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      The Little Red Boxes Making a Mockery of Campaign Finance Laws

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      Facing a threat from his left flank, Representative Kurt Schrader of Oregon wanted to send an urgent message to allies ahead of his upcoming primary: It was time to go on the attack.The challenge: Campaign finance rules bar candidates from directly coordinating with the very outside groups that Mr. Schrader, a top moderate in Congress, needed to alert. So instead, he used a little red box.On April 29, Mr. Schrader issued a not-quite-private directive inside a red-bordered box on an obscure corner of his website, sketching out a three-pronged takedown of what he called his “toxic” challenger, Jamie McLeod-Skinner — helpfully including a link to a two-page, opposition-research document about her tenure as a city manager.The message was received.On May 3, a super PAC that has received all its money from a secret-money group with ties to the pharmaceutical industry began running television ads that did little more than copy, paste and reorder the precise three lines of attack Mr. Schrader had outlined.Kurt Schrader for CongressAn ad attacking Jamie McLeod-Skinner reflects language used on her opponent Kurt Schrader’s campaign website.Center ForwardFrom Oregon to Texas, North Carolina to Pennsylvania, Democratic candidates nationwide are using such red boxes to pioneer new frontiers in soliciting and directing money from friendly super PACs financed by multimillionaires, billionaires and special-interest groups.Campaign watchdogs complain that the practice further blurs the lines meant to keep big-money interests from influencing people running for office, effectively evading the strict donation limits imposed on federal candidates. And while the tactic is not new to 2022, it is becoming so widespread that a New York Times survey of candidate websites found at least 19 Democrats deploying some version of a red box in four of the states holding contested congressional primaries on Tuesday.The practice is both brazen and breathtakingly simple. To work around the prohibition on directly coordinating with super PACs, candidates are posting their instructions to them inside the red boxes on public pages that super PACs continuously monitor.The boxes highlight the aspects of candidates’ biographies that they want amplified and the skeletons in their opponents’ closets that they want exposed. Then, they add instructions that can be extremely detailed: Steering advertising spending to particular cities or counties, asking for different types of advertising and even slicing who should be targeted by age, gender and ethnicity.“Liberals, voters under 50 and women — across only San Antonio, Guadalupe and Atascosa counties,” reads the targeting guidance from Jessica Cisneros, a Democratic challenger in South Texas.Understand the Pennsylvania Primary ElectionThe crucial swing state will hold its primary on May 17, with key races for a U.S. Senate seat and the governorship.Hard-Liners Gain: Republican voters appear to be rallying behind far-right candidates in two pivotal races, worrying both parties about what that could mean in November.G.O.P. Senate Race: Kathy Barnette, a conservative commentator, is making a surprise late surge against big-spending rivals, Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick.Democratic Senate Race: Representative Conor Lamb had all the makings of a front-runner, but John Fetterman, the state’s shorts-wearing lieutenant governor, is resonating with voters.Abortion Battleground: Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states where abortion access hangs in the balance with midterm elections this year.Electability Concerns: Starting with Pennsylvania, the coming weeks will offer a window into the mood of Democratic voters who are deeply worried about a challenging midterm campaign environment.“Black voters ages 45+ in Durham and white women ages 45+ in Orange” was the recent directive from Valerie Foushee, a Democratic House candidate in North Carolina locked in a competitive primary for an open seat.Red-boxing spans the ideological spectrum of the Democratic Party, from Blue Dog Democrats like Mr. Schrader to progressives like his challenger and Ms. Cisneros, who has the backing of the Working Families Party and Justice Democrats as she tries to unseat Representative Henry Cuellar.It is not clear why Democratic candidates have so thoroughly embraced the red box tactic in primaries while Republicans have not. Republicans work hand in glove with their super PACs, too, but in different ways.In 2014, some Republican groups tried using anonymous Twitter accounts to share internal polling data through coded tweets. More recently, J.D. Vance outsourced some of his Ohio Senate campaign’s most basic operations. His allied super PAC, funded by $15 million from the Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel, posted troves of internal and polling data on an unpublicized Medium page that campaign officials used to guide decisions.The Vance super PAC was so central to the campaign that when Mr. Vance walked onstage at a rally with Donald J. Trump, the cameraman filming him from behind worked for the super PAC, not the Vance campaign.Adav Noti, the legal director of the watchdog group the Campaign Legal Center, said that red boxes were erasing the very barriers that were erected to make politicians feel less indebted to their biggest financial benefactors. Federal candidates can legally raise only $2,900 for a primary per donor; super PACs can receive donations of $1 million — or even more.“It’s a joke,” he said. “The coordination of super PACs and candidates is the primary mechanism for corruption of federal campaigns in 2022.”In Democratic primaries, the biggest money is often aligned with the more moderate wing of the party, and sometimes with very specific interest groups.In her race in North Carolina, Ms. Foushee, a state legislator, has been aided by more than $3 million in spending from two of the bigger new players in Democratic House races. One is a super PAC funded by an arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobbying group (a separate pro-Israel group has spent nearly $300,000 more). And the other is a super PAC financed chiefly by the 30-year-old crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried.Ms. Foushee is running against, among others, Nida Allam, a Durham County commissioner who promotes herself as the first Muslim woman elected in North Carolina, and who has been critical of U.S. military aid to Israel “being used to oppress the Palestinian people.”The super PAC that Mr. Bankman-Fried is bankrolling, Protect Our Future, has spent more than $11 million in another open Oregon House race — an astounding sum to lift a political newcomer, Carrick Flynn. At least one of the many ads run in the race echoes the language in Mr. Flynn’s red box.Red boxes are typically hidden in plain sight in “Media Center” or “Media Resources” sections of campaign websites that operatives know how to find, and often use thinly veiled terms to convey their instructions: Saying voters need to “hear” something is a request for radio ads, “see” means television, “read” means direct mail, and “see while on the go” usually means digital ads.Ms. Allam used “on the go” in an April 20 red box update to request online ads telling voters — “especially women, Democrats under 50 and progressives” — that she would “be an unapologetic progressive.”The Working Families Party used those exact words — along with other verbatim phrases — in a Facebook ad that began running on May 5. Facebook records show that 95 percent of the ad’s impressions were with women and people under 54.End runs around campaign limits are themselves nothing new: For years, candidates have posted flattering pictures and videos of themselves for super PACs to download and use. But the explosion of red boxes and their unabashed specificity is the latest example of how America’s system of financing political campaigns — and the restrictions put in place to curb the power of the wealthy in the wake of Watergate a half-century ago — is teetering toward collapse.