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      After Jacksonville, Tensions Flare Between DeSantis and Black Floridians

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      At a vigil for the shooting victims, Mr. DeSantis had to speak over loud boos from a largely Black crowd. His agenda in Florida has earned him few Black allies.Days after being sworn in as Florida’s governor in 2019, Ron DeSantis pardoned the Groveland Four, a group of Black men who had been wrongfully accused of sexually assaulting a white woman decades earlier.At the time, Mr. DeSantis’s decision seemed like it could serve as a vital olive branch to Florida’s wary African American community. Accusations of racism had trailed him throughout a bruising general election, which he had begun by warning voters not to “monkey this up” by voting for his Democratic opponent, who was Black. The case of the Groveland Four, who all died before having their names cleared, had received national attention, and Mr. DeSantis said their treatment represented a “miscarriage of justice.”Four years later, Mr. DeSantis’s relationship with Black Floridians could hardly be worse. As he moved increasingly to the right ahead of his run for president, Mr. DeSantis pushed an agenda that cemented his status as a rising conservative star nationally but that has outraged many Black voters and leaders in his home state.Those policies include changing how slavery is taught in schools, cutting funding for diversity and inclusion initiatives and redistricting a Black-led congressional district in northern Florida out of existence. Some Black professional groups have stopped holding conferences in the state, while several Black leaders have condemned Florida — and Mr. DeSantis — as an example of racism in policymaking.Now, a racially motivated shooting in Jacksonville that killed three Black people over the weekend has escalated those tensions to new heights.At a vigil on Sunday for the victims, Mr. DeSantis had to speak over loud boos from the largely Black crowd. He condemned the murders and called the killer, a white man who the authorities said intentionally targeted Black people before killing himself, “a major-league scumbag.”Mr. DeSantis was confronted with loud boos at the vigil for the shooting victims.John Raoux/Associated PressJeffrey Rumlin, a pastor who spoke after Mr. DeSantis, offered a correction. “Respect for the governor,” Mr. Rumlin, who is Black, told the crowd, but “he was not a scumbag. He was a racist.”Shevrin Jones, a state senator from South Florida, said Mr. DeSantis’s reception at the vigil was telling.“The response from Jacksonville’s Black community was the response from the Black community across the state of Florida,” said Mr. Jones, a Black Democrat. “We’ve never had a relationship with the governor.”Mr. DeSantis’s office, which is preparing for a major hurricane, did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did his campaign.Kiyan Michael, a Republican state representative from the Jacksonville area, defended Mr. DeSantis. Far from being racist, she said, his support for policies like universal school choice and efforts to crack down on the employment of undocumented immigrants, had helped African Americans. The governor made modest gains with Black voters in his re-election last year, according to an Associated Press analysis.Ms. Michael, who is Black, also praised Mr. DeSantis for attending the Jacksonville vigil.“He could have sent somebody in his place. He didn’t,” she said. “He knew that he was going into a hornet’s nest, but he came himself to show his heart, his concern, his compassion.”The list of policies that Mr. DeSantis’s critics describe as harmful to African Americans is long, and many have been challenged in court.As governor, Mr. DeSantis sought to restrict enacting a popular referendum to restore the voting rights of many felons. After the George Floyd rallies, he signed legislation that many civil rights activists said criminalized political protests, as well as laws eliminating diversity and inclusion spending from state universities and restricting the teaching of the academic framework known as critical race theory. He also set up a new state police force to enforce election laws that arrested mainly Black people in a high-profile sweep and has seen many of its cases stumble in court. And he removed two elected state attorneys from office. Both were Democrats who supported criminal justice reform. One was Black.Perhaps the biggest backlash was early this year, when Florida education officials rejected an Advanced Placement course on African American studies and subsequently adopted new standards that said students should be taught how enslaved people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” The line was widely denounced, with a number of Black conservatives, including Mr. DeSantis’s 2024 rival Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, criticizing its inclusion.In the presidential race, Mr. DeSantis has leaned on his “war on woke,” aiming to eliminate liberal viewpoints on race and gender from many parts of public life.Daniel A. Varela/Miami Herald, via Associated PressA backlash came when Florida education officials said students should be taught how enslaved people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”Alicia Devine/Tallahassee Democrat, via Associated PressMr. DeSantis defended the changes, saying on Fox News this month that the standards overwhelmingly showed the “injustices of slavery,” while also demonstrating that “people acquired skills in spite of slavery, not because of it, and then they used those when they achieved their freedom.”As a young man, Mr. DeSantis taught American history at a private boarding school in Georgia. There, The New York Times previously reported, some students said he offered lessons on the Civil War that seemed slanted, factually wrong and sometimes presented in ways that sounded like attempts to justify slavery.On the campaign trail, Mr. DeSantis has leaned on his record leading Florida, particularly his “war on woke,” which seeks to eliminate liberal viewpoints on race and gender from many parts of public life. Republican primary voters have generally responded well, although Mr. DeSantis is still polling far behind the front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump.A general election, however, could be a different story. Mr. DeSantis’s status as a lightning rod for racial issues could galvanize Black turnout against him. Black voters are a key part of the Democratic electorate and their participation at the polls is vital. In 2016, Hillary Clinton lost to Mr. Trump as Black turnout declined in a presidential election for the first time in 20 years, according to the Pew Research Center. Four years later, Joseph R. Biden Jr. won as Black voters came back to the polls in higher numbers.Angie Nixon, a Democratic state representative from Jacksonville, said in an interview that the harms of Mr. DeSantis’s policies were not just limited to Black voters.