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      Daniel McKee, Rhode Island Governor, Wins Nomination to Run for Seat

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      Daniel McKee, the governor of Rhode Island, has secured the Democratic nomination to run for his first full term in office, according to The Associated Press. Mr. McKee, 71, overcame four challengers in a hard-fought primary with a focus on his leadership through the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic recovery.Mr. McKee had served as the state’s lieutenant governor since 2015 and was first sworn in as governor in March 2021, when former Gov. Gina Raimondo resigned to join President Biden’s cabinet as commerce secretary.In the primary, he had been neck and neck with Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, 55, with whom he was elected to statewide office in 2014 and who drew from the same well of support. But it was Helena Foulkes, 58, a former CVS executive, who came in second place after a late-breaking surge in momentum that followed a strong debate performance and an endorsement from Speaker Nancy Pelosi.His other opponents included Matt Brown, a former Rhode Island secretary of state, and Dr. Luis Daniel Muñoz, a community activist.Mr. McKee will face Ashley Kalus, a Republican businesswoman and first-time candidate. A college freshman, Zachary Hurwitz, also collected enough signatures to run as an independent.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.A Fierce Primary Season Ends: Democrats are entering the final sprint to November with more optimism, especially in the Senate. But Republicans are confident they can gain a House majority.Midterm Data: Could the 2020 polling miss repeat itself? Will this election cycle really be different? Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, looks at the data in his new newsletter.Republicans’ Abortion Struggles: Senator Lindsey Graham’s proposed nationwide 15-week abortion ban was intended to unite the G.O.P. before the November elections. But it has only exposed the party’s divisions.Democrats’ Dilemma: The party’s candidates have been trying to signal their independence from the White House, while not distancing themselves from President Biden’s base or agenda.Ms. Gorbea, born and raised in Puerto Rico, had sought to become the first Latina elected governor in New England, touting her 30 years of experience as a community activist and nonprofit leader focused on addressing the state’s housing crisis. She rocked the Rhode Island political world when she won her campaign for secretary of state in 2014 with little funding or name recognition, and many expected her to do the same in the governor’s race.But she stumbled after her campaign aired an attack ad about Mr. McKee that cited an article from a conservative commentator. Her office also was heavily criticized after new touch-screen voting machines listed the wrong candidates on the Spanish-language ballot, which led to the discarding of more than 50 ballots.The missteps gave a small opening to Ms. Foulkes, who proved to be a prolific fund-raiser and whose mother was close friends with Ms. Pelosi. “I just want to say one word to you,” Ms. Pelosi told a crowd of more than 200 people gathered Sunday in Providence. “Helena.”A former mayor of the town of Cumberland, Mr. McKee is not seen as a natural politician and has tended to stay behind the scenes in his political career. His campaign was clouded by state and federal investigations into a multimillion-dollar education consulting contract that his administration awarded to the ILO Group, a consulting firm to which he has ties and that was created two days after he took office.But Mr. McKee had three factors working in his favor, said Adam Myers, an associate professor of political science at Providence College: a strong base of voters in the Blackstone River Valley, the northeast pocket of the state that he is from; an ability to consolidate the support of organized labor groups; and his appeals to Latino voters.Mr. McKee had appointed Sabina Matos to replace him, making her the first Afro-Latina lieutenant governor and the first Dominican American in the country to hold statewide office. He also had a star endorser — his 94-year-old mother. She became a campaign sensation when she appeared in an ad playing cards with her son in oversized sunglasses.In the ad, Mr. McKee champions his efforts to steer the state through the pandemic, his elimination of the car tax and his signing of gun safety laws. She responds: “Not bad for a governor that lives with his mother.” More

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

