief video clips as he recovered. In June, his campaign acknowledged that he also had a heart condition called cardiomyopathy. Mr. Fetterman said that he had “almost died,” and he promised to focus on his recovery.He has slowly begun to emerge, greeting volunteers in July and attending some in-person fund-raisers, while Dr. Oz has criticized him for his absence from the trail. Some who have listened to Mr. Fetterman at fund-raising events in recent weeks have said that he appears energetic but that it was sometimes evident that he was grasping for a word — something Mr. Fetterman has acknowledged.“I might miss a word every now and then in a conversation, or I might slur two words,” Mr. Fetterman told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last month. “Even then, I think that’s infrequent.” He added, “I feel like we are ready to run.”While Mr. Fetterman himself has had a light in-person campaign schedule, he and his team have maintained a relentless pace on social media, pursuing a range of creative tactics to cast Dr. Oz as more at home in New Jersey — which had been his longtime principal residence — than in Pennsylvania, where he says he now lives, in a Philadelphia suburb.Mr. Fetterman’s campaign tapped Nicole Polizzi of “Jersey Shore” fame — better known as Snooki — to record a video for Dr. Oz declaring that “Jersey will not forget you.” And Stevie Van Zandt, a renowned musician and actor who has reached legend status in his home state, recorded a direct-to-camera message to Dr. Oz urging him to “come on back to Jersey where you belong. And we’ll have some fun, eh?” For his part, Dr. Oz, a heart surgeon, has unveiled a site that criticizes Mr. Fetterman as a “basement bum” over his absence from the campaign trail. He has also sought to link Mr. Fetterman to President Biden, who has struggled with anemic approval ratings, and to Senator Bernie Sanders, whom Mr. Fetterman backed in the 2016 presidential primary.Public polling shows Mr. Fetterman with a sizable lead over Dr. Oz. But Pennsylvania is perhaps the ultimate swing state, and the race may tighten significantly before Election Day. On Friday, Mr. Fetterman’s campaign announced that it surpassed one million individual contributions since he announced his candidacy last year.“Whoever wins Erie County will win Pennsylvania,” Mr. Fetterman said in a statement announcing his plans for a rally. “Erie County is Pennsylvania’s most important bellwether county.” More

A new advertisement for Representative Liz Cheney’s re-election campaign features a leader of a bygone era in the Republican Party excoriating the leader of the current one.“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual that was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Ms. Cheney’s father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, said in the ad, released less than two weeks before Wyoming’s primary elections on Aug. 16.He praised Ms. Cheney, who has become a pariah among Republicans for her criticism of Mr. Trump and her work as vice chairwoman of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, for “honoring her oath to the Constitution when so many in our party are too scared to do so.”The one-minute ad landed with a bang Thursday on social media, where a single copy racked up seven million views. But in Wyoming, where Mr. Trump won 69.9 percent of the vote in 2020 — more than in any other state — it is highly unlikely to sway any significant number of voters in Ms. Cheney’s favor.For decades before Mr. Trump transformed the party, Mr. Cheney was one of the most influential Republicans in the nation: He was the White House chief of staff under President Gerald Ford, secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush and vice president under President George W. Bush, a position in which he wielded uncommon power and was an architect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But the Republican Party of 2022 bears little resemblance to the party he held power in.At least six of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump will be leaving Congress in January: Four of them are retiring and two were defeated in primaries, with another two still awaiting primary results several days after voting ended in Washington State. It would take an astonishing political turnaround for Ms. Cheney to avoid joining them. In a Casper Star-Tribune poll last month, she trailed her opponent, Harriet Hageman, by 22 percentage points.In light of those numbers, the ad, like many of Ms. Cheney’s public statements as a leader of the Jan. 6 committee, seemed more of an appeal to history than one to the electorate.Mr. Trump “tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him,” Mr. Cheney said in the ad. “He’s a coward. A real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters. He lost his election and he lost big. I know it, he knows it, and, deep down, I think most Republicans know it.”Of his daughter, he continued, “There is nothing more important she will ever do than lead the effort to make sure Donald Trump is never again near the Oval Office — and she will succeed.” More

