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      Charlie Crist to Face Gov. DeSantis in Florida This Fall

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      FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Florida Democrats chose Representative Charlie Crist as their nominee for governor on Tuesday, betting that the former Republican governor who campaigned on a return to political decency was their best bet to try to defeat Gov. Ron DeSantis, the polarizing Republican incumbent.Mr. Crist’s blowout victory sets up the general election against Mr. DeSantis as a contest between a centrist and a hard-right conservative, with Democrats believing that the well-known and peaceable Mr. Crist can attract independent voters and Republicans who are fed up with Mr. DeSantis’s aggressive right-wing policies.“They want a governor who cares about them, who solves real problems, who preserves our freedom,” Mr. Crist told supporters gathered in his hometown, St. Petersburg, as he pivoted quickly to attacking Mr. DeSantis. “Not a bully who divides us and takes our freedom away.”But Mr. DeSantis is a formidable foe, having built his national profile during the coronavirus pandemic as a Republican eager to fight public health experts. His political rise has made him a favorite to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 and helped him amass more than $130 million for his re-election campaign, an eye-popping amount that Democrats are not expected to come close to matching.Mr. DeSantis did not face a primary challenger but still campaigned for down-ballot candidates and started a series of highly produced television ads, including a national spot on Monday inspired by the film “Top Gun,” with Mr. DeSantis, clad in a pilot jacket, “dogfighting” against “the corporate media,” which he frequently portrays as his foil.He has also reminded Floridians at every turn that he refused to impose coronavirus lockdowns for very long in 2020, a position that thrust Mr. DeSantis into the national spotlight.“They have opposed every decision I’ve made to keep this state open,” Mr. DeSantis said of Democrats on Tuesday. “To save their jobs. To keep kids in school. To save businesses.”In the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, Representative Val B. Demings of Orlando, who had only nominal opposition, handily won the nomination to face off against Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican.In Florida’s congressional primaries, far-right Republicans won in a number of races on Tuesday night. Many are now favored to win in November; Mr. DeSantis and Republicans in the State Legislature redrew House districts this year to strongly favor the G.O.P., leaving few competitive general election contests in a state known not long ago for its abundance of them.Representative Matt Gaetz from the Florida Panhandle defeated Mark Lombardo, a Marine Corps veteran and retired FedEx executive. Cory Mills, an Army veteran and conservative commentator won in a suburban Orlando district that the Republicans are expected to win in the fall. And the Republican primary in Mr. Crist’s district in the Tampa Bay area, which was redrawn to favor the G.O.P., was won by Anna Paulina Luna, who was endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump.In one bright spot for progressives, Maxwell Alejandro Frost, a 25-year-old activist from Orlando, bested nine other Democrats, including former Representatives Corrine Brown and Alan Grayson, in an open district in the Orlando area. Mr. Frost, who is Afro-Cuban, would be the first Gen Z member of Congress.Florida Democrats went into Tuesday knowing that their candidates for governor had raised far less money than Mr. DeSantis and that their party infrastructure was far from robust compared with Republicans.Nikki Fried speaks to the press after conceding to Charlie Crist in the Democratic primary on Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2022.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesMr. Crist won a resounding victory over Nikki Fried, the state’s agriculture commissioner, who had cast herself as a fresh option in a state where Democrats have fallen short in election after election and felt little optimism about their chances in November. Unofficial results showed Mr. Crist leading by such a wide margin that the race was called when the final polls in the state closed at 8 p.m.“Nobody ever broke the glass ceiling on the first pitch,” Ms. Fried said in Fort Lauderdale after conceding to Mr. Crist. “We are going to make Ron DeSantis a one-term governor and a zero-term president of the United States.”Florida has trended more and more Republican since President Barack Obama won the state twice by building a massive organization that no candidate or party leader has been able to replicate. President Biden lost Florida by more than 3 percentage points, the biggest margin in a marquee race since 2004.The last incumbent Florida governor to lose re-election was Bob Martinez, a Republican, who conceded to Lawton Chiles in 1990. No Democrat has won the governorship since Mr. Chiles secured re-election in 1994.Mr. Crist has lost two statewide races since he was first elected governor in 2006, including one as an independent before he switched to the Democratic Party in 2012. But some Democrats think a centrist like Mr. Crist would have succeeded against Mr. DeSantis in 2018, had voters nominated Gwen Graham, a former congresswoman, in the primary. Instead, Democrats chose Andrew Gillum, who captivated them with his progressive platform and charismatic personality but lost the general election by about 32,000 votes.“There is a pragmatism from the Democratic perspective that says, ‘Yes, we want to fall in love, but we’d rather win,’ and at this point that is the main calculus driving people,” said Fernand R. Amandi, a Democratic pollster based in Miami.Democrats see a narrow path to defeating Mr. DeSantis, in trying to cast him as a divisive leader who plays up his policies as promoting freedom despite restricting the rights of women, Black and Hispanic Floridians and the L.G.B.T.Q. community.They also hope to persuade voters that Mr. DeSantis is to blame for the rising costs of living, especially when it comes to housing, electricity and insurance — issues that Democrats say have been ignored as Mr. DeSantis and Republican lawmakers have fought cultural battles.