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      ‘The G.O.P. Has Gone Even Farther to the Right Than I Expected’: Three Writers Talk About the Midterms

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      Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted an online conversation with Lis Smith, a Democratic communications strategist, and Matthew Continetti of the American Enterprise Institute about a month of primaries, how they have shaped the midterms and what Democrats and Republicans can hope for and expect.FRANK BRUNI: On Tuesday, at least 19 children and two teachers were killed in the latest mass school shooting in a country that has witnessed too many of them. In my heartfelt (and heartsick) opinion, that should change the political landscape. But, realistically, will it?LIS SMITH: It should, but I unfortunately don’t think it will move the needle a ton.MATTHEW CONTINETTI: I agree. Unfortunately, history suggests that the political landscape won’t change after the horror in Texas.There’s a long and terrible list of school shootings. Each incident has been met with public horror and with calls for gun controls. But little has happened to either reduce the number of guns in America or to shift power to advocates for firearm regulation.SMITH: After Sandy Hook, we did see a number of states — Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, New York — take strong action on gun control, and I still believe that we will most likely see gun-control legislation on the state versus the federal level.And this does raise the stakes of the midterms. It will allow Democrats in marginal, suburban seats to use the issue against their Republican opponents, given that nearly every Republican in the House voted against H.R. 8, which would implement background checks and common-sense restrictions of the sort that have had broad public support.BRUNI: After that cheery start, let’s pull back and zoom out to a bigger picture. Have the primaries so far conformed to your expectations — or are there particular results or general patterns that surprise you and that challenge, or throw into doubt, your assumptions about what will happen in November?CONTINETTI: I’d say they are shaping up as one might expect. The president’s party rarely does well in midterms. The Biden Democrats appear to be no exception. What has surprised me is the depth of public disillusionment with President Biden, his party and the direction of the country. My guess is Democrats are surprised as well.SMITH: We have seen common-sense Democrats like Shontel Brown in Ohio, Valerie Foushee in North Carolina and Morgan McGarvey in Kentucky win against far-left Democrats, and that’s a good thing for the party and our chances in November.The G.O.P. has gone even farther right than I expected. Just look at Doug Mastriano, who won the Republican governor’s primary in Pennsylvania. He funded buses to shuttle people to the Capitol on Jan. 6 and helped efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state. He opposes abortion without exceptions. He makes Ron DeSantis look like Charlie Baker.BRUNI: Matt, do ultra-MAGA Republican candidates like him or for that matter Ted Budd in the North Carolina Senate race potentially undermine what might otherwise be a red-wave year? I’m thinking about a guest essay you wrote for The Times not long ago in which you raised the concern that Donald Trump and his minions would spoil things. Does that concern persist?CONTINETTI: Indeed, it does. Where Republicans got the idea that Trump is a political winner is a mystery to me. By the end of his presidency, Democrats were in full control of government. And he has been unpopular with the independents and suburban moderates necessary for any party to win a majority.I draw a distinction, though, between Mastriano and Budd. Mastriano is, as you say, ultra-MAGA. Even Trump was wary of him until the very end of the primary. Budd is a more typical fusion of conservative movement traits with Trump MAGA traits. If I had to guess, Budd is more likely to win than Mastriano.BRUNI: Lis, is Matt splitting hairs? I mean, in the House, Budd voted to overturn the 2020 election results. I worry that we’re cutting certain Republican conspiracists a break because they’re not as flagrant conspiracists as, say, Marjorie Taylor Greene or Madison Cawthorn.SMITH: It’s splitting hairs a bit. But he’s right — Mastriano proved so polarizing and so toxic that you had a former Trump adviser in Pennsylvania, David Urban, say that he was too extreme. He was too MAGA for the MAGA crowd. The G.O.P. has been more welcoming of Budd, but he also wanted to overturn 2020 and he also opposes abortion in every instance. North Carolina voters have a history of turning back candidates with extreme social views. That’s one of the reasons Roy Cooper won his first race for governor — the G.O.P. overreached on the bathrooms issue, the law that restricted restroom access for transgender people.BRUNI: What shall we call “too MAGA for MAGA”? Mega-MAGA? Meta-MAGA? Maxi-MAGA? Regardless, we keep asking, after every primary: What does this say about Trump’s level of sway? Is that question distracting us from bigger, more relevant ones?SMITH: Trump is a factor here, but Democrats really need to keep the focus on these candidates and their beliefs and make this an election between the Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate. As we saw in Virginia, Democrats can’t rely on painting their opponents as Trump 2.0 — they need to explicitly define and disqualify the opposition, and these mega-MAGA extremists give us plenty of material. The people who aren’t as out there as Mastriano give us plenty of material, too.BRUNI: Matt, I know you’re not here to help Democrats, but if you were advising them, what would you tell them to do to head off a possible or probable midterms drubbing?CONTINETTI: If I were a Democratic consultant, the first thing I would tell my clients would be to take shelter from the storm. There is no escaping Biden’s unpopularity. The best hope for Democratic incumbents is to somehow denationalize their campaigns. Even that probably won’t be enough to escape the gravitational pull of Biden’s declining job approval.BRUNI: Lis, the “plenty of material” you refer to must include abortion. Along those lines, do you see anything potentially happening in the months ahead that could change the trajectory of the midterms? For example, what if the Supreme Court in June in fact overturns Roe or further weakens gun regulations? What about hearings on the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol?SMITH: Roe is an example of something that could change the trajectory of the election. I usually think of the presidential election as when the broad electorate turns out and midterms as when pissed-off voters come out to vote. The Supreme Court taking away something that has been a fundamental right for 50 years will definitely piss people off and bring some of the Biden voters who might have otherwise voted Republican this year back into our corner. But voters have more reasons to be angry than just Roe.BRUNI: What are you thinking of? I’d like to hear it and then what Matt has to say about it.SMITH: We need to be screaming from the rooftops about what the Republicans in Congress are doing. They voted against the American Rescue Plan (then took credit for the checks that went to American households), mostly voted against infrastructure (then took credit for projects in their