Two months ago, the megawatt contest for a rare open House seat in New York City seemed destined to be shaped by one of a handful of nationally known candidates.There was the former New York City mayor, an ex-congresswoman, a former federal prosecutor who helped impeach Donald J. Trump, and even a sitting congressman from the exurbs.But with the Aug. 23 primary less than three weeks away, the contours of the race have been redefined. Two women with local bona fides but little national stature have surged toward the front of the pack, upending early conventional wisdom and scrambling the race.In recent public and internal polling for the Democratic primary, Carlina Rivera, a councilwoman from Manhattan, and Yuh-Line Niou, a Manhattan assemblywoman, are running neck-and-neck with the two well-resourced men considered heavyweights: Representative Mondaire Jones, a recent transplant to the district, and Daniel Goldman, the impeachment investigator, who has never held elective office.Ms. Rivera and Ms. Niou have one particularly compelling advantage: they already represent parts of the congressional district, and have proven bases of support among voters and Democratic groups in the area — a likely boon in a late-summer contest where voter turnout and interest are expected to be low.Ms. Niou, speaking at a recent candidates forum in Brooklyn, is backed by the Working Families Party.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesIndeed, in a brief canvas on Thursday of would-be voters in Ms. Rivera’s district on the Lower East Side, the vast majority said they were not following the race. Campaign signs were almost nonexistent — save a couple for Mr. Goldman.But Wilfredo Lopez, a 73-year-old resident walking by Hamilton Fish Park, was an exception. He said he was voting for Ms. Rivera because “she’s from the neighborhood and she’s for the neighborhood.”On the surface, Ms. Rivera and Ms. Niou have similarities; both are 30-something women of color with far-left roots.When she was first running for Council, Ms. Rivera, a 38-year-old Lower East Side native of Puerto Rican descent, was a dues-paying member of the Democratic Socialists of America; her campaign said that she attended only one meeting.New York’s 2022 ElectionsAs prominent Democratic officials seek to defend their records, Republicans see opportunities to make inroads in general election races.N.Y. Governor’s Race: This year, for the first time in over 75 years, the state ballot appears destined to offer only two choices: Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, and Representative Lee Zeldin, a Republican. Here is why.10th Congressional District: Representative Mondaire Jones, a first-term Democratic congressman who faces a highly competitive race in the redrawn district, has won the endorsement of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.11th Congressional District: Recent Supreme Court rulings on abortion and guns are complicating the re-election bid of Representative Nicole Malliotakis, New York City’s lone Republican House member.State Senate: New district maps are causing some incumbents to run in neighboring districts, forcing them to campaign in unfamiliar territory and contemplate new living arrangements.She has since tacked toward the center, resisting the anti-development predilections of the left and defining herself as a pragmatic progressive, as someone who gets things done.Ms. Rivera has nonetheless won the support of the progressive Brooklyn political establishment — the borough president, Antonio Reynoso; Nydia Velazquez, the congresswoman whose current district overlaps with the newly redistricted one; and several unions — even as she has also more aggressively courted the real estate sector.Ms. Rivera has been endorsed by Representative Nydia Velazquez, whose current district overlaps with the new contours of the 10th District in Brooklyn.Kirsten Luce for The New York TimesMs. Niou, 39, has never been a D.S.A, member, but has retained her far left posture, winning the support of left-leaning organizations like the Working Families Party and the Jewish Vote, the political arm of Jews For Racial and Economic Justice. Since she was elected to the New York State Assembly in 2016, Ms. Niou has focused on combating racial discrimination and sexual harassment. In the past six years, she has been the prime sponsor of 15 bills that became law, according to her campaign, including one establishing a toll-free hotline for complaints of workplace sexual harassment.During the tail end of Andrew Cuomo’s tenure as governor, Ms. Niou could sometimes be found sparring with him and his staff. After