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      Rhode Island voters are heading to the polls to pick candidates for governor and an open House seat. Here’s what to know about voting in the state:How to voteThe deadline to register for Rhode Island’s primary elections has passed. You can check your registration status on the secretary of state’s website here.In-person voting runs from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., which is also the time by which mail ballots must be received. It is too late to return a ballot in the mail, but you can deliver it by hand to a drop box or to the Board of Elections office in Cranston.If you’ve already mailed your ballot, you can track its status here.Where to voteYou can find your nearest polling place here.Mail ballots can be delivered to drop boxes at designated locations. You can find your town’s drop box location here or use this map.Who’s on the ballotVoters will pick parties’ nominees for governor. Four Democrats are challenging Gov. Daniel McKee, who was appointed last year after former Gov. Gina Raimondo became President Biden’s secretary of commerce.Two Republicans are vying for their party’s place on the November ballot: Ashley Kalus, a health care executive and businesswoman, and Jonathan Riccitelli, who owns a hotel and maintenance company and whose criminal record — much of it under another name — was reported by The Boston Globe. Representative Jim Langevin, a Democrat, is retiring at the end of his term. The state treasurer, Seth Magaziner, leads the pack of six Democrats hoping to replace him. The winner of that race will face Allan Fung, a Republican and former Cranston mayor, in November.There are also Republican and Democratic primaries for lieutenant governor and a Democratic primary for secretary of state. You can see a full sample ballot online here. More

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      Zeldin Uses Adams as a Surprising Weapon in N.Y. Governor’s Race

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      Lee Zeldin and other Republicans are trying to attract swing voters by aligning themselves with Mayor Adams, a Democrat, over his law-and-order platform.In his uphill battle to become New York’s next governor, Representative Lee M. Zeldin, the Trump-supporting conservative Republican from Long Island, has turned to an unlikely weapon: Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City.In recent weeks, and despite Mr. Adams’s protestations, Mr. Zeldin has repeatedly aligned himself with Mr. Adams, a first-term Democrat, over the issue of the state’s 2019 bail reform law, which both men have argued is deeply flawed and needs to be overhauled.It is a message that some other Republicans have also begun sounding, echoing the law-and-order credo that helped Mr. Adams get elected last year and the litany that Republicans have been reciting in races across the country. Their goal appears to be to focus swing voters on crime and public safety rather than divisive social issues, like abortion, that often lead those voters to favor Democrats.Marc Molinaro, a Republican running for Congress in the newly redrawn 19th Congressional District, which now stretches from the northern Hudson Valley to the Southern Tier, said he sometimes invokes Mr. Adams’s call to tighten bail restrictions.“I will say it in town hall meetings, sort of to emphasize the logic of the reforms that we want to see, I point to Mayor Adams,” said Mr. Molinaro, who serves as the Dutchess County executive.The Republican minority leaders in the State Legislature have also cited Mr. Adams, and Nick Langworthy, the state Republican Party chair, suggested other Republicans would be wise to employ the tactic.“I do think that Mayor Adams’s position could be used” more broadly, he said. “Not because he’s collaborating, but because common sense should unite people of all party affiliations.”With less than two months until Election Day, Mr. Zeldin is generally considered an underdog against Gov. Kathy Hochul, with polls generally showing him consistently behind the incumbent. Mr. Zeldin is also badly trailing Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, in the fund-raising race, and has recently leaned on Mr. Trump for help.Mr. Zeldin’s embrace of Mr. Adams is particularly striking given Mr. Adams’s endorsement of Ms. Hochul and the outsize role that the mayor’s predecessor, Bill de Blasio, played as a boogeyman for conservative campaigns across New York State during his eight years in office. Republicans frequently deployed Mr. de Blasio as an example of liberalism run amok, often tying him to candidates with little or no actual connection to the former mayor.