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      How Dan Cox Won the Republican Race for Maryland Governor

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      Maryland’s Republican contest for governor was the third election this year in which Democrats have effectively teamed up with Republicans loyal to former President Donald J. Trump to help a far-right candidate win a blue-state primary.Weeks ahead of Maryland’s Republican primary for governor, private Democratic polling showed the Trump-endorsed candidate, Dan Cox, with a slight lead over his establishment-backed rival, Kelly Schulz, a former cabinet secretary to Gov. Larry Hogan.But polls showed that once Republican voters were told Mr. Cox, who spent just $21,000 on TV and radio advertising, had been endorsed by Mr. Trump and held staunchly conservative views on abortion, his advantage ballooned.The Democratic Governors Association proceeded to spend more than $1.16 million on TV ads reminding Republican voters of Mr. Cox’s loyalty to Mr. Trump and endorsement from him.Mr. Cox won his race on Tuesday by double digits. He became the latest Republican primary winner to demonstrate both the power of the party’s far-right base in selecting G.O.P. nominees and the establishment wing’s inability to halt Democratic meddling in primaries.On Wednesday, Mr. Cox — who wrote on Twitter during the Capitol riot that Vice President Mike Pence was a “traitor” — dismissed the idea that he had been propped up by Democrats. They supported his primary bid in the belief that he cannot win the general election in Maryland, which Mr. Trump lost by 33 points in 2020.“The Democrats didn’t win this race,” Mr. Cox said in an interview on “Fox & Friends,” the morning program watched regularly by Mr. Trump. “The arguments of my opponent were replayed over and over again, smearing me.”The chief antagonist of Mr. Cox’s campaign was less any future Democratic opponent or even Ms. Schulz than it was Mr. Hogan, who won two terms as governor of an overwhelmingly Democratic state by focusing on Maryland’s economy while avoiding thorny social issues.Mr. Cox’s strategy of playing to the Trumpist base of the party won him a commanding primary victory, though tens of thousands of uncounted absentee ballots are likely to narrow his 16-point margin.Still, sowing division among Republicans and alienating moderate Democrats is the opposite of how Mr. Hogan won the last two elections. Mr. Cox is likely to face challenges broadening his support.Mr. Cox’s Democratic opponent is likely to be Wes Moore, a best-selling author and former nonprofit executive.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesIn the past, Mr. Cox has associated himself with followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory. He has tweeted the group’s hashtag, and in April he appeared at an event called Patriots Arise at a hotel in Gettysburg, Pa., that was organized by a right-wing social media influencer whose website has promoted a QAnon slogan.There, Mr. Cox promoted a similar brand of Christian nationalism that has animated the campaign of Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, who has endorsed Mr. Cox.“The Constitution does not give us our liberties. It merely protects those that were given by God,” Mr. Cox said at the event. “We have natural rights that supersede any governor, any government, any official, all of which is based upon the fact that we are created in his image.”Mr. Cox, in his Fox interview on Wednesday, played down the suggestion that he would not be able to build a winning coalition.But Mr. Hogan didn’t wait 24 hours before signaling that he would not vote for Mr. Cox. “The governor will not support the QAnon candidate,” said Mr. Hogan’s spokesman, Mike Ricci.Mr. Cox’s campaign manager, his daughter Patience Faith Cox, declined an interview request.The state’s business community, after eight years of being aggressively courted by Mr. Hogan, might soon turn to the Democrats.Rick Weldon, the president of the local chamber of commerce in Frederick, Md., said on Wednesday that he had better conversations about the needs of small businesses in the state with Wes Moore, who leads the still-uncalled Democratic primary, than with Mr. Cox, a state legislator from Frederick.