The New York Times reported on a $25,000-a-couple fund-raiser hosted by the governor during the legislative session, Ms. Niou and two colleagues held a news conference to express their outrage. Mr. Cuomo’s spokesman responded by calling her and her colleagues “[expletive] idiots.”During this race, Ms. Niou has assiduously courted the left-most flank of the Democratic Party, even expressing support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement — a decision that may cost her votes in a district with a substantial Jewish population.John Mollenkopf, a political science professor at the CUNY Graduate Center who analyzes voter data, estimates that at least 16 percent of the primary voters in the 10th Congressional District will have Jewish surnames. He said those voters might take issue with Ms. Niou’s B.D.S. stance, “partly because there are other quite acceptable candidates to center-left Jewish voters in the race.”Ms. Niou’s and Ms. Rivera’s national policy stances are similar: They both champion federal abortion rights; the Green New Deal plan advanced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; and more liberal immigration and refugee policies.But at the local level, pronounced distinctions have emerged.Ms. Rivera staunchly backs the ongoing effort to tear down and then rebuild East River Park at a higher elevation, to make the neighborhoods it abuts less vulnerable to storms like Hurricane Sandy. Protesters booed Ms. Rivera for that stance at a recent environmental forum, but on Monday she won the backing of the forum’s host — the New York League of Conservation Voters.Ms. Niou took issue with the plan to make the area more resilient.Ms. Niou and Representative Mondaire Jones, embracing after the candidates forum, are among the more left-leaning contenders in the primary contest.Hilary Swift for The New York Times“The city and the way that the city operated raise a lot of questions for me,” Ms. Niou said.In the City Council, Ms. Rivera has acted as the first primary sponsor on 25 pieces of legislation that have become law, including a bill requiring restaurants give bathroom access to delivery workers.Ms. Rivera also supported a bid to build low-income senior housing in a wealthy neighborhood’s community garden, a project codeveloped by Habitat for Humanity. Ms. Niou sued to stop the development, alienating the former local councilwoman, Margaret Chin, who has endorsed Ms. Rivera instead.“I’m so disappointed in her,” Ms. Chin said of Ms. Niou.“Normally I would support an Asian woman, we need more representation, but in this case,” Ms. Chin said, trailing off.Ms. Rivera has also backed a bid to allow more density, including affordable housing, in the Manhattan neighborhoods of SoHo and NoHo, an initiative Ms. Niou says she had doubts about.This year’s unusually messy redistricting process fundamentally reshaped the 10th District. Where the district once stretched from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to Bensonhurst Brooklyn, the new map makes it more compact, encompassing only Lower Manhattan and the northwest precincts of Brooklyn.Jerry Nadler, the congressman now representing the district, opted to run in the 12th District against a longtime colleague, Representative Carolyn Maloney, after his Upper West Side home base was moved there. The result was a rare open seat in the heart of New York City, and a political gold rush that drew a dozen or so candidates, including Mr. Jones, the congressman who currently represents Rockland County and parts of Westchester.Mr. Jones and Mr. Goldman are by far the race’s best-resourced candidates. At the end of June, Mr. Jones had $2.8 million to spend. Mr. Goldman had $1 million, though he also has a vast reservoir of personal wealth to draw from and told NY1 he intends to use it. He has up to $253 million in personal wealth, according to Bloomberg News.“I am extremely grateful for the opportunities I’ve had, and that is why I’ve committed my life to public service,” Mr. Goldman said in a statement. “I’m running for Congress to continue that service, to build a better future for all of our children, and to give everyone the opportunity to succeed.”His financial disclosures with the House, which cover an 18-month period ending June 30, indicate that he has a line of credit from Goldman Sachs worth up to $50 million, and hundreds of investments, including in weapons manufacturer Sturm, Ruger & Company; in oil companies, including Chevron and Exxon Mobil; and even in Fox Corporation.A spokesman for Mr. Goldman said he will put his assets into a blind trust upon entering Congress, as he has done in the past, and that he has such a wide breadth of investments because his portfolio is structured to mirror the S&P 500. “How the hell can this guy claim to believe our democracy faces a five-alarm fire, and to care about public safety, when he’s got