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      Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado Fends Off Challenge From Left in N.Y. Primary

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      Antonio Delgado, the lieutenant governor of New York, won the Democratic primary on Tuesday, scoring a convincing victory over his nearest challenger, Ana María Archila, a longtime activist who had emerged as the left wing’s best chance of winning statewide office this election cycle.Mr. Delgado prevailed despite his late entry into the race just last month, when Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed him as her second-in-command and running mate, replacing former Lt. Gov. Brian A. Benjamin, who was arrested on federal campaign finance fraud charges.But in just a few weeks, Mr. Delgado, a former congressman from the Hudson Valley, managed to overwhelm his opponents with millions of dollars spent on television ads and campaign mailers. With Ms. Hochul’s backing, he secured the party’s institutional support and endorsements from major labor unions, giving him a definitive edge as he rushed to introduce himself to voters statewide.The election for the state’s second-highest office became one the most compelling and closely watched contests in Tuesday’s primary after Mr. Benjamin’s resignation rocked the race. It cast a spotlight on a typically low-profile office with few statutory duties besides succeeding the governor — a once-rare occurrence that has nonetheless come to pass for two of the last three governors.The race set off competing visions of an office typically used to amplify the governor’s agenda and touched on divisive issues around ideology, Latino representation in government and the influence of money in the State Capitol.A Guide to New York’s 2022 Primary ElectionsAs prominent Democratic officials seek to defend their records, Republicans see opportunities to make inroads in general election races.Governor’s Race: Gov. Kathy Hochul is trying to fend off energetic challenges from two fellow Democrats, while the four-way G.O.P. contest has been playing in part like a referendum on Donald J. Trump.Where the Candidates Stand: Ahead of the primaries for governor on June 28, our political reporters questioned the seven candidates on crime, taxes, abortion and more.Maloney vs. Nadler: New congressional lines have put the two stalwart Manhattan Democrats — including New York City’s last remaining Jewish congressman — on a collision course in the Aug. 23 primary.15 Democrats, 1 Seat: A newly redrawn House district in New York City may be one of the largest and most freewheeling primaries in the nation.Offensive Remarks: Carl P. Paladino, a Republican running for a House seat in Western New York, recently drew backlash for praising Adolf Hitler in an interview dating back to 2021.And it presented a potentially awkward outcome for Ms. Hochul: Had Ms. Archila scored an upset, Ms. Hochul would have shared the Democratic ticket with a running mate not of her choice in the general election. Ms. Hochul and Mr. Delgado will now face off in November against the Republican ticket of Representative Lee Zeldin and Alison Esposito, a former police officer who ran unopposed for lieutenant governor.On Tuesday night, Mr. Delgado said that if Democrats needed a reminder of what’s at stake in November, they need look no further than the Supreme Court’s “disastrous” decision to take away a woman’s right to an abortion.“This is the fight of our lives,” Mr. Delgado said at an election night watch party at a Manhattan rooftop event space swirling with a who’s who of the state’s top Democrats.Mr. Delgado had won 60 percent of the Democratic primary vote, with 48 percent of the expected vote counted, according to The Associated Press. Ms. Archila had won 25 percent of the vote, followed by Diana Reyna, with 14 percent.Ms. Reyna 48, a former city councilwoman from Brooklyn, was the running mate of Representative Thomas Suozzi of Long Island, who unsuccessfully challenged Ms. Hochul in the primary.Mr. Delgado’s main competition was thought to be from Ms. Archila, the preferred candidate of the Working Families Party, who sought to galvanize the party’s left flank by mounting an insurgent campaign that garnered endorsements from Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nydia Velázquez, and a slew of progressive groups. Running alongside Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate, Ms. Archila vowed to use the lieutenant governor’s office not as a ceremonial role but as an independent bully pulpit to push back against the governor’s office.In Ms. Archila, 43, the party’s progressive-activist wing saw its latest opportunity to catapult one of its own to statewide office for the first time, following a string of failed attempts in recent years: Mr. Williams himself came close to unseating Ms. Hochul when she was lieutenant governor in 2018.Diana Reyna, left; Ana María Archila, center; and Antonio Delgado, who won the race.Mary Altaffer/Pool, AP, via Associated PressBut Ms. Archila’s nimble campaign was no match for Mr. Delgado’s giant campaign war chest, which helped him outspend his opponents 80 to one on the airwaves.Mr. Delgado poured $5.3 million into the race to pay for a barrage of television and digital ads leading up to Election Day. The Archila campaign and the Working Families Party spent only $66,000 in ads on her behalf, according to AdImpact, a firm that tracks political ad spending.Mr. Delgado, 45, was elected to Congress in 2018 as part of the so-called blue wave during the Trump presidency, flipping a largely rural House seat in the Hudson Valley and becoming the first person of color to represent a New York district outside New York City and its suburbs in Washington.A newcomer to the intricacies of state politics, Mr. Delgado was recruited by Ms. Hochul in May to serve as her lieutenant governor and running mate after she muscled through legislation to remove Mr. Benjamin from the ballot after his arrest. The Hochul campaign saw in Mr. Delgado a proven campaigner who could potentially win in competitive districts and help Ms. Hochul, who is white, make inroads among Black and Latino communities.Mr. Delgado, who identifies as Afro-Latino, struggled to explain his Hispanic roots during his first news conference in Albany, upsetting Latino political leaders who were eager to elevate a Latino to statewide office for the first time in the state’s history. The concerns around his ethnicity were amplified by the two Latinas challenging him; Ms. Archila was born in Colombia, while Ms. Reyna is Dominican-American.On the campaign trail, Mr. Delgado often highlighted his upbringing in a working-class household in Schenectady and his polished résumé as a Rhodes scholar and graduate of Harvard Law School, as well as his brief stint as a rapper — an example, he has said, of an unplanned trajectory that led him to enter public service.Mr. Delgado has said he would work in close partnership with Ms. Hochul if elected for a full-term and, because of his connections in Washington, serve as a liaison between New York and the federal government.Dana Rubinstein More

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      Illinois Governor’s Race Shows G.O.P.’s Lurch to Right (With Nudge From Left)

