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      Elissa Slotkin Announces Senate Run in Michigan

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      Ms. Slotkin, a former C.I.A. analyst who represents a divided district, is expected to focus heavily on economic matters.Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat and former C.I.A. analyst who has notched several high-profile victories in a challenging district, said Monday that she would run for the Senate seat being vacated by Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat.Ms. Slotkin is the first Democrat running in what could be a hotly contested primary followed by a marquee fight in the general election, held during a presidential year in a major battleground state.“We need a new generation of leaders that thinks differently, works harder and never forgets that we are public servants,” Ms. Slotkin said in an announcement video released Monday morning.In Michigan, an industrial Midwestern state that helped propel Donald J. Trump to the White House in 2016 before narrowly flipping back to the Democrats in 2020, Ms. Slotkin is planning a pitch heavily focused on jobs and economic matters. An adviser, granted anonymity to discuss internal strategy, said to expect a campaign message that emphasized American manufacturing, “jobs with dignity” and labor protections.“We seem to be living crisis to crisis,” Ms. Slotkin said in the video. “But there are certain things that should be really simple, like living a middle-class life in the state that invented the middle class.”She also stressed the importance of “preserving our rights and our democracy so that our kids can live their version of the American dream.”There have been two school shootings in Ms. Slotkin’s district over the last 15 months, including one at Michigan State University this month. She is expected to focus on issues of safety, especially combating gun violence, the adviser said.Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.In New York: The state almost single-handedly cost Democrats their House majority in the midterms. Now, a leading Democratic group is hoping New York can deliver the party back to power.Blue-Collar Struggles: A new report from Democratic strategists found that the economy was a bigger problem than cultural issues for the party in the industrial Midwest. It also found hopeful signs for Democrats.Black Mayors: The Black mayors of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston have banded together as they confront violent crime, homelessness and other similar challenges.Wisconsin Supreme Court: Democratic turnout was high in the primary for the swing seat on the court, ahead of a general election that will decide the future of abortion rights and gerrymandered maps in the state.Ms. Slotkin, an experienced fund-raiser who represents a Lansing-area district that includes plenty of Republican voters, has impressed state and national Democrats with her electoral track record. She flipped a Republican-held district in 2018, held it in 2020 and was widely seen as endangered last fall, but ultimately won by five percentage points.And in a nod to her focus on bipartisanship, she featured images of former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama in her biography-heavy announcement video as she noted that she had worked “in the White House under two presidents, one Republican and one Democrat.”Her relatively moderate politics, a boon in her House district, may be viewed skeptically by more progressive voters and activists across the state who could mobilize in a primary. There is already public and private clamoring in some quarters for a more robust and diverse primary field, even as a number of the state’s most high-profile Democrats have passed on runs themselves.Ms. Slotkin, for her part, emphasized in a tweet on Monday that “I’ve never taken corporate PAC money, and I’m not starting now.”Ms. Slotkin will also need to introduce herself to Black communities in a number of the state’s bigger cities. She is planning to visit cities including Detroit, Grand Rapids and Flint soon, the adviser said on Friday.The state primary is not expected to be until August of next year, and it is not yet clear what the final field may look like, or how competitive it may ultimately be.A number of the state’s most prominent politicians — including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Mayor Mike Duggan of Detroit and Representative Haley Stevens — have indicated they do not intend to run. Pete Buttigieg, the U.S. transportation secretary whose official residence is now in Michigan, has said the same.On Friday, State Senator Mallory McMorrow, a prominent lawmaker who went viral last year defending L.G.B.T.Q. rights, also said she would not run.Many elected officials and other power players in the state had been waiting to see whether Garlin Gilchrist II, the state’s first Black lieutenant governor, would jump into the race, and some had wanted to support him. But on Sunday, he wrote on Twitter: “Serving our state in Washington, D.C. would be a great opportunity, but instead I will keep standing tall for Michigan, right here at home, as Lieutenant Governor. The Governor & I have more work to do. I look forward to working with our next US Senator to get it done.”Some Michigan Democrats have emphasized the importance of Black representation in the primary.“Michigan has this rich pool of qualified African American candidates, and we have so few that represent us in the Senate,” former Representative Brenda L. Lawrence, Democrat of Michigan, said in an interview on Friday. “We have an opportunity to send a qualified public servant to the Senate, so I just really think it’s important. And I think Michigan has the opportunity to fulfill that.”She pointed at the time to Mr. Gilchrist and Hill Harper, an actor in the TV series “The Good Doctor,” as potentially strong candidates. She also said she had not “shut the door yet” on her own potential bid.And there is renewed attention to the intentions of Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson. She has not ruled out a bid, but previously signaled she was more focused on her current job.Representative Debbie Dingell has not categorically ruled out a run, either.Republicans haven’t yet landed their own high-profile candidate. Nikki Snyder, a Republican member of the state board of education, was the first to jump in. But Representative John James, Michigan’s first Black Republican member of Congress, indicated on Friday that he would not seek the seat.Former Representative Peter Meijer, who lost his primary after voting to impeach Mr. Trump, is perhaps the most prominent potential Republican contender, although he would have clear difficulties navigating another primary.Others who either have indicated interest in running or are often mentioned in Republican circles include Representative Lisa McClain; State Senator Ruth Johnson; Kevin Rinke, who lost a largely self-funded Republican primary campaign for governor last year; and former Representative Mike Rogers.The National Republican Senatorial Committee has previously pledged to “aggressively target this seat.” In a statement on Monday, Maggie Abboud, a committee spokeswoman, called Ms. Slotkin a “liberal politician.”Democrats are betting that, as the Michigan Republican Party moves further to the right — it is now helmed by an election-denying Trump acolyte — the strongest potential general election contenders, like Mr. Meijer, would struggle to make it through a primary, paving the way for a far-right nominee who would face significant challenges in a general election.But many have warned that the strong Democratic showing in the midterms in Michigan — against a number of right-wing Republicans — should not be mistaken for a tidal shift in the state’s highly competitive politics.“I don’t know that the state itself has swung more Democratic,” Mr. Duggan said. “I think it has more to do with the caliber of leaders that we’ve had in recent years.”“This state,” he added, “is very closely divided.” More

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      This Is Not How Pete Buttigieg Wanted to Visit Ohio

