Elections

A community-driven movement has recruited around 25 candidates, most of them successful women preaching pragmatic reform. They could shape the balance of power after Saturday’s election.SYDNEY, Australia — On a cool morning at 5:50 a.m., Allegra Spender prepared to dive into the surf alongside dozens of ocean swimmers at Bondi Beach. She was there not just for exercise. She was there to meet voters.Her name was all over volunteers’ teal T-shirts and swim caps, identifying her as an independent candidate for the Australian federal Parliament.“Takes a lot of courage, what you’re doing,” said Jason Carr, 50, a security consultant, who came over to pledge his vote. “Good luck shaking things up.”Ms. Spender, 44, looked down and laughed.A first-time candidate, she said she still found the attention that comes with politics embarrassing. But that has not stopped her from shaking the political establishment — she is part of a movement of around 25 independents, nearly all of them women with successful careers, who are aiming to do nothing less than rejuvenate Australian democracy by saving it from the creep of corruption, right-wing populism and misogyny.The so-called teal independents, who tend to share the campaign colors of a Pacific wave, offer a sharp rebuke to Australia’s rigid party system. Recruited by energetic community groups that have formed only in the past few years, they are the public face of a fresh approach to politics that hopes to pull Australia back to the middle with a focus on climate change solutions, integrity and values like kindness.The “teals” could have a profound impact on Saturday’s election. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the leader of the conservative Liberal Party, has warned of a “cavalcade of chaos” should too many independents win. But if the vote is close, as expected, and if neither the Liberal coalition nor the opposition Labor Party wins a majority, this group of loosely organized women who share common goals of making government more responsive and productive could decide who leads the next Australian Parliament.Ms. Spender, center in black, during a swim to meet voters at Bondi Beach in Sydney.Stephanie Simcox for The New York TimesThe gray-haired men fighting for power in the world’s third-largest exporter of fossil fuels — where sexual harassment in politics has long been ignored, where money pours in and out of government without oversight, where conservatives promoting populism make bans on transgender athletes a campaign plank — could soon find themselves forced to negotiate with independent working mothers demanding change, backed by mobilized constituents.“It’s a rebellion from the sensible center,” said Ms. Spender, who is challenging a Liberal incumbent in a district her father once represented in Parliament as a Liberal, in the days when the party was more center-right.“No, rebellion is the wrong word,” she added. “It’s a move by people who feel that they are not represented, and have had enough, and are hoping things will change.”The Indie From IndiAustralia’s major parties are gatekeepers with old operating systems. There are no primaries, and dark money pays a lot of the bills. The parties decide who runs, and those who win rarely break ranks, because a single breach can end a political career.In many districts, there has long been a sense that political ambition and party loyalty matter more than local interests. And while some of that discontent has flowed to minor parties like the Greens on the left and One Nation on the far right, what’s happening now with independents is more focused on how to improve representation rather than channeling frustration into one partisan wing or another.It began far from the cities, with a no-nonsense leader. Her name is Cathy McGowan.A sheep farmer and former president of Australian Women in Agriculture, she reached Parliament in 2013 as an independent from Indi, a rural area northwest of Melbourne. She defeated the Liberal incumbent. And the way she got there was even more groundbreaking than the victory itself.The process started before her candidacy with a group of local residents — Voices for Indi — gathering to discuss what they loved about their community and what they wanted to see changed. More than 400 people participated in 55 conversations around kitchen tables, over coffee or a beer, after a class or while camping.Those casual chats led to a thoughtful report that listed concerns from poor mobile phone reception to climate change. It also sought to define good political representation with phrases pulled from the conversations like “walk the talk” and “asks the community what it needs and is willing to listen.”Voices for Indi was the catalyst for Ms. McGowan’s campaign. When she won, Australians around the country started calling and emailing.“I was quite surprised by the response,” Ms. McGowan said. “There was huge interest.”Cathy McGowan in Parliament in 2019. Her campaign sprang from a local grass-roots movement.Tracey Nearmy/Getty ImagesTo share what she had learned, she hosted small events in 2014 and 2017.After another voices group in Sydney helped an independent candidate, Zali Steggall, unseat former Prime Minister Tony Abbott in 2019, the movement suddenly went viral.Ms. McGowan, who left Parliament that year, passing the seat to another independent, Helen Haines, wrote a book in 2020 that told her personal story. She also started leading conferences over Zoom during the pandemic, connecting hundreds of people with similar inclinations.Each voices group that emerged embarked on a listening tour and ended up with its own list of concerns. The groups also hosted virtual events with policy experts.