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      Republican voters in Illinois nominated a conservative hard-liner for governor on Tuesday, lifting State Senator Darren Bailey out from a bruising and costly primary that saw spending from three dueling billionaires — including the current Democratic governor, who spent tens of millions of dollars to meddle in the Republican contest.Mr. Bailey defeated Mayor Richard C. Irvin of Aurora, the moderate Black mayor of the state’s second-biggest city, in a race that captured the ongoing power struggle inside the Republican Party. On one side were the old-guard fiscal conservatives who bankrolled Mr. Irvin. On the other side was an ascendant G.O.P. wing that wants to take a more combative approach to politics inspired by former President Donald J. Trump.Kenneth Griffin, a Chicago-based Republican and hedge-fund founder, plunged $50 million into Mr. Irvin’s campaign in an effort to find a moderate Republican who could compete against Democrats in a blue state. But his preferred candidate came under attack not just from Mr. Bailey and other Republicans, but also from the Democratic Governors Association and Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a fellow billionaire and a Democrat. And Mr. Bailey had his own billionaire: Richard Uihlein, a top financier on the right.Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois at a deli in Chicago on Tuesday.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesThe Illinois race is the most expensive example yet of a high-risk 2022 Democratic strategy of injecting money into Republican primaries to help more extreme G.O.P. candidates in the hopes that Democrats will face weaker general-election opponents.Democrats welcomed Mr. Bailey to the general election by tagging the opponent they had helped engineer as a “MAGA extremist.”“Bailey is far too conservative for Illinois,” said Noam Lee, the executive director of the Democratic Governors Association.Mr. Bailey called Chicago a “hellhole” during one primary debate, was once removed from a legislative session for refusing to wear a mask and has said he opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest. Mr. Trump endorsed him over the weekend.Democrats also spent money to shape three Republican primaries in Colorado on Tuesday for Senate, governor and the House — and lost in all three.Worried that an eroding national political climate could endanger Senator Michael Bennet, Democrats spent heavily to intervene in the Republican primary. They helped lift up State Representative Ron Hanks, a far-right Republican who marched at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. A Guide to New York’s 2022 Primary ElectionsAs prominent Democratic officials seek to defend their records, Republicans see opportunities to make inroads in general election races.Governor’s Race: Gov. Kathy Hochul is trying to fend off energetic challenges from two fellow Democrats, while the four-way G.O.P. contest has been playing in part like a referendum on Donald J. Trump.Where the Candidates Stand: Ahead of the primaries for governor on June 28, our political reporters questioned the seven candidates on crime, taxes, abortion and more.Maloney vs. Nadler: New congressional lines have put the two stalwart Manhattan Democrats — including New York City’s last remaining Jewish congressman — on a collision course in the Aug. 23 primary.15 Democrats, 1 Seat: A newly redrawn House district in New York City may be one of the largest and most freewheeling primaries in the nation.Offensive Remarks: Carl P. Paladino, a Republican running for a House seat in Western New York, recently drew backlash for praising Adolf Hitler in an interview dating back to 2021.But the effort failed as a more moderate businessman, Joe O’Dea, won on Tuesday. His campaign celebrated by handing out faux newspapers to supporters at his victory party with the banner headline “O’DEA DEFEATS SCHUMER.”In his victory speech in Denver, Mr. O’Dea pledged to be “like a Republican Joe Manchin” and lampooned the failed intervention by Democrats as “everything that the American people hate about politics.”“It is pure cynicism and deceit,” he said.Illinois and Colorado were two of seven states holding primaries or runoffs on Tuesday, the first races since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last week and thrust abortion back to the center of the American political debate.Governor Kathy Hochul speaks to supporters after winning the Democratic nomination Tuesday night.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesIn New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul won the Democratic nomination for her first full term after succeeding Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who resigned under pressure over sexual misconduct. In Oklahoma, voters were sorting through a host of Republicans for a rare open Senate seat. And in Mississippi, one House Republican was defeated in a runoff and another survived a right-wing challenger. There were also contests in Utah and South Carolina, including for Senate.Democrats had also attempted to meddle in the Republican primary for governor of Colorado, where an outside group spent money linking Greg Lopez, a former mayor of Parker, to Mr. Trump in a backhanded attempt to elevate him over Heidi Ganahl, a University of Colorado regent.But Ms. Ganahl prevailed and will face Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat who became the first openly gay man elected to a governorship in 2018 and is seeking re-election.Democrats had also spent in Colorado’s open Eighth District to aid another far-right candidate. The seat is expected to be competitive in the fall.In another closely watched Colorado race, Tina Peters, a Mesa County clerk who has been charged with seven felonies related to allegations that she tampered with voting machines to try to prove the 2020 presidential election was rigged, lost her bid for the Republican nomination to oversee elections as secretary of state.Ms. Peters has pleaded not guilty, and the indictment made her something of a hero to the election-denial movement spurred by Mr. Trump. But that was not enough for her to defeat Pam Anderson, a former Jefferson County clerk.On Tuesday, one voter, Sienna Wells, a 31-year-old software developer and registered independent who lives in Mesa County, cast her ballot in the Republican primary to oppose Ms. Peters, calling her “delusional.”“She says she wants free and fair elections and stuff like that, but if she gets in, she’ll be the one performing fraud,” Ms. Wells said. “It’s awful.”Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk who is running for Colorado secretary of state, spoke at an event in Grand Junction in June.Daniel Brenner for The New York TimesIn Illinois, an aggressive remapping by Democrats in the once-a-decade redistricting process created a half-dozen competitive House primaries, including two that pitted incumbents of the same party against each other. The races were the latest battlefields for the two parties’ ideological factions.In the Chicago suburbs, Representative Sean Casten defeated Representative Marie Newman after both Democrats were drawn into the same district. Ms. Newman had defeated a moderate Democratic incumbent to win her seat just two years ago. But she has since come under investigation for promising a job to an opponent to get him to exit her race.The victory for Mr. Casten came two weeks after he suffered a personal tragedy: the death of his 17-year-old daughter.In a sprawling and contorted new district that wraps around Springfield, Ill., two Republican incumbents, Representatives Rodney Davis and Mary Miller, were at odds. The contest has involved more than $11.5 million in outside spending. Mr. Davis is an ally of Republican leaders and has benefited from PAC spending linked to Mr. Griffin, the Republican billionaire, and the crypto industry. Ms. Miller was supported by spending from the Club for Growth, a conservative anti-tax group.Representative Mary Miller greeted supporters at a rally hosted by former President Donald J. Trump in Mendon, Ill.