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      Gail Collins: Bret, Democratic strategists are worried about hanging on to support in the working class. The good news, from my perspective, is that it looks like the big problem is economic concerns, not cultural ones.Saying that’s good news because the Biden administration can respond to those worries by pointing to a ton of effort to create jobs and fight inflation.Guessing you may, um, disagree?Bret Stephens: In the immortal words of the “Airplane” sequel: “Just a tad.”The big problem for Democrats is that their economic message — that happy times are here again — isn’t landing in the places where they need to win, particularly factory towns where elections in states like Wisconsin or Ohio are sometimes decided. Inflation is still too high and probably means the Fed will continue to raise interest rates. Unemployment is low in part because so many people have dropped out of the labor force. Years of lax border control creates a perception that cheap immigrant labor will further undercut working-class wages. And a lot of the projects that President Biden’s spending bills are supposed to fund will take years to get off the ground because there’s rarely such a thing as a “shovel-ready” project.Gail: Yeah, gearing up for a big construction effort does take time. But people who’ve suffered with terrible transportation problems for years do know the shovels are coming. Like the bridge project over the Ohio River that Democrats in Cincinnati have joined hands with Mitch McConnell to celebrate.Bret: The other problem for Democrats is that if they aren’t winning the messaging battle when it comes to the economy, they are losing it badly when it comes to cultural issues. You and I often rue the collapse of the moderate wing of the G.O.P. that was occasionally willing to break with right-wing orthodoxies, but Democrats could also do more to embrace candidates who depart from progressive orthodoxies on issues like guns, immigration, school choice, trans issues and so on.Gail: “Depart from progressive orthodoxies” is a nice way of saying “embrace the bad.” I appreciate that it would be strategic for some purple-state Democrats to take moderate positions on guns, immigration, etc. But I’m not gonna be applauding somebody who, for instance, votes against an assault weapon ban.Bret: You’re reminding me of the story, probably apocryphal, of the supporter who told Adlai Stevenson, during one of his presidential runs in the 1950s, that “Every thinking person in America will be voting for you.”“I’m afraid that won’t do,” he supposedly replied. “I need a majority.”Gail: Let’s go back to infrastructure for a minute. Big story about that train wreck in Ohio. Do you agree with me that the whole thing is the fault of Republicans caving in to pressure from the rail industry to loosen regulations?Bret: Er, no. I read recently that there were more than 1,000 train derailments last year, which averages out to more than two a day, and that there’s been a 60 percent decline in railroad safety incidents since 1990. Accidents happen. When they do, they shouldn’t become a partisan issue.Gail: When major accidents happen in an industry that’s both necessarily regulated and greatly lobbied over, it should be a call for investigation.And while we’re on this subject, please let’s talk about our transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg ….Bret: So, to illustrate my point, I’m not going to raise an accusing finger at him. Not even remotely his fault, even if Republicans are trying hard to pin him with the blame. Although, for someone with presidential aspirations, he didn’t exactly help himself by showing up a day after Donald Trump did.Gail: Sort of embarrassed that while I was trying to ponder rail regulation, my thoughts kept drifting off to Buttigieg the possible presidential candidate.He’s one of the guys we always mention when we talk about who might be nominated if Biden doesn’t go for a second term. But Buttigieg’s performance in Ohio was definitely not the work of a guy who knows how to run for that job.Steve McCurry/Magnum PhotosBret: Switching subjects again, we should talk about the legacy of President Jimmy Carter. I was a 7-year-old child living in Mexico City when he left office, so your recollections of him are much more valuable and interesting than mine.Gail: I distinctly remember bemoaning the energy shortage that left drivers waiting in long lines at the gas stations, but that’s hardly an insider’s story.Bret: Those lines put last year’s spike in gas prices in perspective.Gail: And every Democrat worried about Carter’s minimal talent for communication. He made a big TV appearance to promote energy conservation, wearing a sweater and sitting next to a fire, looking more silly than inspiring.Now, when I recall some of the stuff he did — environmental protection, promoting diversity, negotiating a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt — I appreciate him a lot more.Bret: Airline deregulation, too. Made air travel affordable to middle-class America for the first time. And he had the guts to nominate Paul Volcker to the Federal Reserve in 1979 to jack up interest rates and finally tame inflation, even though it would help cost him his presidency the next year.Gail: But the biggest thing he’s leaving us, Bret, is the story of his post-presidency. Campaigning endlessly for human rights, fair voting around the world and housing for the poor. Rather than holding press conferences to make his point, he’d swing a hammer with the crew at low-income housing construction sites.If high-ranking politicians see retirement from their top jobs as just a path to giving big-money speeches and writing the occasional memoir, they set a bad example for every older American. Carter showed how the later stages of life can actually be the richest and most rewarding.Bret: There’s a lot about Carter’s policy views that didn’t square with my own, and his persona sometimes struck me as … immodestly modest. But he was a unique figure in American political life, and he single-handedly disproved F. Scott Fitzgerald’s contention about there being no second acts in American lives.Gail: Not to mention third acts!Bret: He also showed how much more valuable a purpose- and values-driven life can be than one consumed by the culture of celebrity, wealth and pleasure — something that seriously tarnished the post-presidential legacy of a certain Southern Democrat who succeeded him, to say nothing of an even more saturnalian Republican president.Totally different topic, Gail, but I want to recommend our colleague Michelle Goldberg’s terrific column on the terrible mental-health effects of social media, particularly for teenagers. She mentions a proposal by Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri to totally ban social media for kids under 16. It’s one to which, as a father of three teenagers, I’m pretty sympathetic. Your thoughts?Gail: I read Michelle’s great piece and remembered how paranoid I was as a teenager when I thought two of my friends might be talking about me on the phone after school. Can’t imagine how I’d have felt if they had the capacity to do it as a group, while they were supposed to be studying after dinner. With a transcript available to the entire class later in the evening.Bret: Not only frequently abusive but also addictive. Someone once said that there are only two industries that speak of their customers as “users” — drug dealers and social-media companies.Gail: Just saying that kids can’t use social media sounds very attractive. But somehow I have my doubts it’ll work. Wonder if the more likely outcome might be a system the more sophisticated kids could use while the poorer, or less technologically cool ones, got sidelined.Am I being overly paranoid?Bret: No ban works perfectly. But if we were able to more or less end teenage cigarette smoking over the last 20 years, it shouldn’t be out of the question to try to do the same with social-media use. I can’t imagine that it’s beyond the technological reach of a company like Apple to write some code that stops social-media apps from being downloaded to phones whose primary users they know are under the age of 16.Gail: Well, happy to insist they do that. Even if they don’t know how, it’d increase pressure for them to find a way.Bret: I would welcome it, and I suspect most teenagers would, too. It’s hard enough being 14 or 15 without needing to panic about some embarrassing Instagram pic or discovering too late that something stupid or awful you wrote on Facebook or Twitter at 16 comes back to haunt you at 20.Gail: Hey, it’s traumatic enough being haunted by what I said last month.Bret: Or last week.As columnists, we volunteered to have a paper trail for our critics to pick through. We owe it to the kids to shield them from creating public records of their own indiscretions and idiocies. Life will come roaring at them soon enough. I say no social media till they’re old enough to vote, smoke and maybe even buy a drink. Full-frontal stupidity should be left to the grown-ups — like us!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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      Democratic Voters, Not Biden, Should Choose Vice President