“I no longer recognize the leaders of the Republican Party,” Mr. Crist said on Tuesday night. “They’re extremists. They want to turn back the clock on our freedom. They’re trying to undermine our democracy in ways no one could have imagined.“That stops here,” he continued. “That stops now. And it stops with our Florida.”Ms. Fried initially struggled to home in on an effective message, though it crystallized after the Supreme Court eliminated federal protections for abortion rights. No woman has ever been elected Florida governor, and Ms. Fried ran on the belief that a female nominee would offer voters a clearer contrast against Mr. DeSantis.But with limited money to advertise in the state’s expensive, urban television markets, Ms. Fried was unable to introduce herself to enough Democratic voters. Mr. Crist made her task more difficult when he cast her as a business lobbyist who was cozy with Republicans. Both questioned each other’s liberal bona fides, though the contest was defined less by sharp ideological differences and more by contrasts in style.Mr. Crist led the Democratic race from the start, declaring his candidacy before Ms. Fried, the only Democrat currently holding statewide elected office. He devoted himself to reaching out to county and state leaders, and the early work paid off: Mr. Crist amassed more endorsements from Democratic officials, labor unions and local newspapers than his rival. During campaign stops, he posed for photos with people who greeted him simply as “Charlie.”Michael Joseph, a city commissioner in North Miami Beach, endorsed Mr. Crist after the congressman traveled to see him last year, knowing that he needed the support of the Haitian American community that Mr. Joseph represents.“He’s very personable and he remembers your name,” Mr. Joseph said. “I’ve never seen DeSantis reach out to different communities. Charlie didn’t have to come to my neighborhood to have a burger — but he did.”Maggie Astor and Jennifer Medina contributed reporting. More

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      Florida Primary: How to Vote and Who’s on the Ballot

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      It is Primary Day in Florida, where Democratic voters will choose challengers to Gov. Ron DeSantis and Senator Marco Rubio, both Republicans, for the fall.Here is what to know about voting in the state:How to voteThe deadline to register to vote in the primary election was July 25. Not sure if you are registered? You can check here.The mail-voting period has ended in Florida, and it is too late to return a mail or absentee ballot by mail for this election.Polls close in most of the state at 7 p.m. Eastern time, and an hour later in the western counties in Florida’s panhandle that are in a different time zone.Voters who requested an absentee ballot but have not returned it yet can vote in person at a polling place, or can deliver it by hand to their county elections offices. You can find the location of your elections office here.Do not forget to bring valid photo identification with you to the polls. Examples of acceptable forms can be found here. If you forget your ID, you can still cast a provisional ballot. If the signature on that ballot matches the signature on your registration file, officials will count the ballot.Where to voteYou can find your voting location on your county’s website. A list of counties with links to their sites is available here.Who is on the ballotNikki Fried, who is Florida’s commissioner of agriculture and consumer services, and Representative Charlie Crist, who was a Republican while he served as governor from 2007 to 2011, are among the candidates vying for the Democratic nomination to challenge Mr. DeSantis in November.Representative Val B. Demings leads the Democrats competing for the chance to take on Mr. Rubio. Neither Mr. Rubio nor Mr. DeSantis is facing primary challengers.Kevin Hayslett, a former prosecutor, and Anna Paulina Luna, a conservative activist and Air Force veteran, are locked in a competitive Republican primary in the House district that Mr. Crist currently represents. Former President Donald J. Trump endorsed Ms. Luna, giving her an advantage in the district, which became more conservative during redistricting earlier this year. More

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      The Florida Primary for Governor is Mostly About Ron DeSantis

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      Democrats would love to defeat Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in November. But first they must nominate a challenger who can win in a state where they seem to perpetually fall short.HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — On the first day of early voting in Broward County, Florida’s Democratic mecca, Jared Brown, a 41-year-old lawyer who until recently had never attended a Democratic Party meeting, drove to the polls in suburban Hollywood, slipped on a party T-shirt and grabbed a clipboard to go knock on voters’ doors.He was motivated by anger.Anger at Republicans in general — for appointing conservative judges, redirecting money from public schools and governing in a way that struck him as “authoritarian” — and anger at one Republican in particular: Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose polarizing persona has come to suck up all of the state’s political oxygen.“It’s too offensive,” Mr. Brown said of the culture wars stoked by the governor and state lawmakers. “If you don’t fight them now,” he added, “it’s just not going to get any better.”Going into Tuesday’s primary election, Florida Democrats like Mr. Brown are angry, especially at the ascendant Mr. DeSantis and the way he seems to them to act like someone who already has his eye on the White House. But it is not clear that in the choices they have to challenge him — Representative Charlie Crist, who served as governor from 2007 to 2011, and Nikki Fried, the state’s agriculture commissioner — they have someone who can beat him.“DeSantis is running for president,” said Ann Ralston, 69, as she prepared for a long, sweaty day volunteering for no fewer than seven down-ballot Democratic candidates, whose logos she had pinned on her clothes, turning herself into a human billboard. “It’s a foregone conclusion,” she said.Representative Charlie Crist, who served as Florida governor from 2007 to 2011, greeted people at Mo’s Bagels & Deli in Aventura this month.