districts), mostly voted against capping the price of insulin, voted against stopping oil companies from price gouging, mostly voted against a bill that would include importing baby formula.Why? Because they want to impose as much misery as possible on the American people so that voters blame Biden and vote Republican in November. It’s really cynical, dark stuff. And then when they win, they want to criminalize abortions and ensure that we never have free and fair elections again. That’s my rant.CONTINETTI: Voters will hear a lot of what Lis is saying before November, but the Democrats’ problem is that they are in power as inflation comes roaring back after a 40-year absence. I am open to the idea that the end of Roe v. Wade may induce pro-choice voters off the sidelines in some swing districts, but in the weeks since the leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion, the evidence of a pro-abortion-rights surge among voters is scattered at best. As the great Mark Shields likes to say, “When the economy is bad, the economy is the only issue.” Right now the economy is the issue, and it’s hurting the Democratic Party.BRUNI: As we were all typing, Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat who’s running for governor in Texas, where this latest horrible massacre occurred, interrupted a news conference being held by the incumbent Republican governor, Greg Abbott, to shout at Abbott that he was doing nothing to stop such bloodshed. In its urgency and passion, is that smart politics that could make a difference, Lis?SMITH: That’s a great example of going on the offensive, generating the emotion and pissed-off-ness that Democrats need to turn out our voters in the midterms. We often lose the gun debate because it’s about policy particulars. If Democrats can channel the outrage that a lot of Americans feel — particularly parents — toward the politicians who are just sitting behind tables and choosing inaction and make this about political courage, we can potentially flip the script. Sometimes these sorts of confrontations can come across as a little stunt-y, but in this case, it was executed well and made Governor Abbott and his lackeys look cowardly.CONTINETTI: O’Rourke is running 10 points behind Abbott, and I don’t think his outburst will help him close that gap. Many Democrats believe that pissed-off-ness is the key to winning elections, but I don’t know what evidence there is for that case. The key to winning elections is to appeal to independent voters and moderates in the suburbs.SMITH: Trump’s whole pitch is to play on grievances! And midterm elections are traditionally where voters air their grievances: They’re mad about inflation, mad about gas prices — in 2018, they were mad about Republicans’ trying to repeal Obamacare. This is a strategy that appeals to independent and moderate voters in the suburbs — they are often with Democrats on abortion, with us on guns.CONTINETTI: As you know, Trump did not win the popular vote in either 2016 or 2020. Pissed-off-ness gets you only so far. I agree that it helps when you are the out party in a national election and can blame the incumbent for poor economic and social conditions. Whether getting angry will work in Texas this year and for this candidate is another matter.BRUNI: Matt, why aren’t the Republicans who are losing to other Republicans in these primaries, as Lis put it earlier, “screaming from the rooftops” about election irregularities and rigged results the way they do when they lose to Democrats? Either a state holds trustworthy elections or it doesn’t, no?CONTINETTI: We’ve been reminded in recent weeks of what you might call Trumpian Exceptionalism. Whenever Trump loses, he says the result is fraudulent. He’s been urging his choice in the Pennsylvania Senate primary, Mehmet Oz, to declare victory in a race too close to call. Yet Oz has refrained, as have other Trump picks like the former senator David Perdue, who lost in a landslide in Georgia to the incumbent governor, Brian Kemp. Is there a Republican future in which candidates regularly ignore Trump? Some of us hope so. Though we’ve learned not to hope too much.BRUNI: Let’s end with a lighting round of short questions. At this point, just over five months out, what percentage chance would you say the Democrats have of holding the House? The Senate?CONTINETTI: Math, much less statistics, has never been my strong suit. Let’s just say that the Democrats have a very slim chance of holding the House and a slightly less-than-even chance of holding the Senate.SMITH: Emphasis on “at this point”: 51 percent chance Democrats hold the Senate, 15 percent House.BRUNI: In 2028 or 2032, will we be talking about Sarah Huckabee Sanders, possible Republican presidential nominee?!?!SMITH: Wow, I’ve never thought of that, but I can see it. At some point the Republicans will nominate a woman for president — let’s hope that you didn’t just conjure this one.CONTINETTI: I can see that, too — maybe that’s when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will make her presidential debut as well.BRUNI: Thoughts on Herschel Walker (potentially) in the Senate, in five words or less.SMITH: Death of an institution.CONTINETTI: Fun to watch.BRUNI: Lastly, in one sentence without too many conjunctions and clauses, give me a reason not to feel too despondent-verging-on-hopeless about our political present and immediate future?SMITH: We’ve gotten through worse.CONTINETTI: When you study history, you are reminded that America has been through a lot like this before — and worse — and has not only endured but prospered. We’ll get through this moment. It will just take time.Sorry, that’s three sentences — but important ones!Frank Bruni (@FrankBruni) is a professor of public policy at Duke, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk,” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter and can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Matthew Continetti (@continetti) is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism.” Lis Smith (@Lis_Smith), a Democratic communications strategist, was a senior adviser to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign and is the author of the forthcoming memoir “Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      At Least Trump Didn’t Get What He Wanted This Week

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      Well, the people have spoken. Sort of.Several major elections this week, and the big story was Georgia. The race Donald Trump certainly seemed to care about most was a Republican primary there involving his enemy Gov. Brian Kemp.Trump, as the world knows, hates hates hates Kemp for insisting on reporting the accurate results of Georgia’s voting in the 2020 presidential race. The rancor runs so deep that Trump’s Save America PAC actually coughed up at least $500,000 toward Kemp’s defeat.Normally, our ex-president sits on his cash like a nesting hen. Must have tugged at his heartstrings to see it being carted away. And to no avail, hehehehehehe. Trump recruited former Senator David Perdue to run against his enemy, and Kemp demolished Perdue by more than three to one.Same story with Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, who Trump told to “find 11,780 votes” after the presidential election and give him the win. Didn’t happen! Yet this week, Raffensperger did so well with Georgia Republican voters that he’s not even going to face a primary runoff.If you’ve got an optimistic nature, here’s a spin you can put on