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      Mayra Flores, a Latina Republican, Sends a Message to Democrats

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      Last week, Mayra Flores, a Republican candidate for Congress who was born in Mexico and immigrated to the United States at the age of 6, flipped a congressional seat in a region of the Rio Grande Valley of Texas that had voted Democrat for 150 years. Flores’s victory came with the usual bluster from the G.O.P. and all the head-scratching from the national media that accompanies rightward voting swings in any nonwhite population. “G.O.P. wins big in Rio Grande Valley district. Does it portend shift of Hispanic voters?” the Fort Worth Star-Telegram asked in a headline. The conservative National Review called Flores’s victory “An Earthquake in South Texas” and said that her win “portends a major shift in the major American political landscape.”Before I get into my own portending, let me offer up a bundle of caveats. This was an extremely low-turnout special election for a vacated congressional seat that will once again be up for grabs this November. The lines of the district will be significantly different in a few months — Flores won over an electorate that Joe Biden won by four points back in 2020. In November, Flores will be in the odd position of being a near-five-month incumbent running in a newly drawn district that, had it existed in 2020, Biden would have won by 15.5 points. This is presumably why Monica Robinson, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (D.C.C.C.), dismissed Flores’s victory as a “rental” seat.So we can and should throw some cold water on the grand claims about what this electoral result means for the future of the Republican Party. Flores’s campaign outraised that of her Democratic opponent Dan Sanchez by a 16-to-1 margin. It also spent more than $1 million on television ads. The imbalance in spending and resources was so extreme that after the results had come in, Sanchez’s campaign manager said in a statement, “The D.C.C.C., D.N.C. and other associated national committees have failed at their single purpose of existence: winning elections.”I think it’s perfectly fair to take Robinson and the D.C.C.C. at their word when they say that they did not think it was worth expending too much effort on a seat that will almost certainly swing back to Democrats at the start of 2023. What seems far more interesting to me is why the G.O.P. put so much effort into securing Flores’s victory. Why did they care?The simple answer is that since the 2020 general election showed surprising gains for the G.O.P. among Latino voters, especially in Florida and the Rio Grande Valley, Republicans have spent a considerable amount of time and money to turn what ultimately might have been an electoral blip into a national reality. They wanted Mayra Flores to win because it’s good for Republicans to show that they can win seats in districts like this one, with an 85 percent Latino population.Chuck Rocha, a political consultant and a former senior adviser for Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, told me that even if Flores ultimately only serves for five months, her campaign is “a brilliant marketing strategy by the Republicans.” He believes Flores’s victory will result in a “fund-raising boom” that will allow G.O.P. operatives to go out and solicit funds for other races in places with significant Latino populations. Flores’s victory, then, will allow the G.O.P. to raise money and mobilize public opinion around the narrative that the Latino vote is swinging fast. Any close race with a large Latino population will now seem up for grabs.But a lot of the excitement around Flores has to do with Flores herself. She is a 36-year-old immigrant and a respiratory-care therapist who works with elders. She is married to a Border Patrol agent. In her own words, she is “Pro-Life, Pro-Second Amendment, and Pro-Law Enforcement.” It’s hard to imagine a more perfect face for the future of the G.O.P. — a working Mexican American woman telling the public that everything the Democrats think and say about the people of South Texas is out of touch and wrong. In one television ad put out by the Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC, which opens with a photo of Joe Biden smiling at a podium, an unidentified voice speaking in a mild Hispanic accent says, “From up there, he’ll never get us down here. Forty years in office and not one visit to the border. He’s left us behind. That is why Mayra Flores is running for Congress. She’s one of us.”“One of us” is the purest expression of identity politics, and while Republicans have long used this tactic to convince white voters to vote for white candidates, it’s rarely, if ever, been used by the party to endorse a Latina and underscore her connection to her working-class community. (The Flores campaign did not respond to a request for an interview.)Much has been made over the past five years about how the Democratic Party can reach the working class. These conversations, which invoke coal miners and factory workers, are almost invariably concerned with the white working class. What’s almost never discussed is whether the Democrats are losing the nonwhite working class as well.“The Democratic Party has walked away from blue-collar messaging, which is really aligned with the new immigrant community, mainly Latinos, and actually in some states A.A.P.I., because they’re working those jobs,” Rocha said.This has opened the door for politicians like Flores to reimagine what the politics of her community should be. This has a special power within immigrant groups — even those who have been in America for a few generations — because their political allegiances aren’t calcified. According to a January Gallup poll, 52 percent of Latinos identify as independent, which is 10 percent higher than the proportion of independents among the American population as a whole. While this is a crude way to measure voter flexibility, it’s also true that over the past 40 years, both major immigrant groups in America — Latinos and Asian Americans — have swung between the two parties at a rate that far outpaced Black and white Americans.So who does Flores imagine is “us”? Her messaging mostly centered around economic hardship, family and opportunity. In a flier titled “Mayra Flores Will Restore the American Dream,” Flores promises to “stop out-of-control spending to end inflation,” “secure the border” and “expand, not limit, access to health care.” In another, she promises to “get the economy back on track” and “stop inflation in its tracks, and keep more money in your pocket.” And in her acceptance speech last week, Flores said, “The policies that are being placed right now are hurting us. We cannot accept the increase of gas, of food, of medication, we cannot accept that. And we have to state the fact that under President Trump, we did not have this mess in this country.” Her messaging is clear: “Us” refers to the struggling, working-class families who grew up with socially conservative values. “Them” is everyone else.Flores, then, can act almost as a proof of concept for future Republican candidates. Her invocation of Trump might have caught the attention of headline writers, but her campaign only occasionally mentioned the former president and stayed on message about economic factors, family and what she said were the real values of the people of South Texas: border security, religion, affordable health care, well-funded police and the Second Amendment.It’s time for Democrats to ask a very simple question: What, exactly, does their party offer working-class immigrants? Note that here I am not talking about the broad, humanitarian ideal of immigration, wherein a government puts aside its nativist tendencies and welcomes people from around the world. I am talking about the millions of first- and second-generation immigrants who still identify strongly with their country of origin but who have mostly come to the United States seeking economic opportunity. They are largely apolitical or independent voters. They get their news from non-English sources far from the reach of things like this newsletter. Like everyone else in America, they tend to vote based on which party better reflects their self-interest.This is a question I’ve been turning over in my head for the past five or so years, since I noticed that many of the communities I was reporting on — mostly Asian American — did not seem all that concerned with the threat of Donald Trump. This wasn’t a surprise to me. I was not born in this country, grew up in an immigrant household and have spent much of my career reporting on immigrant communities. For many first- and second-generation immigrant families, racism and white supremacy are secondary political concerns. (A Pew poll in 2020 showed that “racial and ethnic inequality” was fourth on the list of Hispanic voter priorities. The economy and health care were at the top of the list. Immigration, for what it’s worth, was eighth, below Supreme Court appointments and climate change.)Most immigrant families, mine included, assume that racism will be a part of their lives. But because they still believe in American economic opportunity, economic and health care issues will always be more of a political priority than the squishier and sometimes more abstract competition between which party they think will be more racist than the other. This is especially true of working-class immigrants, many of whom come from the socially conservative, religious backgrounds that Flores defines as “us.”If Flores’s low-turnout, likely temporary victory “portends” anything, it’s that immigrant identity politics rooted in economic talk can work for the right just as well as it has worked in the past for the left. What many in these communities want is a voice that will talk about economic hardships while also invoking a type of identity politics that will allow them to feel like they are part of a community.For the past two years I have been writing about how the Democratic Party has taken immigrant votes for granted with the warning that if this continues, a new politics rooted in “us” will arise, paired with the grievance that liberals do not actually care about “our” issues. This is precisely what Flores did. In one of her many interviews after her victory, she said Democrats had taken South Texas “for granted” and that “they feel entitled to our vote.”“I’m their worst nightmare,” Flores said of the Democrats in an interview with Newsmax. “They claim to be for immigrants. I’m an immigrant. They claim to be for women. I’m a woman. They claim to be for people of color. I’m someone of color. Yet I don’t feel the love.”Jay Caspian Kang (@jaycaspiankang), a writer for Opinion and The New York Times Magazine, is the author of “The Loneliest Americans.” More