“He attacks marginalized communities in general because his base doesn’t like them,” Ms. Nixon said. “Because that’s low-hanging fruit for him to gain even more points politically among a base of voters. That’s all he’s ever done — is to try to appeal to a base of people.”Black leaders in Florida described their relationship with Mr. DeSantis as strained at best. In his five years as governor, Mr. DeSantis has held no formal meetings with the state’s legislative Black caucus, according to its members. In contrast, his predecessor, Rick Scott, did sit down with the Black legislators, although the meetings grew contentious and were eventually canceled after the caucus members said they were not being listened to.“I worked with Jeb Bush. I worked with Martinez. I worked with Rick Scott,” said the former congressman Al Lawson, referring to several past Republican Florida governors, including Bob Martinez. “None of them disenfranchised Blacks as much as this governor, DeSantis.”Mr. Lawson’s former district — once heavily Black and Democratic — is now held by a Republican, a product of a redistricting process in which Mr. DeSantis took the unusual step of putting forth his own maps, rather than leaving it entirely to the Legislature, where he enjoys significant support with G.O.P. supermajorities. (A legal challenge asserting that the changes harmed Black voters could restore Mr. Lawson’s district.)This summer, Black national organizations have shunned the state or encouraged their members to travel elsewhere. The National Association of Black Engineers said it would move its 2024 convention, originally set for Orlando, to Atlanta. Alpha Phi Alpha, the nation’s oldest Black fraternity, said it would no longer hold its 2025 convention in Orlando. Both organizations cited recent policies in Florida that they felt posed a threat to Black Americans.In May, the N.A.A.C.P. released a travel advisory to Black Americans considering visiting Florida, calling the state “openly hostile” to members of racial minorities and L.G.B.T.Q. people.Carol Greenlee, 73, pushed for decades for the pardon and eventual exoneration of her father, Charles Greenlee, one of the Groveland Four, over the 1949 crime in Central Florida. She saw the pardon as a moment of hope and reconciliation, especially after the previous governor, Mr. Scott, had declined to take up the case, despite the urging of the Legislature.“It felt like we were moving forward,” she said. “It felt like the pendulum was swinging toward justice.”Ms. Greenlee, who lives in Tennessee but has followed Mr. DeSantis’s path as governor, said his subsequent actions had left her baffled and angry.“I have to shake my head and wonder what happened with some of the stances he has taken,” she said. “It’s almost like a 180-degree turnaround.” More

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      Republicans Ease Off ‘Woke’ Rhetoric on Education Issues

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      Ron DeSantis rose to prominence in part on his “anti-woke” agenda, especially when it comes to education. In some settings, culture-war messaging seems to be receding.Earlier this year, the Republican presidential primary looked as though it would be driven by conservative cultural battles, especially fights over education that had animated the party’s base since the pandemic.Gov. Ron DeSantis seemed poised to lead the charge, thanks to an “anti-woke” agenda he put into effect in Florida, restricting how schools teach America’s racial history, banning lessons about gender identity and empowering parents to have books removed from libraries and classrooms.Even Donald J. Trump seemed to be trying to outflank Mr. DeSantis on education policies, promising to root out “Marxists” in the Education Department.But anti-wokeness has not played as large a role as expected in the Republican race so far. On the campaign trail, Mr. DeSantis has refocused his stump speech on the economy and border security while leaning less into culture-war issues. Former Vice President Mike Pence called in a speech this month to redistribute federal education spending to states — a traditional Republican goal dating from long before anti-woke crusades.In the first primary debate last week, the word “woke” was uttered exactly once. Instead, when the topic was education, the conversation onstage in Milwaukee sounded more like a product of the Reagan era than the Trump era.There were calls to eliminate the Education Department.To expand “school choice.”To slay the teachers’ unions.The focus on a throwback set of education topics seems to signal that Republicans are seeking to frame the 2024 campaign around topics beyond their opposition to “wokeness” — generally understood as liberal views on race and gender — as they try to appeal to audiences wider than conservative activists. On education, the candidates were turning to a general election message, though one with familiar echoes.“The old Reagan agenda was front and center, and the post-Trump agenda didn’t get much attention,” said Rick Hess, the director of education policy studies at the center-right American Enterprise Institute. He noted that after school closures during the pandemic, some polling showed a reversal in voters’ longstanding preference for Democrats on education issues. “I think what you see is Republican candidates trying to find a way to leverage that support into something sustainable,” he said.On Monday, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina rolled out a plan that seeks to unite older and more recent Republican talking points on education. Calling his proposal the “Empower Parents Plan,” Mr. Scott said he wanted to “enact nationwide school choice,” while also ripping “the false notions of ‘equity’ and the left’s attacks on honors classes.”A cooling-off of the cultural battle over education in the political conversation could reflect recent electoral history showing that railing against “woke” ideology plays well with social conservatives, but also that most parents are more concerned about children’s pandemic-era learning loss and a lack of mental health support in schools.The sole time the word “woke” was spoken in the two-hour debate last week was when Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, seemed to dismiss school-based cultural issues as a distraction from student learning. “There’s a lot of crazy, woke things happening in schools, but we have got to get these kids reading,” Ms. Haley said, touching on both traditional and current issues for conservatives.For his part, Mr. DeSantis nodded to the bans on critical race theory and what he called “gender ideology” that he enacted in Florida schools (though there is no evidence that critical race theory was taught in the state’s K-12 schools). On the stump before Republican audiences, the governor still reels off an alphabet soup of anti-woke targets like C.R.T., for critical race theory, and E.S.G., for environmental, social and governance corporate investment policies.But Mr. DeSantis has also adjusted the way he presents those issues, making more of an effort to explain why they matter.Aides to the DeSantis campaign say that since the governor has successfully introduced himself to voters as an anti-woke warrior, he is now ramping up his messaging on other policies.Asked in Iowa the day after the debate why he hadn’t emphasized an anti-woke message during the widely viewed televised broadcast, Mr. DeSantis said there were few questions prompting the topic. (Education was the fourth most-discussed issue at the debate, just below abortion, Donald Trump and their credentials, according a Times analysis.)