“This page only exists because of our broken campaign finance system,” reads a web page that Lt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, a leading candidate in Tuesday’s Democratic Senate primary, posted this year to make suggestions to super PACs. (Like some others, he did not surround his instructions in a red box.)Mr. Fetterman was not above providing guidance: His site asked only for positive ads and included some biographical bullet points. Sure enough, a super PAC ran a positive ad employing some of those arguments — like the fact that he had refused to live in a state mansion to save taxpayers money.Conor Lamb for U.S. SenatePennsylvania ProgressMr. Fetterman’s leading rival, Representative Conor Lamb, used his own red box earlier this year to outline the attacks he hoped his supportive super PAC would broadcast against Mr. Fetterman. In short order, a television ad appeared warning Democrats that Mr. Fetterman had once been called a “Silver Spoon Socialist” and that “Republicans think they could crush” him. It also echoed verbatim the recommended talking points about Mr. Lamb’s background.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      The Looming End to Abortion Rights Gives Liberal Democrats a Spark

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      The progressive wing of the Democratic Party appeared to be flagging until a draft Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade leaked — and shook the political world.The Democratic primary in North Carolina’s first congressional district had been a low-key affair, despite a new Republican-drawn map that will make the longtime stronghold for Black Democrats a key battleground in the fall.Then the Supreme Court’s draft decision that would overturn the constitutional right to an abortion was leaked, thrusting a searing issue to the forefront of the contest. Now, voters in North Carolina’s northeast will choose sides on Tuesday in a proxy war between Erica Smith, a progressive champion of abortion rights with a wrenching personal story, and Donald Davis, a more conservative state senator with the backing of the establishment who has a record of votes against abortion rights.“There’s a political imperative for Democrats to have pro-choice nominees this cycle,” said Ms. Smith, a pastor and former state senator who was once given a choice between ending a pregnancy or risking her own life to deliver a dangerously premature baby. She chose to give birth, only to lose the child tragically five years later, but said she would never take that choice away from a woman in her circumstances.Around the country — from South Texas to Chicago, Pittsburgh to New York — the looming loss of abortion rights has re-energized the Democratic Party’s left flank, which had absorbed a series of legislative and political blows and appeared to be divided and flagging. It has also dramatized the generational and ideological divide in the Democratic Party, between a nearly extinct older wing that opposes abortion rights and younger progressives who support them.President Biden and Democrats in Congress have told voters that the demise of Roe means that they must elect more “pro-choice” candidates, even as the party quietly backs some Democrats who are not.The growing intensity behind the issue has put some conservative-leaning Democrats on the defensive. Representative Henry Cuellar of Texas, the only House Democrat to vote against legislation to ensure abortion rights nationwide, insisted in an ad before his May 24 runoff with Jessica Cisneros, a progressive candidate, that he “opposes a ban on abortion.”Candidates on the left say the potential demise of Roe shows that it’s time for Democrats to fight back.“We need advocates. We need people who are going to work to change hearts and minds,” said Maxwell Alejandro Frost, who, at 25 years old, is battling an established state senator 20 years his senior, Randolph Bracy, for the Orlando House seat that Representative Val Demings is leaving to run for the Senate.Kina Collins, who is challenging longtime Representative Danny Davis of Chicago from the left, said, “We came in saying generational change is needed,” adding, “We need fighters.”But the youthful candidates of the left will have a challenge exciting voters who feel as demoralized by the Democrats’ failure to protect abortion rights as they are angry at Republicans who engineered the gutting of Roe v. Wade.From Opinion: A Challenge to Roe v. WadeCommentary by Times Opinion writers and columnists on the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.Gail Collins: The push to restrict women’s reproductive rights is about punishing women who want to have sex for pleasure.Jamelle Bouie: The logic of the draft ruling is an argument that could sweep more than just abortion rights out of the circle of constitutional protection.Matthew Walther, Editor of a Catholic Literary Journal: Those who oppose abortion should not discount the possibility that its proscription will have some regrettable consequences. Even so, it will be worth it.Gretchen Whitmer, Governor of Michigan: If Roe falls, abortion will become a felony in Michigan. I have a moral obligation to stand up for the rights of the women of the state I represent.Summer Lee, a candidate for an open House seat in the Pittsburgh area, pressed the point that in states like Pennsylvania the future of abortion rights will depend on governors, and “the only way we’re going to win the governor’s seat in November is if, in crucial Democratic counties like this one, we put forth inspiring and reflective candidates that can expand our electorate up and down the ballot to turn out voters.”There is little doubt that the draft Supreme Court decision that would end the 50-year-old constitutional right to control a pregnancy has presented Democrats with a political opportunity in an otherwise bleak political landscape. Republicans insist that after an initial burst of concern the midterms will revert to a referendum on the Democrats’ handling of pocketbook issues like inflation and crime.But the final high court ruling is expected in June or July, another jolt to the body politic, and regardless of how far it goes, it is likely to prompt a cascade of actions at the state level to roll back abortion rights.Jessica Cisneros, a progressive candidate from Texas who is challenging the last anti-abortion Democrat in the House, has retooled her closing argument around abortion rights.