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      For South Texas Democrats, an Intraparty Test of Abortion Politics

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      A staunchly anti-abortion Democrat in Congress will face a young abortion-rights supporter in a pivotal primary runoff.LAREDO, Texas — When Representative Henry Cuellar stepped onstage at a campaign rally in San Antonio this week, he spoke of education, health care and his experience in Congress. But as Mr. Cuellar, a nine-term Democratic congressman, faces his toughest re-election challenge yet, one word did not escape his lips: abortion.Mr. Cuellar, the most staunchly anti-abortion Democrat in the House, will face a primary runoff later this month against Jessica Cisneros, a 28-year-old immigration lawyer and a progressive supporter of abortion rights.Democrats across the country hope the leaked draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade will help galvanize their voters in the midterm elections, potentially rallying support for the party in a year that is widely expected to benefit Republicans.But one of the first tests of just how much the issue will motivate Democratic voters will come in a primary runoff at the end of May, in the South Texas district held by Mr. Cuellar where conservative Democrats have regularly succeeded. It is a heavily Latino district that includes the border city of Laredo and parts of San Antonio, where Catholicism dominates, and where, as Mr. Cuellar showed from the stage, the subject of abortion often goes undiscussed.Dr. Enrique Benavides III, a 51-year-old obstetrician-gynecologist who manages a women’s health clinic with his father in Laredo, said that typically when patients request abortions, he gives them information about a clinic in San Antonio, more than a two-hour drive away.Dr. Benavides described himself as a pro-choice Catholic Democrat who will vote for Mr. Cuellar. “Democrats here are very different than those on the coasts, very Catholic and conservative,” he said.Abortion rights advocates believe the Supreme Court’s draft ruling will shake up the race, providing a helpful jolt for Ms. Cisneros. But supporters of Mr. Cuellar and some local Democratic officials say the district’s voters, who lean socially conservative, are unlikely to be moved by the issue. And several national Democratic leaders who have publicly made fiery vows to maintain abortion rights are nonetheless standing behind Mr. Cuellar, with some warning that a win for Ms. Cisneros later this month could give Republicans an edge in November.Mr. Cuellar’s district includes the South Texas border city of Laredo. Jason Garza for The New York TimesIn interviews with nearly a dozen men and women in Laredo, most said they would support Mr. Cuellar in spite of — or even because of — his stance on abortion.These voters, several of whom expressed support for abortion rights but said they would still vote for an anti-abortion congressman, revealed the uphill battle Ms. Cisneros faces as she tries to convince voters to oust a familiar political figure whose family has long been a fixture in the community. Even among Democrats, support for abortion rights may not uniformly motivate voters, particularly working-class Latinos — a demographic that has shown signs of drifting away from the party.Understand the Ohio and Indiana Primary ElectionsTrump’s Grip: J.D. Vance’s win in Ohio’s G.O.P. Senate primary was a strong affirmation of the former president’s continued dominance of the Republican Party.How Vance Won: The author of “Hillbilly Elegy” got a big endorsement from Donald J. Trump, but a cable news megaphone and a huge infusion of spending helped pave his way to victory.Ohio Takeaways: It was a good night for Mr. Trump, and not just because of Mr. Vance. Here’s why.Winners and Losers: A progressive challenger was defeated (again) in Ohio, and a Trump-endorsed Pence (not that one) won in Indiana. These were some of the key results.Hector Gomez, 67, has known Mr. Cuellar since they were classmates at J.W. Nixon High School in the 1970s, and has voted for the congressman in every election since he first ran in 2006.“He’s doing his job,” said Mr. Gomez, an antique store owner, adding that although he is Catholic and opposed to abortion, the issue does not determine his vote. “Mr. Cuellar is the best choice because he’s not someone you can just brush off.”Texas’ 28th Congressional District stretches from the Mexican border to San Antonio, and Laredo is its political center. A working-class city, it has been a Democratic stronghold for decades but remains culturally conservative, with residents who fill Catholic church pews on Sundays. Many describe themselves as apolitical, and said they are more focused on making ends meet than staking out positions on partisan political issues.Before this week’s leaked Supreme Court opinion, abortion had not been the central issue in the primary campaign, though several national abortion rights groups had invested heavily in the district, focusing on the new state abortion restrictions in Texas. Ms. Cisneros did not run a television advertisement on the issue until late last month, according to AdImpact, an ad tracking firm. Until the focus on abortion was renewed this week, the runoff had been a mostly sleepy affair, with observers predicting an extremely low turnout.Now, Ms. Cisneros and her supporters have moved to use the threat to abortion rights as a primary motivator for both voters and donors.“We’re really at a moment where people are fired up and they know how much they are at risk of losing,” said Kristin Ford, the vice president of communications and research at the abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America, which has sent organizers to Laredo to campaign for Ms. Cisneros.Ms. Cisneros argues that the district is not nearly as conservative as Mr. Cuellar and his backers suggest, and that attitudes are changing.Senator Elizabeth Warren, left, and Ms. Cisneros spoke to reporters after a campaign event in San Antonio in February.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times“This ignited the urgency,” she said in an interview on Friday. “When we defeat the anti-choice Democrat, that’s going to set the tone for the rest of the midterms that we want a pro-choice Democratic majority in power.”Several prominent left-wing lawmakers, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, have made fund-raising appeals for Ms. Cisneros. Earlier this week, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, one of Ms. Cisneros’s most prominent backers, used an appearance on MSNBC to make a full-throated fund-raising pitch.“If you’re mad when you listen to this, send Jessica Cisneros ten bucks,” she said.And during a recent virtual fund-raiser for Ms. Cisneros, Ms. Warren, speaking of Mr. Cuellar, said, “When it comes to reproductive rights, Henry’s got a record that makes my blood boil,” according to prepared remarks obtained by The New York Times.Ms. Cisneros first challenged Mr. Cuellar in 2020, when she lost the Democratic primary by 4 percentage points, and quickly made plans to pursue a rematch. Earlier this year, the F.B.I. raided Mr. Cuellar’s Laredo home as part of an ongoing investigation that appears to be linked to an inquiry into the political influence of Azerbaijan, the former Soviet republic. In March, Mr. Cisneros fell less than 1,000 votes short of Mr. Cuellar’s total, forcing the two into the May 24 runoff.Mr. Cuellar, who declined to comment for this article, has long defended his anti-abortion stance.“As a lifelong Catholic, I have always been pro-life,” he said in a statement this week. “As a Catholic, I do not support abortion, however, we cannot have an outright ban. There must be exceptions in the case of rape, incest and danger to the life of the mother.”Mr. Cuellar, one of the few anti-abortion Democrats in Congress, is facing his toughest re-election campaign.Eric Gay/Associated PressMr. Cuellar has repeatedly insisted that his stance mirrors the views of voters in the district. Though there has not been any public district-level polling on the issue, 2018 data from the Public Religion Research Institute found that Hispanics in Texas are less likely than other Americans to say they believe abortion should be legal in all cases, with 53 percent saying it should be illegal in most or all cases. Gallup’s Values and Beliefs poll last year found that low-income voters are also more likely to identify themselves as “pro life,” a trend that has held steady for several years and could be a factor in Mr. Cuellar’s largely working-class district. But in a poll from the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin released last June, 54 percent of Hispanics said they were opposed to a ban on abortion if Roe v. Wade was overturned. Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Clyburn Pushes Childs for Supreme Court, Testing Sway With Biden