“I mean, for example, they asked a question about U.F.O.s,” Mr. DeSantis said. “They didn’t ask about things like D.E.I. in universities and corporate settings.”It’s not uncommon for candidates to use different rhetoric on the campaign trail or in fund-raising requests to activists than they may use during debates to primary voters. And in many settings, Mr. DeSantis is still invoking “woke” issues to stir up his base.In a fund-raising text last week sent to supporters, Mr. DeSantis wrote, “Across the nation, I am witnessing radical ideology, brimming with hate and guilt, shoved down the throats of children from their earliest days of school.”One possible motive for candidates to de-emphasize education in culture-war terms is the lesson of the 2022 midterms at the local level. In nearly 1,800 school board races nationwide, conservative candidates who opposed discussions of race or gender in classrooms, or opposed mask mandates during the pandemic, lost 70 percent of their races, according to Ballotpedia, a site that tracks U.S. elections. A Republican National Committee memo from last September warned candidates that “focusing on C.R.T. and masks excites the G.O.P. base, but parental rights and quality education drive independents.”“These culture-war arguments are falling flat,” said Karen M. White, deputy executive director of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union. “Banning books and talking about gender identity is not the approach parents and educators and students want.”Traditionally, Republicans have sought to push control of education down to the local level and minimize federal involvement. Under President George W. Bush, the party briefly changed course with the No Child Left Behind Act, which created a rigorous federal program to compel schools to raise student achievement.But sentiment shifted again with Republicans’ rejection of the Obama administration’s promotion of Common Core learning standards a decade ago. Now, some candidates, most visibly Mr. DeSantis, have suggested that the federal government intervene more vigorously with policies like banning critical race theory in schools nationally, and defunding diversity, equity and inclusion offices in higher education, as he has done in Florida’s public colleges and universities.“We’re going to do similar things across the United States,” Mr. DeSantis said in Rock Rapids, Iowa, during a campaign swing on Friday.At the same time, he, too, supports eliminating the Education Department. First proposed by Ronald Reagan in the presidential campaign of 1980, killing the department has been a Republican talking point ever since.In the debate last week, Mr. Pence, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur who styles himself as a millennial embodiment of Trumpism, all said that the department must go. Mr. Ramaswamy called it “the head of the snake.”But no Republican administration or G.O.P.-led Congress has seriously tried to shutter the Education Department. Its major programs are widely popular. They include Pell grants for low-income college students, so-called Title I subsidies for schools in low-income communities and funds to ensure that students with disabilities get an equal education.“Given that Republicans don’t even want to trim Medicare and Social Security, it’s incredibly hard to see any credible path forward on defunding the major Department of Education programs,” said Mr. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute.“There’s no way you can get even half the Republican caucus in the House to zero out money for kids with special needs,” he added. “Nobody wants to zero out Title I. And nobody wants to zero out Pell grants.”Ann Klein More

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      DeSantis Confronts Jacksonville Shooting and Storm Idalia in Florida

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      A racially motivated shooting and an impending storm provide the most serious tests of Mr. DeSantis’s leadership since he began running for president in May.For the first time since declaring his bid for the Republican nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is facing a crisis in his home state.Well, not one crisis, but two.On Saturday, a gunman motivated by racial hatred killed three people at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville. All the victims were Black. The shooter was white. And on Wednesday, a major storm is projected to strike somewhere along Florida’s Gulf coast, the first to hit the state during the 2023 hurricane season.After the shooting, Mr. DeSantis flew back to Tallahassee from a campaign trip to Iowa. He then canceled a visit to South Carolina scheduled for Monday, citing the storm and sending his wife, Casey DeSantis, in his place. He has said he will stay in Florida for the storm’s duration and aftermath.“This is going to be our sole focus,” Mr. DeSantis said on Monday at a news conference at the state’s emergency operation center in Tallahassee.The twin crises provide the most serious tests of Mr. DeSantis’s leadership since he began running for president in May. On the stump, he often cites his track record as governor as his biggest advantage over his rivals, almost none of whom hold executive office. He has also criticized President Biden for his response to the wildfires that devastated Maui.But the emergencies have pulled Mr. DeSantis off the trail at a time when his campaign had seemed to stabilize after weeks of layoffs and upheaval among his staff, as well as a debate performance that drew strong reviews from many Republican voters.Both the shooting and the storm could further spotlight criticisms that rival candidates have made of Mr. DeSantis’s stewardship of Florida since being elected as governor in 2018. After clashes on a number of race-related issues, including the way African American history is taught in schools, his relationship with Florida’s Black community is so strained that he was loudly booed when he appeared at a vigil for the shooting victims in Jacksonville on Sunday.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida was booed and heckled when he spoke at a vigil for three people killed in an attack where officials say a white gunman targeted Black people inside a Jacksonville, Fla., store.John Raoux/Associated PressMr. DeSantis has also struggled with the state’s property insurance market, a long-running problem that the governor has repeatedly tried to address with legislation. The market has been so battered by high costs that Mr. DeSantis said in July that he would “knock on wood” for no big storm to hit Florida this year.Mr. DeSantis’s opponents, including former President Donald J. Trump and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, have used the issues to criticize him.A spokesman for the DeSantis campaign said the governor’s response to the shooting and the storm demonstrated “the strong leadership in times of crisis that Americans can expect from a President DeSantis.”