“Political parties have become disconnected from any kind of local membership,” said John Daley, a professor at the University of Melbourne Law School who wrote a major report about disengagement and gridlock last year. “The independent playbook goes precisely in the other direction — it goes back to the original idea of representative democracy.”The strongest efforts seem to have sprung up in areas with conservative roots, professional families and intense frustration with the tilt away from the political middle by the Liberal-led governing coalition.Most of the contenders are pro-business, pro-innovation (especially on energy) and proudly pro-equality (on both race and gender).Their campaigns have been bolstered by money from a group called Climate 200, which has collected more than 12 million Australian dollars, or about $8.5 million, from 12,000 donors to go to 22 independent candidates.That has led critics to claim they are not really independent. But Ms. McGowan and others, including Simon Holmes à Court, a founder of Climate 200, say the traditional major parties just don’t get that they’ve been disrupted.The independents and their supporters describe what’s happening as a 21st-century movement, organized on Slack and Zoom, crowd-funded, decentralized and committed to pragmatism.“Whatever the issue may be,” Ms. McGowan said, “what they want is action.”Fun … and Climate ChangeFor first-timers like Ms. Spender, who has worked in education and renewable energy and for the fashion company founded by her mother, Carla Zampatti, campaigning with new community groups often feels like her swim toward a distant buoy with energetic neighbors — exhausting, a little scary, but also rewarding.After her ocean jaunt in Bondi, she walked to a nearby cafe with all the others. Waiting in line for coffee, Ms. Spender warmed up near other swimmers and a few dogs wearing Allegra scarves. For the next hour, she did less talking than her volunteers.“This is the alternative to a career politician,” said Jonathan Potts, 51, who said he spends five hours a day volunteering to get Ms. Spender elected. “It’s a different philosophy — we want to look after long-term interests rather than party interests.”In interviews, many of the independents said they were initially reluctant to run, but had been surprised by how fun it had been to work with an ideas-first, community-driven approach.Zoe Daniel, a former foreign correspondent for Australia’s national broadcaster who is an independent candidate in Melbourne’s bayside suburbs, said she had been amazed to see young schoolgirls stopping outside her campaign office, taking selfies. There is even a choir that sings songs with “Zoe-ified lyrics.”An independent candidate, Zoe Daniel, center, greeting constituents in the suburbs of Melbourne earlier this month.Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The New York Times“All of us feel that we’ve made lifelong friends with like-minded people through this,” she said.Dr. Monique Ryan, a pediatric neurologist who is challenging Josh Frydenberg, the national treasurer, said the local support pointed to the power of “small ‘l’ liberal values.”In her district, 2,000 volunteers have come out, including several hundred with Voices of Kooyong, who signed up before she was their candidate. They’ve knocked on around 50,000 doors — almost every single household in the electorate.“We offer something that’s not the normal partisan politics,” she said. “We also offer something that’s very values based. For me, it’s about integrity and transparency and action on climate, which a lot of people feel deep anxiety about. It’s about gender equity, it’s about a more cohesive society.”Polls show close contests for Ms. Daniel, Ms. Spender and Dr. Ryan. Incumbent independents, including Andrew Wilkie in Tasmania and Ms. Steggall in Sydney, also appear to be in strong positions. The fortunes of some other independents are harder to gauge, but the momentum has clearly set conservative politicians on edge.Mr. Frydenberg, who has been talked about as a potential prime minister, recently admitted he was facing “the fight of my political life.”Ms. Spender, at a recent climate event with two other independents — Georgia Steele, a lawyer, and Kylea Tink, a businesswoman — said they were trying to fill a national void.“I’m angry, I mean, really angry that the moderates of the coalition and even the Labor Party are not taking enough action right now and that other people have to stand up in their stead,” Ms. Spender said.“This is a national transformation,” she added. “It’s not one business, it’s not one community. It’s all.”Yan Zhuang contributed reporting. More

The aftershocks of Tuesday’s big primaries are still rumbling across Pennsylvania, but one impact is already clear: Republican voters’ choice of Doug Mastriano in the governor’s race is giving the G.O.P. fits.Conversations with Republican strategists, donors and lobbyists in and outside of Pennsylvania in recent days reveal a party seething with anxiety, dissension and score-settling over Mastriano’s nomination.In the run-up to Tuesday night, Republicans openly used words and phrases like “suicide mission,” “disaster” and “voyage of the Titanic” to convey just what a catastrophe they believed his candidacy will be for their party.An adviser to several Republican governors, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said there was wide displeasure with the outcome, calling him unelectable. The Mastriano campaign did not respond to a request for comment.Some in Pennsylvania blame Jeff Yass, a billionaire options trader and the state’s most powerful donor, for sticking with Bill McSwain for governor despite Donald Trump’s blistering anti-endorsement; others point the finger at Lawrence Tabas, the state party chairman, for failing to clear the field; still others say that Trump should have stayed out of the race altogether instead of endorsing Mastriano. Tabas did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.An 11th-hour effort to stop Mastriano failed when both McSwain and Dave White, a self-funding candidate who spent at least $5 million of his own money, refused to drop out and support former Representative Lou Barletta, whose supporters insisted he was the more viable option.Many Republicans thought that idea was futile and far too late; several said a serious effort to prevent Mastriano from winning should have begun last summer, while others said that Yass and his allies could have dropped McSwain sooner.“Had they kept their powder dry, they could have seen the lay of the land, when Mastriano’s lead was 8-10, and backed Barletta,” said Sam Katz, a former Republican candidate for governor who now backs Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee.“Had they spent $5 million in three weeks, they might have forced Trump to make a different choice and changed everything,” Katz added.Mastriano had amassed nearly 45 percent of the vote as of Wednesday afternoon.Matthew Brouillette, head of Commonwealth Partners, which bankrolled McSwain’s campaign, noted that his organization also backed Carrie DelRosso, who won the lieutenant governor’s race. He said the criticism was coming largely from “consultants and rent-seekers who don’t like us as we disrupt their gravy trains.”After the Pennsylvania and North Carolina PrimariesMay 17 was the biggest day so far in the 2022 midterm cycle. Here’s what we’ve learned.Trump’s Limits: The MAGA movement is dominating Republican primaries, but Donald J. Trump’s control over it may be slipping.‘Stop the Steal’ Endures: G.O.P. candidates who aggressively cast doubt on the 2020 election have fared best, while Democratic voters are pushing for change. Here are more takeaways.Trump Endorsements: Most of the candidates backed by the former president have prevailed. However, there are some noteworthy losses.Up Next: Closely watched races in Georgia and Alabama on May 24 will offer a clearer picture of Mr. Trump’s influence.Ties to Jan. 6 and QAnonMastriano’s vulnerabilities are legion, G.O.P. operatives lament.The state senator and retired U.S. Army colonel has taken a hard line on abortion, which he has said should be illegal under all circumstances. He organized buses to Washington for the Jan. 6, 2021, rally in Washington and can be seen on video crossing police lines at the Capitol as the rally became a riot. He has also been a leading advocate of the baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.Mastriano’s name has appeared in documents released by the committee investigating the Capitol riot, and he claims to have been in close personal contact with Trump about their shared drive to overturn President Biden’s victory. In February, the committee demanded “documents and information that are relevant to the select committee’s investigation” in a letter to Mastriano. He has refused to say whom he would appoint as secretary of state, a critical position overseeing election infrastructure and voting.Mastriano has appeared at events linked to QAnon, the amorphous conspiracy theory that alleges there is a secret cabal of elite pedophiles running the federal government and other major U.S. institutions. He also has made statements that veer into Islamophobia.He is likely to be an especially weak candidate in the crowded suburbs around Philadelphia, the state’s most important political battleground. On the other side of the state, the editorial page of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has already all but officially endorsed Shapiro as “the only statewide candidate who did everything the Pennsylvania way.”Operatives in both parties expect Shapiro to blitz Mastriano with advertising portraying him as a dangerous extremist while Mastriano’s shoestring organization struggles to raise money.Even before Mastriano clinched the nomination, Shapiro’s campaign aired an ad highlighting his views on abortion and the 2020 election as well as his ties to Trump, who lost the state to Biden by 80,000 votes.Mastriano gave scant indication during Tuesday’s victory speech that he was ready to shift toward a more palatable general election message. Listing his early priorities as governor, he said, “mandates are gone,” “any jab for job requirements are gone,” critical race theory is “over,” “only biological females can play on biological female teams” and “you can only use the bathroom that your biological anatomy says.”The Mastriano matchup also plays to Shapiro’s carefully cultivated image as a fighter for democracy, though his campaign plans to focus primarily on bread-and-butter economic issues such as jobs, taxes and inflation.As attorney general, Shapiro was directly involved in the Pennsylvania government’s litigation after the 2020 election, and oversaw at least 40 cases of alleged voter fraud — winning every single one.Josh Shapiro campaigning in Meadville, Pa.Jeff Swensen for The New York TimesWait-and-see modeWill national Republicans help Mastriano or shun him? Right now, the major players in governor’s races appear to be waiting to see how the race develops before making that determination.Some Republicans believe the national “tailwinds” blowing in their favor might help Mastriano win despite all of his weaknesses, but for now, Democrats are thrilled to be facing him in November. They note that Shapiro performed better than Biden did in Pennsylvania during his re-election race as state attorney general, and expect Shapiro to be flooded with donations from in and outside the state.On Tuesday night, the Republican Governors Association issued a lukewarm statement acknowledging Mastriano’s victory, but suggesting he was on his own for now.“Republican voters in Pennsylvania have chosen Doug Mastriano as their nominee for governor,” Executive Director Dave Rexrode said. “The R.G.A. remains committed to engaging in competitive gubernatorial contests where our support can have an impact.”The statement left room for the possibility that the G.O.P. governors might help Mastriano should the Pennsylvania race be close in the fall.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. — In his campaign headquarters the morning after his electoral victory, Chuck Edwards showed no interest in dissecting one of the biggest political upsets so far in this year’s Republican primary season.Mr. Edwards, 61, a three-term state senator and business owner, thwarted Representative Madison Cawthorn’s turbulent re-election bid in North Carolina, beating him in Tuesday’s primary in a rare defeat of a Trump-backed Republican incumbent.