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      Democrats Can Win This Fall if They Make One Key Promise

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      Democrats hope to make November’s midterm elections a referendum on Roe v. Wade, the linchpin decision upholding abortion rights, which the Supreme Court is almost certain to strike down this summer. That strategy makes sense. Polls show that roughly two in three Americans oppose overturning Roe and almost 60 percent support passing a bill to set Roe’s protections in a federal law. What’s more, polls showed a rising number of voters listing abortion as their top midterm issue after news of Roe’s imminent demise leaked in the form of a draft court opinion published by Politico.Unfortunately, their current plan is almost sure to fail.After the Democrats came up with just 49 votes to bring a Roe-protecting bill before the Senate on May 11, they promised to keep fighting and, in the words of Senator Amy Klobuchar, “take that fight right to the ballot box” in November. But you can’t make an election into a referendum on an issue if you can’t point to anything winning the election would accomplish. To make the 2022 elections a referendum on Roe, Democrats have to put protecting Roe and abortion rights on the table.Here’s one way to do that: get clear public commitments from every Senate Democrat (and candidate for Senate) not only to vote for the Roe bill in January 2023 but also to change the filibuster rules to ensure that a majority vote would actually pass the bill and send it to the White House for the president’s signature.At present, there are likely 48 Senate Democrats who can make that pledge. Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are dead set against any changes to the filibuster — a fact you likely know because most of President Biden’s agenda has been bottled up behind their refusal for the past year. Some claim that Senators Manchin and Sinema are just taking the public heat for a number of other Senate Democrats who are also unwilling to change the filibuster rules. That’s highly unlikely. But if any do have misgivings, that’s why the public commitments are so important. Getting a list of holdouts down to a publicly named handful is the first step to persuading them to fall in line.If my math is right and there are 48 Senate Democrats ready to make that pledge, they need two additional Democratic senators in the next Congress. And that is the party’s message that makes the 2022 midterms a referendum on Roe: “Give us the House and two more senators, and we will make Roe law in January 2023.”No ambiguity, no haggling, no living in Senator Manchin’s head for a year. You give us this, and we’ll give you that. That tells voters exactly what will be delivered with a Democratic win. It also defines what constitutes a win: control of the House and two more Senate seats.The campaign message is clear: If you want to protect Roe, give us those majorities. If this is your passion, here’s where to channel that passion. These are the Senate seats we need to hold (in New Hampshire, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada) and here are the ones we need to win (in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and possibly in Ohio, Florida and North Carolina). With those commitments in hand, one question should be on the lips of every Democratic candidate. Will you make a firm commitment to never vote for a federal law banning abortion nationwide?Few, if any, Republicans would be able to make that pledge. And their evasions wouldn’t just make them look ridiculous; that would put squarely on the table the very real threat that Republicans would enact a nationwide abortion ban as soon as January 2025. That could prove enough to win Senate races in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio.In a way, though, this strategy isn’t so much about winning the 2022 midterms or even making Roe into a federal law, although it’s the best way to accomplish both. It’s just an example of how you win elections.Effective campaigns are built on connecting the intense beliefs of the electorate — their hopes and fears — directly to the hard mechanics of political power. You’ve got to connect those wires. If you were testing some new electrical contraption, that’s the first thing you’d do: make sure the energy supply is wired to the engine that makes it run. This is no different. Without tying a specific electoral result to a clear commitment to a specific legislative action after the elections, you’re not connecting those wires.What Democrats would be proposing is a classic small-c conservative solution in the best sense of the word. Codifying Roe would preserve the set of rights and protections that the vast majority of Americans have lived their entire adult lives with and that the overwhelming majority of Americans do not want to change. The threat that the court will strike down such a law is real but overstated. And in any case, refusing to act because of what opponents might do is the definition of political paralysis.So how do Democrats get from here to there?They likely can’t rely on the party’s leaders, at least not at first. But they’re not essential. It’s really up to voters and activists and particularly committed members of Congress. Probably half the Democrats in the Senate would be happy to sign on this dotted line by the end of the day. Those who are up for re-election, even in safe races, will come around quickly.Some senators may resist at first. And that wouldn’t be surprising. Politicians seldom see any advantage to committing themselves in advance or reducing their room for maneuver. It’s always safer to keep your options open and be as general as possible until the final moment. That’s why assembling a clear public list of commitments is critical. Once the list gets down to a handful of hesitaters, the pressure from Democrats nationwide, focused on those members, will be overwhelming. If there are real holdouts, they’ll fold in short order.You don’t need to wait on Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer or President Biden. You can get the ball rolling by calling up your Democratic senator today.Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) is the founder and editor in chief of the political news website TPM.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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      In San Francisco, Democrats Are at War With Themselves Over Crime