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      The highest-ranking Black member of Congress is credited with helping resurrect the president’s 2020 campaign at a critical point. Now he is calling in a favor.WASHINGTON — Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina was already picturing Judge J. Michelle Childs sitting on the Supreme Court bench in early 2020 when he suggested Joseph R. Biden Jr. could revive his faltering presidential campaign by pledging to nominate the first Black woman to serve there.Mr. Biden did so, paving the way for an endorsement from Mr. Clyburn ahead of the South Carolina primary that was a critical turning point in the race. In the months since the election, Mr. Clyburn, the No. 3 House Democrat and the highest-ranking Black member of Congress, has not been shy about taking his share of credit for Mr. Biden’s victory and trying to exert influence on the president’s policy and personnel choices.Now, Mr. Clyburn is mounting an aggressive campaign to persuade Mr. Biden to nominate Judge Childs, a district court judge in his home state of South Carolina, to succeed Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who is retiring. It is a blatant effort to call in a political favor in the form of a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court and, perhaps, the most consequential test yet of the Biden-Clyburn relationship.“I make my case, I share my views, sometimes my feelings, and then I go on,” Mr. Clyburn, 81, said in a recent interview, describing how he uses his sway with Mr. Biden. This time, he is going all out, and irking some of the president’s allies in the process.Within hours of Mr. Breyer’s retirement announcement, Mr. Clyburn held a conference call with South Carolina reporters, stating that Judge Childs’s humble background — she attended large public universities on scholarships, earning her undergraduate degree at the University of South Florida and law and business degrees at the University of South Carolina — would better represent the country than another justice with an Ivy League pedigree. (Ketanji Brown Jackson, another top contender, has two degrees from Harvard, while a third, Leondra R. Kruger, has one from Harvard and one from Yale.)Allies in South Carolina immediately began emailing talking points to potentially helpful surrogates, noting that Judge Childs was “rooted in the African American community,” a member of Delta Sigma Theta, the prestigious Black sorority, and a member of the oldest Black Catholic church in Columbia.Over the past week, Mr. Clyburn has plugged her case on television and noted that she had the backing of Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. On Wednesday, he and Mr. Graham had breakfast in the Senate dining room with Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, to discuss, among other issues, Judge Childs and how to make a bipartisan case for her nomination. Mr. Graham posted a picture on Twitter of the three men smiling.“It’s good for the country to have the court look more like America,” Mr. Graham said afterward. He said he had told the White House that Judge Childs, who is regarded as more moderate than other candidates Mr. Biden is thought to be considering, “would draw some Republican support.”At the White House, Mr. Clyburn has been talking her up to the president since a few days after Inauguration Day, although he said he had not spoken to Mr. Biden about Judge Childs since Mr. Breyer’s retirement announcement. It was Mr. Clyburn who urged the president to nominate her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which is considered a feeder to the Supreme Court. Mr. Biden announced in December that he would do so.“He’s just determined,” said Representative G.K. Butterfield, Democrat of North Carolina, said of Mr. Clyburn. “He wants a pick who is racially and geographically diverse, whose views reflect the mainstream of the American people.”The result has been the kind of pressure campaign that longtime Biden aides say can sometimes backfire. Mr. Biden recoils at being lobbied through the television. And there is sensitivity among some of his allies and former aides that his selection must look like the president’s own historic pick, not like a political chit he owes to Mr. Clyburn.Mr. Clyburn, left, received his diploma from Mr. Biden at the South Carolina State University’s commencement ceremony in December.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesBut for Mr. Biden, a believer in sticking with the people who helped him get to where he is, Mr. Clyburn, a friend of many decades, still enjoys a special status.“I’d almost walk to South Carolina to be able to do that for Jim,” Mr. Biden said when he visited South Carolina in December to give the commencement speech at his alma mater, South Carolina State University. Mr. Clyburn, who received his diploma by mail when he graduated in 1961, walked with the graduates and received his diploma from Mr. Biden.“When it comes to the Black community in general, Jim Clyburn is on that short list of people he will always call,” Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist, said.Mr. Clyburn is an old-school Southern politician perhaps better known for his annual fish fry, which draws most of the Democratic presidential candidates every four years, than he is for his role as House whip. He is a natural political operator who cultivates press coverage, values loyalty and understands how to press an advantage when he can.Over the decades when they overlapped in Congress, Mr. Biden and Mr. Clyburn often played golf and appeared together on Charlie Rose’s talk show. They first bonded over the fact that one of the cases in Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that held that segregating schools was unconstitutional, was from South Carolina and another was from Mr. Biden’s home state of Delaware.“We spent time talking about the similarities of these cases,” Mr. Clyburn recalled of their early conversations.When Mr. Biden drew criticism during the 2020 campaign for boasting of his work with segregationist Democrats in the 1970s, Mr. Clyburn was there to defend him.Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, said that Mr. Clyburn’s advocacy must be looked at in light of how he “basically resurrected” Mr. Biden’s presidential campaign.“I think Joe Biden has to listen to him,” he said.The White House has downplayed the influence of any single voice in the selection of a nominee, but has confirmed that Judge Childs is being considered.“The president’s focus is not on gaming out the process; it’s on picking the right candidate,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said at a briefing this week when asked about Mr. Clyburn and Mr. Graham’s coordinated campaign.Mr. Clyburn said he was aware that the administration would not always heed his advice. But that has not deterred him from pushing.He lobbied successfully for his longtime friend Marcia L. Fudge to join the president’s cabinet, for Shalanda Young to be chosen as director of the Office of Management and Budget and for Jaime Harrison, a former South Carolina representative, to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee.He has also tried to expand his role as a kingmaker, inserting himself into a party primary in Ohio to boost a more moderate candidate over a progressive acolyte of Senator Bernie Sanders. His chosen candidate won, but his involvement angered some on the left, underscoring the ideological divide among Democrats between establishment veterans in Congress and a progressive new generation that is increasingly challenging them.Judge Childs’s potential nomination has also drawn pushback from some progressives and labor activists, who have flagged her work as a lawyer representing employers opposing unionization drives.In terms of policy, he and his congressional allies credit Mr. Clyburn with pushing for the “10-20-30 formula,” which directs investments to poverty-stricken communities, to be included in the president’s budget request. They also give him credit for pressing for more money for broadband in the infrastructure law.Mr. Clyburn, never a shrinking violet, goes further.“It was yours truly who made broadband an infrastructure issue,” he said. “The White House has supported me with all these issues.”Judge Childs with Mr. Clyburn, who has said her background would better represent the country than another justice with an Ivy League pedigree.Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImageMr. Clyburn also takes credit for Mr. Biden’s pledge to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court, though others say he played only a partial role.“I decided that Joe Biden needed to do something that would demonstrate a high level of respect for Black women,” he said. “What higher level of respect can there be?”Biden campaign aides recall things slightly differently. It was Ms. Fudge, they said, who first raised the issue of making the pledge to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court during a meeting Mr. Biden held with members of the Congressional Black Caucus aboard the U.S.S. Yorktown in Charleston, S.C.During the meeting, the group, which included Mr. Clyburn, had a frank conversation with Mr. Biden about the state of his campaign.“We said, ‘If you really want to be the nominee, you’re going to have to do something dramatic,’” Mr. Thompson recalled. “If you don’t win the debate, and ultimately the Saturday primary, it’s over.”Ms. Fudge then told Mr. Biden he needed to find a forum where he would pledge to put a Black woman on the Supreme Court. Mr. Clyburn and Mr. Thompson agreed.“We left there with the impression that he was going to do it,” Mr. Thompson said.Some of Mr. Biden’s advisers, however, thought making such a pledge on the debate stage would be viewed as pandering to Black voters. In a debate preparation session, Symone D. Sanders, a former top aide who is Black, said she did not think it was a good idea.But Mr. Biden ultimately made the pledge, and Mr. Clyburn’s endorsement soon followed.The White House has not always accommodated his requests. He originally pushed for Ms. Fudge to be nominated as agriculture secretary, but she ended up as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development.Mr. Clyburn remains optimistic that Mr. Biden will choose Judge Childs and that he will have had a hand in the selection of a groundbreaking Supreme Court nominee.But even if Judge Childs does not get the nod, Mr. Clyburn’s allies said he had already made his mark on the process.“At 81, as his career nears an end, his legacy is for the most part written, but you can always add accouterments,” said Bakari Sellers, a Democratic strategist and former member of the South Carolina legislature. “You can’t mention the first Black female on the Supreme Court without mentioning the name Jim Clyburn.” More

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      Democrats Struggle to Energize Their Base as Frustrations Mount