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesWomen would be confronted with the immediate loss of access that would ripple across the nation, said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who has been studying what she calls a “game-changing” political event.“It’s not going to die down,” she said.And while Republican consultants in Washington are telling their candidates to lay low on the issue, some of the candidates have different ideas. Three contenders for attorney general in Michigan suggested at a forum that the right to contraception established by the Supreme Court in 1965 should be decided on a state-by-state basis, assertions that Dana Nessel, Michigan’s Democratic attorney general, latched onto in her re-election bid.Yadira Caraveo, a pediatrician and Democratic state lawmaker in Colorado running for an open House seat, is already being attacked by a would-be Republican challenger, Lori Saine, who is proclaiming herself as “strongly pro-life” and seeking to “confront and expose these radical pro-abortion Democrats.”“They’ve already shown they can’t keep away from these issues,” Ms. Caraveo said, adding, “I want to focus on the issues that matter to people, like access to medical care and costs that are rising for families every day.”For liberal candidates in primary contests, the timing of the leak is fortuitous. Their calls for a more confrontational Democratic Party are meshing with the inescapable news of the looming end to Roe v. Wade and the Democratic establishment’s futile efforts to stop it.That is especially true for women of childbearing age. This week, five Democratic candidates squared off at a debate ahead of Tuesday’s primary for the House seat in Pittsburgh. Ms. Lee, the candidate aligned with the House Progressive Caucus, was the only woman on the stage. After one of her male rivals worried aloud about a post-Roe world for his daughters, she made it personal. She was the only one in the race directly impacted.“Your daughters, your sisters, your wives can speak for themselves,” she said.Ms. Cisneros, the liberal insurgent in South Texas challenging the last Democratic abortion rights opponent in the House, Mr. Cuellar, appeared to have a steep uphill battle in March after she came in second in the initial balloting, with Mr. Cuellar’s seasoned machine ready to bring out its voters for what is expected to be a low-turnout runoff on May 24.The State of Roe v. WadeCard 1 of 4What is Roe v. Wade? More

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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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      The Young Progressive Lawyer at the Center of a Marquee Texas Runoff

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      Jessica Cisneros had the backing of national progressive leaders, a cramped campaign headquarters and the help of her father. She’s now taking on Representative Henry Cuellar in a runoff in May.LAREDO, Texas — Just a few years ago, Jessica Cisneros was an intern in Henry Cuellar’s congressional office. Now, the representative’s former intern has forced the nine-term incumbent into a runoff, providing progressives with an opening to oust a powerful moderate Democrat and upend South Texas politics.The runoff election on May 24 — the same day Ms. Cisneros turns 29 — will be a rematch more than two years in the making. In 2020, she came within 2,700 votes of beating Mr. Cuellar in the Democratic primary. Her father and volunteers drove through the district after she lost, picking up her campaign signs. They held onto many of those signs knowing there might be a sequel. So some of her signs from 2020 are out on the streets again in Laredo in 2022, with the old election date painted over.“We knew from the very beginning this was going to be a very tough election,” Ms. Cisneros said Wednesday morning, speaking to a crush of reporters who squeezed into her one-room campaign headquarters, a Laredo storefront tucked between a snack stand and Mexican bakery. “We deserve a lot more than what we’re being offered. And I’m really glad that over half of the voters agree that it’s time for new leadership.”Volunteers at the Cisneros campaign headquarters in Laredo.Jason Garza for The New York TimesMs. Cisneros’s success in forcing Mr. Cuellar into a runoff was one of the most striking results of Tuesday’s primary election in Texas, the first of the 2022 midterm season. In Texas primaries, any candidate who finishes below 50 percent faces the No. 2 vote-getter in a runoff. As of Wednesday evening, Mr. Cuellar had won 48.4 percent of the vote, Ms. Cisneros had 46.9 percent and another liberal candidate, Tannya Benavides, had 4.7 percent.Though she has frequently been compared to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York — the two campaigned together in San Antonio last month — Ms. Cisneros is no firebrand. While she pushes for many of the same progressive policies as Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, including the Green New Deal and a $15 federal minimum wage, Ms. Cisneros has campaigned heavily on what she describes as more bread-and-butter issues in this border district — jobs and health care.The results from Tuesday showed the ideological and geographic split among South Texas Democrats.The congressional district stretches from the edge of San Antonio to Laredo and to rural counties along the southern border. Ms. Cisneros performed best in the northern reaches of the district that are farthest from the border, beating Mr. Cuellar in Bexar County, which includes San Antonio. But she lost to him in Webb County, which includes Laredo, and in the more rural areas closer to the border, including Zapata and Starr Counties. The newly redrawn district lines included more of liberal San Antonio and appeared to help Cisneros.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsPrimaries Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the midterm election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.The politics of South Texas do not fit easily into national norms. Senator Bernie Sanders won several parts of the district in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. But at the same time, Donald J. Trump dramatically improved his performance with voters in the larger South Texas region in the 2020 general election. That shift has alarmed many Democrats, who warn that Latino voters along the border are increasingly skewing to the right.Ms. Cisneros has dismissed those views, arguing that the area is seen as conservative largely because Mr. Cuellar helps perpetuate the idea. Mr. Cuellar, in turn, has criticized Ms. Cisneros’ endorsements from political leaders outside Texas, including Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.“South Texas is its own district,” Ms. Cisneros said in an interview in 2019 with The Laredo Morning Times. “We are placed in a very unique spot in terms of politics and also geographically, being right here on the border. But fundamentally I think the big issues are being able to address things like poverty — the rampant poverty that we have here on the border — health care access and the jobs issue.”Jessica Cisneros campaigning with her father, Jose Luis Cisneros.