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      How Can Democrats Persuade Voters They’re Not a Party of Rich Elites?

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      Today, at an unassuming event space in Washington overlooking the Capitol, a coterie of progressive thinkers and doers gathered for an intimate conference that could not have been more different from the boisterous gathering hosted just down the road by the conservative America First Policy Institute.The purpose of Tuesday’s liberal gathering was to discuss ways to counter a narrative that appears to be gaining traction with voters: that Democrats are now the party of economic elites, while Republicans represent working-class Americans.The G.O.P., of course, has been trying to pull off exactly this feat for decades — with mixed success.Richard Nixon spoke of a “silent majority” of Americans who were turned off by what they saw as the cultural excess of the 1960s. One famous attack line from Nixon’s re-election campaign painted George McGovern, the Democratic nominee in 1972, as the candidate of “acid, amnesty and abortion.”Ronald Reagan, a sunnier type, appealed to the patriotism and conservative social values of blue-collar workers in places like Ohio’s Mahoning Valley by aggressively confronting the Soviet Union abroad and speaking openly about his Christian faith.A shift for the partiesBut it was Donald Trump, a billionaire real estate baron from Manhattan, who arguably pulled off the major realignment of the two parties along educational and class lines. Now, Republican politicians boast that theirs is the party of working people. They speak much less often, in public at least, about “tort reform,” “double taxation” and other phrases that the business community once regularly injected into the political conversation.This shift has alarmed many Democratic Party strategists. Americans without a college degree still represent the majority of voters, fueling critiques like Ruy Teixeira’s jeremiad against what he characterizes as overly educated cultural snobs who, in his view, are leading Democrats to ruin.Many of those critiques urge Democrats to alter their cultural message to reach voters who might not share their views on, say, structural racism or immigration.But the wonks and operatives huddling at Tuesday’s series of panels and hallway discussions would argue that party leaders are failing on two more fundamental levels: They don’t fight hard enough for working-class people, and they aren’t tough enough on big, greedy corporations.Leah Hunt-Hendrix, an oil heiress turned liberal activist, organized the event with Adam Jentleson, a former top aide to Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader and senator from Nevada who died last year.Jentleson, who now runs a progressive communications strategy firm called Battle Born Collective along with Rebecca Katz, said in an interview, “Democrats must find a more effective way to meet working-class voters where they are, and channel their very real anger — or else Republicans will.”Adam Jentleson with Senator Harry Reid in 2015. Jentleson, who now helps run a progressive communications strategy firm, supports an economic approach he calls “inclusive populism.”Tom Williams/Roll Call, via Getty ImagesJentleson championed an economic philosophy called “inclusive populism” — essentially, left-leaning economics without the nastiness of past populist movements, which have often channeled working-class voters’ resentment toward immigrants or racial minorities.Not everyone could agree on what to call their nascent movement, with one attendee noting that the term “populist” comes freighted with historical baggage.Brandishing a fresh survey commissioned by the progressive group Fight Corporate Monopolies and conducted by GBAO, a Democratic polling firm led by Margie Omero, Jentleson argued that “a populist economic message is highly effective, and it’s crazy that Dems aren’t already moving in this direction as fast as possible.”Omero, who presented her findings at the conference, said that while Democrats’ problems with white working-class voters might be the most acute, workers without college degrees of all backgrounds are drawn to the general tenets of “inclusive populism” — whatever one calls it — and are highly receptive to messages that blame, say, oil companies for the high price of gasoline.Among the other speakers at Tuesday’s gathering — which was called Sound Check — were Representative Jamaal Bowman, a Democrat from New York’s Westchester County; Heather McGhee, the board chairwoman of Color of Change, a civil rights group; and Zachary Carter, a journalist and the author of a biography of John Maynard Keynes.In his talk, Carter bashed unnamed economists of the “old guard” of the Democratic Party, who he said were misdiagnosing the causes of inflation and prescribing, essentially, higher unemployment and lower wages as the answer.“The story we are hearing from the old guard is not fundamentally compelling in a democracy,” Carter said. “Their critique is premised on the idea that most working people actually have it too good, and attempts to improve their well-being can only make things worse.”An informal coalition of progressive groups helped put on the event: Way to Win, a donor community led by Ms. Hunt-Hendrix; Fight Corporate Monopolies, a relatively new advocacy group led by Sarah Miller, founder of the American Economic Liberties Project; the Economic Security Project, led by Taylor Jo Isenberg; and Popular Comms, a progressive strategy group co-founded by Jonathan Smucker.Lessons from PennsylvaniaSmucker, whose background is in political organizing in eastern and central Pennsylvania, gave a presentation on lessons learned from the 2018 campaign for Congress of Jess King, who ran as an inclusive populist in Lancaster, Pa.King, who styled herself a working mom who refused to take “corporate” donations, wound up losing her race after a court decision left the district solidly Republican.She would have been able to overcome the district’s original lean of six percentage points toward the G.O.P., though not the 14-point structural advantage she ultimately faced in the general election, Smucker said.What helped open the door with working-class voters in that