the whole story: Tuesday’s results showed regular Republicans aren’t all still steaming about how the 2020 presidential election was stolen from their man. And they’re not all going to the polls to get revenge.They’re ready to — dare I say it? — move on. No better example than Mike Pence. “I was for Brian Kemp before it was cool,” the former vice president told a crowd near Atlanta.Yes, he really said that. It will be remembered as yet another sign of the wrecked relationship between Trump and his former No. 2. It was also perhaps the only moment in American history when Mike Pence was linked with the word “cool.”OK, that’s enough voter happiness. Back down to Planet Earth. The newly reaffirmed Governor Kemp announced on Tuesday that he and his family were “heartbroken” by the “incomprehensible” school shooting in Texas.Now, Kemp recently signed a bill that will allow Georgians to carry handguns in public pretty much whenever they feel like it — no license or background check required. You’d think — at least wish — that he’d consider a possible link between the wide, wide availability of firearms in this country and the tragic line of mass shooting deaths. Anything can make a difference.Compared with the elementary school shooting in Texas, everything else about this week will be a political footnote. But some of the footnotes are certainly interesting. If we want to pick a theme for Tuesday’s elections, it might be that Donald Trump’s influence isn’t nearly as strong as he thinks it is, and that he may be the only American voter whose chief preoccupation is revisiting the 2020 election on an hourly basis.Getting over it is something Trump can’t abide. Consider the primary in Alabama for a Republican Senate candidate. Perhaps you remember — if you’re very, very, very into elections — that Trump began by backing Representative Mo Brooks, then changed his mind and unendorsed him? Cynics believed Trump had just decided Brooks was a loser, but it’s also possible the congressman had offended our former president by urging voters to “look forward.”That’s the wrong direction to mention when you’re hanging out with the Trump camp.“Mo Brooks of Alabama made a horrible mistake recently when he went ‘woke’ and stated, referring to the 2020 presidential election scam, ‘Put that behind you, put that behind you,’” Trump said as he retracted his endorsement.The outcome of all this drama was that Brooks got less than a third of the vote, behind Katie Britt, the former chief of staff of retiring Senator Richard Shelby. Since Britt failed to get 50 percent, there will be a runoff. Winner will face Democratic nominee Will Boyd this fall.One addendum — which you should really skip over if you’re feeling even modestly depressed: Both Britt and Brooks are in the gun camp as deep as humanly possible. Britt has ads in which she’s aiming a rifle and promising to “shoot straight.” The N.R.A., which endorsed Brooks, praised his efforts to protect “interstate transportation of firearms.” Those of us in states that are desperately trying to keep gun proliferation under control would appreciate it if he focused his energies on something else.Trump’s biggest election night triumph may have been Herschel Walker, the former football player he backed for a Georgia Senate nomination. But Walker’s competition wasn’t exactly top-notch, and now he’ll be running against Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, who will probably take note of a few items on Walker’s résumé that Trump overlooked. Including allegations of domestic violence, refusal to take part in debates, and the day on the campaign trail when Walker expressed doubt about the theory of evolution. (If it were true, Walker mused, “Why are there still apes? Think about it.”)On the plus side, there was Walker’s eagerness to spend $200,000 entertaining people at Mar-a-Lago. Nothing, it appears, raises the former president’s enthusiasm for a candidate like a willingness to make Donald Trump wealthier.All told, reporters found that seven of the Republicans Trump endorsed this year spent a total of more than $400,000 in campaign money at the resort. So yeah, our ex-president lost a lot politically this election season. But he gained a chunk of cash.Maybe he’ll use some of it for tips when he speaks on Friday at the N.R.A.’s three-day convention in Houston.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Stacey Abrams Fights Headwinds From Washington in Georgia Rematch

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      ATLANTA — When Teaniese Davis heard that Stacey Abrams was holding a public event on Tuesday morning, she raced to a church parking lot teeming with two dozen cameras and members of the news media, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of Georgia’s most famous Democrats.“People know who she is,” Ms. Davis, who works in public health research, said of her state’s Democratic nominee for governor. “A lot of people are bought into who she is.”Republicans are bought into Ms. Abrams, too. Even as they fought among themselves in vigorous primary battles, Ms. Abrams has featured prominently in G.O.P. ads and debates as a potent symbol of the threat of Democratic ascendance in the state.Now, as Ms. Abrams hurtles into a general election against Gov. Brian Kemp in what will be among the most closely watched governors’ races in the nation, her candidacy will offer a vivid test of a significant question facing Democratic candidates this year. To what extent can clearly defined, distinctive personal brands withstand the staggering headwinds facing the Democratic Party, as Republicans seek to nationalize the midterm campaigns at every turn?Ms. Abrams and Mr. Kemp are technically in a rematch, but their race is unfolding in a vastly different political climate compared with 2018, when Ms. Abrams electrified Democrats as she vied to become the country’s first Black female governor. Ms. Abrams cemented her status as a national star even in narrow defeat, while her party, buoyed by opposition to former President Donald J. Trump, went on to retake the House of Representatives. Roughly two years later, Georgia helped deliver the presidency and then the Senate majority to the Democrats, an emphatic break with the state’s longtime standing as a Republican bastion, and Ms. Abrams was widely credited with helping to flip the state.Now, President Biden’s approval rating is a drag on Democrats like Ms. Abrams, inflation has soared, Mr. Kemp is an entrenched incumbent and Mr. Trump is not on the ballot. Ms. Abrams isn’t just a galvanizing force for Democrats, she has become a common enemy for Republicans trying to unite their party after divisive primaries.Voters in Dalton, Ga., on Tuesday for the state’s primary elections, where turnout was up compared with 2018.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesThat primary competition helped drive up turnout for Republicans on Tuesday. Roughly 1.2 million people voted in the G.O.P. primary for governor, compared with 708,000 people who voted for Ms. Abrams, who was unopposed. Both of those numbers are up from 2018, the last midterm primary, but Republican participation doubled.“We’re definitely seeing the enthusiasm on the Republican side,” said Jacquelyn Bettadapur, the chairwoman of the Cobb County Democratic Committee. Ms. Bettadapur said she sees a role reversal for the parties. After losing the White House in 2016, Democrats were motivated to stage a comeback.