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesMs. Miller won. Her success was a victory for Mr. Trump, who endorsed her months ago in a contest that was seen as the greatest test of his personal influence on Tuesday. Ms. Miller made headlines at a rally with Mr. Trump last weekend, when she hailed the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe as a “victory for white life.” An aide said she had misread a prepared line about the “right to life.”In Chicago, Representative Danny K. Davis, a veteran 80-year-old Black Democrat, confronted a robust primary challenge from Kina Collins, a 31-year-old gun safety activist, in one of the nation’s most solidly Democratic seats.. Representative Michael Guest at a campaign event in Magee, Miss., in June.Rogelio V. Solis/Associated PressIn Mississippi, Representative Michael Guest held off a primary challenge in the Third District from Michael Cassidy, a Navy veteran.Mr. Guest had drawn attacks as one of the three dozen Republicans who voted to authorize an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack, even though such a commission was never formed. Instead, a Democrat-led House committee is now investigating.But after Mr. Cassidy narrowly outpaced Mr. Guest in the first round of voting, a super PAC aligned with Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican minority leader, spent more than $500,000 attacking Mr. Cassidy in the final two weeks before the runoff.In Mississippi’s Fourth District, Representative Steven Palazzo was defeated by Sheriff Mike Ezell of Jackson County on Tuesday. Mr. Palazzo, seeking a seventh term, had earned only 31 percent of the vote in the first round and was seen as vulnerable after a congressional ethics investigation accused him in 2021 of misspending campaign funds and other transgressions.In Oklahoma, the early resignation of Senator James M. Inhofe, a Republican who will retire in January, created a rare open seat in the solidly Republican state and drew an expansive primary field.Representative Markwayne Mullin advanced to the runoff and the second spot was still too close to call late Tuesday. T.W. Shannon, the former speaker of the Oklahoma House, Luke Holland, who served as Mr. Inhofe’s chief of staff, and State Senator Nathan Dahm were competing for the second runoff spot. Scott Pruitt, the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, was on track for a weak fifth-place finish.In Utah, Senator Mike Lee, the Republican incumbent, defeated two primary challengers. In a state that is a conservative stronghold, Democrats decided not to put forward a nominee and instead endorsed Evan McMullin, an independent who made a long-shot bid for president in 2016 by appealing to anti-Trump Republicans.Ryan Biller More

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      Gov. Hochul Cruises to Democratic Primary Win in New York

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York took a crucial step toward winning a full term on Tuesday, easily fending off a pair of spirited primary challengers and cementing her status as the state’s top Democrat less than a year after she unexpectedly took office.The runaway victory by Ms. Hochul, the state’s first female governor, sets the stage for what could be a grueling general election contest against Representative Lee Zeldin, a conservative congressional ally of former President Donald J. Trump who beat out three fellow Republicans in a gritty race for his party’s nomination.Ms. Hochul enters the November contest with deep structural advantages: She has the power of the governor’s office and overflowing campaign accounts, her party enjoys a more than two-to-one registration advantage and Republicans have not won statewide in New York since Gov. George E. Pataki secured a third term in 2002.But with warning signs flashing red for Democrats nationally and New Yorkers in a dour mood over elevated crime and skyrocketing prices for housing, gas and a week’s groceries, both parties were preparing to run as if even deep blue New York could be in play this fall.The general election contest promises to have sweeping implications that ripple well beyond New York in the aftermath of two recent landmark Supreme Court decisions that ended the federal right to an abortion and curtailed New York’s ability to regulate firearms. The state has long been a safe haven for abortion and had one of the most restrictive laws regulating firearms, positions Mr. Zeldin and Mr. Giuliani oppose and could try to change if one of them wins.With that fight looming, Democratic primary voters on Tuesday chose Ms. Hochul, a middle-of-the-road incumbent who spent the campaign’s final weeks casting herself as a steady protector of the state’s liberal values — if not the firebrand or soaring orator who have found success in other races.“We cannot and will not let right-wing extremists set us backward on all the decades of progress we’ve made right here, whether it’s a Trump cheerleader running for the governor of the State of New York or Trump’s appointed justices on the Supreme Court,” Ms. Hochul told supporters at a victory party in TriBeCa in Manhattan.Standing, symbolically, under a glass ceiling, a jubilant Ms. Hochul added that she stood “on the shoulders of generations of women” in her effort to become the first to win the governorship.Ms. Hochul planned to quickly return to Albany, where she has called the Legislature back for a rare special session to respond to the Supreme Court ruling invalidating a century-old state gun control law.The race was called by The Associated Press 25 minutes after the polls closed in New York.Ms. Hochul had won 67 percent of the Democratic primary vote, with 50 percent of the expected vote counted. Jumaane D. Williams, the left-leaning New York City public advocate, had won 21 percent of the vote. Representative Thomas R. Suozzi, a Long Island moderate who ran an aggressively adversarial campaign focused on cutting crime and taxes, won 12 percent of the vote.A Guide to New York’s 2022 Primary ElectionsAs prominent Democratic officials seek to defend their records, Republicans see opportunities to make inroads in general election races.Governor’s Race: Gov. Kathy Hochul is trying to fend off energetic challenges from two fellow Democrats, while the four-way G.O.P. contest has been playing in part like a referendum on Donald J. Trump.Where the Candidates Stand: Ahead of the primaries for governor on June 28, our political reporters questioned the seven candidates on crime, taxes, abortion and more.Maloney vs. Nadler: New congressional lines have put the two stalwart Manhattan Democrats — including New York City’s last remaining Jewish congressman — on a collision course in the Aug. 23 primary.15 Democrats, 1 Seat: A newly redrawn House district in New York City may be one of the largest and most freewheeling primaries in the nation.Offensive Remarks: Carl P. Paladino, a Republican running for a House seat in Western New York, recently drew backlash for praising Adolf Hitler in an interview dating back to 2021.Democratic voters also rewarded Ms. Hochul’s handpicked lieutenant governor and running mate, Antonio Delgado, who survived a spirited challenge from Ana María Archila, a progressive activist aligned with Mr. Williams. Mr. Suozzi’s running mate, Diana Reyna, was also on track to finish third.Mr. Delgado, a former Hudson Valley congressman, was only sworn in a month ago after the governor’s first lieutenant, Brian A. Benjamin, resigned in the face of federal bribery charges and after Ms. Hochul pushed for a legal change to get him on the ballot.His victory was a the night’s second significant disappointment for progressives, who saw Ms. Archila as their best shot at winning statewide office this year. Ultimately, she could not overcome the vast financial and institutional advantages that helped Mr. Delgado blanket TVs and radios in advertising.Primaries in other statewide races — for U.S. Senate, state attorney general, comptroller and the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor — were uncontested.Turnout was relatively low across the state, especially compared with 2018. Combined with President Biden’s slumping approval ratings, Ms. Hochul’s relative newness to office and strong Republican performances last fall in Virginia, New Jersey and on Long Island, the figures were enough to give Democrats cause for concern as they pivoted toward a general election.