“I’m excited for the opportunity to unify the Republican Party, put the primary behind us and focus our attention towards the real issues,” Mr. Edwards said on Wednesday, seated at a sleek mahogany conference table at his campaign office in downtown Hendersonville.What went unspoken was that many voters saw him as the establishment candidate who benefited from the boost of old-guard Republicans at home and in Washington. Mr. Cawthorn, 26, had alienated two powerful Republicans with a litany of political and personal errors and scandals: Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority leader, and Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina.A political group supporting Mr. Tillis, who endorsed Mr. Edwards, poured money into an ad campaign that painted Mr. Cawthorn as a fame-seeking liar. Other top North Carolina Republicans, including the state’s House speaker and State Senate leaders, also came to Mr. Edwards’s side.State Senator Chuck Edwards spoke during a candidate debate in Asheville, N.C., last month.Angela Wilhelm/The Asheville Citizen-Times, via Associated PressIn most Republican primaries across the country, old-fashioned establishment candidates in the Romney and Bush mold have been on the run amid intraparty battles and challenges from a far-right wing energized by former President Donald J. Trump. But as Mr. Edwards’s low-key postelection demeanor suggested, the state’s establishment seemed unwilling to claim victory when the word establishment itself has become an insult in Republican politics.After the Pennsylvania and North Carolina PrimariesMay 17 was the biggest day so far in the 2022 midterm cycle. Here’s what we’ve learned.Trump’s Limits: The MAGA movement is dominating Republican primaries, but Donald J. Trump’s control over it may be slipping.‘Stop the Steal’ Endures: G.O.P. candidates who aggressively cast doubt on the 2020 election have fared best, while Democratic voters are pushing for change. Here are more takeaways.Trump Endorsements: Most of the candidates backed by the former president have prevailed. However, there are some noteworthy losses.Up Next: Closely watched races in Georgia and Alabama on May 24 will offer a clearer picture of Mr. Trump’s influence.Asked about those who saw him as the establishment figure in the race, Mr. Edwards said people had different definitions of the label.“It is true I have established conservative principles and a track record of getting things done,” he said. “I’ve established that I can cut taxes. I’ve established that I can balance budgets. I’ve established that I can pass bills to outlaw sanctuary cities.”Of course, Mr. Cawthorn’s defeat was not solely the work of the establishment. He appeared to struggle with two key demographics: unaffiliated voters, who make up more than 40 percent of his district, and those in Henderson County, which includes his hometown of Hendersonville and helped carry him to victory in the last Republican primary.A barrage of bad press and personal and political mistakes helped turn voters against Mr. Cawthorn. Many said in interviews that they still supported Mr. Trump, but that they viewed Mr. Cawthorn as irresponsible, immature and unbecoming of public office. Mr. McCarthy, for his part, told reporters in March that he had spoken to Mr. Cawthorn after the freshman congressman had implied members of his own party invited him to orgies and to use cocaine with them.Mr. Cawthorn had been accused of engaging in insider trading, was pulled over for speeding, charged with driving with a revoked license and had been stopped for trying to bring a gun through airport security a second time. Photos and videos of him partying and emulating sexual antics circulated. Most damaging were reports that he frequently missed votes and had abandoned constituency offices.Mr. Edwards jumped into the race after Mr. Cawthorn announced last year that he would run in a new district near Charlotte. Mr. Cawthorn ended up changing his mind and returning to his old district after the new district was redrawn and tilted Democratic.Mr. Edwards, who owns several McDonald’s franchises and has served in the state legislature since 2016, has built a staunch conservative brand to the right of what used to be considered the traditional establishment Republican. He has pushed measures to overhaul tax laws, enact a constitutional amendment for voter identification and require county sheriffs to work with immigration enforcement agencies.In his campaign office Wednesday, days after a racist mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket, Mr. Edwards said he did not believe limiting gun ownership for law-abiding citizens would solve societal problems. And he declined to condemn the racist conspiracy theory that police say motivated the Buffalo gunman — and that has been echoed by members of his own party. That unfounded theory essentially holds that elites are using immigration and falling birthrates to replace white people and destroy white culture.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

Republican voters in this week’s primary races demonstrated a willingness to nominate candidates who parrot Donald J. Trump’s election lies and who appear intent on exerting extraordinary political control over voting systems. The results make clear that the November midterms may well affect the fate of free and fair elections in the country.In Pennsylvania, Republican voters united behind a nominee for governor, Doug Mastriano, who helped lead the brazen effort to overturn the state’s 2020 election and chartered buses to the rally before the Capitol riot, and who has since promoted a constitutionally impossible effort to decertify President Biden’s victory in his state.In North Carolina, voters chose a G.O.P. Senate nominee, Representative Ted Budd, who voted in Congress against certifying the 2020 results and who continues to refuse to say that Mr. Biden was legitimately elected.And in Idaho, which Mr. Trump won overwhelmingly in 2020, 57 percent of voters backed two Republican candidates for secretary of state who pushed election falsehoods, though they lost a three-way race to a rival who accepts Mr. Biden as president.The strong showings on Tuesday by election deniers, who have counterparts running competitively in primaries across the country over the coming months, were an early signal of the threat posed by the Trump-inspired movement.