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    Santos’s Lies Were Known to Some Well-Connected Republicans

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    In late 2021, as he prepared to make a second run for a suburban New York City House seat, George Santos gave permission for his campaign to commission a routine background study on him.Campaigns frequently rely on this kind of research, known as vulnerability studies, to identify anything problematic that an opponent might seize on. But when the report came back on Mr. Santos, the findings by a Washington research firm were far more startling, suggesting a pattern of deception that cut to the heart of the image he had cultivated as a wealthy financier.Some of Mr. Santos’s own vendors were so alarmed after seeing the study in late November 2021 that they urged him to drop out of the race, and warned that he could risk public humiliation by continuing. When Mr. Santos disputed key findings and vowed to continue running, members of the campaign team quit, according to three of the four people The New York Times spoke to with knowledge of the study.The episode, which has not been previously reported, is the most explicit evidence to date that a small circle of well-connected Republican campaign professionals had indications far earlier than the public that Mr. Santos was spinning an elaborate web of deceits, and that the candidate himself had been warned about just how vulnerable those lies were to unraveling.Fraudulent academic degrees. Involvement in a firm accused of a Ponzi scheme. Multiple evictions and a suspended driver’s license. All of it was in the report, which also said that Mr. Santos, who is openly gay, had been married to a woman. The report did not offer conclusive details, but some people briefed on the findings wondered whether the marriage was done for immigration purposes.It remains unclear who else, if anyone, learned about the background study’s contents at the time, or if the information made its way to party leaders in New York or Washington. Mr. Santos, 34, managed to keep almost all of it from the public until after he was elected, when an investigation by The Times independently unearthed the problematic claims documented by researchers and others that they missed.After The Times sent a detailed list of questions for this story, a lawyer for Mr. Santos, Joe Murray, said “it would be inappropriate to respond due to ongoing investigations.” A spokeswoman for Mr. Santos’s congressional office did not respond to a similar request for comment.Mr. Santos himself has admitted to some fabrications, but insists he was merely embellishing his qualifications. He has vowed to serve out a two-year term in Congress. State, local and federal prosecutors are now investigating his activity.A 2021 background check revealed that Mr. Santos had likely lied about graduating from Baruch College and New York University, which The New York Times publicly revealed a year later.Alejandra Villa Loarca/Newsday, via Getty ImagesThe existence of the vulnerability study underscores one of the most vexing questions still surrounding the strange saga of George Santos: How did the gate-keeping system of American politics — Republican leaders, adversarial Democrats and the prying media — allow a fabulist who boasted about phantom mansions and a fake résumé get away with his con for so long?Interviews with more than two dozen associates, adversaries and donors, as well as contemporaneous communications and other documents reviewed by The Times, show that Mr. Santos inspired no shortage of suspicion during his 2022 campaign, including in the upper echelons of his own party.Well-connected supporters suspected him of lying and demanded to see his résumé. Another former campaign vendor warned a state party official about what he believed were questionable business practices. And the head of the main House Republican super PAC told some lawmakers and donors that he believed Mr. Santos’s story did not add up.But in each case, rather than denounce Mr. Santos publicly, the Republicans looked the other way. They neglected to get the attention of more powerful leaders or to piece together shards of doubt about him, and allowed him to run unopposed in the 2022 primary. Some assumed that Mr. Santos’s falsehoods were garden variety political embellishments; others thought Democrats would do their dirty work for them and Mr. Santos would be exposed in the heat of a general election campaign.But Democrats struggled to do so. In 2020, the party incumbent, Tom Suozzi, dismissed Mr. Santos as a nonviable threat, and conducted no opposition research at all while cruising to victory. When Democrats did vet him two years later, they failed to find some of the most egregious fabrications that prompted members of Mr. Santos’s campaign team to quit.Democrats then labored unsuccessfully to convince the news media, which had been weakened by years of staff cuts and consumed by higher-profile races, to dig into the troubling leads they did unearth. Aside from The North Shore Leader — a small weekly newspaper on Long Island, which labeled Mr. Santos “a fake” — and a few opinion pieces in Newsday, New York’s media machine paid Mr. Santos scant attention.More on the George Santos ControversyBehind The Times’s Investigation: The Times journalists Michael Gold and Grace Ashford discuss how Representative George Santos was elected to Congress and how they discovered that he was a fraud.Split View: New York Republicans are ready to rid themselves of the newly elected representative after his pattern of deception was revealed. But House Republican leaders badly need his vote.Facing Inquiries: Federal and local prosecutors are investigating whether Mr. Santos committed crimes involving his finances or made misleading statements, while authorities in Brazil said they would revive a 2008 fraud case against him.“The reality is there’s no defense, it shouldn’t have happened,” said Gerard Kassar, the chairman of the New York Conservative Party, a small but influential partner to the Republican Party that backed Mr. Santos. “It would be impossible and probably incorrect for me to say this could never happen again, but it won’t be from me not looking again.”Early warning signs missedMr. Santos had never held elected office until joining Congress in January.Jackie Molloy/BloombergMr. Santos was a political neophyte when he first showed interest in running for a House seat made up of parts of Queens and Nassau County in 2020. His only real electoral experience ended quickly: A year earlier, he was forced to drop his insurgent campaign for a low-level party position in Queens because he lacked enough valid signatures to make the ballot, according to Joann Ariola, a New York City Council member who led the Queens Republican Party at the time.Among the tight-knit Republican circles on Long Island, he was virtually unknown. And in Queens, party leaders were still sour over his initial foray.In normal circumstances, Mr. Santos would have been shooed away. Republicans in Nassau County, which comprises the bulk of New York’s Third Congressional District, have long been famous for exercising tight control over who runs, grooming and rewarding a stable of candidates like an old-school political machine.But with the country in lockdown in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic and the district expected to remain under Democratic control, no one else put their hand up to run. Mr. Santos submitted a résumé and answered a vetting questionnaire riddled with lies, including that he had a 3.9 grade-point average from a college he never graduated from and job credentials he did not possess. A vetting team for the county Republican Party accepted his answers without question.