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      Biaggi Seeks to Block Sean Patrick Maloney’s Chosen Path to Re-election

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      Mr. Maloney, who leads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, upset some Democrats by opting to run in a district currently represented by a Black congressman.Representative Sean Patrick Maloney’s decision last week to leave behind his current congressional district to campaign for a colleague’s safer seat infuriated fellow Democrats, who saw the actions as unacceptable for the man tasked with protecting their House majority.On Monday, a progressive New York lawmaker, Alessandra Biaggi, said she would try to stand in his way, channeling the ire of the party’s left wing at the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in a primary challenge.“I am sure that he will say, ‘This is hurting the party, she doesn’t care about being a Democrat,’” Ms. Biaggi, a state senator from Westchester County, said in an interview. She emphatically declared herself a “proud Democrat. What hurt the party was having the head of the campaign arm not stay in his district, not maximize the number of seats New York can have to hold the majority.”Ms. Biaggi plans to formally announce her candidacy for the Aug. 23 primary on Tuesday.She had already been running for Congress in the nearby Third District, campaigning against a “lack of urgency in Washington” and for policies like single-payer health care. But when a state court finalized new lines on Friday that removed the Westchester portions of the district, Ms. Biaggi decided to switch course.Ms. Biaggi called Mr. Maloney “a selfish corporate Democrat.” She drew a straight line between her campaign and his recently announced decision to abandon much of his current territory in the Hudson Valley to run in a safer, reconfigured 17th Congressional District currently represented by a Black progressive.Democrats across the political spectrum decried the move last week, when it looked like it might force Representative Mondaire Jones into a primary fight with either Mr. Maloney or Representative Jamaal Bowman, a fellow Black progressive in a neighboring seat. Instead, Mr. Jones chose to avoid the conflict altogether, announcing a campaign for an open seat miles away in New York City.But Democrats in the party’s progressive wing, some of whom had considered calling for Mr. Maloney’s resignation, are not ready to let him off the hook, and are lining up behind Ms. Biaggi.“Biaggi has been a voice for justice since she entered the State Senate,” Mr. Bowman said in an interview. “She’s also been a voice for accountability and pushing our party to do better.”He called Mr. Maloney’s decision to leave the 18th District he has long represented — which could swing to Republicans in the fall — “completely unacceptable for a leader of our party whose job it is to make sure that we maintain the majority.” He said he would support Ms. Biaggi but stopped short of issuing an official endorsement. “Leadership requires sacrifice and leadership requires selflessness,” said Mr. Bowman, who defeated another high-ranking Democrat in a 2020 primary.Another member of the New York City House delegation, who asked not to be named to speak frankly, echoed that assessment and suggested Ms. Biaggi could attract significant support.It would not be the first time Ms. Biaggi, 36, has taken on an established Democratic leader.She was first elected to the State Senate in 2018, when she was the face of a wave of younger lawmakers who toppled six conservative Democratic incumbents who had led the chamber in a power-sharing agreement with Republicans. In her victory over Jeffrey D. Klein, a former leader of the breakaway group known as the Independent Democratic Conference, Ms. Biaggi was outspent nearly 10 to one.But the odds could be even higher this time around.Mr. Maloney, 55, will enter the race with far more money, name recognition and institutional party support. The fifth-term congressman had more than $2 million in the bank at the end of March, and, given his ties as a party leader, could easily marshal far more in outside support if needed. (Ms. Biaggi said she had about $200,000 in her campaign account.)Representative Sean Patrick Maloney outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington in 2021.Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesThough Democrats have complained about Mr. Maloney running in a district that contains about 70 percent of Mr. Jones’s current constituents, the party chairman does live within the new lines. Ms. Biaggi does not live in the newly shaped district, nor does her current Westchester State Senate District overlap with the new seat.And while Mr. Maloney has attracted ire from fellow New York Democrats, he maintains the support of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.Mia Ehrenberg, a campaign spokeswoman for Mr. Maloney, touted his record and said that the congressman would work hard to win voters’ support.“Representative Maloney has served the Hudson Valley for nearly a decade, spending every day fighting for working families, good jobs, and to protect the environment,” she said.A Fordham-educated lawyer and granddaughter of a Bronx congressman, Ms. Biaggi served as an aide to former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign before winning elective office.In the State Senate, she helped push through an overhaul toughening New York’s sexual harassment laws, became known as an outspoken critic of Mr. Cuomo and was a reliable member of the chamber’s growing left wing, pushing for single-payer health care among other policies.Some of those positions could prove a liability in the race for Congress in a more conservative district, which includes large exurban and rural areas. Ms. Biaggi, for example, has been an outspoken critic of police departments and called for their budgets to be cut, often using the term “defund the police.”Ms. Biaggi said on Monday that she no longer used the term, but would still push for changes in the way American cities are policed, and provide other services to the people who live in them. “Whether or not I use the term is irrelevant because my principles are the same,” she said.Whoever emerges from the Democratic primary in August will likely face a difficult general election in November. The district voted for President Biden in 2020 by an 8-point margin, but Republicans believe the party has a good chance of flipping it this fall.Michael Lawler, a former Republican operative who currently represents Rockland County in the State Assembly, declared his candidacy on Monday and is expected to be the front-runner.“Make no mistake, the record inflation, record crime, and unending series of crises that have defined the Biden presidency are Sean Maloney’s record,” said Mr. Lawler, 35.With the new maps in place, other candidates continued to trickle into high-profile House races on Monday.In Manhattan, Suraj Patel, a lawyer and perennial candidate, announced that he would continue running in the Democratic primary for the 12th District, challenging Representatives Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler even after they were drawn into a single district by the courts.Mr. Patel came close to defeating Ms. Maloney in a 2020 primary, and was running against her this year before the maps were reconfigured. Separately, after weeks of inaction, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that Representative Antonio Delgado would be sworn in as her lieutenant governor on Wednesday. That date would allow the governor to schedule a special election to temporarily fill Mr. Delgado’s Hudson Valley House seat on the same day in August as the congressional primaries. More

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      National Democrats Make Last-Gasp Push to Keep N.Y. District Maps