“It’s a big problem,” said former Representative Charlie Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican, who added that the G.O.P. needs “to show an alternative vision for the party. I don’t think we’re seeing enough of that right now.”While election issues have dominated several high-profile Republican primaries so far, G.O.P. candidates do not always place 2020 objections at the center of their pitches to voters. Instead, fomenting doubts about Mr. Biden’s victory is often the table stakes of Republican primaries that can tilt hard to the right. Candidates who avoid the subject risk losing credibility with the party’s base.When talking to voters, many Republican candidates have focused heavily on a broader list of promises to restore conservative governance. And in many general-election races, candidates from both major parties are likely to focus on inflation and the economy.Still, the election issue hangs over several races in presidential battleground states. Republicans trying to reclaim governor’s mansions and take over top offices overseeing elections have fallen over one another for the last year and a half to cater to voters who believe myriad false claims about the 2020 contest.The biggest single test will be next Tuesday in Georgia, where Mr. Trump has backed a slate of candidates running on election-denial platforms against the incumbent governor, secretary of state and attorney general.After the Pennsylvania and North Carolina PrimariesMay 17 was the biggest day so far in the 2022 midterm cycle. Here’s what we’ve learned.Trump’s Limits: The MAGA movement is dominating Republican primaries, but Donald J. Trump’s control over it may be slipping.‘Stop the Steal’ Endures: G.O.P. candidates who aggressively cast doubt on the 2020 election have fared best, while Democratic voters are pushing for change. Here are more takeaways.Trump Endorsements: Most of the candidates backed by the former president have prevailed. However, there are some noteworthy losses.Up Next: Closely watched races in Georgia and Alabama on May 24 will offer a clearer picture of Mr. Trump’s influence.Mr. Trump’s choice for governor, former Senator David Perdue, appears likely to fall short against Gov. Brian Kemp, whom Mr. Trump still blames for his 2020 loss in Georgia. All three races could wind up in runoffs if no candidate secures a majority of the primary vote.Representative Jody Hice of Georgia is running with Donald J. Trump’s backing for Georgia secretary of state. Mr. Trump was angry that Brad Raffensperger, the incumbent, did not help him overturn the state’s 2020 results.Audra Melton for The New York TimesMr. Perdue and Representative Jody Hice, who is challenging Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, have each falsely argued that rampant voter fraud marred the 2020 Georgia contests. Mr. Perdue began a debate with Mr. Kemp by declaring: “The election in 2020 was rigged and stolen.” Mr. Hice said he would not have certified Mr. Biden’s victory.In the state’s Senate race, the leading Republican candidate, the Trump-backed former football star Herschel Walker, said on Wednesday that he wasn’t sure if Mr. Biden had been lawfully elected in 2020.“I don’t know,” Mr. Walker told a New York Times reporter after a speech in Macon, Ga. “I do think there was problems. And I think everybody else thinks there was problems, and that’s the reason right now everybody’s so upset.”But no Republican nominee for a major swing-state office has done more to amplify bogus election claims than Mr. Mastriano in Pennsylvania.Mr. Mastriano has helped promote continuing — and constitutionally impossible — efforts to decertify Pennsylvania’s 2020 results. Julio Cortez/Associated PressA state senator and retired Army colonel, he spent $3,354 in campaign funds to charter buses to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. A Senate Judiciary Committee report said that video footage had confirmed that Mr. Mastriano had “passed through breached barricades and police lines” near the Capitol, though he has denied that he breached the lines and there is no evidence that he entered the Capitol itself.This March, Mr. Mastriano held a campaign event in Gettysburg at which attendees signed a petition calling on Pennsylvania to decertify the state’s 2020 results, according to The York Daily Record.The decertification push has become the latest litmus test in 2020 election denialism. It has also rattled Republicans in Wisconsin, where one of the party’s four major candidates for governor has made undoing Mr. Biden’s 2020 victory in the state the central plank of his campaign.Mr. Trump has encouraged the decertification effort in Wisconsin and offered a late endorsement to Mr. Mastriano. The former president has conditioned his endorsement, the most valuable seal of approval in Republican politics, on amplifying false claims about the election.Once in office, Trump-backed candidates are likely to try to follow through on promises to alter election law — in some cases, by simply making voting more difficult, but in others, by going so far as to give Republican-controlled state legislatures the right to overturn election results.In Pennsylvania, Kathy Barnette, a Jan. 6 rally attendee who pushed many false stolen-election claims and campaigned on a slate with Mr. Mastriano, placed third in the state’s G.O.P. Senate primary with about 25 percent of the vote.And the two men locked in a photo finish for first place, Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick, have also cast doubt on the 2020 election results, refusing to say Mr. Biden won fairly.Dr. Mehmet Oz is not as strident as Mr. Mastriano on election issues, but he has declined to say that Mr. Biden won fairly.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesDr. Oz, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump, has said in his stump speech that “we can’t leave 2020 behind,” without articulating precisely what he means.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