district, Smucker said, was an aggressive door-knocking campaign that began with a conversation about “special interests,” Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy and the eventual need for a universal health care system — and included large doses of criticism of the leaders of the Democratic Party as disappointing and out of touch.The unmistakable tone of the event was a rebuke of the Democrats who have failed to squeeze more progressive policy wins out of their congressional majority over the last 18 months — and essentially, in the left’s telling, let their most conservative member, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, dictate the terms of their governing agenda.Hunt-Hendrix said she found the conference “fortifying” at a time when many on the left are discouraged by how the midterm elections are shaping up.Jentleson emphasized that Tuesday’s confab was “a conversation about the future of the party, not a prescription for 2022.”What to readIn competing speeches in Washington, Donald Trump portrayed the country as overwhelmed by crime, Michael Bender reports, while Mike Pence tried to draw subtle distinctions with his former ally and current rival.Previously undisclosed communications among Trump campaign aides and outside advisers provide new insight into their efforts to overturn the election in the weeks leading to Jan. 6, Maggie Haberman and Luke Broadwater report.As the world faces disasters including climate change and the pandemic, an old question seems newly urgent: Does democracy or autocracy perform better in times of crisis? Max Fisher explores.Several disabled voters are suing Wisconsin’s Elections Commission in federal court, seeking to restore a decades-old precedent that allowed people with disabilities to receive assistance with the return of absentee ballots.— BlakeIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Republicans Confront Unexpected Online Money Slowdown

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      Online fund-raising has slowed across much of the Republican Party in recent months, an unusual pullback of small donors that has set off a mad rush among Republican political operatives to understand why — and reverse the sudden decline before it damages the party’s chances this fall.Small-dollar donations typically increase as an election nears. But just the opposite has happened in recent months across a wide range of Republican entities, including every major party committee and former President Donald J. Trump’s political operation.The total amount donated online fell by more than 12 percent across all federal Republican campaigns and committees in the second quarter compared with the first quarter, according to an analysis of federal records from WinRed, the main online Republican donation-processing portal.More alarming for Republicans: Democratic contributions surged at the same time. Total federal donations on ActBlue, the Democratic counterpart, jumped by more than 21 percent.The overall Democratic fund-raising edge online widened by $100 million from the last quarter of 2021 to the most recent three-month period, records show.Exacerbating the fund-raising problems for Republicans is that Mr. Trump continues to be the party’s dominant fund-raiser and yet virtually none of the tens of millions of dollars he has raised has gone toward defeating Democrats. Instead, the money has funded his political team and retribution agenda against Republicans who have crossed him.The current political climate favors Republicans as President Biden’s approval rating plumbs new lows. But nearly a dozen Republican strategists directly involved in fund-raising or overseeing campaigns have expressed concerns about how the fund-raising downturn might limit their party’s gains.Working in the party’s favor is that Wall Street billionaires and other industry titans have cut seven- and eight-figure checks to Republican super PACs, offsetting some of the party’s small-dollar struggles, which some attributed to inflation and others to deceptive tactics that are turning off supporters over time.“We’ve got to raise the money,” Senator Rick Scott of Florida, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said repeatedly on Fox News on Friday when pressed about the 2022 landscape. “We get the money, we win.”For the Senate Republican committee, online fund-raising plunged by $6.7 million in the most recent quarter, to $11 million, from $17.7 million. Top Republican Senate candidates, even those whose fund-raising ticked up, are falling well behind their Democratic rivals in the cash race.Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia raised $12.3 million online last quarter.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesThe money gap is so pronounced that Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, an endangered Democratic incumbent, raised more online last quarter — $12.3 million — than the combined WinRed quarterly hauls of the Republican Senate nominees or presumptive nominees in seven key contests: Georgia, Wisconsin, Florida, Nevada, Ohio, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.Money alone does not win political races and, for years, Republicans have grown accustomed to trailing Democrats in online fund-raising. Democratic donors, for instance, poured more than $200 million into losing Senate races in Kentucky and South Carolina last cycle — and neither contest ended up even close.Key Themes From the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarCard 1 of 5The state of the midterms. More

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      Democrats Aid Far-Right Candidate Against Republican Who Backed Impeachment