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesLike Mr. Cuellar, Ms. Cisneros is the child of immigrants from Mexico.Her parents moved to the United States before she was born, after their older daughter needed serious medical care. Her father worked in agriculture and later opened a small trucking company. After growing up in Laredo and graduating as the valedictorian from Early College High School, Ms. Cisneros moved to Austin to attend the University of Texas and went on to law school there, focusing on immigration law.During the campaign, Ms. Cisneros has frequently referred to her work as an immigration lawyer, citing her efforts helping asylum seekers who were stuck at the border under the Trump administration’s Remain in Mexico policy.She has frequently relied on immigration to contrast herself with Mr. Cuellar, who has been an outspoken critic of President Biden on the issue. Mr. Cuellar has said the president has been too lax on border security and has not done enough to listen to the views of Border Patrol agents. Ms. Cisneros has said she supports overhauling decades-old laws that make up the immigration and deportation system.But for all the divisive issues that have helped define her campaign nationally, many voters who supported her were simply focused on a change in leadership, particularly as Mr. Cuellar faces an F.B.I. investigation.On Tuesday night, Ms. Cisneros and her supporters gathered outdoors behind a Laredo strip mall, cheering each time the vote tally showed her edging out Mr. Cuellar. That lead had eroded by the time she took the stage just after 11 p.m., but the mood hardly dampened. It was unclear at that hour whether she had earned enough votes to force a runoff.Standing in front of her parents, sister and niece, Ms. Cisneros assured the crowd, in both English and Spanish, that she was confident she would win. “Tonight, tomorrow or in May,” she said. More

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      Takeaways From Texas's 2022 Primary Elections

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      Republicans’ turnout swamped Democrats’, while progressives claimed wins in the first elections of the 2022 midterms.For nearly a decade, the refrain from Texas Democrats has been that they are on the verge of making their state competitive, even though no Democrat has won a statewide race since 1994.Tuesday’s primary results illustrated that Democrats still have a long way to go.With more than three-quarters of the votes counted, nearly 800,000 more Republicans than Democrats voted for a candidate for governor — a gap far larger than the one in 2018, the last midterm primary election in Texas.To be sure, Republicans had a more competitive primary than Democrats. Gov. Greg Abbott’s contest against Republican challengers from his right may have been more of a draw than Beto O’Rourke’s glide path to the Democratic nomination. And Democrats will be quick to note that primary turnout is not always a predictor of big turnout in November.Still, Republicans demonstrated they are energized — even when divided between far-right and mainstream factions — and hardly ceding their hold on the state.Abbott’s right turn paid off.Before this year, Mr. Abbott had never faced a competitive Republican primary in his 25-year political career. But in a moment of conservative energy, with Republicans furious about the 2020 election and President Biden’s immigration policies, a field of Republicans bet that Mr. Abbott would be vulnerable to a challenger from his right.Turns out they were wrong.Armed with a $60 million war chest, Mr. Abbott easily dispatched seven Republicans, taking more than two-thirds of the vote. It was a win that was a year in the making. Mr. Abbott has spent much of last year placating the state’s conservative base by passing new restrictions on abortion, easing gun laws and enacting new limits on how Texas schools teach about the history of racism. Days before the primary, Mr. Abbott directed state health agencies to classify medical treatments commonly provided to transgender adolescents as “child abuse.”Mr. Abbott’s record was a striking demonstration of how a primary threat can help the right wing of the Republican Party drive the agenda, even in a state that has been trending toward Democrats.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsPrimaries Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the midterm election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.In the general election, Mr. Abbott will again be a heavy favorite, this time against Mr. O’Rourke, the Democrat and former congressman who narrowly lost a 2018 race to Senator Ted Cruz and then flopped in the 2020 presidential primary.Mr. Abbott has been said to have presidential ambitions himself, if Mr. Trump does not run again in 2024. The next step on that journey for him will require a decisive victory in November. In a year when Republicans are expected to do well, he will need a show of strength in Texas to make a case he can appeal to voters nationwide.Beto O’Rourke in Fort Worth after winning his primary.LM Otero/Associated PressBeto O’Rourke put up a big number.Four years ago when he ran for the Senate, Mr. O’Rourke took just 61 percent of the 2018 Senate primary vote even though he was running against little-known, poorly funded candidates.Now, after Mr. O’Rourke has become the best-known figure in Texas Democratic politics, he easily dominated a field of four Democratic primary opponents.Mr. O’Rourke took more than 90 percent of the primary vote, carrying nearly all of the 254 counties in Texas after losing 76 of them four years ago.Mr. O’Rourke’s broad win was a reminder that he enters this race as a far different candidate than the plucky underdog who became a national star in 2018. Now running for governor, Mr. O’Rourke has name recognition and the state’s largest fund-raising network, but also baggage from his previous races. His call for government confiscation of some firearms will continue to appear in Republican attacks against him, and he also has to overcome significant G.O.P. advantages in the state.Trump picked (easy) winners.As the first primary contest of 2022, Texas previewed what will be a dominant theme of the primary season: Can Donald J. Trump play kingmaker?Mr. Trump’s record was mixed. The former president endorsed 33 Texas Republicans ahead of their primaries, but virtually all of them were widely expected to win before receiving the Trump seal of approval. As of early Wednesday morning, all of Mr. Trump’s picks for Congress were on pace to win their nominations.But other races raised doubts that Mr. Trump’s approval alone could secure a victory. Attorney General Ken Paxton, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump, and Dawn Buckingham, Mr. Trump’s choice for land commissioner, were both headed to runoffs in May, after failing to get more than 50 percent of the vote.“Big night in Texas!” Mr. Trump said late Tuesday. “All 33 candidates that were Trump endorsed have either won their primary election or are substantially leading in the case of a runoff.”There were also signs that it can be perilous for Republicans to cross Mr. Trump. Representative Van Taylor, a two-term incumbent from the Dallas exurbs who voted to confirm the 2020 election results and for a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the United States Capitol, was in danger of being forced into a runoff as votes were still being tallied early Wednesday. Mr. Taylor outspent his competitors nearly 10 to 1.That figure may put a scare into Republican incumbents facing more significant tests from Trump-backed challengers in the coming months. Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Republicans who voted for impeachment from Michigan, South Carolina and Washington State are all vulnerable and the subject of Mr. Trump’s obsession.Greg Casar in Austin after winning his primary.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesThe Squad may get reinforcements.Progressives frustrated by Mr. Biden’s stalled social policy agenda were looking for a boost in Texas and got one — possibly three.Greg Casar, a former Austin city councilman, won easily Tuesday night and appears poised to come to Washington next year from his safely Democratic district. Another progressive contender, Jessica Cisneros, forced a runoff with Representative Henry Cuellar, a moderate who narrowly defeated her in the 2020 primary but is now under investigation by the F.B.I.Jasmine Crockett, a state lawmaker who was among the ringleaders of Texas Democrats’ flight to Washington to delay new Republican voting laws last summer, has a large lead but appears bound for a runoff in a Dallas-area district. Ms. Crockett was endorsed by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, who has represented the district for 35 years. Ms. Crockett leaned into the endorsement: Her campaign slogan was “passing the torch, fueling the fire.”Together, Mr. Casar, Ms. Cisneros and Ms. Crockett would bring new energy to the liberal wing of the House and to “the Squad” of progressive Democrats. Last month, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York came to Texas to campaign for Mr. Casar and Ms. Cisneros. More

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      Primary Day in Texas Will Offer Preview of Midterm Battles Ahead

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      Texas is holding the first primary election of 2022 on Tuesday. Some of the dynamics at play include the intensity of Donald Trump’s continued hold on the Republican electorate.HOUSTON — The Texas primaries on Tuesday will provide the first pieces of the 2022 midterm puzzle.The strength of the two parties’ ideological factions. The intensity of Donald J. Trump’s continued hold on the Republican electorate. And, for bullish Republicans, the earliest signs of how advantageous the political climate has become.The full picture of the 2022 landscape will be revealed through a series of state-by-state primaries held over the next six months. But the country’s first primary elections in Texas represent almost a sneak peek of many of the coming dynamics nationwide in an increasingly challenging environment for President Biden and the Democrats. That includes the impact of strict new voting rules imposed by the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature and the political salience of abortion for both parties.A Texas state law last year effectively banned most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, and this year a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court is expected in the Mississippi abortion case, which could affect procedures in multiple states. In South Texas, progressives are attempting to defeat one of the last anti-abortion Democrats remaining in Congress, Representative Henry Cuellar, and they received a political gift when the F.B.I. recently raided his home. Falling short under those circumstances would be a blow for the left after Mr. Cuellar narrowly won two years ago.At the top of the ticket, Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, is widely expected to vault past two spirited right-wing challengers. But he is also likely to come nowhere close to the 90 percent he marshaled in his last primary four years ago, a testament to an increasingly restive Republican base.Mr. Abbott has aggressively catered to that base over the last year and in the campaign’s closing days, telling state agencies to investigate treatment for transgender adolescents as “child abuse” and suggesting he might pardon more than a dozen Austin police officers who were indicted on charges of using excessive force during racial justice protests in 2020.“Governor Abbott is running very hard and taking the campaign very, very seriously,” said Ray Sullivan, a Republican strategist who served under two Texas governors, Rick Perry and George W. Bush. “There is an ongoing battle: the mainstream conservatives versus more right-wing, more conspiratorial and paranoid voices. Some of the primary elections will help determine where the energy is in the party.”After redistricting, Texas lawmakers erased nearly all the House seats that were competitive in the general election from the map in 2022, magnifying the importance of a handful of contested primaries in both parties. Republicans, in particular, are hoping to build on the dramatic gains the party made in South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley, particularly among working-class Latino voters in 2020, in the state’s lone open, tossup seat.Nationwide, Republicans are energized by the chance to take back both the House, which the Democrats control by a historically narrow margin, and the Senate, which is equally divided with only Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote giving control to the Democrats.Mr. Biden’s sagging approval ratings — not just in Texas but even in Democratic strongholds like California — and the lingering cloud of the coronavirus on life, the economy and schools have emboldened many Republican voters, candidates and strategists.But Republicans fear nominating candidates outside the mainstream. The party suffered a series of stinging defeats in two otherwise favorable cycles in the recent past, 2014 and 2010, with candidates who repelled broad swaths of the political middle that still decides elections.A Guide to the Texas PrimaryThe 2022 midterm elections begin with the state’s primary on March 1.Governor’s Race: Gov. Greg Abbott’s rightward shift will face a test in November. His likely challenger, Beto O’Rourke, is haunted by his 2020 presidential bid.Attorney General’s Race: Whether Ken Paxton can survive the G.O.P. primary may be the biggest test yet of Donald Trump’s continued power over voters.A Changing Landscape: Issues like abortion and immigration are driving Hispanic voters in Democratic strongholds to switch parties and prompting liberal candidates to shift tactics.A Deepening Divide: Competitive districts are being systemically erased across the country. Texas is an especially extreme example.New Voting Law: Officials have rejected thousands of absentee ballots based on new requirements, an alarming jump ahead of the primary.The concern among Texas Republicans chiefly centers on the attorney general, Ken Paxton, who has attracted the attention of federal investigators after some of his own top aides accused him of corruption.Despite the hostile national climate, Democrats have scored some notable recruiting successes, including two high-profile candidates who came up just short in 2018: Beto O’Rourke, who is running for governor of Texas, and Stacey Abrams, who is running again for governor of Georgia.Beto O’Rourke campaigning for Texas governor in Tyler in early February.Montinique Monroe for The New York TimesMr. O’Rourke, whose Democratic nomination is mostly a formality, has been crisscrossing the state and raising money at a fast clip: $3 million in the last month. But Mr. Abbott, a prolific fund-raiser, outpaced him and entered the final days before the primary with $50 million on hand, compared to $6.8 million for Mr. O’Rourke.Texas has a two-step primary system: Any candidate who finishes below 50 percent will face off against the No. 2 vote-getter in a May runoff.Mr. Abbott appears to be leaving nothing to chance, spending $15 million in the last month alone and seeking to leave little daylight for his conservative opponents as he has overseen a sharp push to the far right in state government.Still, Mr. Abbott, who has Mr. Trump’s support, was booed in January at a Trump rally north of Houston, only winning over the crowd by invoking the president’s name more than two dozen times in his six-minute speech.