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      For many months — since the 2020 campaign — Republicans have tried to portray Joe Biden as being too old to be president, as mentally deficient, as one small step away from death or disability. Democrats do themselves no favors when they let it be known, as they have in recent polling, that they too think he is too old to run again.Democratic voters should have more respect for Mr. Biden’s record as president and more confidence in the good judgment of the American people. His recent bravura performance at the State of the Union and his trip to Poland and Ukraine should compel even the most skeptical voters to admit that he is up to the job, at least at this moment. This month his doctor reported that Mr. Biden is “healthy,” “vigorous” and “fit” to carry out the duties of president.His party should show a united front in support of his re-election. But even as we put our faith in Mr. Biden, the questions about his age and physical condition will not go away, and it’s fair for voters to want reassurances and decisions that show the White House will be in solid hands. He should take steps to make those reassurances, but he, Vice President Kamala Harris and the rest of the party should also consider making some bold decisions to address these actuarial concerns and show they are being taken seriously.Focusing attention on the issue of succession — and spotlighting the strength of the Democratic bench in the process — would be one of the smartest, most persuasive ways of dealing with this dilemma. When considering who should be his running mate in 2024, Mr. Biden would do well to follow what Franklin D. Roosevelt did in 1944: He expressed a preference for certain candidates but turned the choice of his running mate over to the delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.Considering the age factor alone, many experts agree that Mr. Biden is much more likely to die within the next decade than a man 10 years younger. He is the oldest man ever sworn into the office. Only four presidents have died of natural causes while in office, and when elected, none of the four were aged, by today’s standards. The last president to die of natural causes while in office was Roosevelt. He was only 63 when he died, 82 days into his fourth term.Mr. Biden is showing his age. Because he has been active on the national stage for so many decades, his current condition compares unfavorably with memories of his former self. People remember him when he didn’t whisper or mumble, when his gait was not that of someone concerned about tripping or falling.Those who love Mr. Biden the most dread the inevitable Republican ad that raises the possibility of his not being able to finish a second term and strings together his most embarrassing bobbles and bloopers into a single 30-second thread. It is no betrayal of him for public-spirited Democrats to want to address these issues head-on, and it is a simple denial of reality for him to say, “I don’t believe the polls” that reflect those concerns.History offers some bracing reminders for Americans about a president’s health and points to the need for a president to take farsighted action to look out for the country and leadership continuity. According to the presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, in the last week of March 1944, “Roosevelt’s health was deteriorating so steadily that he canceled all appointments and confined himself to his bedroom.” His daughter, Anna, arranged for a checkup at Bethesda Naval Hospital, where a young cardiologist, Dr. Howard Bruenn, examined him. The doctor concluded that, if his congestive heart failure was left untreated, the president was unlikely to survive for more than a year.When Roosevelt’s prognosis came, it was two months before D-Day and less than four months before the Democrats were scheduled to convene in Chicago to renominate him. He knew full well that there was a good chance that the next vice president — whoever that might be — would be called on to lead the nation.It would be only natural for this thought to pass through Mr. Biden’s mind as he prepares himself for the presidential election of 2024. And he should take a page from Roosevelt’s book by telling his party that he will not dictate who will be his running mate but instead leave it up to the delegates to pick the person who is best equipped to take on that task.I do not suggest that Mr. Biden’s physical condition today is as dire as Roosevelt’s in 1944. However, the risk of Mr. Biden’s death or disability in his second term is such that the selection of his running mate takes on new urgency.Another version of the same drama took place in 1956. After Adlai Stevenson defeated Averell Harriman and Lyndon Johnson to win the Democratic nomination for president a second time, he announced he would leave it up to the delegates to choose the V.P. nominee.In a wild and exciting race for that nomination, young Democrats like Hubert Humphrey and Albert Gore Sr. took a run at it. In the process, another relatively unknown young Democrat — the junior senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy — became an instant star in the Democratic firmament when he led the race on the second ballot. But other candidates withdrew in favor of Senator Estes Kefauver, who then won by acclamation and joined Stevenson on the ticket, which lost to Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon by a landslide in November.The politics and processes of picking a national ticket are different today. In 1944 and 1956, conventions actually picked the candidates. The uncertainty and disunity were over quickly.If the party were to give Democratic voters a role in picking the vice-presidential nominee, it would have to rely on the primaries and caucuses to make the decision. As a practical matter, one way of structuring an open race for the nomination would involve creating a way for voters in Democratic primaries and caucuses to select delegates who support specific tickets. The race could take place among Biden-Harris delegates and — to cite some possible contenders — Biden-Amy Klobuchar delegates and Biden-Cory Booker delegates.It would take time. Divisions in the party would be on display and even deepen. A charismatic candidate like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might inspire the base and sweep the field. And perhaps most important, the inevitable messiness of the contest would make it appear that the aging president and his team were not in charge. The White House would want neither the appearance nor the reality of losing control of its own party.There are countervailing considerations.Without real campaign activity among Democrats in the lead-up to the 2024 election, media coverage of Republican presidential politics will be intense, with regular bashing of Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris, including attacks and conspiracy theories about the president’s age and health. Republican candidates will get billions of dollars of unpaid advertising