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      The House Democrats’ official campaign arm is stepping into a Western Michigan Republican primary to elevate a candidate endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump against one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him.The $425,000 advertising run is the latest in a slew of Democratic efforts to draw attention to far-right candidates, hoping that they will be easier to beat in November than more mainstream Republicans. But in this case, it could also be seen as a slap to Representative Peter Meijer, the incumbent in the Grand Rapids-area district who braved blowback from his own party over his vote to impeach Mr. Trump and is now fighting skulduggery from the right and the left.The ad, which will begin airing on Tuesday and was openly cut and funded by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, proclaims that John Gibbs, who is challenging Mr. Meijer, is “too conservative” for West Michigan. But in tone and content, it is clearly meant to appeal to pro-Trump voters in the Aug. 2 Republican primary, hailing Mr. Gibbs as “handpicked by Trump to run for Congress,” buffing his bona fides as an aide in the Trump administration and promising that he would push “that same conservative agenda in Congress,” including a hard line against illegal immigration and a stand for “patriotic education.”It is similar to an advertisement run by the House Democratic super PAC that unsuccessfully tried to bolster a pro-Trump candidate against Representative David Valadao in California, another of the 10 Republicans who voted for impeachment. That ad infuriated even some Democrats.By law, elected Democrats must stay at arm’s length from the super PAC, known as the House Majority PAC, that was responsible for the ad in Mr. Valadao’s race. But with the Gibbs ad, the campaign committee responsible for it is run by a member of Democratic leadership, Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, and the group is far more integrated into official actions.The Democratic campaign committee refused to comment on the advertisement. But the intent was clear. Mr. Meijer’s redrawn district has shifted from one that narrowly voted for Mr. Trump in 2020 to one that President Biden would have carried by nine percentage points.The tone of the current ad is bright, but if Mr. Gibbs were to win the primary, the next effort from Democrats is likely to be considerably darker. Mr. Gibbs, who was an aide to former Housing Secretary Ben Carson, could not win confirmation in 2020 to direct Mr. Trump’s Office of Personnel Management over comments he made accusing Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, of taking part in a “Satanic ritual,” and calling Democrats the party of “‘Islam, gender-bending, anti-police, ‘u racist!’”More recently, Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Meijer clashed over the legitimacy of Mr. Biden’s 2020 victory, which Mr. Gibbs baselessly called “simply mathematically impossible.”In Pennsylvania, the state’s Democratic Party singled out State Senator Doug Mastriano during his successful quest for the Republican nomination for governor, despite his propagation of false claims about the 2020 election and his presence in Washington during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Polling last month showed that Mr. Mastriano’s race against Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee, appeared to be a dead heat.Democrats believe that Michigan’s Third District, with its new boundaries, is one of the few in the country that they can take from a Republican, and they are willing to risk electing a Trump-backed election denier with a history of inflammatory remarks to make it easier on their favored candidate, Hillary Scholten.After Mr. Meijer’s impeachment vote, Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House majority leader, praised Mr. Meijer for what he called “a very impressive display of courage and integrity.”“Guess that doesn’t count for much when a marginally increased chance of flipping a House seat is on the table,” Mr. Meijer quipped in a text message on Monday. More

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      The Dystopian Myths of Red America

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      Desensitization is an amazing thing. At this point most political observers simply accept it as a fact of life that an overwhelming majority of Republicans accept the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen — a claim with nothing to support it, not even plausible anecdotes.What I don’t think is fully appreciated, however, is that the Big Lie is embedded in an even bigger lie: the claim that the Democratic Party is controlled by radical leftists aiming to destroy America as we know it. And this lie in turn derives a lot of its persuasiveness from a grotesquely distorted view of what life is like in blue America.Urban elites are constantly accused of not understanding Real America™. And, to be fair, most big-city residents probably don’t have a good sense of what life is like in rural areas and small towns, although it’s doubtful whether this gap justified the immense number of news reports interviewing Trump voters sitting in diners.But I’d argue that right-wing misperceptions of blue America run far deeper — and are far more dangerous.Let’s start with the politics. The other day The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel, reporting from the campaign trail, noted that many Republican candidates are claiming that Democrats are deliberately undermining the nation and promoting violence against their opponents; some are even claiming that we’re already in a civil war.Some (many?) of these candidates have been winning primaries, suggesting that the G.O.P. base agrees with them. Actually, I’d like to see some surveys along the lines of those showing that most Republicans accept the Big Lie. How many Republicans believe that President Biden and other leading Democrats are left-wing radicals, indeed Marxists?Relatedly, I’d like to know how many Republicans believe that Black Lives Matter demonstrators looted and burned large parts of America’s major cities.Now, the reality is that the modern Democratic Party is a mildly center-left coalition, consisting of what Europeans would call social democrats, and relatively conservative ones at that. To take one measure, I can’t think of any prominent Democrats — actually, any Democratic members of Congress — who have expressed admiration for any authoritarian foreign regime.This is in contrast to widespread conservative admiration for Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who recently denounced other Europeans for “mixing with non-Europeans” and declared that he doesn’t want Hungary to become a “mixed-race” country.On the domestic violence front, a study by the Anti-Defamation