“I think Greg Abbott has been in long enough,” said Anita Brown, 62, who attended a recent rally for a right-wing House candidate in The Woodlands, a suburban enclave north of Houston. “I would just like to have someone new.”Texas is where Mr. Trump suffered one of his rare primary endorsement defeats last year, in a House race, and while he has issued a range of endorsements, from governor down to Tarrant County District Attorney, he has mostly backed incumbents and heavy favorites.Bigger tests of his influence loom later in the spring and summer, in the Senate contests in North Carolina and Alabama, and in the governor’s race in Georgia. In that Georgia race, Mr. Trump recruited David Perdue, a former senator and governor, to attempt to unseat Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican who refused to bend to Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.In Texas, Mr. Paxton, a regular guest on Fox News, commands the endorsement of Mr. Trump, but remains vulnerable because of his legal troubles: On top of his aides’ accusations of corruption, the Texas attorney general has been under indictment for securities fraud since 2015.His range of challengers represent the various Republican power centers vying to be the future of the party.There is George P. Bush, the son of Jeb Bush and a statewide office holder who has held himself out as the most electable conservative in the race, and Eva Guzman, a former state Supreme Court justice who has the backing of some traditional, business-aligned power players in Republican politics.Representative Louie Gohmert, a Trump ally whose speeches and remarks frequently land him on national television, is also running. He attended the Trump rally in Texas and got an unexpected shout-out, despite the former president’s endorsement of Mr. Paxton. Mr. Gohmert also posed with Mr. Trump during a photo line at the rally, but the Trump team refused to send Mr. Gohmert the picture, because they did not want him to use it in the primary, according to a person familiar with the exchange.Representative Louie Gohmert spoke at a forum in Midland with two other Republican candidates for attorney general, Eva Guzman, center, and George P. Bush, right.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesThe race has been multidimensional. Ms. Guzman has swiped at Mr. Bush, whose family dynasty has been weakened even among Texas Republicans. Mr. Bush has responded in kind. Mr. Paxton has traded attacks with Mr. Gohmert and, in recent days, started going after Ms. Guzman as well.“We haven’t seen a primary this consequential since the 1990s,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston.The race is less about policy positions as it is about who holds power in the Republican Party now. “It will tell us a lot about Donald Trump’s juice in Texas,” Mr. Rottinghaus said.Mr. Paxton finished behind the rest of the Republican ticket in 2018, raising some fears that his renomination this year could provide a rare opening for Democrats in November. Republicans have won every statewide race in Texas since 1994.The national battle for power within the Republican Party is centered on the district of retiring Representative Kevin Brady, north of Houston, where a super PAC aligned with Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, has spent heavily to elect Morgan Luttrell, a Navy SEAL veteran. The activist wing of House Republicans has rallied behind Christian Collins, a former aide to Senator Ted Cruz.While the super PAC aligned with Mr. McCarthy is aiding Mr. Luttrell, the political arm of the House Freedom Caucus is boosting Mr. Collins.At a recent rally for Mr. Collins, Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina made clear that their support for Mr. Collins was about opposition to the existing political order in Washington.“This is primary season,” Ms. Greene said. “This is where we work out our differences. This is where iron sharpens iron.”On the Democratic side, two primaries pit the party’s ideological wings against each other.The race for one open seat features a socialist Austin city councilman, Greg Casar, taking on State Representative Eddie Rodriguez. The other race is in South Texas between Mr. Cuellar and a young progressive lawyer, Jessica Cisneros — a rematch in which abortion has been an issue for the district’s large number of Catholic voters.Both races have attracted attention from national progressive figures, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — to the frustration of some Texas Democrats. They view the progressives’ efforts as potentially counterproductive for a party that has been losing ground among traditional Democratic voters in places like South Texas.“I get what people do on the fund-raising side,” said James Aldrete, a Democratic consultant. But unless Democrats do more to address the concerns of low-turnout voters, particularly in Hispanic communities, Mr. Aldrete added, “we’ll be in the same boat: no growth in the statehouse, no growth in the congressional delegation, no Democrat elected statewide.”When Ms. Ocasio-Cortez declared at a rally for Mr. Casar and Ms. Cisneros that “Texas turning blue is inevitable,” the clip was immediately picked up by Republicans, including Mr. Abbott, and wielded as an attack.“She was doing the work for Republicans,” said Matt Angle, a Democratic activist whose political action committee aims to unseat Republicans in Texas. He noted that Texas Democrats are more moderate in their approach to politics and more conservative in their views on issues like guns and abortion than national party leaders.“It’s a field trip for them,” Mr. Angle added. “For us, it’s the future of the state.” More

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      Progressive Jessica Cisneros Challenges Rep. Cuellar in Texas