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      Even as President Biden achieves some significant victories, Democrats are warning that many of their most loyal supporters see inaction and broken campaign promises.Democrats across the party are raising alarms about sinking support among some of their most loyal voters, warning the White House and congressional leadership that they are falling short on campaign promises and leaving their base unsatisfied and unmotivated ahead of next year’s midterm elections.President Biden has achieved some major victories, signing a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill and moving a nearly $2 trillion social policy and climate change bill through the House. But some Democrats are warning that many of the voters who put them in control of the federal government last year may see little incentive to return to the polls in the midterms — reigniting a debate over electoral strategy that has been raging within the party since 2016.As the administration focuses on those two bills, a long list of other party priorities — expanding voting rights, enacting criminal justice reform, enshrining abortion rights, raising the federal minimum wage to $15, fixing a broken immigration system — have languished or died in Congress. Negotiations in the Senate are likely to further dilute the economic and climate proposals that animated Mr. Biden’s campaign — if the bill passes at all. And the president’s central promise of healing divisions and lowering the political temperature has failed to be fruitful, as violent language flourishes and threats to lawmakers flood into Congress.Interviews with Democratic lawmakers, activists and officials in Washington and in key battleground states show a party deeply concerned about retaining its own supporters. Even as strategists and vulnerable incumbents from battleground districts worry about swing voters, others argue that the erosion of crucial segments of the party’s coalition could pose more of a threat in midterm elections that are widely believed to be stacked against it.Already, Mr. Biden’s approval ratings have taken a sharp fall among some of his core constituencies, showing double-digit declines among Black, Latino, female and young voters. Those drops have led to increased tension between the White House and progressives at a time of heightened political anxiety, after Democrats were caught off-guard by the intensity of the backlash against them in elections earlier this month. Mr. Biden’s plummeting national approval ratings have also raised concerns about whether he would — or should — run for re-election in 2024.Not all of the blame is being placed squarely on the shoulders of Mr. Biden; a large percentage of frustration is with the Democratic Party itself.“It’s frustrating to see the Democrats spend all of this time fighting against themselves and to give a perception to the country, which the Republicans are seizing on, that the Democrats can’t govern,” said Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, who leads the A.M.E. churches across Georgia. “And some of us are tired of them getting pushed around, because when they get pushed around, African Americans get shoved.”Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a leading House progressive, warned that the party is at risk of “breaking trust” with vital constituencies, including young people and people of color.“There’s all this focus on ‘Democrats deliver, Democrats deliver,’ but are they delivering on the things that people are asking for the most right now?” she said in an interview. “In communities like mine, the issues that people are loudest and feel most passionately about are the ones that the party is speaking to the least.”Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats acknowledge that a significant part of the challenge facing their party is structural: With slim congressional majorities, the party cannot pass anything unless the entire caucus agrees. That empowers moderate Democrats like Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia to block some of the biggest promises to their supporters, including a broad voting rights bill.A more aggressive approach may not lead to eventual passage of an immigration or voting rights law, but it would signal to Democrats that Mr. Biden is fighting for them, said Faiz Shakir, a close adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Mr. Shakir and others worry that the focus on the two significant pieces of legislation — infrastructure and the spending bill — won’t be enough to energize supporters skeptical of the federal government’s ability to improve their lives.“I’m a supporter of Biden, a supporter of the agenda, and I’m frustrated and upset with him to allow this to go in the direction it has,” said Mr. Shakir, who managed Mr. Sanders’s presidential run in 2020. “It looks like we have President Manchin instead of President Biden in this debate.”He added: “It’s made the president look weak.”The divide over how much attention to devote to staunch Democratic constituencies versus moderate swing voters taps into a political debate that’s long roiled the party: Is it more important to energize the base or to persuade swing voters? And can Democrats do both things at once?White House advisers argue that winning swing voters, particularly the suburban independents who play an outsize role in battleground districts, is what will keep Democrats in power — or at least curb the scale of their midterm losses. They see the drop among core groups of Democrats as reflective of a challenging political moment — rising inflation, the continued pandemic, uncertainty about schools — rather than unhappiness with the administration’s priorities.“It’s November of 2021, not September of 2022,” John Anzalone, Mr. Biden’s pollster, said. “If we pass Build Back Better, we have a great message going into the midterms, when the bell rings on Labor Day, about what we’ve done for people.”Even pared back from the $3.5 trillion plan that Mr. Biden originally sought, the legislation that passed the House earlier this month offers proposals transforming child care, elder care, prescription drugs and financial aid for college, as well as making the largest investment ever to slow climate change. But some of the most popular policies will not be felt by voters until long after the midterm elections, nor will the impact of many of the infrastructure projects.Already, Democrats face a challenging education effort with voters. According to a survey conducted by Global Strategy Group, a Democratic polling firm, only about a third of white battleground voters think that either infrastructure or the broader spending bill will help them personally. Among white Democratic battleground voters, support for the bills is only 72 percent.Representative James E. Clyburn, the high-ranking House Democrat from South Carolina and a close ally of Mr. Biden, said the way the bills were negotiated and reported in the media had voters in his district asking him about money that was cut from initiatives rather than the sweeping benefits.“People stopped me on the streets saying we cut money from our H.B.C.U.s,” Mr. Clyburn said, pointing out that more funding for historically Black colleges and universities will be added in the coming years of the administration. “So while everybody keeps blaming the Democrats, Democrats, Democrats, it’s the Senate rules that are archaic, and stop us from passing these bills.”Mr. Clyburn and other lawmakers say they struggle to explain the vacillations of congressional wrangling to their voters, who expected that by electing Democrats to the majority they would be able to pass their agenda.“Nobody thought about the filibuster and the realities,” said Representative Steve Cohen, Democrat of Tennessee. “People don’t understand the Byrd rule and the parliamentarian and the things we have to put up with. It does lower their enthusiasm.”Atlanta voters cast their ballots last November. Mr. Biden won more than 90 percent of Black voters in Georgia, but inaction on voting rights has weakened their support.Jessica Mcgowan/Getty ImagesAs they’ve begun to do with the infrastructure bill, the White House plans an aggressive approach to sell the social policy legislation once it passes, dispatching Mr. Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and other top officials for events across the country.“There is a real window of opportunity to show the cooperation and competence people expect from us,” said Representative Josh Gottheimer, Democrat of New Jersey and a leader of a moderate wing of lawmakers in congressional negotiations. “It’s up to us to communicate what we just accomplished for families and for the country.”Yet many activists say the White House is to blame for failing to aggressively push for the central promises made to their supporters during the campaign. They said they wanted Mr. Biden to leverage both his bully pulpit and executive powers to tackle student loans, criminal justice, immigration reform and other issues.“We’re talking about democracy in such a crisis and here we are with very few legislative days left and the lack of urgency is deafening,” said Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner, a minister and civil rights advocate who has helped lead the response from faith leaders on voting rights. “For the president to say he can only do one thing at a time is simply not true.”Lorella Praeli, the president of Community Change Action, a group advocating immigration reform, offered a terse warning to the administration about keeping Latino support: “There are no participation trophies.”Some of the most popular policies in the social safety net bill that passed the House won’t be felt by voters until long after the midterm elections.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesAlready, the national environment looks difficult for Democrats, who may lose seats in redistricting and face the historical trend of a president’s party losing seats during his first term in office.Tomás Robles, the co-chair of Lucha, a Latino civil rights group based in Phoenix that is widely credited with helping Democrats win the state in 2020, said people were “disillusioned and unmotivated” by what they had seen in the first 10 months of Democratic governance.