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      Gov. Kathy Hochul Seeks Donations From Cuomo Appointees

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul’s campaign says contributions from board and commission members and their families are fair game because she did not appoint them.ALBANY, N.Y. — On the road to building one of the largest campaign war chests the state of New York has ever seen, Gov. Kathy Hochul has been taking money from appointees of the governor — despite an executive order designed to prevent it.In her first year in office, Ms. Hochul has accepted more than $400,000 from appointees on boards from Buffalo to Battery Park City as well as the appointees’ spouses, a New York Times analysis of campaign finance data has found.The fund-raising has occurred despite the longstanding executive order — reissued by Ms. Hochul on her first day in office — that prohibits such transactions in order to avoid even the appearance of rewarding donors with jobs in exchange for contributions.Ms. Hochul’s campaign said it was appropriate to accept the contributions because they came from people appointed by her predecessor, Andrew M. Cuomo. The argument underscored a loophole in the ethics order that would seem to allow one governor to accept money from another governor’s board and commission appointees. In some cases, Ms. Hochul received donations from people Mr. Cuomo had appointed and then gave them new appointments.A spokesman for Ms. Hochul’s campaign, Jerrel Harvey, said that Ms. Hochul had not accepted money from people she appointed and emphasized that all of her fund-raising had been aboveboard.“We’ve been clear from the beginning of Governor Hochul’s term that people who are appointed by her are prevented from donating once they are appointed,” Mr. Harvey said. “We have followed that straightforward standard consistently and strictly.”But legal experts and good government advocates have called Ms. Hochul’s reasoning into question.“It’s a silly argument to say if I appointed you then you can’t contribute to me, but if my predecessor appointed you, then I can hit you up for donations,” said Bruce Green, a professor at Fordham University Law School and a former member of the New York City Conflicts of Interest Board. “Going forward, presumably, they’re both going to want to be reappointed.”Ms. Hochul has already raised some $35 million and set a goal of raising as much as twice that amount ahead of the general election in November. Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesThe donations that Ms. Hochul accepted from appointees represent just a small portion of her campaign’s huge haul ahead of the election in November. She has already raised some $35 million and set a goal of raising as much as twice that amount, people familiar with her plans said. Doing so would put the 2022 governor’s race at or near the most expensive in state history.Ms. Hochul, a Democrat who was sworn in as governor after Mr. Cuomo resigned amid a scandal last year, easily defeated two primary rivals this summer and is heavily favored to win against Representative Lee Zeldin, a Republican, in the fall.Although she has promised a clean break from the ways of her predecessor, Ms. Hochul’s willingness to raise money from appointees runs counter to that pledge. Mr. Cuomo was known for taking a hawkish approach to soliciting donations from the people he appointed, raising ethics concerns.Ms. Hochul’s campaign has not shrunk from accepting donations from Mr. Cuomo’s appointees, receiving more than $250,000 from them, records show.She got more than $56,000 from the real estate developer Don Capoccia, whom Mr. Cuomo appointed to the Battery Park City Authority in 2011 and who did not respond to requests for comment.She accepted more than $90,000 between October and May from a trial lawyer, Joe Belluck, who was chosen by Mr. Cuomo for two statewide panels, and his wife. Ms. Hochul appointed Mr. Belluck to the state’s new Cannabis Advisory Board in June.Mr. Belluck scoffed at the notion of any impropriety in his donation.