“It was a real sort of kick in the pants to get the Democrats engaged and mobilized, which we did,” she said, adding that Republicans are now “in that same situation.”After the Georgia Primary ElectionThe May 24 races were among the most consequential so far of the 2022 midterm cycle.Takeaways: G.O.P. voters rejected Donald Trump’s 2020 fixation, and Democrats backed a gun-control champion. Here’s what else we learned.Rebuking Trump: The ex-president picked losers up and down the ballot in Georgia, raising questions about the firmness of his grip on the G.O.P.G.O.P. Governor’s Race: Brian Kemp scored a landslide victory over David Perdue, delivering Mr. Trump his biggest setback of the 2022 primaries.2018 Rematch: Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor, will again face Mr. Kemp — but in a vastly different political climate.Ms. Bettadapur stressed that Democrats, too, were motivated, singling out the Supreme Court’s possible overturning of Roe v. Wade as a potentially galvanizing force. The state has a law, signed by Mr. Kemp and poised to take effect if Roe is overturned, that prohibits abortions after about six weeks from conception. Ms. Bettadapur also noted, in an interview before the deadly Texas elementary school shooting on Tuesday, that Mr. Kemp’s moves to loosen gun restrictions might be off-putting to many Georgia voters.Ms. Abrams’s campaign on Wednesday hit Mr. Kemp for his record on guns in a statement, calling attention to a 2018 campaign ad in which Mr. Kemp holds a shotgun in his lap and asks a teenager who wants to court his daughter to recite his campaign platform.“Years from now, Kemp will be remembered as a one-term governor who pointed a gun at a boy on television,” said Lauren Groh-Wargo, Ms. Abrams’s campaign manager.Hundreds of Mr. Kemp’s supporters packed into the College Football Hall of Fame on Tuesday night to celebrate his victory. In his speech accepting the party’s nomination, Mr. Kemp encouraged his supporters to organize, asking all of them to make phone calls and knock doors “like we’ve never knocked before” heading into November. His goal, he said, is not only to be re-elected but also to stunt Ms. Abrams’s political future.Gov. Brian Kemp at his primary watch party Tuesday. “I think you’re going to see Republicans up and down the ballot and all over the country united,” he said earlier.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“You can see the choice on the ballot this November is crystal clear,” he told the crowd amid shouts of “four more years!” from some. “Stacey Abrams’s far-left campaign for governor in 2022 is only a warm-up for her presidential run in 2024.”Ms. Abrams’s campaign declined to comment on Mr. Kemp’s remarks, but a spokesman confirmed that she intended to serve a full term as governor if elected.Ms. Abrams, the former minority leader in the Georgia statehouse, has been particularly focused on engaging more Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters in an increasingly diverse state. The party has used Georgia’s ballooning population as a springboard to those efforts — census data shows that more than one million people moved to the state between 2010 and 2020, with most in deep-blue Metro Atlanta counties.“Clearly they have signed up a lot of new folks over the past four years and you have to give it your hand to them for what they’ve done there,” said Saxby Chambliss, a former Georgia senator, even as he stressed that “if Republicans get out and vote, we’re a red state.”Among Ms. Abrams’s new challenges this year is building a case against the governor while his approval rating hovers around 50 percent. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll from January found that Georgians were more optimistic about the direction of the state than that of the nation.In a recent speech, Ms. Abrams cited Georgia’s maternal health, gun violence and health-insurance rates. “I am tired of hearing about being the best state in the country to do business when we are the worst state in the country to live,” she said over the weekend, a remark she later defended as an “inelegant delivery of a statement that I will keep making: and that is that Brian Kemp is a failed governor.”Mr. Kemp seized on the comments to cast himself as a Georgia booster and declared “that is why we are in a fight for the soul of our state.”Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Four Takeaways From Tuesday’s Elections

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      Tuesday was a booming repudiation of former President Donald J. Trump’s relentless preoccupation with the 2020 election. In Georgia, his voter-fraud-focused choices for governor and attorney general were roundly defeated, while his pick for secretary of state lost to a man who stood up to those false claims two years ago.But it would be a mistake to interpret these results as a wholesale rejection of Mr. Trump himself. His gravitational pull on Republican voters warped every one of Tuesday’s primaries, shaping candidates’ positions and priorities as they beat a path to Mar-a-Lago.It was a bittersweet evening for progressives, who remain in suspense about the fate of their challenger to a conservative Democratic incumbent in Texas. But in another House race in the Atlanta suburbs, the party’s left flank ousted one of the “unbreakable nine” Democrats who balked at President Biden’s social spending plans. Here are a few key takeaways from this week’s primaries, among the most consequential of the 2022 midterm cycle:Republican governors are standing up to Trump. And winning.David Perdue, a wealthy former senator recruited by Mr. Trump to challenge Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, told reporters in the race’s final days that despite his poor standing in polls, “I guaran-damn-tee you we’re not down 30 points.”Mr. Perdue was correct. He lost by about 50 percentage points.Mr. Kemp easily swatted away Mr. Perdue’s lackluster bid, shoring up local support and rallying fellow Republican governors to his side. By the campaign’s final weeks, Mr. Perdue had pulled back on television advertising — usually a telltale sign of a doomed candidacy.And even though Mr. Trump had transferred more than $2.5 million to Mr. Perdue from his political operation, it wasn’t enough. Mr. Perdue’s own allies were openly critical of his halfhearted efforts on the stump, as well his inability to move beyond false claims about the 2020 election.Republican governors were quick to cast Mr. Kemp’s resounding victory as a rejection of Mr. Trump. Minutes after Mr. Perdue conceded, Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and a sometime Trump ally, praised Georgia voters for refusing to be “willing participants in the DJT Vendetta Tour.”Mr. Perdue’s performance suggests that Mr. Trump’s endorsement can be “poison,” said Jon Gray, a Republican political consultant in Alabama, by giving candidates a false sense of complacency.David Perdue at a campaign event in Plainville, Ga., last week. By the race’s final weeks, he had pulled back on television advertising. Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s involvement can also skew an entire primary contest to the right, as it did in Alabama and Georgia. Mr. Kemp now faces a rematch in the general election against Stacey Abrams, an experienced and well-funded Democrat he defeated by fewer than 55,000 votes in 2018.So far, Mr. Trump’s record in primaries that are actually contested is more mixed than his overall win-loss score suggests.His favored Senate candidates won the Republican nomination in Georgia, North Carolina and Ohio, but struggled in Alabama and Pennsylvania.In governor’s races, he endorsed Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his first White House press secretary, who won by a commanding margin in Arkansas, where she is political royalty. Mr. Trump was occasionally critical of Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama, who nevertheless managed to avoid a runoff in her primary.But he also unsuccessfully opposed Republican incumbents in Georgia and Idaho, while his choice for governor of Nebraska, Charles Herbster, lost by nearly four percentage points this month to Jim Pillen, the favorite of the local establishment.“It’s silly to obsess over individual endorsements and what they mean,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican consultant who is working against many of Mr. Trump’s candidates across the country, “when the whole field has gone Trumpy.”‘Stop the Steal’ is often a political loser. But not always.Candidates who made Mr. Trump’s narrative of a stolen election the centerpiece of their campaigns fared badly. But those who embraced it only partially did just fine.In the Republican primary for Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger won an outright victory over Representative Jody Hice, whose wholesale embrace of Mr. Trump’s conspiracy-mongering about the 2020 election was not enough to force a runoff.The incumbent in the Republican primary for attorney general, Chris Carr, brushed off a feeble challenge from John Gordon, a lawyer who had represented Mr. Trump’s bogus election-fraud claims in court. Mr. Raffensperger may have had help from Democrats, thousands of whom reportedly crossed over to vote on the Republican side.“Not buckling under the pressure is what the people want,” Mr. Raffensperger said on Tuesday night at his election watch party.That said, few Republican candidates who have forthrightly denounced Mr. Trump’s lies about 2020 have survived elsewhere.In Ohio, the one Senate candidate who did so, Matt Dolan, finished in third place. In Pennsylvania, the Republican nominee for governor, Doug Mastriano, was deeply involved in Mr. Trump’s plot to overturn the state’s 2020 results, while the two leading Senate candidates, Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick, have equivocated about whether Mr. Biden was fairly elected.Representative Mo Brooks, an erratic, hard-right congressman who was once one of Mr. Trump’s staunchest supporters in Congress, gained notoriety for wearing body armor to the “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021.But Mr. Brooks came in second place in the Republican primary for Senate in Alabama to Katie Britt, who ran a campaign tightly focused on local issues and will now face Mr. Brooks in a runoff election next month. Even so, Ms. Britt told reporters she would have objected to the 2020 election results had she been in office at the time.Mr. Brooks attacked her anyway on Tuesday night. “Alabama, your choice is Katie Britt, who hid in her foxhole when a voter fraud fight was brought,” he said, or himself, “who led the fight against voter fraud in the U.S. Congress.”Pro-business Republicans can still win a big race. Maybe.Ms. Britt’s first-place finish in Alabama is a reminder that Mr. Trump’s endorsement is not all-powerful. But it’s also a testament to the enduring political clout of corporate America.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Trump Vowed Vengeance, but Georgia Voters Rejected His Meddling

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      Donald J. Trump barreled into Georgia vowing to marshal voters against his enemies and punish Republicans who crossed him in 2020. Instead, Georgia voters punished him for meddling in their state.Mr. Trump picked losers up and down the ballot, most strikingly missing the mark on a third governor’s race in three weeks. The dismal record, particularly for chief executives, illustrates the shortcomings of Mr. Trump’s revenge tour.Since leaving the White House, and the structure it provided, the former president has erratically deployed his political power, often making choices on a whim or with little clear path to execution. That approach has repeatedly left him empty-handed and raised new doubts about the viselike grip he has held on the Republican Party.In Georgia, Mr. Trump tried to wipe out a triumvirate of Republican statewide officeholders who refused to help overturn the 2020 presidential results: Gov. Brian Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Attorney General Chris Carr. But the three men all coasted to victory — and handed Mr. Trump a stinging rebuke in a state that has become one of the nation’s most important presidential battlegrounds.Henry Barbour, a Republican National Committee member from Mississippi, said Mr. Trump’s endorsements this year had been “driven by who he dislikes and whoever’s running against them.”“Sometimes that may work out, but I think as we see in Georgia, it’s very unlikely to,” Mr. Barbour said.Mr. Trump’s poor showing in state capitals — his endorsed candidates for governor have now lost as many races as they’ve won this year — can be partly blamed on the degree of difficulty of his undertaking. Successful campaigns for governor often must be precisely tailored to address nuanced regional and local issues. House and Senate bids — where Mr. Trump’s endorsement record as yet is nearly unblemished — can more easily harness national political winds.Unseating incumbent governors in a primary, as Mr. Trump tried to do in Georgia and Idaho, is even more challenging. According to the Eagleton Center on the American Governor at Rutgers University, governors defeat primary challengers about 95 percent of the time. Two incumbent governors haven’t lost primaries in the same year since 1994.But Mr. Trump has shown the unlikely to be practically impossible when decisions about endorsements for high-profile public offices are based on falsehoods, vengeance and personal pride. His refusal to take a more cautious approach and protect his political capital ahead of a likely 2024 presidential campaign has resulted in unforced errors that could unspool for months.Gov. Brian Kemp in Atlanta on Tuesday night after winning the Republican primary.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesIn Georgia, for example, Republicans have worried about the unnecessary political damage Mr. Trump has inflicted on Mr. Kemp, who will face a rematch in November with Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee who lost their 2018 contest by 54,700 votes, or less than one-half of one percentage point. Political control of the governor’s office carries significant influence over election laws and regulations heading into the 2024 voting.