“In the face of the tragedy in Jacksonville and the impending major hurricane, Ron DeSantis is focused on leading his state through these challenging moments,” Bryan Griffin, the campaign’s press secretary, said in a statement. “He’s now at the helm of Florida’s hurricane response and is working with local officials across the state to do everything necessary to ensure Florida is fully prepared.”Mr. DeSantis said in an afternoon news conference that he had spoken to Mr. Biden and the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.Partly because of extreme weather, Florida homeowners have seen their property insurance costs rise more than those in any other state since 2015. Some major insurers have pulled out of the market, although smaller ones have entered. Last year, Mr. DeSantis called a special legislative session to address property insurance. But he has warned that fixing the troubled market will take time.Last month, Mr. Trump urged the governor to leave the campaign trail and “get home and take care of insurance.”Hurricanes traditionally provide an opportunity for Florida governors to demonstrate their strength and leadership. Mr. DeSantis has faced several major storms, as well as the fatal collapse of a condominium in Surfside, since taking office.Last year, Hurricane Ian killed 150 people in Florida, making it the state’s most deadly hurricane in decades and raising questions about why local officials had not issued evacuation orders earlier. On the trail, Mr. DeSantis frequently talks about his efforts to rebuild the state after the storm, including quickly repairing bridges and causeways to islands that had been cut off.On Sunday, Mr. DeSantis received a starkly negative reception when he attended a vigil for the victims of the shooting in Jacksonville, which has a large African American population.His administration has come under repeated fire for rejecting the curriculum of an Advanced Placement African American studies class and rewriting African American history courses, something that Mr. Scott, who is Black, has criticized.After the crowd in Jacksonville booed Mr. DeSantis when he tried to speak, a city councilwoman stepped in and asked people to listen. He was booed again when he finished.On Monday, Mr. DeSantis announced that he would award $1 million through the Volunteer Florida Foundation to bolster campus security at Edward Waters University, the historically Black university near the Dollar General store that the gunman attacked. He also said that the foundation, a tax-exempt state commission focused on community service projects, would donate $100,000 to the families of the victims.State Representative Angie Nixon, who represents Jacksonville, called the shooting “a stark reminder of the dangerous consequences of unchecked racism” and criticized Mr. DeSantis for “empty gestures” and “publicity stunts.”“Our historically Black institutions have faced an uphill battle for decades, and I invite DeSantis to go back through unfilled budget requests and line-item vetoes to begin to provide the funding they’ve needed for years. For it to take murder for him to dig in his overflowing coffers for support is appalling,” she said.In April, Mr. DeSantis was faulted for not visiting Fort Lauderdale, which strongly leans Democratic, after damaging flooding there. Since officially announcing his 2024 bid in May, Mr. DeSantis has spent several days per week out of Florida, usually meeting voters in the early nominating states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, or attending closed-door fund-raisers with donors.Mr. DeSantis’s campaign has seemed to steady in recent days thanks in part to his performance in the first Republican primary debate last week in Milwaukee that Mr. Trump, the front-runner who is leading Mr. DeSantis by double digits, did not attend. The DeSantis campaign said it raised more than $1 million the next day and a snap poll of Republican voters by the Washington Post, FiveThirtyEight and Ipsos declared him the winner.On his weekend bus tour through northwest Iowa, many Republican voters said they had been impressed, particularly by how Mr. DeSantis talked about his record as governor.“DeSantis was the one who broke through,” said Cody Hoefert, a former co-chair of the Republican Party of Iowa who endorsed the governor immediately after the debate. “I want somebody who is going to lead and deliver results.” More

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      The Thing Is, Most Republicans Really Like Trump

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      Much of what is happening in American politics today can be explained by two simple yet seemingly contradictory phenomena: Most partisans believe that the other side is more powerful than their own, while at the same time feeling quite certain that their own team will prevail in the upcoming election.Just as Democrats view Republicans as wielding outsize influence through dark money, structural advantages in our political system and control of institutions like the Supreme Court, Republicans view themselves as under siege by not just a federal government largely controlled by Democrats but also by the media, the entertainment industry and, increasingly, corporate C-suites.Republicans in particular hold a fatalistic view of the future of the country. In a recent Times poll, 56 percent said they believe we are “in danger of failing as a nation.” Far from the party of Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” ad, the presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy countered during last week’s debate: “It’s not morning in America. We live in a dark moment.”Given that many Republicans have such an apocalyptic view of the future, believing that the future of the country hangs in the balance if their party does not win the 2024 election, you might assume that Republicans would prioritize electability as they choose a nominee and seek a safe, steady standard-bearer to face President Biden next November. And you might assume, as many pundits and commentators do, that Republicans would begin to consider that nominating Donald Trump, with all his troubles and legal peril, would be too great a risk.But the belief that the other party would be simply disastrous for the nation is feeding the deep confidence that one’s own side is going to prevail in 2024.What does this mean for Republicans? It means that G.O.P. voters see Mr. Biden as eminently beatable, and they think most Americans see him as they do. Given that, most Republicans aren’t looking to be rescued from Donald Trump. The fact is, they really do like him, and at this point they think he’s their best