Melissa Carone was supposed to be a star witness for Rudolph W. Giuliani on his election denial tour, but she is perhaps better known as a caricature on “Saturday Night Live” — a mercurial purveyor of wild conspiracy theories about fraud and miscounted ballots whom Mr. Giuliani shushed in the middle of her testimony.Her next move was to run for the legislature in Michigan, joining a host of election deniers across the nation who have sought public office since former President Donald J. Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joseph R. Biden Jr.But her plans were short-circuited on Tuesday, when the Michigan Department of State disqualified Ms. Carone, 35, a former election contractor, as a Republican primary candidate for a State Senate seat outside of Detroit.The office said that Ms. Carone, along with 10 other legislative candidates, had made false statements on an affidavit that candidates were required to submit to election administrators. On one of the forms that was signed by Ms. Carone, she had attested that she did not have any unpaid fines for election law violations and that all of her public campaign filings were up-to-date. The county clerk where Ms. Carone was running for office said on Wednesday that had not been the case.It was the second time in recent months that Ms. Carone had been disqualified as a candidate: The Macomb County Clerk & Register of Deeds barred her in March from the Aug. 2 primary for state representative.When she signed the affidavit, Ms. Carone had owed at least $125 in late fees for missing the deadline twice for quarterly campaign filings in 2021, according to a letter from the clerk that was obtained by The New York Times. She had also failed to file an annual statement for 2022 for her campaign and an amendment to a quarterly report last October, the letter said.Ms. Carone, who was played by the “Saturday Night Live” cast member Cecily Strong in the show’s cold open in December 2020, blamed the situation on a former campaign manager whom she said in an interview on Wednesday did not file the paperwork.She accused Republican election officials and the party’s leaders of conspiring to keep her off the ballot.“This is how our elected officials keep good candidates from getting elected,” Ms. Carone said. “I’m going to fight it. Even if I don’t end up on the ballot, my voice will be heard. I’m not going anywhere. I will still be exposing these establishment sellout RINOs in the Michigan G.O.P.”Anthony G. Forlini, a Republican who is the Macomb County clerk, said on Wednesday that his office had been following the law and that the disqualification of Ms. Carone was not politically motivated.“From our standpoint, she was kicked off the ballot because she basically perjured herself,” Mr. Forlini said.Mr. Forlini said that it is a felony in Michigan to make a false statement on affidavits like those signed by candidates.“We’re just sticking to the letter of the law,” he said. “She likes the drama, and she’s been feeding on it.”Mr. Forlini said that he could not speak to the specifics of Ms. Carone’s recent disqualification by the Michigan Department of State, a separate agency headed by Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat who is secretary of state.A spokeswoman for that agency said on Wednesday that she could not further discuss the nature of the false statements that led to Ms. Carone’s disqualification, which was announced in conjunction with the other candidates who were barred on Tuesday.A receipt filed with the secretary of state’s office showed that Ms. Carone had paid $125 in late fees with a check on March 24, three days after she signed the affidavit attesting that she did not owe anything.Gustavo Portela, a spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party, rejected Ms. Carone’s assertions that there was a concerted effort to keep her off the primary ballot.“Terrible candidates seem to find it hard to take accountability for themselves so they pass the blame to others,” he said in an email on Wednesday.Ms. Carone claimed she was contracted by Dominion Voting Systems, an election technology company that has been the target of a baseless pro-Trump conspiracy theory about rigged voting machines. The company called her claims defamatory and sent her a cease and desist letter.During an election oversight hearing held by legislators in Michigan in December 2020, she testified that she had observed over 20 acts of fraud — not counting ballots found in rivers and under a rock — and that at least 30,000 ballots had been counted multiple times. A judge in Wayne County Circuit Court had already found Ms. Carone’s claims — made in an affidavit seeking to stop the certification of votes — were “not credible.”At times combative and glib, Ms. Carone’s performance was widely mocked, including by “Saturday Night Live.”“To be honest with you, I didn’t watch it for a really long time,” she said on Wednesday. “I think it’s funny. That kind of stuff doesn’t make me mad. I don’t care.” More

A group trying to hold lawyers accountable for their efforts to keep Donald Trump in power after his election loss filed a complaint against the Republican senator with the Texas bar association.A group formed in the hopes of disbarring lawyers who worked on cases in which former President Donald J. Trump tried to subvert the results of the 2020 election filed a complaint with the Texas bar association on Wednesday against Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, for his efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power.The complaint against Mr. Cruz, filed by a group called the 65 Project, focuses on baseless assertions by Mr. Cruz about widespread voting fraud in the weeks between Election Day in 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021, as well as his participation in lawsuits protesting the results in Pennsylvania.“Mr. Cruz played a leading role in the effort to overturn the 2020 elections. And while the same can be said about several other elected officials, Mr. Cruz’s involvement was manifestly different,” the complaint said, asserting that Mr. Cruz moved beyond simply working within the confines of Congress.“He chose to take on the role of lawyer and agreed to represent Mr. Trump and Pennsylvania Republicans in litigation before the U.S. Supreme Court,” the complaint said, citing his role in two cases, neither of which succeeded. “In doing so, Mr. Cruz moved beyond his position as a United States senator and sought to use more than his Twitter account and media appearances to support Mr. Trump’s anti-democratic mission.”Elsewhere, the complaint argued, Mr. Cruz continued to make statements that he knew to be false, about the election and about the state courts in Pennsylvania being partisan.