through coverage, including regular televised debates in which many of them will raise doubt after doubt about his age and draw contrasts with their age, health and fitness. It is already happening.Allowing Democratic voters to pick the vice-presidential nominee might address the Democrats’ enthusiasm gap. If the status quo continues, no one on the Democratic side will excite or inspire a crowd. Giving Democratic voters a role in choosing the V.P. nominee would inject electricity and drama into an otherwise predictable if not enervating process. It would allow the Democratic Party to showcase a new generation of younger political leaders who would otherwise be doing nothing more than clapping their hands on the sidelines.Opening up the V.P. nomination would also give the Democratic Party a chance to test-drive candidates of the future. Who does well in debates? Who does well on the hustings? Who can get voters excited and galvanized?There will be those who see a decision to let Democratic voters pick Mr. Biden’s running mate as being a betrayal of Ms. Harris. That would be a misreading of the situation. Certainly he would be free to express his views about various possible running mates — as did Roosevelt in 1944 — and there is every reason to think that she would win the nomination on her own. There is nothing disloyal about putting the vice president in a position in which she wins the slot and becomes a more and more proven and battle-tested political leader in the process. If she were to prevail in her effort to be renominated, she would certainly be a stronger candidate and a more powerful vice president.Giving voters a chance to participate in selecting Mr. Biden’s running mate in 2024 would address the issue of age and succession. It would show him to be confident, engaged, unafraid, farsighted and even vital.Greg Craig is a lawyer who served in the White House under President Bill Clinton and was a White House counsel under President Barack Obama.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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      Marianne Williamson Says She Will Run for President Again

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      Ms. Williamson, a self-help author, called Trumpism a symptom of a disease in the American psyche during her last bid for the Democratic nomination.Marianne Williamson, the self-help author and spiritual adviser who ran unsuccessfully for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, will run again in 2024, she told supporters this weekend.“Since the election of 2016 it’s odd for anyone to think they can know who can win the presidency,” she said in a statement that was emailed to supporters and posted on Facebook. “And I’m not putting myself through this again just to add to the conversation. I’m running for president to help bring an aberrational chapter of our history to a close, and to help bring forth a new beginning.” She added, “Washington is filled with good political car mechanics, but the problem is that we are on the wrong road.”She will formally announce her campaign in a speech on Saturday.Four years ago, Ms. Williamson was one of more than 25 candidates for the nomination that Joseph R. Biden Jr. ultimately won. This time around, so far, she is the only candidate — entering the 2024 race before even Mr. Biden has done so, though he is widely expected to run for re-election.Ms. Williamson, 70, became famous within the self-help world as an author of several best-selling books and a spiritual adviser to Oprah Winfrey. In the 1980s, she founded the Los Angeles and Manhattan Centers for Living, which supported people with H.I.V. and AIDS, and Project Angel Food, which provides free meals to people with serious illnesses.A signature proposal in her first presidential campaign was to establish a federal Department of Peace, which would seek nonmilitary solutions to foreign conflicts and oversee efforts to combat domestic extremism, including white supremacy. She also supported reparations for slavery, arguing in a Democratic debate that they were better described not as “financial assistance” but rather “payment of a debt that is owed.”Who’s Running for President in 2024?Card 1 of 6The race begins. More

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      Ex-Attorney General in Arizona Buried Report Refuting Voter Fraud Claims

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      Under Mark Brnovich, a Republican who left office in January, a 10,000-hour review did not see the light of day. His Democratic successor, Kris Mayes, released investigators’ findings.Mark Brnovich, a Republican who served as Arizona’s attorney general until January, buried the findings of a 10,000-hour review by his office that found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, newly released documents reveal.The documents were released on Wednesday by Mr. Brnovich’s successor, Kris Mayes, a Democrat who took office last month as the top law enforcement official in the battleground state, which remains at the forefront of the election denial movement.The sweeping review was completed last year after politicians and other conspiracy theorists aligned with former President Donald J. Trump inundated Mr. Brnovich’s office with election falsehoods. They claimed baselessly that large numbers of people had voted twice; that ballots had been sent to dead people; and that ballots with traces of bamboo had been flown in from Korea and filled out in advance for Joseph R. Biden Jr., who won Arizona by a little over 10,000 votes.But investigators discredited these claims, according to a report on their findings that was withheld by Mr. Brnovich. (The Washington Post reported earlier on the findings.)“These allegations were not supported by any factual evidence when researched by our office,” Reginald Grigsby, chief special agent in the office’s special investigation’s section, wrote in a summary of the findings on Sept. 19 of last year.The summary was part of documents and internal communications that were made public on Wednesday by Ms. Mayes, who narrowly won an open-seat race in November to become attorney general.“The results of this exhaustive and extensive investigation show what we have suspected for over two years — the 2020 election in Arizona was conducted fairly and accurately by elections officials,” Ms. Mayes said in a statement. “The 10,000-plus hours spent diligently investigating every conspiracy theory under the sun distracted this office from its core mission of protecting the people of Arizona from real crime and fraud.”Efforts to reach Mr. Brnovich, who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate last year, were not immediately successful.His former chief of staff, Joseph Kanefield, who was also Mr. Brnovich’s chief deputy, did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.In the eight-page summary of investigators’ findings, Mr. Grigsby wrote that the attorney general’s office had interviewed and tried to collect evidence from Cyber Ninjas, a Florida firm that conducted a heavily criticized review of the 2020 election results in Arizona’s most populous county, Maricopa, at the direction of the Republican-controlled State Senate.Investigators also made several attempts to gather information from True the Vote, a nonprofit group founded by Catherine Engelbrecht, a prominent election denier, the summary stated..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“In each instance and in each matter, the aforementioned parties did not provide any evidence to support their allegations,” Mr. Grigsby wrote. “The information that was provided was speculative in many instances and when investigated by our agents and support staff, was found to be inaccurate.”When investigators tried to speak to Wendy Rogers, an election-denying Republican state lawmaker, they said in the summary that she refused to cooperate and told them she was waiting to see the “perp walk” of those who had committed election fraud.Ms. Rogers, who was censured by the State Senate in March 2022 after giving a speech at a white nationalist gathering, declined to comment on Thursday.In a series of emails exchanged by Mr. Brnovich’s staff members last April, Mr. Grigsby appeared to object several times to the language in a letter drafted on behalf of Mr. Brnovich that explained investigators’ findings. Its intended recipient was Karen Fann, a Republican who was the State Senate’s president and was a catalyst for the Cyber Ninjas review in Arizona.One of the statements that Mr. Grigsby highlighted as problematic centered on election integrity in Maricopa County.