“I don’t believe Kemp can do it,” Mr. Trump said during a tele-rally on Monday about the governor’s chances of defeating Ms. Abrams. “He’s got too many people in the Republican Party that will refuse to vote. They’re just not going to go out.”Mr. Trump’s loss in Georgia also meant a major victory for the Republican Governors Association, which has circled the wagons around incumbents and resisted the former president’s attacks on their members.The group spent $5 million on Mr. Kemp’s race and dispatched a cavalry of current and former governors to campaign for him, including two potential challengers to Mr. Trump in 2024: Chris Christie of New Jersey and former Vice President Mike Pence, who, like Mr. Kemp, refused to help Mr. Trump overturn the 2020 election.Whether the Georgia results will provide a toehold for a challenge to Mr. Trump’s supremacy in the party remained unclear, but signs that he has lost some political altitude have been unmistakable throughout the 2022 primary season.Mindful that potential 2024 presidential rivals are watching for openings against him, Mr. Trump has been toying for months with announcing his candidacy ahead of the midterm elections this year, according to people who have spoken with him.Earlier talk of similar moves went nowhere, including a “Draft Trump” movement floated by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina shortly after Mr. Trump left office and an idea to announce an exploratory committee as recently as March.But Mr. Trump has spoken to aides recently about declaring his candidacy this summer as a way to box out other candidates. Other advisers said he viewed an announcement as a way to link himself to the success that Republicans expect in the midterm elections this November.Herschel Walker with former President Donald J. Trump at a March rally in Commerce, Ga.Audra Melton for The New York TimesMr. Trump had a smattering of success on Tuesday night, notably with his former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who is almost certain to become the next governor of Arkansas after winning the Republican primary. And Herschel Walker, the former football star whom Mr. Trump urged to run for Senate, easily won his Georgia primary. Still, they were exceptions, and faced weak opposition.In a statement, Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, ignored the string of defeats Tuesday night, calling it “another huge night of victories for his endorsed candidates.”In an interview last week, Mr. Trump defended his endorsement record, saying he had backed candidates he believed in, not just those he expected to win. He pointed to J.D. Vance’s win in the Ohio Senate primary, Mr. Trump’s biggest victory of the primary season so far.There, Mr. Trump acted after polling late in the race suggested his endorsement could make the difference for Mr. Vance, who was behind in the polls at the time — and his announcement propelled Mr. Vance to a decisive victory.But that deliberate decision-making was a departure from the more scattershot approach seen in Mr. Trump’s endorsements for governor.In Nebraska, where Mr. Trump’s endorsed candidate, the agriculture executive Charles Herbster, was defeated on May 10, Mr. Trump has privately faulted the Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, complaining that she pushed him to back Mr. Herbster, and going so far as to suggest to some people that Ms. Pirro and Mr. Herbster had dated.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Two Republicans Face Disqualification in Michigan Governor’s Race

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      Two top Republican candidates for governor in Michigan are in danger of being denied a spot on the primary ballot after the state’s election bureau invalidated thousands of signatures submitted by their campaigns, saying many of the names had been forged and were collected by fraudulent petition circulators.The Michigan Bureau of Elections recommended on Monday that James Craig, a former Detroit police chief, and Perry Johnson, a wealthy businessman, be excluded from the Aug. 2 primary, finding that neither candidate met the requirement of submitting signatures from at least 15,000 registered voters.Republicans in the state characterized the move as a politically motivated effort from a Democratic-led agency, while Mr. Craig pointed to his standing in the race.“They want me out,” Mr. Craig said, alluding to Republicans and Democrats. “I’ve been leading.”Three other lesser-known Republican candidates for governor also fell short of the threshold, the bureau determined, meaning that five of the party’s 10 candidates who filed to run for the state’s top office would be ineligible.In its review of the nominating petitions for both candidates, the elections bureau issued a stinging indictment of the methods used by their campaigns to collect signatures and the operatives working for the candidates.“The Bureau is unaware of another election cycle in which this many circulators submitted such a substantial volume of fraudulent petition sheets consisting of invalid signatures,” the bureau said, but clarified that it saw no evidence that the candidates had any knowledge of the fraud.Mr. Craig said in an interview on Tuesday that he would go to court to challenge any effort to deny him access to the ballot.“None of the candidates knew about the fraud,” Mr. Craig said. “Certainly, I didn’t. There needs to be an investigation and prosecution, if, in fact, there is probable cause that they did in fact commit fraud.”While the final say over the candidates’ eligibility rests with the Board of State Canvassers, a separate panel that will meet on Thursday, the recommended disqualification of Mr. Craig and Mr. Johnson threatened to create chaos for Republicans in their quest to challenge Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat.Perry Johnson was also widely viewed as one of the top candidates in the state’s Republican primary for governor.Daniel Shular/The Grand Rapids Press, via Associated PressBoth Mr. Craig and Mr. Johnson were widely viewed as front-runners for the party’s nomination in a key battleground state, where Republicans have clashed with Democrats over the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election and pandemic restrictions.More than half of the 21,305 signatures submitted by Mr. Craig’s campaign were rejected, leaving him with 10,192 valid signatures, the bureau said in its report, which noted that little effort was made to vary handwriting.“In some cases, rather than attempting varying signatures, the circulator would intentionally scrawl illegibly. In other instances, they circulated petition sheets among themselves, each filling out a line,” the bureau said of the petitions for Mr. Craig.Mr. Craig identified Vanguard Field Strategies, an Austin, Texas, firm, as helping to manage the canvassing effort, one that he said relied on several subcontractors that were previously unknown to him. He said that the onus was on the firm to have checks and balances to detect fraud, and he called it “shortsighted” and unrealistic to expect that a busy candidate would verify more than 20,000 signatures.Vanguard Field Strategies confirmed on Tuesday that 18 of the people identified in the elections bureau’s report as circulating the fraudulent petitions had been working for another firm that it had subcontracted to help it gather signatures. The company would not identify the subcontractor, which it characterized in a statement on Tuesday as a nationally respected Republican firm.“The allegations of fraudulent activity, and individuals infiltrating Chief Craig’s campaign in an effort to sabotage it, is very concerning,” Joe J. Williams, Vanguard’s president, said in a statement. “I hope the individuals charged with fraud (none of which worked for or were paid by Vanguard) are held responsible if the allegations are true.”According to Vanguard, Mr. Craig’s campaign retained its services about two months ago, having collected just 500 signatures at the time — the deadline to submit them was April 19.The elections bureau rejected 9,393 of the 23,193 signatures submitted by Mr. Johnson’s campaign, leaving him with 13,800 valid signatures. Some of the fraudulent signatures represented voters who had died or moved out of the state, the bureau said.John Yob, a campaign strategist for Mr. Johnson, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday. In a series of tweets on Monday night, Mr. Yob said that the move to disqualify Republican candidates en masse was politically motivated and criticized the head of the state agency that the elections bureau is part of: Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat who is secretary of state.Mr. Yob said that the campaign would contest the bureau’s recommendation.