“I guess unfortunately we rely on the person to be truthful to us,” Joseph G. Cairo Jr., the Republican Party county chairman, said in an interview. This week, he called on Mr. Santos to resign and said he would no longer be welcome in the Nassau Republican Party.When Mr. Santos chose to run again two years later, local Republicans again gave him their support. They expected that flipping the district would once again be a stretch and, in any case, Mr. Cairo’s priority was winning state and local offices, which control thousands of local jobs and major tax and spending decisions. Efforts to recruit a more formidable candidate, like State Senator Jack Martins, did not pan out.There were already questions swirling by that time among donors and political figures about where exactly Mr. Santos lived and the source of the money that supported the lavish lifestyle he boasted about.In the summer of 2021, one of the former advisers to Mr. Santos, who insisted on anonymity, discovered his connections to Harbor City Capital, the Florida-based firm accused of a Ponzi scheme, and to other suspicious business practices that Mr. Santos had obscured. The adviser said he took the findings to a state party official later that fall and tried to pitch the story to a newspaper, which he said did not pursue it. The Harbor City connection was later reported in The Daily Beast.Joseph G. Cairo Jr., the Nassau County Republican committee chairman, was among nearly two dozen local Republicans who recently called for Mr. Santos’s resignation.Johnny Milano for The New York TimesAround that time, Mr. Santos began attracting the suspicion of a pair of friends and potential donors active in New York Republican circles. Mr. Santos claimed to one of them, Kristin Bianco, to have secured the endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump, when he had not. That prompted her to express concerns about Mr. Santos to plugged-in Republicans, including associates of Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, one of Mr. Santos’s biggest early backers whose top political aide was assisting his campaign. Later Ms. Bianco and her friend became suspicious that they could not verify his work history.“We’re just so tired of being duped,” Ms. Bianco texted Mr. Santos in early 2022, after he refused her request to produce his résumé. Mr. Santos wrote back that he found the request “a bit invasive as it’s something very personal.”In the run-up to the 2022 contest, Dan Conston, a close ally of Speaker Kevin McCarthy who leads the Congressional Leadership Fund, the main House Republican super PAC, also confided in lawmakers, donors and other associates that he was worried information would come out exposing Mr. Santos as a fraud, according to two people with knowledge of the conversations who insisted on anonymity to describe them and declined to provide more detail.In the spring of 2022, Mr. Santos’s race suddenly became competitive, after a state court undid a Democratic gerrymander and adopted new congressional boundaries friendlier to Republicans. Despite the prime pickup opportunity, the Congressional Leadership Fund deliberately withheld support from the contest — but never spoke about it publicly. A spokesman for Mr. Conston’s group declined to comment on its campaign strategy or its leaders’ conversations.If party leaders were aware of any of the concerns about Mr. Santos, or others raised by his former vendors, they found ways to reassure themselves.“The thinking was the guy went through a campaign with Suozzi, who was a pretty tough and thorough guy,” said Peter T. King, a retired longtime Republican congressman from Nassau County. “So anything would have come out.”Opposition research misses the markRobert Zimmerman, center, opted not to spend campaign funds on opposition research against Mr. Santos as they ran to replace Representative Tom Suozzi, center right.John Minchillo/Associated PressThe assumption that any damaging information about Mr. Santos would have been found in the 2020 campaign turned out to be misguided. Mr. Suozzi, the popular Democratic incumbent, got a quote for the cost of an outside firm to do opposition research on Mr. Santos. But he decided not to spend the money — sparing Mr. Santos meaningful scrutiny in his first race.“No one knew George Santos, and he had less than $50,000 in campaign funds against a popular incumbent who never even said his name,” said Kim Devlin, a Suozzi adviser. “We didn’t feed anything to the press because why would we give him press?”With a more competitive race expected in 2022, researchers at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee did the first meaningful opposition research on Mr. Santos that summer, assembling an 87-page opposition research book. It extensively documents Mr. Santos’s past statements — including his extreme views on abortion rights and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.Using public records, the committee’s researchers also turned up some red flags in Mr. Santos’s biography: multiple evictions; no I.R.S. registration for an animal charity he had claimed to have created; details about his involvement with Harbor City (Mr. Santos himself was not named in the Ponzi scheme allegations) and more recent suspicious business dealings; as well as apparent discrepancies in his financial disclosure forms that raised questions about the source of hundreds of thousands of dollars he had lent his campaign.But with orders to produce similar research books on dozens of other candidates across the country, the committee’s strained research team left stones unturned. At several points, researchers explicitly flagged the need for follow-up inquiries, such as to “determine whether Santos has a criminal record.” And their study failed to turn up key problems that prompted Mr. Santos’s own vendors to quit months earlier: his fabricated educational record, his marriage to a woman and questions about his residency.A spokeswoman for the D.C.C.C. declined to comment.Opposition research by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee suggested that further inquiries should ascertain whether Mr. Santos had a criminal record.Mary Altaffer/Associated PressMr. Santos’s 2022 opponent, Robert Zimmerman, got hold of the research book in late August, right after he won a competitive and costly Democratic primary. He decided not to spend what would have likely been tens of thousands of dollars to do more rigorous outside research.Other Democrats have second-guessed that decision in recent weeks, but at the time, Mr. Zimmerman had his reasons. While presidential and Senate campaigns typically have the financial and staff resources for exhaustive opposition research, House campaigns tend to rely on the D.C.C.C. to conduct their research.Strapped for time and cash, Mr. Zimmerman concluded that his money would be better spent on advertising and canvassing operations. And he believed that the campaign committee’s report as well as Mr. Santos’s far-right views on abortion and Jan. 6 — two of the year’s most prominent campaign themes — gave him powerful campaign fodder.“We knew a lot about him did not add up; we were very conscious of that,” Mr. Zimmerman said in an interview. “But we didn’t have the resources as a campaign to do the kind of digging that had to be done.”Mr. Zimmerman said his campaign tried to prod reporters at local and national news outlets with leads about Mr. Santos, but had little luck. The candidate himself, a public relations executive, did not hold news conferences or use paid advertising to draw attention to known discrepancies in his opponent’s record.“The response we got back pretty universally was they just didn’t have the personnel, the time or the money to do it,” Mr. Zimmerman said, referring to the publications the campaign contacted. “One person said to me, there are 60 to 80 crazy people running, we can’t investigate them all.”One outlet stood out, The North Shore Leader in Long Island, run by a Republican lawyer and former House candidate, Grant Lally. The paper published a pair of articles casting doubt on Mr. Santos’s claims that he owned extravagant cars and homes, and labeling him a “fabulist — a fake,” though it did not have other specifics that would later come out about his falsified résumé or his past.None of the bigger outlets, including The Times, followed up with extensive stories examining his real address or his campaign’s questionable spending, focusing their coverage instead on Mr. Santos’s extreme policy views and the historic nature of a race between two openly gay candidates.What did top Republicans know?Representative Daniel Goldman of New York, who has called for Mr. Santos’s resignation, filed a formal ethics complaint against him.