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesMs. Fried and Mr. Crist have each cast themselves as the more viable alternative and the truer Democrat, but each is defined as much by their perceived limitations as their strengths: Mr. Crist for already losing two statewide races since being elected governor, and Ms. Fried for her short time in public life.To win, Democrats are fighting history as well as themselves. After four election cycles of close losses, the national donors whom they need to help finance expensive statewide campaigns appear unengaged this time. So do some voters.“It’s an emotional narrative about Florida,” said Andrea Cristina Mercado, the executive director of Florida Rising, a racial justice organization. “‘Florida has broken my heart too many times.’”Money usually flows into the state after the primary. But this year, she worries that Florida is not even on some donors’ radar.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsLiz Cheney’s Lopsided Loss: The Republican congresswoman’s defeat in Wyoming exposed the degree to which former President Donald J. Trump still controls the party’s present — and its near future.2024 Hint: Hours after her loss, Ms. Cheney acknowledged that she was “thinking” about a White House bid. But her mission to thwart Donald J. Trump presents challenges.The ‘Impeachment 10’: With Ms. Cheney’s defeat, only two of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump remain.Alaska Races: Senator Lisa Murkowski and Sarah Palin appeared to be on divergent paths following contests that offered a glimpse at the state’s independent streak.“The right wing says every chance they can that ‘Florida is red, Florida is red,’ and it seems that Democrats are buying into that,” she said, noting that people who live in the state know it feels more closely divided than it looks.“We don’t want DeSantis to just walk into the White House,” she added. “We’re trying to do what needs to be done with Scotch tape and paper clips.”Whether Democrats nominate the more disciplined happy warrior Mr. Crist or the more unpredictable, feisty Ms. Fried might matter less than the state party’s longstanding problems. The failings have been clear for years — a thin candidate bench, weak party infrastructure, undisciplined messaging, mounting losses with Latinos — but leaders have struggled with how to address them. Last year, the number of active voters registered as Republicans surpassed Democrats for the first time in history, and the G.O.P. edge has only continued to grow.Nikki Fried, Florida’s agriculture commissioner, is the only Democrat elected to statewide office since 2018.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesManny Diaz, the executive director of the Florida Democratic Party, said in an interview that since taking over in 2021, he had built an internal voter database, trained volunteers and created a detailed county-level campaign plan. Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, who is friendly with Mr. Diaz, recently gave the party $1 million, which is far less than the tens of millions Mr. Bloomberg spent in Florida two years ago.“I’m confident that we will get funding,” Mr. Diaz said.In 2018, Mr. DeSantis defeated Andrew Gillum, who would have become Florida’s first Black governor, by about 32,000 votes — less than half a percentage point — making the state a rare bright spot for Republicans. Some Democrats concluded that they would have won with a more moderate candidate, a hypothesis that Mr. Crist would now test. Others insisted that they only came as close as they did because of the excitement surrounding Mr. Gillum. Ms. Fried would be Florida’s first female governor.For now, Democrats’ most buzzy statewide candidate is Val B. Demings, the Orlando congresswoman challenging Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican. Ms. Demings and Mr. Rubio have already attacked each other in ads, and recent Democratic polls have shown the race to be close, though Mr. Rubio is still considered the favorite. More

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      There Is No Happy Ending to America’s Trump Problem

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      Debate about the search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence has settled into well-worn grooves. Mr. Trump and many Republicans have denounced the act as illegitimate. Attorney General Merrick Garland is staying mostly mum. And Democrats are struggling to contain their enthusiasm.Liberal excitement is understandable. Mr. Trump faces potential legal jeopardy from the Jan. 6 investigation in Congress and the Mar-a-Lago search. They anticipate fulfilling a dream going back to the earliest days of the Trump administration: to see him frog-marched to jail before the country and the world.But this is a fantasy. There is no scenario following from the present that culminates in a happy ending for anyone, even for Democrats.Down one path is the prosecution of the former president. This would be a Democratic administration putting the previous occupant of the White House, the ostensible head of the Republican Party and the current favorite to be the G.O.P. presidential nominee in 2024, on trial. That would set an incredibly dangerous precedent. Imagine, each time the presidency is handed from one party to the other, an investigation by the new administration’s Justice Department leads toward the investigation and possible indictment of its predecessor.Some will say that Mr. Trump nonetheless deserves it — and he does. If Mr. Garland does not press charges against him for Jan. 6 or the potential mishandling of classified government documents, Mr. Trump will have learned that becoming president has effectively immunized him from prosecution. That means the country would be facing a potential second term for Mr. Trump in which he is convinced that he can do whatever he wants with complete impunity.That seems to point to the need to push forward with a case, despite the risk of turning it into a regular occurrence. As many of Mr. Trump’s detractors argue, the rule of law demands it — and failing to fulfill that demand