“We strongly believe they are refusing to count thousands of signatures from legitimate voters who signed the petitions and look forward to winning this fight before the Board, and if necessary, in the courts,” he said.On Tuesday, Ron Weiser, the chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, slammed the move to exclude the Republicans from the primary ballot on Twitter.“This is far from over,” Mr. Weiser said. “Democrats claim to be the champions of democracy but are actively angling behind the scenes to disqualify their opponents in an unprecedented way because they want to take away choice from Michigan voters.”Tracy Wimmer, a spokeswoman for Ms. Benson, said in an email on Tuesday night that the election bureau was not swayed by politics.“The Bureau of Elections is staffed by election professionals of integrity who conducted their review of candidate submissions in a nonpartisan manner in accordance with state law,” Ms. Wimmer said.Election officials said that they had identified 36 people who had submitted fraudulent petition sheets consisting entirely of invalid signatures. On Monday, a total of 19 candidates learned that they had not met the signature requirement to get onto the ballot, including three Republicans and one Democrat seeking House seats, and 10 nonpartisan candidates seeking judicial posts.Democrats had separately challenged the petitions of Mr. Craig and Mr. Johnson, but the bureau did not take action because those candidates did not have enough signatures. Mark Brewer, a former chairman of the Michigan Democrats and a lawyer who challenged Mr. Craig’s petitions, defended the steps taken by the elections bureau on Twitter.“What kind of message does it send if any candidate with forged signatures is allowed on the ballot?” Mr. Brewer said on Tuesday. In a 17-page report detailing its findings on Monday, the elections bureau said that the head of one canvassing firm used by the candidates to gather signatures had pleaded guilty to two counts of election fraud in 2011 in Virginia. He was accused of instructing two individuals to sign as a witness on dozens of petition sheets filled with signatures they did not collect, the bureau said.The report did not identify the person, but cited links to news stories and court cases that pointed to Shawn Wilmoth, a political operative based in Michigan, and Mr. Wilmoth’s company, First Choice Contracting LLC.A person who answered the phone at the company on Tuesday said that Mr. Wilmoth was not available, and Mr. Wilmoth did not respond to messages seeking comment.When asked if Mr. Wilmoth or his firm had done work for his campaign, Mr. Craig said on Tuesday that he had learned only that day of a potential nexus.“I don’t want to make excuses,” Mr. Craig said. More

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      Georgia Democrats Elect Stacey Abrams as Their Nominee for Governor

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      ATLANTA — Stacey Abrams will advance to Georgia’s general election for governor after running in the state’s Democratic primary unopposed.Ms. Abrams, a 48-year-old lawyer who served as Georgia’s Statehouse minority leader for six years, last ran for governor in 2018 against then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp in a bitter race that propelled her to national stardom in Democratic politics.Ms. Abrams’s victory was called by The Associated Press on Tuesday night. In 2018, her campaign emphasized outreach to infrequent, rural and Black voters over independent white suburbanites. She lost to Mr. Kemp by less than 55,000 votes — a gap she blamed in large part on what she described as Mr. Kemp’s roles as “the referee, the contestant and the scorekeeper” because he served as both a candidate in a statewide race and the state’s top election official.Her current campaign has largely borrowed from the same playbook it employed during the last race for governor, continuing its focus on voters that were not as widely courted in previous election cycles. She has so far avoided her marquee issue, voting rights, in most campaign stump speeches and advertisements, opting instead to discuss Georgia-specific policy issues. In a recent television advertisement she emphasizes her political and business credentials to underline her qualifications, describing the job of governor as “being the executive for the state.”Following the 2018 election, Ms. Abrams founded the voter advocacy group Fair Fight, which has raised more than $100 million. Ms. Abrams’s work through Fair Fight and the New Georgia Project, a voter mobilization organization she founded four years prior, helped Democrats make inroads in top-of-the-ticket races in Georgia, including Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s win in 2020 and the victories of two Democratic senators in 2021.Ms. Abrams’s 2022 campaign will feature many of the same issues at play in 2018: Medicaid expansion, economic relief and voter protection. She remains a feature of several Georgia Republican attack ads, as conservatives up and down the ballot have aimed to characterize her as a far-left, power-hungry figure who would force on the state policies supported by national Democrats.Still, Ms. Abrams remains one of the most prolific fund-raisers both in Georgia and Democratic politics, out-raising her Republican opponents. She has brought in more than $21 million since announcing her bid for re-election in December. In early May, she paused her fund-raising efforts to redirect funds to women’s health clinics and organizations that support abortion access. More

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      Georgia, a New Battleground State, Is Once Again the Center of Attention

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      It’s the crucible of American politics.Georgia’s got everything: disputed elections, rapid demographic change, celebrity Democrats, a restrictive new voting law, an open criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s meddling in the 2020 election, a deep rural-urban divide and unending drama between the Trump wing of the Republican Party and the local G.O.P. establishment.It’s a longtime Republican stronghold that has become a battleground state. Trump won Georgia by more than 200,000 votes in 2016, then lost it by fewer than 12,000 votes four years later. Georgia was where President Biden made his doomed final push to pass voting rights legislation in the Senate. It was where Democrats picked up two crucial Senate seats on Jan. 5, 2021, giving them the barest control of both chambers of Congress.But those gains are fragile, and Republicans are confident they can win the governor’s race and regain one of the Senate seats. It’s largely for the usual reasons: high prices for the two Gs — gas and groceries — as well as Biden’s low job approval ratings. Either way, millions of campaign dollars