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      Democrats are seeking to reinstate congressional district maps that were declared unconstitutional last week by New York’s highest court.With the balance of the House of Representatives at stake, national Democrats made an 11th-hour appeal to a federal court on Monday to intervene in New York’s heated redistricting dispute, hoping to reinstate House maps thrown out by the state’s highest court last week.In a 17-page complaint, they argued that there simply was not enough time to implement the order from the State Court of Appeals for new district lines and still comply with a longstanding federal court order meant to protect the rights of Americans casting ballots from overseas.The Democrats asked a panel of federal judges to exercise its authority to effectively block the state court from enforcing its decision, and instead require New York to hold this year’s elections in late June, as originally scheduled, on the map adopted by the Democrat-dominated Legislature.“The state has an obligation to timely redistrict,” the complaint said. “Since it has failed to do so, this court must act.”The unusual legal maneuver, funded by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on behalf of five New York voters, amounted to a last-gasp effort by party leaders to save a set of lines that could net their party as many as three new seats in the battle for control of the House.The State Court of Appeals tossed the maps last week, ruling that Democratic state leaders had violated a 2014 amendment to the State Constitution, including a ban on partisan gerrymandering. In a far-reaching decision, the judges ordered a court-appointed special master to draw the new lines instead and set the stage for the primary to be delayed until Aug. 23.While it is not unheard-of for federal courts to temporarily allow elections to proceed on flawed maps for pragmatic reasons, it was far from clear that Democrats’ arguments would prevail here.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.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Deepening Divides: As political mapmakers create lopsided new district lines, the already polarized parties are being pulled even farther apart.A federal judge could, for example, be persuaded that there was enough time to draft new maps to satisfy the state court this year under the revised primary calendar. Other states frequently hold late-summer primaries and are able to comply with overseas ballot requirements.Republicans said they were confident the state ruling would stand unimpeded.“It’s a Hail Mary and a sign of desperation,” said John Faso, a former congressman who helped bring the Republicans’ initial legal challenge. “An Aug. 23 primary fully complies with the requirements of the federal military voters act.”National Democratic leaders on Monday coupled the lawsuit with a public campaign to openly pressure the state courts to alter the process for drawing the new district lines, in case they do not prevail in court.Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the No. 5 House Democrat, criticized the judge overseeing the case for creating a process that makes it difficult for voters of color in his Brooklyn district to have any say in the final maps at all.The judge, Patrick F. McAllister, has ordered that anyone wishing to offer input to the special master must do so in person at a courthouse in Bath, N.Y., on Friday.Mr. Jeffries noted, in arguments that echoed parts of the lawsuit, that it was a five-hour drive from New York City and virtually inaccessible by public transportation — an arrangement he called “not acceptable.”“The court must immediately schedule additional hearings at locations accessible throughout our state, including in New York City, Albany and Buffalo, before ruling on legislative and congressional districts drawn by an unelected, out-of-town special master,” he wrote to the judge.The initial lawsuit, filed against New York State Democratic leaders, was financed and supervised by Republicans in Albany and Washington, and filed before Justice McAllister, a conservative Republican in Steuben County, N.Y.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Victor Fazio, Longtime Democratic Leader in the House, Dies at 79

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      Known for his ability to work across the aisle, he represented the Sacramento area from 1979 to 1999 and rose to become chairman of the House Democratic caucus.Victor Fazio, a longtime Democratic member of Congress from California who served in House leadership for several years, died on March 16 at his home in Arlington, Va. He was 79.The cause was cancer, according to a statement from his former congressional office.Mr. Fazio represented the Sacramento area from 1979 to 1999. As a member of the House Appropriations Committee, he helped bring home funding for numerous projects, including a multimillion-dollar environmental institute at the University of California, Davis. He also lobbied for the funds to protect 3,700 acres of wetlands west of Sacramento as a refuge; dedicated by President Bill Clinton in 1997, it is known as the Vic Fazio Yolo Wildlife Area.Known for his low-key, bipartisan style, he often worked in partnership with the powerful California Republican representative Jerry Lewis, who died last year.Perhaps Mr. Fazio’s most difficult period was his tenure as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 1994 — the year that Republicans, led by Representative Newt Gingrich, took control of the House for the first time in 40 years.Still, because of Mr. Fazio’s ability to work across the aisle, his colleagues chose him the next year as chairman of the House Democratic caucus.Mr. Fazio stood behind the speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, as Mr. Gingrich’s fellow Republican representatives Bill Thomas (partly hidden) and Tom DeLay conferred, during a news conference on Capitol Hill in 1995.Karin Anderson for The New York TimesAfter he retired from Congress, he worked at a public relations firm in Washington led by Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman. He later joined the Washington office of the powerhouse law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and was regularly named to the annual list of top lobbyists by the political newspaper The Hill. He retired from Akin Gump in 2020.Victor Herbert Fazio Jr. was born in Winchester, Mass., on Oct. 11, 1942. His father was an insurance salesman, his mother a homemaker and dress shop manager.He earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., in 1965 before going to California on a Caro Foundation fellowship.In 1970, he co-founded California Journal magazine, now defunct, which covered state government and politics, and served in the California State Assembly before winning his House seat in 1978.His first marriage, to Joella Mason, ended in divorce. His second wife, Judy Neidhardt Kern, whom he married in 1983, died in 2015.In 2017, he married Kathy Sawyer. In addition to her, he is survived by a daughter from his first marriage, Dana Fazio Lawrie; two stepchildren, Kevin and Kristie Kern; and four granddaughters. A daughter, Anne Noel Fazio, died in 1995. More

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      House Democrats Push Biden to Build a Better Midterm Message