“I receive no remuneration and do no business with the state, period,” he said. “I have no private interests related to these positions. I donate to Governor Hochul because I support her policies and admire her leadership, and I am honored to serve.”Ms. Hochul also received $45,200 from John Ernst, an heir to the Bloomingdale’s fortune, whom Mr. Cuomo appointed to the Adirondack Park Agency board in 2016, and Mr. Ernst’s wife. Less than three weeks after receiving those donations, she reappointed Mr. Ernst to the park agency’s board and made him chairman.Mr. Ernst said he initially turned down Ms. Hochul’s offer of the chairmanship, which comes with a $30,000 annual salary, and emphatically denied any connection between his donating and being appointed to the position.“If I had thought it was a conflict, I wouldn’t have done it — wouldn’t have made a contribution,” he said. “I did it independently as a citizen because I believed in Kathy Hochul.”A spokeswoman for the governor’s office, Julie Wood, said Ms. Hochul has applied the ethics order far more “broadly and strictly” than Mr. Cuomo did, saying his administration “violated their own rules.”“Governor Hochul holds herself to a higher ethical standard,” Ms. Wood said.Ms. Hochul has also accepted contributions and then appointed the donors to state boards and commissions. She received $3,000 from Robert Simpson, the chief executive of a Syracuse nonprofit that promotes economic development, in two donations and named him to the board of Empire State Development, New York’s economic development agency, less than a month after the second one.A spokeswoman for Mr. Simpson said that after he assumed the post he adopted policies to limit conflicts of interest and pledged to no longer contribute to or raise money for Ms. Hochul.Ms. Hochul accepted more than $7,800 from Janice Shorenstein, the mother of Ms. Hochul’s former transition director, Marissa Shorenstein, and Janice Shorenstein threw a fund-raiser for the governor in May. Marissa Shorenstein, who attended the event, was confirmed to the New York State Gaming Commission about two weeks later. Ms. Shorenstein and her mother did not respond to requests for comment left at their offices.And Ms. Hochul accepted another $5,000 in April from Sammy Chu, a Long Island businessman whose company also paid more than $2,100 for a Hochul fund-raiser in Plainview two days later. In late May, she tapped him for a spot on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.Mr. Chu said he learned of the rules against governors’ accepting money from appointees only when The Times informed him of them in August.“There was certainly no quid pro quo,” Mr. Chu said. “Now that I’m appointed to the board, you know, I’ll be hypervigilant about it. But at that time, I was not a nominee or a board member.”Taken together, records show, Ms. Hochul accepted at least 40 donations totaling more than $475,000 from her nominees or Mr. Cuomo’s appointees and their family members. Those appointees are sitting on more than 20 boards, commissions and public authorities across New York, including the State University of New York board, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the New York Power Authority and the United Nations Development Corporation.Ms. Hochul’s campaign stressed that she had been careful not to take contributions from any person she appointed to a state position. In at least one case, The Times found, Ms. Hochul accepted contributions from a person appointed by Mr. Cuomo, appointed that person to a different commission and then declined to accept further contributions from him.While none of the donations accepted by Ms. Hochul’s campaign from her own appointees appeared to violate any rules, they nevertheless might create the appearance of impropriety, legal experts said.Some might feel pressure to give to an elected official with power over their appointed positions. Others who wish to be appointed might donate in hopes of getting the job, said Kathleen Clark, a Washington University law professor.“It may appear that the way to get appointed is to give money or to hold fund-raisers,” Professor Clark said, adding: “The scandal is what we allow rather than what we prohibit.”For her part, Ms. Hochul has dismissed any suggestion that her fund-raising practices might raise ethical concerns. When a reporter asked at a recent news conference if she worried about the optics of taking campaign money from people who are doing business with the state, she bristled.“I will say one sentence on this,” she said. “I follow all the rules, always have, always will.”Nicholas Fandos More