League found that 75 percent of extremist-related domestic killings from 2012 to 2021 were perpetrated by the right and only 4 percent by the left.Finally, about B.L.M.: The protests were, in fact, overwhelmingly peaceful. Yes, there was some arson and looting, with total property damage typically estimated at $1 billion to $2 billion. That may sound like a lot, but America is a big country, so it needs to be put in perspective.Here’s one point of comparison. Back in April, Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, pulled a political stunt at the border with Mexico, temporarily imposing extra security checks that caused a major slowdown of traffic, disrupting business and leading to a lot of spoiled produce. Total economic losses have been estimated at around $4 billion; that is, a few days of border-security theater appear to have caused more economic damage than a hundred days of mass protests.Yet pointing out these facts probably won’t change many minds. Nor does there seem to be any way to change the perception, also alluded to in that Post article, that a lax attitude toward law enforcement has turned America’s big cities into dangerous hellholes. It’s true that violent crime rose during the pandemic, but it rose about as much in rural America as it did in urban areas. And despite that recent rise, violence in many cities is far lower than it was not long ago.In New York City, homicides so far this year are running a bit below their 2021 level, and in 2021 they were 78 percent lower than they were in 1990 and a quarter lower than they were in 2001. As Bloomberg’s Justin Fox has documented, New York is actually a lot safer than small-town America. Los Angeles has also seen a big long-term drop in homicides, as has California as a whole. Some cities, notably Philadelphia and Chicago, are back to or above early 1990s murder rates, but they’re not representative of the broader picture.But who among the Republican base will acknowledge this reality? Whenever I mention New York’s relative safety, I get a wave of mail saying, in effect, “You can’t really believe that.”The fact is that a large segment of the U.S. electorate has bought into an apocalyptic vision of America that bears no relationship to the reality of how the other half thinks, behaves or lives. We don’t have to speculate about whether this dystopian fantasy might lead to political violence and attempts to overthrow democracy; it already has. And it’s probably going to get worse.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      There’s Hot and Then There’s Hot as … Politics

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. Damn, it’s hot.Gail Collins: Ah Bret, we agree once again. How inspiring it is to realize that even in these troubled times, Americans of all political stripes can gather to complain about the weather.Bret: Just give this conversation another five seconds ….Gail: And, of course, vent about Senator Joe Manchin, who keeps putting his coal-loving foot on any serious attempt to deal with climate change.Am I moving out of our area of agreement?Bret: Maybe a tad. I’m grateful to Manchin for fighting for American energy. We’ll all be complaining about climate change a whole lot more when diminished power generation and supply shocks leave us with rolling blackouts and long stretches without air-conditioning.On the other hand, I mentioned in a previous conversation that I’m going to Greenland later this summer. Wasn’t kidding! An oceanographer I know pretty much wants to shove my face into a melting glacier in hopes of some kind of Damascene conversion.Gail: Great! Then we can join hands and lobby for tax incentives that will encourage Americans to buy electric cars and encourage power companies to trade coal for wind and solar energy, right?Bret: Wind and solar power alone will never meet demand. We should build a lot more nuclear power, which is what France is doing, again, and also extract more gas and oil in the U.S. and Canada. However, if Joe Biden also wants to help me pay for that Tesla I don’t actually need, I probably won’t say no.Speaking of the president, I’m wishing him a speedy recovery. Is Covid something we can at last stop being freaked out about?Gail: Clearly Biden’s in a particular risk group because of his age, but 79-year-olds who are surrounded by high-quality medical staff may not be the most endangered part of the population.Bret: Just hope the vice president’s office didn’t recommend the doctor.Gail: One of the biggest problems is still the folks who refused to get vaccinated. And who are still being encouraged by a number of Republican candidates for high office.Bret: OK, confession: I’m having a harder and harder time keeping faith with vaccines that seem to be less and less effective against the new variants. How many boosters are we all supposed to get each year?Gail: Oh Bret, Bret …Bret: Never mind my Kamala joke, now I’m in real trouble. What were you saying about Republicans?Gail: I was thinking about anti-vaxxers — or at least semi-anti-vaxxers — like Dan Cox, who is now the Republican nominee for Maryland governor, thanks to the endorsement of Donald Trump and about $1.16 million in TV ads paid for by the Democratic Governors Association, who think he’ll be easy to beat.Bret: Such a shame that a state Republican Party that had one of the few remaining Republican heroes in the person of the incumbent governor, Larry Hogan, should nominate a stinker like Cox, who called Mike Pence a “traitor” for not trying to overturn the election on Jan. 6. His Democratic opponent, Wes Moore, is one of the most outstanding people I’ve ever met and could be presidential material a few years down the road.I hope Cox loses by the widest margin in history. Of course I also said that of Trump in 2016.Gail: Ditto. But I just hate the Democrats’ developing strategy of giving a big boost to terrible Republican candidates in order to raise their own side’s chances. It is just the kind of thing that can come back to haunt you in an era when voters have shown they’re not always freaked out by contenders who have the minor disadvantage of being crazy.Bret: Totally agree. We should be working to revive the center. Two suggestions I have for deep-pocketed political donors: Don’t give a dime to an incumbent who has never worked on at least one meaningful bipartisan bill. And ask any political newcomer to identify one issue on which he or she breaks with party orthodoxy. If they don’t have a good answer, don’t write a check.For instance: bail reform. My jaw hit the floor when the guy who tried to stab Representative Lee Zeldin at a campaign event in New York last week walked free after a few hours, even if he was then rearrested under a federal statute.Gail: We semi-disagree about bail reform. I don’t think you decide who should be able to walk on the basis of the amount of money their families can put up. Anybody who’s charged with a dangerous crime should stay locked up, and the rest should go home and be ready for their day in court. More