“Democrats better not take this for granted because Lee Zeldin is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” said Isaac Goldberg, a New York Democratic strategist not working on the race. “He will appeal well to his fellow suburbanites who don’t know how far right he truly is.”Mr. Zeldin, 42, defeated Andrew Giuliani, who had captured far-right support based on his connections to Mr. Trump, his former boss, and the former New York City mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, his father. Mr. Zeldin had 42 percent of the vote, with 55 percent of expected votes reported.He also beat Harry Wilson, a corporate turnaround specialist who burned more than $10 million of his own money into his campaign, and Rob Astorino, the party’s 2014 nominee for governor.The victory was a triumph for the state’s Republican establishment, which threw money and support behind Mr. Zeldin early — a wager that a young Army veteran with a track record of winning tight races on eastern Long Island could appeal to the independents and disaffected Democrats that Republicans need to sway in New York to have a path to victory.Mr. Zeldin has tried to orient his campaign around bipartisan fears about public safety and inflation, promising to open up the state’s Southern Tier to fracking natural gas, reverse the state’s cashless bail law and end coronavirus vaccine requirements, while accusing Ms. Hochul of doing too little to restore public safety.BDemocrats have already started amplifying Mr. Zeldin’s more conservative positions on guns (Mr. Zeldin once said he opposed New York’s red-flag law), abortion rights (he celebrated last week’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade), and, above all, his embrace of Mr. Trump and vote on Jan. 6, 2021, to overturn the results of the presidential election in key swing states.No Republican candidate who opposes abortion rights has won New York’s top office in the half-century since the state legalized abortion.For Ms. Hochul, 63, Tuesday’s vote was the first major test of electoral strength since she unexpectedly came to power last August, when Mr. Cuomo resigned as governor in the face of sexual harassment allegations.A Buffalo native in a party dominated by New York City Democrats, Ms. Hochul had spent much of career toiling in relative obscurity, briefly as a congresswoman from western New York and for nearly six years as Mr. Cuomo’s lieutenant governor.She moved quickly to establish herself as a political force as much as a governing one, leaving little doubt that she was the Democratic front-runner. She won the endorsement of nearly every major Democrat and labor union, assembled a $34 million war chest to vastly outspend her opponents on TV and glossy mailers and took pains to balance the concerns of Black and progressive lawmakers and New Yorkers fearful of crime when pushing for a set of modest changes to the state’s bail laws this spring.She had to withstand aggressive critiques from Mr. Suozzi on her right and Mr. Williams on her left, who argued that she was doing too little to address soaring housing prices or crime and portrayed the governor as another creature of Albany’s corrupt establishment.Polls also showed that Ms. Hochul’s decision to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on a new stadium for the Buffalo Bills was especially unpopular with voters. Like fears about public safety, the deal could re-emerge as a campaign issue this fall.But in the primary contest, at least, it did not matter. Ms. Hochul’s winning margin and coalition closely resembled the ones that sent Mr. Cuomo to Albany for three terms: a strong showing in the New York City suburbs; upstate strongholds in Albany, Buffalo and Rochester; and among Black and Latino voters in New York City.There were also signs that her emphasis on abortion and guns was resonating with voters she will need to turn out in November.“We need someone who can stand up for women’s rights and safety in our schools and a cleaner environment,” said Rebecca Thomas, a financial consultant who cast her vote Tuesday morning in Manhattan’s Battery Park City, at the same site where Mr. Giuliani cast his ballot.Of her fellow voter, she added: “Wrong person, wrong time.”Téa Kvetenadze More

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      Biden Irked by Democrats Who Won’t Take ‘Yes’ for an Answer on 2024

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      The White House is trying to tamp down speculation about plans to seek re-election, while aides say President Biden is bristling at the persistent questions.WASHINGTON — Earlier this month, when Senator Bernie Sanders said he would not challenge President Biden in 2024, Mr. Biden was so relieved he invited his former rival to dinner at the White House the next night.Mr. Biden has been eager for signs of loyalty — and they have been few and far between. Facing intensifying skepticism about his capacity to run for re-election when he will be nearly 82, the president and his top aides have been stung by the questions about his plans, irritated at what they see as a lack of respect from their party and the press, and determined to tamp down suggestions that he’s effectively a lame duck a year and a half into his administration.Mr. Biden isn’t just intending to run, his aides argue, but he’s also laying the groundwork by building resources at the Democratic National Committee, restocking his operation in battleground states and looking to use his influence to shape the nomination process in his favor.This account of Mr. Biden’s preparation for re-election and his building frustration with his party’s doubt is based on interviews with numerous people who talk regularly to the president. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. But several said the president and his inner circle were confounded by Democrats’ discussions about a Plan B when the one person who has defeated Donald J. Trump has made clear he intends to run again.Mr. Biden has told advisers he sees a replay of the early days of his 2020 primary bid, when some Democrats dismissed him as too old or too moderate to win the nomination. He blames the same doubters for the current round of questioning.Those skeptics grew louder over the weekend, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, when Mr. Biden restated his opposition to expanding the ranks of the high court, the left’s preferred solution to the court’s current conservative tilt. The remarks angered critics who argue that the president, who has never been comfortable elevating abortion rights and positions himself as a consensus builder, doesn’t have the temperament for partisan combat.“Too many people in our party look at the glass as half-empty as opposed to the glass as half-full,” said former Representative Cedric Richmond, whom Mr. Biden dispatched from the White House to shore up the Democratic National Committee. Accusing other Democrats of “putting too much into these polling numbers,” an allusion to Mr. Biden’s standing below 40 percent in some surveys, Mr. Richmond said there was “a wing in our party who wanted a different candidate and I’m sure they’d love to have their candidate back in the mix again.”However, it’s hardly just the president’s progressive detractors who are nervous about soaring inflation, uneasy about Mr. Biden running again, and not convinced he even should.Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia at the Capitol in June.Anna Rose Layden Layden for The New York TimesSenator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, who some wealthy donors are hoping will consider a third-party presidential bid, declined to say whether he would consider such a run or if he planned to back Mr. Biden. “We’re just trying to do our daily thing, brother,” Mr. Manchin said. “Trying to do what we got to do that’s good for the country.”Other interviews with Democratic lawmakers yield grave doubts about whether Mr. Biden ought to lead the party again with some concluding he should but only because there’s no clearly viable alternative.