Elections

LOS ANGELES — Voters in California delivered a stark warning to the Democratic Party on Tuesday about the potency of law and order as a political message in 2022, as a Republican-turned-Democrat campaigning as a crime-fighter vaulted into a runoff in the mayoral primary in Los Angeles and a progressive prosecutor in San Francisco was recalled in a landslide.The two results made vivid the depths of voter frustration over rising crime and rampant homelessness in even the most progressive corners of the country — and are the latest signs of a restless Democratic electorate that was promised a return to normalcy under President Biden and yet remains unsatisfied with the nation’s state of affairs.“People are not in a good mood, and they have reason not to be in a good mood,” said Garry South, a Los Angeles-based Democratic strategist. “It’s not just the crime issue. It’s the homelessness. It’s the high price of gasoline.”The West Coast contests were being monitored closely by strategists and leaders in both parties around the country, as Democrats seek to hold together a fractious and diverse political coalition that can be divided both by race and ideology over criminal justice.In Los Angeles, Rick Caruso, a billionaire luxury mall developer, spent nearly $41 million telling voters how he would restore order in the city, vowing to add 1,500 officers to the police department and promoting the endorsement of William J. Bratton, the former police chief famous for his broken-windows policy. The race now heads to a November runoff. Mr. Caruso will face Representative Karen Bass, the Democratic former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. Mr. Caruso had about 42 percent of the vote and Ms. Bass had around 37 percent early Wednesday morning.In San Francisco, about 60 percent of voters recalled Chesa Boudin, a former public defender who became district attorney in 2019 in a huge win for the progressive left. He promised then that “the tough-on-crime policies and rhetoric of the 1990s and early 2000s are on their way out.” Instead, he is.Chesa Boudin, the San Francisco district attorney, making final campaign appearances on Tuesday.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesThe elections on Tuesday showed the extent to which the political winds have shifted even in Democratic cities in the two years since George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer. The initial rally cry on the left then — “defund the police” — has since become so politically toxic that it is now more often used by Republicans as an epithet than by Democrats as an earnest policy proposal. And the crusading energy to overhaul policing in the face of rising crime has waned.For Democrats, the issue of crime and disorder threatens to drive a wedge between some of the party’s core constituencies, as some voters demand action on racial and systemic disparities while others are focused on their own sense of safety in their homes and neighborhoods.“People walking the streets, in many cases, feel themselves in danger, and that’s got to be dealt with,” said Willie Brown, a Democrat who is the former mayor of San Francisco.But Mr. Brown said too many Democrats do not want to talk about “what cops do” for fear of crossing the party’s activist class and offending “A.O.S. or A.O.C. or whatever that woman’s name is,” he said dismissively of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, the influential progressive.In a sign of how crime can divide the party in unusual ways, public and internal polling showed how the crime-and-homelessness campaign of Mr. Caruso, who is white, helped him make inroads with a large swath of Black men, even as he ran against Ms. Bass, who is Black. In one May survey, Mr. Caruso was performing more than 30 percentage points better among Black men than women.Mr. Caruso found traction in the heavily Democratic city despite being a longtime Republican who then became an independent and only joined the Democratic Party just before running for office. He ran a campaign promising to “clean up” the city and hailed Tuesday’s results as “a great awakening.”Jefrey Pollock, a pollster for Mr. Caruso, said the results should be a take-heed moment for the party.“If the Democratic primary electorate is showing a shift toward the middle on police and crime issues, then it is an even larger concern when thinking about the November general elections,” said Mr. Pollock, who also works for at-risk Democratic congressional candidates in other states.Turnout was low on Tuesday across California. And there is always a risk of over-interpreting local races where distinctly local dynamics are often at play. Mr. Caruso’s vast financial advantage — he outspent Ms. Bass by more than 10-to-1 — is not replicable in most races, and he still faces a fierce fight in the fall.Steve Soboroff, a Los Angeles police commissioner who himself ran for mayor in 2001 and endorsed Ms. Bass this year, was unimpressed by Mr. Caruso’s “basic guttural knee-jerk messages” on crime and his final showing, given his vast spending.