“When you’re not passing bold progressive policies, you have to be able to show something,” Mr. Robles said. “President Biden gets the most blame because he’s the most visible, but it’s the party as a whole that has failed its voters.”In Georgia, inaction on voting rights has fueled a steepening decline of enthusiasm for Mr. Biden among Black voters. The New Georgia Project, a progressive civil rights group, conducted a study last month of Black voters in Georgia, and found that 66 percent approved of the job Mr. Biden was doing, and 51 percent thought that his administration was working to address the concerns of the Black community. In 2020, Mr. Biden won more than 90 percent of Black voters in Georgia.Representative Cori Bush, a progressive whose district includes large parts of St. Louis, said the social safety net and climate provisions included in the bill that passed the House could not be pared down any further. And, she added, the White House has to follow through on other provisions if Democrats want to excite Black voters — perhaps the party’s most loyal constituency — ahead of the midterm elections.“Do I believe Black community members will be happy to see these investments? Absolutely. Will they feel like this has changed their lives in some ways? Yes,” Ms. Bush said. “But will this be enough to excite? When you’re excited, that means that you feel like something else is coming. You have hope that more is happening. So what’s next?” More

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      In the Final Days Before Virginia Votes, Both Sides Claim Momentum

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      Glenn Youngkin and Terry McAuliffe crisscrossed Virginia on the last weekend of what has become an increasingly close race for governor.MANASSAS PARK, Va. — The high-stakes race for governor of Virginia entered its final stretch with Glenn Youngkin and Terry McAuliffe trading accusations of sowing division, as voters appeared closely divided over returning a Democrat to office or electing a Republican to lead their state for the first time in more than a decade.The size and atmosphere of dueling events during the last weekend of campaigning before Election Day on Tuesday reflected the trends in the most recent polls. Mr. Youngkin, the Republican candidate, greeted crowds of more than 1,000, while Mr. McAuliffe, the Democrat, hustled through sparsely attended events from morning to night.Mr. McAuliffe, who served one term as governor from 2014 to 2018, has displayed a rising sense of urgency lately, dispatching some of the Democratic Party’s biggest stars to campaign for him and push people to vote early. In 11 hours on Saturday, Mr. McAuliffe traveled more than 120 miles, making eight stops in six cities amid a whirlwind day of campaigning in which he urged supporters not to be complacent.“We are substantially leading on the early vote, but we cannot take our foot off the gas,” Mr. McAuliffe told a crowd on Saturday in Norfolk, where he met with labor leaders who were planning to spend the day knocking on doors.He and his allies took it as an encouraging sign that more than 1.1 million of Virginia’s 5.9 million registered voters had cast ballots as of Sunday morning, according to the Virginia Department of Elections.But the energy this weekend was more palpable among Mr. Youngkin and his supporters, who have heeded the Republican’s calls for a new direction in the state’s political leadership after more than a decade of Democratic governors. Mr. Youngkin has framed the election as an opportunity for Virginians to send a message to the nation that Democrats are out of step with the majority of Americans on a number of issues, from how racial inequality is taught in schools to coronavirus-related mandates.“The nation’s eyes are on Virginia,” Mr. Youngkin told an energetic crowd of several hundred people who came to see him on Saturday afternoon in Manassas Park, a city near the suburban Democratic stronghold of Fairfax County outside Washington. In his speeches, he often ascribes a larger significance to his campaign, saying, “This is no longer a campaign. It’s a movement.”Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate for governor, spoke to reporters on Saturday with Bruce Smith, a developer and former N.F.L. defensive end.Kristen Zeis for The New York TimesIt was clear in interviews with voters over the weekend that many Virginians view this election as something symbolically greater than a face-off between two candidates for governor. The contest has exposed the country’s persistent divisions over questions of race, class, privilege and the appropriate role of government, and become an outlet for Virginians to register their dissatisfaction with the political culture.“I’m a Hillary-Biden voter,” said Glenn Miller, a lawyer from McLean, as he walked into a Youngkin rally in southern Fairfax County on Saturday night that drew more than 1,000 people. He explained his tipping point: Working from home and hearing his teenage daughter’s teacher make a comment during a virtual lesson about white men as modern-day slaveholders.“There are a lot of people like me who are annoyed,” he said, adding that he was able to vote for Mr. Youngkin because he did not associate him as a Trump Republican. “My problem with Trump was I thought he was embarrassing. I just don’t think Youngkin is going to embarrass me or the state.”The McAuliffe campaign has tried to portray Mr. Youngkin as a Trump acolyte, accusing him of exaggerating fears that children are being divided by race by teachers who are encouraging them to see white people as inherently bad.“He’s got parents fighting parents and parents fighting teachers,” Mr. McAuliffe said over the weekend. “He’s turned our school boards into war zones. It’s all about this critical race theory, which is not taught in Virginia. This is all he talks about. It has never been taught in Virginia. Let’s call it what it is: It’s a racist dog whistle. He’s run a racist campaign from start to finish.”Some Democratic voters said they appreciated the link Mr. McAuliffe was making between former President Donald J. Trump and Mr. Youngkin, who opposes abortion, same-sex marriage and mandates for the coronavirus vaccine.“I see a lot of issues with what’s going on in the national Republican Party,” said Jerry Dalesandro, 59, a retiree from Virginia Beach. “I’m a Biden fan, an Obama fan, but also more just a not-a-Trump fan.”Mr. Youngkin has tried to strike a balance between keeping Mr. Trump close but not too close. The former president recently announced he would speak at a telephone town-hall-style event for Mr. Youngkin on Monday. But the Republican candidate said he would not be participating.For Mr. McAuliffe, the visit to Norfolk was one of several stops he made in southeastern Virginia, where he drew small to modest crowds of 30 to 100 people. The largest crowd on Saturday was at a Black church in Portsmouth, where Mr. McAuliffe was joined by Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, the civil rights leader.Supporters of Mr. Youngkin rallied at an event in Springfield, Va., on Saturday.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesPresident Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Barack Obama have all visited Virginia as part of the McAuliffe campaign’s push to boost turnout, especially among core Democratic constituencies such as Black voters. But generating enthusiasm has been difficult at times, which was evident on Saturday at a McAuliffe event in Chesapeake. When Mr. McAuliffe went to speak, the crowd yelled “Terry, Terry, Terry” only after a campaign staffer started the chant to ramp up the energy in the room.On the minds of many Democrats was the unpleasant memory of what happened in 2016, when they believed Hillary Clinton was all but certain to win the White House. “You need to remember back how you felt in November of 2016, when we woke up and we realized who was going to be our next president,” Gov. Ralph Northam, who is prohibited from running again because of term limits, told a crowd in Virginia Beach on Saturday. “We do not want to wake up on November the 3rd of this year and have that same feeling.”At the Youngkin events, it was unclear how many people were voters like Mr. Miller, the former Biden supporter now voting for the Republican. Many said they were committed Republicans, and the crowds were more diverse than Republican events typically are.In the Washington suburb of Chantilly, John and Linda Torres of Herndon stood in a parking lot as the crowd of several hundred returned to their cars after a Youngkin rally. Ms. Torres held a Youngkin yard sign and a handful of stickers that read “Latinos for Youngkin.”The couple said they both voted for Mr. Trump, but also for Mr. Obama. They said they disliked Mr. McAuliffe’s stance on vaccine mandates as well as his insistence that Mr. Youngkin was making a problem where one doesn’t exist by criticizing how race is taught in some schools. “I know some people say, ‘Oh, it’s all made up.’ But it’s real,” said Mr. Torres, 41, a veteran.Ms. Torres, 43, a nurse, said she and her husband have considered pulling their two children out of public school and putting them into a Christian one. And that same impulse applied to her views on the state’s political leadership.“We just want it to change,” Ms. Torres said. More

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      The Congressional Black Caucus: Powerful, Diverse and Newly Complicated