shot.Despite losing the 2020 elections and then experiencing a disappointing 2022 midterm, most Republicans seem confident that their candidate — even Donald Trump, especially Donald Trump — would defeat Joe Biden handily in 2024. They have watched as Mr. Biden has increasingly stumbled, as gas prices have remained high and as Americans have continued to doubt the value of “Bidenomics.” Many of them believe the pernicious fantasy pushed by Trump — and indulged by too many Republican leaders who should know better — that the 2020 election was not actually a loss.Republican voters see the same polls that I do, showing Mr. Trump effectively tied against Mr. Biden even though commentators tell them that Mr. Trump is electoral poison. And they remember that many of those same voices told them in 2016 that Mr. Trump would never set foot in the White House. In light of those facts, Republicans’ skepticism of claims that Mr. Trump is a surefire loser begins to make more sense.It didn’t have to be this way. In the immediate aftermath of the 2022 midterms, which were disappointing for many Republicans, there was a brief moment where it seemed like the party might take a step back, reflect and decide to pursue a new approach — with new leadership. In my own polling immediately following the election, I found the Florida governor Ron DeSantis running even with Donald Trump in a head-to-head matchup among likely Republican primary voters, a finding that held throughout the winter. Even voters who consider themselves “very conservative” gravitated away from Mr. Trump and toward the prospect of an alternative for a time.But by the end of the spring 2023, following the Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis’s rocky entrance into the presidential race, not only had Mr. Trump regained his lead, he had expanded upon it. Quinnipiac’s polling of Republican primary voters showed that Mr. Trump held only a six-point lead over Mr. DeSantis in February, but that lead had grown to a whopping 31 points by May.Any notion that Republicans ought to turn the page, lest they face another electoral defeat, largely evaporated. And the multitude of criminal indictments against Mr. Trump have not shaken the support of Republicans for him, but have instead seemingly galvanized them.In our focus group of 11 Republican voters in early primary states this month, Times Opinion recruited a range of likely primary voters and caucusgoers to weigh in on the state of the race. They were not universally smitten with Donald Trump; some described him as “troubled,” “arrogant” or a “train wreck.” About half of our participants said they were interested in seeing a strong competitor to Mr. Trump within the party.But the argument that Donald Trump won’t be able to defeat Joe Biden? Not a single participant thought that Mr. Trump — or any Republican, really — would lose to Mr. Biden. In polling from CBS News, the ability to beat Joe Biden is one of the top qualities Republican primary voters say they are looking for, and they think Mr. Trump is the best poised to deliver on that result. Only 9 percent of likely Republican primary voters think Mr. Trump is a “long shot” to beat Mr. Biden, and more than six in 10 think Mr. Trump is a sure bet against Mr. Biden. Additionally, only 14 percent of Republican primary voters who are considering a Trump alternative said they were doing so because they worried Mr. Trump couldn’t win.In an otherwise strong debate performance last week, when Nikki Haley argued that “we have to face the fact that Trump is the most disliked politician in America — we can’t win a general election that way,” the reaction from the crowd was decidedly mixed. This isn’t to say such an argument can’t become more successful as the primary season goes on, as Mr. Trump’s legal woes (and legal bills) continue to mount and as the alternatives to Mr. Trump gain greater exposure.But for now they think that Mr. Biden is both enormously destructive and eminently beatable. They are undeterred by pleas from party elites who say Mr. Trump is taking the Republican Party to the point of no return.Republicans both deeply fear a 2024 loss and also can’t fathom it actually happening. Candidates seeking to defeat Mr. Trump in the primary can’t just assume Republican voters will naturally conclude the stakes are too high to bet it all on Trump. For now, many of those voters think Mr. Trump is the safest bet they’ve got.Kristen Soltis Anderson is a Republican pollster and a moderator of Opinion’s series of focus groups.Source photographs by Joe Raedle/Getty Images and Brian Snyder/ReutersThe 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 Iowa, a Voter Asks DeSantis: Why Should I Choose You Over Trump?

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      The Florida governor was reluctant to attack the former president too directly as he navigated the tricky waters of the Republican primary.In a rural Iowa town, Ethan Masters asked Ron DeSantis the most pressing question of the primary season: Why would he make a better president than Donald Trump?Standing next to a yellow-and-green tractor at J&J Ag Solutions Machine Shop in Estherville, Iowa, Mr. Masters, a 21-year-old real estate agent, was a stand-in for many Republican voters. He went for Mr. Trump in 2020, but he’s open to another candidate. He plans to caucus but did not have time to watch the Republican primary debate on Wednesday night. He’s also not familiar with the details of Mr. Trump’s various criminal cases.Though Mr. Masters’s question on Friday was brief and straightforward, the Florida governor spoke for nearly three minutes, before he was interrupted by another voter, a rarity on Iowa’s normally staid political circuit.A Question for Ron DeSantis“You could probably consider me the average voter. I haven’t done a lot of research on you. I voted for Trump, and I didn’t mind what he did. So I wouldn’t mind either of you getting voted in. So what’s your biggest selling point when I’m in the voting stage and it’s between you and Trump?”The SubtextMr. DeSantis almost never criticizes Mr. Trump, who is leading him by double digits in Iowa and by nearly 40 points nationwide, unless prompted to do so. He has the difficult task of navigating the Trump Triangle, appealing to voters who like Mr. Trump’s policies and brash manner; those who are aligned with his policies, but are tired of his legal troubles; and the Never Trump Republicans who want a return to the pre-Trump party.The question from Mr. Masters was a rare chance for the governor to make his single best argument in one place.DeSantis’s Answer“Well, I think a few things. One is, I think I’m much more likely to actually get elected, which is very important. I could serve two terms. He’d be a lame duck on Day 1 even if he could get elected. I have a track record of appointing really good people to office. I think he appointed a lot of duds to office, and it really hurt his ability to get his agenda done. I also think I’m more likely to follow through on doing what I said I would do. You look in Florida, everything I