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      Fueled by concerns about burglaries and hate crimes, San Francisco’s liberal district attorney, Chesa Boudin, faces a divisive recall in a famously progressive city.SAN FRANCISCO — As the former chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, Mary Jung has a long list of liberal bona fides, including her early days in politics volunteering in Ohio for the presidential campaign of George McGovern and her service on the board of the local Planned Parenthood branch. “In Cleveland, I was considered a communist,” she said in her San Francisco office.But the squalor and petty crime that she sees as crescendoing on some city streets — her office has been broken into four times during the coronavirus pandemic — has tested her liberal outlook. Last year, on the same day her granddaughter was born, she watched a video of a mentally ill man punching an older Chinese woman in broad daylight on Market Street.Ms. Jung, director of government affairs for the San Francisco Association of Realtors and head of a Realtors foundation that assists homeless people, wondered what kind of city her granddaughter would grow up in. “I thought, ‘Am I going to be able to take her out in the stroller?’”Now she finds herself leading what has been called a Democratic civil war in one of America’s most liberal cities: an effort to recall San Francisco’s district attorney, Chesa Boudin, that has echoes of the party’s larger split over how to handle matters of crime and punishment. In an overwhelmingly Democratic city, liberals and independents will decide a recall that is being financially backed by conservative donors.“What shade of blue are you — that’s really what it comes down to,” said Lilly Rapson, the campaign manager of the recall and Ms. Jung’s partner in the endeavor. A lifelong Democrat, Ms. Rapson said she was motivated to lead the campaign after her home was broken into last year as she slept.There is no compelling evidence that Mr. Boudin’s policies have made crime significantly worse in San Francisco. Overall crime in San Francisco has changed little since Mr. Boudin took office in early 2020.But his message of leniency for perpetrators has rankled residents of the city, many of whom feel unsafe and violated by property crimes. Like a president facing election during a bad economy, Mr. Boudin finds himself a vessel for residents’ pandemic angst and their frustrations over a wave of burglaries and other property crimes in well-to-do areas. Some residents, especially the city’s sizable Asian American population, also feel that a spike in hate crimes has made it unsafe to walk the streets.If successful, the recall would overturn one of the nation’s boldest efforts in criminal justice reform: an experiment to install a former public defender as the protector of public safety with promises to reduce mass incarceration, hold the police accountable and tackle racial disparities in the justice system.A vote to push Mr. Boudin from office would signal to Democrats that talking tough on crime could be a winning message in the midterm elections, and deal a blow to a national movement that has elected progressive prosecutors in cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles.Mr. Boudin faced long odds in his race to become San Francisco’s district attorney two years ago.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesThe election comes as San Francisco is being convulsed by debates over the disorder of its streets — car break-ins, tent encampments that dot the sidewalks in some neighborhoods and the open-air markets peddling illicit fentanyl that has killed more people in the city than Covid-19.Read More About the Homelessness Crisis in America‘Invisible Child’: In 2013, a five-part Times series told the story of Dasani, an 11-year-old Black girl who lived in a Brooklyn homeless shelter. Today, she’s still struggling.A Rising Death Toll: More than ever it has become deadly to be homeless in America, especially for men in their 50s and 60s.Housing Discrimination: A voucher program aimed at reducing homelessness in New York City has been hamstrung by the discriminatory practices of landlords and real estate agents.Los Angeles Goes to War With Itself: The pandemic has intensified a bitter fight over homelessness in the city — with no end in sight.Mr. Boudin, 41, was an outsider to San Francisco politics who grew up while his parents, 1960s radicals with the Weather Underground, went to prison for their role in the notorious 1981 robbery of a Brink’s armored car in New York that left two police officers and a bank guard dead.He went on to become a Rhodes Scholar who graduated from Yale College and Yale Law School before starting his legal career as a public defender. In 2019, Mr. Boudin sought to move across the courtroom and was elected as the city’s top prosecutor, assuming office just before the pandemic.He promised to end cash bail, stop prosecuting children as adults and expand diversion programs that offer defendants a chance at rehabilitation instead of prison — all steps he has taken while in office. Almost immediately, his opponents began collecting signatures toward a recall.“It’s not been an easy time to start a career in public life,” he said recently at a community forum in the North Beach neighborhood, which was interrupted by protesters outside chanting, “Recall Chesa!”On the campaign trail, Mr. Boudin is facing stiff headwinds. Several polls showed him down at least 10 points. In fighting to keep his job, he has leaned on two main strategies: associate, at every turn, the recall effort with Republicans, and confront voters with data that shows overall crime has not increased meaningfully while he has been in office, even as some categories have risen during the pandemic.He has referred to one of the biggest donors to the recall campaign, William Oberndorf, a conservative and wealthy businessman, as an “oligarch,” called his opponents “Trumpian,” and sought to place the recall in the national context of a Republican-led effort to attack liberal prosecutors as weak on crime.“It’s really problematic that we are having a very Trumpian conversation in San Francisco,” Mr. Boudin said.California Democrats have had success using that strategy of attaching opponents to former President Donald J. Trump — most notably in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s triumph over a recall drive. But some wonder if the approach has staying power the longer Mr. Trump is out of office.Mr. Boudin added that the recall campaign had exploited individual tragedies like the story of a Thai grandfather who was fatally attacked last year while taking his morning walk. He also pointed to an increase in media coverage of crime, and especially high-profile videos on social media of shoplifting cases — like one showing a man on a bike stealing from a Walgreens.“And then people read the story, they see the video, and they perceive crime as being out of control,” Mr. Boudin said. “When in fact things like shoplifting are down dramatically. It doesn’t mean we don’t have a real problem with auto burglaries, but the notion that it’s out of control today and it wasn’t in 2019 is just demonstrably false.”Auto burglaries have been especially common in San Francisco’s tourist hot spots.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesBut more than anything, it was the case of Troy McAlister, a man with a long criminal history who mowed down two people with a stolen car on New Year’s Eve in 2020, that has fueled the recall effort. Mr. McAlister was free because Mr. Boudin’s office had previously negotiated a plea deal on an armed robbery charge. And Mr. Boudin says it is a case that keeps him up at night.