Elections

Hoarding cash, doling out favors and seeking to crush rivals, the former president is dominating the G.O.P., preparing for another race and helping loyalists oust officials who thwarted his attempted subversion of the 2020 election.PALM BEACH, Fla. — On any given night, Donald J. Trump will stroll onto the patio at Mar-a-Lago and say a few words from a translucent lectern, welcoming whatever favored candidate is paying him for the privilege of fund-raising there.“This is a special place,” Mr. Trump said on one such evening in February at his private club. “I used to say ‘ground zero’ but after the World Trade Center we don’t use that term anymore. This is the place where everybody wants to be.”For 15 months, a parade of supplicants — senators, governors, congressional leaders and Republican strivers of all stripes — have made the trek to pledge their loyalty and pitch their candidacies. Some have hired Mr. Trump’s advisers, hoping to gain an edge in seeking his endorsement. Some have bought ads that ran only on Fox News in South Florida. Some bear gifts; others dish dirt. Almost everyone parrots his lie that the 2020 election was stolen.Working from a large wooden desk reminiscent of the one he used in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump has transformed Mar-a-Lago’s old bridal suite into a shadow G.O.P. headquarters, amassing more than $120 million — a war chest more than double that of the Republican National Committee itself. Federal records show that his PAC raised more online than the party on every day but two in the last six months of 2021, one of which was Christmas Eve.And while other past presidents have ceded the political stage, Mr. Trump has done the opposite, aggressively pursuing an agenda of vengeance against Republicans who have wronged him, endorsing more than 140 candidates nationwide and turning the 2022 primaries into a stress test of his continued sway.Inspiring fear, hoarding cash, doling out favors and seeking to crush rivals, Mr. Trump is behaving not merely as a power broker but as something closer to the head of a 19th-century political machine.“Party leaders have never played the role that Trump is playing,” said Roger Stone, an on-and-off adviser to Mr. Trump since the 1980s who has been spotted at Mar-a-Lago of late. “Because he can — and he’s not bound by the conventional rules of politics.”This portrait of Mr. Trump as a modern-day party boss is drawn from more than 50 interviews with Trump advisers past and present, political rivals, Republicans who have sought his support and G.O.P. officials and strategists who are grappling with his influence.Mr. Trump plainly relishes the power. But as he hints repeatedly about a third White House bid, the looming question is whether he can remain a kingmaker if he doesn’t actually seek the crown.For now, he has delved into the minutiae of cleansing the Republican Party of his critics, even if, in typical fashion, the planning and execution can be haphazard. He has focused his efforts almost obsessively on installing unflinching loyalists in key battleground state posts — governors, senators, House members, secretaries of state and state attorneys general — often in place of the very officials who thwarted his attempts to subvert the 2020 results.He has pressured candidates to switch the races they enter, counseled Republicans on whom to hire, involved himself in party registration rules in Wyoming and the statehouse speaker’s race in Michigan. He conditioned his endorsement of Gov. Mike Dunleavy of Alaska on Mr. Dunleavy not endorsing the state’s incumbent senator, Lisa Murkowski; Mr. Dunleavy quickly complied. Last week, he issued an anti-endorsement, urging Pennsylvanians not to vote for Bill McSwain in the primary for governor, on the grounds that Mr. McSwain had insufficiently embraced his allegations of 2020 election fraud.Mr. Trump declined to be interviewed for this article.Those close to Mr. Trump say he draws gratification from the raw exercise of his power. He will listen to the lobbying of senior Republicans, like Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House G.O.P. leader, and then turn on them with little warning. A day after Mr. McCarthy reprimanded Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina for saying that colleagues in Washington had held orgies and used cocaine, Mr. Trump awarded Mr. Cawthorn a coveted speaking slot at his next rally.For 15 months, a parade of supplicants — senators, governors, congressional leaders and Republican strivers of all stripes — have made the trek to Mar-a-Lago.Saul Martinez for The New York Times‘A developing Tammany situation’An entire political economy now surrounds Mr. Trump, with Trump properties reaping huge fees: Federal candidates and committees alone have paid nearly $1.3 million to hold events at Mar-a-Lago, records show. A phalanx of Trump whisperers has emerged with candidates paying them in hopes of lining up meetings, ensuring that he sees damaging research on their rivals or strategically slipping him a survey showing a surge in the polls, even as Trump alumni warn that it is always buyer-beware in the Trump influence game.“If someone is out there selling their ability to make endorsements happen, they’re selling a bridge they don’t own,” said Michael Caputo, a former adviser who still speaks to Mr. Trump. “What appears to be a developing Tammany situation is really the coalescence of many consultants who pretend they have an inside track toward the endorsement. No inside track exists.”Yet while Tammany Hall, a New York City political machine that endured for nearly two centuries, owed its longevity to its spreading around of patronage, Mr. Trump can be downright stingy. Though he holds rallies for some candidates, for many his support goes no further than an email and a $5,000 check. Mr. Trump has almost never deployed his huge list of supporters to help other politicians raise money (Representative Elise Stefanik of New York being a rare exception earlier this year). Facing the possibility of high-profile defeats, the Trump team is now planning to spend directly to assist some vulnerable Trump-backed candidates; a cash transfer to a Georgia super PAC was only the first step.Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said focusing only on direct spending does not fully account for the value of the Trump imprimatur for voters and the “free media coverage” it generates. “It was once said an endorsement isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, but there’s now a caveat to that — the Trump endorsement,” Mr. Budowich said.Not unlike past political bosses, Mr. Trump has focused heavily on the mechanics of elections — who counts the votes, who certifies them — while ceaselessly sowing distrust in the system through false claims of vote rigging.As Tammany’s corrupt Boss Tweed was portrayed saying, as he leaned on a ballot box in a famous 1870s cartoon: “As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?”Or, as Mr. Trump told Breitbart News this month, “There’s an expression that the vote counters are more important than the candidate, and you could use that expression here.”Wielding power over the party and selling the fiction of a stolen election also serve to distract from Mr. Trump’s unhappy exit from the White House as a loser.Michael D’Antonio, a Trump biographer, drew a parallel between this period and an earlier crisis in Mr. Trump’s career: his bankruptcy in the early 1990s. “These would have been ruinous events for someone else,” he said. “But for Trump it just marked a turn in his method and his pursuit of power. And he never accepted these were really losses.”Democrats are bracing for losses in 2022. But strategists in both parties say Mr. Trump’s big public profile presents a risk for Republicans, as private surveys and focus groups show he remains a potent turnoff for swing voters.It is a very different story in Republican primaries, where few serious candidates are openly breaking with Mr. Trump. “The takeover of the Republican Party by President Trump has been so complete,” said Boris Epshteyn, another former Trump adviser sometimes seen at Mar-a-Lago, “that even the RINOs are attempting to talk MAGA.”Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina was reprimanded for saying colleagues in Washington had held orgies and used cocaine, but Mr. Trump nevertheless awarded him a coveted speaking slot at his next rally.Veasey Conway for The New York Times“I need to see polling, I need to see funding, I need to see you make a name for yourself,” Mr. Trump instructed Joe Kent, who won Mr. Trump’s backing for his effort to unseat Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington State.Nathan Howard/Associated Press‘Like crabs in a bucket’Nothing reveals Mr. Trump’s hold on the party quite like the genuflections and contortions of those seeking his political approval.Some candidates pay to attend Mar-a-Lago fund-raisers for others — clamoring for a fleeting moment of Mr. Trump’s attention, or better yet, a photo. “Epic moment,” was how one House contender memorialized her few seconds with Mr. Trump on Instagram.When Mr. Trump invited candidates from Michigan to stand beside him at one event, a man’s voice rang out: “I’m running for governor, too, can I come up there?” It was Ryan Kelley. “You’re running for governor of what?” a confused Mr. Trump asked. “Michigan!” Mr. Kelley replied. Up he came, shaking hands with an opponent, Perry Johnson.Mr. Johnson, for his part, had been a repeated presence at Mar-a-Lago, proudly posting a grainy video of Mr. Trump hailing his “good poll numbers” at another fund-raiser. He had even bought a television ad welcoming Mr. Trump to Michigan before an April 2 rally.Yet Mr. Trump snubbed him at the rally and instead praised a rival candidate, Tudor Dixon, who had held her own Mar-a-Lago fund-raiser in February.In many ways, the endorsement chase is a real-life reprisal of Mr. Trump’s old reality-television role.“What was ‘The Apprentice’ but a sad scramble of people behaving like crabs in a bucket to be lifted out by him?” said Mr. D’Antonio, the biographer. “How are these people anything other than contestants vying for his approval?”In one oft-recounted scene, Mr. Trump pulled several Ohio Senate candidates into a room last year at Mar-a-Lago, where they began verbally attacking one another as he watched. “Things went off the rails,” said one candidate, Bernie Moreno, who blamed his rivals, not Mr. Trump, for the mayhem. Mr. Moreno has since dropped out, not wanting to divide the pro-Trump vote.Nearly all the Ohio contenders have run ads playing up their ties to Mr. Trump and lobbied him personally. Jane Timken calls herself “the real Trump conservative.” Josh Mandel calls himself “pro-God, pro-gun, pro-Trump.” Mike Gibbons calls himself and Mr. Trump two “businessmen with a backbone.”Mr. Trump did not endorse any of them, instead backing the author J.D. Vance. At a debate before the endorsement, Matt Dolan, the only leading Republican contender not aggressively vying for a Trump endorsement, suggested his rivals were putting Ohio voters second. “There are people up on this stage who are literally fighting for one vote,” he said, “and that person doesn’t vote in Ohio.”Mr. Dolan is an exception. As a rule, an audience with Mr. Trump can make or break a candidacy. So candidates strategize heavily.Mr. Trump enjoys flattery and is not above rewarding sycophants. But insiders say bringing compelling visual material matters, too. Big fonts are crucial. With photos and graphics. In color.“He’s not a real big digital guy, so we had printouts,” said Joe Kent, who has since won Mr. Trump’s backing for his effort to unseat Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, one of the 10 Republican impeachment votes.“I need to see polling, I need to see funding, I need to see you make a name for yourself,” Mr. Trump instructed him, as Mr. Kent recalled.When he likes what he sees, Mr. Trump will mail words of encouragement, scrawled on news clippings with a Sharpie. “You are doing great!” he wrote in January to Mr. Kent. “You are doing great!” he wrote last October to Harriet Hageman, who is challenging Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming.When Representative Billy Long, a candidate for Senate in Missouri, first met with Mr. Trump last year, he brought along a favorable poll printout. But he sensed he’d been beaten to the punch when, he recalled, Mr. Trump “reached over and picked up another poll” that Mr. Long presumed came from a rival, though it could have been part of the packet Mr. Trump’s team prepares for candidate meetings.“Donald J. Trump is going to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it,” Mr. Long said. “There is no secret sauce here.”In March, a group urging Mr. Trump to rescind his endorsement of Matthew DePerno, a candidate for Michigan attorney general, bought an ad that ran in West Palm Beach.Nic Antaya for The New York TimesMr. Trump made clear his desire to take control of Michigan’s vote-counting posts, rallying support for Kristina Karamo, his choice for secretary of state.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesPrecision televisionTelevision is a popular way to lobby Mr. Trump, and some candidates try by running ads far away from their voters. When Mr. Trump was staying at his Bedminster, N.J., golf course last summer, Jim Lamon, a Senate candidate in Arizona, paid for an ad on Fox News in New Jersey.Michele Fiore, a Las Vegas city councilwoman, announced her bid for Nevada governor with a theatrically pro-Trump commercial that ran in West Palm Beach. She later switched to the state treasurer’s race, saying in another ad that the Trump team had counseled her to lower her sights.And in March, a group urging Mr. Trump to rescind his endorsement of Matthew DePerno, a Republican running for attorney general in Michigan, bought an ad attacking Mr. DePerno that ran in West Palm Beach.The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6Numerous inquiries. More

France’s president is trying to tap into the country’s large pool of left-wing voters, but many are hesitant to back him.MARSEILLE, France — On a stage erected on lush green lawns overlooking the sun-soaked Mediterranean port of Marseille, President Emmanuel Macron declared on Saturday to a crowd of supporters, “The politics that I will carry out in the next five years will be environmental, or will not be!”It was an ambitious promise for a president whose green policies have been criticized at repeated climate protests, condemned by courts for “inaction” and marked by failure to meet goals. But above all, Mr. Macron’s vow was a direct appeal to voters to his left, who hold the key to a final victory in the second round of the presidential election — and for whom climate has become a key issue.Mr. Macron devoted about three-quarters of his hour-and-a-half speech to environmental issues. He promised to appoint ministers responsible for long-term environmental planning, to plant 140 million trees by 2030 and to rapidly cut dependence on oil and gas by developing nuclear and renewable energy.“Inaction — not for me!” he told a cheering crowd of some 4,000 people who gathered in the Parc du Pharo, on the heights of Marseille, for what was possibly Mr. Macron’s last rally before the April 24th vote.The event symbolized Mr. Macron’s strategy for the runoff between the centrist incumbent and his far-right opponent, Marine Le Pen: wooing the left with progressive policies and campaigning in working-class cities where he is trying to shed his image as an aloof president detached from everyday realities. If large numbers of left-wing voters stay home for the second round of voting, or migrate to Ms. Le Pen’s camp, it could spell serious trouble for Mr. Macron.Stewart Chau, an analyst for the polling firm Viavoice, said Mr. Macron’s main goal was to “seek voters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon,” the far-left candidate who came in third overall in the first round of voting — but first in Marseille, with 31 percent of the vote.In September, the president unveiled a multibillion-euro plan to tackle crime and poverty in Marseille.Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate, held a news conference on her foreign policy agenda this week in Paris.Yoan Valat/EPA, via ShutterstockPromising a “complete renewal” if he is re-elected, Mr. Macron also used his speech to attack Ms. Le Pen, accusing her of wanting to curtail freedom of the press, challenge gender equality and lead France out of the Europe Union. He is trying to revive the “dam” that mainstream voters have long formed by voting for anyone over a Le Pen — either his current opponent or her father, Jean-Marie, leaders of the French far right since the 1970s.Saturday’s rally capped an intense week of campaigning for Mr. Macron, touring the country since Monday to make up for a lackluster initial campaign. Visiting only places where Ms. Le Pen or Mr. Mélenchon came out on top in the first round, he is risking engaging with angry residents, in an attempt to show that he, too, can feel their pain.By contrast, Ms. Le Pen, who has long striven to soften her public image, has been more risk-averse, limiting her campaign trips this week. Instead, she has tried to cement her credibility with two news conferences on her institutional overhaul proposals and her foreign policy agenda.But those events partly backfired after her party’s refusal to accredit some media outlets caused a stir, and as she detailed contentious plans to seek rapprochement with Russia and quit NATO’s integrated military command.Ms. Le Pen has been more exposed to scrutiny since another far-right candidate, Éric Zemmour, failed to make the runoff. His incendiary comments opposing immigration and Islam drew much of the attention away from Ms. Le Pen, who has long been known for similar stances.“The form confronts the substance,” said Mr. Chau, the analyst, adding that Ms. Le Pen’s sanitized image now clashed with “the reality of her ideas, which are anything but appeased, anything but softened.”At a rally on Thursday in the southern city of Avignon, Ms. Le Pen mentioned immigration only three times, despite it being the cornerstone of her platform. She has proposed deporting foreigners after they have been unemployed for one year, giving priority to native-born French for social housing and benefits, and abolishing the right to citizenship through birth in France.Supporters of Ms. Le Pen on Thursday in Avignon.Daniel Cole/Associated PressHer supporters were blunter. “She still wants to kick out the immigrants,” said Aline Vincent, a French flag in her right hand, who attended Ms. Le Pen’s rally along with about 4,000 others. “But she doesn’t say it the same way.”In Marseille, Daniel Beddou, said he “was very worried” about the rise of the far right. Holding a European flag in his left hand, he said he was pleased by Mr. Macron’s environmental plans. He said they embodied the president’s “at the same time” approach, referring to his habit of borrowing policies from both the left and right.As he appeals to the 7.7 million voters who backed Mr. Mélenchon in the first round and appear to hold the key to a final victory, Mr. Macron has toned down some of his proposals, like a plan to raise the legal retirement age to 65 from 62, which he now says could be softened.On Saturday, he also insisted on long-term “environmental planning” — a concept that was a cornerstone of Mr. Mélenchon’s platform — promising to appoint a minister “directly responsible” for it, assisted by two ministers in charge of the energy and environmental transition.“There’s a real willingness to speak to a working-class electorate, a left-wing electorate that we lacked in the first round,” said Sacha Houlié, a lawmaker and spokesman for Mr. Macron’s campaign.What to Know About France’s Presidential ElectionCard 1 of 4Heading to a runoff. More

Throughout the Trump era it was a frequent theme of liberal commentary that their political party represented a clear American majority, thwarted by our antidemocratic institutions and condemned to live under the rule of the conservative minority.In the political context of 2016-20, this belief was overstated. Yes, Donald Trump won the presidential election of 2016 with a minority of the popular vote. But more Americans voted for Republican congressional candidates than Democratic congressional candidates, and more Americans voted for right-of-center candidates for president — including the Libertarian vote — than voted for Hillary Clinton and Jill Stein. In strictly majoritarian terms, liberalism deserved to lose in 2016, even if Trump did not necessarily deserve to win.And Republican structural advantages, while real, did not then prevent Democrats from reclaiming the House of Representatives in 2018 and the presidency in 2020 and Senate in 2021. These victories extended the pattern of 21st century American politics, which has featured significant swings every few cycles, not the entrenchment of either party’s power.The political landscape after 2024, however, might look more like liberalism’s depictions of its Trump-era plight. According to calculations by liberalism’s Cassandra, David Shor, the convergence of an unfavorable Senate map for Democrats with their pre-existing Electoral College and Senate disadvantages could easily produce a scenario where the party wins 50 percent of the congressional popular vote, 51 percent of the presidential vote — and ends up losing the White House and staring down a nearly filibuster-proof Republican advantage in the Senate.That’s a scenario for liberal horror, but it’s not one that conservatives should welcome either. In recent years, as their advantages in both institutions have increased, conservatives have defended institutions like the Senate and the Electoral College with variations of the argument that the United States is a democratic republic, not a pure democracy.These arguments carry less weight, however, the more consistently undemocratic the system’s overall results become. (They would fall apart completely in the scenario sought by Donald Trump and some of his allies after 2020, where state legislatures simply substitute their preferences for the voters in their states.)The Electoral College’s legitimacy can stand up if an occasional 49-47 percent popular vote result goes the other way; likewise the Senate’s legitimacy if it tilts a bit toward one party but changes hands consistently.But a scenario where one party has sustained governing power while lacking majoritarian support is a recipe for delegitimization and reasonable disillusionment, which no clever conservative column about the constitutional significance of state sovereignty would adequately address.From the Republican Party’s perspective, the best way to avoid this future — where the nature of conservative victories undercuts the perceived legitimacy of conservative governance — is to stop being content with the advantages granted by the system and try harder to win majorities outright.You can’t expect a political party to simply cede its advantages: There will never be a bipartisan constitutional amendment to abolish the Senate, on any timeline you care to imagine. But you can expect a political party to show a little more electoral ambition than the G.O.P. has done of late — to seek to win more elections the way that Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon won them, rather than being content to keep it close and put their hopes in lucky breaks.Especially in the current climate, which looks dire for the Democrats, the Republicans have an opportunity to make the Electoral College complaint moot, for a time at least, by simply taking plausible positions, nominating plausible candidates and winning majorities outright.That means rejecting the politics of voter-fraud paranoia — as, hopefully, Republican primary voters will do by choosing Brian Kemp over David Perdue in the Georgia gubernatorial primary.It means rejecting the attempts to return to the libertarian “makers versus takers” politics of Tea Party era, currently manifested in Florida Senator Rick Scott’s recent manifesto suggesting tax increases for the working class — basically the right-wing equivalent of “defund the police” in terms of its political toxicity.And it means — and I fear this is beyond the G.O.P.’s capacities — nominating someone other than Donald Trump in 2024.A Republican Party that managed to win popular majorities might still see its Senate or Electoral College majorities magnified by its structural advantages. But such magnification is a normal feature of many democratic systems, not just our own. It’s very different from losing the popular vote consistently and yet being handed power anyway.As for what the Democrats should do about their disadvantages — well, that’s a longer discussion, but two