“Mr. Cox is a crusader,” Mr. Weldon said. “Crusaders, once they get elected, make relatively ineffective elected officials.”Democrats’ backing of Mr. Cox was helped by Ms. Schulz’s minimal attempts to define him as unelectable. She never attacked him in television ads, hoping to employ the Hogan strategy of appealing to all manner of Republicans while also winning a substantial amount of Democratic votes in November.Kelly Schulz, Mr. Cox’s top rival, raised about $2.5 million through early July — about five times as much as he took in.Matt Roth for The New York TimesOfficials at the Democratic Governors Association bore no guilt about elevating a series of election-denying, Trump-loyal candidates who would seek to ban abortion, among a range of other measures, if they prevail in November.David Turner, a spokesman for the D.G.A., said his organization was focused on “winning these elections in November.” If giving a boost to far-right candidates increases the chances that Democrats will prevail, he said, it is worth the risk of placing in a governor’s mansion someone like Mr. Cox, Mr. Mastriano or Darren Bailey, an Illinois state senator who was the beneficiary of $35 million of Democratic advertising before winning his primary last month.“If the Republican Party had more leaders and less cowards at the top willing to speak truth to their voters, this lane wouldn’t even exist,” Mr. Turner said.Ms. Schulz had raised about $2.5 million through early July — about five times as much as Mr. Cox took in.But unlike Gov. Brian Kemp in Georgia, who imported a host of ambitious Republicans looking to create some daylight between themselves and Mr. Trump with voters, Ms. Schulz never sought to make her contest a referendum on Trumpism.Campaigning with national Republican figures would have made an already difficult general election much harder, said Doug Mayer, Ms. Schulz’s senior adviser.“You don’t play to win the primary, you play to win the general,” Mr. Mayer said. “In Maryland, that is a very, very, very difficult line to walk.”Mr. Cox’s Democratic opponent is likely to be Mr. Moore, a best-selling author and former nonprofit executive. Mr. Moore holds a 35,000-vote lead over Tom Perez, a former Democratic National Committee chairman. At least 169,000 Democratic absentee votes remain to be counted, but the number could be more than 300,000: Ballots postmarked by Tuesday will count as long as they are received by July 29.On Thursday morning, election officials across Maryland will begin processing the absentee ballots received in the mail and in drop boxes. The counting is expected to take several days.Elizabeth Dias More

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      Dan Cox, a Trump Loyalist, Wins Maryland G.O.P. Primary for Governor

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      Republican voters in Maryland on Tuesday nominated for governor Dan Cox, a state legislator who was endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump and who wrote on Twitter during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol that Vice President Mike Pence was a “traitor.” The Associated Press called the race late Tuesday. Mr. Cox defeated Kelly Schulz, a former cabinet secretary under Gov. Larry Hogan, an ambitious term-limited governor who has sought to present himself as a potential alternative to Mr. Trump in 2024. But Mr. Hogan’s inability to push through his political protégé in his home state will put a significant damper on his chance of galvanizing a national movement in the party against Mr. Trump. Mr. Cox faces a steep general-election challenge in a state Joseph R. Biden Jr. won by more than 30 percentage points. Republicans like Mr. Hogan have done well in Maryland by appealing to independents and moderate Democratic voters worried about Democratic dominance of the General Assembly; Mr. Cox has predicated his campaign on a fealty to Mr. Trump and his far-right base. In remarks to supporters in Annapolis before the race was called on Tuesday night, Ms. Schulz expressed regret about Republican voters’ loyalty to Mr. Trump and lamented that the G.O.P. has strayed from its historical roots. “My Republican Party is the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and John McCain,” she said. “And that is exactly the party that I will continue to fight for.”Ms. Schulz had predicted Mr. Cox would lose the general election by 30 percentage points to any of the Democrats running. “The Maryland Republican Party got together and committed ritualized mass suicide,” said Doug Mayer, an senior aide to Ms. Schulz. “The only thing that was missing was Jim Jones and cup of Kool-Aid.”Democrats were choosing among a field of nine candidates, the top tier of which included Tom Perez, a former Democratic National Committee chairman and labor secretary; Peter Franchot, the state comptroller, who has been in Maryland politics since 1987; and Wes Moore, a best-selling author and former nonprofit executive who campaigned as a political newcomer. Late Tuesday, Mr. Moore held a healthy lead over Mr. Perez, with Mr. Franchot well behind both, though nearly two-thirds of the Democratic vote