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      House Democrats have been pressing the president to come up with a bumper-sticker-worthy slogan. The White House says it’s sharpening its message.WASHINGTON — After offering her customary lavish praise of President Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi got to the business at hand at a White House meeting last month on the midterm elections.Democrats, Ms. Pelosi told Mr. Biden and a group of his aides, need a more succinct and consistent message. The speaker, who has long been fond of pithy, made-for-bumper-sticker mantras, offered a suggestion she had heard from members: Democrats deliver.What Ms. Pelosi did not fully detail that February evening was that some of her party’s most politically imperiled lawmakers were revolting against Mr. Biden’s preferred slogan, “Build back better,” believing it had come to be a toxic phrase that only reminded voters of the party’s failure to pass its sweeping social policy bill. And what the president and his advisers did not tell the speaker was that they had already surveyed “Democrats deliver” with voters — and the response to it was at the bottom of those for the potential slogans they tested, according to people familiar with the research.No new campaign message was agreed to that day — or since. Mr. Biden is now absorbed by the war in Europe. Facing the biggest foreign policy crisis of his presidency, he is hardly consumed with the looming midterm elections, let alone trying to devise a catchy slogan. Still, his advisers acknowledge that the crisis in Ukraine presents a chance for a reset, perhaps the president’s best opportunity to restore his standing before November.Democrats are pleading with him to come up with a sharper message. With inflation hitting another 40-year high and gas prices spiking because of the boycott on Russian oil, they remain angst-ridden about their prospects in the fall, in large part because the president’s approval ratings remain in the 40s, and even lower in some pivotal states, even after a recent bump.Democrats who once thought the key to their political success would be beating back the pandemic and restoring the economy are deflated to find that falling coronavirus positivity rates and rising employment numbers — and even foreign policy leadership — have barely moved public opinion.“The economy is strong, and America is once again leading in freedom’s fight against tyranny,” Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota said. “But we all know that politics isn’t predicated on what’s real, rather on how people feel.”Representative Dean Phillips at a news conference with fellow members of the Problem Solvers Caucus outside the U.S. Capitol in December.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesRepublicans have plenty of their own divisions over message — and messengers. As long as former President Donald J. Trump retains his grip on the party, Democrats have a chance to remind up-for-grabs voters what is at stake this year and beyond.Still, White House aides acknowledge the pressure to revamp their strategy. They have been frustrated by how little credit they have received for enacting major legislation such as the Covid relief bill or bipartisan infrastructure legislation.“You tell them about the American Rescue Plan, and they say, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’” Mr. Biden, in a burst of candor, said at the House Democratic retreat on Friday, alluding to the $1.9 billion Covid measure he signed a year ago that is but a dim memory for most voters.The president’s advisers point to the State of the Union address — which emphasized pragmatism over bold progressive goals — as a blueprint for his message in coming months and note that, according to their research, cutting drug costs was among the most popular proposals in the speech.They also are considering a handful of executive orders that would please their base, on matters including the cancellation of some student loan debt, and are determined to enact legislation lowering the costs of prescription drugs, according to Democrats familiar with his plans.Some Democrats say they have been cheered by signs that the White House, and particularly Ron Klain, the chief of staff, are now focused on inflation after initially arguing last year that the increase was transitory. During a recent meeting with a group of House Democrats, Mr. Klain resisted a request to spend more federal dollars aiding restaurants in part because it could be seen as adding to inflationary pressures, according to an official at the meeting.To the relief of Democrats in Congress, the White House is dropping the “Build back better” catchphrase. The administration is also attempting to pin the blame on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for rising gas prices, hoping it will at least dilute Republican attacks over the issue.Mr. Biden’s midterm priorities aren’t taking a back seat to the war in Ukraine, the White House insists. Senior officials acknowledge that they regret their all-consuming focus on the Afghanistan withdrawal last summer, and as one said, they will not let the West Wing “become a bunker” at the expense of domestic politics.Democrats are counting on it.Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado, a Democrat who is on the ballot this fall, said he had privately urged Mr. Biden to put reducing consumer costs at the center of his agenda.