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      The group, which includes most Black members of Congress, remains publicly united. But in private, an influx of new members who think differently about its purpose are making a play for the future.The Congressional Black Caucus is the largest it has ever been, jumping to 57 members this year after a period of steady growth. The 50-year-old group, which includes most Black members of Congress and is entirely Democratic, is also more diverse, reflecting growing pockets of the Black electorate: millennials, progressives, suburban voters, those less tightly moored to the Democratic Party.But while a thread of social justice connects one generation to the next, the influx of new members from varying backgrounds is testing the group’s long-held traditions in ways that could alter the future of Black political power in Washington.The newcomers, shaped by the Black Lives Matter movement rather than the civil rights era, urge Democrats to go on the offensive regarding race and policing, pushing an affirmative message about how to overhaul public safety. They seek a bolder strategy on voting rights and greater investment in the recruitment and support of Black candidates.Perhaps more significant than any ideological or age divide, however, is the caucus’s fault line of political origin stories — between those who made the Democratic establishment work for them and those who had to overcome the establishment to win.Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, a Democrat and the most powerful Black lawmaker in the House, said in an interview that the group still functioned as a family. But that family has grown to include people like Representative Cori Bush of Missouri, an outspoken progressive who defeated a caucus member in a hotly contested primary last year, and Representative Lauren Underwood of Illinois, whose district is overwhelmingly white.“There was not a single member of the caucus, when I got there, that could have gotten elected in a congressional district that was only 4 percent African American,” Mr. Clyburn said, referring to Ms. Underwood.“We didn’t have people in the caucus before who could stand up and say, ‘I know what it’s like to live in an automobile or be homeless,’” he said of Ms. Bush, whose recent dayslong sit-in on the Capitol steps pushed President Biden’s administration to extend an eviction moratorium.In interviews, more than 20 people close to the C.B.C. — including several members, their senior aides and other Democrats who have worked with the group — described the shifting dynamics of the leading organization of Black power players in Washington.Representative Lauren Underwood of Illinois serves a district that is overwhelmingly white.Sarah Silbiger/The New York TimesThe caucus is a firm part of the Democratic establishment, close to House leadership and the relationship-driven world of political consulting and campaigns. However, unlike other groups tied to party leaders, the caucus is perhaps the country’s most public coalition of civil rights stalwarts, ostensibly responsible for ensuring that an insider game shaped by whiteness can work for Black people.Today, the C.B.C. has swelling ranks and a president who has said he owes his election to Black Democrats. There is a strong chance that when Speaker Nancy Pelosi eventually steps down, her successor will be a member of the group. At the same time, the new lawmakers and their supporters are challenging the group with a simple question: Whom should the Congressional Black Caucus be for?The group’s leadership and political action committee have typically focused on supporting Black incumbents and their congressional allies in re-election efforts. But other members, especially progressive ones, call for a more combative activist streak, like Ms. Bush’s, that challenges the Democratic Party in the name of Black people. Moderate members in swing districts, who reject progressive litmus tests like defunding police departments or supporting a Green New Deal, say the caucus is behind on the nuts and bolts of modern campaigning and remains too pessimistic about Black candidates’ chances in predominantly white districts.Many new C.B.C. members, even those whose aides discussed their frustration in private, declined to comment on the record for this article. The leadership of the caucus, including the current chair, Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio, also did not respond to requests for comment.Miti Sathe, a founder of Square One Politics, a political firm used by Ms. Underwood and other successful Black candidates including Representative Lucy McBath, a Georgia Democrat, said she had often wondered why the caucus was not a greater ally on the campaign trail.She recounted how Ms. Underwood, a former C.B.C. intern who was the only Black candidate in her race, did not receive the caucus’s initial endorsement.In Ms. Underwood’s race, “we tried many times to have conversations with them, to get their support and to get their fund-raising lists, and they declined,” Ms. Sathe said.Representative Cori Bush of Missouri, an outspoken progressive, defeated a caucus member in a hotly contested primary race last year.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesRepresentative Ritchie Torres of New York, a 33-year-old freshman member, said the similarities among C.B.C. members still outweighed the differences.“It seems one-dimensional to characterize it as some generational divide,” he said. “The freshman class — the freshman members of the C.B.C. — are hardly a monolith.”Political strategy is often the dividing line among members — not policy. The Clyburn-led veterans have hugged close to Ms. Pelosi to rise through the ranks, and believe younger members should follow their example. They have taken a zero-tolerance stance toward primary challengers to Democratic incumbents. They have recently pushed for a pared-down approach to voting rights legislation, attacking proposals for public financing of campaigns and independent redistricting committees, which have support from many Democrats in Congress but could change the makeup of some Black members’ congressional districts.And when younger members of Congress press Ms. Pelosi to elevate new blood and overlook seniority, this more traditional group points to Representatives Maxine Waters of California and Bennie Thompson of Mississippi — committee chairs who waited years for their gavels. The political arm of the Black caucus reflects that insider approach, sometimes backing white incumbents who are friends with senior caucus leaders instead of viable Black challengers.Representative Gregory Meeks of New York, the chairman of the caucus’s political action committee, said its goal was simple: to help maintain the Democratic majority so the party’s agenda can be advanced.“You don’t throw somebody out simply because somebody else is running against them,” he said. “That’s not the way politics works.”Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the most powerful Black lawmaker in the House, said the group still functioned as a family.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesIn a special election this month in Ohio to replace former Representative Marcia Fudge, the newly appointed housing secretary and a close ally of Mr. Clyburn’s, the caucus’s political arm took the unusual step of endorsing one Black candidate over another for an open seat. The group backed Shontel Brown — a Democrat who is close to Ms. Fudge — over several Black rivals, including Nina Turner, a former state senator and a prominent leftist ally of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.Mr. Meeks said the caucus had deferred to its ranking members from Ohio, including Ms. Beatty and Ms. Fudge. Mr. Clyburn also personally backed Ms. Brown. In the interview, he cited a comment from a campaign surrogate for Ms. Turner who called him “incredibly stupid” for endorsing Mr. Biden in the presidential primary race. “There’s nobody in the Congressional Black Caucus who would refer to the highest-ranking African American among them as incredibly stupid,” Mr. Clyburn said.Ms. Turner, a progressive activist, defended the remark and said the caucus’s endorsement of Ms. Brown “did a disservice to the 11 other Black candidates in that race.” She argued that Washington politics were governed by “a set of rules that leaves so many Black people behind.”“The reasons they endorsed had nothing to do with the uplift of Black people,” Ms. Turner said, citing her support of policies like reparations for descendants of enslaved people and student debt cancellation. “It had everything to do about preserving a decorum and a consensus type of power model that doesn’t ruffle anybody’s feathers.”Privately, while some Black members of Congress were sympathetic to Ms. Turner’s criticism, they also regarded the comment about Mr. Clyburn as an unnecessary agitation, according to those familiar with their views. Last year, several new C.B.C. members across the political spectrum grew frustrated after concluding that Democrats’ messaging on race and policing ignored the findings of a poll commissioned by the caucus and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The poll, obtained by The New York Times, urged Democrats in swing districts to highlight the policing changes they supported rather than defending the status quo.But the instruction from leaders of the caucus and the Democratic campaign committee was blunt: Denounce defunding the police and pivot to health care. “It was baffling that the research was not properly utilized,” said one senior aide to a newer member of the Black caucus, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to voice the frustrations. “It could have helped some House Democrats keep their jobs.”The caucus is perhaps the country’s most public coalition of civil rights stalwarts, ostensibly responsible for ensuring that an insider game shaped by whiteness can work for Black people.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesMr. Clyburn makes no secret of his disdain for progressive activists who support defunding the police. In the interview, he likened the idea to “Burn, baby, burn,” the slogan associated with the 1965 Watts riots in California.“‘Burn, baby, burn’ destroyed the movement John Lewis and I helped found back in 1960,” he said. “Now we have defunding the police.” Mr. Meeks, the political point man for the caucus, said he expected its endorsements to go where they have always gone: to Black incumbents and their allies. Still, he praised Ms. Bush’s recent activism as helping to “put the pressure on to make the change happen,” a sign of how new blood and ideological diversity could increase the caucus’s power.But Ms. Bush won despite the wishes of the caucus’s political arm. And those who seek a similar path to Congress are likely to face similar resistance.When asked, Mr. Meeks saw no conflict.“When you’re on a team,” he said, “you look out for your teammates.” More