still remained to be counted — and very little had been reported in Montgomery County, Mr. Perez’s home base. Mr. Moore built his advantage through his strength in Baltimore City and Prince George’s County, which are home to the state’s largest concentrations of Black voters. He was winning nearly half of the vote in Prince George’s County, a populous Washington suburb, a margin that might be difficult for Mr. Perez to make up. Because Maryland law prohibits the processing and counting of ballots returned by mail and in drop boxes until Thursday, the outcome of the Democratic primary for governor and other close races might not be known for days.As Democrats try to retake a governor’s office that has been held since 2015 by a Republican, Mr. Hogan, their primary contest was defined by stylistic differences rather than ideological ones. Mr. Perez and Mr. Franchot emphasized their long experience in government, while Mr. Moore argued that the party needed new blood. From left, Peter Franchot, Wes Moore and Tom Perez faced off in Maryland’s Democratic primary for governor.The New York Times“You know what you’re going to get with Tom Perez,” Mr. Perez said last week in an interview outside an early-voting site in Silver Spring. “It’s a workhorse, not a show horse. It’s someone with a proven track record of getting stuff done.” In an interview on Tuesday on MSNBC, Mr. Moore dismissed criticism that he had given misleading impressions about his personal history and accomplishments, and said the real risk would be elevating an establishment candidate.“People are not looking for the same ideas from the same people,” he said.Mr. Cox, whose campaign raised little money, was the beneficiary of more than $1.16 million in television advertising from the Democratic Governors Association, which tried to help his primary campaign in hopes that he would be easier to defeat in the general election. Democrats across the country have employed similar strategies to aid far-right Republicans in G.O.P. primaries this year, despite the risk that it could backfire.Dan Cox, a Republican state legislator, was endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump.Brian Witte/Associated PressKelly Schulz, a former cabinet secretary for Gov. Larry Hogan, had his backing.Matt Roth for The New York TimesAt least 169,000 Democratic absentee ballots and more than 38,000 Republican ballots had been returned as of Monday, according to the State Board of Elections. Another 204,000 Democratic and 58,000 Republican absentee ballots were mailed to voters and remain outstanding. Ballots postmarked on Tuesday will count if they are received by July 29.Another 116,000 Democrats and 51,000 Republicans voted during the state’s eight days of early in-person balloting, which ended last week.A ballot drop box in Baltimore on Tuesday.Julio Cortez/Associated PressThe turnout was expected to outpace past competitive primaries in Maryland. Four years ago, in another closely contested Democratic primary for governor, 552,000 people voted. Officials involved in the Democratic campaigns expected between 600,000 and 700,000 votes this year in the primary for governor. The Republican turnout picture was murkier. There has not been a meaningful statewide G.O.P. primary in a midterm year since 2014, when Mr. Hogan first ran. That year, 215,000 Republicans voted. In the state’s open contest for attorney general, Republicans were choosing between Michael Anthony Peroutka, who has on several occasions spoken to the League of the South, a group that calls for the states of the former Confederacy to secede again from the United States, and Jim Shalleck, a prosecutor who has served as president of the Montgomery County Board of Elections.In the Democratic primary, Representative Anthony Brown, who served as lieutenant governor under Gov. Martin O’Malley, was facing off against Mr. O’Malley’s wife, Katie Curran O’Malley, who was a judge in Baltimore for two decades.Republicans have not won an election for Maryland attorney general since 1918.In other Maryland races, former Representative Donna Edwards was trying to win back the Prince George’s County-based House seat she gave up to run for the Senate in 2016. Her candidacy is embroiled in a proxy war over Israel policy.Donna Edwards, a former congresswoman, is trying to win back her old seat.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesMs. Edwards is facing Glenn Ivey, a former prosecutor who is backed by a group affiliated with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesThe United Democracy Project, a political action committee affiliated with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, has spent $5.9 million to help Ms. Edwards’s Democratic opponent, Glenn Ivey, a prosecutor. Ms. Edwards, for her part, is backed by J Street, a liberal Jewish organization. And in a House district that stretches from the Washington suburbs across Western Maryland to the West Virginia line, Mr. Trump and Mr. Hogan — frequent critics of each other — endorsed the same candidate, only to see him go down in defeat.That candidate, a 25-year-old conservative journalist, Matthew Foldi, lost to Neil Parrott, a Republican state legislator. Mr. Parrott will face Representative David Trone, a wealthy Democrat, in a rematch of their 2020 contest. More