“I have been surprised at the number of people who are openly expressing concerns about 2024 and whether or not Biden should run,” said Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, recounting a recent dinner of Democrats in the capital where several speculated about who could succeed the president.More worrisome for Mr. Biden, some ambitious Democrats have found that calling for the president to retire is a sure way to win attention. Former Representative Joe Cunningham of South Carolina, who’s hoping to unseat Gov. Henry McMaster, 75, said the president should cede the nomination “to a new generation of leadership,” as he put it on CNN last week.In some respects, Mr. Biden invited this moment. Running in the 2020 primary, the president presented himself as “a bridge, not as anything else” as he sought to rally skeptical Democrats to his candidacy. Consumed with ejecting Mr. Trump from office, the party’s voters answered that call but thought little of the implications of having an octogenarian in the Oval Office four years on.Now, over half of Democrats say they don’t want Mr. Biden to run again or aren’t sure he should, according to recent surveys.Mr. Biden’s top advisers reject the idea that an open primary would deliver Democrats a stronger standard-bearer. They fear his retirement would set off a sprint to the left. What’s more, while Vice President Kamala Harris would most likely garner substantial support, she’s unlikely to clear the field, leading to a messy race that could widen the party’s divisions on issues of race, gender and ideology.Mr. Biden has told aides he is determined to run again, although he has also noted he will take his family’s advice into account. Mr. Biden’s advisers recognize the political risk of being perceived as a one-term president and are intent on signaling that he intends to run for re-election.The president has made clear he wants a primary calendar that better reflects the party’s racial diversity, all but assuring the demise of first-in-the-nation status for the Iowa, which was hostile to Mr. Biden in his last two presidential bids. Senior Democrats are considering moving up Michigan, a critical general election state where the president has a number of allies in labor and elected office.The Democratic National Committee has been quietly preparing for the president’s re-election by pouring money and staff into eight battleground states that happen to have important midterm elections, an effort that began in the spring of last year. Mr. Biden has also accelerated his fund-raising, holding a pair of events for the committee in June that brought in $5 million, while also spending more time on Zoom sessions courting individual contributors.The president has moved to consolidate his hold on the D.N.C., and not just by sending Mr. Richmond to the committee. Mr. Biden has also shifted both his social media assets and his lucrative fund-raising list to the party, which has made the committee largely reliant on those channels for their contributions.Anita Dunn, center, speaking with Ron Klain, the chief of staff, last year during an event in the Rose Garden.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesEven more subtly, Mr. Biden has made personnel moves that indicate he’s at least preparing to run, most notably summoning Anita Dunn, a longtime adviser, back to the White House from her public affairs firm. Ms. Dunn, who helped revive the president’s moribund primary campaign in 2020; Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, Mr. Biden’s top political aide; and senior adviser Mike Donilon are expected to help guide the re-election, though notably there has been no decision yet on who will formally manage the re-election outside the White House.What Mr. Biden will not do, aides say, is quiet the critics by filing his paperwork to run in 2024 before this year’s midterm elections, a step being considered by Mr. Trump. Mr. Biden’s advisers feel the move would suggest panic and create a significant fund-raising burden two years before the campaign. Should the midterms go poorly, however, the president may feel pressure to formalize his intentions sooner than what they see as the modern standard — former President Barack Obama’s April 2011 declaration.For now, the president is relying on personal diplomacy, as he did with Mr. Sanders, the Vermont independent, and the power of the presidency, to ward off would-be competitors.Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois speaking to abortion rights demonstrators in Chicago in May.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesEven before Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois arrived recently in New Hampshire, a traditional early voting state, Biden officials said that the governor’s office had given them a heads up about the eyebrow-raising travel and reassured them that the governor had no plan to mount a primary challenge against the president. The message was appreciated, a Biden official said, noting that Mr. Pritzker has been lobbying to get the Democrats’ 2024 convention to Chicago. Mr. Biden will make that decision later this year.White House aides have noticed Gov. Gavin Newsom’s repeated denunciations of his party leadership for not more robustly confronting Republicans. They dismissed the California governor’s critiques as those of a politician feeling his oats after easily thwarting a recall and said Mr. Newsom was in frequent contact with the West Wing. And one Biden adviser noted that Mr. Newsom feels enough affection for Mr. Biden to have posted pictures of his children with the president on social media during Mr. Biden’s trip to California last week.As for Hillary Clinton, few Biden advisers think she will mount a challenge against him, though her recent Financial Times interview made it clear she’s eager to have her voice in the political conversation. Mrs. Clinton has made little secret of her frustration that she has not been consulted more by Mr. Biden. But White House aides believe they can direct Mrs. Clinton’s energy toward assisting with the public response to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe.When pressed about why Mr. Biden is so intent on running again, the president’s defenders point out he did what Mrs. Clinton did not, defeat Mr. Trump.Stung about their perceived treatment, they also recall other recent Democrats — President Bill Clinton and Mr. Obama — who rebounded from low approval numbers and rough midterm elections to win second terms.But Mr. Biden’s age — at 79, he is the oldest president in American history — has fueled skepticism those presidents didn’t face.“Trump is a senior citizen, too,” shoots back Fletcher Smith, a former South Carolina legislator, reprising a line White House officials use, as well.Democrats remain so alarmed by the threat that Mr. Trump, 76, represents that Mr. Biden’s aides argue they will be insulated from a primary because such a race will be perceived as effectively aiding the former president, a life-or-death question for American democracy.President Biden in Rehoboth Beach, Del., on Monday.Sarah Silbiger for The New York TimesFor the most part, senior Democrats would rather avoid the question for now.Asked if he expected Mr. Biden to run again, Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, said: “If he runs, I’m for him.” Pressed if he thought Mr. Biden would do so, Mr. Schumer repeated the same line.One outside ally of the president and a regular White House visitor, the National Urban League president Marc Morial, played down questions about the president’s age, saying that “he still has the old Joe Biden fire.”But Mr. Morial urged the president not to dwell on the criticism. “I think sometimes if you overreact to it you give it air,” he said. 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      Under Court’s Shadow, N.Y. Governor Candidates Lob Final Pitches