“The nature of this job is we are always looking backwards and hindsight is 20-20,” Mr. Boudin said. “We know as a matter of material fact that some people will be released and commit bad crimes. There’s always going to be cases where if we look back we would make different decisions.”Unlike in other parts of the country, homicides are not driving the anger and passions of recall advocates. The annual number of people killed in the city has stayed within a range of 41 to 56 over the past seven years.Instead, recall advocates describe a pervasive feeling that quality of life in San Francisco has deteriorated. Burglaries, especially in wealthier neighborhoods, have soared during the pandemic. The city recorded 7,575 burglaries in 2020 and 7,217 last year, a sharp increase of more than 45 percent from 2019. Car break-ins, long a festering problem, were less frequent during the pandemic, but thieves shifted their targets from tourist areas to more residential neighborhoods, a change that gave the issue more immediacy and urgency among voters.Another problem is that Mr. Boudin and the Police Department, whose rate of arrests for reported crimes is among the lowest of major cities, have a toxic relationship. In the 2019 campaign, the San Francisco Police Officers Association attacked Mr. Boudin by calling him the “#1 choice of criminals and gang members.” Supporters of Mr. Boudin responded at his victory party with chants of epithets toward the union.Officers have been heard on body camera footage telling residents that the district attorney is unwilling to prosecute crimes. And while Mr. Boudin has been criticized for not more aggressively prosecuting drug dealing, he said the police make, on average, only two drug-dealing arrests a day.“The perception is right,” Mr. Boudin said. “Low-level drug dealers can reasonably expect in San Francisco that nothing will happen to them. Because they’re not getting arrested. Incidentally, the same thing is true with auto burglaries, where 1 percent of reported auto burglaries result in an arrest. So the focus on my office or on me or my policies is really misplaced.”The chief of police, Bill Scott, declined to answer questions on the department’s rate of solving crimes. A spokesman said in a statement that it was “not appropriate for him to get into the type of political discussion that could influence the will of the voters of San Francisco.”“While Chief Scott admits that he and District Attorney Boudin have their disagreements, he maintains that they have a candid and very professional relationship,” the spokesman said.San Francisco has had a long line of liberal prosecutors, including Vice President Kamala Harris. But if Mr. Boudin loses the recall, Mayor London Breed is likely to appoint a more moderate Democrat, political analysts say. The replacement would serve through the end of the year and then might be eligible for re-election.Some of the recall campaign’s most visible supporters have come from within the district attorney’s office, which has seen a high rate of turnover — dozens of lawyers have left since Mr. Boudin took over, after resigning or being fired.Brooke Jenkins, a former prosecutor, left the office to join the recall effort in part, she says, because she clashed with Mr. Boudin about how to prosecute a murder case. “I don’t believe Chesa is living up to his obligation as the district attorney,” Ms. Jenkins said. “He of course ran on a platform of reform, and reform is necessary in the criminal justice system. But you have to be able to balance that with your primary obligation of maintaining public safety.”Among the most frustrated residents in San Francisco are those who live and work in the Tenderloin, the compact neighborhood near City Hall that was once the city’s red-light district filled with bars and boxing gyms. Today, it is a gritty tableau of the city’s most persistent ills — the illicit drug markets, the desperation of those who are chronically homeless and the consequences of untreated mental illness.A homeless encampment in the Tenderloin.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesAs the manager of Threads for Therapy, a nonprofit thrift shop in the Tenderloin run by a Christian charity, Angel Fernandez watched warily on a recent afternoon as customers perused the women’s coats. The shop has a full-time security guard because so many people try to shoplift.Mr. Fernandez does not hesitate when asked how he will vote on the recall. He compares Mr. Boudin to Robin Hood, someone who views criminals as “the downtrodden forced into crime.” But like the concerns of many recall supporters, some of Mr. Fernandez’s complaints do not relate directly to the district attorney’s performance — they are more general feelings of a need for order and responsiveness from the city, including the police. When Mr. Fernandez calls the Tenderloin police station one block away to report fights on the sidewalk, drug sales, threatening behavior or shoplifting, he is frequently disappointed with the slow response. “Sometimes they don’t come at all,” he said of the police.Holly Secon More

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      Republicans Elevate Diverse Recruits in Bid to Win House Majority

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      The G.O.P.’s plan to win back the House rests on candidates of color who leaders hope can help broaden the party’s appeal. TUCSON, Ariz. — When Juan Ciscomani first brought his family to his new congressional campaign office in the Catalina foothills, his father asked him: “Do you know where we are?”This was the same upscale neighborhood where a teenage Juan and his father, who immigrated from Mexico and took a job driving city buses, used to come early in the mornings to wash expensive cars to help make ends meet. Years later, the younger Mr. Ciscomani is one of House Republicans’ top recruits in the country, running to flip a key congressional seat just blocks from where they once worked to scrape by. “Two blocks away — it dawned on us,” Mr. Ciscomani recalled in an interview. “Then he said his favorite phrase: ‘Only in America.’”If Republicans win back the House majority in the November elections, it will be because of candidates like Mr. Ciscomani. In the nation’s most competitive congressional districts, Republicans have aggressively recruited people of color with powerful personal stories to tell, betting that compelling candidates, equipped with disciplined messages that focus on kitchen table issues like inflation and public safety, will deliver them control of the House.Republicans saw the potency of the strategy in 2020, when handicappers and pollsters predicted that Democrats would expand their majority. Instead, Democrats did not gain a single new seat while Republican candidates — women, minorities and veterans — won 15. Party operatives attributed the success to their decision to follow Democrats’ winning formula in 2018, recruiting a diverse group of candidates who helped propel them to gaining control of the House. Now, Republicans say it is a crucial component of their strategy to build a lasting majority. “We made a significant effort to not just say we would do recruitment differently but to actually get stronger recruits, and forcefully engaging on behalf of stronger recruits, more diverse recruits, recruits that reflect their electorates and the country,” said