“Mr. Cruz knew that the allegations he was echoing had already been reviewed and rejected by courts,” the complaint says. “And he knew that claims of voter fraud or the election being stolen were false.”A spokesman for Mr. Cruz dismissed the 65 Project as “a far-left dark money smear machine run by a who’s who of shameless Democrat hacks. They’re not a credible organization and their complaint won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on.”The 65 Project’s advisers include the Hillary Clinton ally David Brock and Paul Rosenzweig, a conservative and former Republican who worked on the Ken Starr special prosecution team investigating the Clintons. The 65 Project was formed to hold accountable lawyers involved in a series of lawsuits seeking to undermine President Biden’s victory in 2020.Its targets have included a range of lawyers who worked on the postelection lawsuits in 2020. Mr. Cruz is the first senator the group has targeted in its campaign, which is still in its early stages.The complaint cited the suspension of the law license of Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City and one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, in New York as a precedent for what could happen to Mr. Cruz.In an interview, Mr. Rosenzweig said that the purpose of the complaint was to make clear that the need for “self-regulation for false statements is a real thing,” and that “if you transgress those rules, you will at minimum suffer the public consequence of being called out for your misconduct.”Mr. Rosenzweig said that the goal was not to punish people for representing clients, regardless of how many people may disagree with their views, but rather that it was “about whether a lawyer” could “suborn criminal conduct.” More

In this era of partisanship, extremism and general insanity, there are few electoral outcomes that can unite voters across the political spectrum. For instance, is it a good thing that Pennsylvania Republicans just picked an election-denying conspiracist as their nominee for governor? What about the fact that Pennsylvania Democrats, in their Senate primary, went for the tattooed, goateed, progressive lieutenant governor who suffered a stroke last week over the button-down, centrist (some would say milquetoast) congressman who served in the Marine Corps and as an assistant U.S. attorney?So many perspectives. So many opinions.But on one point, most sensible people can agree: The voters in North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District have done the nation a great service by giving the boot to Representative Madison Cawthorn, the scandal-plagued 26-year-old freshman firebrand favored by Donald Trump. While the loss is surely disappointing for young Mr. Cawthorn, it is almost certainly the best outcome for him as well.It is hard not to take satisfaction in the downfall of a political creature as flamboyantly vile, reckless, incendiary and — how to put this gently? — dense as Mr. Cawthorn. Among his more notable transgressions: He has been cited (twice) in recent months for trying to board a plane with a gun. He has been busted twice for driving with a revoked license. He has been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women and of having an inappropriate relationship with a male aide. He has brazenly lied about his background, including key details of the 2014 car crash that left him with limited use of his legs. He is facing accusations of insider trading.But wait! There’s more! Mr. Cawthorn has said nasty things about Volodymyr Zelensky, even as the Ukrainian president struggles to defend his nation from the butchery of Vladimir Putin. Cheering the not-guilty verdict in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who killed two people during the unrest after the police shooting of a Black man in Kenosha, Wis., Mr. Cawthorn urged his social media followers to “be armed, be dangerous.” And he has been among the most aggressive, irresponsible peddlers of Mr. Trump’s election-fraud lies, at one point warning that if America’s election systems “continue to be rigged” and “stolen,” the result can only be “bloodshed.”Of course, in Mr. Trump’s Republican Party, many if not all of the above controversies might have been dismissed as youthful foolishness — boys being boys, if you will — or petty missteps overblown by the libs.But Mr. Cawthorn’s colleagues finally drew a line when he claimed that people he “looked up to” in Washington — presumably his Republican colleagues — had done cocaine and invited him to orgies. Today’s congressional Republicans might forgive a colleague’s tolerance or even encouragement of an armed and bloody assault on American democracy. But they will not stand for being associated with the term “key bump.”Neither were Republicans charmed when risqué images of Mr. Cawthorn (pre-Congress) recently made the rounds on social media: pics of him rocking ladies’ lingerie and a brief video of him naked and — there really is no way to put this tastefully — humping another man’s head. The emergence of these unflattering tidbits was, in fact, widely assumed to be part of a smear campaign orchestrated by Republicans weary of Mr. Cawthorn’s antics.Getting elected to Congress is quite an accomplishment for anyone, much less a 25-year-old who had his life derailed as a teenager. A recent Politico piece detailed the anguish Mr. Cawthorn expressed about his life to a friend in the summer of 2015. He texted that he missed the ability to do basic things, such as dressing himself and using the bathroom without help, and to experience ordinary pleasures, such as “being able to compete” and “being checked out by girls.” “I miss not peeing the bed because I have no control over my penis,” he wrote, and “not having to have pills keep me alive.” He missed his “pride as a man” and “not having to convince myself every day not to pull the trigger and end it all.”Many young people suffer horrific tragedies. And Mr. Cawthorn’s suffering in no way excuses his personal misbehavior or his toxic politics. But clearly the guy is struggling on some level and could benefit from stepping back from public life. The political circus is not the best place to achieve a healthy, balanced existence. To the contrary, modern politics tends to enable and exacerbate the worst tendencies in many people, immersing them in a world of partisan warfare and public pressure, increasingly cut off from a “normal” life.Today’s Republican politics, in particular, rewards acting out. The more performatively transgressive, divisive and obnoxious you are, the more authentically MAGA you are considered. Mr. Cawthorn threw himself into this bad-boy role with more gusto than most. He seems to have been particularly drawn to his party’s obsession with violence and toxic masculinity — clearly to ill effect.And so, even as we cheer the electoral humiliation of this exceptional jerk — the rare ultra-MAGA lawmaker too outrageous even for today’s G.O.P. to tolerate — here’s hoping his next gig is more conducive to helping him get his life together.America is better off without Mr. Cawthorn in Congress. So is he.