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      Rulings on abortion and guns shape the final weekend of campaigning before Tuesday’s primary.A pair of seismic rulings by the Supreme Court jolted the race for governor of New York on Sunday, as Democrats and Republicans made final pitches to an electorate that found itself at the center of renewed national debates over guns and abortion rights.All three Democratic candidates for governor fanned out Sunday morning to Black churches in Harlem and Queens, Manhattan’s Pride March and street corners across the city to denounce the rulings and promise an aggressive response.“We’re going to pass a law that’s going to say, you can’t bring a weapon into this church on a Sunday,” Gov. Kathy Hochul, the Democratic front-runner, assured congregants at Greater Allen African Methodist Episcopal Cathedral of New York in Jamaica, Queens.“I don’t want those guns on subways, either,” she added. “I don’t want them in playgrounds. I don’t want them near schools.”The Republican candidates, who mostly lauded both rulings, generally stuck to other messages with broad appeal to a state where both abortion rights and gun control are popular — attacking Ms. Hochul for New York’s rising inflation and elevated crime rates.But in at least one episode, the abortion issue was hard to avoid. Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, said that he was slapped in the back by a grocery store employee referencing abortion on Sunday afternoon while he was campaigning for his son, Andrew, on Staten Island.“The one thing he said that was political was ‘you’re going to kill women, you’re going to kill women,’” said Mr. Giuliani, who said he understood the remark to be a reference to the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade on Friday.The police, who did not confirm the abortion remark, said a suspect was in custody but had not been charged. The younger Mr. Giuliani was not on hand.Equal parts exuberance and frustration, the final pitches roughly hewed the battle lines that were drawn months ago in races that have been punctuated by violent tragedies — like the racist attack at a Buffalo supermarket in May — and buffeted by quality-of-life concerns.Wendy Dominski of Youngstown, N.Y., left, exchanged a blown kiss with Andrew Giuliani as he arrived at Lebanon Valley Speedway in New Lebanon, N.Y.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesOnly this time, the fights played out in the shadow of the Supreme Court decisions issued in recent days on abortion rights and New York’s ability to regulate firearms. The rulings have injected a fresh dynamic into the races and appear to have given Democrats a new sense of urgency.Ms. Hochul, the state’s first female governor, put both rulings at the center of her weekend hopscotch across the city, highlighting her decisions to spend $35 million to aid abortion access and call lawmakers back to Albany next week for a special legislative session to address the justices’ decision to overturn a 100-year-old New York law limiting the ability to carry concealed weapons.Hours after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday, the governor raced to a protest in Manhattan’s Union Square, promising thousands of New Yorkers that New York would be a “safe harbor” for abortion under her leadership.In a show of her standing with the state’s Democratic establishment, Ms. Hochul and her running mate, Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, also trotted out powerful Democratic surrogates. Mayor Eric Adams campaigned with them in Brooklyn on Saturday, and Representative Gregory W. Meeks, the chairman of the Queens Democratic Party who has prodded her to put together a more diverse campaign, accompanied her to church on Sunday.“I’m not telling you who to vote for,” Ms. Hochul teased in Jamaica. “You’re not supposed to do that in church.”Some voters said they were already impressed.“Thus far, I’ve been happy with what she’s done,” said Shirley Gist, a 74-year-old retired speech pathologist who voted early for Ms. Hochul on Saturday. “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.”Governor Hochul campaigned at the Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral of New York in Queens on Sunday.Brittainy Newman for The New York TimesJumaane D. Williams, New York City’s left-leaning public advocate, and Representative Thomas R. Suozzi, who is running to Ms. Hochul’s right, did their best at a Sunday appearance at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem to convince the uncommitted of just the opposite.“I’m a common-sense Democrat. I’m tired of far left, and I’m tired of crazy right,” Mr. Suozzi said in remarks where he tied himself to Mr. Adams’s crime-fighting plans and pledged to cut taxes and improve public education. He knocked Ms. Hochul for accepting support from the National Rifle Association in past campaigns — an affiliation she has since disavowed.Mr. Williams did not explicitly address the Supreme Court decisions but laid blame nonetheless at the feet of Democratic power structure.“I have to be clear, Democratic leadership has failed this time,” he said. “They failed to act.”Still, it was far from clear that the attacks would be enough to turn the tide against Ms. Hochul, who is spending millions of dollars more in advertising than either primary opponent and holds a large lead in public polls. In fact, some Democrats predicted that backlash to the Supreme Court rulings would only help Ms. Hochul, a moderate from Buffalo who only took office last summer.“What can the two Democratic challengers do?” said former Gov. David A. Paterson. “They can’t be against it, so they have to kind of sit and watch.”He predicted a comfortable win for Ms. Hochul: “When people are embattled, they tend to vote more pragmatically,” he said.Democrats will also decide on a candidate for lieutenant governor on Tuesday. Mr. Delgado has ample institutional support, but he faces a pair of spirited challenges from Ana María Archila, a progressive activist aligned with Mr. Williams, and Diana Reyna, a more moderate Democrat running with Mr. Suozzi.Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate, said Democratic leadership has failed.Craig Ruttle/Associated PressThe winner will face Alison Esposito, a Republican and longtime New York City police officer.The Republican race for governor has been considerably more lively — full of name-calling, increasing disdain and sharper policy differences between the candidates. But with scant public polling available and most of the candidates still struggling to establish name recognition with primary voters, even the state’s most-connected Republicans were scratching their heads.“I have no idea how this turns out,” said John J. Faso, a former Republican congressman and the party’s 2006 nominee for governor.With Mr. Giuliani and Harry Wilson nipping at his heels, Representative Lee Zeldin, the presumptive front-runner backed by the State Republican Party, spent the weekend touring upstate New York in a campaign bus trying to shore up support in regions that typically sway his party’s primary.“Everybody’s hitting their breaking point right now,” Mr. Zeldin told a small crowd of about three dozen who gathered in an industrial park outside of Albany. He promised to rehire people who had been fired for refusing to be vaccinated, and to fire the Manhattan district attorney, who has become a punching bag for Republicans.Another candidate, Rob Astorino, spent Sunday shaking hands with potential voters on the boardwalk in Long Beach on Long Island.Mr. Wilson, a moderate who favors abortion rights and has positioned himself as a centrist outsider, has done relatively little in person campaigning. But he has blanketed the airwaves with more than $10 million worth of advertisements filleting Mr. Zeldin as a flip-flopping political insider.Near Albany, an entirely different message was being delivered by Andrew Giuliani, who spent Saturday night spinning laps around the Lebanon Valley Speedway in a Ram pickup emblazoned with his face. He gleefully tied himself to his former boss, Donald J. Trump: “You like that guy, right?”Though Mr. Giuliani, 36, is an outspoken critic of abortion and proponent of firearms, he spent much of his three hours at the speedway Saturday night reminding voters of his MAGA credentials.The cheers that rose from the crowd suggested he was among friends.Wearing an American flag wrap over a tank top, Wendy Dominski, 52, a retired nurse who drove five hours from Youngstown, N.Y., to volunteer for the event, said the other Republicans in the race are either RINOs — Republicans in Name Only — or “flat-out flip-flop liars.”She had little doubt who the former president supports, even if he hasn’t said so. “Giuliani stands for everything that Trump stands for, and that we stand for,” she said.Reporting was contributed by More

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      Hochul Has Raised $34 Million So Far. Her Goal May Be Double That.