quick points for now.First, to the extent the party wants to focus on structural answers to its structural challenges, it needs clarity about what kind of electoral reforms would actually accomplish something. That’s been lacking in the Biden era, where liberal reformers wasted considerable time and energy on voting bills that didn’t pass and also weren’t likely to help the party much had they been actually pushed through.A different reform idea, statehood for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, wouldn’t have happened in this period either, but it’s much more responsive to the actual challenges confronting Democrats in the Senate. So if you’re a liberal activist or a legislator planning for the next brief window when your party holds power, pushing for an expanded Senate seems like a more reasonable long ball to try to train your team to throw.Second, to the extent that there’s a Democratic path back to greater parity in the Senate and Electoral College without structural reform, it probably requires the development of an explicit faction within the party dedicated to winning back two kinds of voters — culturally conservative Latinos and working-class whites — who were part of Barack Obama’s coalition but have drifted rightward since.That faction would have two missions: To hew to a poll-tested agenda on economic policy (not just the business-friendly agenda supported by many centrist Democrats) and to constantly find ways to distinguish itself from organized progressivism — the foundations, the activists, the academics — on cultural and social issues. And crucially, not in the tactical style favored by analysts like Shor, but in the language of principle: Rightward-drifting voters would need to know that this faction actually believes in its own moderation, its own attacks on progressive shibboleths, and that its members will remain a thorn in progressivism’s side even once they reach Washington.Right now the Democrats have scattered politicians, from West Virginia to New York City, who somewhat fit this mold. But they don’t have an agenda for them to coalesce around, a group of donors ready to fund them, a set of intellectuals ready to embrace them as their own.Necessity, however, is the mother of invention, and necessity may impose itself upon the Democratic Party soon enough.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

The former president is trying to reshape the battleground state in his image. But his false claims about the 2020 election are driving a wedge between loyalists and those who are eager to move on.SHELBY TOWNSHIP, Mich. — The shouting in the banquet hall erupted just minutes after the Macomb County Republican Party convention was called to order.In a room packed with about 500 people, Mark Forton, the county party chairman and a fierce ally of former President Donald J. Trump, began railing against the establishment Republicans in the audience. A plan was afoot to oust him and his executive team, he said.“They’re going to make an overthrow of the party, and you have a right to know what this county party has done in the last three years,” he said as his supporters booed and hollered and opponents pelted him with objections. Republicans in suits and cardigans on one side of the room shouted at die-hard Trump supporters in MAGA hats and Trump gear on the other.The night ended as Mr. Forton had predicted, with a 158-123 vote that removed him and his leadership team from their posts.The raucous scene in Macomb County exploded after months of infighting that roiled the Michigan Republican Party, pitting Trump loyalists like Mr. Forton, who continue to promote Mr. Trump’s lies about a stolen 2020 presidential election, against a cohort of Republicans who are eager to move on. The splintering threatens to upend the upcoming Republican state convention, where county precinct chairs vote on nominees for secretary of state, attorney general and other statewide offices.Mr. Trump is all in on trying to sway those contests — and other races across the state, which he lost by 150,000 votes in 2020. The former president has endorsed 10 candidates for the State Legislature, including three who are challenging Republican incumbents, and has already picked his favorite candidate for speaker of the State House next year. Mr. Trump also has made numerous personal entreaties to shore up support for Matthew DePerno, who is running for attorney general, and Kristina Karamo, a candidate for secretary of state.Kristina Karamo, a candidate for Michigan secretary of state, belongs to a slate of “America First” candidates campaigning, in part, on distorted views of the 2020 election.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesIn Michigan and other battleground states, Mr. Trump’s chosen candidates have become megaphones for his election claims — frustrating some Republicans who view a preoccupation with the 2020 election as a losing message in 2022.Republicans in Wisconsin and Arizona have encountered similar fractures over support for continued investigations into the 2020 election, and Mr. Trump’s attempts to play kingmaker in the Ohio Senate race is splintering Republicans there as well.The root of the rupture in Michigan can, in part, be traced to endorsements made by Meshawn Maddock, a co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party and a Trump confidante. The Republican Party leadership has traditionally stayed out of statewide races, especially before the state convention. But Ms. Maddock endorsed Ms. Karamo and Mr. DePerno.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.Both candidates have been vocal supporters of Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 election. Mr. DePerno was one of the lawyers involved in Republican challenges in Antrim County, Mich., where a quickly corrected human error on election night spawned a barrage of conspiracy theories.Ms. Karamo belongs to a slate of “America First” secretary of state candidates running across the country and campaigning, in part, on distorted views of the 2020 election.Matthew DePerno, a candidate for Michigan attorney general, was involved in Republican challenges in a Michigan county where an election night error spawned conspiracy theories.Nic Antaya for The New York TimesBeyond her endorsements, Ms. Maddock has been working to help prepare convention delegates. Last month, Ms. Maddock attended a mock convention held by the Michigan Conservative Coalition and reiterated glowing praise from Mr. Trump for Ms. Karamo, Mr. DePerno and John Gibbs, the conservative challenger to Representative Peter Meijer, a Republican congressman who voted to impeach Mr. Trump over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.“He was so fired up about Michigan,” Ms. Maddock said of conversations with Mr. Trump as she spoke during a question-and-answer session at the mock convention, according to audio of the event obtained by The New York Times. “This man cannot stop talking about Matt DePerno, Kristina Karamo, John Gibbs, who’s running against Peter Meijer.”In a statement, Mr. DePerno said he’s “proud that local and state party leaders have endorsed my campaign. Ms. Karamo’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.Republican candidates facing Mr. DePerno and Ms. Karamo were taken aback by the endorsements and were outraged at the meddling by the state party leadership before the convention. Ms. Maddock, some candidates charged, appeared to be trying to tip the scales in favor of Trump-backed candidates.Beau LeFave, a Republican state legislator who is running for secretary of state, said that he had spoken to both Ms. Maddock and her husband, State Representative Matt Maddock, “multiple times” before jumping into his race. They told him they were both rooting for him “and that they’re going to stay out of it,” he said.