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      Liz Holtzman Wants Another Crack at Congress, 50 Years Later

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      She shattered glass ceilings, voted to impeach Nixon and helped chase out Nazis. But can Ms. Holtzman overcome one more political hurdle: her age?Elizabeth Holtzman has heard the doubters, the skeptics and the New Yorkers who were mildly surprised that she is still alive, let alone up to the challenge of running for Congress at age 80, half a century after she became one of the youngest women ever to serve there.“The 1980s wants its candidate back,” quipped Chris Coffey, a Democratic political strategist, recalling his first reaction when he heard that the pathbreaking former congresswoman, feminist and New York City official had launched a comeback bid.To all of that, Ms. Holtzman, a Democrat, says that she is not only happily among the living, but ready to prove that she is every bit as pugnacious as when she left electoral politics some three decades ago.So on a recent July evening, she stepped into a green kayak and paddled laps somewhere between Brooklyn and Manhattan, pointing a reporter toward the Statue of Liberty, the crumbling Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and a lifetime of fights that she regrets are urgently new again.“I was really angry,” Ms. Holtzman, an avid kayaker, said back on dry land, explaining how the leak predicting the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade had driven her out of a long political retirement and into an improbable campaign for New York’s newly reconfigured 10th District.“I was angry at the result, but the so-called reasoning was even scarier because it made women second-class citizens, bound by the thinking of people who were misogynist in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries,” she said. “So, I decided to run.”The Aug. 23 Democratic primary for a rare open seat in the heart of liberal New York City has attracted no shortage of head-turning candidates, including a sitting congressman from Westchester County; an architect of Donald J. Trump’s impeachment; a Tiananmen Square protester; and rising stars in their 30s, and until recently, a former mayor of New York City.But the race’s most surprising twist may be the re-emergence of Ms. Holtzman, who, in a summer of intense Democratic anxiety, is asking voters to set aside pressing concerns about aging leadership in Washington and return a storied fighter to the arena who first made her name during the Nixon era.Ms. Holtzman during an unsuccessful bid in the Democratic Senate primary in 1993.Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesIf she pulls off an upset, the candidate who was once the youngest woman elected to Congress could set another record — as the oldest known nonincumbent in the House of Representatives’ long history (surpassing James B. Bowler of Illinois, 78, and Will Neal of West Virginia, 81) after she turns 81 next month.That possibility has left longtime admirers, former foes and a whole generation of voters who have scarcely heard of her at least a little baffled, particularly in a summer when questions about President Biden’s age (79) are front-page news and Senator Dianne Feinstein has shown the perils of taxpayer-funded senescence.Her opponents make a broader argument: For all her experience and evident mental acuity, Ms. Holtzman is simply out of step with the challenges facing New Yorkers trying to make it today in an increasingly unaffordable city. And if she won, they grumble, she would block an important steppingstone for a new generation of New York leaders.“The problems that need to be solved in this country would benefit from voices that have lived and experienced them,” said Carlina Rivera, 38, a City Council member from Manhattan who is considered a leading contender in the race.“For many people in their 40s or younger, they’ve only ever experienced more transience than a sense of security in their jobs, their benefits, their housing and their education,” she added. “I fit into that category.”Ms. Holtzman uses the same logic, only in reverse.It is her own experiences — working in the Civil Rights-era South, fighting for abortion rights in the 1970s and challenging a Republican president undermining democratic norms (Richard M. Nixon) — along with a sense of national backsliding that she says persuaded her to re-enter electoral politics. Otherwise, she would most likely be spending summer weekends kayaking her beloved Peconic River on Long Island instead of zipping around the city to crowded candidate forums and paddling with reporters.