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesIn the aftermath of Mr. Santos’s exposure, Democrats have said that their researchers would likely not have turned up much of the information uncovered by The Times and other media outlets after the election. Private institutions like schools and businesses are more inclined to share educational and employment records with reporters than with political parties, they say.But the opposition research firm Mr. Santos hired in the fall of 2021 — his campaign reported spending $16,600 on Capital Research Group LLC — seems to have had relatively little trouble turning up some of that same information.People working for his campaign had grown accustomed to Mr. Santos’s braggadocio and outlandish claims. But when they approached him about conducting a vulnerability study, the objective was more routine: producing a record of his past statements and other public information that would be useful later when his opponents started crafting attacks.Mr. Santos quickly signed off, but as the research dragged on, he asked to cancel the contract with the firm. When the results came back, it was clear why.Researchers found no evidence that Mr. Santos had earned degrees at Baruch College and New York University, as he had claimed. They turned up records showing his involvement with the company accused of a Ponzi scheme — a relationship he had played down. They found eviction records, business records and a suspended Florida driver’s license, which together raised questions about whether he was a legal New York resident and as rich as he claimed to be.The report also said that Mr. Santos, who was openly gay and appeared to be living with a man at the time, had been married to a woman. The study missed other fabrications that The Times later uncovered, including false claims that he worked at Citibank and Goldman Sachs. Nor did it turn up records of fraud charges in Brazil years earlier.The Times has not seen the vulnerability study, but it was described in recent days by four people with knowledge of the report who were granted anonymity because it remains confidential.The people working for Mr. Santos convened an emergency conference call to discuss the results on Dec. 1, 2021. They presented him with a choice: bow out of the race with dignity, or stay in and risk letting the Democrats turn up the same information and use it to destroy his political and personal future.After promising to produce diplomas that would prove his degrees (he ultimately did not), Mr. Santos said he would think it over. When he came back a few days later, he said he had spoken with other advisers and was convinced the findings were not as bad as they were being portrayed. He was staying in the race. Most of his team quit.What top Republicans were told of Mr. Santos’s issues is more difficult to chart. Mr. Santos required those working for his campaign to sign nondisclosure agreements, limiting the spread of the vulnerability report. But one person who was briefed on its contents said that questions about Mr. Santos’s background were discussed well beyond campaign vendors. The National Republican Congressional Committee, which closely monitors House candidates and backed Mr. Santos, sometimes requests such reports as a condition of its support.A spokesman for the group declined to comment for this article, but pointed to an earlier statement denying it had previous knowledge that Mr. Santos’s record was largely fabricated. The N.R.C.C. typically does not conduct its own independent vulnerability studies on candidates.Mr. McCarthy, who ultimately endorsed Mr. Santos and helped his campaign, has said relatively little about the fabrications, and has refused calls to try to oust him from the House as the speaker seeks to maintain an exceedingly narrow majority in Washington. This week, Mr. McCarthy played down Mr. Santos’s lies, comparing them to other politicians who have embellished parts of their résumés and implying he would not undo the will of voters who elected him.The House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, has refused calls to push for Mr. Santos’s ouster.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesSpokesmen for Mr. McCarthy did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story, and a spokesman for Ms. Stefanik, the highest-ranking New York House Republican, declined to comment. Allies of Mr. McCarthy maintain that they did not know about the baldest fabrications and misrepresentations, like those turned up by Republican researchers in late 2021, but only had more general concerns about his honesty.Despite the financial resources he helped marshal to the race, Mr. McCarthy had good personal reason to be wary of Mr. Santos. Earlier in 2021, an aide to the candidate was caught impersonating Mr. McCarthy’s chief of staff while soliciting campaign contributions.By the spring of 2022, Mr. Santos was in need of a new team of consultants. With help from Ms. Stefanik’s top political aide, he chose a new consulting firm and shared the vulnerability study.The new crop of vendors, led by Big Dog Strategies, never spoke to their predecessors, though, and did not know why they had left the campaign. After Mr. Santos again insisted he had graduated from college, and addressed other red flags raised in the report, the new team accepted his explanations and began plotting a campaign. They would use issues — not the candidate’s biography — to win the race.Mr. Santos has said he will not resign, and intends to serve out his two-year term.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesReporting was contributed by More

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      Far-Right Republicans Face Tough Races in Swing Districts, Testing McCarthy

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      The top House Republican spent freely to try to block extreme candidates who could imperil the party’s chances of winning the majority or challenge his path to the speakership. Some won anyway.WASHINGTON — As the midterm election season enters a critical final phase, some far-right Republicans are facing headwinds in congressional races that once appeared to be prime opportunities for the party to win seats, complicating the plans of Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader who aspires to be speaker, and fueling Democratic hopes of cutting their losses in their fight to retain control of the House.Some of the candidates have risen despite the efforts of Mr. McCarthy, the California Republican who spent freely to defeat them in primaries and toiled to strike a balance between courting the mainstream and making peace with the ascendant extremists in his party’s ranks. Mr. McCarthy now faces possible losses in competitive districts — or the prospect of adding to the list of hard-right lawmakers in his conference who may be difficult to control if he becomes the House speaker next year.The situation underscores the growing influence of extremists styling themselves in the image of former President Donald J. Trump, and how the Republican Party’s core supporters continue to gravitate to such figures.“The story of the last seven years is Kevin McCarthy slowly realizing they’ve lost control of the party that is now dominated by Trump and the voters who love him and love candidates like him,” said Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump Republican political strategist. “Trump controls the base, but the base is large enough to dictate the outcomes of primaries.”In New Hampshire, recent polling has shown the unpopularity of Karoline Leavitt, the 25-year-old ultra-MAGA challenger to Representative Chris Pappas, a Democrat. In a Saint Anselm College Survey Center poll conducted late last month, only 39 percent of voters had a favorable view of Ms. Leavitt, who has repeated Mr. Trump’s election lies, compared with 45 percent who regarded her negatively. Recent polls showed her trailing Mr. Pappas by 8 percentage points, although an AARP New Hampshire poll released last week showed the race to be neck-and-neck.A super PAC aligned with Mr. McCarthy spent $1.3 million to back Matt Mowers, a former Trump administration official, over Ms. Leavitt, and an additional $1 million during the primary attacking Mr. Pappas. Since winning the primary, Ms. Leavitt has not tacked to the middle, appearing on “War Room,” the podcast hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, two days after her victory.Karoline Leavitt initially said she would back Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio over Mr. McCarthy for House speaker, though she has since changed her position.Charles Krupa/Associated PressIn North Carolina, the McCarthy-affiliated group spent nearly $600,000 to try to stop the nomination of Sandy Smith, a self-described entrepreneur and farmer who has proudly admitted that she marched on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But Ms. Smith won the primary, prompting political prognosticators to rate her district in North Carolina, which had previously trended only slightly toward Democrats, more decisively blue.In central New York, Mr. McCarthy poured $1 million into the campaign of Steve Wells, a former criminal prosecutor and businessman who was more of a known quantity, over Brandon Williams. Mr. Williams had called the overturning of Roe v. Wade — the Supreme Court decision that had established abortion rights in 1973 — a “monumental victory” and suggested that there were instances when a woman’s life should be sacrificed to deliver her unborn child.Mr. Williams is ahead in most general election polling, but the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter that analyzes elections, still rates the race a tossup. Mr. McCarthy and the super PAC he is aligned with, the Congressional Leadership Fund, are now fully behind Mr. Williams.