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul’s fund-raising pace could make her run for a full term the most expensive campaign ever for governor of New York.It was the night after the first debate among the major Democrats running to be New York’s governor, and the favored incumbent, Gov. Kathy Hochul, was in a fund-raising mood.As Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” played on the sound system at Hush HK, a gay bar in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, Ms. Hochul worked the crowd of well-connected guests who had paid $500 to $25,000 apiece to attend the June 8 event.As voters prepare for the Democratic primary on Tuesday, Ms. Hochul appears to be a prohibitive favorite over her rivals, Representative Thomas R. Suozzi of Long Island and Jumaane D. Williams, New York City’s public advocate.That has not stopped her from raising campaign cash at a furious pace: Ms. Hochul, who had already collected roughly $34 million in political donations as of Thursday, has set a target of raising a total of $50 million to $70 million by Election Day, according to three Democrats familiar with her plans.“The stakes of this election could not be higher and Governor Hochul is proud of the widespread support for her campaign,” Jen Goodman, a spokeswoman for Ms. Hochul’s campaign, said in a statement. “The governor will continue to build momentum from now until November, connecting with voters across the state and working tirelessly to deliver results for all New Yorkers.”Ms. Hochul and her team have exhaustively pursued contributions from all corners of the donor class: real estate and health care, cryptocurrency and gambling.And she shows no signs of letting up: On Monday, the day before the primary, Ms. Hochul plans a rooftop fund-raiser on Manhattan’s Far West Side. Admission costs a minimum of $100. Hosts are asked to give or raise $25,000.Should Ms. Hochul achieve her desired fund-raising goal, she may be in the running for most expensive campaign for governor in New York history — rivaling only the billionaire Tom Golisano’s failed bid to unseat Gov. George E. Pataki in 2002, an effort with an estimated cost of $54 million to $74 million. She will also put herself in league with similarly expensive campaigns for governor in Virginia and California.Ms. Hochul’s fund-raising effort is somewhat rooted in Albany tradition, with governors often gathering money from donors with business before the state even while the State Legislature is in session.“This is essentially an open seat, so I can understand the logic for why she wants to raise as much as she does to ward off significant competition,” said Blair Horner, the executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, a government watchdog. “On the other hand, where does the money come from?”A Guide to New York’s 2022 Primary ElectionsAs prominent Democratic officials seek to defend their records, Republicans see opportunities to make inroads in general election races.Governor’s Race: Kathy Hochul, the incumbent, is expected to handily win against Jumaane Williams and Tom Suozzi in the Democratic primary on June 28. But some allies worry her low-key approach comes at a cost.Lieutenant Governor’s Race: Ms. Hochul’s handpicked candidate is facing a sharp challenge from the Democratic Party’s left wing.Maloney vs. Nadler: New congressional lines have put the two stalwart Manhattan Democrats — including New York City’s last remaining Jewish congressman — on a collision course in the Aug. 23 primary.15 Democrats, 1 Seat: A newly redrawn House district in New York City may be one of the largest and most freewheeling primaries in the nation.Offensive Remarks: Carl P. Paladino, a Republican running for a House seat in Western New York, recently drew backlash for praising Adolf Hitler in an interview dating back to 2021.Ms. Hochul became the state’s first female governor last August after Andrew M. Cuomo resigned amid allegations of sexual harassment that the state’s attorney general deemed credible.Many of her donations have come from the gambling industry, which is eagerly awaiting the issuance of up to three new licenses for casinos in and around New York City.In recent months. Ms. Hochul has raised more than $200,000 from donors with direct interests in gambling. More than $100,000 of that sum came from contributors associated with Hard Rock, a company that wants to open a casino in New York City, records show.Donors tied to Hard Rock gave Ms. Hochul $80,000 from June 18 to June 23, building on the nearly $40,000 they have given her since she became governor. Jim Allen, Hard Rock International’s chairman, was the largest single donor associated with the company. He gave Ms. Hochul $25,000 on June 20 after contributing almost $13,000 to her campaign in January, the reports show.In addition, Edward Tracy, the chief executive of Hard Rock Japan LLC and a former chief executive at the Trump Organization, gave Ms. Hochul $25,000 on Thursday.A Hard Rock representative declined to comment on the contributions and referred questions to Ms. Hochul’s campaign.Ms. Hochul smashed previous fund-raising records when she announced a $21.6 million haul at the beginning of the year, by far the largest amount any New York candidate had reported for a single filing period.She has continued pulling in money at a dizzying clip, in some cases raising hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single day. She reported taking in $340,000 on Tuesday and another $200,000 on Wednesday, campaign finance records show. That is more than Mr. Suozzi raised in the previous three-week reporting period, which ended in mid-June.Ms. Hochul’s campaign team believes she needs a large campaign war chest to help ensure victory in an election cycle that is widely expected to favor Republicans. While she has been largely absent from the campaign trail, she has been a far more frenetic presence on the fund-raising circuit.On Wednesday, the chief executive of CLEAR — whose biometric technology is used to screen passengers at New York airports — hosted a fund-raiser for Ms. Hochul at Zero Bond, a nightclub often frequented by Mayor Eric Adams. Tickets cost $5,000 to $25,000, according to one invitee.In the most recent filings, which trickle in daily and include contributions since June 14, Ms. Hochul had already exceeded $1 million by Friday, with an average donation of about $10,000 and two new donors giving her the maximum $69,700. Since taking office, at least 10 percent of her cash has come from donors giving the maximum.Real estate interests, still smarting from their loss of a lucrative tax break that lapsed this year, continue to pour money into Ms. Hochul’s campaign. Two members of the Cayre real estate family, which controls the Midtown Equities firm, donated the maximum this week, bringing the family’s total to more than $400,000 since November.The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Several real estate titans have found a way to keep on giving even after hitting their limit with Ms. Hochul’s campaign: contribute to her running mate, Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, instead. In the last few days alone, Mr. Delgado has picked up several five-figure checks from real estate industry contributors who had already maxed out to Ms. Hochul, pushing his total from all donors since June 16 to almost $600,000.Mr. Delgado succeeded Brian Benjamin, who resigned after prosecutors indicted him on federal bribery and fraud charges. The night before the indictment was announced, Ms. Hochul was at a fund-raiser in Midtown Manhattan that featured a performance of Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” by a former governor, David Paterson.“The lyrics for ‘Dock of the Bay’ are quite existential,” Mr. Paterson said in an interview this week before reciting them to a reporter. More

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      With Swag and Swagger, State Democrats Vie for Front of Presidential Primary Line