“So it was quite a surprise to find out that they lied to me,” Mr. LeFave said.Ms. Maddock was not available for an interview, according to Gustavo Portela, a spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party. He said that co-chairs had endorsed candidates in the past but acknowledged that the dynamic this cycle was a bit unusual.The root of the rupture in Michigan can, in part, be traced to endorsements made by Meshawn Maddock, a co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party and a staunch supporter of Mr. Trump.Ruth Fremson/The New York Times“You’ve never had a co-chair who has been this close to a former president, who arguably has a lot of influence on the convention floor,” Mr. Portela said. He added that the party believes the contested races ahead of the convention were “a good thing” that “speaks to the frustration with the direction of our country, and more importantly, the direction of the state.”The state party has struggled with other conflicts. After more than a year of hearing specious claims about vote counts and election equipment, some activists began questioning why the party would use tabulation machines. A group called Unity 4 MRP started an online campaign to pressure the party to count paper ballots by hand rather use the major brands of voting machines.“Grassroots groups would sooner stare into the glowering, red eyes of Beelzebub than to allow a Dominion, ESS, or Hart tabulator to run its lecherous paws over their sacred ballots,” another group, Pure Integrity Michigan Elections, wrote in an email to supporters, according to The Detroit Free Press.Eventually, the party leadership announced a concession: an audit of the convention vote overseen by a former secretary of state. But that didn’t please everyone.“We have state committee members who fought hard to make sure that you do not have a hand count, and you need to ask why, and you need to be angry, and you need people figuring it out,” said J.D. Glaser, an activist who attended a rally of election skeptics in February. “This is our Republican Party. They’re working against you.”The Macomb County Republican Party convention was one of 83 county meetings held Monday to pick the delegates to the statewide Michigan Republican Party endorsement convention on April 23.In the weeks leading up to the event in the Detroit suburbs, Mr. Forton, a retired autoworker and longtime political activist, had rankled prominent Republican elected officials with his conspiracy-theory-laden assertions about the election and what he has described as “a cabal” of Democrats and Republicans who have been installed to control the country.Presiding over the convention, Mr. Forton argued that his wing of Trump supporters had revived the county party, replenished its coffers and helped usher in a wave of Republican victories in the state. He slammed what he viewed as the old-guard Republicans in the room, some of whom were preparing the way to vote him out of office as he spoke.“They have been wanting to take this county party back for a long time,” he said, adding that he and his supporters were “not going away.”Some on Mr. Forton’s side of the room were attending a convention for the first time, spurred to do so, they said, out of concern for the direction of the party and outrage over the lack of audits and investigations into the results of the 2020 presidential election.“What is happening here should be calm and exciting, but what you have is a Republican Party that does not think the same,” said Tamra Szacon, who earlier had led the prayer and was decked out in a cowboy hat and glittering American flag heels. “One of our biggest things is that we believe the election was stolen — a lot of people do.”On the other side of the room, Republicans said they were frustrated with the bickering. Natasha Hargitay, a 35-year-old single mother, said she had been to more than a dozen conventions and had never been to one so contentious. She described herself as “Switzerland,” neutral in the fight. Still, she had not been pleased with Mr. Forton’s comments.“I lost a lot of respect for him when he said, ‘We are the real Republicans,’” she said. “That means you are dividing the Republican Party.”After the commotion, Eric Castiglia, who was elected the county’s new chairman, pledged to welcome all Republicans into the fold. He said he believed the state convention, with its machine and hand count election, would provide an opportunity to show election skeptics that the process could be fair.“We have to start working on what we’re going to do with our values and not be a place where every candidate is a RINO, or not a Republican enough,” Mr. Castiglia said in an interview, using shorthand for “Republican in name only.”But Mr. Forton has no intention of moving on. On Thursday, he filed a petition to state party leaders appealing his ouster. More

WASHINGTON — Ari Rabin-Havt could not stop smiling in the winter of 2020.When a reporter asked the deputy campaign manager for Bernie Sanders why he was so happy, he replied, “Simple. I work for a 78-year-old Jewish socialist, who had a heart attack a few months ago and has won the popular vote in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada.” With an expletive, he added, “That’s remarkable.”In “The Fighting Soul: On the Road With Bernie Sanders,” the former adviser offers an intimate portrait of his cranky boss, writing about everything from Sanders’s famous mittens, to his love of picket lines and Motown songs, to his distaste for “the inane droning of cable news commentators,” to his prescient fear that Donald Trump was “nuts” and would upend democracy.I relish hearing about what Rabin-Havt calls “Bernie’s natural impatience” with the frivolous — pretty much everything except the sweeping changes he wants in the country.Once, in Bloomington, Ind., the Vermont senator got grouchy because the advance staff left four big bottles of water in his hotel room.“Ari,” he told his aide, “I’m not the president of the United States. I don’t need four bottles of water in my room.”When staffers at Jim Clyburn’s World Famous Fish Fry in South Carolina insisted that all the candidates go onstage in matching Clyburn T-shirts for their speeches, Bernie balked at the goofy suck-up idea.Before the first debate in Miami during the Democratic primaries in 2019, Joe Biden was standing right behind Bernie as the candidates were having their makeup touched up.“As they were about to go onstage, Biden rubbed Bernie down the full length of his back with his hands,” Rabin-Havt writes. “Barely paying attention, Bernie used his right hand to swat Biden away.”In L.A. for the second debate, Bernie was stopped on the street by Jeff Katzenberg. The former Disney chairman and DreamWorks C.E.O., and a prolific fund-raiser and donor, introduced himself. Sanders kept strolling, unimpressed. “Bernie would have been more likely to stop for a teacher, a nurse, or a mechanic,” Rabin-Havt writes.I had my own Bernie swatting moment when I interviewed him during the 2020 primaries on Feb. 14 and asked him what he had gotten his wife, Jane, for Valentine’s Day. He informed me in no uncertain terms that romance with Jane was beside the point; Medicare for All was the point!During that run, Bernie was game for anything as long as it promoted his causes. Rabin-Havt tells about the time the candidate happily Facetimed with Cardi B., who was wearing a white bathrobe. The rapper had also endorsed him in 2016, sending out an Instagram video in which she instructed her followers to “Vote for daddy Bernie, bitch.”When Sanders met with Barack Obama at his Georgetown office in 2018 to tell him he was thinking about running for president again, Obama offered this advice: “Bernie, you are an Old Testament prophet — a moral voice for our party giving us guidance. Here is the thing, though. Prophets don’t get to be king. Kings have to make choices prophets don’t. Are you willing to make those choices?”Rabin-Havt (whose brother, Raphi, worked with me at The Times for a spell) writes: “Obama continued, making the point that to win the Democratic nomination, Bernie would have to widen his appeal and convince the party to back him — which would mean being a different type of politician and a different type of candidate than he wanted to be. Bernie listened to Obama, but it was clear to me he never accepted that premise. He has a fundamental belief that he could lead an uncompromising movement that would challenge those who ran the Democratic Party while also leading that same institution, one he steadfastly refused to join.”The author sums up with a trenchant point: Bernie may never see “the promised land,” but he did win.