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      Videos Vanish From Doug Mastriano’s Social Media, on Climate, Abortion and More

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      The videos were a sort-of virtual ride-along with Doug Mastriano as he crisscrossed Pennsylvania in the governor’s race, regaling viewers with his far-right musings about climate change, abortion and critics within his own party.In one live broadcast on Facebook in April, Mr. Mastriano, a Republican state senator, referred to climate change as “pop science.”In a separate video on his social media from a radio interview, three days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, he dismissed the issue of abortion rights as a distraction. And when trying to explain in April why some Republicans would not support him, Mr. Mastriano, a retired Army colonel, attributed it to their “disdain for veterans.”But now that Mr. Mastriano is the G.O.P. nominee for governor, having been helped by the endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump in the primary, he is shifting to the general election — and those videos have vanished.The removal of the videos from his campaign’s Facebook page was reported earlier on Monday by The Philadelphia Inquirer, which listed 14 videos featuring Mr. Mastriano, one of Pennsylvania’s pre-eminent election deniers, that had disappeared since April.It was not the first time that Mr. Mastriano had drawn scrutiny for what critics say is an effort to tone down his profile on social media. Last year, the group Media Matters for America reported that Mr. Mastriano had deleted more than 50 tweets promoting the conspiracy theory QAnon after Media Matters, a journalism watchdog, highlighted his role in an illegitimate election audit in Pennsylvania.But the video footage that once resided on Mr. Mastriano’s campaign Facebook page has not vanished entirely. The New York Times obtained the clips on Monday from American Bridge, a liberal group specializing in opposition research that archived them.A campaign spokesman for Mr. Mastriano denied in a statement on Monday that he had scrubbed his social media accounts of the videos.“The biased mainstream media is trying to manufacture a scandal, but they haven’t done their homework,” said the spokesman, who declined to provide his name but was responding from a campaign email address. “The videos in question were automatically deleted by Facebook after 30 days because of a default Facebook setting.”One of the videos that disappeared was less than 30 days old and was recorded on June 27. And a review of Mr. Mastriano’s Facebook page on Monday showed dozens of Facebook Live videos older than 30 days. The campaign did not respond to a follow-up question about why those videos still appeared.At the end of every Facebook Live broadcast, an automatic prompt asks account holders whether they want their video to be deleted after 30 days or remain on their page, according to the social media company.Critics accused Mr. Mastriano on Monday of trying to distance himself from his extreme views, which they said could alienate voters beyond his far-right political base in the general election against Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor and Pennsylvania’s attorney general.“Doug Mastriano spends every day trafficking conspiracy theories and reminding voters his top priority is banning abortion with no exceptions,” said Manuel Bonder, a campaign spokesman for Mr. Shapiro. “No amount of clicking the delete button can change the fact that Mastriano is the most extreme, dangerous candidate in Pennsylvania history.”David Turner, a spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association, said on Monday that Mr. Mastriano “can’t delete his extreme positions.”“He’s completely out of touch with most Pennsylvanians, calling to ban abortions, trafficking insane election conspiracy theories, and denying climate change,” Mr. Turner said.The Republican Governors Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.In the Facebook Live broadcast on April 6, Mr. Mastriano criticized Gov. Tom Wolf, a term-limited Democrat, for entering Pennsylvania into a regional, multistate compact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector that Mr. Mastriano said could cost the state billions.