“Caruso hit a glass ceiling made of Waterford crystal,” he said.In her own election night speech, Ms. Bass referenced the tilted financial playing field. “All of us stood strong against an onslaught,” she said.Election workers wait for voters at the Avalon Carver Community Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesStill, Mr. Pollock noted that vulnerable congressional Democrats are already hearing about crime back home and racing to show how they differ with the “progressive trends on handling crime.” In Washington, House Democrats boosted funding and grants for local and state law enforcement by more than $500 million in this year’s appropriations package, delivering Democratic lawmakers a talking point to rebuff “defund” attacks from Republicans.And at the White House, Mr. Biden has made a point of outright rejecting the most severe rhetoric embraced by the activist left.“The answer is not to defund the police,” Mr. Biden said in February when he visited New York City, where Mayor Eric Adams, who won in 2021 primarily on a crime-fighting message, has been held up as an example of how to approach the issue.Mr. Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, met privately with Mr. Adams this spring in part to strategize on approaches to public safety. “He was empathetic to the plight and the issue that we’re all facing,” Frank Carone, Mr. Adams’s chief of staff, said of Mr. Klain.The extent to which crime is actually up depends on the category being measured and the particular jurisdiction. But strategists in both parties said that whatever the data shows, there is a widespread sense that daily life in big-city America is no longer as safe as it once was.“There are voters in the suburbs and exurbs all across this country — they’re seeing what’s happening in cities,” said Dan Conston, who heads the leading super PAC for House Republicans. “They’re both aghast and concerned for their communities.”Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

For the most part on Tuesday, primary voters in seven states from New Jersey to California showed the limits of the ideological edges of both parties.A liberal district attorney, Chesa Boudin, was recalled in the most progressive of cities, San Francisco, but conservative candidates carrying the banner of former President Donald J. Trump did not fare well, either.For all the talk of sweeping away the old order, Tuesday’s primaries largely saw the establishment striking back. Here are some takeaways.California called for order.Wracked by the pandemic, littered with tent camps, frightened by smash-and-grab robberies and anti-Asian-American hate crimes, voters in two of the most progressive cities sent a message on Tuesday: Restore stability.In Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest city, Rick Caruso, a billionaire former Republican who rose to prominence on the city’s police commission, blanketed the city with ads promising to crack down on crime if elected mayor.His chief opponent, Karen Bass, a veteran Democratic congresswoman, argued that public safety and criminal justice reform were not mutually exclusive, and disappointed some liberal supporters by calling to put more police officers on the street. The two are headed for a November mayoral runoff.Rick Caruso with supporters at his election night event Tuesday in Los Angeles.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesAnd in San Francisco, voters who were once moved by Chesa Boudin’s plans as district attorney to reduce the number of people sent to prison ran out of patience with seemingly unchecked property crime, violent attacks on elderly residents and open drug use during the pandemic. They recalled him.Statewide, the Democratic attorney general, Rob Bonta, advanced easily to the general election runoff. Mr. Bonta is a progressive, but was careful to stress that criminal justice reform and public safety were both priorities.The choices seemed to signal a shift to the center that was likely to reverberate through Democratic politics across the nation. But longtime California political observers said the message was less about ideology than about effective action. “This is about competence,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, who served in local government in Los Angeles for nearly four decades and is now the director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles.“People want solutions,” he said. “They don’t give a damn about left or right. It’s the common-sense problem-solving they seem to be missing. Government is supposed to take care of the basics, and the public believes the government hasn’t been doing that.”For House Republicans, the Jan. 6 commission vote still matters.In May 2021, 35 House Republicans voted for an independent, bipartisan commission to look at the events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.At first blush, the vote should not have mattered much: The legislation creating the commission was negotiated by the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, John Katko of New York, with the blessing of the Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy of California. Besides, the commission was filibustered by Republicans in the Senate and went nowhere.Representative Michael Guest voting on Tuesday in Brandon, Miss.Hannah Mattix/The Clarion-Ledger, via Associated PressBut Tuesday’s primaries showed that the vote still mattered. In Mississippi, Representative Michael Guest, one of the 35, was forced into a June 28 runoff with Michael Cassidy, who ran as the “pro-Trump” Republican and castigated the incumbent for voting for the commission. In South Dakota, Representative Dusty Johnson, another one of the 35, faced similar attacks but still mustered 60 percent of the vote.In California, Representative David Valadao, who also voted for the commission, struggled to keep pace with his Democratic challenger, State Assemblyman Rudy Salas, as a Republican rival, Chris Mathys, took votes from his supporters on the right.In all, now, 10 of the 35 will not be back in the House next year, either because they resigned, retired or were defeated in primaries. And more are likely to fall in the coming weeks.In New Jersey, it is all about name recognition.In New Jersey on Tuesday, two familiar names won their party nominations to run for the House in November: for the Republicans, Thomas Kean Jr., the son and namesake of a popular former governor; for the Democrats, Robert Menendez, son and namesake of the sitting senator.Robert Menendez Jr. with voters in West New York, N.J., last week.