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      LAREDO, Texas — Two years ago, a 26-year-old immigration lawyer named Jessica Cisneros came within 3.6 percentage points of pushing out the longtime Democratic congressman here, running aggressively on the progressive vision of the national liberals who had bankrolled her insurgent campaign.This time around, at the ripe age of 28, she’s scorching the already brown earth of South Texas, attacking Representative Henry Cuellar not so much for his conservative policy positions, but for being what she describes as a corrupt politician — rich, out of touch with his poor constituents, and quite possibly a felon.“We’re going after him,” Ms. Cisneros said at a picnic table outside the taqueria next to her campaign headquarters, with the confidence of a seasoned political street fighter. “Everything we’ve been doing has been very intentional.”Texas will kick off the 2022 primary season on Tuesday, launching what promises to be a grueling series of contests that could pull both Democrats and Republicans toward their political extremes, while testing the grips that President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump have over their respective parties.In South Texas, another test is developing over the power of identity politics and whether liberals can answer the fears that conservatives are stoking about “open borders,” “critical race theory” and rising crime. In the primary campaign for Texas’ 28th district, it is Mr. Cuellar’s experience versus Ms. Cisneros’s storytelling: the powerful and connected versus the underdogs, the community, the “pueblo.”There have been many changes here since Ms. Cisneros first challenged Mr. Cuellar, but the most significant may have been the shock for both parties of seeing Hispanic voters lurch toward Mr. Trump in 2020. Zapata County, just south of here, is heavily Latino; Hillary Clinton won it by more than 30 points in 2016, then it went to Mr. Trump by about five points. Ms. Clinton’s 60-point margin in Starr County, which is 96 percent Latino, shriveled to a five-point advantage for Mr. Biden.In response, Ms. Cisneros is running a campaign against the 17-year incumbent that could easily have been engineered by a Republican. She still favors Medicare for All, a $15 minimum wage, more liberal immigration policies and abortion rights, but those have not been her focus.Instead, she has played up her biography and hit Mr. Cuellar hard on rising prices. She has portrayed him as a Washington insider, greasing his pockets with money from big corporations, and presented herself as embodying the struggling community he left behind.“My medicines cost more, insurance more,” intones an older Latina in one of Ms. Cisneros’s most recent ads, as the woman sweeps the stoop of her modest house and laments that nothing has changed in Laredo. “Now it’s food and gas, but we don’t make more. If you ask me, Henry Cuellar has been in Washington too long.”The mysterious raid last month by the F.B.I. of Mr. Cuellar’s Laredo home and campaign office presented a late, potentially devastating twist that seemed to confirm all that Ms. Cisneros had been saying of the congressman — and she pounced on it.Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a fellow progressive, campaigned recently for congressional candidate Jessica Cisneros in San Antonio.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesJustice Democrats, the progressive insurgent group that has greatly bolstered her campaign, has piled on with a decidedly nonideological advertisement blanketing South Texas that accuses Mr. Cuellar of hitching rides on donors’ private jets, fixing his BMW with campaign cash and drawing that raid by the F.B.I.Progressives have been on a losing streak of late. In August, a hero of the left, Nina Turner, lost a special election in Cleveland to a candidate backed by establishment Democrats. Representative Marie Newman of Illinois, who in 2020 defeated one of the last House Democrats who opposed abortion, is under an ethics investigation, accused of enticing a primary rival out of the race two years ago with a promised job in her congressional office. Democratic leaders have struggled to distance themselves from the sloganeering of “Defund the police,” while Republicans have demonized progressive views on race and gender.A Guide to the 2022 U.S. Midterm ElectionsIn the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.Like Ms. Cisneros, liberal organizations are trying to adjust.“We are definitely aware of the Trump swing,” said Waleed Shahid, a spokesman and strategist for Justice Democrats, which helped Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Cori Bush of Missouri and Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts defeat veteran Democratic incumbents over the past four years.Mr. Cuellar and his supporters have greeted the onslaught with disbelief. The veteran Democrat may be the last in the House who opposes abortion, and he has taken a tougher line on immigration, border security and law enforcement than many of his colleagues. But that is not what the campaign seems to be about.“They really don’t talk much about what they want to do, except in general terms,” Mr. Cuellar said. Instead, he said, “it’s attack, attack, attack, attack, attack, attack.”He said in January in a video statement on Twitter that the ongoing investigation — which appears linked to a broader inquiry into the political influence of Azerbaijan — will show “no wrongdoing on my part.”Supporters of Ms. Cisneros — and some Democratic thinkers — see in her shift a model for the party in the Trump era of personal politics. Republicans, and to some extent Mr. Cuellar, have created a frightening narrative that feels more urgent than any policy debates in Washington. That story contends that decent, hard-working people are playing by the rules, but strangers are pounding at the door, and neighbors are grabbing all they can from the government.Ian Haney López, a public law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied the Hispanic shift in South Texas, said Ms. Cisneros is using identity to try to galvanize support without alienating the white voters who remain the majority nationwide — though not in the 28th district of Texas.Since the rise of Trumpism, with its appeals to white grievance and fears, he said, Democrats have taken two approaches, both of which have failed. The progressive wing has called out Mr. Trump and his supporters as racist, and urged voters to band together to fight white racism.“That identity story casts the majority of Democratic voters as part of the problem,” he said. In addition, 2020 proved that tactic was also not helpful to the Democratic cause with people of color, especially Latinos. “You’re not going to get them to sign on to a story that says you’re on the margins, you’re widely hated, and your children’s lives will be truncated by racism.”Jessica Cisneros hands out campaign flyers in Laredo, Texas. She is supported by the same progressive group that helped Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Cori Bush of Missouri and Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts defeat veteran Democratic incumbents.