“Our overall assessment is that the current election system in Maricopa County involving the verification and handling of early ballots is broke,” Mr. Brnovich’s draft letter stated.But Mr. Grigsby appeared to reach an opposite interpretation, writing that investigators had concluded that the county followed its procedures for verifying signatures on early ballots.“We did not uncover any criminality or fraud having been committed in this area during the 2020 general election,” a suggested edit was written beneath the proposed language.Ms. Fann did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.In his role in Arizona, Mr. Brnovich was something of an enigma. He defended the state’s vote count after the 2020 presidential election, drawing the ire of Mr. Trump. The former president sharply criticized Mr. Brnovich in June and endorsed his Republican opponent, Blake Masters, who won the Senate primary but lost in the general election.But Mr. Brnovich has also suggested that the 2020 election revealed “serious vulnerabilities” in the electoral system and said cryptically on the former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon’s podcast last spring, “I think we all know what happened in 2020.”In January, as one of Ms. Mayes’s first acts in office, she redirected an election integrity unit that Mr. Brnovich had created, focusing its work instead on addressing voter suppression.The unit’s former leader, Jennifer Wright, meanwhile, joined a legal effort to invalidate Ms. Mayes’s narrow victory in November.Ms. Mayes has said that she did not share the priorities of Mr. Brnovich, whom she previously described as being preoccupied with voter fraud despite isolated cases. The office has five pending voter fraud investigations. More

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      In Wisconsin Supreme Court Race, Democratic Turnout Was High

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      Democratic turnout was high in the Tuesday primary for the State Supreme Court, ahead of a costly general election that will decide the future of abortion rights and gerrymandered maps in the state.MILWAUKEE — Eight months after the nation’s highest court made abortion illegal in Wisconsin, a liberal State Supreme Court candidate who made reproductive rights the centerpiece of her campaign won more votes than her two conservative opponents combined.The Wisconsin Supreme Court primary election on Tuesday was a triumph for the state’s liberals. In addition to capturing 54 percent of the vote in the four-way, officially nonpartisan primary, they will face a conservative opponent in the general election who was last seen losing a 2020 court election by double digits. It proved to be a best-case scenario for Wisconsin Democrats, who for years have framed the April 4 general election for the State Supreme Court as their last chance to stop Republicans from solidifying their grip on the state. Republicans took control of the state government in 2011 and drew themselves legislative maps to ensure perpetual power over the state’s Legislature, despite the 50-50 nature of Wisconsin politics.“If Republicans keep their hammerlock on the State Supreme Court majority, Wisconsin remains stuck in an undemocratic doom loop,” said Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.Now, with an opportunity to retake a majority on the State Supreme Court that could undo Wisconsin’s 1849 ban on nearly all abortions and throw out the state’s gerrymandered legislative maps, Democrats have the general election matchup they wanted. Janet Protasiewicz (pronounced pro-tuh-SAY-witz), a liberal circuit court judge in Milwaukee County, will face off against Daniel Kelly, a conservative former State Supreme Court justice who lost a 2020 election for his seat by nearly 11 percentage points — a colossal spread in such an evenly divided state. Abortion rights demonstrators gathered in Madison, Wis., in January 2022. Judge Protasiewicz has sought to put abortion, which is now illegal in most cases in Wisconsin, at the center of the campaign. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesTuesday’s results suggested that the state’s Democratic voters are more energized than Republicans. While the number of ballots cast statewide represented 29 percent of the 2020 presidential electorate, the turnout in Dane County was 40 percent of the 2020 total, a striking figure for a judicial election. In Dane County, which includes the liberal state capital of Madison, Joseph R. Biden Jr. took three out of every four votes.Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.Black Mayors: The Black mayors of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston have banded together as they confront violent crime, homelessness and other similar challenges.Wisconsin Supreme Court: Democratic turnout was high in the primary for the swing seat on the court, ahead of a general election that will decide the future of abortion rights and gerrymandered maps in the state.Mississippi Court Plan: Republican lawmakers want to create a separate court system served by a state-run police force for mainly Black parts of the capital, Jackson, reviving old racial divisions.Michigan G.O.P.: Michigan Republicans picked Kristina Karamo to lead the party in the battleground state, fully embracing an election-denying Trump acolyte after her failed bid for secretary of state.Republicans will also face the financial might of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, which on Wednesday transferred $2.5 million to the Protasiewicz campaign. Justice Kelly did not spend a dollar on television advertising during the primary, but he was aided by $2.8 million in spending from a super PAC funded by the conservative billionaire Richard Uihlein, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm. Democrats also helped Justice Kelly by spending $2.2 million to attack his conservative opponent, Jennifer Dorow, a circuit court judge in Waukesha County. Justice Kelly has said he expects Mr. Uihlein’s PAC, Fair Courts America, to spend another $20 million on his behalf for the general election. That money will not go as far as the cash transferred directly to the Protasiewicz campaign because candidates can buy television advertising at far lower rates than PACs. Wisconsin’s conservatives, who have controlled the court since 2008, fear a rollback not just of their favorable maps but also of a host of Republican-friendly policies that were ushered in while Scott Walker was governor, including changes to the state’s labor and voting laws. “She’s going to impart her values upon Wisconsin regardless of what the law is — does that seem like democracy to you?” said Eric Toney, the district attorney for Fond du Lac County, who was the Republican nominee for attorney general last year. “This isn’t Republicans and Democrats. It’s democracy and the rule of law that is on the line.”There is also the question of how Wisconsin Republicans coalesce after their second bruising primary contest in six months. Throughout the campaign, Justice Kelly declined to say that he would back Judge Dorow in the general election, while her supporters flatly said that he would lose the general election.It was a bit of a replay of the governor’s race last year, when bitter intraparty feelings remained after Tim Michels, with former President Donald J. Trump’s endorsement, defeated former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch in the primary. Ms. Kleefisch then did little to encourage her supporters to back Mr. Michels, who later lost the general election to Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat.“With Michels and Kleefisch, there wasn’t that come-together-to-Jesus moment,” said Stephen L. Nass, a Republican state senator from Whitewater. “I think people realize now that was a mistake. It should have happened. And now we’ve got to do it.”Wisconsin’s Supreme Court was one vote away from overturning Mr. Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, deciding in a series of 4-to-3 decisions to reject Mr. Trump’s efforts to invalidate 200,000 votes from the state’s two largest Democratic counties.Judge Protasiewicz speaking at her primary night party on Tuesday in Milwaukee. She has openly declared her views in support of abortion rights and against Wisconsin’s gerrymandered legislative maps.Caleb Alvarado for The New York Times“What our Supreme Court did with the 2020 presidential election kind of turned people’s stomachs,” Judge Protasiewicz said in an interview on Tuesday over coffee and paczki, a Polish pastry served on Fat Tuesday. “We were one vote away from overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.”Judge Protasiewicz has pioneered what may be a new style of judicial campaigning. She has openly proclaimed her views on abortion rights (she’s for them) and the state’s legislative maps (she’s against them). That has appeared to offend Justice Kelly, who devoted chunks of his Tuesday victory speech to condemning the idea that Judge Protasiewicz had predetermined opinions about subjects likely to come before the court.“If we do not resist this assault on our Constitution and our liberties, we will lose the rule of law and find ourselves saddled with the rule of Janet,” Justice Kelly told supporters in Waukesha County. But Judge Protasiewicz has considerable incentives to put her views on hot-button topics front and center for voters. (She calls them “my values” to remain within a law that prohibits judicial candidates from plainly stating how they would rule on specific cases.) Democrats learned in last year’s midterm contests just how potent and motivating abortion is for their voters. Judge Protasiewicz, in the interview, recounted how voters had come to her campaign stops wearing sweatshirts bearing the words “Fair maps now.” “The voters are demanding more,” said Rebecca Dallet, a liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, at the Protasiewicz victory party on Tuesday in Milwaukee. “People want to know more about their candidates. And I think there’s a way to communicate that without saying anything that shouldn’t be said about future cases.”Justice Kelly’s views are hardly opaque, either.Appointed to the court by Mr. Walker in 2016 before losing his re-election bid in 2020, Justice Kelly went on to work for the Republican National Committee as an “election integrity” consultant. He has the endorsement of the state’s three major anti-abortion groups.Justice Kelly speaking at a party on Tuesday night in Okauchee Lake, Wis. He said in an interview that only state legislators, not the State Supreme Court, could overturn Wisconsin’s abortion ban.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesDuring an interview on Monday night in Sheboygan, Justice Kelly said only legislators could overturn the state’s 1849 abortion ban, enacted decades before women were allowed to vote. He said that complaints about the maps amounted to a “political problem” and that they were legally sound.Yet in the same interview, conducted in the back of a bar during a meeting of the Sheboygan County Republican Party, Justice Kelly declined to say whether he supported the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s ruling in December 2020 that rejected Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn the state’s presidential election results.“If I were to say it was decided correctly, then the hullabaloo would be, ‘Justice Kelly doesn’t care about election integrity,’” he said. “If I say it was decided incorrectly, the hullabaloo would be, ‘Justice Kelly favors overthrowing in presidential elections.’ And so I don’t think there’s any way to answer that question in a way that would not get overcome by extraneous noise.”Still, he said he had “no reason to believe” Wisconsin’s 2020 election was not decided properly.Since Justice Kelly lost in 2020, he and other Republicans have taken it as an article of faith that the wide margin of his defeat could be attributed to the Democratic presidential primary, which fell on the same day. Several Republicans asserted that Wisconsin’s Democratic Party leadership had colluded with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, whose presidential campaign was by then a lost cause, to remain in the race to lift the chances of the liberal candidate, Jill Karofsky.“It still pains me to admit that, as it turns out, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders combined can turn out more votes than little old me,” Justice Kelly said Monday.Faiz Shakir, who was the campaign manager for the Sanders campaign, said in an interview that Mr. Sanders had indeed decided to suspend his campaign and concede to Mr. Biden days before Wisconsin’s April 2020 primary, but encouraged his supporters to vote in the primary anyway to influence the court election.One thing that is clear is that the next six weeks in Wisconsin politics will be dominated by the Protasiewicz campaign’s effort to place abortion rights at the center of the race. The issue will feature heavily in her television advertising, while Republicans will try to change the subject to crime — or anything else. “Everybody is very emotional about abortion, so that’s the tail that’s going to wag the dog,” said Aaron R. Guenther, a conservative Christian minister from Sheboygan. “It’s not what all of life is about, but it’s what the election is going to be about.”Dan Simmons contributed reporting from Okauchee Lake, Wis. More

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      The Forces Tearing Us Apart Aren’t Quite What They Seem

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      A toxic combination of racial resentment and the sharp regional disparity in economic growth between urban and rural America is driving the class upheaval in American partisanship, with the Republican Party dominant in working class House districts and the Democratic Party winning a decisive majority of upscale House seats.Studies from across the left-right spectrum reveal these and other patterns: a nation politically divided by levels of diversity; the emergence of an ideologically consistent liberal Democratic Party matching the consistent conservatism of the Republican Party, for the first time in recent history; and a striking discrepancy in the median household income of white majority House districts held by Democrats and Republicans.Four scholars and political analysts have produced these studies: Michael Podhorzer, former political director of the AFL-CIO, in “The Congressional Class Reversal,” “Socioeconomic Polarization” and “Education Polarization”; Oscar Pocasangre and Lee Drutman, of New America, in “Understanding the Partisan Divide: How Demographics and Policy Views Shape Party Coalitions”; and Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory, in “Both White and Nonwhite Democrats are Moving Left.”Podhorzer’s analyses produce provocative conclusions.“Throughout the first half of the 20th century,” he writes in his class reversal essay, “Democrats were solidly the party of the bottom of the income distribution and Republicans were solidly the party of the top half of the income distribution.” In 1958, Podhorzer points out, “more than half of the members of the Democratic caucus represented the two least affluent quintiles of districts. Today, that is nearly the case for members of the Republican caucus.”The result? “In terms of income,” Podhorzer writes. “the respective caucuses have become mirror images of each other and of who they were from Reconstruction into the 1960s.”The shift is especially glaring when looking at majority-white congressional districts:From 1994 through 2008, Democrats did about equally well with each income group. But, beginning with the 2010 election, Democrats began doing much better with the top two quintiles and much worse with the bottom two quintiles. In 2020, the gap between the top two and the bottom two quintiles was 50 points. Since 2016, Democrats have been doing worse than average with the middle quintile as well.The income shift coincided with a deepening of the urban-rural partisan schism.