could end up being extremely dangerous.But we’ve been through a version of the turbulent Trump experience before. During the Trump years, the system passed its stress test. We have reason to think it would do so again, especially with reforms to the Electoral Count Act likely to pass during the lame duck session following the upcoming midterm elections, if not before. Having to combat an emboldened Mr. Trump or another bad actor would certainly be unnerving and risky. But the alternatives would be too.We caught a glimpse of those alternative risks as soon as the Mar-a-Lago raid was announced. Within hours, leading Republicans had issued inflammatory statements, and these statements would likely grow louder and more incendiary through any trial, both from Mr. Trump himself and from members of his party and its media rabble-rousers. (Though at a federal judge’s order a redacted version of the warrant affidavit may soon be released, so Mr. Trump and the rest of his party would have to contend with the government’s actual justification of the raid itself.)If the matter culminates in an indictment and trial of Mr. Trump, the Republican argument would be more of what we heard day in and day out through his administration. His defenders would claim that every person ostensibly committed to the dispassionate upholding of the rule of law is in fact motivated by rank partisanship and a drive to self-aggrandizement. This would be directed at the attorney general, the F.B.I., the Justice Department and other branches of the so-called deep state. The spectacle would be corrosive, in effect convincing most Republican voters that appeals to the rule of law are invariably a sham.But the nightmare wouldn’t stop there. What if Mr. Trump declares another run for the presidency just as he’s indicted and treats the trial as a circus illustrating the power of the Washington swamp and the need to put Republicans back in charge to drain it? It would be a risible claim, but potentially a politically effective one. And he might well continue this campaign even if convicted, possibly running for president from a jail cell. It would be Mr. Trump versus the System. He would be reviving an old American archetype: the folk-hero outlaw who takes on and seeks to take down the powerful in the name of the people.We wouldn’t even avoid potentially calamitous consequences if Mr. Trump somehow ended up barred from running or his party opted for another candidate to be its nominee in 2024 — say, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida. How long do you think it would take for a freshly inaugurated President DeSantis to pardon a convicted and jailed Donald Trump? Hours? Minutes? And that move would probably be combined with a promise to investigate and indict Joe Biden for the various “crimes” he allegedly committed in office.The instinct of Democrats is to angrily dismiss such concerns. But that doesn’t mean these consequences wouldn’t happen. Even if Mr. Garland’s motives and methods are models of judiciousness and restraint, the act of an attorney general of one party seeking to indict and convict a former and possibly future president of the other party is the ringing of a bell that cannot be unrung. It is guaranteed to be undertaken again, regardless of whether present and future accusations are justified.As we’ve seen over and over again since Mr. Trump won the presidency, our system of governance presumes a certain base level of public spiritedness — at the level of the presidency, in Congress and in the electorate at large. When that is lacking — when an aspersive figure is elected, when he maintains strong popular support within his party and when that party remains electorally viable — high-minded efforts to act as antibodies defending the body politic from the spread of infection can end up doing enduring harm to the patient. Think of all those times during the Trump presidency when well-meaning sources inside and outside the administration ended up undermining their own credibility by hyping threats and overpromising evidence of wrongdoing and criminality.That’s why it’s imperative we set aside the Plan A of prosecuting Mr. Trump. In its place, we should embrace a Plan B that defers the dream of a post-presidential perp walk in favor of allowing the political process to run its course. If Mr. Trump is the G.O.P. nominee again in 2024, Democrats will have no choice but to defeat him yet again, hopefully by an even larger margin than they did last time.Mr. Trump himself and his most devoted supporters will be no more likely to accept that outcome than they were after the 2020 election. The bigger the margin of his loss, the harder it will be for Mr. Trump to avoid looking like a loser, which is the outcome he dreads more than anything — and one that would be most likely to loosen his grip on his party.There is an obvious risk: If Mr. Trump runs again, he might win. But that’s a risk we can’t avoid — which is why we may well have found ourselves in a situation with no unambivalently good options.Damon Linker, a former columnist at The Week, writes the newsletter “Eyes on the Right” and is a senior fellow in the Open Society Project at the Niskanen Center.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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      Ron DeSantis Rallies With Doug Mastriano and J.D. Vance

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      PITTSBURGH — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, widely seen as the Republican who poses the biggest threat to Donald J. Trump if they both run for president in 2024, blitzed through Pennsylvania and Ohio on Friday during a national tour with hard-right candidates that was clearly intended to elevate his standing and earn political capital with potential future leaders in battleground states.Before an audience of more than 1,000 at an event in Pittsburgh nominally meant to help the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano, Mr. DeSantis delivered a 40-minute address that had the trappings of a speech by a national candidate: bits of personal biography, blasts at the Biden administration and boasts of his Florida accomplishments, which were heavy on cultural messages.