“I’m not a person who sits on the sidelines,” she said in an interview at a cafe near her Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, home after the boating outing. “I’ve taken on the right wing, I’ve taken on presidents, and I can stand up to them.”Ms. Holtzman knows that her campaign is a long shot, but she has been here before. At the age of 31, she became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress in 1972, decades before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed the title, by defeating a 50-year Brooklyn incumbent, Emanuel Celler and the Democratic Party machine. She was the first (and only) woman to serve as district attorney in Brooklyn and as New York City comptroller.A legal mind with a prodigious work ethic, Ms. Holtzman was hardly an average backbencher. As a House freshman, she battled Nixon to the Supreme Court over war powers and later used her perch to help track down and deport Nazi war criminals from the United States and fight for the Equal Rights Amendment. Then as district attorney, she pushed the courts to curb the use of peremptory challenges to keep African Americans off juries because of their skin color.There were also bitter disappointments. She came within a percentage point of being New York’s first female senator in 1980, badly lost a Senate primary in 1992 and then, a year later, was ousted after a single term as comptroller amid a banking-related scandal that undercut her ethical record.Elizabeth Holtzman, on a recent kayaking jaunt off the Brooklyn shore, said she knows she needs to overcome “preconceptions about people my age.”Mary Inhea Kang for The New York TimesIn the interview, Ms. Holtzman likened questions about her age to arguments that a woman was not fit to serve as district attorney and drew a distinction between herself and Celler, whom, decades earlier, she had portrayed as tired and out of touch.“There are obviously some preconceptions about people my age. Can they do the job?” she said. “I feel I have something unique to offer. And I’m not tired. That’s the whole point.”Unsurprisingly, many of Ms. Holtzman’s defenders are older. But some of them are unexpected.“Biden’s decline has made it more difficult for those who are older,” said Alfonse M. D’Amato, 84, the former Republican senator who defeated Ms. Holtzman in 1980. “But that doesn’t mean that every person who is older can’t do the job. Maybe the experience that life has given them makes them as capable or more so.”Ms. Holtzman’s allies argue that her boundary-pushing style, which helped win a generation of admirers (many of whom still vote), has the potential to offset concerns about her advanced age among younger, progressive voters hungry for authenticity.It also makes Ms. Holtzman something of an appealing safe harbor for some older voters who say now is not the time to take a chance on a promising but less seasoned politician, like Ms. Rivera or Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, 39.“She is kind of a dream candidate for me,” said Eileen Clancy, an activist in Manhattan who recalled as a child watching Ms. Holtzman participate in the House Judiciary Committee’s Watergate hearings.“I’m probably much more aligned with Yuh-Line’s policies,” Ms. Clancy said. “But I have to say, considering the country is in an uproar now and the questions at hand, I think Holtzman is uniquely capable. She could add a gravitas to Congress, and she has the backbone and nothing to lose.”With a dozen candidates in the race and a highly abbreviated campaign timeline, any winning candidate probably only needs a small slice of the vote. A pair of recent polls of likely primary voters by progressive groups showed Ms. Holtzman in the middle of the pack, neck and neck with Representative Mondaire Jones and Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon.But the challenge for Ms. Holtzman may be reaching and turning out potential supporters who do not realize she is running.Though she has stayed active in private legal practice and on federal commissions and has written books, her political network thinned long ago: Gloria Steinem, a feminist contemporary, is her only recognizable endorser. As of Friday, her campaign Instagram account (run by hired consultants) has only 25 followers — a dozen more than her Facebook page.And when other candidates showed up with colorful signs and volunteers to march in Brooklyn’s Pride parade in June, Ms. Holtzman walked alone with little indicating she was running for anything.Her fund-raising operation? “It’s rusty,” Ms. Holtzman said just before her campaign reported raising $122,000, about one-tenth of the amount raised by Daniel Goldman, another Democrat in the race. “Getting it geared up and functioning like a lubricated machine, it’s not happening yet.”So far, Ms. Holtzman has sent out a single glossy mailer that touts her record and her “guts” — but could also serve to surface questions about her age. “Sometimes a picture’s worth 1,000 words,” she said, describing a photograph it features of her with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal Supreme Court justice who died at age 87.Bill Knapp, a veteran political ad maker who got his start working for Ms. Holtzman in 1980 and is working on this year’s race, conceded the race was “no layup,” but argued that Ms. Holtzman had a lane, particularly in the shadow of the abortion decision.“There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical,” he said. “But when you take a measure of the person and the times, this is possible.” More

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      Wes Moore Wins Democratic Primary for Maryland Governor

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      Wes Moore, a celebrity author and former nonprofit executive who campaigned as a political outsider, has won the Democratic primary for governor of Maryland.Three days after voting concluded, The Associated Press declared Mr. Moore the winner late Friday over Tom Perez, a former labor secretary and Democratic National Committee chairman; Peter Franchot, the state comptroller; and six other candidates.Mr. Moore, a best-selling author who for a time hosted a show on Oprah Winfrey’s cable network, cast himself as a dynamic newcomer in a race in which his top rivals were all veterans of Maryland or national politics. In addition to an endorsement from Ms. Winfrey, he had the backing of the Democratic leaders of both chambers of the Maryland legislature and three members of the state’s congressional delegation — a strong showing for a first-time candidate.Mr. Moore, who would become Maryland’s first Black governor if he wins, will be a heavy favorite in the general election against Dan Cox, a Republican state legislator who was endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Cox has amplified an array of election conspiracy theories, and during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, he called Vice President Mike Pence “a traitor.”Democrats are seeking to retake the Maryland governor’s office after eight years in which it was occupied by Gov. Larry Hogan, a moderate Republican who is among the nation’s most popular governors.Mr. Hogan, who