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      Democrats in Georgia, Buoyed by Recent Wins, Seek to Keep Up Momentum

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      COLUMBUS, Ga. — As President Biden and Democrats in Congress have notched some wins in Washington lately, Democrats in Georgia have been happily accepting the credit.“Georgia Democrats, we did the work,” Stacey Abrams, the party’s nominee for governor, told delegates at the state party’s convention this weekend. “We provided the voices and the votes that delivered these resources, and now we deserve a better life, a brighter future.”Georgia Democrats’ claim as the clutch players of the 2020 cycle is earned — the state’s Electoral College votes went to a Democrat for the first time since 1992, and it elected two Democratic senators, giving the party control of the Senate. But it has no doubt ramped up the pressure for 2022, raising expectations that the far-from-solidly-blue state might not meet in 2022.Behind Democrats’ boasts at the convention, there is considerable anxiety among party activists. Democrats’ success hinges on a mix of sky-high turnout from the base along with a strong showing from moderate and independent voters in conservative-leaning counties. Now, with a racially diverse statewide ticket and more funding and manpower than the state party has ever seen, the party threw its support behind both its current slate of candidates and its strategy from the past cycle.Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor, said the slate of statewide candidates was “the most extraordinary ticket Georgia has ever produced.”David Walter Banks for The New York TimesRiding a wave of recent legislative wins on climate and health care, along with a boost from President Biden’s student debt relief plan, politicians at Georgia’s Democratic State Convention this weekend played up the role of their voters in securing those victories in Washington.One of the two senators Georgians elected in 2020, Raphael Warnock, is vying this year for a full term against the former University of Georgia football icon Herschel Walker. On Saturday, in a packed convention hall 100 miles southwest of Atlanta, Mr. Warnock joined the state’s top Democratic candidates and elected officials to pitch the party faithful on making the 2022 midterms a repeat of the last election cycle.Mr. Warnock, the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church and the first Black Democrat to represent Georgia in the Senate, focused his speech on the policies that Democrats passed with a razor-thin majority in the Senate and his effort to push Mr. Biden to take action on student loan debt. After those wins, he said, Democrats need time to accomplish even more.“I believe that we’ve started to shape the future that embraces all of our children. But that work is not yet done,” Mr. Warnock told the large crowd of delegates, elected officials and supporters that gathered on Saturday, imploring them to organize in their communities to turn out in the same large numbers that elected him and Jon Ossoff to the Senate in 2021. “I’m glad you’re in this room,” he said. “But the work happens outside of this room.”The convention kicked off a 10-week stretch of campaigning and voter mobilization efforts that will determine the party’s fate in the November midterm elections and prove whether the party’s wins during the 2020 presidential election and U.S. Senate runoffs were a one-off in the state or the beginning of a trend toward blue.Among those counting on big Democratic gains is Representative Sanford D. Bishop Jr., a 15-term incumbent whose district is a top target for Republicans under new lines that make it more competitive. His Republican challenger is Chris West, a lawyer and first-time candidate who has campaigned on a heavily conservative platform and painted Mr. Bishop as disconnected from voters in the heavily rural district, which stretches from the Florida-Georgia line through the center of the state.Mr. Bishop said he did not believe that voters in his district would think of him as “out of touch” nor would they deny that he’s been “up close and personal” with constituents. He pointed to his staff and called them his “eyes and ears” in the district. Asked if that would be enough to set him apart, he underlined his decades spent in both the Georgia state house and U.S. House of Representatives and criticized Mr. West as having “no legislative experience.”As Georgia’s Republican candidates pummel Democrats on the economy and tie them to Mr. Biden’s low approval ratings, Democrats used Saturday’s convention to highlight the contrast between their policies and those of Republicans, especially on abortion access and preservation of democracy. Ms. Abrams exalted her running mates, calling Georgia’s slate of statewide candidates “the most extraordinary ticket Georgia has ever produced.”She added: “It looks like Georgia and sounds like Georgia — it knows Georgia.” More

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      Brian Kemp Must Testify in Trump Inquiry After Election

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      ATLANTA — A judge ruled on Monday that Gov. Brian P. Kemp of Georgia must appear before a special grand jury investigating election interference by former President Donald J. Trump, but will not be compelled to do so until after the Nov. 8 election.Mr. Kemp, who is running for a second term this year, is one of a number of high-profile Republicans who have been fighting subpoenas that call upon them to testify in the sprawling case. Unlike many of those other Republicans, Mr. Kemp does not appear to have been involved in efforts after the November 2020 election to overturn Mr. Trump’s election loss in Georgia.Indeed, Mr. Kemp resisted a personal entreaty from Mr. Trump, in December 2020, to convene the state Legislature in order to appoint pro-Trump electors from Georgia, even though Joseph R. Biden, a Democrat, had won the popular vote in the state.Nevertheless, Mr. Kemp’s lawyers in recent days have tried to persuade Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court that under Georgia law, the sitting governor should not be subject to subpoenas. They argued, among other things, that the governor was protected by the doctrine of sovereign immunity, and that the subpoena had been issued “for improper political purposes” because his presence was being demanded before the November 2022 election. The investigation is being overseen by a Democrat, District Attorney Fani T. Willis of Fulton County, which encompasses most of Atlanta.In a prepared statement on Monday, a spokesperson for Mr. Kemp said the court had “correctly paused” his testimony until after the election, saying the governor’s office would work “to ensure a full accounting of the governor’s limited role in the issues being investigated is available to the special grand jury.”Understand Georgia’s Trump Election InvestigationCard 1 of 5Understand Georgia’s Trump Election InvestigationAn immediate legal threat to Trump. More