Dan Conston, the president of the Congressional Leadership Fund, House Republicans’ super PAC. Understand the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarAfter key races in Georgia, Pennsylvania and other states, here’s what we’ve learned.Trump’s Invincibility in Doubt: With many of Donald J. Trump’s endorsed candidates failing to win, some Republicans see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024.G.O.P. Governors Emboldened: Many Republican governors are in strong political shape. And some are openly opposing Mr. Trump.Voter Fraud Claims Fade: Republicans have been accepting their primary victories with little concern about the voter fraud they once falsely claimed caused Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss.The Politics of Guns: Republicans have been far more likely than Democrats to use messaging about guns to galvanize their base in the midterms. Here’s why.It is a striking strategy for a party whose ranks are overwhelmingly white and male, and include some lawmakers who have lionized the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 and embraced nativist, anti-immigrant language. The House Democrats’ campaign arm has spotlighted the influence of the hard right among Republicans, and has criticized Republican leaders for failing to confront extremists within their own conference. Republicans know that to meet predictions that they will win back the House this year, they must appeal not only to their core political base of right-wing and conservative voters, but also to college-educated people and independents in the suburbs who are likely to be alienated by such statements and stances. And party leaders are eager to continue to fix their diversity problem, with women composing only about 16 percent of the conference and people of color composing nine percent.In Texas, three Latina women are running in the Rio Grande Valley, including Mayra Flores, who immigrated to the United States from Mexico at six years old, worked on the frontline of the pandemic as a respiratory therapist, and is married to a Border Patrol officer. Ms. Flores could come to Congress as early as this month if she wins the special election to replace former Representative Filemon Vela, a Democrat who retired before the end of his term.Black Republicans with records of military service are running for several other key seats, in districts that Mr. Biden won by only a few points. There is John James in Michigan and Wesley Hunt in Texas, who both graduated from West Point and flew Apache helicopters in Iraq; and in Georgia, Jeremy Hunt, the son of two ministers who also graduated from West Point and who served as an active-duty Army intelligence officer in Ukraine. Wesley Hunt, a Republican candidate and Iraq war veteran, speaking to community members in Cibolo, Texas.Christian K. Lee for The New York TimesIn Indiana, Jennifer-Ruth Green, an Air Force veteran who deployed to Baghdad and served as a mission commander for counterintelligence activities, is looking to unseat Democrat Frank Mrvan in his northern district. Should all four prevail, they would triple the number of Black Republicans serving in the House.Here in Arizona, Mr. Ciscomani, a senior adviser to Gov. Doug Ducey, is vying to win the Tucson-based district held by Representative Ann Kirkpatrick, a Democrat who is retiring at the end of the year. In a district evenly populated by Democratic, Republican, and independent voters, Mr. Ciscomani is running with a laserlike focus on inflation, border security, and an explicit appeal for unity. “We have to be very disciplined in saying there are more things we agree on than disagree on,” he said. “And if we stay focused on that — I think that’s what the voters want to see right now. They’re tired of the infighting and bickering. They want government to go do their job. To go actually protect our border, to handle this inflation, stop the overspending, and get things under control.”That type of message would put Mr. Ciscomani in the minority among his Republican colleagues should he be elected in November, and it stands in sharp contrast to the language used by other Republicans in the Arizona delegation. Representative Paul Gosar, who represents much of rural western Arizona, has allied himself with the white nationalist Nick Fuentes and was censured last year for posting an animated video that depicted him killing a Democratic congresswoman. Representative Andy Biggs, whose district is in the eastern portion of the state, has described the influx of migrants at the southwestern border as an “invasion,” and, like Mr. Gosar, participated in the “Stop the Steal” campaign backing former President Donald J. Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      For Beto O’Rourke, Talk of Gun Control Has Become Both a Political Risk and Reward

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      DALLAS — When Beto O’Rourke interrupted a news conference in Uvalde to criticize Gov. Greg Abbott, Jason Smith bristled.Mr. Smith, a Fort Worth lawyer and Democrat, worried that Mr. O’Rourke’s approach was too confrontational in that moment, a day after an 18-year-old gunman stormed into Robb Elementary School. But in the days that followed, as details emerged that the police waited in a school hallway for more than an hour as children called 911 for help and Mr. Abbott acknowledged being “misled” about the response to the massacre, Mr. Smith changed his mind.“I was really glad he did it,” he said of Mr. O’Rourke.Mr. O’Rourke, 49, clearly took a political gamble when he disrupted the governor in an emotional outburst that Republicans and some Democrats believed crossed a line in the aftermath of a mass shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead. He was speaking not only as an outraged parent and Texan, but also as Mr. Abbott’s Democratic opponent in the race for governor.But interviews with Democratic lawmakers, strategists and voters in recent days showed that his return to speaking out about gun control and gun violence has helped him make a powerful connection with many over the tragedy in Uvalde, bringing a new energy to his long-shot campaign to unseat Mr. Abbott and a new urgency to efforts to overhaul the state’s lax gun laws.The very issue that had haunted his campaign for governor for months — his remarks during his 2020 presidential campaign calling for more aggressive gun restrictions — has suddenly helped revive it. Those past comments — “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” he said on a debate stage in 2019 — had seemed politically foolish as he campaigned in gun-friendly Texas, and he had sought to moderate them. Now, to many Texans saddened and angered by a deadly attack on schoolchildren by a gunman with an AR-15-style rifle, Mr. O’Rourke’s stance on guns has taken on a fresh resonance.Mr. O’Rourke confronted Gov. Greg Abbott in Uvalde following the shooting at Robb Elementary School.Veronica Cardenas/Reuters“They say that cost him the election,” said Mary Taylor, 66, a retired human resources manager and former substitute teacher who attended a town hall event on guns that Mr. O’Rourke held in Dallas on Wednesday. “But he had the right idea last time, and now he has more people that are getting on the bandwagon.”In an address at the White House on Thursday, President Biden called on Congress to pass gun control measures. Many were similar to the ones Mr. O’Rourke has been pressing for in Texas — including stronger background checks, a ban on assault weapons and laws to require gun owners to keep their firearms safely stored and allow authorities to take guns away from people who may hurt themselves or others.For some Democratic state leaders, the massacre and Mr. Abbott’s response compounded their frustration with the governor after his hard-right push on abortion and his rhetoric against immigrants, as well as his handling of the state’s troubled electric grid. Mr. O’Rourke has embodied that breaking point.