endorsed Mr. Cox’s rival in the G.O.P. primary, is prohibited by state law from seeking a third term. Despite his popularity, he was unable to transfer his support to Kelly Schulz, a longtime ally who served in his cabinet for seven years. Mr. Hogan said Wednesday that he would not support Mr. Cox.Results from Maryland’s Democratic primary for governor, along with a number of other key races, were delayed because state law prohibits absentee ballots returned through the mail or in drop boxes from being counted for two days after Election Day.On Thursday, election officials across the state gathered to begin the laborious process of inspecting and opening absentee ballots, allowing campaigns to review ballots that prompted any questions, and feeding the ballots through voting machines.Mr. Moore prevailed in the primary despite questions about the veracity of the biography he has presented. He is not a Baltimore native, as he has claimed, and his tenure as a nonprofit executive in New York was marked by an episode in which his assistant was fired after a dispute regarding overtime pay for personal work she was doing for Mr. Moore.Unlike a host of recent Democratic primaries, the party’s contest for Maryland governor didn’t turn on sharp ideological differences between the candidates. Instead the race centered on which candidate could build coalitions across ideologies. More

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      Republicans Sharpen Post-Roe Attacks on L.G.B.T.Q. Rights

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      Days after the Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion, Michigan’s Republican candidates for governor were asked if it was also time to roll back constitutional protections for gay rights.None of the five candidates came to the defense of same-sex marriage.“They need to revisit it all,” one candidate, Garrett Soldano, said at the debate, in Warren, Mich.“Michigan’s constitution,” said another candidate, Ralph Rebandt, “says that for the betterment of society, marriage is between a man and a woman.”Garrett Soldano, a Republican candidate for governor of Michigan, attacked “the woke groomer mafia” in one ad.Michael Buck/WOOD TV8, via Associated PressSince the Supreme Court decision last month overturning Roe v. Wade, anti-gay rhetoric and calls to roll back established L.G.B.T.Q. protections have grown bolder. And while Republicans in Congress appear deeply divided about same-sex marriage — nearly 50 House Republicans on Tuesday joined Democrats in supporting a bill that would recognize same-sex marriages at the federal level — many Republican officials and candidates across the country have made attacking gay and transgender rights a party norm this midterm season.In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton said after the Roe reversal that he would be “willing and able” to defend at the Supreme Court any law criminalizing sodomy enacted by the Legislature. Before that, the Republican Party of Texas adopted a platform that calls homosexuality “an abnormal lifestyle choice.”Demonstrators at the Texas Capitol in Austin rallied in March against an order by the governor that targeted medical treatments provided to transgender adolescents.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesIn Utah, the Republican president of the State Senate, Stuart Adams, said he would support his state’s joining with others to press the Supreme Court to reverse the right of same-sex couples to wed. In Arizona, Kari Lake, a candidate for governor endorsed by Donald J. Trump, affirmed in a June 29 debate her support for a bill barring children from drag shows — the latest target of supercharged rhetoric on the right.And in Michigan’s governor’s race, Mr. Soldano released an ad belittling the use of specific pronouns by those who do not conform to traditional gender roles (“My pronouns: Conservative/Patriot”) and accusing “the woke groomer mafia” of wanting to indoctrinate children.Some Democrats and advocates for L.G.B.T.Q. communities say the Republican attacks have deepened their concerns that the overturning of Roe could undermine other cases built on the same legal foundation — the right to privacy provided in the Fourteenth Amendment — and lead to increases in hate crimes as well as suicides of L.G.B.T.Q. youth.“The dominoes have started to fall, and they won’t just stop at one,” said Attorney General Dana Nessel of Michigan, a Democrat who was the first openly gay person elected to statewide office there. “People should see the connection between reproductive rights, L.G.B.T.Q. rights, women’s rights, interracial marriage — these things are all connected legally.”This year, Republican-led states have already passed numerous restrictions on transgender young people and on school discussions of sexual orientation and gender.In June, Louisiana became the 18th state, all with G.O.P.-led legislatures, to ban transgender students from playing on sports teams that match their gender identity. Laws to prohibit transitioning medical treatments to people under 18, such as puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries — which advocates call gender-affirming care — have been enacted by four states. And after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a law in March banning classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in early grades, more than a dozen other states moved to imitate it.In all, over 300 bills to restrict L.G.B.T.Q. rights have been introduced this year in 23 states, according to the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy organization.The bills under consideration focus not on same-sex marriage but on transgender youth, on restricting school curriculums and on allowing groups to refuse services to L.G.B.T.Q. people based on religious faith. Most of the measures have no chance of passage because of opposition from Democrats and moderate Republicans.Still, the Human Rights Campaign had characterized 2021 as the worst year in recent history for anti-L.G.B.T.Q. laws after states passed seven measures banning transgender athletes from sports teams that match their gender identity. So far in 2022, those numbers are already higher.Officials and television commentators on the right have accused opponents of some of those new restrictions of seeking to “sexualize” or “groom” children. Grooming refers to the tactics used by sexual predators to manipulate their victims, but it has become deployed widely on the right to brand gay and transgender people as child molesters, evoking an earlier era of homophobia.Some conservative advocacy groups that poured resources into transgender restrictions insist that they are not focused on challenging the 2015 Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage. But many L.G.B.T.Q. advocates say they believe their hard-won rights are under attack.