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesMr. Menendez goes into the general election the heavy favorite to win New Jersey’s heavily Democratic Eighth Congressional District and take the seat of Albio Sires, who is retiring.The younger Mr. Kean has a good shot, too. He narrowly lost in 2020 to the incumbent Democrat, Representative Tom Malinowski, but new district lines tilted the seat toward the Republicans, and Mr. Malinowski has faced criticism for his failure to disclose stock trades in compliance with a recently enacted ethics law.MAGA only gets you so far.Candidates from the Trump flank of the Republican Party could have done some real damage to the prospects of a so-called red wave in November, but with the votes still being counted, far-right candidates in swing districts did not fare so well.National Republicans rushed in to shore up support for a freshman representative, Young Kim, whose narrowly divided Southern California district would have been very difficult to defend, had her right-wing challenger, Greg Raths, secured the G.O.P.’s spot on the ballot. It looked as though that would not happen.In Iowa’s Third Congressional District, establishment Republicans got the candidate they wanted to take on Representative Cindy Axne in State Senator Zach Nunn, who easily beat out Nicole Hasso, part of a new breed of conservative Black Republicans who have made social issues like opposing “critical race theory” central to their political identity.And if Mr. Valadao hangs on to make the November ballot for California’s 22nd Congressional District, he will have vanquished a candidate on his right who made Mr. Valadao’s vote to impeach Mr. Trump central to his campaign.Ethics matter.Two primary candidates entered Republican primaries on Tuesday with ethical clouds hanging over their heads: Representative Steven Palazzo in Mississippi and Ryan Zinke in Montana.In 2021, the Office of Congressional Ethics released a report that said Mr. Palazzo had used campaign funds to pay himself and his wife at the time nearly $200,000. He reportedly used the cash to make improvements on a riverside property that he was hoping to sell. Voters in Mississippi’s Fourth District gave him only about 32 percent of the vote, forcing him into a runoff on June 28.Former Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke with voters in Butte, Mont., last month.,Matthew Brown/Associated PressMr. Zinke left what was then Montana’s only House seat in 2017 to become Mr. Trump’s first interior secretary. He departed that post in 2019 with a number of ethics investigations examining possible conflicts of interest and questionable expenditures of taxpayer funds. Still, when Mr. Zinke declared to run for Montana’s new First District, he was widely expected to waltz back to the House.Instead, he was in an extremely tight race with Dr. Al Olszewski, an orthopedic surgeon and former state senator who had come in a distant third when he tried to run for his party nomination for governor in 2020, and fourth when he vied for the Republican nomination to run for the Senate in 2018.If at first you don’t succeed …Dr. Olszewski may not win, but his improved performance could be an inspiration to other past losers. The same goes for Michael Franken, a retired admiral who on Tuesday won the Democratic nomination to challenge Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa in November.Mr. Franken has the résumé for politics: He is an Iowa native and led a remarkable career in the Navy. But losing often begets more losing, and in 2020, he came in a distant second to Theresa Greenfield for the Democratic nod to take on Senator Joni Ernst.Ms. Greenfield was defeated that November, and for all his tales of triumph over past adversity, Mr. Franken is likely to face the same fate this fall. Mr. Grassley will be 89 by then, but Iowans are used to pulling the lever for the senator, who has held his seat since 1981. Despite Mr. Grassley’s age, the seat is considered safely Republican. More

LOS ANGELES — Rick Caruso, a billionaire real estate developer, and Representative Karen Bass are heading to a November runoff election to become mayor of Los Angeles, in a race that has focused on voters’ worries about public safety and homelessness in the nation’s second-largest city.Though neither candidate earned more than 50 percent of the vote, which would have allowed them to win outright on Tuesday, they both comfortably outperformed their opponents. The runoff was declared by The Associated Press.The liberal city’s surge of support for Mr. Caruso, a longtime Republican who changed his registration to Democratic days before declaring his candidacy, is likely to deepen the Democratic Party’s divisions on issues of crime, policing and racial justice. San Francisco voters also moved on Tuesday to recall Chesa Boudin, the city’s progressive district attorney.As Mr. Caruso gave a speech to supporters at the Grove, his flagship shopping center in Los Angeles, he portrayed himself as an optimist with grand plans to address the city’s twin problems of crime and homelessness.