“While Bernie Sanders will never be president, his two campaigns have transformed the Democratic Party and this country. Old orthodoxies about government spending and foreign policy have crumbled as a result of the unceasing efforts by an old socialist.”Since it turned out that Bernie’s ideas were more popular than many realized, he got Democrats out of their deficit-hawk mode and convinced them that it was OK to spend money to help people. During the early days of the pandemic, even Republican members of Congress realized they needed to shovel money out the door to keep things going. He’s been the champion of the $15 minimum wage that his party now almost universally embraces.As the Prince of Darkness, Mitch McConnell, said last year of Sanders’s influence:“Bernie Sanders is really happy, He may have lost a nomination, but he won the argument over what today’s Democratic Party is: more taxes, more spending, more borrowing.”That victory may have come at a cost. Republicans, and a shrinking but influential number of moderate Democrats, are attributing the surge of inflation to aggressive government spending. That’s driven down poll numbers for Biden and the Democrats.If Republicans win in November, as seems likely, Democratic ambitions will shrink, but Bernie’s imprint on the party is going to be long-lasting.As much as he acted unfazed by the Berniemania of the campaign, he secretly liked it. Once, driving in front of the Capitol, he stopped at a red light and a bunch of shrieking high school students ran up to the car to take selfies.Bernie chuckled and said to Rabin-Havt, “I’m like Mick Jagger.” If Mick Jagger wore mittens.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

In several states, Republican candidates are contending with allegations of domestic violence and sexual assault. Few of their primary rivals want to talk about it.WASHINGTON — When fresh allegations of domestic violence were lodged against former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens last month, one of his Republican rivals for the state’s open Senate seat, Representative Vicky Hartzler, stepped up and called for him to end his campaign.Then she moved on to an issue perhaps more resonant with Republican primary voters: transgender women in sports.“Eric Greitens is a toxic candidate unfit to hold office,” Michael Hafner, a spokesman for Ms. Hartzler’s Senate campaign, said, before declaring the central message of her campaign: “Missouri family values, freedom, and taking back our country.”In Missouri, Georgia, Ohio and now Nebraska, Republican men running for high office face significant allegations of domestic violence, stalking, even sexual assault — accusations that once would have derailed any run for office. But in an era of Republican politics when Donald J. Trump could survive and thrive amid accusations of sexual assault, opposing candidates are finding little traction in dwelling on the issues.Political scientists who have studied Republican voting since the rise of Trumpism are not surprised that accused candidates have soldiered on — and that their primary rivals have approached the accusations tepidly. In this fiercely partisan moment, concerns about personal behavior are dwarfed by the struggle between Republicans and Democrats, which Republican men and women see as life-or-death. Increasingly, Republicans cast accusations of sexual misconduct as an attempt by liberals to silence conservatives.The candidates who do speak of their opponents’ domestic violence and assault allegations often raise them not as disqualifications in looming Republican primaries, but as matters ripe for exploitation by Democrats in the fall.“It’s a horrible problem; he’ll never be elected, and that’s the educational process we’re going through right now,” Gary Black, Georgia’s agriculture commissioner, said of domestic violence and assault allegations leveled at Herschel Walker, his Trump-backed Republican rival to take on Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock in November. “There’s a great desire for Republicans to get their seat back. Electability is going to be the issue over the next six weeks.”Herschel Walker, a Trump-backed Senate candidate in Georgia, has owned up to accusations of violence against his wife but has denied the accusations of violent threats against two other women.Audra Melton for The New York TimesEric Greitens resigned as Missouri’s governor after a sexual misconduct scandal, and is facing domestic violence allegations amid his current Senate campaign.Jeff Roberson/Associated PressDemocrats, including President Biden and Keith Ellison, the attorney general of Minnesota, have weathered their own accusations of misconduct in the past — and where such charges have proven difficult to discount, the party has shown itself more willing to jettison its candidates.The accusations facing some Republican men are so stark that they raise the question: What would disqualify a candidate in a Republican primary? Mr. Greitens resigned as Missouri’s governor after a hairdresser testified under oath in 2018 that he had taped her hands to pull-up rings in his basement, blindfolded her, stripped her clothes off and taken a photo of her, which he threatened to release if she revealed their affair.Amid his current Senate campaign, Mr. Greitens was accused last month in a sworn affidavit from his former wife that he had violently abused her and had hit one of their sons as his governorship unraveled. Still, a poll taken after the accusations came to light showed Mr. Greitens neck and neck with Ms. Hartzler and Eric Schmitt, Missouri’s attorney general.Mr. Walker, a former college and pro football star who has the backing not only of Mr. Trump but also much of the Republican establishment, has been accused by his ex-wife of attacking her in bed, choking her and threatening to kill her. Mr. Walker doesn’t deny the assault and has said he was suffering from mental illness.Mallory Blount, a spokeswoman for Mr. Walker’s campaign, said he “emphatically denies” the “false claims” from another woman who said he had been her longtime boyfriend and that when she broke up with him, he had threatened to kill her and himself. Ms. Blount also said he has denied a violent stalking charge by a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader.Mr. Walker “has owned up to his mistakes, sought forgiveness, gotten treatment, and dedicated his life to helping others who are struggling,” Ms. Blount said, condemning the media for surfacing past allegations.Max Miller, another Trump-backed candidate and a former White House aide running for an Ohio House seat, was accused by one of Mr. Trump’s press secretaries, Stephanie Grisham, of hitting her the day they broke up. Mr. Miller denied the allegation, then sued Ms. Grisham for defamation, accusing her of making “libelous and defamatory false statements.” His campaign did not respond to requests for comment.“It used to be that being accused of domestic violence was an automatic disqualifier, regardless of party,” Ms. Grisham’s lawyer, Adam VanHo, said. “And to turn around and sue to silence your accuser was even more abhorrent.”Max Miller, a Trump-backed candidate for an Ohio House seat, was accused by a former White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, above, of hitting her after they broke up. He then sued her for defamation.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOn Thursday, a Republican state senator in Nebraska, Julie Slama, accused a leading Republican candidate for governor in that state, Charles Herbster, of sexually assaulting her three years ago when she was 22, saying in a statement that she had “prayed I would never have to relive this trauma.” Mr. Herbster denied the charges, claiming he was being targeted by political rivals. He linked himself to others who have beaten back similar accusations.“They did it with Brett Kavanaugh. They certainly did it with Donald J. Trump and now they’re trying to do it with Charles W. Herbster,” he told a local radio station.In Missouri, Mr. Greitens’s defiance spurred Rene Artman, who chairs the Republican central committee of St. Louis County, to organize other Republican women to pressure the party chairman, Nick Myers, to demand Mr. Greitens withdraw.