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesMore centrist Democrats, recognizing the perils of that approach, have eschewed identity politics altogether and stuck with dry policy arguments — a strategy Mr. Lopez called “nonsense on stilts.”In Ms. Cisneros’s campaign, he sees an identity-first approach, in which she casually toggles between English and Spanish, speaks of identifying with South Texas and its struggles, contrasts that to the outsiders in Washington, then pivots to issues like health care and reproductive rights.After the Trump shake-up, the region could be ready for a new approach, said Cecilia Ballí, an anthropologist and researcher at the University of Houston who did extensive interviews in South Texas after Mr. Trump’s 2020 gains. For decades, the region has been run by insular political families like Mr. Cuellar’s. His brother is the sheriff of Laredo’s Webb County; his sister is a former municipal judge and tax collector there.Ms. Ballí said that with no real competition between the parties, Democrats have won loyalty with rallies and free food, but no emphasis on issues or retail politics. Mr. Trump’s brand of personality-driven, outsider bombast broke through to many disillusioned Hispanic voters.Ms. Cisneros agreed: “They’ve been voting Democrat for such a long time, and obviously, the poverty rate hasn’t gone down, the uninsurance rate hasn’t gone down. People still have to work two or three jobs just to make ends meet.” she said. Add the pandemic and a shutdown of border crossings that crippled Laredo commerce, “and I think that just led to the perfect storm.”Mr. Cuellar has weapons of his own: an unrivaled network of backers in the political establishment and a seat on the House Appropriations Committee, from which he has plied the sprawling district with federal largess, from $45,520,000 in transportation projects for Atascosa County in the district’s north to $15,142,000 for cattle health in Zapata County in the south.Then there are the fears that a Cisneros victory March 1 would hand newly confident Republicans the seat. Ms. Cisneros insists that she is the answer to the Republican rise, an outsider voice to give hope to the region’s frustrations. Redistricting changes actually made the 28th slightly more Democratic, with more voters from San Antonio’s Bexar County, a potential boon to Ms. Cisneros’s chances — on Tuesday and in November. The district shifted from 76.9 percent Hispanic to 75.3 percent, but a slight rise in Anglo voters could actually help Ms. Cisneros if those new voters are San Antonio liberals.But Mr. Cuellar beat his Republican challenger handily in 2020, with 58 percent of the vote, while Mr. Biden eked out 51.5 percent. Those Trump-Cuellar voters could move to the Republican House candidate that emerges from the seven-candidate primary.“If Henry loses, then they have won this seat,” Anna Cavazos Ramirez, a former Webb County attorney, said of the Republicans.The negative tone of Ms. Cisneros’s campaign has turned off some voters, who speculated that the raid last month — still unexplained — was somehow the work of her supporters. Pastor Tim Rowley, who ministers at one of Laredo’s largest evangelical congregations, Grace Bible Church, said the campaign had left him saddened.“Whether you’re Democrat or Republican, rather than getting up and fully debating the issues, it just seems to be a smear campaign,” he said, suggesting he would likely vote for Mr. Cuellar because “this has to stop.”Miguel Sanchez, 35, was not so quick to dismiss what he called “that incident,” when F.B.I. agents were seen carrying items from Mr. Cuellar’s Laredo home. Mr. Sanchez had come to a rally at Texas A&M International University for Beto O’Rourke, the Democrat running for Texas governor, but the longtime Cuellar supporter was giving the House primary a lot of thought.“Cisneros, she seems to be a breath of fresh air,” he said, adding, “It’s been a long time since we’ve had a grassroots-type Democrat.” As for the incumbent, Ms. Cisneros’s message has gotten through.“I don’t know,” Mr. Sanchez said, shaking his head. “We don’t need politicians like that in Washington.” More

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      How the Fight Over Abortion Rights Has Changed the Politics of South Texas

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      In the Laredo region, long a Democratic stronghold, that single issue appears to be driving the decision for many voters, the majority of whom are Catholic.LAREDO, Texas — Like the majority of her neighbors in the heavily Latino community of Laredo, Angelica Garza has voted for Democrats for most of her adult life. Her longtime congressman, Henry Cuellar, with his moderate views and opposition to abortion, made it an easy choice, she said.But as up-and-coming Democratic candidates in her patch of South Texas have leaned ever more liberal, Ms. Garza, a dedicated Catholic, cast a ballot for Donald Trump in 2016, primarily because of his anti-abortion views.In choosing Mr. Trump that year and again in 2020, Ms. Garza joined a parade of Latino voters who are changing the political fabric of South Texas. In the Laredo region, where about nine out of 10 residents are Catholic, many registered voters appear to be driven largely by the single issue of abortion.“I’m willing to vote for any candidate that supports life,” said Ms. Garza, 75. “That’s the most important issue for me, even if it means not voting for a Democrat.”With a pivotal primary election just a week away, Ms. Garza is ready to to turn away from Democrats. Pointing at a wall covered in folkloric angel figurines at the art store she owns in Laredo, she explained why: “They are babies, angels, and I don’t think anyone has the right to end their life. We have to support life.”Angelica Garza voted for Donald Trump in 2016 because of his anti-abortion views.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesVoters like Ms. Garza are worrying Democratic leaders, whose once tight grip and influence on the Texas-Mexico border region has loosened in recent electoral cycles. Republicans have claimed significant victories across South Texas, flipping Zapata County, south of Laredo on the bank of the Rio Grande, and a state district in San Antonio. They also made gains in the Rio Grande Valley, where the border counties delivered so many votes for Mr. Trump in 2020 that they helped negate the impact of white voters in urban and suburban areas of the state who voted for Joe Biden.Much is at stake in Laredo, the most populous city of the 28th Congressional District, where Latinos are a majority, and which stretches from the eastern tip of San Antonio and includes a western chunk of the Rio Grande Valley. Since the district was drawn nearly three decades ago, the seat has been held by Democrats. Mr. Cuellar has represented the district since 2005. His moderate and sometimes conservative views — he was the only Congressional Democrat to vote against a U.S. House bill that would have nullified the state’s near-total ban on abortion that went into effect last September — have frequently endeared him to social conservatives and Republicans.But he now finds himself locked in a tight fight against a much more liberal candidate backed by the progressive wing of the party that includes Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Mr. Cuellar, whose home was raided last month by the F.B.I. as part of an investigation that neither he nor the government has disclosed, beat his opponent, Jessica Cisneros, by four percentage points in 2020.Should he lose the primary on March 1 to Ms. Cisneros, a 28-year-old immigration lawyer who supports abortion rights, the path to flip the House of Representatives could very well run through South Texas, as Republicans have vowed an all-in campaign focused on religious and other conservative values. More