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Arizona’s Governor’s Race: Democrats are openly expressing their alarm that Katie Hobbs, the party’s nominee for governor in the state, is fumbling a chance to defeat Kari Lake in one of the most closely watched races.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but members of his party have learned to tolerate his behavior.When Republicans have bemoaned issues with “candidate quality,” they have mostly been talking about Senate races, where the influence of Mr. Trump helped contribute to a roster of candidates that has struggled in competitive races. In the House, Republicans have prided themselves on entering the general election with a diverse set of candidates that includes people of color, veterans and women, and on quietly thwarting the ascendance of some far-right candidates who leaders feared would alienate independent voters and cause problems if elected.Those efforts were led in large part by the Congressional Leadership Fund, which is competing in 53 races across the country.But the contests in which the minority leader and other top Republicans failed to block more incendiary candidates reflect the enduring influence of the far right and the challenge that Mr. McCarthy is likely to face should he succeed in winning back the majority. In a very narrow battlefield, even a handful of losses could make the difference between an operational majority and an utterly dysfunctional House.Some hard-right Republican candidates are facing headwinds in races that once appeared to be prime opportunities for their party to win House seats.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times“The House majority will be won district by district, and running with the weakest and most extreme candidates in swing districts will cost the G.O.P.,” said Tommy Garcia, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Mr. Mowers, who lost his primary to Ms. Leavitt, defended Mr. McCarthy’s track record and said it would not hurt Republicans’ chances at taking the House.“No one can bat a thousand,” he said. “And while a few candidates from outside the mainstream have emerged that will have challenges winning a general election, the playing field is more than wide enough to recapture a majority.”In a few cases, the candidate whom Mr. McCarthy failed to defeat is thriving, and the outcome of the primary might not affect Republicans’ chances in the general election. Recent public polls have shown Mr. Williams, for instance, ahead of Francis Conole, the Democrat competing for an open seat in a competitive district in upstate New York.Mr. McCarthy’s super PAC often spends in places where its favored candidate is struggling, so it is not surprising that even with the outside boost of funds, some of those candidates still lost. Overall, the Congressional Leadership Fund sees its primary spending as a success story. The group helped several Republican incumbents fend off challenges from more extreme candidates in competitive districts, including Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania, David Valadao and Young Kim in California and Andrew Garbarino in New York.“By recruiting strong candidates and supporting them through their primaries, we were able to make our own luck,” said Dan Conston, the organization’s president. “Candidate quality matters, and proactively engaging put us in a dramatically better position not to just win the majority, but to elect stars that will be the future of the party.”But elsewhere across the country, right-wing candidates whom Mr. McCarthy tried to knock out have prevailed, bolstering Democrats’ chances of winning a seat.In Arizona, Kelly Cooper, who has refused to acknowledge the 2020 election results and called for the immediate release of people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, defeated Tanya Wheeless, the granddaughter of a Mexican immigrant whom Mr. McCarthy’s PAC endorsed and helped fund.In the Third Congressional District in Washington, a group aligned with Mr. McCarthy, Take Back the House 2022, donated to Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler, who was one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump. But she was defeated in her primary by Joe Kent, who has said he would oppose Mr. McCarthy for the speakership if elected.Ms. Leavitt initially said she would back Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a hard-right Republican, over Mr. McCarthy for speaker; she has since changed her position and said she would support Mr. McCarthy.“They’ve struggled to paint true Trump believers in a negative light, because that’s where the base is, particularly in the South,” said David Wasserman, an election expert with the Cook Political Report. “They have to find other ways to try and disqualify these candidates.”J. R. Majewski’s candidacy in Ohio has been buffeted by accusations that he lied about his military service.Gaelen Morse/ReutersThen there are the races that Mr. McCarthy stayed out of, where extreme candidates have prevailed and are now imperiling the party’s chances. In Ohio, J.R. Majewski, a Trump-backed Air Force veteran who was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and has expressed sympathy for QAnon conspiracy theorists, emerged as the surprise winner from a primary in which the Congressional Leadership Fund did not back any candidate.Mr. McCarthy then embraced Mr. Majewski, campaigning with him in the state, where he declared, “We have a candidate that understands what Ohio needs.”Mr. Majewski’s candidacy has since been buffeted by accusations that he lied about his military service, undercutting his challenge to longtime Representative Marcy Kaptur. The National Republican Congressional Committee, the party’s campaign arm, canceled about $1 million in advertisements to help his campaign.In the general election, Mr. McCarthy has embraced the entire gamut of Republican candidates, striving to avoid appearing as though he is trying to purge the party of its Trumpist wing. He is now vocally backing Ms. Leavitt, and the National Republican Congressional Committee praised Ms. Smith after her victory.That mirrors Mr. McCarthy’s approach in Washington, where he has elevated some of the more extreme members of his conference, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. The minority leader has made room for some of Mr. Trump’s favored elected officials even as he worked to defeat others he viewed as unelectable.“He’s living in a space where he has to conduct two parallel realities,” Ms. Longwell said. “He can say, ‘I’m knocking out some of these really crazy characters that are making us look bad,’ and he’s playing ball with some of Trump’s people.”Rachel Shorey More

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      Fact-Checking a GOP Attack Ad That Blames a Democrat for Inflation