“We’ve heard not a thing, not a thing,” she said on Friday. “This is the breakdown of society. When you take morals and God out of country, this is what happens. I don’t think you can blame this on Trump whatsoever.”Republican candidates, by and large, have remained defiant. One exception is Sean Parnell, Mr. Trump’s pick for an open Senate seat in Pennsylvania, who suspended his campaign after his estranged wife testified that he had repeatedly abused her and their children.Political scientists are not surprised by Republicans’ tolerance for accusations. Charges of misogyny, sexual harassment and even domestic abuse have “become deeply partisan in terms of beliefs about what is acceptable and what is appropriate,” said Kelly Dittmar, a professor at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “And now it’s fallen into the talk of ‘cancel culture’ in the broader society.”It was widely believed that Mr. Trump’s own confession, caught on an infamous video recorded for “Access Hollywood,” that he routinely grabbed women by the genitals — and the plethora of accusations that followed — would drive away women voters.But in 2016, 88 percent of Republican women voted for Mr. Trump, just a percentage point below the share of Republican men who did. Even in 2018, when women were widely seen as having delivered the House to Democrats in response to the Trump presidency, Republican women were no more likely to vote for Democrats than they had been two years before, said Erin C. Cassese, a professor of political science at the University of Delaware who studies women’s voting patterns.The #MeToo movement and the current debate over transgender rights and education are only widening the gap between Republican women and women who identify as Democrats and independents, Prof. Cassese said. For female candidates, appeals to gender solidarity or attacks on misogyny do not seem to work in Republican primaries.“It’s very hard to make those appeals, even for women candidates appealing to women,” she said. “We don’t have any sense of what messages might work.”Jane Timken, the only woman in the Republican primary for a Senate seat in Ohio, chided her male rivals in an advertisement. Andrew Spear/Getty ImagesJane Timken, the only woman in the Republican Senate primary in Ohio, has injected gender into the race — though delicately. In February, she released an advertisement chiding her male rivals: “We all know guys who overcompensate for their inadequacies, and that description fits the guys in the Senate race to a T.”But in an interview on Friday, she explicitly dismissed the issue of gender. “They’re not bad male candidates. They’re just bad candidates,” she said of her opponents, adding that the mistreatment of women is “not an issue that I’m campaigning on. I’m campaigning on the Biden failed policies of border security, inflation and jobs.”In the Trump era, the men who are accused of wrongdoing have become adept at framing themselves as the victims of a broader conspiracy or an intolerant society. Mr. Greitens has blamed George W. Bush’s former political aide, Karl Rove; the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell; even the liberal philanthropist George Soros for the release of his ex-wife’s abuse allegations. His campaign did not respond to requests for comment.Republicans running against those accused say they do see an opening, as long as it’s navigated carefully. Representative Billy Long, who is running in the Missouri Republican Senate primary, emphasized the “$400,000 or so in costs, fines and penalties” that state taxpayers have already shouldered for investigations into Mr. Greitens’s activities. Then there’s the ongoing child custody fight between Mr. Greitens and his ex-wife.“If domestic violence is proven true, he’s toast,” Mr. Long said.Jazmine Ulloa More

The move amounts to a major bet on Mr. Vance’s ability to prevail over a crowded field, and on the former president’s power to alter the course of key congressional races.Former President Donald J. Trump on Friday endorsed the author and venture capitalist J.D. Vance in the Republican primary election for Senate in Ohio, aiming to give the candidate a needed boost in a crowded race that will test Mr. Trump’s potency as a kingmaker in key congressional contests.Calling Mr. Vance “our best chance for victory in what could be a very tough race,” Mr. Trump said in a statement that the candidate was “strong on the Border, tough on Crime, understands how to use Taxes and Tariffs to hold China accountable, will fight to break up Big Tech, and has been a warrior on the Rigged and Stolen Presidential Election.”The move amounted to a major bet on Mr. Vance and on Mr. Trump’s influence over Republican primary voters in conservative-leaning Ohio, where several high-profile candidates are facing off in a contentious and at times nasty campaign to replace Senator Rob Portman, a Republican who is retiring.With the May 3 primary less than three weeks away, limited polling has shown Mr. Vance struggling to break through against rivals including Josh Mandel, a former Ohio state treasurer; Jane Timken, a former chairwoman of the Ohio Republican Party; and Mike Gibbons, a financier. No one has emerged as a clear front-runner.The highly coveted endorsement came after weeks in which the race’s top candidates veered increasingly to the right in pursuit of Mr. Trump’s support, with tension and anticipation rising ahead of a planned visit to the state by the former president on April 23. In recent days, as news reports trickled out that Mr. Vance was likely to win Mr. Trump’s backing, supporters of other candidates engaged in last-ditch efforts to prevent the endorsement.More than three dozen Republican county and state committee leaders urged the former president in a letter not to endorse Mr. Vance, questioning his Republican credentials and noting that he had repeatedly denounced Mr. Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.Mr. Trump’s move carries significant risks, with candidates he has backed in other key races around the country sometimes struggling to emerge as favorites for the Republican nomination.Veasey Conway for The New York TimesBut Mr. Trump had all but decided days earlier to support Mr. Vance, according to four Republicans familiar with his thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.Mr. Trump called Mr. Vance to alert him to the endorsement before it became public. In his statement on Friday, Mr. Trump said, “J.D. Vance may have said some not so great things about me in the past, but he gets it now, and I have seen that in spades.”According to one of the Republicans familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking, he was swayed by several factors, including video clips of a Republican primary debate in which two of the candidates, Mr. Mandel and Mr. Gibbons, nearly came to blows. The incident ended any chance that Mr. Trump, who credits the 2016 presidential debates for his victory that year, might have endorsed either of them, the Republican said. Mr. Trump was also impressed by Mr. Vance’s performance in the last debate.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.Mr. Trump has also told allies that he believes the leading Democratic candidate, Representative Tim Ryan, will be a difficult opponent in the general election and that he thinks Mr. Vance can beat him. Mr. Trump has been increasingly looking toward a prospective 2024 presidential campaign of his own, and he is said to see Mr. Vance as a reliable ally in the Senate on issues he cares about, like trade and immigration.And a last-minute effort to stop Mr. Trump’s endorsement that included releasing an internal Mandel campaign poll appears to have backfired. The survey suggested that Mr. Trump’s endorsement would give Mr. Vance only a five-percentage-point bump in support, which Mr. Trump took as an affront, the Republican familiar with the former president’s thinking said.Mr. Trump was lobbied heavily by supporters of Mr. Vance, including the billionaire Peter Thiel, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and his own son, Donald Trump Jr.Still, the move carries significant risks for Mr. Trump, whose endorsements in other marquee races across the country have not yet proven decisive. In Georgia, his attempt to fuel David Perdue’s Republican primary challenge to Gov. Brian Kemp has largely been seen as underwhelming.In one of his biggest gambles, Mr. Trump recently gave his backing in the Republican Senate primary in Pennsylvania to the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, despite a concerted effort by supporters of the other leading candidate, David McCormick, to persuade Mr. Trump to stay neutral. Mr. McCormick and Mr. Mandel use the same consulting firm, run by the strategist Jeff Roe.Few races across the country have captured Mr. Trump’s effect in Republican primaries in the way that Ohio’s Republican Senate campaign has, with candidates seeking to model themselves after the former president. Most of the contenders have railed against undocumented immigrants, and only one has recognized President Biden as the nation’s legitimate leader.Ahead of the endorsement, many Republican county party leaders expressed frustration that Mr. Trump might select Mr. Vance, the author of the best-selling 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.” They noted that he had spent much of his life in San Francisco and had been critical of Mr. Trump even as they worked to elect him.