“He is frustrated just like me, just like everyone else,” said State Senator Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat who represents Uvalde and who made his own interruption at another Abbott news conference, urging the governor to call for a special session of the Texas Legislature to pass gun-control legislation.Mr. O’Rourke’s campaign for governor is an uphill battle that some say remains all but impossible in Texas, where Republicans have a solid grip on state power.No Democrat has won a statewide race in Texas since November 1994 and no Democrat has occupied the governor’s mansion since January 1995, the last day of Gov. Ann W. Richards’s tenure. Despite years of Democratic promises of a blue wave, Texas keeps passing and enforcing some of the most conservative policies in the country. Democratic organizers continue to grapple with low voter turnout as Republicans have made gains in South Texas border cities. And in the governor’s race, Mr. Abbott has a significant financial advantage — he had nearly $50 million in cash on hand compared to Mr. O’Rourke’s roughly $6.8 million as of Feb. 19, according to the latest Texas Ethics Commission filings.“Their prospects are bleak,” said Cal Jillson, a political analyst and professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “In a good year, they can win some down-ballot offices and even some Texas state legislative seats, but they have not been able to break through statewide, and 2022 is not shaping up to be a good year.”For the longtime Democratic strategists and activists who have been working to turn the state blue, recent electoral contests have left them at once optimistic and worried. Mr. O’Rourke’s Senate bid in 2018 re-energized the party and helped sway down-ballot races in favor of Democrats as he came within three percentage points of unseating Senator Ted Cruz.But Texas Republicans were aided by higher turnout in smaller counties in the 2020 election, and those largely rural areas have been shifting even more to the right. In a Republican primary runoff for attorney general two weeks ago, Ken Paxton, the Trump-backed incumbent, trounced George P. Bush, the state’s land commissioner and the last member of the Bush family still in public office.Mr. O’Rourke, the former El Paso congressman, has cast the race between himself and Mr. Abbott as a choice between old leadership beholden to the gun lobby and his vision for a state where “weapons of war” are removed from civilian life. At the Dallas forum on Wednesday, he said he had rushed the stage to confront the governor in Uvalde because he wished someone had done the same after a mass shooting at a Walmart in his hometown of El Paso in 2019.“I am more worried that one of those AR-15s is going to be used against my kid or your kid,” he told reporters after the Dallas forum. “The problem we have is that people are more worried about the politics or polling than doing the right thing.”But Luke Macias, a Republican political consultant who has worked with some of the state’s most conservative lawmakers, said Mr. O’Rourke seems to be returning to the stances that he took as a presidential candidate, ones that damaged his credibility with independent Texas voters.“Once you lose their trust, it is hard to gain them back,” Mr. Macias said.Still, Democrats and some independents said they hoped this was the moment that would transcend politics. For many, the emotions from the attack are still raw as funerals have begun in Uvalde, and the trauma has made it difficult for many to even discuss its political ramifications. In conversations, the voices of Democratic leaders and voters often cracked with emotion, and some of them shed tears.Mr. Smith, the Fort Worth lawyer, spoke as he picked up his 12-year-old twins and 8-year-old son on the last day of school. His children had not been able to bring their backpacks on the last day before the summer break because officials had been concerned someone would bring a gun.“I think people are really heartbroken about what has happened,” Mr. Smith said. “I don’t think this is just another news story. Parents are scared.”Since 2017 alone, Texas has been the site of five mass shootings that have taken the lives of 87 victims, including attacks at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs in 2017 and Santa Fe High School southeast of Houston in 2018. Yet even as the governor has held town halls and at times has expressed an openness to tightening gun laws, Texas continues to have some of the least restrictive rules in the country. In 2021, Mr. Abbott signed a law allowing anyone over 21 to carry a handgun without a permit or training.After the killings in Uvalde, he and other Republican leaders in Texas have focused on the need to increase school security and access to mental health care, though the Uvalde gunman had no known history of mental issues. On Wednesday, Mr. Abbott tweeted a letter to state leaders calling for a special committee to address mass violence in schools. Among the list of topics was “firearm safety.”Mark Miner, a spokesman for Mr. Abbott’s campaign, said the governor was focused on the response to the tragedy and was declining to speak on political issues at this time.Mr. O’Rourke’s supporters listened to a discussion on gun violence in Dallas. Emil Lippe for The New York TimesAt Mr. O’Rourke’s town hall in Dallas, where supporters welcomed him with cheers and a standing ovation, he held firm on his support for stronger gun control measures yet also pledged to work with Republicans. He challenged his supporters to knock on doors and have uncomfortable conversations with voters on gun measures in the hopes of finding common ground.Mr. O’Rourke described how he had promised the mother of Alithia Ramirez, a 10-year-old girl who was killed at Robb Elementary, that he would work to prevent another mother from going through the same trauma. Yet even in Alithia’s own home, the divide was evident: One of her relatives told Mr. O’Rourke that he did not want to give up his AR-15 because he hoped to serve in the military.“If you are going to trust me to give my life for this country, you should trust me to own an AR-15,” Mr. O’Rourke said the young man told him. But, Mr. O’Rourke added, “there was more that we agreed upon than we disagreed on.” More

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      Fetterman Discloses Extent of Heart Issues: ‘I Avoided Going to the Doctor.’