“We can’t just stand idly by while woke ideology ravages every institution in our society,” Mr. DeSantis proclaimed, citing laws he has signed to bar transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports and to ban instruction of gender identity and sexual orientation in early grades.As he aims to wrest control of the conservative movement, Mr. DeSantis is appearing with some of its highest-profile and most incendiary figures — midterm candidates who, unlike him, have relentlessly pushed the fiction that the 2020 election was stolen. His rallies on Friday for Mr. Mastriano and J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for Senate in Ohio, came five days after an event for Kari Lake, the G.O.P. pick for governor of Arizona, and Blake Masters, the nominee for Senate there.The catch: All of these candidates identify with Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement and have his endorsement.That leaves Mr. DeSantis walking a fine line as he tries to build alliances with Mr. Trump’s chosen 2022 candidates while simultaneously conveying the message that the Republican Party does not belong only to the former president.Mr. DeSantis and his allies may see a political opening in Mr. Trump’s mounting legal problems. But at the same time, the former president is widely expected to embark on a third run for the White House, and the investigations surrounding him have prompted Republicans to circle wagons around their embattled leader, reaffirming his power over the party.In Pittsburgh, Mr. DeSantis began his speech with a personal slide show that was typical of how a candidate might be introduced at a political convention.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesSupporters of Mr. DeSantis believe he can appeal to many Republicans as a figure who fights the same cultural battles as Mr. Trump but without the chaos and with the ability to win over some moderate voters beyond the party’s base.“DeSantis leans into and leads on the important policy issues people care about, but he does so without the off-putting craziness that turns off independent and swing voters — the people you need to win Pennsylvania,” said Matthew Brouillette, the leader of an influential conservative political group in the state. “They gave Trump a chance in 2016, but had enough in 2020. It’s time to move on.”More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsLiz Cheney’s Lopsided Loss: The Republican congresswoman’s defeat in Wyoming exposed the degree to which former President Donald J. Trump still controls the party’s present — and its near future.2024 Hint: Hours after her loss, Ms. Cheney acknowledged that she was “thinking” about a White House bid. But her mission to thwart Donald J. Trump presents challenges.The ‘Impeachment 10’: With Ms. Cheney’s defeat, only two of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump remain.Alaska Races: Senator Lisa Murkowski and Sarah Palin appeared to be on divergent paths following contests that offered a glimpse at the state’s independent streak.In Pittsburgh, Mr. DeSantis began his speech with a personal slide show that was typical of how a candidate might be introduced at a political convention, including a picture of him as a toddler in a Pittsburgh Steelers hat.The governor, who has a reputation as a sometimes wooden speaker, stood throughout his address behind a rostrum as if giving a lecture, holding on to its edges with his hands.Mr. DeSantis attacked Democrats’ newly passed climate, health and tax law by zeroing in on its hiring of more than 80,000 Internal Revenue Service employees.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesBut the crowd reacted enthusiastically, frequently jumping to its feet as he spoke of how under his watch, Florida had banned what he called “ballot harvesting,” or the practice of voters depositing ballots for other people, as well as prohibited schools from enacting mask mandates during the pandemic.He attacked Democrats’ newly passed climate, health and tax law by zeroing in on its hiring of more than 80,000 Internal Revenue Service employees over a decade, meant in part to restore the agency’s depleted enforcement staff. Echoing conspiracy theories on the right about the hires, which the Biden administration says will not result in new audits of households earning under $400,000, Mr. DeSantis claimed that the increased staffing was “absolutely going to hit people who are small business folks, contractors, handymen, you name it.”On Tuesday, Florida Democrats will decide whether to nominate Representative Charlie Crist or Nikki Fried, the state’s agriculture commissioner, to challenge Mr. DeSantis in November. Mr. DeSantis’s national profile has allowed him to raise more than $130 million in campaign cash, making him a formidable incumbent.Democrats know they face long odds to defeat him, but they have recently begun to believe there is a narrow path to do so, in part because of voter frustration over the elimination of federal abortion rights and a new Florida law restricting abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. More

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      Doug Mastriano Gets Pennsylvania Republicans to Close Ranks Behind Him

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      STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Before Pennsylvania’s primary, much of the state’s Republican establishment agreed that Doug Mastriano would be a disaster as the nominee for governor.Andy Reilly, the state’s Republican national committeeman, had joined a stop-Mastriano effort by rival candidates, who feared that the far-right state senator and prolific spreader of election conspiracy theories would squander an otherwise winnable race.Yet on a warm evening last month, Mr. Reilly opened his suburban Philadelphia home for a backyard fund-raiser for Mr. Mastriano, who won his primary in May. Guests chipped in $150 for ribs and pulled pork and listened to Mr. Mastriano, fresh from an uproar over his presence on Gab, a social media site that is a haven for hate speech.Mr. Reilly later defended Mr. Mastriano as the better choice to lead Pennsylvania over his Democratic opponent, Josh Shapiro. “The question is can Doug Mastriano keep the Republican Party base and all the factions together?” Mr. Reilly said.In one of the most closely watched governor’s races of the year, Pennsylvania Republican officials who had warned that Mr. Mastriano was unelectable have largely closed ranks behind him, after he proved to be the overwhelming choice of base Republicans. On Friday, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida plans to headline a rally with Mr. Mastriano in Pittsburgh, a bearhug from one of the party’s most popular national figures.Mr. Shapiro, the state attorney general, has used a huge fund-raising advantage to batter Mr. Mastriano in TV attack ads as an extremist on abortion and on the 2020 election, opening a double-digit lead in polls. Still, Democrats remain anxious they could lose to Mr. Mastriano because of the free-floating anger of the electorate this year, with most voters worried primarily about the economy.Josh Shapiro, with supporters in Lock Haven, Pa., has battered Mr. Mastriano in TV attack ads as an extremist.