“The president and the administration need to be attentive to the difficulties that real people are facing in the real world,” Mr. Polis said, recounting his message to the president on a phone call with other governors last month. “He’s a good listener. It’s just a matter of how it gets translated into policies, and we haven’t seen that yet from the White House.”Other prominent Democrats have also privately voiced discontent to Mr. Biden. Those ranks include Democrats who may also run for president and some who already have. Speaking to a friend last month, Hillary Clinton expressed concern that Mr. Biden was not offering a compelling narrative to voters about his presidency, according to a person familiar with the conversation.In addition to Mr. Biden’s policy plans, his advisers say they are taking steps to focus more aggressively on the election and on building good will with restive lawmakers.Biden officials said the president and Vice President Kamala Harris had both stepped up their fund-raising efforts for the Democratic National Committee in February, engaging major donors in one-on-one video conversations that had bolstered the committee’s coffers. There are discussions about expanding the White House political operation by dispatching a senior adviser, Cedric Richmond, to the D.N.C., which administration aides are frustrated with.Also, in hopes of quieting grumbles about Mr. Biden’s lack of engagement, his advisers say they plan to open up the White House to lawmakers, hosting them at the White House movie theater and bowling alley and reviving popular events like the Easter Egg Roll and West Wing tours.Nowhere is there more alarm in the party ranks than among House Democrats, many of whom have long felt that Mr. Biden and his aides, with their decades of service in the Senate, were overly focused on the other chamber.Most outspoken are incumbents facing difficult elections.Mr. Biden with Mayor Andy Schor and Representative Elissa Slotkin in Lansing, Mich., in October.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOne of them, Representative Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, had been privately pushing party leaders to salvage some elements of the sweeping social welfare legislation that Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia appeared to have torpedoed at the end of last year. Ms. Slotkin’s idea: Hold a summit-style gathering with House and Senate leaders and find consensus.That did not happen. Ms. Pelosi did hold a meeting in her office last month with Ms. Slotkin and other Democrats from competitive districts. The gathering devolved into a session of griping about the White House and pleas with the speaker to tell Mr. Biden to stop using the phrase “Build back better.”Ms. Slotkin declined to discuss private conversations but was blunt about her exasperation. “It would be helpful if the White House, the Senate and the House were all on the same page on those priorities,” she said.Asked if she was happier after the State of the Union, she shot back, “Words are good; deeds are better.”Some of her colleagues are voting with their feet: 31 House Democrats have said they will not run for re-election, the highest number in the caucus since 1992.Not all of the ire is aimed at Mr. Biden. Lawmakers view Ms. Pelosi as a political force but a de facto lame duck who is all but certain to join the exodus if Republicans reclaim the majority. They complain that they have received little guidance from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has sought to mollify members by talking up better-than-expected results from the redistricting process.The new maps, though, are little comfort to the lawmakers like Representative Dina Titus of Nevada, a poster child for the anguish of congressional Democrats.Representative Dina Titus of Nevada. Her tourism-dependent district was hit hard by the pandemic; Nevada still has some of the highest unemployment levels in the country.Joe Buglewicz for The New York TimesMs. Titus sought an ambassadorship but didn’t get one because Democrats couldn’t risk losing her seat. Her district became more competitive through redistricting. She is facing a primary from the left despite her largely progressive record. And she is running in tourism-dependent Nevada, which still has some of the highest unemployment levels in the country.Mr. Biden has set foot in the state only once as president, when he flew in for former Senator Harry Reid’s funeral.“They haven’t had time to come up with a plan because every day is some new crisis,” Ms. Titus said of the White House. Maybe, she wondered, there is no return to normal in polarized times.“You get expectations up that you can bring people together, you can negotiate, you got international experience, and then it’s a new world,” she said.Representative Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, another Democrat who is facing a tough re-election campaign, used the same word.“Let’s manage expectations,” Ms. Wild said, conceding that “as a party we overshot on” the social welfare measure that ran aground with Mr. Manchin.It’s hardly just swing district Democrats who are frustrated. As Mr. Biden’s approval rating has taken a significant hit among younger and nonwhite voters, other party leaders are urging him to address the concerns of those constituencies.Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York had broader advice for the president going forward: “Speak to more progressive policies, and speak to issues that impact people of color specifically.”Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesRepresentative Jamaal Bowman of New York said he had called Mr. Klain after Mr. Biden’s State of the Union speech to relay his alarm that the president had made the case against defunding the police without more robustly addressing police misconduct. (White House aides noted that the president had explicitly pledged “to hold law enforcement accountable.”)Mr. Bowman offered this advice for the president: “Speak to more progressive policies, and speak to issues that impact people of color specifically.”At a closed-door retreat for Senate Democrats that Mr. Biden attended on Wednesday, Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia pressed the president to cancel student loan debt, according to Democrats in the room.“Good policy, good politics,” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said of wiping away student debt.That advice, though, is bumping against the concerns of moderate Democrats, who are pushing Mr. Biden to pivot to the political center. Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey has spearheaded what he calls a “common sense” agenda and shared it with Mr. Klain, who was interested in some elements but mostly wanted to know what could pass the Senate. More