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      In a Nevada tossup race that could help decide whether Republicans gain control of the House, a super PAC aligned with congressional G.O.P. leaders recently mounted an economically driven attack against Representative Dina Titus.In a 30-second ad released on Saturday, the Congressional Leadership Fund accused Ms. Titus, a Democrat who represents Las Vegas, of supporting runaway spending that has exacerbated inflation.Here’s a fact check.WHAT WAS SAID“Economists said excessive spending would lead to inflation, but she didn’t listen. Titus recklessly spent trillions of taxpayer dollars,” the ad’s narrator says, and, later: “Now we’re paying the price. Higher prices on everything. Economy in recession. Dina Titus. She spent big … and we got burned.”This lacks context. The implication here is that Democrats’ policies led to inflation. We recently put this question to our economics correspondent, Ben Casselman, who said: “True, although we can argue all day about how much.”He explains: “Here’s what I think we can say with confidence: Inflation soared last year, primarily for a bunch of pandemic-related reasons — snarled supply chains, shifts in consumer demand — but also at least in part because of all the stimulus money that we poured into the economy. Then, just when most forecasters expected inflation to start falling, it took off again because of the jump in oil prices tied to the war in Ukraine.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.A Focus on Crime: In the final phase of the midterm campaign, Republicans are stepping up their attacks about crime rates, but Democrats are pushing back.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Doug Mastriano, the Trump-backed G.O.P. nominee, is being heavily outspent and trails badly in polling. National Republicans are showing little desire to help him.Megastate G.O.P. Rivalry: Against the backdrop of their re-election bids, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida are locked in an increasingly high-stakes contest of one-upmanship.Rushing to Raise Money: Senate Republican nominees are taking precious time from the campaign trail to gather cash from lobbyists in Washington — and close their fund-raising gap with Democratic rivals.“Now, inflation is falling again. Overall consumer prices were up just 0.1 percent in August, and a separate measure showed prices falling in July. But a lot of that is because of the recent drop in gas prices, which we all know could reverse at any time. So-called core inflation, which sets aside volatile food and energy prices, actually accelerated in August.“All of which means we don’t know how long the recent pause in inflation will last, and we definitely don’t know whether Biden will get credit for it if it does.”Backing up a bit, it’s worth noting that not all of the stimulus spending was at the direction of President Biden and Democrats. The first two rounds were approved during the Trump administration. And, economists were not united in warning about inflation.As for the economy being in recession? “Most economists still don’t think the United States meets the formal definition,” Mr. Casselman wrote in July, and he said that remained true as we head into October. But such calls are only made in retrospect. “Even if we are already in a recession, we might not know it — or, at least, might not have official confirmation of it — until next year,” Mr. Casselman said.What was said“Tax breaks for luxury electric cars.”This is true. The Inflation Reduction Act contains a tax credit for electric vehicles. Their final assembly must be completed in North America to be eligible for the credit, which, indeed, extends to several luxury automakers. The list includes Audi, BMW, Lincoln and Mercedes, but also non-luxury models like the Ford Escape and Nissan Leaf. What about Tesla? It made the list of 2022 models, but it has already reached a federal cap of the number of vehicles eligible for the credit, according to the Energy Department.What was said“Even a billion dollars to prisoners, including the Boston Bomber.”This is exaggerated. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted of helping carry out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, received a $1,400 Covid-19 stimulus rebate from the federal government in June 2021. The money was part of the American Rescue Plan Act, which President Biden signed into law after it passed the House on a mostly party-line vote, with Ms. Titus supporting it.But what the Republican attack ad failed to disclose was that Mr. Tsarnaev was required by a federal judge to return the money as part of restitution payments to his victims. Another glaring omission was the fact that inmates were previously eligible for Covid-19 relief payments when former President Donald J. Trump was in office, though the Internal Revenue Service and some Republicans had later tried to rescind the payments. A federal judge thwarted those efforts, ruling that inmates could keep the payments.Those nuances haven’t stopped Republicans from latching onto the issue of inmates receiving Covid-19 payments against Democrats in key races across the nation, including Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. More

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      Democrats’ Departures Narrow Path to Holding the House Majority

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      WASHINGTON — Hurrying from the House floor to a waiting car on a recent afternoon, Representative Cheri Bustos, Democrat of Illinois, rattled off an exhaustive analysis of her conservative-leaning district in one minute flat, listing the number of family-owned farms in the area and landing on the argument her party believes could save their House majority: that the Republican running for the seat has “extreme views on women’s health issues.”It is that message discipline and deep knowledge of her western Illinois constituency that has allowed Ms. Bustos to win election five times in a district that has recently leaned conservative, supporting former President Donald J. Trump both times he ran for president.The problem for Democrats is that Ms. Bustos is not running for re-election. She is one of more than a dozen Democratic lawmakers in competitive districts who have said they will depart Congress after this year, leaving less experienced, relatively lesser-known candidates to fight it out with a Republican to keep their seats.In a midterm election cycle in which Democrats’ majority is at stake, the rash of retirements has complicated their efforts to hold the House, even as the political terrain has shifted in their favor in recent weeks in a surge of enthusiasm around protecting abortion rights. Instead of battle-tested incumbents, first-time candidates without the inherent advantages of incumbency — name recognition, experience and fund-raising networks — are defending the districts.Political handicappers expect at least six open seats alone — some of them skewed conservative by redistricting — to swing into Republican control, in Wisconsin, Texas, Arizona, Michigan and Florida. Republicans need a net gain of just five seats to win back the majority.Elsewhere around the country, Democrats may be able to hang on to their open seats, but the incumbent exodus will make doing so more costly, leaving less money for the party to fight it out in other competitive races.“There is a challenge that comes with these retirements,” Tim Persico, the executive director of House Democrats’ campaign arm, said in an interview. “It just means there are some places where we wouldn’t be spending money where we do have to invest a little bit more. But it’s really a resource challenge. It’s not a ‘We can’t win’ sort of thing.”Representative Ron Kind, left, has “run out of gas” after 13 terms in the House.Doug Mills/The New York TimesWhen House Democrats announced their retirements last year, the political terrain for the party looked bleak. Dreading the prospect of fighting their way out of bruising re-election battles only to be relegated to the backbenches of the minority in an increasingly toxic institution, party veterans headed for the exits, opting to retire or run for higher office.But the political winds shifted after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, giving Democrats hope that they could stem a Republican wave. The nonpartisan analysts at the Cook Political Report downgraded its projected outlook for Republican gains last month from 15 to 30 seats to 10 to 20 seats in a post titled, “Red Wave Looks More Like a Ripple.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Inflation Concerns Persist: In the six-month primary season that has just ended, several issues have risen and fallen, but nothing has dislodged inflation and the economy from the top of voters’ minds.