“For what?” Mr. Mastriano asked rhetorically in the video, assailing Democrats. “For pop science. Let’s talk about climate change. So they’re hellbent on this theory. It’s a theory. It’s not a fact. Heck, the weatherman can’t get the weather right, you know, 24 hours out.”A link to a video on Mr. Mastriano’s campaign Facebook page said on Monday that the content was no longer available “because the owner only shared it with a small group of people, changed who can see it or it’s been deleted.”In a Facebook Live video from June 27, Mr. Mastriano recorded himself giving a radio interview in which he accused Democrats of trying to turn attention away from the troubled economy to issues like abortion rights and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. (He funded buses to shuttle supporters to the rally before the riot.)“They want us to focus on this and now on the Roe v. Wade decision instead of dealing with life,” he said in the video, which was also no longer visible on his Facebook page.Mr. Mastriano’s claim that the issue of reproductive rights was a distraction echoed remarks he made three days earlier in Binghamton, N.Y., where he appeared with Rudolph W. Giuliani and his son, Andrew Giuliani, an unsuccessful Republican candidate for New York governor. More

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      Gov. Hochul Holds Steep Fund-Raising Edge Over G.O.P. Rival Lee Zeldin

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      According to the latest campaign filing numbers, there is little question that Representative Lee Zeldin faces an extreme uphill battle in his effort to unseat Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York.Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, has a better than seven to one fund-raising advantage over Mr. Zeldin, a conservative Republican congressman from Long Island, heading into their general election showdown.Ms. Hochul reported $11.7 million in the bank as of mid-July, compared with just $1.57 million for Mr. Zeldin, reports filed late Friday show.But perhaps the starkest example of the governor’s fund-raising advantage — and, perhaps, her confidence of victory in November — was the nearly $1 million that her campaign transferred to the state Democratic Party, more than half of it before she won her primary election in late June.The $950,000 transfer outpaced the little under $900,000 that Mr. Zeldin reported in the latest period (June 14-July 11), about 60 percent from donors who gave in chunks of $5,000.The largest single source of contributions listed on Mr. Zeldin’s financial disclosure report wasn’t from an individual donor, however — it was from unitemized donations, which have no names attached.Campaigns are not required to report the names of donors who give no more than $99. Many campaigns do so anyway; Ms. Hochul, for example, has listed no unitemized donations in reports going back to August of last year.Representative Lee Zeldin accepting the Republican nomination for governor in February. Johnny Milano for The New York TimesMr. Zeldin has taken the opposite tack. In the last year, the congressman has reported at least $897,636 from unitemized donors, representing 10 percent of the total haul for the Zeldin for New York campaign committee during that time, records show. Mr. Zeldin’s campaign did not immediately respond to questions from The New York Times.In the latest report, Mr. Zeldin reported receiving $72,546 from unitemized donors.Ms. Hochul raised over $2 million from mid-June through the beginning of last week, about $1.8 million (86 percent) of which came in chunks of $5,000 or greater. She shattered previous records for a single state reporting period in January, and she has far outpaced her rivals in both parties ever since.Ms. Hochul’s campaign is hoping to raise as much as $70 million for her race at a time when Democrats nationally are facing headwinds because of sky-high inflation and President Biden’s sagging approval ratings. She has already accumulated half that ambitious amount, with about $35 million raised since she was sworn in as governor on Aug. 24 last year, after Andrew M. Cuomo resigned amid allegations that he had sexually harassed multiple women. More

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      Maryland Primary Races for Governor Pit Old Guard vs. Upstarts