“I believe the story that will be written in 2023 is how well a Governor Zeldin is working with Mayor Adams to save this city and to save the state,” Mr. Zeldin said in a recent interview. History is against him: Mr. Zeldin, a four-term congressman who voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, is seeking to become only the second Republican to be elected governor of New York in the last 50 years.But he believes he has a path to defeating Ms. Hochul, if he can capture about 30 percent of the New York City voters, something he thinks he is capable of doing despite daunting odds. The city is overwhelmingly Democratic, with Republicans and Conservative Party members making up about 10 percent of the city’s more than five million registered voters. Voters who decline to state their affiliation — generally considered independents — make up approximately 20 percent.William F.B. O’Reilly, a Republican consultant who worked with Rob Astorino, one of Mr. Zeldin’s vanquished primary opponents, said that by parroting Mayor Adams’s rhetoric on crime, Mr. Zeldin and Republicans elsewhere can heighten their appeal to independents and some middle-of-the-road Democrats.“By aligning himself with a prominent Democrat, it suggests that he’s part of the middle,” Mr. O’Reilly said, noting that Mr. Adams’s race could also be a factor. “He’s Black, he’s a Democrat, he’s a former police officer, and I think he’s generally considered a centrist. So the closer that Zeldin can get to him the better.”Ms. Hochul’s camp scoffs at the notion that Mr. Zeldin — who opposes abortion rights, supports nearly unfettered gun rights and has been close with former President Donald J. Trump — can somehow present himself as a moderate.Mayor Eric Adams, right, largely based his campaign on a law-and-order platform.Natalie Keyssar for The New York Times“This is another pathetic attempt from Lee Zeldin to distract voters from his extreme MAGA positions,” said Jerrel Harvey, a spokesman for the Hochul campaign. “Governor Hochul and Mayor Adams have made progress on countless issues and shared Democratic priorities, from reducing gun violence to expanding child care to getting our economy back on track.” Likewise, Mr. Adams has resoundingly and repeatedly rejected any suggestion that he and Mr. Zeldin have anything in common, saying that Mr. Zeldin is a threat to public safety, not an asset. Mr. Zeldin has criticized the state’s strict gun laws and hailed a recent Supreme Court decision allowing easier use of concealed weapons.“In spite of what people are attempting to say — Lee Zeldin and I are aligned at the hip — we must have a broken hip because he clearly doesn’t get it,” Mr. Adams said in August. “He has voted against all of the responsible gun laws in Congress.”Still, the implied association between the mayor and the Republican nominee has dismayed his fellow Democrats, particularly those whose political beliefs are to the left of his.“It’s not surprising that Zeldin wants to latch on to the Democratic mayor of the state’s largest city,” said State Senator Michael Gianaris, the Queens Democrat who serves as deputy majority leader in Albany’s upper chamber. “What is surprising is the mayor is giving him the fuel to do so.”Assemblyman Ron Kim, a Queens Democrat, said that it was “inevitable” that Republicans would pick up the similarities between their rhetoric and Mr. Adams’s in an election year, even if the mayor disapproves of Mr. Zeldin.“As a Democrat, this isn’t where you want to be, especially with other gender and racial justice issues that he’s clearly not aligned with Lee Zeldin on, ” Mr. Kim said. “So it’s unfortunate that he’s giving him cover around bail when there’s other big things that Democrats want to home in on.”The disdain expressed by Mr. Gianaris and Mr. Kim is part of a larger schism in the state Democratic Party between progressives and more centrist leaders like Mr. Adams, a former police captain who was elected in part by promising robust law enforcement in a city suffering from a rise in some forms of violent crime.Mr. Zeldin has made repeated references to Mr. Adams’s stance on bail in campaign events and news releases, echoing the mayor’s call for a special legislative session devoted to the issue.In 2019, the state changed its bail law to prevent those charged with relatively minor crimes from being held on bail. Proponents of the new law argue that the issuance of bail disproportionately affects poorer people, keeping them in jail because they cannot afford to post bail.The law, which took effect the following year, has since been amended twice amid widespread opposition from law enforcement officials, who claim it has led to increased crime. No data has emerged indicating that to be the case.Zellnor Myrie, a state senator from Brooklyn who helped craft the bail reform legislation, says it is particularly rich for Mr. Zeldin to use bail reform to paint himself a law-and-order candidate, in light of his fealty to Mr. Trump.