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate candidate in Georgia claimed his business donated 15 percent of its profits to charities. Three of the four groups named as recipients say they didn’t receive money.North Carolina Senate Race: Are Democrats about to get their hearts broken again? The contest between Cheri Beasley, a Democrat, and her G.O.P. opponent, Representative Ted Budd, seems close enough to raise their hopes.Echoing Trump: Six G.O.P. nominees for governor and the Senate in critical midterm states, all backed by former President Donald J. Trump, would not commit to accepting this year’s election results.That has left some Democrats privately lamenting the retirements, noting that their party could have cemented some tough seats on the map had their incumbents decided to run for re-election.“There’s no guarantee that the Democratic incumbents who are not running again would have won in 2022 because some of them represent some Republican-leaning areas,” said Nathan Gonzales, a longtime election analyst and the publisher of Inside Elections, a political newsletter. “But they would have started from a stronger place and probably would receive a bit more help because they are sitting members of Congress who are currently on the Hill making policy.”Representative Ron Kind, for example, was widely considered the only Democrat who could hold his seat in rural western Wisconsin. He announced his retirement in August 2021, telling reporters that after 13 terms in office holding down a conservative-leaning district that he had “run out of gas.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“I had to face a serious job review every two years for 26 years,” Mr. Kind said.And in Texas, Representative Vicente Gonzalez changed seats in an effort to run in a friendlier district, vacating his newly drawn South Texas seat and leaving it open to a bitter primary contest to replace him. Ultimately, his moderate would-be successor was defeated by an unabashed progressive, potentially making the seat even more difficult for Democrats to hold.Republicans claim credit for helping to orchestrate the retirements. The Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with House Republican leaders, began advertising early against Democratic incumbents in competitive districts, offering a preview of the political attacks they would face in the midterms in an effort to goad them into leaving Congress. The strategy, said the group’s president, Dan Conston, “paid dividends.”G.K. Butterfield will be departing after 18 years in Congress.Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images“Many of the best offense opportunities in the House this cycle are open seats because we’ve erased all of the incumbents’ natural advantages like resources and voter familiarity,” Mr. Conston said. “Democrats are already walking away from key open seats, and this is inevitably the first group they’ll cut off.”Democrats argue that they recruited candidates to succeed the retiring incumbents who are already well-known in their communities, pointing to Eric Sorensen, the former television meteorologist who is running for Ms. Bustos’s seat, and Don Davis, a state senator and former mayor who is running in northeastern North Carolina to replace Representative G.K. Butterfield, who is departing after 18 years in Congress.Mr. Sorensen, for example, has sought to emphasize his nearly two decades on local television news, making that credential the centerpiece of his first television ad.“Neighbors look out for each other, keep each other safe,” Mr. Sorensen says in a voice-over as a clip of him giving the weather report flashes on the screen. He adds: “As your meteorologist, I helped you prepare for your day. And being born and raised here, I know how special this place is.”And they plan to lean heavily into painting Republicans as out of step with their districts on abortion rights, an issue that has mobilized independent voters and women across the country.“The benefit of running against Republicans is that they continuously nominate the extreme of the extremes for some of these seats,” Mr. Persico said. “That makes holding onto them that much more likely.”But Republican candidates in several key races in open tossup seats — especially those running for Congress a second time — have significantly out-raised their Democratic counterparts, many of whom only recently emerged from competitive primary races.That dynamic — what Mr. Persico referred to as a “resource challenge” — means that those candidates may end up relying more heavily on outside groups, such as the party’s political action committee, to finance their contests, setting up tough decisions for Democrats about where to spread a finite pool of money as House Republicans’ super PAC continues to post fund-raising records.When Ms. Bustos prevailed in 2020, she raised more than twice as much money as her Republican opponent, bringing in about $5 million to Esther Joy King’s $2 million haul, and in the last days of the race, House Democrats’ PAC dumped $1 million into television ads against Ms. King, in a sign of just how close the contest was.This year, Ms. King has a sizable cash advantage over Mr. Sorensen, raising just over $3 million to Mr. Sorensen’s $500,000. She had $1.8 million on hand versus Mr. Sorensen’s $115,000, according to the latest publicly available campaign report, filed at the end of June. (Mr. Sorensen won his six-way primary just two days before the report was filed; Ms. Bustos said later that more recent filings would show that he had a “very good fund-raising quarter.”)In Mr. Kind’s district in Wisconsin, Derrick Van Orden, a former Navy SEAL who attended the Stop the Steal rally and was on the Capitol grounds during the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, has out-raised Democratic State Senator Brad Pfaff, $4,428,105 to $720,637, according to data from July.Such races historically have presented “headaches” for both parties, said Steve Israel, a former Democratic congressman from New York who led the party’s House campaign efforts in 2012 and 2014.“In terms of calculating how you win the majority, or retain the majority, second-guessing is not a factor,” Mr. Israel said. “You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. You have to be ready. You can never look back.” More

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      Young Kim of California Survives Her House Primary

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      Representative Young Kim of California, a Republican who is one of the first Korean American women in Congress, advanced to the general election in November after a hard-fought primary that became one of the most expensive races in the state.Ms. Kim was one of the top vote-getters in the June 7 House primary, according to The Associated Press. California’s primaries are open — all candidates, regardless of party, run on the same ballot and the top two vote-getters advance to the November general election.Ms. Kim will now face Asif Mahmood, a Democrat and a physician who is focusing on abortion access, in November in California’s 40th Congressional District, which encompasses parts of Orange and San Bernardino Counties.Ms. Kim currently represents another district, the 39th, where she captured her seat as a moderate Republican in 2020. The district was redrawn and now includes far more Republicans. Ms. Kim and other Republicans have been vying to reclaim Orange County, a decades-long Republican stronghold that shifted to the left during the Trump administration.In the final weeks of the campaign, Ms. Kim focused on her Republican opponent, Greg Raths, a councilman in Mission Viejo who is also a retired combat fighter pilot. Ms. Kim was backed by the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with the Republican leadership, which had called her race a “must win” for November. The super PAC and Ms. Kim’s campaign spent about $1.2 million on Republican television ads attacking Mr. Raths.One ad from Ms. Kim’s campaign accused Mr. Raths of raising taxes and saying he is “just like Biden and the liberals.” Mr. Raths, for his part, frequently reminded Republican voters that Ms. Kim had voted to censure former President Donald J. Trump and remove Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, from congressional committees.Mr. Mahmood, the Democrat, released an ad portraying Mr. Raths as too conservative on abortion, a move that some thought could raise the Republican’s profile and, in the state’s open-primary system, edge Ms. Kim out of the general election. More