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      Lt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, the Democratic nominee in what will be one of the hardest-fought Senate contests in the nation, has a heart condition called cardiomyopathy and appeared to have left other heart issues untreated for years, his doctor disclosed in a statement on Friday.Mr. Fetterman, who suffered a stroke days before the Democratic primary last month, had a pacemaker and defibrillator implanted on the day of the primary, which his campaign at the time described as a standard procedure that would address “the underlying cause of his stroke, atrial fibrillation.” His campaign offered few other details about his condition in the days that followed, but doctors questioned the campaign’s characterization of the use of a defibrillator, noting that they are not typically used for atrial fibrillation, and are more often used for conditions like cardiomyopathy — a weakened heart muscle.“Yesterday I talked to John about how, while afib was the cause of his stroke, he also has a condition called cardiomyopathy,” Ramesh R. Chandra, his doctor, wrote in a note. “The prognosis I can give for John’s heart is this: If he takes his medications, eats healthy, and exercises, he’ll be fine. If he does what I’ve told him, and I do believe that he is taking his recovery and his health very seriously this time, he should be able to campaign and serve in the U.S. Senate without a problem.”Cardiomyopathy “is a disease of the heart muscle that makes it harder for the heart to pump blood to the rest of the body,” according to the Mayo Clinic. “Cardiomyopathy can lead to heart failure.”Dr. Chandra said the defibrillator and pacemaker appeared to be “working perfectly and he is doing well.”Dr. Chandra also wrote that when Mr. Fetterman was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation and a decreased heart pump in 2017, he was prescribed medicine, lifestyle changes and follow-up appointments, but he “did not go to any doctor for 5 years and did not continue taking his medications.”“Like so many others, and so many men in particular, I avoided going to the doctor, even though I knew I didn’t feel well,” Mr. Fetterman said in a statement. “As a result, I almost died. I want to encourage others to not make the same mistake.”Dr. Chandra is Mr. Fetterman’s cardiologist, but after the stroke he was initially treated by other doctors at Lancaster General Hospital. They have not been made available for questions.Former Vice President Dick Cheney had a defibrillator implanted in 2001. He finished two terms in the White House, including a hard-fought re-election campaign in 2004. “Doctors have told me I need to continue to rest, eat healthy, exercise, and focus on my recovery, and that’s exactly what I’m doing,” Mr. Fetterman said. “It will take some more time to get back on the campaign trail like I was in the lead-up to the primary. It’s frustrating — all the more so because this is my own fault — but bear with me, I need a little more time. I’m not quite back to 100 percent yet, but I’m getting closer every day.”When he does return to the campaign trail, it appears his Republican opponent will be Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity television physician. With a statewide recount still underway on Friday in the Republican Senate primary and no official race call, David McCormick conceded the race to Dr. Oz.Ed Rendell, a Democratic former governor of the state and a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in an interview on Friday that he had no qualms about Mr. Fetterman’s fitness to serve. He downplayed how much Mr. Fetterman’s health would weigh on the minds of voters, saying that he did not think it would be an issue.“When I was governor, the Republicans used to say I was one cheese steak away from having a heart attack, and I never did,” said Mr. Rendell. Nancy Patton Mills, the chairwoman of the Pennsylvania Democrats, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee did not immediately comment on Friday.Mr. Fetterman has been off the campaign trail since his stroke and has occasionally released brief videos since then. In a sign that Mr. Fetterman was moving back toward some political engagement, Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, wrote on Twitter that he’d had a “virtual double date” with Mr. Fetterman and his wife, Gisele Barreto Fetterman, earlier Friday afternoon.“Looking forward to many more on the campaign trail this summer!” Mr. Casey wrote.Gina Kolata More

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      The Massachusetts Race for Democrats’ Next Crusading Attorney General

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      Want to know where Democratic politics are headed? Watch Massachusetts.The state has always had a crusading streak — it was, after all, founded by religious dissidents. Massachusetts prides itself on leading the nation on progressive causes, be it overthrowing the British, outlawing slavery and Jim Crow, establishing universal health care or legalizing same-sex marriage. In an 1858 article in The Atlantic, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. only half-jokingly called the statehouse atop Boston’s Beacon Hill “the hub of the solar system.”The departing attorney general of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, gained a national following for suing Donald Trump’s administration in dozens of cases. At the Boston Women’s March the day after Trump’s inauguration in 2017, she famously stood in front of an enormous crowd and shouted what would become a signature line: “We’ll see you in court!”So the race to succeed Healey, who is running for governor, is very much worth following. At a time when many Democrats find themselves demoralized by the paralysis in Washington and by President Biden’s low approval ratings, its contours will tell us something about what voters on the left are most passionate about.It is also exposing a fault line within the Democratic Party over corporate money — between those who see it as inherently corrupting and reject it, and those who view it as a necessary evil.The leading candidate in the primary, by all indications, is Andrea Campbell, a former Boston City Council president who finished third in the city’s mayoral race last year. She faces Quentin Palfrey, a former assistant attorney general, voting rights lawyer and official in the Obama and Biden administrations who supports Medicare for all; and Shannon Liss-Riordan, a self-financing labor lawyer who has the backing of major unions.All three are running as different flavors of liberal, fitting what local Democrats say is the public’s appetite for someone willing to wield the power of the office aggressively to protect consumers and correct injustices.