investments in Fox News and deadly gun manufacturers?” Mr. Jones said in a statement. (On Friday, after the article had published online, Mr. Goldman’s spokesman said that the former prosecutor no longer holds any stock in Sturm, Ruger and Company.)Even so, Mr. Goldman’s paid role as a legal analyst on MSNBC, and his time as an impeachment prosecutor have won him supporters, including Joan Manzioni, a 67-year-old restaurateur who on Thursday said she was considering voting for Mr. Goldman or Ms. Holtzman.Mr. Goldman and Mr. Jones are the only two candidates with television ads, according to Ad Impact, an advertising analytics firm. As of Thursday, Mr. Goldman had spent $2.2 million on television, while Mr. Jones had spent $684,000.The third presumed heavyweight, former Mayor Bill de Blasio, dropped out of the race in July, citing his inability to sway voters. Elizabeth Holtzman, the former congresswoman, is doing better than expected in some of the polls, but is far behind in fund-raising and is combating doubts about her age, 80.Ms. Rivera trails two Democratic rivals in fund-raising, but has $150,000 more than Ms. Niou.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesAs of late June, Ms. Niou had $202,000 on hand; Ms. Rivera had $354,000. In an effort to compete financially with Mr. Jones and Mr. Goldman, Ms. Rivera has raised money from major developers, including the CEO of Two Trees, which is based in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Dumbo. In recent weeks, she has reached out to at least two other executives in the real estate industry for donations, according to recipients of her outreach.And, in apparent expectation of super PAC support, she has also put a so-called “red box” on her website, which candidates use to communicate indirectly with super PACs. More

Republican candidates, facing a stark reality check from Kansas voters, are softening their once-uncompromising stands against abortion as they move toward the general election, recognizing that strict bans are unpopular and that the issue may be a major driver in the fall campaigns.In swing states and even conservative corners of the country, several Republicans have shifted their talk on abortion bans, newly emphasizing support for exceptions. Some have noticeably stopped discussing details at all. Pitched battles in Republican-dominated state legislatures have broken out now that the Supreme Court has made what has long been a theoretical argument a reality.In Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano, the Republicans’ ardently anti-abortion candidate for governor, has lately taken to saying “the people of Pennsylvania” will “decide what abortion looks like” in the state, not the governor. In Minnesota, Scott Jensen, a family physician who said in March that he would “try to ban abortion” as governor, said in a video released before the Kansas vote that he does support some exceptions: “If I’ve been unclear previously, I want to be clear now.”Republican consultants for Senate and House campaigns said Thursday that while they still believe inflation and the economy will drive voters to the G.O.P., candidates are going to have to talk about abortion to blunt Democratic attacks that the party’s position is extreme. They have started advising Republicans to endorse bans that allow exceptions for pregnancies from rape or incest or those that threaten the life of the mother. They have told candidates to emphasize care for women during and after their pregnancies.Representative Nancy Mace won an exemption for rape and incest in South Carolina’s abortion law.Logan R. Cyrus for The New York Times“If we are going to ban abortion, there are things we’ve got to do to make sure the need for abortion is reduced, and that women are not endangered,” said Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, who won an exemption for rape and incest in her state’s abortion law as a state representative. Now, she says Republicans need to press to expand access to gynecological and obstetrics care, contraception, including emergency contraception, and even protect the right of women to leave their states to get an abortion without fear of prosecution.Messaging alone cannot free the G.O.P. from the drumbeat of news after the Supreme Court’s decision, including the story of a 10-year-old rape victim who crossed state lines to receive an abortion, and headlines about women who confronted serious health problems under new, far-reaching restrictions or bans.On Thursday, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has recently avoided talking about abortion, suspended a state attorney from Hillsborough County who refused to prosecute people who try to provide abortions prohibited by the state’s new 15-week ban, prompting angry recriminations from Democrats.The recalibration for some began before voters of deeply Republican Kansas voted overwhelming on Tuesday against removing abortion rights from the state’s constitution. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, retracting the constitutional right to the procedure, many Republicans were slow to detail what would come next. As they rush to enact long-promised laws, Republican-led legislatures have learned how difficult banning abortion can be.“Not just the pro-choice movement but the pro-life movement was caught by surprise” by the Supreme Court, said Brandon Steele, a West Virginia delegate who pressed for an abortion ban without exceptions in a special session of the legislature that ended this week with the Republican supermajority stymied. “Without having the talking points, without being told what to do, legislators had to start saying what they were actually going to do. You could see the confusion in the room.”“We’re finding out who is really pro-life and who is pro-life only to get elected, not just in West Virginia but across the country,” Mr. Steele said.Activists on both sides of the abortion issue gathered last month in the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis during a special session of the state legislature to consider a near-total abortion ban.Kaiti Sullivan for The New York TimesIn Indiana, a special session of the state legislature to consider a near-total abortion ban has had brutal debates over whether to include exemptions and how far those exemptions should go.More Coverage of the Kansas Abortion VoteA Resounding Decision: Kansas voters overwhelmingly rejected an amendment that would have removed the right to abortion from the State Constitution, a major win for the abortion rights movement in a deep-red state.Midterm Reverberations: After the stunning result, the first post-Roe vote on abortion rights, emboldened Democrats vowed to elevate the issue in races across the country.A Huge Turnout: The victory for abortion rights in Kansas relied on a broad coalition of voters who crashed through party and geographic lines.What the Vote Suggests: A Times analysis of the results in Kansas shows that around 65 percent of voters nationwide would reject a similar ballot initiative, including in more than 40 of the 50 states.“For some it’s very black and white: if you’re pro-life with no exceptions or if you’re pro-choice with no restrictions,” said State Senator Kyle Walker, an Indiana Republican who said abortion should be legal during at least the first trimester of pregnancy. “When you are in the gray area, you are forced to reconcile in your own mind where your own limits are.”For months, Republicans have maintained that abortion rights would be a footnote in a midterm campaign driven by the worst inflation in 40 years, crime, immigration and a Democratic president whose approval ratings are mired around 40 percent.That is still the public line, even after the Kansas referendum, where voters faced a single issue, not the multiplicity of factors they will be considering in November.But the reality on the campaign trail is different. Sarah Longwell, a Republican pollster, said in her focus groups that swing voters do bring up inflation and the economy when asked what issues are on their minds. But when prompted to discuss abortion, real passion flares. That indicates that if Democrats can prosecute a campaign to keep the issue front and center, they will find an audience, she said.Ms. Mace agreed, saying that abortion is rising fast and that Republicans have to respond.In Minnesota, Dr. Jensen, the Republican candidate expected to take on Gov. Tim Walz, suggested it was interactions with voters after the fall of Roe that, he said, prompted him to clarify his position on abortion.“Once the Roe v. Wade decision was overturned, we told Minnesota, and basically told everybody that we would engage in a conversation,” he said. “During that conversation, I learned of the need for me to elaborate on my position.”Scott Jensen at the Minnesota State Republican Convention in Rochester in May.Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune, via Associated PressThat elaboration included embracing a family and maternity leave program, promoting a $2,500-per-child adoption tax credit, and improving access to birth control, including providing oral contraceptives over the counter with a price ceiling. And, like Adam Laxalt, the G.O.P. Senate nominee in Nevada, Dr. Jensen pointed to abortion protections already in place in Minnesota to cast the matter as settled rather than on the ballot this year.Mr. Walz said he would stay on offense, and not accept any softening of the Republican line.