“We are not helpless in the face of our problems,” he said, flanked by his wife and their four children. “We will not allow this city to decline. We will no longer accept excuses. We have the power to change the direction of Los Angeles.”Ms. Bass was widely seen as the front-runner in the crowded primary before Mr. Caruso’s entrance in February, but his lavish spending and tough-on-crime message quickly propelled him, leading several other candidates to drop out of the race to replace Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is term limited.The developer of several popular luxury shopping centers, Mr. Caruso, 63, tightly tied his campaign to the spotless image he has cultivated in the faux town squares of those properties. His campaign spent nearly $41 million, including $39 million of his own money, much of it on television, digital and radio ads that seemed to blanket the airwaves in recent weeks, portraying him as a successful businessman who could “clean up” Los Angeles.Mr. Caruso may face a steeper uphill climb during the general election if high-profile Democrats rally behind Ms. Bass.“Together we can make our city a place where you can afford to live, where you want to live, because you feel safe, because the air you breathe is clean, because people are no longer dying on the streets,” Ms. Bass told supporters at the W Hollywood hotel on Tuesday night. “Not with empty promises from the past but with a bold path forward.”A victory for Mr. Caruso would be a significant shift in this overwhelmingly liberal city, where Senator Bernie Sanders easily won the Democratic presidential primary two years ago. The city’s longstanding battles over housing, homelessness and crime have reached a new level of urgency during the pandemic.Mr. Caruso has portrayed the city as one in deep decay, promising to hire 1,500 more police officers and build 30,000 shelter beds in 300 days. The message has resonated among voters who are deeply frustrated with homeless encampments throughout the city, visible on residential sidewalks, nestled in parks and sprawling under freeway overpasses.Casting himself as an outsider, Mr. Caruso has blamed career politicians, including Ms. Bass, for the city’s ills. After voting in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Boyle Heights, Mr. Caruso criticized his rival for suggesting that it could take more than four years to solve homelessness in the city, an objection he repeated in his speech on Tuesday night.But experts and critics say many of Mr. Caruso’s promises may not be possible because of federal court mandates that allow people to camp in public spaces, as well as the city’s byzantine zoning rules. Compared with leaders of other large cities, the mayor of Los Angeles has relatively little power. Much of the sprawling region is controlled by the five members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, who oversee a $38.5 billion budget.Ms. Bass, 68, who spent years organizing in South Los Angeles after the 1992 riots before being elected to the State Legislature and then Congress, has described her campaign as a kind of homecoming and pledged to address questions of equity in this profoundly stratified city.Representative Karen Bass is a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, and was on President Biden’s shortlist as a possible vice president.Alisha Jucevic for The New York TimesThe campaign between the two is also poised to become a test of whether voters this year favor an experienced politician who has spent nearly two decades in government or an outsider running on his business credentials.Latino voters are expected to play a pivotal role in the November election and will be courted aggressively by both candidates. Polling has also indicated a striking gender gap, with Black and Latino men appearing more likely to choose Mr. Caruso over Ms. Bass.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

Voters in seven states weighed in on key contests in Tuesday’s primaries. Here is a rundown of some of the most notable wins and losses:CaliforniaSan Francisco recalled its progressive district attorney, Chesa Boudin. Mr. Boudin had enacted sweeping overhauls since being elected two years ago and faced criticism that those changes led to increases in crime.Rick Caruso, the billionaire developer, and Representative Karen Bass will square off in a runoff contest to be the mayor of Los Angeles.Gov. Gavin Newsom, who last year easily beat back a Republican-led recall effort, will face State Senator Brian Dahle, a Republican.Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, will advance to the November runoff after his first place finish in the open primary for that office. A second candidate has not been determined yet.Representative Michelle Steel, a freshman Republican, will face Jay Chen, a Democrat and Navy reservist.Scott Baugh, a former leader of the California Assembly, fended off a crowded Republican field on Tuesday to earn the right to challenge Representative Katie Porter.Representative Mike Garcia, a Republican, will face Christy Smith, a former Democratic state legislator, for the third time.Kevin Kiley, a Republican state legislator backed by former President Donald J. Trump, will compete against the Democrat, Kermit Jones, who is a Navy veteran and physician, in the Third Congressional District.New JerseyRobert J. Menendez Jr., the son of Senator Bob Menendez, won his House Democratic primary in the Eighth Congressional District.Tom Kean Jr., a former lawmaker and the son of a two-term New Jersey governor, won the Republican nomination in the state’s Seventh Congressional District. He now faces Representative Tom Malinowski, the Democratic incumbent.IowaSenator Charles E. Grassley, 88, easily won his primary race and will run against Mike Franken, a retired Navy admiral who won the Democratic primary for Senate.State Senator Zach Nunn won the Republican nomination for Iowa’s Third Congressional District. Mr. Nunn will face Representative Cindy Axne, the Democratic incumbent.New MexicoMark Ronchetti, a former Albuquerque television meteorologist, was the Republican’s pick to challenge Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat.Gabe Vasquez, a Las Cruces city councilor, won the Democratic nomination for New Mexico’s Second Congressional District. Mr. Vasquez will face Representative Yvette Herrell, the Republican incumbent.Raúl Torrez, the Bernalillo County district attorney, defeated Brian Colón, the state auditor, in the Democratic primary for attorney general.South DakotaVoters defeated an effort to increase the level of support needed to pass most voter-initiated referendums to 60 percent from a majority.Gov. Kristi Noem won her Republican primary, and so did Senator John Thune.MississippiRepresentative Steven Palazzo, a Republican facing an ethics investigation, was forced into a runoff election in his party’s primary, according to The Associated Press. It has not yet been announced who he will face later this month. More

On Thursday, a bipartisan House select committee will begin public hearings on the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. The weeks ahead will be awash with news as the committee reveals what happened in the days and weeks before the attack — and to what extent the rioters were emboldened, or enabled, by the White House and Republican lawmakers.To wade through the news and help us understand what to pay attention to as the hearings unfold, host Jane Coaston calls upon two experts on the Republican Party.[You can listen to this episode of “The Argument” on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]Nicole Hemmer is an author and historian of conservative media. Ross Douthat is a Times Opinion columnist. They give their takes on what narratives might play out in the hearings and comment on the danger of far-right extremism in the G.O.P. “I don’t see an incentive structure that pulls the Republican Party in general away from procedural extremism, or even really at the moment, anything that pulls them back to a majoritarian democratic process,” Hemmer says.Mentioned in this episode:“What Oprah Winfrey Knows About American History That Tucker Carlson Doesn’t” by Nicole Hemmer in The New York Times“Are We Witnessing the Mainstreaming of White Power in America?” episode from The Ezra Klein Show“Why Would John Eastman Want to Overturn an Election for Trump?” by Ross Douthat in The New York Times(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Samuel Corum/Getty ImagesThoughts? Email us at [email protected] or leave us a voice mail message at (347) 915-4324. We want to hear what you’re arguing about with your family, your friends and your frenemies. (We may use excerpts from your message in a future episode.)By leaving us a message, you are agreeing to be governed by our reader submission terms and agreeing that we may use and allow others to use your name, voice and message.“The Argument” is produced by Phoebe Lett, Elisa Gutierrez and Vishakha Darbha. Edited by Alison Bruzek and Anabel Bacon. With original music by Isaac Jones and Pat McCusker. Mixing by Pat McCusker. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta with editorial support from Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. More

Mr. Kushner’s role in the final months of the Trump White House could come into sharp relief once the committee investigating the attack on the Capitol opens hearings.WASHINGTON — On Thursday, Nov. 5, 2020, barely 24 hours after President Donald J. Trump claimed in the middle of the night that “frankly, we did win this election,” Jared Kushner woke up in his Kalorama mansion and announced to his wife that it was time to leave Washington. “We’re moving to Miami,” he said.The election had not even been called for Joseph R. Biden Jr., but as Mr. Kushner later told the story to aides and associates, the White House’s young power couple felt no need to wait for the official results. They saw which way the votes were going and understood that, barring some unforeseen surprise, the president had lost his bid for a second term. Even if he refused to accept it himself.No matter how vociferously Mr. Trump claimed otherwise, neither Mr. Kushner nor Ivanka Trump believed then or later that the election had been stolen, according to people close to them. While the president spent the hours and days after the polls closed complaining about imagined fraud in battleground states and plotting a strategy to hold on to power, his daughter and son-in-law were already washing their hands of the Trump presidency.Their decision to move on opened a vacuum around the president that was filled by conspiracy theorists like Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who relayed to Mr. Trump farcically false stories of dead voters, stuffed