“What voters are looking for is people who are going to fight on their behalf,” said Mary Anne Marsh, a Democratic strategist in Boston who is not supporting any of the candidates.Understand the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarAfter key races in Georgia, Pennsylvania and other states, here’s what we’ve learned.Trump’s Invincibility in Doubt: With many of Donald J. Trump’s endorsed candidates failing to win, some Republicans see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024.G.O.P. Governors Emboldened: Many Republican governors are in strong political shape. And some are openly opposing Mr. Trump.Voter Fraud Claims Fade: Republicans have been accepting their primary victories with little concern about the voter fraud they once falsely claimed caused Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss.The Politics of Guns: Republicans have been far more likely than Democrats to use messaging about guns to galvanize their base in the midterms. Here’s why.A tradition of taking on big businessThe attorney general in Massachusetts has a storied muckraking tradition dating to Frank Bellotti, who transformed the office into a formidable platform for law in the public interest during the 1970s and ’80s.Scott Harshbarger sued major tobacco manufacturers, resulting in a huge settlement in the late 1990s; more recently, Healey has gone after pharmaceutical companies that made and marketed opioids, effectively shutting down Purdue Pharma.“It’s the people’s attorney,” said Marie St. Fleur, a former assistant attorney general in Massachusetts who is close to Campbell. “That’s who we are.”This weekend, the three candidates will face their first test when delegates to the Democratic Party’s state convention will vote to decide who receives the party’s endorsement. Any candidate who does not reach 15 percent support among delegates will not make the primary ballot.Palfrey and Liss-Riordan have attacked Campbell for refusing to disavow a super PAC, Better Boston, that spent $1.6 million in support of her mayoral run. Palfrey has said the donations could create “a conflict of interest” if Campbell becomes attorney general. Both have pushed Campbell to sign the People’s Pledge, an agreement to reject corporate donations that was popularized by Senator Elizabeth Warren. She has refused.“That’s probably because they realize that Campbell has the early lead,” said David Paleologos, the director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, who has seen private polling in the race that heavily favors Campbell.Better Boston has not spent any money so far in the attorney general’s race, though it has not shut down, either. Its donors include Reed Hastings, a chief executive of Netflix, who chipped in $250,000; Andrew Balson, a former managing director at Bain Capital, who likewise gave $250,000; and Jim Walton, an heir to the Walmart dynasty, who donated $45,000. Sonia Alleyne, a former bank executive listed as the chairwoman of the group, did not respond to emails.Critics of corporate money in politics say the super PAC’s looming presence in the race is unprecedented, and has the potential to be corrupting even if the group is not currently active.“I’m not aware of a super PAC spending in an attorney general’s race in Massachusetts, ever,” said Jeff Clements, the president of American Promise, a nonprofit group that supports tightening campaign finance laws, and a former chief of the public law enforcement bureau in the Massachusetts attorney general’s office. “When that kind of raw power can be used to decide who can be the chief law enforcement officer of a state, that’s a big deal.”Campbell has raised nearly $1 million so far, significantly ahead of Palfrey and Liss-Riordan. She rejects what she says are “lies” spread about the financing of her campaign by her opponents, though she has declined to say whether she would disavow Better Boston’s support should it resume spending.“I’m not accountable to corporations or PACs,” she said in a recent television interview, emphasizing that 93 percent of her campaign donations had come from within Massachusetts. “I’m accountable to the people.”Andrea Campbell, right, campaigning last year for mayor of Boston, a race she lost.M. Scott Brauer for The New York TimesPersonality goes a long wayWith little to fear from Republicans in most general elections, Democrats in Massachusetts tend to race to the left in primaries for attorney general. But the candidates in this race have struggled to differentiate themselves on the issues.Where national Democrats have pivoted to loudly proclaiming their appreciation for America’s police officers, Campbell has gotten into public scrapes with police unions. And while Democrats in Congress have all but abandoned hope of banning military-style rifles like the one used in the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Palfrey is calling to banish gun manufacturers from the state altogether.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      A Georgia Mystery: How Many Democrats Voted in the G.O.P. Primary?

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      ATLANTA — One look at the results of Georgia’s primary election last week led many Republicans to believe it was the product of Democratic meddling. Former President Donald J. Trump’s recruited challengers lost in grand fashion in his most sought-after races: David Perdue was routed by Gov. Brian Kemp by more than 50 percentage points, while Representative Jody Hice fell to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger by nearly 20.Mr. Trump and his allies pointed to so-called Democratic crossover voters as the cause of their shellackings. In Georgia’s open primary system, Democrats and Republicans can vote in the other party’s primary if they wish, and more than 37,000 people cast early ballots in this year’s Republican primary election after voting in the Democratic primary in 2020.Some Democrats, for their part, staked a claim to these voters, arguing that they had crossed over to strategically support candidates who reject Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 election. Most of the crossover voters, the Democrats said, would return to the party in November.But a closer look at these voters paints a more complicated picture. Just 7 percent of those who voted early during last month’s Republican primary cast ballots for Democrats in that party’s 2020 primary election, according to the data firm L2. And 70 percent of this year’s crossover voters who cast early ballots in the G.O.P. primary had participated in both Democratic and Republican primaries over the last decade.These voters, data suggests, are less Republican traitors or stalwart Democrats aiming to stop Trump loyalists than they are highly sought-after — and unpredictable — swing voters.