“Lee Zeldin and those around him in my mind have zero credibility on public safety,” Mr. Myrie said. “This is the same candidate who, after the former president stole nuclear secrets from the White House, instead of distancing himself from that, has only drawn closer to him.”Mr. Myrie, who is Black, also noted a racial dynamic inherent to the debate. Both Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who is a constant Zeldin target, and Mr. Adams are Black. Mr. Zeldin and Mr. Trump are white.“I truly believe that deep down, race is driving this conversation,” he said. “That’s why to me it’s very insidious sometimes what we hear emanating from the mayor’s office or from various other city agencies, because they — they being the Republicans — are not good faith actors when it comes to this, and you have put Black men in the line of fire because of the nature and the temperature of the rhetoric around public safety.”In an interview, Mr. Zeldin said that bail wasn’t the only issue on which he agreed with Mr. Adams, noting his support for mayoral control of schools, something that Albany lawmakers agreed to in June, but only after extracting concessions on reducing class sizes.“I thought it was absurd,” said Mr. Zeldin, of the Legislature’s negotiating tactics. “He had just got into office. The correct policy is just to extend mayoral control. So just do it.”Mr. Zeldin says that he and Mr. Adams became acquainted, from opposite sides of the aisle, when both were state senators in Albany, sometimes sharing lunch amid colleagues in a conference room adjacent to the Senate floor.While in Albany in 2013, Mr. Adams also served as a chairman of the Senate Committee on Aging, the only mainstream Democrat to hold a chairmanship in that period from the chamber’s Republican leaders. Mr. Zeldin, who also served on the committee, recalled that the two “got along well, and we stayed in touch afterward.”“It’s not like he’s calling me up to be the best man at his wedding, or vice versa,” Mr. Zeldin added. “But the goal here, the objective, the motive is to work together.”Jonah Bromwich contributed reporting. More

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      Democrats Fret as Stacey Abrams Struggles in Georgia Governor’s Race

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      NEWNAN, Ga. — Georgia Democrats have grown increasingly pessimistic about Stacey Abrams’s chances of ousting Gov. Brian Kemp from office, pointing to her struggles to rally key parts of her party’s coalition and her inability to appeal to a slice of moderate Republican voters who can decide the state’s elections.Public and private polls have consistently shown her trailing Mr. Kemp, a Republican seeking a second term. And, in a particularly worrying sign for Ms. Abrams, polls also show she is drawing less support than the other high-profile Democrat on the ballot, Senator Raphael Warnock, who is seeking a first full term.The gap between the two Democrats, which is within the margin of error in some recent surveys and as wide as 10 points in others, highlights the extent of her struggles. Though she is beloved by Democratic voters, she has lost some ground with Black men, who provided crucial backing in her narrow loss to Mr. Kemp in 2018. And while Mr. Warnock draws some support from Republican moderates, Ms. Abrams — who has been vilified more by the G.O.P. than any other statewide figure — has shown little sign of peeling off significant numbers of disaffected Republicans.Ms. Abrams’s standing — consistently trailing Mr. Kemp in polls by around five percentage points — has alarmed Democrats who have celebrated her as the master strategist behind Georgia’s Democratic shift.For years, she worked to register and turn out Democratic voters, narrowly losing her first bid for governor in 2018 and helping fuel President Biden’s victory in 2020. Now, her struggles have some Georgia Democrats wondering if the Abrams model — seeking to expand the universe of voters to fit her politics — is truly better than trying to capture 50 percent of the voters who exist now.“Right now, people are concerned — kind of looking sideways,” said Erick Allen, a Democratic state representative, who said he hoped enthusiasm would pick up in the fall sprint. “There’s a lot of energy around the Warnock campaign. I’m not sure if the same energy that we had four years ago is around the Abrams campaign yet.”In an interview last week, Ms. Abrams defended her strategy, noting that her Democratic turnout operation helped carry the state for Mr. Biden, Mr. Warnock and Senator Jon Ossoff in the 2020 election cycle. “I imagine an electorate that is possible, not the electorate as if the election was held today,” she said.She and her top aides believe her standing is improving, buoyed by voter anger over the Supreme Court decision overturning the federal right to an abortion. She is planning a broader campaign to highlight Mr. Kemp’s signing of a 2019 law — which went into effect in July — that bans abortion in Georgia after the sixth week of pregnancy.Ms. Abrams’s allies said the comparisons between her and Mr. Warnock overlooked stark differences. Ms. Abrams is a Black woman contending with sexist stereotypes about leadership, they note. She is also running against an incumbent governor with a well-built political apparatus, while Mr. Warnock’s rival, the former football star Herschel Walker, is a political novice. (Both Mr. Kemp and Mr. Walker’s campaigns declined to comment.)