ballot boxes, corrupted voting machines and foreign plots. Concluding that the president would not listen even to family members urging him to accept the results, Mr. Kushner told Mr. Trump that he would not be involved if Mr. Giuliani were in charge, according to people he confided in, effectively ceding the field to those who would try to overturn the election.Mr. Kushner’s decision to withdraw from the most consequential moment of the Trump presidency left few effective counterweights to the plotters seeking to subvert the will of the voters to hang on to power. While the president’s son-in-law had arguably been the most influential adviser to the president through four years, weighing in at times and carefully cultivating his reputation, he chose at that pivotal moment to focus instead on his personal project of Middle East diplomacy. He returned to the region to meet with figures who would also be helpful to him later in making money after leaving the White House. It was the final act in the myth that Mr. Kushner would be the moderating force on a president who resisted moderation.The role Mr. Kushner played could come into sharp relief once the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol opens public hearings this week. The committee interviewed Mr. Kushner, who otherwise has not spoken at length publicly about the events after the 2020 election, and plans to show video excerpts from his testimony along with Ivanka Trump’s.Mr. Kushner’s activities in his final months in the White House are now also coming under the scrutiny of another Democratic-run House committee investigating whether he used his position to secure a $2 billion investment in his new private equity firm from a prominent Saudi Arabian wealth fund. Mr. Kushner has said he abided by all legal and ethical guidelines while in public service.This account of Mr. Kushner’s postelection activities is based on interviews with a wide array of figures close to him and the former president for a forthcoming book by this reporter and Susan Glasser of The New Yorker magazine called “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” to be published by Doubleday on Sept. 20. Nearly all of those who spoke requested anonymity to discuss private conversations and meetings.One of the most striking realizations that emerged from the book research was how many people around Mr. Trump did not believe the election had been stolen but kept quiet or checked out, including White House officials and campaign aides. Hope Hicks, long one of his closest advisers, told him it was time to move on. “Well, Hope doesn’t believe in me,” Mr. Trump responded bitterly. “No, I don’t,” she replied. “Nobody’s convinced me otherwise.” She disappeared in the final weeks of the administration.Kellyanne Conway, the former White House counselor and fierce Trump loyalist, reported in her new book that she told Mr. Trump to accept his loss, something she did not say publicly at the time; even this much-delayed acknowledgment of reality drew a rebuke from Mr. Trump, who said she should “go back to her crazy husband.”The Two-to-One FormulaDuring his four years in the White House, Mr. Kushner positioned himself as the measured alter ego to a volatile president, the one who others turned to for help in calming down or reasoning with Mr. Trump when he headed down one erratic path or another. But in fact, Mr. Kushner became strategic in his interventions, having been burned by early efforts that blew up in his face. He focused on personal priorities like criminal justice reform, and he jousted with rivals in a factionalized West Wing while absenting himself at key moments, to the frustration of colleagues.Mr. Kushner developed his own techniques for handling Mr. Trump. One key, he told others, was feeding the president good news, even if it was in short supply. In fact, Mr. Kushner came up with a specific mathematical formula for his peculiar brand of Trump management: two to one. Any phone call, any meeting should include this good-news-to-bad-news ratio. He would give twice as much upbeat information as grim updates. He similarly made a habit of telling Mr. Trump to add five points to any bad poll, rationalizing that traditional surveys missed many Trump voters anyway, part of a common White House practice of telling the president what he wanted to hear regardless of the facts.Jared Kushner would give President Trump twice as much upbeat information as grim updates.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesEven for his son-in-law, though, the president was a demanding boss, not given to showing appreciation. Mr. Kushner understood that Mr. Trump was never going to call him and say, “You’re doing a great job. I just want to thank you for this.” Instead, Mr. Kushner once explained to an associate, his dealings with Trump invariably began with the president saying, “What the hell is going on with this?” albeit with an earthier expletive, often in a phone call at 1 or 2 in the morning.Having watched dozens of senior officials come and go, Mr. Kushner realized the essential element of survival: never forgetting it was Mr. Trump’s show, Mr. Trump’s party, Mr. Trump’s way. “You have to realize you don’t make the waves,” Mr. Kushner regularly advised other officials. “He makes the waves. And then you have to do your best to kind of stay on the surfboard.”Mr. Kushner the surfer had come to recognize when the waves were too rough — as they were after Election Day 2020. He understood that his father-in-law