“The far right is emboldened in a way they have not been in five decades,” said State Representative Daniel Hernandez Jr. of Arizona, a Democrat and a co-founder of the Legislature’s L.G.B.T.Q. caucus. “In addition to trying to create even more restrictions on abortion, they are going after the L.G.B.T.Q. community even more.”Republicans say the laws focused on transgender youth are not transphobic — as the left sees them — but protect girls’ sports and put the brakes on irreversible medical treatments.In Utah in March, state lawmakers in Salt Lake City listened to a protest against transgender athletes.Samuel Metz/Associated PressThey said the issues have the power to peel away centrist voters, who polling shows are less committed to transgender rights than to same-sex marriage. A Washington Post-University of Maryland survey in May found 55 percent of Americans oppose letting transgender girls compete on girls’ high school teams. In a Gallup poll last year, 51 percent of Americans said changing one’s gender is “morally wrong.”“I believe these are enormous issues for swing voters and moderates,” said Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, a group that opposes civil rights protections for L.G.B.T.Q. people and plans to spend up to $12 million on ads before November.One of the group’s ads goes after Representative Peter Meijer, a Michigan Republican facing a primary challenge next month, for co-sponsoring a House bill that pairs anti-discrimination protections for L.G.B.T.Q. people with exemptions for religious groups. Saying the bill “would put men in girls’ locker rooms,” the ad asks, “Would you trust Meijer with your daughter?”By contrast, Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, said “hate has no place” in the state after he vetoed an anti-transgender sports bill. Had it become law, he said, the ban would have “a devastating impact on a vulnerable population already at greater risk of bullying and depression.”A 2022 survey by the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention group, found that nearly one in five transgender or gender-nonconforming young people had attempted suicide in the past year. L.G.B.T.Q. youth who feel accepted in their schools and community reported lower rates of suicide attempts.The surge in transgender restrictions reflects a reversal of fortune for social conservatives from just a few years ago, when a focus on “bathroom bills” produced a backlash. A North Carolina law passed in 2016 requiring people to use public restrooms matching their birth gender contributed to the defeat of the Republican governor who signed it.“It made a lot of folks wary of going after transgender rights,” said Gillian Branstetter, a communications strategist for the A.C.L.U. who is transgender.But that changed with the focus on sports teams and transitioning medicine for minors, she said.On the right, the transgender restrictions have been pushed by advocacy groups that have long opposed L.G.B.T.Q. rights and in some cases consulted in the drafting of legislation. And on the left, the wave of legislation has been used by liberal organizations to mobilize their base, fund-raise and help turn out voters in midterm primaries in a hostile national political climate for Democrats.In Arizona, where Republicans control the Legislature and the governor’s office, a law enacted this year bars trans girls from competing on sports teams aligned with their gender and on transitioning surgery for people under 18.“My colleagues on the right have spent more time demonizing me and the L.G.B.T.Q. community than I’ve ever seen,” said Mr. Hernandez, the state representative, who is running in the Democratic primary for Congress on Aug. 2 in a Tucson-area seat.In the Arizona primary for governor, Ms. Lake, the Trump-endorsed candidate who is leading in some polls, seized on a recent uproar over drag performers — in response to a viral video of children at a Dallas drag show — to demonstrate her sharp shift to the right.“They kicked God out of schools and welcomed the Drag Queens,” Ms. Lake said in a tweet last month. “They took down our Flag and replaced it with a rainbow.” And Republican leaders in the Arizona Legislature, denouncing “sexual perversion,” called for a law barring children from drag shows.Kari Lake, left, at a rally in Tucson. Ms. Lake, the Trump-endorsed candidate for governor in Arizona, has seized on a recent uproar over drag performers.Rebecca Noble/ReutersBut a drag performer in Phoenix, Rick Stevens, accused Ms. Lake, who he said had been a friend for years, of hypocrisy. “I’ve performed for Kari’s birthday, I’ve performed in her home (with children present) and I’ve performed for her at some of the seediest bars in Phoenix,” he wrote on Instagram.Mr. Stevens, who goes by the stage name Barbra Seville, posted photos of the two of them together — one with Ms. Lake next to him while he is dressed in drag, and another when he is in drag and wearing Halloween-style skull makeup while she poses alongside him dressed as Elvis.In a debate, Ms. Lake insisted Mr. Stevens was lying about performing at her home and her campaign threatened to sue him for defamation.In Michigan, meanwhile, Ms. Nessel, the Democratic attorney general, joked at a civil rights conference in June that drag queens “make everything better,” and added, “A drag queen for every school.” In response, Tudor Dixon, a Republican candidate for governor, called this month for legislation letting parents sue school districts that host drag shows, despite there being no evidence that a district had ever done so.“We’re taking the first step today to protecting children,” Ms. Dixon said. 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