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. 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If the Ohio Senate primary two weeks ago provided some clarity about the ideological divisions in the Republican Party, Tuesday’s primaries often seemed more like a showcase for the distinctive personalities that populate a Trumpified G.O.P.The Pennsylvania Senate race gave us an especially vivid mix: As of this writing, the Celebrity Doctor and the Hedge Fund Guy Pretending to Be a MAGA True Believer may be headed for a recount, after the Would-Be Media Personality With the Inspiring Back Story and the Unfortunate Twitter Feed faded back into the pack. In the governor’s race, Republican voters chose to nominate Doug Mastriano, a.k.a. the QAnon Dad. In North Carolina, they ended — for now — the political career of Representative Madison Cawthorn, the Obviously Suffering Grifter.On substance, as opposed to personality, though, the night’s stakes were relatively simple: Can Republicans prevent their party from becoming the party of constitutional crisis, with leaders tacitly committed to turning the next close presidential election into a legal-judicial-political train wreck?This is a distinctive version of a familiar political problem. Whenever a destabilizing populist rebellion is unleashed inside a democratic polity, there are generally two ways to bring back stability without some kind of crisis or rupture in the system.Sometimes the revolt can be quarantined within a minority coalition and defeated by a majority. This was the destiny, for instance, of William Jennings Bryan’s 1890s prairie-populist rebellion, which took over the Democratic Party but went down to multiple presidential defeats at the hands of the more establishmentarian Republicans. You can see a similar pattern, for now, in French politics, where the populism of Marine Le Pen keeps getting isolated and defeated by the widely disliked but grudgingly tolerated centrism of Emmanuel Macron.In the alternative path to stability, the party being reshaped by populism finds leaders who can absorb its energies, channel its grievances and claim its mantle — but also defeat or suppress its most extreme manifestations. This was arguably the path of New Deal liberalism in its relationship to Depression-era populism and radicalism: In the 1930s, Franklin Roosevelt was able to sustain support from voters who were also drawn to more demagogic characters, from Huey Long to Charles Coughlin. Two generations later, it was the path of Reaganite conservatism in its relationship to both George Wallace’s populism and the Goldwaterite New Right.The problem for America today is that neither stabilizing strategy is going particularly well. Part of the Never Trump movement has aspired to a Macron-style strategy, preaching establishment unity behind the Democratic Party. But the Democrats haven’t cooperated: They conspicuously failed to contain and defeat Trumpism in 2016, and there is no sign that the Biden-era variation on the party is equipped to hold on to the majority it won in 2020.Meanwhile, the Republican Party at the moment does have a provisional model for channeling but also restraining populism. Essentially it involves leaning into culture-war controversy and rhetorical pugilism to a degree that provokes constant liberal outrage and using that outrage to reassure populist voters that you’re on their side and they don’t need to throw you over for a conspiracy theorist or Jan. 6 marcher.This is the model, in different styles and contexts, of Glenn Youngkin and Ron DeSantis. In Tuesday’s primaries it worked for Idaho’s conservative incumbent governor, Brad Little, who easily defeated his own lieutenant governor’s much-further-right campaign. Next week the same approach seems likely to help Brian Kemp defeat David Perdue for the governor’s nomination in Georgia. And it offers the party’s only chance, most likely via a DeSantis candidacy, to defeat Donald Trump in 2024.Unfortunately this model works best when you have a trusted figure, a known quantity, delivering the “I’ll be your warrior, I’ll defeat the left” message. The Cawthorn race, in which the toxic congressman was unseated by a member of the North Carolina State Senate, shows that this figure doesn’t have to be an incumbent to succeed, especially if other statewide leaders provide unified support. But if you have neither unity nor a figure with statewide prominence or incumbency as your champion — no Kemp, no Little — then you can get results like Mastriano’s victory last night in Pennsylvania: a Republican nominee for governor who cannot be trusted to carry out his constitutional duties should the presidential election be close in 2024.So now the obligation returns to the Democrats. Mastriano certainly deserves to lose the general election, and probably he will. But throughout the whole Trumpian experience, the Democratic Party has consistently failed its own tests of responsibility: It has talked constantly about the threat to democracy while moving leftward to a degree that makes it difficult to impossible to hold the center, and it has repeatedly cheered on unfit Republican candidates on the theory that they will be easier to beat.This happened conspicuously with Trump himself, and more unforgivably it happened again with Mastriano: Pennsylvania Democrats sent out mailers boosting his candidacy and ran a big ad buy, more than twice Mastriano’s own TV spending, calling him “one of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters” — an “attack” line perfectly scripted to improve his primary support.Now they have him, as they had Trump in 2016. We’ll see if they can make the story end differently this time.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More