“We have to work harder as women, as African American women,” said former Mayor Shirley Franklin of Atlanta, who added that women “just have a harder time capturing the imagination as executives.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries winding down, both parties are starting to shift their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Battleground Pennsylvania: Few states feature as many high-stakes, competitive races as Pennsylvania, which has emerged as the nation’s center of political gravity.The Dobbs Decision’s Effect: Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the number of women signing up to vote has surged in some states and the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage are hard to see.How a G.O.P. Haul Vanished: Last year, the campaign arm of Senate Republicans was smashing fund-raising records. Now, most of the money is gone.Digital Pivot: At least 10 G.O.P. candidates in competitive races have updated their websites to minimize their ties to former President Donald J. Trump or to adjust their stances on abortion.The Abrams and Warnock campaigns have pursued different strategies. Mr. Warnock is betting on winning over just enough moderate, white Republican voters to get himself past Mr. Walker. Ms. Abrams needs a big turnout from base Democrats and new voters to oust Mr. Kemp.Last week, Mr. Warnock demurred when asked by The New York Times during a news conference if he would campaign with Ms. Abrams, delivering the sort of practiced non-answer Democrats have been reciting when asked if they would welcome help from an unpopular President Biden.“The pundits want to know who I’m campaigning for and who I’m campaigning with,” Mr. Warnock said. “I’m focused on my campaign.”The next morning, Ms. Abrams announced she would join Mr. Warnock for a campaign stop that very afternoon.“We need Stacey Abrams,” Mr. Warnock told supporters at the event, calling her “a visionary leader” and “my dear friend.”Senator Raphael Warnock at a barbershop in Newnan, Ga. Polls suggest Mr. Warnock is ahead in his race, while Ms. Abrams is struggling to keep pace.Erik S Lesser/EPA, via ShutterstockDemocrats have largely kept quiet on their concerns about Ms. Abrams’s campaign. But several county elected officials and community leaders in Georgia have privately expressed their worries to the campaign directly, according to interviews with more than two dozen Democratic officials who asked not to be named discussing private conversations. They have complained that the campaign was slow to reach out to key constituencies and underestimated Mr. Kemp’s strength in an already difficult year for Democratic candidates.Ms. Abrams has in recent weeks focused attention on winning support from Black men, voters who have inched toward Republicans during the Trump era. More

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      How Michigan Resisted Far Right Extremism

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      ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A brutal plot to abduct the governor. An armed protest in the galleries of the State Capitol. A candidate for governor who stormed the halls of Congress — only to see his popularity rise.In Michigan, you can feel extremism creeping into civic life.Michigan is far from the only state in the grip of politicians who peddle disinformation and demonize their opponents. But it may also be the one best positioned to beat back the threat of political violence.Unlike, say, Arizona and Pennsylvania, two purple states where Republicans have also embraced a toxic brew of political violence and denialism, Michigan is home to voters who, to date, have avoided succumbing to the new conservative dogma, thanks in large part to its Democratic politicians, who have remained relentlessly focused on kitchen table issues. In that sense, Michigan may hold lessons for residents of other states looking to withstand the tide of authoritarianism and violence, restoring faith in the American institutions under siege from the right.Certainly, recent history is concerning. Although a jury last month convicted two men who plotted to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer over her Covid shutdown orders, that verdict came only after a jury in an earlier trial could not reach a unanimous verdict on the charges against them and acquitted two other co-defendants, despite chilling evidence that members of a militia group known as the Wolverine Watchmen had been building homemade bombs, photographing the underside of a bridge to determine how best to destroy it to slow a police pursuit and using night-vision goggles to surveil Ms. Whitmer’s vacation home.In that first trial, the defense argued that the F.B.I.’s informants had egged on the men, and it was persuasive enough to deadlock the jury. But I doubt the jurors would have been so receptive to that line of argument without Donald Trump persistently blasting government employees as “the deep state” and calling the conduct of the F.B.I. “a disgrace.”For the upcoming November elections, the G.O.P. nominees for attorney general and secretary of state are election deniers, and the candidate for governor has also cast doubt on the results of the 2020 vote for president. And not only are Republican candidates consumed with signaling an allegiance to Mr. Trump, but we are also seeing an alarming rise in political extremism in Michigan.In spring 2020, armed protesters demonstrated against Covid shutdown orders by occupying the galleries over the Senate chamber in the State Capitol while brandishing assault rifles. After the 2020 election, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson faced a deluge of threats and harassment from election deniers, including an armed protest at her home, where a mob chanted “stop the steal” while she was inside with her 4-year-old son. Ryan Kelley, who sought the Republican nomination for governor, was charged with four misdemeanor offenses for his alleged role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. After his involvement in the attack became well known, his polling numbers actually went up.Still, there is reason for some cautious optimism. In the Republican primary, voters rejected Mr. Kelley. An independent citizens redistricting commission has been created by a voter initiative to end the gerrymandering that has led to a Republican-controlled State Legislature. Recent polling shows Ms. Whitmer, Ms. Benson and Attorney General Dana Nessel, who are all Democrats, with comfortable leads as the general election approaches, and their resilience in the face of threats has only strengthened their political stock. And the convictions in the Whitmer kidnapping case show that 12 random people can still be found who will set aside their biases and decide a case based on the law and the facts they hear in court. My hunch is that there are more fair-minded people out there who will go to the polls in November.Governor WhitmerPatrick Semansky/Associated PressPragmatic problem-solving still seems to appeal to Michigan voters. Many families’ fortunes are tied inextricably to the auto industry, the health of which can swing sharply with every economic trend. Ms. Whitmer has championed economic development legislation that has helped create 25,000 auto jobs during her administration. She recently made a pitch to leverage federal legislation to lure companies to manufacture semiconductors in Michigan.In a state sometimes referred to as the birthplace of the middle class, labor unions carry more influence with working-class voters than the MAGA movement. From the rebirth of Detroit to the expansion of tourism Up North, Michigan is also a place that has long welcomed newcomers. Whether they be laborers on the assembly lines of Henry Ford or engineers for autonomous vehicles, workers from all over the world have always been needed and accepted as part of the work force, making it more difficult to demonize outsiders as “other.” As a result, voters tend to be less susceptible to the politics of fear that are driving the culture wars. Indeed, Ms. Whitmer was elected with a slogan to “Fix the Damn Roads.”Maybe it is a Midwestern sensibility, but Michiganders seem more interested in candidates who will help advance their financial bottom lines than those who traffic in conspiracy theories. And, four years later, Ms. Whitmer has fixed a lot of the damn roads.By focusing on economic outcomes of working families, Democrats in Michigan have managed to clinch not only the top state offices, but also the state’s two U.S. Senate seats.And while every state is different, politicians in other states could learn from Michigan to ignore the bait Republicans use to demonize them and focus on the bottom line issues that matter to voters.Barbara McQuade (@BarbMcQuade) is a professor of law at the University of Michigan. She served as the U.S. attorney for Michigan’s Eastern District from 2010 to 2017.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