promised, I did. I never made a promise that I didn’t follow through on, and that’s just how I am. I am not going to sit there and tell you something that you want to hear to try to get your vote, and then get in and just forget that it ever happened.”The SubtextThat was only the first 45 seconds of Mr. DeSantis’s answer, in which he listed not just one of his selling points but many, contrasting his record of success in Florida with Mr. Trump’s failure to build the border wall or “drain the swamp.” But his argument felt more like a series of bullet points than a comprehensive political vision. He went on for much longer, mentioning Mr. Trump’s unrealized promise to “lock up” Hillary Clinton and accusing him of handing over his congressional agenda to Paul Ryan, the former Republican speaker of the House who is now seen by some in the G.O.P. as insufficiently conservative.True to his debate performance and campaign trail events, Mr. DeSantis never delivered a real punch.Why It MattersThe governor’s path to victory is based on a slow-and-steady approach. While Mr. DeSantis may not have had a breakout moment at the debate on Wednesday, Republican voters thought he performed best of all the candidates, according to a snap poll by the Washington Post, FiveThirtyEight and Ipsos. And his campaign said he raised more than $1 million the following day, the most it has raised in 24 hours, apart from the day Mr. DeSantis announced he was running.“Ron DeSantis’s path to victory isn’t going to run through flashy, sugar-high moments that fade in and out of the national narrative,” Andrew Romeo, the campaign’s communications director, said in a statement. “We have challenged the opposition to try to keep up in terms of pace and organization.”Iowa voters listened to Mr. DeSantis speak at Frontier Bank in Rock Rapids, Iowa, on Friday.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesWhat the Voter SaidIn a follow-up interview, Mr. Masters said that he was impressed by Mr. DeSantis overall but not blown away by his answer.“I asked for his biggest selling point, and he gave me a list,” said Mr. Masters. “But it was a pretty good list.” More

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      The Republican Debate Proved That Trump Has What It Takes

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      Like far too many of you, I watched the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night, during which all of the most popular contenders in the field tried to stand out and establish themselves as a serious alternative for the Republican presidential nomination.An alternative to whom? Donald Trump, who wasn’t on stage for the debate. And yet, despite his absence, there was no way that any of the candidates could escape his presence. The former president loomed over the proceedings, not the least because he is, so far, the uncontested leader in the race for the nomination. His nearest competitor, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, still trails him by nearly 40 points.There’s also the fact that the candidates had no choice but to answer questions about Trump, who has been indicted on state and federal charges related to the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The pretense of the debate was that the candidates could talk about themselves and the future of the Republican Party without the former president, but that was simply impossible.But the issue wasn’t just that Trump was unavoidable; it was that none of the other candidates had much to say for themselves. Even the most dynamic of the contenders, Vivek Ramaswamy, was doing little more than his own spin on Trump’s persona. As I argued in our post-debate recap, none of the candidates had any of the charisma or presence or vision that might mark them as something more than just another governor or legislator.Far from giving the other Republicans a chance to shine, Trump’s absence underscored the extent to which he is the only Republican of national stature with the political chops to appeal to Republican voters as well as a considerable chunk of the American electorate.It is obviously true that a major reason for Trump’s dominance in the Republican primaries is the fact that at no point since the 2020 election have Republican officeholders and other figures tried to set him aside as the leader of the party. But we can’t underestimate the extent to which Trump has it what it takes — and most of his competitors simply don’t.Now ReadingRuqaiyah Zarook on the network of lawyers, accountants and other fixers who shield the wealth of the super-rich from taxation, for Dissent magazine.Ratik Asokan on the long struggle of India’s sanitation workers for The New York Review of Books.Clare Malone on David Zaslav for The New Yorker.Ellen Meiksins Wood on capitalism and human emancipation for New Left Review.Marcia Chatelain on the persistence of American poverty for The Nation.Photo of the WeekJamelle BouieI was up in the Adirondacks for the first time this summer and obviously spent a lot of time walking around and photographing lakes. This is a picture of Mirror Lake in Lake Placid, which was very picturesque.Now Eating: Masala Black-Eyed PeasAmong the things I hope to accomplish with this newsletter is getting people to eat more beans and field peas, both of which are versatile and affordable staple foods. This recipe, from NYT Cooking, for black-eyed peas in an Indian style, is very easy and very filling. I would serve with flatbreads, a green vegetable and a carrot raita. But by itself with steamed rice would be just as good and just as filling.Ingredients3 tablespoons ghee or neutral oil1 medium yellow or red onion, finely chopped1 ½ teaspoons ginger paste or freshly grated ginger1 ½ teaspoons garlic paste or freshly grated garlic1 teaspoon cumin seeds¾ teaspoon Kashmiri or other mild red chile powder¼ teaspoon ground turmeric3 Roma tomatoes, finely chopped or 1 (15-ounce) can crushed tomatoes1 teaspoon fine sea salt3 cups of cooked black-eyed peas, frozen or from dried3 fresh green Thai or serrano chiles, chopped2 tablespoons lemon juice (from about half a lemon)½ teaspoon garam masala2 tablespoons chopped cilantroDirectionsHeat ghee or oil in a medium-sized pot for 30 seconds on medium-low. Add onion, ginger and garlic, and cook on high heat, stirring frequently, until onions are transparent, 5 to 7 minutes.Stir in cumin seeds, chile powder and turmeric. Add tomatoes and salt. Continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes break down and the oil separates, 5 to 7 minutes. (If you want your finished dish to be less saucy, cook the tomatoes a little longer.)Stir in black-eyed peas and bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium and simmer 5 minutes to allow the flavors to meld. Top with green chiles, lemon juice, garam masala and cilantro, if you like. More

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      The Story Behind DeSantis’s Anecdote About an ‘Abortion Survivor’