would not concede right away and would ask for recounts and file lawsuits, but he believed that even if there were some irregularities, it was mainly a way of soothing a wounded ego and explaining defeat. Mr. Trump would lash out and make outlandish claims but eventually accept reality and move out of the White House — an assumption many Republicans in Washington made, only to discover how far the president was really willing to go.To Mr. Kushner, his father-in-law’s decision to turn once again to Mr. Giuliani was a red flag. As far as Mr. Kushner was concerned, Mr. Giuliani was an erratic schemer who had already gotten Mr. Trump impeached once because of his political intriguing in Ukraine, and nothing good would come of the former mayor’s involvement in fighting the election results. But instead of fighting Mr. Giuliani for Mr. Trump’s attention, Mr. Kushner opted out entirely, deciding it was time to focus on his own future, one that would no longer involve the White House.He and Ms. Trump began making plans. They quickly ruled out returning to New York. Like Mr. Trump, who had officially become a Florida resident in 2019, they had soured on their former home just as it had soured on them. Miami, on the other hand, seemed exciting and new.While Mr. Trump huddled with Mr. Giuliani and others telling him that he could still win, Mr. Kushner and his wife began thinking about where they would live, what schools they could send their three children to and what business ventures they would pursue. They had to be discreet about it. The last thing they wanted to do was make it look as if they were moving on because that would produce headlines embarrassing to Mr. Trump. Indeed, Ivanka Trump would text her father’s top advisers that same day just after the election and prod them to “Keep the faith and the fight!”But she and Mr. Kushner were soon scouting properties in Florida, and within weeks they were buying a $32 million lot formerly owned by the Spanish singer Julio Iglesias on the private island of Indian Creek near Miami, an exclusive haven for a couple dozen wealthy families that tabloids called the “Billionaire’s Bunker.”In what remaining time he had in the White House, Mr. Kushner wanted to focus on expanding the Abraham Accords, the agreement establishing diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab states, an achievement that he felt validated his whole time in Washington. Two other countries, Morocco and Sudan, signed on to the accords during the period between the election and Mr. Biden’s inauguration.As his father-in-law refused to authorize transition cooperation with Mr. Biden’s incoming team, Mr. Kushner quietly began working with aides to the president-elect like Jake Sullivan and Jeffrey Zients to prepare for their takeover. And although Mr. Trump might not have been thinking about his legacy yet, Mr. Kushner was.While still in the White House, he began writing a memoir focused on Middle East peacemaking. In the weeks to come, as Mr. Trump would continue to insist that he would remain for a second term, Mr. Kushner set about chronicling the first. He even took an online MasterClass on how to write a book, taught by the prolific best-selling novelist James Patterson. In the course of a two-week stretch after the election, he secretly batted out 40,000 words of a first draft. The final version is set to be published in August.While Mr. Kushner was often called a shadow chief of staff, the man who held the actual title, Mr. Meadows, was encouraging the conspiracy theorists seeking to overturn the election.Doug Mills/The New York TimesA Coming CollisionThe postelection fraud claims quickly exposed a rift within the Trump family. On the same day Mr. Kushner woke up to declare it was time to move to Miami, his brother-in-law Donald Trump Jr. was already pushing the president’s team to fight to stay in power. He sent a text to Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, outlining a plan to override the verdict of the voters by having Republican legislatures in states won by Mr. Biden invalidate the results and send Electoral College votes for Mr. Trump when Congress counted them on Jan. 6.How much Mr. Kushner knew about that at the time remains unclear, but he did not express serious concern about how far the effort to hang on to power would go. He sent word to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader, that Mr. Trump would eventually accept the reality that he lost.“We’ll get through it, bear with us,” Mr. Kushner told Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff and campaign manager for Mr. McConnell who would pass along the message. “We’ve got a couple of challenges that have some merit, we’ll see how they go, but there’s a pretty good chance we come up short.” And once the Electoral College voted on Dec. 14, he suggested, that would be the end of it. Mr. Trump just needed time to come to terms with his defeat.While Mr. Kushner was often called the president’s shadow chief of staff, the man who held the actual title, Mr. Meadows, was actively encouraging the conspiracy theorists seeking to overturn the election, acting less as a gatekeeper than a door opener, letting practically anybody who wanted to come into the Oval Office.Among them were lawyers and others arguing that Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally stop Mr. Biden from being formally recognized as the winner in his role overseeing the counting of the Electoral College votes in Congress. Mr. Pence concluded he had no such power and it would be unconstitutional for him to do so, but that did not stop Mr. Trump from keeping up the pressure.Finally, seeing the collision that was coming, Marc Short, the vice president’s chief of staff, tried to enlist help from Mr. Kushner, calling him over the holidays to ask him to get his father-in-law to stand down. “Look, can you help us with this?” Mr. Short asked.Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and Jared Kushner in Doha, Qatar, in December 2020. Leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Kushner was in the Middle East brokering a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Qatar.Qatar News Agency/EPA, via ShutterstockBut Mr. Kushner brushed him off. “Look, when Rudy got involved, I stopped being involved,” he told Mr. Short. The vice president “is a big boy,” and if he disagreed with the president on a legal issue, he should bring in his lawyers. “I’m too busy working on Middle East peace right now, Marc.”Indeed, in the days leading up to Jan. 6, Mr. Kushner was in the Middle East brokering a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Qatar to end a three-year blockade of the small Gulf state. He was on a plane back to Washington when Mr. Trump’s mob stormed the Capitol.After arriving home in the afternoon, Mr. Kushner was in the bathroom with the shower already running and about to jump in when his phone rang. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican minority leader, was on the line asking Mr. Kushner to persuade the president to do something. “We need help!” Mr. McCarthy insisted. Mr. Kushner turned off the shower and rushed to the White House.Ivanka Trump had spent much of the day trying to keep her father from going too far. She had refused to address the rally on the Ellipse but at the last minute was so concerned by her father’s anger toward Mr. Pence that she decided to accompany him there in hopes of avoiding a worse clash. Over the following hours, as rioters rampaged through the Capitol, she ran up and down the stairs in the West Wing from her office to the Oval Office hoping to persuade her father to issue stronger statements calling off the attackers.By the time Mr. Kushner finally arrived at the White House, his wife had gotten her father to release a video telling supporters to go home. But even then, he repeated his lies about the “fraudulent election” and expressed solidarity with the rioters, telling them, “We love you, you’re very special.” Mr. Kushner quickly concluded there was little more he could do at that point.In the days that followed, Mr. Kushner tried to broker peace between the president and vice president. On Jan. 11, he asked Mr. Short to come to his office. Would the vice president be willing to get together with the president?“He’s always willing,” Mr. Short replied. “But that’s not his responsibility to reconcile this relationship. That invitation should come from the other end of the hall.”“That’s what I’m doing, Marc,” Mr. Kushner said.At Kushner’s arrangement, Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence sat down that afternoon with no staff for an hour and a half. Mr. Pence reported back to aides that it was somewhat warm. But it was only a bandage over a gaping wound.Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner attended a farewell ceremony for the outgoing president on January 20, 2021, and were moving out of Washington the next day.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesOn Jan. 20, Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump attended the farewell ceremony for the outgoing president at Joint Base Andrews and accompanied him on Air Force One to Florida. Mr. Trump was heading into exile, prepared to keep waging war on Mr. Biden and the system, insisting he really won.Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump would have nothing to do with that. The next day, two moving trucks showed up at their Kalorama house to load up the furniture and a Peloton bike for the journey south to a luxury multilevel condo they had rented to live in while waiting for their new mansion to be built.They were moving on to their new life. More

Scott Baugh, the former leader of the California Assembly, fended off a crowded Republican field on Tuesday to earn the right to challenge Representative Katie Porter, a Democratic star, in November.The newly drawn 47th District of California leans slightly Democratic, but in a difficult year for President Biden’s party, Republicans would relish dimming Ms. Porter’s shine. Since she took her seat in the former Republican stronghold of Orange County in 2018, Ms. Porter has emerged as a powerhouse fund-raiser and a popular figure for the activist left.Democratic officials widely see her as an heir to the Senate seat now held by Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is not expected to seek re-election in November 2024, when she will be 91. A loss now would complicated Ms. Porter’s path.Representative Katie Porter, a powerhouse Democratic fund-raiser, at a campaign event on Saturday.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesMr. Baugh is the essence of the Orange County Republican establishment, having once headed the party in the county. With more than $1 million in his campaign accounts, he heads toward November in a respectable position. But his cash on hand pales in comparison with Ms. Porter’s $18 million in a widely watched race is likely to be expensive. More

Shawn Hubler
June 7, 2022 More