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      An Arizona Democrat Tries to Hang On in a Trump-Tilting District

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      Representative Tom O’Halleran of Arizona is seeking re-election as his district leans further toward Trump. His strategy? Don’t change. “I am,” he says, “who I am.”Arizona has a history of producing lightning-rod members of Congress, like Representative Paul Gosar. But the Arizona politician you should be paying attention to — and who can potentially tell us a great deal about Democrats’ hopes of avoiding a 2022 wipeout in the House — probably isn’t on your radar.That would be Representative Tom O’Halleran, a Democrat who has been in office since 2017 and who started out his political career as something few Democrats can claim — a Republican.O’Halleran’s district was redrawn in 2020 and became tougher and Trumpier. Many say he’s doomed to fail, but O’Halleran is unfazed. Despite all the challenges Democrats face in the midterms this year — President Biden’s low approval ratings, historical precedent for the party in power, overheating inflation — O’Halleran believes old-fashioned retail politics will come through for him. His approach is an example of the stubborn yet necessary hope that Democrats can both localize and personalize their races in order to overcome a punishing national environment.“I’m not somebody that stokes the fire,” O’Halleran, 76, said in an interview last week. “I’m somebody that tries to keep it in the area where it’s contained so that we can continue to use it effectively.”Even before it was redrawn, O’Halleran’s district, which includes most of eastern Arizona, was highly competitive. Donald Trump carried it in 2016, the year O’Halleran won his seat. He has held it since then thanks in part to recruiting problems by Republicans, who have put forward an array of over-the-top and underwhelming candidates.This year, the Republican primary field includes a former contender on the reality TV show “Shark Tank” and a QAnon conspiracy theorist.But now the district is even friendlier to Republicans: Trump won 53 percent of its voters in 2020. Some Republicans argue that in this political environment, any conservative candidate who wins the primary will win the general election, so it’s less important for the party than it has been in the past to find a superstar candidate.“There’s a limit to how far you can outrun your party before political gravity eventually catches up with you, especially in a year like this,” said Calvin Moore, a spokesman for the Congressional Leadership Fund, House Republicans’ super PAC.O’Halleran has only so much control over his electoral fate, with the political world anticipating a Republican wave that flips the House. Some Democrats merely hope that O’Halleran and a few of the party’s other candidates in tough races can hold on and deny Republicans an overwhelming majority.In that scenario, O’Halleran is at the front lines of Democrats’ defense, defying the partisanship of his district as he has done multiple times before. And the way the Republican primary is shaking out, it’s very possible that O’Halleran could end up with another weak opponent in the general election.He feels confident either way.“I was a Republican, remember?” he said. “I’m the same person then as I am now. And so I think people will remember that.”‘I am who I am’You won’t find O’Halleran talking about progressive policies on cable news or criticizing his Republican colleagues in the newspaper. It’s all part of his political strategy.A former police officer in Chicago, he was first elected to the Arizona Legislature as a Republican in 2000, and served in both chambers through 2009. After losing his State Senate seat to a more conservative candidate, he unsuccessfully ran to return to the state Legislature as an independent, then ran for the U.S. House as a Democrat in 2016.He claims to do more town hall events than anybody else in Arizona. And while he acknowledges that fame allows some members of Congress to fill their campaign coffers and help build enthusiasm, he says that’s not for him.When asked how he’d respond to concerns from voters about gas prices and inflation, he launched into an explanation that included a description of a chart presented at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, sprinkled with mentions of supply and demand. When asked how he’d fit that message into a 30-second ad, he responded, “What will be in the 30-second campaign ad is my sincerity.”He said this race would come down to how much his constituents trust him, the same as in past races. That’s one reason he’s not changing his approach, even though he now has new constituents.“I am who I am,” he said, adding, “If I start changing because of that, that’s going to say to them I’m willing to make changes based on my ability to get elected versus my ability to help lead.”The competition across the aisleO’Halleran also dismisses the idea that he’s been lucky with his Republican competition over the years.In 2016, he was challenged by a former sheriff who had stepped down from Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign after being accused of threatening to deport his ex-boyfriend. In 2018, O’Halleran faced an Air Force veteran who had already lost a few House contests. In 2020, a challenger who struggled with fund-raising in 2018 struggled once again.This year, the crowded Republican primary includes Ron Watkins, a former website administrator who is widely believed to have played a major role in writing the anonymous QAnon posts. Republicans doubt that Watkins will make it far. He last reported having raised just over $50,000, behind three other Republicans who have made federal campaign filings.But even the candidate perceived to be most appealing to the establishment — Eli Crane, the top Republican fund-raiser — has positions that would be tough to defend with moderates. He’s a former member of the Navy SEALs, former contender on “Shark Tank” and has boasted that he supported decertifying the 2020 election. His top competition for the nomination might be State Representative Walt Blackman, a decorated veteran who once praised the Proud Boys.When asked about the primary field, Republican strategists did not express much excitement, but they were also confident their party would win the seat anyway. And even if a candidate who is underwhelming at fund-raising wins the nomination, they expect outside groups to help out.The expensive Phoenix media market might not have seemed worth the investment in previous years, but with such a promising national environment and the district’s new partisan composition, Republicans expect it’ll be worth the effort this time.“Candidates and campaigns always matter,” said Brian Seitchik, an Arizona-based Republican consultant. “Having said that, with the redraw of that congressional district and a hyper-favorable environment for Republicans, I’d say that race is going to be the Republicans’ race to lose in November.”But O’Halleran’s team remains optimistic. Rodd McLeod, a Democratic consultant who is working with O’Halleran, maintains that the congressman’s relationships with constituents run deeper than partisanship.“He could be the guy,” McLeod said, “who outlasted the wave.”What to read Donald Trump endorsed Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor, for the Republican nomination in Pennsylvania’s Senate race, Trip Gabriel reports.The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is split on whether to make a criminal referral of Trump to the Justice Department, Michael S. Schmidt and Luke Broadwater report.The Biden administration has long been torn over how to handle Trump-era immigration policies, report Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Michael D. Shear and Eileen Sullivan.Fiona Hill, who advised Trump and his predecessors on Russia, connects the Jan. 6 attack to the invasion of Ukraine, in an article by Robert Draper in The New York Times Magazine.at issue“What we have going for us,” said Jane Kleeb, Nebraska’s Democratic Party chairwoman, “is that we are small — small but mighty.”Walker Pickering for The New York TimesNebraska wants to be the next IowaFor the last 50 years, Nebraska’s role in presidential primaries has largely been as a place with a good airport for traveling to western Iowa.Now, with Iowa’s first-in-the-nation spot in grave peril after the last two Democratic caucuses were flubbed, Nebraska is ready to enter the contest to knock its neighbor off the beginning of the Democratic presidential nominating calendar.