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has been retelling Miriam Hopper’s 1955 birth story. The details are jarring, highly unusual and unverifiable.Ron DeSantis wanted to dodge a debate question about a six-week federal abortion ban. So the Florida governor pulled out a personal story, one that had recently become part of his pitch to voters on the need for greater regulation of abortion rights.“I know a lady in Florida named Penny,” he said. “She survived multiple abortion attempts. She was left discarded in a pan. Fortunately, her grandmother saved her and brought her to a different hospital.” He then pivoted to attack Democrats for their abortion “extremism.”The jarring anecdote caught the attention of viewers on social media, who speculated that Mr. DeSantis was fabricating the story.But Penny does exist. Mr. DeSantis’s campaign says the governor has met her. She is Miriam Hopper, who goes by Penny and is an anti-abortion activist who lives in Florida and calls herself an “abortion survivor.”The details of Ms. Hopper’s birth in 1955 are impossible to verify. But at least one prominent obstetrician noted that medical advances and practices had changed so dramatically in the nearly seven decades since then that her story had little relevance for the current debate about abortion rights and policy. At the time of her birth, abortion was illegal. Even an attempted abortion could have resulted in fines and imprisonment for a provider.Ms. Hopper did not return a call for comment this week. But she told her story in an online video posted by Protect Life Michigan, an anti-abortion advocacy group. The video, part of a broader campaign, was posted in September 2022 amid a campaign against a ballot initiative that would enshrine abortion rights in Michigan’s Constitution. So-called abortion survivors have been a staple of the anti-abortion movement for years, frequently appearing in campaign ads and testifying on Capitol Hill in favor of federal abortion bans.According to Ms. Hopper, her mother sought medical care at a clinic in central Florida in 1955 because of bleeding and other complications. She was 23 weeks pregnant, right at the outer edge of when a fetus is considered able to survive outside the womb. The doctor who examined Ms. Hopper’s mother said he could not hear a heartbeat. He induced labor, she said.“You do not want this baby to live — if it lives, it will be a burden on you all of your life,” Ms. Hopper says the doctor told her parents before instructing a nurse to discard the baby — “dead or alive.”Ms. Hopper said she had weighed one pound 11 ounces at her birth. The nurse “placed me in a bedpan on the back porch of the clinic,” she said. When her grandmother and aunt arrived, they found Ms. Hopper. Her grandmother called the police. A nurse helped take Ms. Hopper to a hospital in Lakeland, Fla., where she survived several bouts of pneumonia.Ms. Hopper’s mother, aunt, father and grandmother have died. It does not appear that the incident was covered in news reports.After an extended stay, Ms. Hopper went home and had a “great life.” She married her high school sweetheart, had two children of her own and has seven grandchildren. “Life has value, and all lives matter,” she said, at the end of the video.In a 2013 interview with the Florida radio station WFSU, conducted in the middle of a statehouse debate over new abortion restrictions, Ms. Hopper said that her story was based on what she had been told by her family. She said that her father, raised during the Great Depression, did not want another child and that she suspected a botched abortion had sent her mother to the hospital with the complications.Diane Horvath, an obstetrician and gynecologist who performs abortions until 34 weeks at a clinic in Maryland, said it was difficult to parse Ms. Hopper’s account.“There’s a lot of parts of this story that don’t make sense to me,” she said, noting that 68 years ago, physicians had lacked the current-day technologies to keep very premature babies alive.In the 1950s, death was “virtually ensured” when an infant was delivered at or before 24 weeks of gestation, according to a report published in 2017 by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine.By contrast, a study conducted last year by a team of neonatologists found that nearly 56 percent of infants who are born at 23 weeks survive — if they receive aggressive treatment in a neonatal intensive care unit.Even if Ms. Hopper’s story is accurate, it’s not particularly germane to a discussion of current abortion practices or regulations, Dr. Horvath said.“It doesn’t represent the reality of medical practice at this moment,” she said. “It’s not really relevant to what we should be talking about when we talk about access to abortion.”Fewer than 1 percent of abortions occur after 21 weeks’ gestation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Such procedures are generally difficult to receive, with only a limited number of facilities offering them.The Republican presidential primary debate wasn’t the first time Mr. DeSantis had told a version of this story. He debuted the narrative last weekend at a town hall in Nashua, N.H., amid a shift in his messaging that was meant to evoke a more personal touch.The moment came in response to a question from a voter who described himself as a “traditional Catholic” and asked Mr. DeSantis, who has signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida and has tried to dodge questions on whether he supports a similar ban nationwide, how he would “protect the life of the unborn.”Mr. DeSantis said he had met “Penny” in person in central Florida, and then launching into a similar version of the story he told on Wednesday night, including the details about Ms. Hopper’s grandmother and the pan, and trying to paint Democrats as the extremists on abortion.“You know, that’s a very callous thing to happen,” Mr. DeSantis said. Most Democratic officeholders say the government should not legislate such decisions and should leave them to a woman and her doctor.Ryan Tyson, a top DeSantis campaign adviser, said the governor was making an effort to talk more about the people he had encountered on the trail. His campaign did not provide details about the circumstances of his meeting with Ms. Hopper.“He’s out there — he’s meeting people,” Mr. Tyson said in an interview after the debate. “He’s hearing their stories as he gets across the country. And I think that’s why you saw he had a moment there, because it does take a toll on you.” More

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      Candidates Look to Cash In on First G.O.P. Debate — Especially Haley and Pence