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      How The Cleveland House Race Between Turner and Brown Captures Democrats' Generational Divide

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      Nina Turner’s move from Bernie Sanders’s campaign co-chairwoman to House candidate has highlighted a Democratic divide between impatient young activists and cautious older voters.WARRENSVILLE HEIGHTS, Ohio — Nina Turner had just belted out a short address to God’s Tabernacle of Faith Church in the cadences and tremulous volumes of a preacher when the Rev. Timothy Eppinger called on the whole congregation to lay hands on the woman seeking the House seat of greater Cleveland.“She’s gone through hell and high water,” the pastor said to nods and assents. “This is her season to live, and not to die.”On Aug. 3, the voters of Ohio’s 11th District will render that judgment and with it, some indication of the direction the Democratic Party is heading: toward the defiant and progressive approach Ms. Turner embodies or the reserved mold of its leaders in Washington, shaped more by the establishment than the ferment stirring its grass roots.Democrats say there is little broader significance to this individual House primary contest, one that pits two Black women against each other in a safe Democratic district that had been represented by Marcia Fudge before she was confirmed as President Biden’s secretary of housing and urban development.Yet in the final weeks of the campaign, the party establishment is throwing copious amounts of time and money into an effort to stop Ms. Turner, a fiery former Cleveland councilwoman and Ohio state senator known beyond this district as the face and spirit of Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns, a co-chairwoman in 2020 and a ubiquitous surrogate for the socialist senator.That suggests leaders understand that the outcome of the race will be read as a signal about the party’s future. It has already rekindled old rivalries. The Congressional Black Caucus’s political action committee has endorsed Ms. Turner’s main rival, Shontel Brown, the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party chairwoman. So have Hillary Clinton and the highest-ranking Black member of the House, James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, who will be campaigning here this weekend for Ms. Brown. They argue that Ms. Brown is the better candidate, with a unifying message after four divisive years of Donald J. Trump.Ms. Brown sees herself as liberal, but she would move step by step, for instance embracing Mr. Biden’s call for adding a “public option” to the Affordable Care Act before jumping straight to the single-payer Medicare-for-all health care system Ms. Turner wants.“I’m not one to shy away from a challenge or conflict; I just don’t seek it out,” said Ms. Brown, who sees the differences as more style than substance. “And that’s the major difference: I’m not looking for headlines. I’m looking to make headway.”In turn, liberal activists around the country have rushed to Ms. Turner’s defense, with money, volunteers and reinforcements. Her campaign has raised $4.5 million for a primary, $1.3 million in the last month. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York will be knocking on doors for her the same weekend Mr. Clyburn will be in town. Mr. Sanders will join the fray in person the last weekend before Election Day.“She would be a real asset for the House,” Mr. Sanders said. “She is a very, very strong progressive, and I hope very much she is going to win.”Supporters of Shontel Brown say she presents a more unifying message after four years of the Trump administration.Mike Cardew/Akron Beakon Journal, via USA Today NetworkThe race has captured less an ideological divide than a generational split, pitting older voters turned off by the liberal insurgency’s disparagement of Democratic leaders and brash demands for rapid change against younger voters’ sense of urgency and anger about the trajectory of the country and world being left to them.At every turn here, Ms. Turner hits on the struggles of her city, the poorest large municipality in the country, but also America’s mountain of student debt, its inequity in health care and a climate crisis that has left the West parched and burning, the ice caps melting and Europe digging out from a deluge.Cleveland’s mayor, Frank Jackson, has endorsed Ms. Turner, as has The Plain Dealer. But Ms. Brown has the most reliable voters, many of them older, more affluent and white.For Ms. Turner to win, she needs people like Dewayne Williams, 31 and formerly incarcerated, who came out in the rain on Saturday to the Gas on God Community Giveaway, for $10 worth of free gas in one of Cleveland’s most dangerous neighborhoods.“I’m just young, don’t know much about politics, but I know she’s a good woman,” Mr. Williams said, growing emotional after Ms. Turner leaned into his car to give him a hug. Given his experience in the prison system, he said, “the changes she’s trying to do — to even care a little bit about that situation — I definitely appreciate.”“Oh man,” Mr. Williams added, “you’ve got to have a loud voice. You’ve got to be loud so people can hear.”The outcome of the special election could reverberate through the party. Progressive primary challengers have already declared — and are raising impressive sums, far more than previous challengers — to take on Representatives Carolyn B. Maloney in New York, Danny K. Davis in Chicago, John Yarmuth in Louisville and Jim Cooper in Nashville. They are hoping to build on the successes of Representatives Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman in New York, Ayanna S. Pressley in Boston, Marie Newman in Chicago and Cori Bush in St. Louis — all of whom have knocked off Democratic incumbents since 2018.All of them face opposition from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Congressional Black Caucus and a new political action committee, Team Blue, started by Representatives Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic Caucus chairman; Josh Gottheimer, a moderate from New Jersey; and Terri A. Sewell, a Black Caucus member from Alabama.“It speaks volumes to where they want us to be going as a party,” said Kina Collins, who is challenging Mr. Davis. “The message is, ‘You’re not welcome, and if you try to come in, we’re going to pony up the resources to silence you.’”Ms. Turner spoke with voters at a Gas on God Community Giveaway in Cleveland on Saturday.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMs. Turner said she wanted the race to be about her issues: single-payer Medicare for all, a $15-an-hour minimum wage, canceling student loan debt and other centerpieces of the Sanders movement she helped create. She said she had been warned from the beginning of her candidacy that Washington Democrats would unite around an “anyone but Nina” candidate.But on Sunday, even she seemed surprised by the bitter turn the contest had taken. The Congressional Black Caucus PAC’s intervention particularly rankled. With the rise of liberal groups like Justice Democrats dedicated to unseating entrenched Democrats in safe seats, the caucus has emerged as something of an incumbent protection service.It backed Representative William Lacy Clay Jr. of Missouri, a caucus member, in his unsuccessful bid to stave off a Black challenger, Ms. Bush, last year, and Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio, now the chairwoman of the caucus, in her successful bid to beat a Justice Democrat.But the PAC also backed Representative Eliot Engel of New York, who is white, last year against his progressive challenger, Mr. Bowman, who is Black.And now, inexplicably to Ms. Turner and her allies, the powerful Black establishment is intervening in an open-seat race between two Black candidates.“I don’t begrudge anybody wanting to get involved in the race,” Ms. Turner said, “but the entire Congressional Black Caucus PAC? That’s sending another message: Progressives need not apply.”Mr. Clyburn’s high-profile intervention is especially striking. In endorsing Ms. Brown, Mr. Clyburn said he was choosing the candidate he liked best, not opposing Ms. Turner. But he did speak out against the “sloganeering” of the party’s left wing.Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the highest-ranking Black Democrat in the House, has endorsed Ms. Brown.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesIn Cleveland, not everyone appreciated the distinction.“They want somebody they can control, and they want somebody to fall in line,” said State Representative Juanita Brent, who backs Ms. Turner. She said she had a message for Mr. Clyburn: “Congressman, with all due respect, stay out of our district.”Ms. Brown, younger than Ms. Turner, with an easygoing demeanor that does not match the Turner campaign’s description of her negative campaigning, pushed back hard against the characterization of her as a Washington puppet.Her campaign is staffed by help from SKDK, a powerhouse Democratic political firm stocked with old hands from the Clinton and Obama days. Her endorsements include moderate House Democrats like Mr. Gottheimer, many of whom are motivated by Ms. Turner’s favorable statements on Palestinian rights.But Ms. Brown insists she is no pawn for establishment Democrats.“You should ask the people who have tried to control me,” she said. “You will find that I am an independent thinker. I am one that likes to gather all of the facts and make an informed decision.”At Alfred Grant’s motorcycle shop in Bedford, Ohio, where Ms. Brown was dropping by a show of motorcycle muscle on Saturday night, older Black voters backed her campaign’s assessment of Ms. Turner: You either love her or you really don’t.