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

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

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      in Elections

      How Deceptive Campaign Fund-Raising Ensnares Older People

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      Older Americans, a critical source of political donations, often fall victim to aggressive and misleading digital practices. A broad Times analysis points to the scope of the problem.William W. Vaughan Jr. was a senior atmospheric scientist at NASA during the space race and later an accomplished academic, but as with so many aging Americans, time and technology had sapped him of some of his savvy, especially online.Computers made him feel “like a duck out of water,” his son Steve Vaughan said. So when Steve was sorting through the elder Mr. Vaughan’s papers after his death at 90 in December, he was unsettled by what he found on his father’s final credit card bill.The first item was familiar: $11.82 at the local Chick-fil-A in Huntsville, Ala. But every other charge on the first page, and there were dozens of them, was to the firm that processes online Republican campaign contributions, WinRed. Over four months last year, Mr. Vaughan had made 400 donations totaling nearly $11,500 — to Donald J. Trump, Mitch McConnell, Tim Scott, Steve Scalise and many others.The sum was far beyond the realm of his financial ability, his son said, and sure enough, he soon discovered handwritten notes outlining what appeared to be his father’s call disputing the charges with his credit card company. He is still seething at the avalanche of charges and “what they did to a 90-year-old” just before his death.“If it happened to him,” he said, “I have to figure it happened to other people.”It has.Mr. Vaughan died in December at age 90.The dirty little secret of online political fund-raising is that the most aggressive and pernicious practices that campaigns use to raise money are especially likely to ensnare unsuspecting older people, according to interviews with digital strategists and an examination of federal donation and refund data.Older Americans are critical campaign contributors, both online and offline. More than half of all the online contributions processed by WinRed in the last cycle, 56 percent, came from people who listed their occupation as “retired,” federal records show.Digital operatives in both parties deploy an array of manipulative tactics that can deceive donors of all age groups: faux bill notices and official-looking correspondence; bogus offers to match donations and hidden links to unsubscribe; and prechecked boxes that automatically repeat donations, which are widely seen as the most egregious scheme.But some groups appear to specifically target older internet users, blasting out messages with subject lines like “Social Security” that have particular resonance for older people, and spending disproportionately on ads for an older audience. In many cases, the most unscrupulous tactics of direct mail have simply been rebooted for the digital age — with ruthless new precision.“Everybody knows what they’re doing: They’re scamming seniors to line their own pockets and to raise money for campaigns,” said Mike Nellis, a Democratic digital strategist who is critical of deceptive practices.“You are targeting people who are less savvy online, who are more likely to believe what’s put in front of them,” Mr. Nellis said, lamenting tactics that “erase people’s humanity.”It is impossible to tell just how many older Americans are deceived by such methods, because age is not reported on federal filings. One useful measuring stick, digital experts say, is the number of donations that are refunded — which often occurs when contributors feel unsatisfied or duped.The New York Times analyzed refund data from 2020, working with the political information firm Political Data Inc., which matched refunded donors to the voter rolls. The results provide a rare window into just how disproportionately old the universe of donors who receive refunds is.Donation refunds skewed heavily to older peopleRepublican campaigns issued refunds at far higher rates (7.4 percent of WinRed contributions) than Democratic ones (2.3 percent on ActBlue) in the 2020 election. But the age distribution for both parties among California refunds was very similar.