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      Campaigns saw the nationally televised event, the first of the 2024 campaign, not just as a way to reach voters, but also as an appeal to donors big and small.Eric J. Tanenblatt, a top fund-raiser for former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, woke up Thursday morning in his Milwaukee hotel room to dozens of enthusiastic text messages and emails from donors expressing admiration for Ms. Haley’s performance, particularly her command of foreign policy and handling of questions about abortion.“Donors who have been sitting on the sidelines are now taking another look,” said Mr. Tanenblatt, an Atlanta businessman who has known Ms. Haley since she was a state legislator and attended the debate Wednesday night. “Obviously I am somewhat biased, but I think last night was a really good night for Nikki Haley.”Mr. Tanenblatt was not alone in his assessment. In conversations with more than a dozen Republican donors — including undecided backers and some who support other candidates — Ms. Haley was singled out as the night’s standout. The question now becomes whether her debate performance will translate into dollars.For years, the Republican money class has been seeking an alternative — any alternative — to former President Donald J. Trump. In some ways, donors were the most consequential audience for Wednesday night’s debate, and many of them, including those who have not yet backed a candidate this cycle, were in Milwaukee.While the official fund-raising totals won’t be known until October, when campaign quarterly filings are due, there were signs within hours of the debate — flurries of text messages, requests for introductions to campaigns and reports of fresh contributions — that the candidates’ performances, even if they might not change hearts and minds, could move piles of cash.A spokeswoman for Ms. Haley declined to release detailed numbers, but said the campaign had raised more money online in the 24 hours after the debate than it had on any day since the campaign started. “The response to Nikki’s debate performance has been overwhelming,” said the spokeswoman, Nachama Soloveichik.Former Vice President Mike Pence, whom the donors also identified as having a good night onstage, also saw an uptick, according to his campaign. Marc Short, a top adviser to Mr. Pence, said it had taken in at least 1,000 new contributions overnight. While most were smaller donors — valuable because they can sustain a campaign in the long term — “the bigger breakthrough last night was the major donors,” he said, including some who had funded other candidates but held back on Mr. Pence.“I think there’s been a large number of supporters who have been on the sidelines but have been looking for some of that spark,” Mr. Short said. “I think many of them saw that last night.”The immediate feedback reflected the traditional sympathies of major Republican donors. They favored candidates who they felt came off as authoritative but not obnoxious, with established résumés and hawkish foreign policy views. They also, naturally, tended to see their preferred candidates’ performances through hopeful eyes.These tendencies have proved to be blind spots before, especially in the face of the unwavering support of the small donor base that remains fiercely loyal to Mr. Trump. Several major donors downplayed the significance of the immediate returns, saying that no debate-dollar bump could surmount Mr. Trump’s popularity. Some who attended the debate described it as something of a social occasion or a sideshow.Unsurprisingly, the candidate who most defended — and sounded like — Mr. Trump on Wednesday night, Vivek Ramaswamy, was also the candidate who most rankled the high-dollar donors. Several of them said they thought Mr. Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and author, had overplayed his hand, citing his bombast and confrontational style.“Vivek made a complete jackass out of himself,” said Andy Sabin, a major donor to Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. “He is so clueless about what’s going on in this country.”But his performance appeared to have appeal for some small-dollar donors. A spokeswoman for Mr. Ramaswamy, Tricia McLaughlin, said the campaign raised $625,000 in the 24 hours after the start of the debate — the biggest single fund-raising day of the campaign, with an average donation size of $38.“Unlike some donor-favorite candidates onstage,” Ms. McLaughlin said, “Vivek is not worried about what the donor class has to say about his politics and performance, which is why he is unconstrained in speaking the truth.”Mr. Sabin said he thought Mr. Scott had “done what he was supposed to do,” but the crowded, fast-paced format, in which candidates frequently talked over the moderators, made it hard for Mr. Scott to stand out. Money is less of a concern for Mr. Scott than for Mr. Pence or Ms. Haley: His campaign had $21 million on hand at the end of June, and groups supporting him have spent tens of millions of dollars on advertising in the early states.“Tim stayed out of trouble and out of the fray, had good answers,” Mr. Sabin said. “He probably should have been more involved in this, but I don’t think that had anything to do with him.”A major donor to Senator Tim Scott said the debate’s crowded, fast-paced format made it hard for the candidate to stand out.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesGov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who went into the debate with the highest poll numbers of any candidate on the stage, was also quieter than many had expected.Some unaffiliated donors said it was a missed opportunity for Mr. DeSantis. Among the backers of other candidates, Bill Bean, an Indiana businessman and longtime supporter of Mr. Pence, said Mr. DeSantis “did not have that moment where he just separated himself from the whole field that I think some people were looking for.”The days after the debate kicked off a major slate of campaign travel and new ads for Mr. DeSantis, according to Jay Zeidman, a major DeSantis fund-raiser. “We view this as the turn of a new chapter,” he said — a reference, in part, to the turbulence of the governor’s campaign in recent months, as his poll numbers have lagged. Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC, Never Back Down, confirmed that it would spend $25 million on ads in Iowa and New Hampshire in the next two months, a buy that was first reported by The Washington Post.Mr. Pence, who has struggled to gain traction in the race and still lags far behind his rivals in fund-raising, spoke the most of any candidate on the stage last night, and many donors took notice.“There was a lot of energy there,” said Mr. Tanenblatt, the Haley donor. “I think that surprised people.”Several bundlers and donors — some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they still plan to support Mr. Trump — suggested that Mr. Pence’s performance and steadfast appeal to evangelicals were likely to help him in Iowa, which is crucial to his campaign.Before Wednesday’s debate, Mr. Bean, who has given $100,000 to a super PAC supporting Mr. Pence, hoped that Mr. Pence would have the opportunity to “show the American people who he really is.”That objective was largely met, Mr. Bean said, although he felt the debate format was too fast-paced and chaotic to give any candidate enough time to cover significant topics.“The biggest thing that was accomplished last night,” Mr. Bean said, was that Mr. Pence “moved past the Jan. 6 issue, which I thought was probably the biggest single thing out there that he had to do.” More