“It seems to me that Nina tends to work for herself more than working together,” Roberta Reed said. “I mean, I need people who are going to work together to make it all whole.”“She’s going to help the Biden-Harris agenda; that means a lot,” Denise Grant, Mr. Grant’s wife, said of Ms. Brown, hitting on her biggest talking point. “We don’t need anybody fighting with Biden there.”Her husband jumped in, expressing weariness of the kind of confrontational politics that Ms. Turner embraced. “We did four years of foolishness,” he said. “Now it’s calmed down. That’s how politics should be. I don’t have to look at you every day.”Ms. Turner does not back down from that critique. Voters can take it or leave it.“My ancestors would have never been set free but for somebody bumping up against the status quo and saying, ‘You will not enslave us anymore,’” she said.Parishioners prayed over Ms. Turner at God’s Tabernacle of Faith Church on Sunday.Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times“Martin Luther King, Minister Malcolm X, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, Fannie Lou Hamer — I’m just giving examples of people who I’m sure folks who believe in the status quo wish had been nicer,” she said.At God’s Tabernacle of Faith, Pastor Eppinger teed up Ms. Turner with a rousing sermon inspired by the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel.“How long will you walk through dead schools, dead communities, dead governments?” he thundered. “Can these dry bones live?”Ms. Turner, in a bright yellow dress, removed her matching, bright yellow mask, and answered, “All Sister Turner is saying is, we need somebody to speak life into the dry bones of City Hall, the dry bones in Congress, and if God blesses me to go to that next place, I am going to continue to stand for the poor, the working poor and the barely middle class. Can these dry bones live?”To that, the 50 or so parishioners gave an amen. More

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      As Republicans Take Aim at Voting, Democrats Search for a Response

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      A speech by President Biden on Tuesday could be a signal of how hard the Democrats will fight to protect voting rights. WASHINGTON — The Democratic Party pledged millions for it last week, grass-roots groups are campaigning for it nationwide and, as recently as Friday, Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, said the fight for it had only begun.But behind the brave words are rising concerns among voting-rights advocates and Democrats that the counterattack against the aggressive push by Republicans to restrict ballot access is faltering, and at a potentially pivotal moment.President Biden is expected to put his political muscle behind the issue in a speech in Philadelphia on Tuesday. But in Congress, Democratic senators have been unable to move voting and election bills that would address what many of them call a fundamental attack on American democracy that could lock in a new era of Republican minority rule. And in the courts, attacks on voting restrictions face an increasingly hostile judiciary and narrowing legal options.Texas seems poised, absent another walkout by Democratic legislators, to become the latest Republican-controlled state to pass a sweeping legislative agenda placing new barriers to the ability to cast a ballot. That comes on the heels of a major Supreme Court ruling this month further weakening the one enforcement clause of the Voting Rights Act that remained after the court nullified its major provision in 2012. The decision arrived as advocacy groups were pressing lawsuits against restrictive voting laws enacted in roughly a dozen Republican-controlled state legislatures.“One more arrow has been taken out of the quiver of voting-rights plaintiffs to strike down these new laws passed since the 2020 election,” said Nathaniel Persily, an election-law scholar at Stanford. “And it’s not like they had all that many arrows in the quiver to begin with.”Roughly a dozen Republican-controlled states passed laws this past spring restricting voting or significantly changing election rules, ostensibly in response to President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that voter fraud cost him the November election. Many made it harder to vote early or by mail, banned or restricted drop boxes, shortened early or absentee voting periods or gave more leeway to partisan poll watchers. Some laws made it easier to replace local election officials with partisans, something voting rights advocates say might make it possible even to invalidate or sway election results. Atop that, Republican filibuster threats have bottled up the flagship effort by congressional Democrats to counter such restrictions — a sweeping overhaul of federal election laws and a beefed-up revision of the Voting Rights Act. Despite controlling the Senate, Democrats have failed to unite behind a change in filibuster rules that would allow them to pass the legislation with a simple majority vote. That is a painful reversal for Democrats, who had labeled the bills their top priority, and for Mr. Biden, who said a year ago that strengthening the Voting Rights Act would be his first task in the White House. It also has far-reaching ramifications: The election-overhaul bill would set minimum standards for ballot access, potentially undoing some provisions of the newly enacted laws, and ban gerrymandering just as states begin drawing new boundaries for House seats and local political districts.Democrats worry that failing to act will empower states led by Republicans to impose more restrictions before the 2024 presidential election — a genuine concern, they say, given that Mr. Biden carried the Electoral College by fewer than 43,000 votes in three key states, despite outpolling Mr. Trump by seven million votes nationwide. President Biden said a year ago that strengthening the Voting Rights Act would be his first task in the White House.Samuel Corum for The New York TimesAnd some worry that a Republican Party that still refuses to accept the legitimacy of the last presidential vote sets the stage for a constitutional crisis should red states, or even a Republican-led House of Representatives, contest the next close election. “There’s not a caucus meeting that goes by that our leadership doesn’t talk about S. 1 and how our democracy is on the verge of disappearing,” U.S. Representative John Yarmuth, a Kentucky Democrat who has spent 14 years in the House, said in an interview, using shorthand for voting legislation stalled in the Senate. “There’s plenty to be scared about.”Republicans argue that it’s Democrats who are the threat to democracy. “The Democratic Party wants to rewrite the ground rules of American politics for partisan benefit,” Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, said at a hearing on the bill to overhaul voting laws, called the For the People Act. “It’s hard to imagine anything that would erode public confidence in our democracy more drastically.”Mr. McConnell has called the proposal “a craven political calculation” that shows “disdain for the American people.”In the states, Republican legislators have frequently taken a similar tack, charging that Democrats oppose tightening voting rules because they benefit from voter fraud.More common among voting experts, though, is a view that Republicans, facing unfavorable demographic tides, see their future linked to limiting Democratic turnout. “They’re going to do everything they can to hold on to power, and one essential of that is limiting the Democratic vote,” said Larry J. Sabato, a veteran political analyst and director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. Voting-rights advocates and the Biden administration are not without weapons. Under Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Justice Department has already sued to block voting legislation enacted by the Georgia General Assembly this past spring, and more lawsuits are likely.On Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris said that the Democratic National Committee planned to spend $25 million before the 2022 midterms to organize and educate voters.And a number of voting rights advocates said they believed that the breadth and the audacity of Republican voting restrictions was igniting a backlash that would power a grass-roots voting movement and increase Democratic turnout in the midterms.“It could well have a significant pushback,” said Miles Rapoport, a senior fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance at Harvard. “The extra motivation of ‘You’re not going to take away my vote’ could end up with very, very heavy turnout come 2022 and 2024.”But voting issues could be a motivator for both parties and, in a highly polarized electorate, the moral high ground can be hard to establish. “I think a lot of this from the other side is political theater,” Representative Briscoe Cain, the Republican House Elections Committee chairman in Texas said in a phone interview on Sunday night. The goal, he said, is to “win elections and make Republicans look bad.”Advocacy groups and Democrats also are in the courts. In Georgia alone, eight lawsuits are challenging Republican election laws enacted in the spring. Marc Elias, a longtime lawyer for Democratic Party interests, is opposing new election laws in seven Republican-dominated states.How badly the Supreme Court ruling will hinder such efforts is unclear. The 6-to-3 decision, covering Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, made it much harder to attack a voting restriction based principally on its lopsided impact on a minority group.Mr. Elias called the ruling “a terrible decision,” but added that most election lawsuits claim violations of the Constitution, not the Voting Rights Act.Richard L. Hasen, a leading election-law expert at the University of California, Irvine, was less sanguine, arguing that one part of the ruling has given states wide latitude to defend restrictions as necessary to prevent fraud — even if there is no evidence of fraud. Stopping fraud is by far the leading reason cited by Republican legislators sponsoring curbs on voting.