“As recently as 2008,” Podhorzer writes, “40 percent of the Democratic caucus represented either rural or sparse suburban districts, and about a fifth of the Republican caucus represented majority-minority, urban or dense suburban districts. Now, the caucuses are sorted nearly perfectly.”As if that were not enough, divergent economic trends are compounding the urban-rural split.In his socioeconomic polarization essay, Podhorzer shows how median household income in white majority districts has changed.From 1996 to 2008, in majority white districts, there was virtually no difference in household income between districts represented by Republicans and Democrats. Since then, the two have diverged sharply, with median household income rising to $80,725 in 2020 in majority white districts represented by Democrats, well above the $62,163 in districts represented by Republicans.Podhorzer ranks congressional districts on five measures:1) Districts in the lowest or second lowest quintile (the bottom 40 percent) of both income and education; 2) districts in the lowest or second lowest quintile of income but in the middle quintile or better for education; 3) districts that are not in the other four measures; 4) districts that are either in the fourth quintile on both dimensions or are in the fourth for one and the fifth for the other; and 5) districts that are in the fifth quintile for both dimensions.Using this classification system, how have majority white districts changed over the past three decades?“For the entire period from 1996 through 2008,” Podhorzer writes,none of the white socioeconomic groups was more than 10 points more or less than average, although we can see the highest socioeconomic group trending more Democratic through that period. But everything changed dramatically after 2008, as the two highest socioeconomic groups rapidly became more Democratic while the lowest socioeconomic group became much less Democratic.In 1996, Democrats represented 30 percent of the majority white districts in the most educated and most affluent category; by 2020, they represented 86 percent. At the other end, in 1996, Democrats represented 38 and 42 percent of the districts in the bottom two categories; by 2020, those percentages fell to 12 and 18 percent.In examining these trends, political analysts have cited a growing educational divide, with better educated — and thus more affluent — white voters moving in a liberal Democratic direction, while whites without college have moved toward the right.Podhorzer does not dispute the existence of this trend, but argues strenuously that limiting the analysis to education levels masks the true driving force: racial tolerance and racial resentment. “This factor, racial resentment,” Podhorzer writes in the education polarization essay, “does a much, much better job of explaining our current political divisions than education polarization.”In support of his argument, Podhorzer provides data showing that from 2000 to 2020, the Democratic margin among whites with and without college degrees who score high on racial resentment scales has fallen from minus 26 percent to minus 62 percent for racially resentful non-college whites and from minus 14 percent to minus 53 percent among racially resentful college- educated whites.At the same time, the Democratic margin rose from plus 12 to 70 percent over those twenty years among non-college whites low in racial resentment; and from 50 to 82 percent among college-educated whites low in racial resentment.In other words, in contradiction to the education divide thesis, non-college whites who are not racially resentful have become more Democratic, while college-educated whites who are racially resentful have become more Republican, in contradiction to the education divide thesis.Podhorzer makes the case that “the unequal distribution of recovery after the economy crashed in 2008 has been profoundly overlooked,” interacting with and compounding divisions based on racial attitudes:Educational attainment was among the important characteristics associated with those increasingly prosperous places. Add to that mix, first, the election of a Black president, which sparked a backlash movement of grievance in those places left behind in the recovery, and, second, the election of a racist president, Donald Trump — who stoked those grievances. We are suffering from a polarization which provides an even more comprehensive explanation than the urban-rural divide.Changing racial attitudes are also a crucial element in Abramowitz’s analysis, “Both White and Nonwhite Democrats are Moving Left,” in which he argues that “Democrats are now as ideologically cohesive as Republicans, which is a big change from a decade ago, when Republicans were significantly more cohesive than Democrats.”Damon Winter/The New York TimesIn 1972, on a 1 to 7 scale used by American National Election Studies, Abramowitz writes,Supporters of the two parties were separated by an average of one unit. The mean score for Democratic voters was 3.7, just slightly to the left of center, while the mean score for Republican voters was 4.7, to the right. By 2020, the distance between supporters of the two parties had increased to an average of 2.6 units. The mean score for Democratic voters was 2.8 while the mean score for Republican voters was 5.5.The ideological gulf between Democrats and Republicans reached its highest point in 2020, Abramowitz observes, “since the ANES started asking the ideological identification question.”While the movement to the right among Republican voters has been relatively constant over this period, the Democratic shift in an increasingly liberal direction has been more recent and more rapid.“The divide between supporters of the two parties has increased considerably since 2012 and most of this increase was due to a sharp leftward shift among Democratic voters,” Abramowitz writes. “Between 2012 and 2020, the mean score for Democratic voters went from 3.3 to 2.9 while the mean score for Republican voters went from 5.4 to 5.5.”By far the most important shift to the left among Democrats, according to Abramowitz, was on the question “Should federal spending on aid to Blacks be increased, decreased or kept about the same?” From 2012 to 2020, the percentage of Democrats saying “increased” more than doubled, from 31.3 to 72.2 percent. The surge was higher among white Democrats, at 47.5 points, (from 24.6 to 72.1 percent), than among nonwhite Democrats, at 31.2 points, from 41.1 to 72.3 percent.The growing ideological congruence among Democrats has significant consequences for the strength of the party on Election Day. Abramowitz notes that “For many years, white Democrats have lagged behind nonwhite Democrats in loyalty to Democratic presidential candidates. In 2020, however, this gap almost disappeared with white Democratic identifiers almost as loyal as nonwhite Democratic identifiers.”The increase in loyalty among white Democratic identifiers, he continues, “is due largely to their increased liberalism because defections” to the right “among white Democrats”have been heavily concentrated among those with relatively conservative ideological orientations. This increased loyalty has also been apparent in other types of elections, including those for U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. In 2022, according to data from the American National Election Studies Pilot Survey, 96 percent of Democratic identifiers, including leaning independents, voted for Democratic candidates for U.S. House and U.S. Senate.In their paper, “Understanding the Partisan Divide,” Pocasangre and Drutman of New America focus on race and ethnicity from the vantage point of an analysis of voting patterns based on the level of diversity in a district or community.