      Note: Donations without an age listed were excluded.Source: Federal Election Commission and Political Data, Inc.Taylor JohnstonThe findings, which looked at refunds in one large and diverse state, California, showed that the average age of donors who received refunds was almost 66 on WinRed and nearly 65 on ActBlue, the equivalent Democratic processing site.Even more revealing: More than four times as much money was refunded to donors who are 70 and older than to adults under the age of 50 — for both Republicans and Democrats.More than 65,000 unique donors, who were refunded a roughly $25 million combined last election, were matched by name and ZIP code in California. The ages of donors being refunded in both parties were very similar, even as Republican campaigns issued online refunds at more than triple the overall rate of Democrats, records show.A Times investigation earlier this year revealed how the Trump operation had made donations automatically recur weekly, and had obscured that fact with extraneous text, causing a multimillion-dollar cascade of refunds and a surge of fraud complaints.Multiple banking officials said the flood of complaints against Mr. Trump’s operation came heavily from older donors. One fraud investigator recalled the case of an 88-year-old who worried that her family would presume she was developing dementia because the repeat charges had blown past her credit card limit.Exploiting the diminishing capacity of older people for cash extends far beyond politics. There is an entire initiative at the Justice Department devoted to elder abuse, and the F.B.I.’s Internet Crime Complaint Center reported nearly $1 billion in losses for those 60 and older in 2020.Most political tactics are legal, though the Justice Department recently called out nonexistent promises to match donations as an example of “material misrepresentations.”“You leverage data, technology, emotion and digital tactics to take advantage of a population,” said Cyrus Krohn, who oversaw digital strategy at the Republican National Committee more than a decade ago and now regrets some of his earlier work. “It’s like a kid in a candy store.”A rally for former President Donald J. Trump at The Villages, a retirement community in Florida, in October.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesWhy older people are ‘the perfect target’Daniel Marson, a clinical neuropsychologist who has studied financial decision-making among aging Americans, said older people face a double whammy online when combining their generational lack of familiarity with technology and age-related cognitive declines.The brain itself starts to shift with age, Dr. Marson and other neurological experts said. Processing typically begins to slow. Keeping track of multiple things is harder. Evaluating trustworthiness becomes more of a struggle.“They just don’t have the same digital literacy or capacity to engage in an internet world,” said Dr. Marson, the former director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.Certainly, millions of aging Americans are still adroit with technology and some don’t decline cognitively until a very advanced age.But even the kinds of silly deceptions that millennials and digital natives might roll their eyes at — like stress-inducing donation countdown clocks — can more easily distract or confuse many retirees who adopted computers later in life.Some campaigns use subject lines like “Final Notice #33716980” — which the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee recently deployed — that can make it appear as if actual bills are at risk of defaulting. Some use breathless exaggerations, like a recent text from the House Republican campaign arm, which warned it would “lose the House for good!” if everyone did not contribute $9 by midnight.A fund-raising email from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Personal information has been redacted.Many older people interpret personalized messages literally.Tatenda Musapatike, a Democratic digital strategist, recalled having to explain to some older family members that Joe Biden was not in fact the person sending them an email asking for money.“It’s not naïve or foolish,” she said. “It’s from people being less online.”The daughter of one 69-year-old donor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to safeguard her father’s wishes to remain private, described a call from her mother last year asking her to intervene in his excessive online contributions. “Mom came to me and said, ‘Dad donated $25,000,’” the woman said. Records show he made hundreds of donations via WinRed to a variety of Republican campaigns.“He’s taking what they say as truth,” she said, adding that he has begun exhibiting early symptoms of mental decline and insists he has not donated as much as he actually has.While she has unsubscribed him from as many email and text lists as she can, she remains worried. “I can’t watch him 24 hours a day,” she said.Text messages sent from the National Republican Congressional Committee urged people to donate with false deadlines and promises of matching contributions.David Laibson, a behavioral economics professor at Harvard who has studied the impact of aging on financial decision-making, said studies showed that half of people in their 80s or older have either some cognitive impairment short of dementia or actual dementia.“Who’s the perfect target?” he said. “They’re in their early 80s, they have a very substantial likelihood of cognitive impairment, and they probably still haven’t depleted their retirement nest egg.”In fact, the records show that more money was refunded to donors who were 80 and older than to adults under 50, on both ActBlue and WinRed, according to the examination of California refund data.ActBlue and WinRed both said they work with customers to solve any problems they encounter, but declined to comment further.Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the chairwoman of the Rules Committee, which oversees federal elections administration, noted that many older Americans were particularly isolated during the coronavirus pandemic, and were simultaneously forced to be online more to connect with family and friends. “They had no choice,” she said, “so it is really easy to target them.”Ms. Klobuchar, a Democrat, recently introduced legislation to ban prechecked boxes that repeat donations after the Federal Election Commission unanimously recommended outlawing the practice in the wake of the Times investigation.