“There’s no question that the road is much tougher for voting rights plaintiffs in federal courts,” he said. “These battles will have to be fought within each state, mustering coalitions among business groups, civil leaders and voters from all parties who care about the sanctity of the right to vote.”Legal options also exist outside the federal judiciary. Mr. Elias recently won a suit claiming discrimination against college-age voters in the New Hampshire Supreme Court. The Southern Coalition for Social Justice is challenging North Carolina’s voter ID requirements in that state’s Supreme Court. Demonstrators gathered in Washington, D.C., in June to protest for equal voting rights.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesAnd Alison Riggs, a voting-rights lawyer and co-executive director of the coalition, noted that Congress could easily address concerns with the court’s ruling in any revision of the Voting Rights Act.Mr. Biden’s speech on Tuesday may signal whether he intends to become involved in pushing that legislation and the overhaul of voting laws to passage. Mr. Biden made voting issues a priority in his campaign, but as president he has emphasized bread-and-butter issues like infrastructure spending and coronavirus relief. He was largely absent in June when Democrats in the Senate tried and failed to bring up the For the People Act for debate — in part, perhaps, because even Democrats realized that it must be stripped down to a more basic bill to have a chance of passing.The president is unlikely to have that option again. Over the weekend, a close ally, Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, told Politico that Mr. Biden must push to modify the filibuster so both voting bills could pass.So did civil rights leaders in a meeting with the president on Thursday. “We will not be able to litigate our way out of this threat to Black citizenship, voting and political participation,” Sherrilyn Ifill, the president of the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said later. “We need legislation to be passed in Congress.”The consequences of doing that — or not — could be profound, said Dr. Sabato. “If there was ever a moment to act, it would be now, because Republican legislatures with Republican governors are going to go even further as we move into the future,” he said.“For years, Democrats will point to this as a missed moment. And they’ll be right.”David Montgomery contributed reporting. More

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      Rep. James Clyburn Opposes Sanders Ally in Special Election

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      The decision by Representative James Clyburn to oppose an outspoken ally of Senator Bernie Sanders in a special election in Cleveland highlights the generational and ideological gulf in the Democratic Party.WASHINGTON — Early last year, as Bernie Sanders was surging through the first Democratic presidential primary races, Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, a kingmaker in his state, stepped in to endorse Joseph R. Biden Jr. before the primary there, helping vault the former vice president to the nomination.On Tuesday, Mr. Clyburn, the No. 3 House Democrat, took aim at one of Mr. Sanders’s most outspoken acolytes, Nina Turner, a hero to the left who is surging in her campaign in Ohio to claim the Cleveland-based congressional seat vacated by the housing secretary, Marcia L. Fudge.In a rare intervention into a party primary, Mr. Clyburn, a veteran lawmaker and the highest-ranking Black member of Congress, endorsed Shontel Brown, Ms. Turner’s leading opponent.He said his decision to back Ms. Brown, the chairwoman of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party, was not about Mr. Sanders, or even Ms. Turner, who remains the favorite before the contest on Aug. 3 in the heavily Democratic district. But he took a swipe at what he called the “sloganeering” of the party’s left flank, which has risen to power with calls for “Medicare for all,” and to “abolish ICE” and “defund the police.”“What I try to do is demonstrate by precept and example how we are to proceed as a party,” Mr. Clyburn said in an interview. “When I spoke out against sloganeering, like ‘Burn, baby, burn’ in the 1960s and ‘defund the police,’ which I think is cutting the throats of the party, I know exactly where my constituents are. They are against that, and I’m against that.”The special election in Cleveland is highlighting the vast generational divide and ideological gulf that the Democratic Party faces as the entire House leadership heads toward the sunset. Mr. Clyburn, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House majority leader, Representative Steny H. Hoyer, are all octogenarians, leading an increasingly youthful, diverse and restive caucus. Ms. Pelosi even agreed to vacate her position after this Congress, and the next year will be an ideological battle over who will succeed her.Ms. Brown has the backing of the Democratic establishment, including not only Mr. Clyburn but also Hillary Clinton; Richard Cordray, a former Ohio attorney general; Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio, the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus; and moderate Democrats like Representatives Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and David Trone of Maryland.Ms. Turner, who has the endorsements of much of the House Progressive Caucus, including the so-called squad — Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna S. Pressley, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib — would be a strong new voice for the congressional left. And the left is increasingly focused on Black and Hispanic districts that they see as safe redoubts for ideological candidates.“You can’t take any one race and paint it as some larger aggregate for the whole country,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, said on Tuesday. “But I do think that Nina is a beloved leader in the progressive movement, and the degree of excitement that she’s generated and grass-roots energy and organizing in her direction is a real testament to the asset that the base of our party can provide.”Ms. Turner is undoubtedly a divisive figure as well. A prominent surrogate for Mr. Sanders in 2016 and a national co-chairwoman for his campaign in 2020, she has never minced words about what she calls “corporate Democrats.” She has declined to say whether she voted for Ms. Clinton in 2016, and before Election Day in November, she suggested the choice between Donald J. Trump and Mr. Biden was the choice between a full bowl of excrement and half a bowl.Nina Turner, who is running for a House seat in Ohio, was a prominent surrogate for Senator Bernie Sanders in 2016 and a national co-chairwoman for his campaign in 2020.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesAt an event last weekend, Ms. Turner sat beside the rapper Killer Mike, another supporter of Mr. Sanders, as he suggested that Mr. Clyburn sold out cheap to Mr. Biden, delivering his endorsement in exchange for making Juneteenth into a federal holiday.“I think it’s incredibly stupid to not cut a deal before you get someone elected president, and the only thing you get is a federal holiday and nothing tangible out of it,” he said, as Ms. Turner approvingly interjected, “You better talk about it.”To this day, some Democrats say Ms. Turner’s hostility cost Mrs. Clinton key votes on the left in the swing states that decided the 2016 election.In an interview Tuesday, Ms. Turner blanched at any notion of disloyalty to the party for which she has served as a Cleveland city councilwoman, a state senator, the Democratic nominee for secretary of state, and a two-time convention delegate for Barack Obama, when Mr. Biden shared his ticket.“I wish people were more concerned about the suffering that I have enumerated than the colorful words that I have used,” she said.Mr. Clyburn said “colorful words” did not factor in his endorsement, though in an advertisement to begin running on Wednesday, he listed the names of past Black members of Congress who represented Ohio and said they had been effective “because they focused on you, not on themselves.”Both Ms. Turner and Ms. Brown are Black, as is Ms. Fudge, whom Mr. Clyburn aggressively promoted to lead the Agriculture Department before Mr. Biden selected her as housing secretary.Ms. Brown carefully plays on Ms. Turner’s outspokenness in her campaign.“As the leader of this party, I am truly skilled in building bridges and doing it without attacking people or insulting them,” she said Tuesday. If sent to Washington, she added, “I won’t have to start with a long letter of apology.”Ms. Turner has a ready answer for that, pointing to the blistering attack Kamala Harris, then a senator, directed at Mr. Biden during one of the presidential debates, when she said his policies had exacerbated racial injustice.“If those two can be side by side now, then surely the president and I can come together,” she said, though she added that her campaign is “not about loyalty to any one person.”She has been trying to make amends, commending the Biden administration for its pandemic response, its huge coronavirus aid package and its social policy proposals, while saying Democrats need to go further — on student debt forgiveness, a $15-an-hour minimum wage and climate change,And ultimately, ideology, not style, is the biggest issue confronting the Democratic Party.“These generational shifts are absolutely a theme throughout the caucus across a lot of different issues,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said. “That’s why I think Nina’s groundswell is exciting, because it’s not any one person’s endorsement. It’s really the sum of everything that we’ve seen.” More