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesWhether the recent run of Democratic successes nationally — including the climate and drug-pricing legislative package and the resounding defeat of an anti-abortion measure in Kansas — can shift the fundamental midterm equation remains unclear.“The environment that Joe Biden has created for Josh Shapiro makes this year probably the only year that a Mastriano-type candidate could win in a purple state like Pennsylvania,” said Matt Brouillette, the head of a conservative political group in the state that opposed Mr. Mastriano in the primary. “While the Democrats want to focus on Jan. 6 and Roe v. Wade, the electorate is focused on putting food on their table and filling up the tanks in their cars.”The Democratic anxiety was on display recently at a party picnic in liberal State College, the home of Pennsylvania State University. At Mr. Shapiro’s mention of Mr. Mastriano during a speech, a woman shouted, “You better win!”More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsLiz Cheney’s Lopsided Loss: The Republican congresswoman’s defeat in Wyoming exposed the degree to which former President Donald J. Trump still controls the party’s present — and its near future.2024 Hint: Hours after her loss, Ms. Cheney acknowledged that she was “thinking” about a White House bid. But her mission to thwart Donald J. Trump presents challenges.The ‘Impeachment 10’: With Ms. Cheney’s defeat, only two of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump remain.Alaska Races: Senator Lisa Murkowski and Sarah Palin appeared to be on divergent paths following contests that offered a glimpse at the state’s independent streak.There was nervous laughter. The worry reflects the alarm of Democrats that if Mr. Mastriano, 58, becomes governor, he would sign severe abortion restrictions and would have the power to subvert the 2024 presidential election in the swing state in favor of the G.O.P. nominee.A Shapiro campaign event in State College. Democrats in Pennsylvania are worried about Mr. Mastriano’s positions on abortion and voting.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York Times“I hear it every single day,” Mr. Shapiro told the crowd. “They’re worried about their rights being ripped away from them.”Mr. Mastriano, a retired Army officer who led Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election in Pennsylvania, marched on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, passing police barricades breached by other marchers. He has boasted that as governor, “I get to decertify any or all machines in the state.” He has called for compelling all nine million registered voters in the state to re-register, which experts say would violate federal law.“These are dangerous, extreme positions he’s taken, and these are things I know the people of Pennsylvania reject,” Mr. Shapiro, 49, said in an interview.Mr. Shapiro compared the unusually high turnout in deep-red Kansas in favor of abortion rights to how the issue is motivating his own supporters. “We have seen incredible intensity in our campaign post-Dobbs,” he said, referring to the Supreme Court decision leaving it to states to protect or deny abortion access.Many women who attended his events agreed, saying that abortion is their most important issue. “I was the generation that was young when Roe vs. Wade became the law of the land, and I’ve known women whose health was ruined because of an illegal abortion,” said Bonnie Hannis, 80, who came to hear Mr. Shapiro in rural Clinton County.“I’m excited to defend my reproductive rights,” said Gianna Renzo, 19, who grew up in the county and is now a student at Princeton. “I see women my age who are typically from Republican families, and they’re going to come over to the Democratic side” because of abortion.Mr. Mastriano, the sponsor in the State Legislature of a six-week abortion ban with no exceptions, has appeared to modulate that position lately, saying lawmakers will write whatever bill they choose and “my personal views are irrelevant.”But there are few signs that he has broadened his appeal to independent and swing voters, especially in the suburbs, who have played a pivotal role in recent Pennsylvania elections. He was supported by 82 percent of Republicans in a Fox News poll in late July, but independents preferred Mr. Shapiro by 28 points.It remains to be seen if Mr. Mastriano can broaden his appeal to independent and swing voters.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesMr. Mastriano declined to comment for this article.He has routinely snubbed the state’s TV news outlets and newspapers that might help him reach a broader audience. It is a purposeful strategy aimed at exciting conservatives who believe that Democrats have “the media in their pockets,” as he recently put it.This week, he said he would not participate in traditional debates run by independent news organizations because of what he called their “hidden partisan agenda.” He proposed debates in which each candidate names a moderator — a nonstarter for the Shapiro campaign, which called the idea an “obvious stunt.”Mr. Mastriano speaks almost exclusively to far-right podcasters like Stephen K. Bannon, conservative talk radio hosts and Fox News. On a recent swing through northwest Pennsylvania, he brushed off a Pittsburgh TV station that sought to interview him, and even the small-circulation Meadville Tribune.One result of that approach is that he seldom has to field tough questions. And his poor fund-raising — he ended the primary season with just $400,000 in his campaign account, compared with $13.4 million for Mr. Shapiro — has left him unable to run TV ads all summer to counter a barrage of attacks from his opponent.The Shapiro ads use Mr. Mastriano’s words to paint him as outside the mainstream, not just on abortion and election denial, but on gay marriage, which he has said should “absolutely not” be legal, and on global warming, which he called “fake science.”