“He is the guy who worked against Trump and spoke against Trump and told everybody he didn’t vote for Trump,” said David Johnson, the chairman of the Columbiana County Republican Party, who has endorsed Ms. Timken. Mr. Johnson helped circulate the letter from Republican leaders in Ohio, which stated that Mr. Vance was not a registered Republican and provided Mr. Trump with a list of negative comments that Mr. Vance had made against him, including calling him “another opioid” in 2016.“While we were working hard in Ohio to support you and Make America Great Again, J.D. Vance was actively working against your candidacy,” the letter says. “He referred to your supporters as ‘racists.’”Asked for comment, including about the accusation that Mr. Vance is not a registered Republican, Taylor Van Kirk, a spokeswoman for the Vance campaign, said: “When he has voted in primaries, J.D. has always voted in Republican ones. He has a long public history of supporting Republican candidates, including Donald Trump in 2020.”The campaign also pointed to polling that showed Mr. Vance in second place behind Mr. Mandel, as well as a tweet from one Republican Party county chairman denying that he had signed the letter, and another tweet from the anti-abortion group Ohio Right to Life PAC that expressed support for a Trump endorsement of Mr. Vance.In the tweet, the group’s chairman, Marshal Pitchford, said that the former president would be making “a fantastic choice” in backing Mr. Vance, adding that he was 100 percent “pro-life without exceptions” and would continue Mr. Trump’s “pro-life victories” in the Senate.In stump speeches, Mr. Vance has been quick to address the criticism that he has not always been a Trump loyalist, often saying that the best policy is honesty.“I didn’t like Trump six years ago,” he told supporters this week at a brewery in Hilliard. “I did not think he was going to be a good president. I was very happy to be proven wrong.”He added, “I was very proud to support the president over the past several years.” More

Senator Mike Lee and Representative Chip Roy, once backers of President Donald J. Trump’s claims of a stolen election, eventually urged his top aide to change course.WASHINGTON — For weeks in late 2020, Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, cheered on President Donald J. Trump’s effort to fight his election defeat, privately offering up “a group of ready and loyal advocates who will go to bat for him.”In text messages to Mark Meadows, then the White House chief of staff, Mr. Lee encouraged the Trump campaign to embrace Sidney Powell, a pro-Trump lawyer whom the senator described as a “straight shooter,” and said the president should “hire the right legal team and set them loose immediately.”But when Ms. Powell put forth wild claims of foreign rigging of election machines at a widely derided news conference in November, Mr. Lee was chagrined and quietly began to question what Mr. Trump was up to.“I’m worried about the Powell press conference,” Mr. Lee wrote in another text message to Mr. Meadows. “The potential defamation liability for the president is significant here.”That message and several others from Mr. Lee, as well as a separate set of exchanges between Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, and Mr. Meadows, trace an about-face by the two Republican lawmakers. The pair started out as enthusiastic supporters of Mr. Trump’s claims of a stolen election but gradually grew alarmed about his push to invalidate the results and ultimately opposed his bid to get Congress to overturn them on Jan. 6, 2021.The text messages, which are in the possession of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot, were obtained by CNN and authenticated by The New York Times.They provide a window into the eagerness of Republicans — even some who ended up voting on Jan. 6 to confirm Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory — to believe Mr. Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud and their willingness to go to great lengths, including attempts at exploiting the nation’s election laws, to keep him in power. They also illustrate how rapidly those efforts spiraled out of control, and they show a keen awareness on the part of at least some Republicans involved that the endeavor had become untenable to the point of being dangerous.The text messages were sent to and from Mr. Meadows, who turned them over to the House committee while he was cooperating with the panel. Mr. Meadows later refused to sit for an interview with the committee, and the House voted to recommend that the Justice Department prosecute him for criminal contempt of Congress.A lawyer for Mr. Meadows did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for the committee declined to comment.The text messages with Mr. Meadows show that Mr. Lee tried several times to offer advice and support for the effort to overturn the election, using multiple strategies.Mr. Lee suggested that Mr. Trump should “disassociate himself” from Ms. Powell’s false claims after her performance at the November news conference, but even after that, the senator vouched for the conservative lawyer John Eastman, who wrote a memo outlining plans for overturning the election that members of both parties have likened to a blueprint for a coup.Mr. Lee then endorsed a plan to have legislatures in “a very small handful of states” that Mr. Biden had won put forth pro-Trump electors, as part of a scheme proposed by Mr. Eastman to allow Vice President Mike Pence to reject Mr. Biden’s victory.But Mr. Lee backed off the effort after no state legislature convened to certify so-called alternate electors, and he began criticizing plans by Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, both Republicans, to use Congress’s official count of electoral votes on Jan. 6 to challenge the election outcome.“I have grave concerns with the way my friend Ted is going about this effort,” Mr. Lee wrote to Mr. Meadows.Mr. Lee ultimately voted to confirm Mr. Biden’s victory. More than half of the Republicans in Congress — eight senators and 139 House members — voted to invalidate it, after a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters, enraged by the lie of a stolen election, stormed the Capitol demanding that it be overturned.A spokesman for Mr. Lee confirmed the authenticity of the text messages and said they told “the same story Senator Lee told from the floor of the Senate the day he voted to certify the election results of each and every state in the nation.”“They tell the story of a U.S. senator fulfilling his duty to Utah and the American people by following the Constitution,” the spokesman, Lee Lonsberry, said, citing the senator’s remarks after the deadly riot, which injured more than 150 police officers.“The President should call everyone off,” Representative Chip Roy wrote to Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, on Dec. 31, 2020. “It’s the only path.”Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesMr. Roy’s text messages with Mr. Meadows tell a similar tale of a lawmaker who appeared eager to fight alongside Mr. Trump but ultimately backed off when evidence of a stolen election did not appear.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3Debating a criminal referral. More