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      Will a deep-blue state elect another Republican governor to succeed Larry Hogan? Tuesday’s competitive primaries will signal where the race is headed.SILVER SPRING, Md. — Tuesday’s primary elections for Maryland governor come at a moment when Democrats are jittery, unsure of the future and perhaps willing to bet on a flashy, unproven commodity.That could be a real problem for Tom Perez.As he did in early 2017, when he won a contest among party insiders at the dawn of the Trump era to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Mr. Perez is pitching himself as the safe establishment choice.But polling in the Democratic race for governor shows a dead heat between Mr. Perez and Wes Moore, a best-selling author, television show host and nonprofit executive who has been endorsed by Oprah Winfrey. Peter Franchot, the state comptroller and a fixture of Maryland politics since the 1980s, is close behind.The race, like Maryland’s Republican primary for governor, will test voters’ appetites for competence and experience at a time when the bases of both parties are angry at their political establishments.Republicans will choose between Kelly Schulz, a former cabinet secretary for the departing Gov. Larry Hogan, who is term-limited, and Dan Cox, a first-term state delegate who has been endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump and who wrote on Twitter during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol that Vice President Mike Pence was a traitor.Mr. Cox is also one in a string of Republicans who have received help this year from Democrats pursuing the hazardous strategy of trying to elevate far-right G.O.P. primary candidates in the hope that they are too extreme to win a general election. The Democratic Governors Association has spent $1.16 million on advertising trying to lift his candidacy — more than all the Republicans combined have spent on TV and radio ads, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm.While the Republican primary is a battle between Mr. Hogan’s center-right political operation and Mr. Trump’s far-right supporters, the Democratic primary has developed as a stylistic contest with few ideological differences: Mr. Perez’s awkward-dad competence, Mr. Moore’s charismatic dynamism and Mr. Franchot’s decades of experience in state politics.Wes Moore, a best-selling author, television show host and nonprofit executive, has faced questions about elements of his personal story.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesDemocrats are eager to win back the governorship of a deep-blue state that has been led by a Republican, Mr. Hogan, since 2015. At the same time, Democrats hold veto-proof majorities in both chambers of Maryland’s General Assembly that are likely to withstand even a strong Republican showing in November thanks to the state’s gerrymandered districts.Neither party’s primary has garnered the nine-figure sums spent on television and radio advertising in other states’ races. Mr. Perez and a super PAC supporting him have combined to spend $3.5 million — more than any other candidate in the governor’s race.Mr. Perez has highlighted his years working in the Justice Department and as labor secretary under former President Barack Obama. In his TV ads — one of which uses Mr. Obama’s voice promoting Mr. Perez — he describes himself as the candidate from the “get stuff done” wing of the party, though he uses a more pungent noun than “stuff.”In an interview on Thursday at an early-voting site in Silver Spring, an inside-the-Beltway suburb, Mr. Perez said Democrats would be taking a big risk in the general election if they nominated Mr. Moore.“I’ve been Senate-confirmed twice,” Mr. Perez said. “I’ve run for office twice. I’ve been vetted for vice president in 2016. I won’t spend the general-election campaign explaining something that I did in the past or that I didn’t do in the past.”Mr. Perez was referring to the fact that elements of Mr. Moore’s inspiring personal story have been challenged.A Rhodes scholar and a veteran of the Afghanistan war, Mr. Moore has placed his biography at the center of his campaign. He wrote a best-selling book that was promoted by Ms. Winfrey, who later gave him a show on her cable channel.Mr. Moore has repeatedly described himself as a Baltimore native, but he was born in the Washington suburbs and raised in the Bronx; he did not live in Baltimore until he enrolled at Johns Hopkins University.And he has sometimes not corrected interviewers who made flattering mistakes about his résumé, including one who said he had been inducted into a Maryland hall of fame for football (an institution that does not exist) and at least two others who described him as a Bronze Star recipient (he is not).Brian Jones, an aide to Mr. Moore, said the candidate had never given any false impressions about his record. He declined requests to make Mr. Moore available for an interview.