“Republican districts,” they write,are some of the least ethnically diverse districts. But voters within these districts have diverse policy views, particularly on economic issues. Democratic districts are some of the most ethnically diverse districts. But voters within these districts are mostly in agreement over their views of both social and economic issues.Pocasangre and Drutman’s study reinforces the widespread finding “That Republican districts are predominantly white and, for the most part, less affluent than the national average. In contrast, Democratic districts are less white than the average but tend to be more affluent than average.”Pocasangre and Drutman find that the household income differences between Democratic and Republican-held seats continues to widen. From 2020 to 2022, the income in Democratic districts rose from $95,000 to $100,000 while in Republican districts it grew from $77,000 to $80,000, so that the Democratic advantage rose from $18,000 to $20,000 in just two years.Republican districts, the two authors continue, are “conservative on both social and economic issues, with very few districts below the national average on either dimension.” Democratic districts, in contrast, areprogressive on both policy domains, but have quite a few districts that fall above the average on either the social or economic dimension. In particular, of the 229 Democratic districts in 2020, 14 percent were more conservative than the national average on social issues and 19 percent were more conservative than the national average on economic issues.On average, competitive districts tilt Republican, according to the authors:Very few competitive districts in 2020 were found on the progressive quadrants of social and economic issues. Instead, of the 27 competitive districts in 2020, 70 percent were more conservative than the national average on economic issues and 59 percent were more conservative than the national average on social issues.These battleground districtslean toward the progressive side when it comes to gun control, but they lean toward the conservative side on all the other social issues. Their views on structural discrimination — an index that captures responses to questions of whether Black people just need to try harder to get ahead and whether discrimination keeps them back — are the most conservative, followed by views toward abortion.In addition, a majority of competitive districts, 57 percent, are in Republican-leaning rural-suburban communities, along with another 13 percent in purely rural areas. Democratic districts, in contrast, are 17 percent in purely urban areas and 52 percent in urban-suburban communities, with 31 percent in rural-suburban or purely rural areas.I asked Pocasangre about this tilt, and he emailed back:For now, most swing districts go for Republicans. The challenge for Democrats right now is that most of these swing districts are in suburbs which demographically and ideologically look more like rural areas where Republicans have their strongholds. So, Democrats do face an uphill battle when trying to make inroads in these districts.But, Pocasangre continued, “majorities in Congress are so slim that control of the House could switch based on idiosyncratic factors, like exceptionally bad candidates on the other side, scandals, changes in turnout, etc. Democrats need to get lucky in the suburbs, but for Republicans, they are theirs to lose.”Pocasangre and Drutman classified districts as Democratic, Republican, or competitive, based on the ratings of the Cook Political Report in the 2020 and 2022 elections: “Competitive districts are those classified as toss ups for each cycle while the partisan districts are those rated as solid, likely, or lean Democratic or Republican.”The Cook Report analysis of 2024 House races lists 20 tossup seats, 11 held by Democrats, 9 by Republicans, one of which is held by the serial fabulist George Santos, whose threatened New York seat is classified as “lean Democratic.” Eight of the 11 Democratic toss-ups are in three states, four in North Carolina and two each in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Four of the nine Republican tossups are in New York, along with two in Arizona.The changing composition of both Democratic and Republican electorates and the demographics of the districts they represent is one of the reasons that governing has become so difficult. One result of the changing composition of the parties has been a shift in focus to social and cultural issues. These are issues that government is often not well equipped to address, but that propel political competition and escalate partisan hostility.Perhaps most important, however, is that there now is no economic cohesion holding either party together. Instead, both have conflicting wings. For the Republicans it’s a pro-business elite combined with a working class, largely white, often racially resentful base; for the Democrats, it’s a party dependent on the support of disproportionately low-income minorities, combined with a largely white, college-educated elite.One might question why all these cultural and social issues have come so much to the fore and what it might take for the dam to give.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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      Jennifer McClellan Wins in Virginia and Will Be State’s First Black Woman in Congress

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      Jennifer McClellan, a state senator, will fill the seat held by Representative A. Donald McEachin, who died in November.Jennifer McClellan, a veteran Democratic state senator, won a special election for Virginia’s Fourth Congressional District on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, making her the first Black woman to represent the state in Congress.Ms. McClellan, 50, will fill the seat formerly held by Representative A. Donald McEachin, who died Nov. 28 of colorectal cancer. She has cited Mr. McEachin as a mentor and was highly favored to win in the safely Democratic district, which stretches from Richmond, where she is based, to the rural counties along Virginia’s border with North Carolina.She defeated Leon Benjamin, a Republican Navy veteran and local pastor. Mr. Benjamin lost to Mr. McEachin by nearly 30 points in November.Virginia Democrats, including the party’s entire congressional delegation and many local and statewide officials, were quick to coalesce around Ms. McClellan’s candidacy during the primary in late December. Even though the accelerated election calendar set by Gov. Glenn Youngkin left her campaign with less than two weeks to turn out primary voters, she still won with nearly 85 percent of the vote, according to the state party.Ms. McClellan centered her campaign on legislation she spearheaded as a state senator — issues she championed, like voting rights, environmental protection and abortion access, often dovetailed with the national Democratic platform.“I passed legislation to protect our right to vote and our right to a clean environment. I led the fight for our reproductive freedom,” Ms. McClellan said in a television ad. “I’ll take that same fight with me to Congress.”In a January opinion essay for Essence magazine, Ms. McClellan also said that her identity as a Black female lawmaker would help shape her policy positions.“This election isn’t just about my lived experiences, it’s about elevating the experiences of so many whose voices have not been heard in our government,” she wrote.Ms. McClellan, a lawyer who is also the vice chair of the Virginia legislature’s influential Black caucus, has been frequently promoted as a rising star among state Democrats. This is her second run for statewide office: In 2021, she fell short in a crowded primary for governor.Susan Swecker, chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Virginia, said in a statement on Tuesday night: “Jennifer McClellan’s history-making victory as the first Black woman to be elected to Congress from Virginia will have ripple effects across the Commonwealth.”“Her leadership will expand upon the outstanding progress and advocacy for which we remember Congressman A. Donald McEachin — I cannot think of a better way to honor his life and legacy than with the new generation of leadership that Congresswoman-elect Jennifer McClellan will bring to Washington.” More