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      Beto O’Rourke Sidelined With Bacterial Infection Amid Texas Run

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      The Democrat, who is trying to unseat Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, said that although his symptoms had improved, he would be resting at home on doctors’ orders.Beto O’Rourke, the former congressman and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate who is running to unseat Greg Abbott in the tightening race for Texas governor, said on Sunday that he would be sidelined from campaigning because of a bacterial infection.Mr. O’Rourke, 49, said on Twitter that he had gone to Methodist Hospital, in San Antonio, after feeling ill on Friday.“While my symptoms have improved, I will be resting at home in El Paso in accordance with the doctors’ recommendations,” he said. “I am sorry to have had to postpone events because of this, but promise to be back on the road with you as soon as I am able.”Mr. O’Rourke on Friday postponed a weekend of campaign stops in the Coastal Bend region of Texas after falling ill and had also left early from a book signing in San Antonio that afternoon, according to The Caller Times, a newspaper in Corpus Christi. A campaign spokesman said that Mr. O’Rourke did not have Covid-19 and did not provide more details, the newspaper reported.In his statement on Sunday, Mr. O’Rourke did not say when he expected to be back on the trail.His uphill candidacy, an attempt to wrest the Texas governor’s mansion from Republican control for the first time since Ann Richards’s underdog win in 1990, has relied heavily on traveling the state and meeting Republican voters, even inviting protesters to his events.“I can’t win this with Democrats alone,” Mr. O’Rourke said in a recent interview with The New York Times after an event in Texarkana.A poll earlier this month from The Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler found that Mr. Abbott, who is seeking his third term, was leading Mr. O’Rourke by 7 percentage points. More

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      Doug Mastriano Wore a Confederate Uniform in a Faculty Photo

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      Doug Mastriano, the far-right Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, wore a Confederate uniform for a faculty photo at the Army War College that surfaced on Friday.The photo, from the 2013 to 2014 academic year, shows Mr. Mastriano wearing a gray military uniform, including a gray cap with yellow trim, and holding a Civil War-era firearm. It was first reported Friday evening by Reuters, which obtained it through a Freedom of Information Act request.Mr. Mastriano — a retired Army colonel and now a state senator whose district includes Gettysburg, the site of the battle where the tide of the Civil War turned against the Confederacy — is running for governor against the Pennsylvania attorney general, Josh Shapiro, a Democrat.Mr. Mastriano’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday evening. Neither did the Army War College, which Reuters reported had recently removed the photo from a wall of faculty portraits. Mr. Mastriano used to work for the college’s Department of Military Strategy, Plans and Operations.Some of the other faculty members in the photo also appear to be wearing historical outfits, though others are in regular attire. Mr. Mastriano is a leading figure on the far right in Pennsylvania, where he spearheaded efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and funded buses that took supporters of former President Donald J. Trump to Washington for the Jan. 6, 2021, rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol.If elected in November, Mr. Mastriano would appoint Pennsylvania’s top elections official. He has suggested de-registering all of Pennsylvania’s roughly nine million registered voters and requiring them to register again.Mr. Mastriano was criticized in recent months for his ties to the founder of the far-right social media platform Gab, who has made antisemitic remarks. Mr. Mastriano’s campaign paid Gab a $5,000 consulting fee, and he did an interview with the founder, Andrew Torba, in which the two praised each other. In response to criticism, Mr. Mastriano said last month that he rejected antisemitism and that Mr. Torba “doesn’t speak for me or my campaign.” More