“Politicians are always courting the votes of seniors,” she said. “Then, behind their backs, they’re scamming them for money. It’s pretty bad.”Some younger donors who are less internet-savvy also donated more than they intended.Daisy DeSimone, left, and her mother, Marian, at their home in New Jersey.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesMarian DeSimone, the mother of Daisy DeSimone, who has a developmental disability, said her 30-year-old daughter was entrapped in a Republican recurring donation vortex last year that involved hundreds of small contributions totaling $2,700, about 85 percent of which went to two Trump committees.In a joint interview with her mother, Daisy said she contributed more than she intended, “by a lot,” and felt “frustrated” by her experience. She was most impassioned about the overwhelming volume of solicitations: “They would keep coming back to me, they would keep emailing me and texting me.”When her mother logged into her account to try to delete her from various lists, she discovered that the “unsubscribe” link from the Republican National Committee was in plain text. Unlike every other link, it was neither bold nor blue nor underlined. You had to hover above to see that it was a link at all.“Shameful!” she thought. At first, she had blamed her daughter for the deluge of donations. Now she sees her as a victim.Mothership Strategies, a Washington-based digital consulting firm, is known for its aggressive tactics in Democratic politics.Matt McClain/The Washington Post, via Getty Images‘A systemic campaign finance abuse issue’Overall, Republican campaigns issued refunds at far higher rates (7.4 percent of WinRed contributions) than Democratic ones (2.3 percent on ActBlue) in the 2020 election, a gap driven chiefly by Mr. Trump’s prechecked boxes scheme.But some Democratic donors did feel victimized.Susan Kraus is an 81-year-old New Yorker who, federal records show, made around 175 separate donations last year via ActBlue, totaling about $4,500.“That’s impossible,” Ms. Kraus said in an interview. “Never. I don’t know how that happened. But it wasn’t me doing it.” Both she and her son, Brett Graham, said she experiences short-term memory loss.“It’s almost like they were duplicating it,” she said. “Like there were tricks.” She recalls making donations with her phone but nothing at that scale, nor to the range of groups that records show she contributed to.“There isn’t a nice way to spin it,” said Mr. Graham, who helps manage his mother’s financial affairs. “This is a systemic campaign finance abuse issue.” He added that the overlapping pattern of giving was “not what a human being would do.” He was able to receive refunds for roughly $2,500 from two credit cards.The largest share of Ms. Kraus’s donations went to two interconnected groups, Stop Republicans and the Progressive Turnout Project, that she said she had never heard of. Both organizations share a Washington-based digital consulting firm, Mothership Strategies, that Democratic critics have singled out for its aggressive tactics.Of the top 10 Democratic groups with the oldest average age for refunded donors in California during the last election that refunded at least $75,000, all were Mothership clients.Those groups had an average age range of 74 to 78, the analysis of refund data shows. (WinRed does not itemize which campaigns provide refunds to particular donors, so an equivalent examination is not possible.)More than 40 percent of Facebook ads from Stop Republicans and the Progressive Turnout Project reached users over 65, according to a public database compiled by Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Democratic digital consultancy. In comparison, the Biden campaign devoted 18.5 percent of its Facebook ads to that demographic.Mothership said that it does not target people by age. Instead, it said, it screens based on interests and likelihood to donate — and that older people are simply more reliable donors.“We’re proud to raise the funds that allow our clients to outcompete Republican super PACs and elect progressive and diverse Democrats across the country,” Maya Garcia, a principal at Mothership, said in a statement. She added that the leaders of the firm “never want anyone to make an accidental contribution,” that it displays its organizations’ names prominently and that it works “to ensure all refund requests are handled quickly.”The company declined to say if it receives a commission on money it raises online. The Washington Post reported in 2019 that its commission was as high as 15 percent.A debate among Democrats on tacticsToday, most leading Republican groups deploy prechecked recurring boxes and other aggressive tactics, but in Democratic circles a debate is raging about the ethics of online solicitations. There are two clear camps: those who rose through the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party’s House fund-raising arm, and its highly aggressive program, including Mothership Strategies, and those more aligned with the presidential campaigns of Senator Bernie Sanders.The D.C.C.C.’s operation is one of the few Democratic groups that continue to use the prechecked boxes. It has also experimented with another processing platform while ActBlue moves to block the practice entirely. In June, one fund-raising pitch came from a sender listed as “SOCIAL SECURITY UPDATE (via DCCC)” — though on platforms like Gmail, the D.C.C.C. part was cut off unless people clicked through.Murshed Zaheed, a veteran Democratic digital consultant, is among those pushing for what he calls “ethical email,” which he defined as not deceiving supporters.“I cannot tell you how much I hate the words ‘email list,’” he said. He said the phrase “dehumanizes” people and treats them “as A.T.M. machines.”For Mr. Vaughan, the former NASA scientist, his final credit card bill was a maze of repeating charges to the same campaigns, sometimes on the same day.The note his son discovered had the words “WinRed charges to be refunded” written clearly. It was dated Nov. 25 — the same day that federal records show $1,144 was refunded.It was only about 10 percent of his total giving. His son has been unable to recoup the rest.Rachel Shorey contributed research. More

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      The ‘Resistance’ Formed Because of Trump, With an Assist From Jon Ossoff

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