“Wes Moore has absolutely nothing to exaggerate, he has absolutely nothing to regret, and anyone suggesting otherwise should be ashamed of themselves,” Mr. Jones said.Mr. Moore at the Robin Hood Foundation’s 2018 benefit in New York. He earned nearly $1 million a year at the organization.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesMr. Moore’s most recent job was chief executive of the Robin Hood Foundation, an anti-poverty organization in New York where he was paid nearly $1 million a year.There, in 2018, questions were raised about the amount of overtime Mr. Moore’s executive assistant was accumulating. The assistant, Maria Flynn, wrote a memo, reviewed by The New York Times, stating that Mr. Moore had “required” her to perform a litany of personal tasks for him, including booking Amtrak tickets for Mr. Moore’s nanny and scheduling, negotiating and drafting contracts for his many paid speaking engagements.Ms. Flynn was fired a week after submitting her memo.Robin Hood investigated Ms. Flynn’s allegations. According to an internal report reviewed by The Times, Mr. Moore told Robin Hood that he had asked Ms. Flynn not to submit for overtime pay for personal work she did for him outside the hours she worked for the organization and had instead “personally compensated” her with an unspecified quarterly bonus.The investigation ultimately concluded that Ms. Flynn’s termination was justified because she had filed excessive overtime hours with Robin Hood and had improperly “migrated files to her personal email account.”A separation contract she signed stipulated that Robin Hood would pay her $23,925 — three months’ pay and benefits — if she agreed not to sue the group or speak ill of her experience working there for Mr. Moore.Ms. Flynn said she could not discuss her tenure working for Mr. Moore because she signed a nondisclosure agreement upon her dismissal.“I didn’t have the money to hire a lawyer,” she said. “I wasn’t able to fight.”A Robin Hood spokesman, Kevin F. Thompson, declined to discuss Ms. Flynn’s specific claims or the internal documents.“We take all employee misconduct allegations seriously, and we never had cause to take any disciplinary actions against Wes Moore,” he said.Mr. Jones, the aide to Mr. Moore, said the claims in Ms. Flynn’s memo were false and said they had surfaced through “flimsy opposition research” by Mr. Moore’s political opponents.The third major candidate in the Democratic primary, Mr. Franchot, said in an interview on Friday that his long career in Maryland politics would be valuable in addressing voters’ concerns about inflation and high gas prices.“People are looking for a steady hand at the helm, somebody that has had experience, obviously knowledgeable about the state’s economy,” said Mr. Franchot, who was first elected comptroller in 2006 and served in the General Assembly for two decades before that. “I’m the person that’s been on the stage for the last 16 years.”Republican voters face a different type of decision — whether fealty to Mr. Trump and lies about the 2020 election carry more political weight than Mr. Hogan, a two-term governor who cast himself as a check against excesses of Democratic supermajorities.Ms. Schulz, a former state delegate who spent nearly seven years in Mr. Hogan’s cabinet, has adopted the governor’s mantra and is betting on their political alliance. She would most likely be a formidable candidate in the general election. Mr. Hogan remains one of the nation’s most popular governors, and while the state has more than twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans, it has elected only one Democrat, Martin O’Malley, as governor since the turn of the millennium.Kelly Schulz held a baby in front of cutouts of Democratic politicians at an event this month in Annapolis. She has pitched herself as a moderate Republican successor to Gov. Larry Hogan.Matt Roth for The New York Times“She understands the nuance of what you have to do to win as a Republican in Maryland,” said Mileah Kromer, a pollster at Goucher College in Towson, Md.Ms. Schulz predicted that Mr. Cox would lose the general election by 30 percentage points to any of the Democrats running.