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      After Iowa’s disastrous 2020 caucuses, Democratic officials are weighing drastic changes to the 2024 calendar. States, angling for early attention, are waxing poetic. Behold, the New Jersey Turnpike!WASHINGTON — High-ranking Democrats distributed gift bags and glossy pamphlets, waxing poetic about New Hampshire’s Manchester Airport and the New Jersey Turnpike.Midwestern manners barely masked a deepening rivalry between Michigan and Minnesota.And state leaders deployed spirited surrogate operations and slickly produced advertisements as they barreled into a high-stakes process that will determine the most consequential phase of the Democratic presidential nominating calendar.After Iowa’s disastrous 2020 Democratic caucuses, in which the nation’s longtime leadoff caucus state struggled for days to deliver results, members of the Democratic National Committee are weighing drastic changes to how the party picks its presidential candidates. The most significant step in that process so far unfolded this week, as senators, governors and Democratic chairs from across the country traipsed through a Washington conference room to pitch members of a key party committee on their visions for the 2024 primary calendar.Democratic state parties have formed alliances, enlisted Republicans — and in Michigan’s case, turned to the retired basketball star Isiah Thomas — as they argued for major changes to the traditional process or strained to defend their early-state status.Signs denoting a polling location in Columbia, S.C., before the 2020 primary.Hilary Swift for The New York Times“Tradition is not a good enough reason to preserve the status quo,” said the narrators of Nevada’s video, as state officials bid to hold the first nominating contest. “Our country is changing. Our party is changing. The way we choose our nominee — that has to change, too.”Four states have kicked off the Democratic presidential nominating contest in recent years: early-state stalwarts Iowa and New Hampshire, followed by Nevada and South Carolina. But Iowa has faced sharp criticism over both the 2020 debacle and its lack of diversity, and in private conversations this week, Democrats grappled with whether Iowa belonged among the first four states at all.Mindful of the criticism, Iowa officials on Thursday proposed overhauling their caucus system, typically an in-person event that goes through multiple rounds of elimination. Instead, officials said, the presidential preference portion of the contest could be conducted primarily by mail or drop-offs of preference cards, with Iowans selecting just one candidate to support.“In order to continue growing our party, we need to make changes,” acknowledged Ross Wilburn, the Iowa Democratic Party chairman.But the plan drew skeptical questions from some committee members who suggested it might amount to a caucus in name only, and really more of a primary. That would butt it up against New Hampshire, which has passed legislation aimed at stopping other states from pre-empting its first-in-the-nation primary.New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada are generally expected to remain as early states, though the process is fluid and the order is up for debate, with Nevada directly challenging New Hampshire’s position on the calendar, a move the Granite State is unlikely to take lightly.In swag bags from New Hampshire’s delegation, which included maple syrup and a mug from the state’s popular Red Arrow Diner, there was also a brochure noting the history of New Hampshire’s primary, dating to 1916. And in a sign of how seriously New Hampshire takes being the first primary, both of the state’s U.S. senators, Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, were on hand to make the case.“You cannot win a race in New Hampshire without speaking directly to voters, and listening and absorbing their concerns,” Ms. Hassan said, arguing for the benefits of having Democratic presidential contenders submit to the scrutiny of the small state’s famously discerning voters.The committee could weigh many permutations for the order of the states. It is also possible that the D.N.C.’s Rules and Bylaws Committee will recommend adding a fifth early-state slot as large, diverse states including Georgia bid for consideration.The committee is slated to make its recommendations in August, with final approval at the D.N.C.’s meeting in September.Earlier this year, the committee adopted a framework that emphasized racial, ethnic, geographic and economic diversity and labor representation; raised questions about feasibility; and stressed the importance of general election competitiveness. Some committee members this week also alluded to concerns about holding early contests in states where Republican election deniers hold, or may win, high state offices.Sixteen states and Puerto Rico made the cut to present this week, from New Jersey and Illinois to Washington State and Connecticut.The search process comes just over two years after President Biden came in fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire but won the nomination on the strength of later-voting and more diverse states. The White House’s potential preferences in the process would be significant.“They know where we’re at,” said Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, asked on Wednesday if she had spoken with Mr. Biden or the White House about Michigan’s bid. “I haven’t had a direct conversation, but our teams converse regularly.”She also said she had made “a number of phone calls to voice my support and urge the committee to strongly consider us.”Behind-the-scenes lobbying efforts of committee members and other stakeholders are expected to intensify in the coming weeks.The most pitched battle concerns representation from the Midwest, especially if Iowa loses its early-state slot. Michigan, Minnesota and Illinois are vying to emerge as the new Midwestern early-state standard-bearer. Michigan and Minnesota are thought to be favored over Illinois for reasons of both cost and general election competitiveness, though Illinois also made a forceful presentation, led by officials including Senator Dick Durbin.“The Minnesota Lutheran in us — if you do a good deed and talk about it, it doesn’t count — but we’re getting over that and talking about it,” said Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, whose Democratic colleagues kicked off their presentation with a song by Prince and distributed Senator Amy Klobuchar’s recipe for hot dish.Ken Martin, the chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, grappled head-on with concerns around diversity and relevance in a general election.“We’re going to disabuse you of two things: One, that we’re just a bunch of Scandinavians with no diversity, and two, that we’re not a competitive state,” he said, as his team distributed thick pamphlets highlighting the state’s racial and geographic diversity, including its rural population.Michigan’s presenters included Senator Debbie Stabenow and Representative Debbie Dingell, who signed handwritten notes to committee members. One read, “Michigan is the best place to pick a president!” Their gift bags featured local delicacies like dried cherries, and beer koozies commemorating the inauguration of Ms. Whitmer and Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist II, a party spokesman said.“We have the clearest and best case that Michigan is an actual battleground, the most diverse battleground in the country,” Mr. Gilchrist said in an interview, calling it “a down payment on an apparatus for the general election.”Likewise, Ms. Dingell and Ms. Stabenow emphasized opportunities for retail politicking and the chance for candidates to familiarize themselves early with the concerns of one of the country’s biggest contested states.Both Minnesota and Michigan require varying degrees of cooperation from Republicans in order to move their primaries up. Minnesota officials were quick to note that they must simply convince the state Republican Party. Michigan requires the approval of the Republican-controlled state Legislature. Presenters from both states were questioned about the feasibility of getting the other side on board.Minnesota released a list of Republicans who support moving up the state’s contest, including former Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Senator Norm Coleman. Members of Michigan’s delegation noted the backing they had from former Republican chairs and organizations like the Michigan Chamber of Commerce.The Detroit News reported later Thursday that the Republican majority leader of the State Senate, Mike Shirkey, had indicated support for moving up Michigan’s primary, a significant development.(Officials from the two states were also asked about their plans for dealing with wintry weather. They emphasized their hardiness.)By contrast, Emanuel Chris Welch, the speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, pointedly said that “in Illinois, there is no chance that Republican obstruction will distract, delay or deter us” from moving up the state’s primary.Some of Mr. Biden’s closest allies were also present on Thursday as his home state, Delaware, made the case for hosting an early primary.In an interview, Senator Chris Coons insisted that he had not discussed the prospect with Mr. Biden and that he was not speaking on the president’s behalf. But, he said: “Our state leadership is doing what I think is in Delaware’s best interest. And I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t be happy with the outcome.” More

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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