“I take them at their first word,” he said of Dr. Jensen and his running mate, Matt Birk, a former N.F.L. player and anti-abortion rights advocate. “If they get the opportunity they will criminalize this while we’re trying to protect it. So it’s become a central theme, obviously, I think that flip on their part was in response to that.”The Kansas vote implies that around 65 percent of voters nationwide would reject rolling back abortion rights, including a majority in more than 40 of the 50 states, according to a New York Times analysis.Republicans believe their party can grab the mantle of moderation from Democrats, in part by conveying empathy toward pregnant women and offering exemptions to abortion bans, and casting Democrats as the extremists when it comes to regulating abortion. If Democrats insist on making abortion the centerpiece of their campaigns, they argue, they risk looking out of touch with voters in an uncertain economy.Supporters of the abortion referendum in Kansas monitored results at a watch party in Overland Park on Tuesday night.Christopher (KS) Smith for The New York TimesBut Republicans who moderate their views must still contend with a core base of support that remains staunchly anti-abortion. Abortion opponents said Thursday that Republican candidates should not read too much into the Kansas vote, a single-issue referendum with language that was criticized by voters on both sides as confusing.“Regardless of what the consultant class is telling the candidates, they would be wise to recognize that the right-to-life community is an important constituency and an important demographic of voters,” warned Penny Nance, chief executive and president of Concerned Women for America, a conservative organization that opposes abortion rights.After the Kansas vote, Democrats stepped up efforts to squeeze their opponents between a conservative base eager for quick action to ban all abortions and a broader electorate that wants no such thing. Representative Elaine Luria, a moderate Democrat running in a Republican-leaning district in southeastern Virginia, released a new advertisement against her Republican opponent, Jen Kiggans, painting her as “too extreme” on abortion. Ms. Luria had initially said she would campaign on her work for the district and her support for the Navy, a big force in the region, but the landscape has shifted. Ms. Kiggans’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.Tudor Dixon speaking in Grand Rapids, Mich., after winning the Republican nomination for governor.Emily Elconin for The New York TimesA group aligned with the Democratic Governors Association is already advertising off abortion-related remarks made by Tudor Dixon of Michigan, who won the Republican nomination for governor this week.“If you take Tudor Dixon at her word when it comes to outlawing abortion, she’s told us exactly who she is,” the spot, titled “No Exceptions,” intones, featuring clips of Ms. Dixon highlighting her opposition to a range of abortion-related exceptions. Ms. Dixon was unambiguous about her position earlier this summer, writing on Twitter, “My only exception is to protect the LIFE of the mother.”In a lengthy statement that highlighted her opposition to an expected ballot measure in Michigan intended to protect abortion rights, Ms. Dixon also insisted that her race would be defined by jobs, schools, crime and being “able to afford your gas and groceries.”For Republicans, one problem might be the extensive trail on the issue they left during the primary season.In May, Mr. Mastriano was unequivocal in Pennsylvania as he courted Republican primary voters: “That baby deserves a right to life whether it is conceived in incest or rape or there are concerns otherwise for the mom.”Last month, he said it was not up to him. “You decide on exceptions. You decide on how early. And that’s in the hands of the people,” he said on Philadelphia talk radio. “That’s a fact. That’s not a dodge.”Mitch Smith More

Source: Election results and race calls from The Associated Press. The Times estimates the number of remaining votes based on historic turnout data and reporting from The Associated Press. These are only estimates and they may not be informed by official reports from election officials.The New York Times’s results team is a group of graphics editors, engineers and reporters who build and maintain software to publish election results in real-time as they are reported by results providers. To learn more about how election results work, read this article.The Times’s election results pages are produced by Michael Andre, Aliza Aufrichtig, Neil Berg, Matthew Bloch, Véronique Brossier, Sean Catangui, Andrew Chavez, Nate Cohn, Alastair Coote, Annie Daniel, Asmaa Elkeurti, Tiffany Fehr, Andrew Fischer, Will Houp, Josh Katz, Aaron Krolik, Jasmine C. Lee, Vivian Li, Rebecca Lieberman, Ilana Marcus, Jaymin Patel, Rachel Shorey, Charlie Smart, Umi Syam, Urvashi Uberoy, Isaac White and Christine Zhang. Reporting by Maya King; production by Amanda Cordero and Jessica White; editing by Wilson Andrews, Kenan Davis, Amy Hughes and Ben Koski. More

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