“You’ve basically got a one-person governor’s race right now in terms of voter contact,” said Christopher Nicholas, a Republican consultant in the state. “All the folks who listen to those far-right podcasts, I think he maxed out his vote potential. He has to move past his base.”At a recent appearance by Mr. Mastriano at the York County Fair, there were no signs on the sprawling fairgrounds directing potential voters his way. Outside the hall where he was to appear, a large crowd on bleachers at the appointed hour turned out to be waiting for the Hot Dog Pig Races.Mr. Mastriano showed up inside at the county Republican booth. He did not give a speech, but shook hands and posed for pictures with several dozen supporters.Donna VanDyne, an insurance agent, supported a no-exceptions abortion ban, claiming that victims of rape or incest who give birth adjust. “When they have their baby, they have each other and become support systems for one another,” she said.Dawn Smith, an aspiring teacher’s aide, repeated a debunked conspiracy theory Mr. Mastriano had spread about voting machines. “They switched President Trump’s votes to Joe Biden’s votes with the Dominion machines,” she claimed.Wayne Liek, a retired truck driver, recalling prayers he said in school in the 1960s, agreed with Mr. Mastriano that the Constitutional separation of church and state was, as Mr. Mastriano described it, “a myth.”A core of Mr. Mastriano’s popularity with Republicans is his embrace of views associated with Christian nationalism, the belief that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, and often intertwined with far-right conspiratorial thinking.Mr. Mastriano, the sponsor in the legislature of a six-week abortion ban with no exceptions, has appeared to modulate that position lately.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesFew attendees seemed aware of the furor over Mr. Mastriano’s presence on Gab. His campaign had paid $5,000 to broaden his support with users of the social media site, which is known as a haven for white nationalists. A post by Mr. Mastriano in July criticizing Democratic policies drew dozens of replies that were antisemitic insults of Mr. Shapiro.Gab’s founder, Andrew Torba, defended Mr. Mastriano in videos laced with antisemitic vitriol. Mr. Mastriano distanced himself from Mr. Torba on July 28, saying that he rejected “antisemitism in any form.’’At a later appearance where he did give a speech, in Cochranton, Mr. Mastriano said: “It’s funny, they want to call us extremists. They’re the extremists.’’He attacked Mr. Shapiro for suing, as attorney general, to keep a mask mandate in schools and to uphold Gov. Tom Wolf’s shutdown of nonessential businesses early in the pandemic. Mr. Mastriano first gained a following for leading protests against restrictions to prevent the spread of Covid. Fury at those orders lingers for many conservatives.Asked about the suits, Mr. Shapiro said that he personally opposes mandates for masks and vaccines, but as the state’s top lawyer he was required to represent the governor and executive branch in litigation. He prevailed in both cases.Before he campaigned in State College, a blue island in a sea of red in central Pennsylvania, Mr. Shapiro had visited Lock Haven in nearby Clinton County.Mike Hanna Sr., a retired Democratic state lawmaker from the area, said Mr. Mastriano “has a strong base here, just like Trump.” But Mr. Hanna said the former president had lost support since inciting the mob that attacked the Capitol.“I hunt with a bunch of veterans, and they just shake their heads,” Mr. Hanna said. “Trump has done a lot to erode his standing with his base, and Mastriano’s participation in all that, and the extreme positions he’s taken, have done the same thing.”“It’d be a lot scarier for us,” Mr. Hanna said, “if the Republicans had selected a moderate.” More

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis Announces Arrests in Florida for Election Fraud

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      Seven weeks after Florida’s state government opened a new office of election crimes and security, Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Thursday that 17 people had been charged with casting illegal ballots in the 2020 election, in which 11.1 million Floridians voted.The governor called the arrests “a first salvo” in a long-overdue crackdown on voting crimes. Critics called the announcement a publicity stunt that said less about voter fraud than about holes in the state’s election security apparatus that had allowed the violations to occur in the first place.Mr. DeSantis, who is seeking re-election this year and is widely considered to be running an unannounced campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has made action against voter fraud a centerpiece of his tenure as governor. He offered crucial backing last year to legislation tightening the rules for registering to vote and casting ballots. The State Legislature allotted $1.1 million for his 15-person election crimes office after he proposed its creation late last year.But while the specter of widespread fraud has become a staple of Republican political rhetoric, there is no evidence that election crimes are a serious problem in Florida or anywhere else in the nation. There and elsewhere, most violations appear to involve people who ran afoul of laws that restrict voting by former felons, or people who cast two ballots, usually in separate states where they spend different parts of the year.Experts say that many of those violations appear to be inadvertent. The 17 people charged on Thursday were all felons, convicted of murder or sex offenses, who were barred by law from casting ballots. All but one were men, and all but two were in their 50s or older.Casting an ineligible ballot is a felony punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment and up to $5,000 in fines. “That was against the law, and now they’re going to pay for it,” Mr. DeSantis said.The governor said more arrests were forthcoming, and suggested that they would include so-called double voters and noncitizens who cast illegal ballots — another offense that experts say is frequently the result of confusion about voting rules.He added that a paucity of voting fraud prosecutions in recent years reflects a lack of enforcement, not a lack of fraud. “Now we have the ability with the attorney general and statewide prosecutors to bring these cases on behalf of the state,” he said. He said that if anyone is thinking of committing electoral crimes: “Don’t do it, because we’re coming for you.”Local law enforcement officials made a flurry of voting-related arrests this spring after a researcher who scanned voting rolls claimed to have found scores of convicted sex offenders who cast ballots in 2020, although a constitutional amendment bars them from voting.A group that advocates restoring voting rights to former felons said on Thursday that none of the 17 people arrested would have faced charges had the state not allowed them to register and vote, despite their ineligibility.“When someone registers to vote, it is the responsibility of the state to utilize its vast resources to determine a person’s eligibility,” Desmond Meade, the executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, said at a news conference. “And once that person is eligible to vote, that person is issued a voter identification card.”Mr. Meade said state money would be better spent on improving voter registration systems to screen out potentially ineligible voters than on finding and prosecuting them.“What we’ve seen today is an indication that the system is broken,” he said. “These individuals should never have gotten to this point.”Mr. DeSantis’s announcement drew quick rebuttals from two Democrats who are vying to oppose him in the November election for governor.“Everybody wants elections to be secure, but Ron DeSantis — who has never refuted Donald Trump’s Big Lie — is the last person we can trust with ‘election police,’” Nikki Fried, the state agriculture commissioner and Florida’s highest-ranking Democrat, said in a statement. “As governor, I will disband this force and return jurisdiction back to local authorities.”Representative Charlie Crist, a former Florida governor, who is running against Ms. Fried in next week’s primary election, said in a statement that Mr. DeSantis’s news conference was “about playing politics, intimidating Democratic voters and his desire to run for president, not securing elections.” More

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      Ron DeSantis and Republicans’ Mar-a-Lago Playbook

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      Republican politicians weighing how to react to the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago last week had several options. Boiled down, they were:1. Immediately denounce it as a “witch hunt” and threaten to investigate or even defund the bureau, while calling for Attorney General Merrick Garland’s impeachment.2. Issue a cautious, place-holder statement expressing confidence in the process while sounding a note of concern about the potential for Justice Department overreach. Say little that could become embarrassing should more facts emerge that portray the former president’s conduct in a negative light.3. Criticize Trump as having jeopardized the national security of the United States. Call on him to release the search warrant and explain what agents might have been looking for, and why he had not returned the documents they were seeking.4. Await more information before commenting at all.To defend or not to defend?The political dilemma was particularly acute for Republicans who aspire to run for president in 2024 — requiring a high-wire act worthy of the Flying Wallendas.Enter Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who is widely viewed as Trump’s most serious potential rival in a Republican primary race. The political world watches DeSantis’s every move nowadays, and many awaited his reaction to the search with bated breath.Sometimes, mischief ensues.In a clever but dishonest bit of online skulduggery, someone spliced together two separate videos to make it seem as if DeSantis had defended the F.B.I. The manipulated video, which circulated widely on social media, purports to show DeSantis tangling with Sean Hannity over the Fox News host’s use of the word “raid” to describe the F.B.I.’s actions.“It’s not a raid,” DeSantis says in the edited video, adding, “they were serving valid process in accordance with the laws and Constitution of the United States.”It would have been an explosive moment — the first real fireworks of the shadow 2024 presidential primary.But it never happened.In reality, DeSantis had been defending a 2020 search by law enforcement officers of the home of Rebekah Jones, a former data specialist for the state of Florida who had claimed that the DeSantis administration was manipulating information about the coronavirus pandemic.Hannity, for one, called the video “FAKE NEWS” and demanded that Twitter remove it.What DeSantis actually said was this tweet:“The raid of MAL is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves,” DeSantis wrote. “Now the Regime is getting another 87k IRS agents to wield against its adversaries? Banana Republic.”Note what was missing here: any defense of Trump’s conduct. DeSantis made similar remarks at a rally on Sunday for Kari Lake and Blake Masters, the Republican nominees for governor and Senate in Arizona — criticizing the Justice Department and raising examples of what he characterized as F.B.I. misconduct, while remaining silent on the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.DeSantis and Trump hats at a Turning Point USA event in Tampa, Fla., in July.Marco Bello/ReutersThe DeSantis danceDavid Jolly, a former Republican member of Congress from Florida, said the “dance” between DeSantis and Trump was quietly consuming both camps behind the scenes.Trump has periodically noted — accurately — that he remains the most popular Republican in hypothetical 2024 primary matchups, with DeSantis a distant second. But the two have yet to spar in earnest. More