“I didn’t want any of the Trumpsters becoming a candidate,” said Frances Cooper, 43, who voted in Columbia County, two hours east of Atlanta.A self-described moderate, Ms. Cooper said that she had voted in both Democratic and Republican primaries in the past, and that she could often vote “either way.” This time, she said, Mr. Kemp had been “pretty good, and was the best of our options.” She was undecided about the November general election for governor, but “if anything leaning toward Kemp.”Understand the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarAfter key races in Georgia, Pennsylvania and other states, here’s what we’ve learned.Trump’s Invincibility in Doubt: With many of Donald J. Trump’s endorsed candidates failing to win, some Republicans see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024.G.O.P. Governors Emboldened: Many Republican governors are in strong political shape. And some are openly opposing Mr. Trump.Voter Fraud Claims Fade: Republicans have been accepting their primary victories with little concern about the voter fraud they once falsely claimed caused Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss.The Politics of Guns: Republicans have been far more likely than Democrats to use messaging about guns to galvanize their base in the midterms. Here’s why.Voters like Ms. Cooper base their choices in every election on multiple variables: their political leanings, how competitive one party’s primary might be or the overall environment in any given election year, among others. Some Democratic voters in deep-red counties opted for a Republican ballot because they believed it would be a more effective vote. Others, frustrated with leadership in Washington, voted according to their misgivings.Many unknowns still remain. The current data on crossover voters includes only those who cast ballots during Georgia’s three-week early voting period, when the most politically engaged people tend to vote. In addition to traditional swing voters or disaffected Democrats, a portion of those who crossed over were indeed probably Democratic voters switching strategically to the Republican primary to spite the former president.Yet the crossover voters who cast early ballots in last month’s Republican primary are not demographically representative of Georgia’s multiracial Democratic base, which also includes a growing number of young voters. Fifty-five percent of these early crossover voters were above the age of 65, and 85 percent were white, according to voter registration data. Less than 3 percent were between the ages of 18 and 29.It is unclear whether a majority of these voters will return to support Democrats this November, as some in the party expect, or whether they will vote again for Republicans in large numbers.“I think there’s a real danger on the part of Democrats in Georgia to just assume that they aren’t going to lose some of those voters from 2020,” said Erik Iverson, a Republican pollster who works with Georgia campaigns.Crossing the runoff thresholdNo race has attracted more debate about crossover voting than the Republican primary for secretary of state, in which Mr. Raffensperger, the incumbent, who had rejected attempts to subvert the 2020 election, defeated Mr. Hice, a Trump-endorsed challenger.Though Mr. Raffensperger won by almost 20 points, he escaped being forced into a runoff election by finishing with 52.3 percent of the vote, or 2.3 percent above the majority threshold that would have prompted a runoff.Operatives on both sides of the aisle have speculated that crossover voting was a chief reason that Mr. Raffensperger avoided a runoff. But drawing such a conclusion ignores the many reasons for crossover voting in Georgia, and probably overestimates the number of true Democrats voting for Mr. Raffensperger.“That would be an awful lot of crossover voting,” said Scott H. Ainsworth, a professor of political science at the University of Georgia, adding that Mr. Raffensperger’s nearly 30,000-vote margin to avoid a runoff had most likely been spurred by more than just meandering former Democratic primary voters.Still, that hasn’t dissuaded some from pointing to crossover voters as a root cause of Mr. Raffensperger’s success.Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger at a campaign event in Atlanta. In 2020, he refused to help President Donald J. Trump overturn Georgia’s presidential election results.Audra Melton for The New York TimesRepresentative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a Republican who founded the group Country First, which supports pro-democracy G.O.P. candidates, cited the Georgia secretary of state’s victory as proof of his organization’s effectiveness.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Democrats Attack Both Oz and McCormick in Pennsylvania Senate Race Ads

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      The recount of Pennsylvania’s photo-finish Republican Senate primary will not be revealed until June 8, but Democrats aren’t waiting to try to stain both possible winners, Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick.The Democrats’ Senate campaign arm released prototypes of attack ads against both candidates on Thursday, leaning into the theme that Dr. Oz, the celebrity physician, and Mr. McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, are out-of-state carpetbaggers. The ads preview how the general election could unfold in one of the most critical midterm contests for Senate control.The 30-second spots portray Dr. Oz, who held a tiny lead going into the recount and has declared himself the “presumptive” nominee, as “pretending to be from Pennsylvania.’’ Mr. McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, is attacked for having “moved from Connecticut to buy a Senate seat.”The ad maker, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, is not paying for the spots to run on the airwaves or on digital screens; it offered them to the news media as previews of a paid campaign in the fall, and in the expectation that they would be shared on social media. Axios earlier reported on the ads.The committee has reserved an initial $3 million for ads in Pennsylvania’s Senate race, where the retirement of Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican, has created an open seat.The attacks — including that Dr. Oz is a Hollywood type who promoted dubious medical claims on television, and that Mr. McCormick is a friend of China’s who outsourced jobs at a Pittsburgh company — are likely already familiar to many Pennsylvania voters, who were barraged with the same material in the primary. Both of the super-wealthy candidates and their allies spent tens of millions of dollars in attack ads ahead of the May 17 primary.Dr. Oz led by fewer than 1,000 votes, or .07 percent, when the recount began on Friday. Armies of lawyers for both candidates continue to scrap for every vote before county election boards and in court.With the race in suspense for more than two weeks, the Democratic nominee, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, has been largely out of the spotlight, which may benefit him politically as he recuperates from a stroke suffered just before Election Day. He has made no public appearances since then and has none currently planned. His campaign repeated this week that he is on the path to a full recovery, yet questions about his health have swirled as his campaign declined requests from reporters to speak with Mr. Fetterman or his doctors about his condition. On Tuesday, he posted to Twitter a short speech thanking Democratic House members from Pennsylvania for their endorsements.A spokeswoman for Dr. Oz, Brittany Yanick, did not respond directly to the Democratic committee’s attack ad, but called the “Biden/Fetterman agenda” wrong for Pennsylvania. “John Fetterman’s radical agenda harms Pennsylvanians and makes our communities less safe,” she said.Mr. McCormick’s campaign responded similarly, focusing on the “agenda of Biden and John Fetterman” but arguing that Mr. McCormick is the candidate best positioned to defeat Mr. Fetterman this fall. More