“I don’t think there’s a single person out there in the state of Maryland that actually believes that Dan Cox can beat a Democrat in November,” she said in an interview, calling Mr. Cox an “out-of-control conspiracy-theorist-type person.”Mr. Cox’s campaign manager, his daughter Patience Faith Cox, did not respond to requests for comment.The Democratic Governors Association agrees with Ms. Schulz’s assessment. It has essentially fueled Mr. Cox’s entire ad campaign. Mr. Cox has spent just $21,000 on television and radio ads, yet polls show him tied with or leading Ms. Schulz.Mr. Cox has been a prolific amplifier of pro-Trump conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. In December 2020, he wrote on Facebook that Mr. Trump should use the federal government to “seize federal vote machines in states where fraud is exceedingly rampant.”He chartered three buses from his home base in Frederick County to the Jan. 6, 2021, rally to protest the election results. That day, after the mob had breached the Capitol amid chants of “Hang Mike Pence,” Mr. Cox tweeted, “Pence is a traitor.”Dan Cox, a Republican state delegate in Maryland, has been a prolific amplifier of pro-Trump conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. Brian Witte/Associated PressAhead of Tuesday’s primary, Mr. Cox has threatened lawsuits seeking to invalidate mail-in ballots and warned without evidence that “there have been mules in Maryland” illegally stuffing ballot drop boxes, a reference to a Trump-promoted film that makes false claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election.The counting of absentee ballots is expected to last for days after Tuesday’s vote. Maryland law forbids the processing and counting of ballots returned in drop boxes or by mail until Thursday, and aides for several candidates have warned that the winners in each primary may not be known until late in the week.Delegate Ric Metzgar, a Republican who is backing Mr. Cox, said that Mr. Hogan had alienated the party’s base by breaking with Mr. Trump and that Ms. Schulz had failed to present herself as anything beyond an extension of Mr. Hogan’s administration.“There’s not many Republicans supporting him at this moment, he’s distanced himself so far away from Trump,” Mr. Metzgar said. “You can’t ride coattails if there’s no coattails to hang on to.” More

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      Beto O’Rourke broke a Texas fund-raising record with a $27.6 million haul, his campaign said.

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      Beto O’Rourke set a new Texas fund-raising record for state office with a $27.6 million haul over four months in the governor’s race, his campaign announced on Friday, saying that it had outpaced Gov. Greg Abbott, the Republican incumbent, in the tightening contest.But the campaign of Mr. Abbott, who still holds a cash-on-hand advantage over Mr. O’Rourke, reported that he had raised nearly $25 million during the same period ending in June.Mr. O’Rourke’s campaign received over a half-million donations at the same time that he was staunchly critical of gun control laws in Texas after a mass shooting in May at an elementary school in Uvalde, and after the state imposed restrictions on abortions last month.Both issues have boosted the national profile of Mr. O’Rourke, a Democrat and former congressman who ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2018 and later for president.Mr. O’Rourke received widespread attention in May when he interrupted a news conference held by Mr. Abbott in Uvalde after an 18-year-old gunman armed with an AR-15-style rifle killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school. Mr. O’Rourke, who supports banning assault weapons, accused Mr. Abbott of “doing nothing” to prevent gun violence before Mr. Abbott’s allies told Mr. O’Rourke to “shut up” and said that he was an “embarrassment.”Two recent polls — one conducted by the University of Houston and one by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas in Austin — had Mr. O’Rourke within five and within six percentage points of Mr. Abbott.“We’re receiving support from people in every part of Texas,” Mr. O’Rourke said in a statement and pointed to “keeping our kids safe” and “protecting a woman’s freedom to make her own decisions about her own body, health care and future” as significant concerns.Gardner Pate, who is Mr. Abbott’s campaign chairman, said in a statement that Mr. Abbott’s re-election effort was well positioned, with nearly $46 million in cash on hand as of the end of June and having raised nearly $68 million since last June.“Our campaign has also pre-purchased more than $20 million in advertising for the fall, and begun funding an extensive block-walking program to get voters to the polls this November,” Mr. Pate said.Mr. O’Rourke’s campaign did not disclose how much cash on hand it had through June, but a February filing showed that he had nearly $6.8 million.Official campaign finance reports for Mr. O’Rourke and Mr. Abbott, due on Friday to the Texas Ethics Commission, have not yet been posted. It was not immediately clear who held the previous Texas fund-raising record for state office. More