“Nebraska is going to go for it,” Jane Kleeb, the state’s Democratic Party chairwoman, told me.She will lobby her fellow Democratic National Committee members to back Nebraska in jumping to the front of the nominating line, she said. Republicans, meanwhile, remain committed so far to keeping Iowa first.Among the Democrats, Nebraska will have competition. New Jersey offered itself last month to the D.N.C., and Michigan’s Democratic officials are also lobbying to go first.Both are big states dominated by urban areas in expensive media markets. The appeal of the traditional early states — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — is that they in theory are small enough to build grass-roots campaigns that aren’t just television productions.Kleeb’s pitch is that Nebraska has inexpensive media markets in Omaha, Lincoln and Grand Island; a recent record, unlike Iowa, of sending one of its electoral votes to Democratic presidential candidates; a mix of urban, suburban and rural voters; a significant Latino population at 11 percent; and plenty of Fortune 500 companies — and Warren Buffett — to help underwrite party-building in the state.“We know that we will be going up against a big Midwest state like Michigan,” she said. “What we have going for us is that we are small — small but mighty.”A shift from Iowa to Nebraska would keep rural issues front and center for an increasingly urban Democratic Party. Candidates would have to become fluent in pipeline and eminent domain politics, where Kleeb got her political start, and learn to embrace the runza, the unofficial state sandwich of Nebraska.— Leah (Blake is on vacation)Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      A Democratic Super PAC’s Ad Buy Shows a Widening Battle for House Control

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      The Democrats’ House Majority PAC is spending nearly $102 million to reserve advertising time in 51 media markets, staking out a broad battlefield for the coming midterm elections.WASHINGTON — The House Democrats’ main political action committee is spending nearly $102 million to reserve advertising spots in 50 media markets, from Bangor, Maine, to San Diego, Calif., a battlefield that is considerably larger and more expensive than it was in the past two congressional elections.The breadth of the congressional map reveals the scope of Democrats’ worries about holding seats in midterm elections. Areas once considered safe, like South Texas, greater Pittsburgh and Seattle will see Democratic advertising.But Democrats will be playing some offense, too, especially in California, where redistricting has opened up Republican targets.“We are doing whatever it takes to hold the majority, and there are opportunities across the map,” said Abby Curran Horrell, the executive director of the House Democrats’ political action committee, known as House Majority PAC, adding, “We feel confident about the races that we plan to play in.”Her Republican counterpart, Dan Conston of the Congressional Leadership Fund, said the huge expenditure is a sign of weakness and an admission that inflation, rising crime rates and an unpopular Democratic president will not only cost Democrats swing districts but also make some districts President Biden won handily fiercely competitive.“I think they believe they’ve already lost the majority,” he said. “This is about staving off losses in some deep blue, traditionally Democratic areas.”The spending comes even as redistricting has shriveled the number of districts considered competitive based on election results in 2020. House district maps gerrymandered by both parties have left fewer than 40 seats — potentially far fewer — that would have been closely divided between Republican and Democratic voters in 2020. But the new advertising reservations point to a map that has expanded far beyond those districts.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Analysis: For years, the congressional map favored Republicans over Democrats. But in 2022, the map is poised to be surprisingly fair.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Wednesday’s reservations in 51 markets stand out, even in recent history. In 2020, House Majority PAC made initial advertising reservations in 29 media markets, with half the money it is spending Wednesday. In the Democratic wave year of 2018, $43 million was put down early for reservations in 33 markets.Democrats holding swing seats will see advertising spent on their behalf. Among the beneficiaries will be Representatives Jared Golden of Maine, Abigail Spanberger and Elaine Luria of Virginia, Cindy Axne of Iowa, Sharice Davids of Kansas, Angie Craig of Minnesota and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan.But with Mr. Biden’s approval ratings hovering near 40 percent, House Majority PAC is reserving advertising time to defend some entrenched Democratic incumbents, whose political holds are weakened not just by the president but by newly drawn districts. Representative Sanford Bishop, for instance, has represented a swath of southern Georgia since 1993. Yet the PAC is reserving $2.6 million of ad space in three media markets to boost his re-election.A member of the Kildee family has represented the area around Flint, Mich., for 45 years — first Dale Kildee, then his nephew Dan, who took the seat nearly a decade ago. But new district lines and a stiff political headwind have forced House Majority PAC to make a hefty advertising reservation of more than $1 million to try to save the younger Kildee’s House career. Media stations in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., will get more than $1.7 million as the PAC tries to save Representative Matt Cartwright, another veteran.In Colorado, the last several elections seemed to turn the districts around Boulder and Denver into a reliable shade of blue. But redistricting and the retirement of Representative Ed Perlmutter have prompted House Majority PAC to pony up $4.4 million in the Denver media market to defend the state’s seventh and eighth districts.And the marked movement of Hispanic voters toward the Republican Party is forcing Democratic spending in South Texas to try to secure two House districts that stretch from the once reliably Democratic Rio Grande Valley to San Antonio and its suburbs.Rep. Katie Porter at a town hall meeting in Irvine, Calif., in 2019.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesRep. Mike Levin at an event hosted by the Democratic Party of Orange County, Calif., in 2019.Allison Zaucha for The New York TimesDemocrats are also preparing to spend big to stave off defeats in Southern California, focusing their defenses on Representatives Katie Porter and Mike Levin.The advertising reservations also show how painful it will be to defend the seats of the 31 House Democrats who have announced their retirements or are seeking other offices. Millions of dollars will be spent to save the seats of Mr. Perlmutter and other retiring Democrats, including Ron Kind of Wisconsin, Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona, Cheri Bustos of Illinois and G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina.Democrats are defending the seats of the 31 House Democrats who have announced their retirements or are seeking other offices. They include, from left, Rep. Cheri Bustos, Rep. Ron Kind, Rep. Ed Perlmutter, Rep. G.K. Butterfield, and Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick. Win McNamee/Getty Images, Lauren Justice for The New York Times, Pool photo by Anna Moneymaker, Erin Schaff/The New York Times, Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times, Kelly Presnell/Arizona Daily Star, via Associated PressThe multitude of races in some states is also challenging Democratic efforts. In Nevada, for instance, where Democrats are trying to hold onto the governorship, a Senate seat, and three House seats, House Majority PAC is shelling out $11.6 million in Las Vegas alone.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More