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      Ads Begin in Texas Governor Race, With O’Rourke’s Highlighting Abortion

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      HOUSTON — With early voting now two months away, the ad competition has begun in the race for Texas governor. Last week, Gov. Greg Abbott released a first ad and, on Thursday, Beto O’Rourke, the former El Paso congressman and perennial Democratic hopeful, countered with two of his own.The O’Rourke campaign, looking for leverage in a tightening but still uphill campaign, focused on abortion, seeking to harness anger among women at the overturning of Roe v. Wade and to direct that anger at Mr. Abbott.Its two ads were released on the day that a so-called trigger law — made possible by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade — went into effect in Texas. The law, signed last year by Mr. Abbott, bans abortion with no exception for rape or incest and with only limited medical exceptions.“From this day forward, Aug. 25, women all across Texas are no longer free,” several women say in one ad, speaking one after another. “All because of Greg Abbott’s abortion law.”“So I’m voting for Beto, who will give women our freedom back,” they conclude.Another 30-second ad from Mr. O’Rourke similarly seeks to link him to the idea of freedom, trying to recapture a word that is more often used by Republicans. That ad, also focused on the state’s abortion ban under Mr. Abbott, features a politically mixed Texas couple who are now both supporting Mr. O’Rourke.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsAug. 23 Primaries: The Democratic establishment in Florida and New York had a good night. Here are some key takeaways and a rundown of who won and who lost.The Evidence Against a Red Wave: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it’s increasingly hard to see the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage. A strong Democratic showing in a special election in New York’s Hudson Valley is the latest example.Bruising Fights in N.Y.: A string of ugly primaries played out across the state, as Democrats and Republicans fought over rival personalities and the ideological direction of their parties.Challenging DeSantis: Florida Democrats chose Representative Charlie Crist, a former Republican, to take on Gov. Ron DeSantis, setting up a contest between a centrist and a hard-right G.O.P. incumbent.“This is a free country,” says the husband, Trey Ramsey, shown as a lifelong Republican who supported former president Donald J. Trump. “We need a governor who gets that, and that’s Beto.”The ad appeared to be part of a strategy by Mr. O’Rourke to challenge Mr. Abbott for wavering Republican votes, including in typically conservative strongholds around rural Texas. In recent weeks, he has crisscrossed the state, appearing in front of supportive crowds in deep-red areas but occasionally attracting vocal, and armed, protesters.In contrast to Mr. O’Rourke’s attacks, the governor’s campaign opted for a strategy for its first ad that has worked well in previous elections: a biographical portrait of the governor, a two-term incumbent who uses a wheelchair and has been in statewide elective office in Texas since the 1990s.An ad by Mr. Abbott tells a biographical story about his family, injury and recovery.Texans for Greg AbbottThe ad recounts his recovery from an accident that partly paralyzed him and is narrated by his wife, Cecilia, who is Hispanic. The governor’s campaign has said it believes Mr. Abbott can win a majority of Hispanic voters, who have been increasingly turning to Republicans, particularly in more rural areas of South Texas.“Hard work, perseverance and family: That’s what defines Greg Abbott and how he governs Texas,” Mrs. Abbott says.The ad is the first of what is likely to be a barrage of messages from Mr. Abbott, who has vowed to spend $100 million on the race and whose campaign has already secured some $20 million in television and digital space for ads.Mr. O’Rourke, also a proficient fund-raiser, started behind Mr. Abbott, who entered the race with tens of millions on hand. As of the July filing, the governor had $46 million on hand and Mr. O’Rourke had $24 million. The O’Rourke campaign has repeatedly stressed to potential donors the high cost of advertising statewide in Texas.Several polls in recent weeks put Mr. O’Rourke at five to seven percentage points behind Mr. Abbott, who won in 2018 by 13 percentage points. More

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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