will flow into Georgia between now and November.Before all that, though, we’ll have to get through Tuesday’s primaries. Here is what else is going on:Trump vs. PenceOn Monday, Trump and Mike Pence, his former vice president, held dueling events for their respective candidates in the Republican primary for governor: David Perdue, a former senator and Dollar General executive who entered the race at Trump’s insistence, and Brian Kemp, the incumbent.Pence attended a rally for Kemp at the Cobb County airport in suburban Atlanta, while Trump appeared remotely for Perdue, who took a racist swipe at Stacey Abrams, the presumptive Democratic nominee, during a news conference at a wings-and-beer restaurant north of the city. As Jonathan Martin writes, Pence and Trump are circling each other warily in advance of a possible clash in the presidential primary in 2024, so their standoff in Georgia has national implications.It’s not looking good for Trump’s leading candidate in the state, for the reasons our colleagues Reid Epstein and Shane Goldmacher reported this weekend. Polls show Kemp ahead by an average of 25 percentage points, leading Perdue to try to reset expectations last week. “We may not win Tuesday,” he said, “but I guaran-damn-tee you we are not down 30 points.”Along with Representative Jody Hice, who is hoping to unseat Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Perdue is running a campaign that is almost single-mindedly focused on Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.Understand the Georgia Primary ElectionThe May 24 primary will feature several Trump-backed candidates in closely watched races.A New Battleground: Republicans have fought bitter primaries in Georgia. But just two years after Democrats flipped the state, it’s trending back to the G.O.P.G.O.P. Governor’s Race: David Perdue’s impending loss to Brian Kemp looms as the biggest electoral setback for Donald Trump since his own 2020 defeat.Trump vs. Pence: With the ex-president backing Mr. Perdue and his former vice president supporting Mr. Kemp, the G.O.P. governor’s race has national implications for 2024.Fighting Headwinds: Democrats in Georgia — and beyond  — are worried that even the strongest candidates can’t outrun President Biden’s low approval ratings.Perdue and Hice are speaking to a “small and shrinking crowd in Georgia,” said Chris Clark, the president and chief executive of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, which is backing Kemp and Raffensperger.“Nobody asks about it at events,” Clark added, referring to the 2020 election. “They’re asking about jobs and inflation.”Alexis Hill, a canvasser with the New Georgia Project, went door to door in Fairburn, Ga., to encourage people to register to vote.Alyssa Pointer/ReutersDemocrats look ahead to a difficult autumnThe Rev. Raphael Warnock, the preacher turned senator, and Stacey Abrams, the former state lawmaker and voting rights champion, ran unopposed in their primaries for Senate and governor this year. That doesn’t mean they’ll have an easy time of it in the fall, with a base that leading Democrats are describing openly as “quite demoralized.”Abrams is one of those Democrats, like Beto O’Rourke in Texas or Amy McGrath in Kentucky, whose national stardom and appeal among activists sometimes outstrip their local support. Polls show her behind Kemp by about five points in head-to-head matchups.“When you lift someone up that high, people love to see you fall,” said Martha Zoller, a former aide to Perdue who now hosts a talk radio show in Gainesville, Ga.Abrams’s campaign released a memo on Sunday outlining what it described as her strengths heading into November. It makes three basic points:Democratic turnout is holding up. The Abrams team says that “Democrats are on track to break records” in Tuesday’s primary, a fact that has Republicans arguing that Georgia’s new voting law has not suppressed voting.As Nick Corasaniti and Maya King reported on Monday morning, however, “It is too soon to draw any sweeping conclusions, because the true impact of the voting law cannot be drawn from topline early voting data alone.” We’ll know more after tomorrow.So-called crossover voters will go for Democrats in November. Abrams aides say they have identified “nearly 35,000 voters who we expect to vote for the Democratic ticket in November but who cast Republican ballots for the primary,” a group they are calling “crossover voters.” Of the 855,000 Georgia voters who had cast their ballots as of Friday, when early voting closed, the Abrams campaign estimates that more than half — 52.9 percent — were Republicans, while only 46.5 percent were Democrats. (Georgia does not register voters by political party.)The Abrams team spins this as “a remarkably close margin,” given all the attention the news media has paid to Georgia’s big G.O.P. primaries, which are more competitive than the major Democratic ones. But it also could be an ominous sign for Democrats that Republican voters are more energized heading into the fall.Georgia is growing more diverse, and that will help Democrats. The speed of voter registration has slowed in Georgia, which was once a model for the ability of grass-roots organizing to overcome entrenched obstacles to voting. That slowdown could hurt Democrats in the fall, although the Abrams campaign says it has identified about 42,000 Georgians who have already voted in this year’s primary but did not vote in the 2018 general election. Her team also says it has found more than 100,000 Black voters who skipped the 2018 primary but have already voted this year, as well as 40,000 additional white voters and an unspecified number of new Asian American and Latino voters. Abrams lost her first race for governor against Kemp by just under 55,000 votes, so those new voters could be significant.It’s not a safe assumption that voters of color will choose Democrats at the same rates they have in the past, however. Biden has lost support among Black and Latino Americans since taking office. As of April, the president’s approval rating was just 67 percent among Black adults, down 20 percentage points since the start of his term. Not only is turnout a question mark, but it’s also by no means clear that Democrats will be able to hang on to all of those voters if inflation continues to bite into their pocketbooks in November.What to readPresident Biden pledged to defend Taiwan against attack, moving a step beyond longstanding U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity.” Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Peter Baker report from Tokyo and Seoul.Representative Mo Brooks, a hard-right Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama, seems to be making an unlikely comeback after his low poll numbers prompted Donald Trump to take back his endorsement, Trip Gabriel reports.In Texas, the closely watched House race between Representative Henry Cuellar and his progressive challenger, Jessica Cisneros, encapsulates the tensions within the Democratic Party on immigration, Jazmine Ulloa and Jennifer Medina report.how they run George P. Bush talking to members of Texas Strong Republican Women before an event for the attorney general’s race.Shelby Tauber for The New York TimesPaxton’s legal troubles haven’t amounted to political onesKen Paxton, the Texas attorney general, has faced his share of legal concerns in recent years, something that George P. Bush, his rival in the primary this year and the state’s land commissioner, has seized upon as he seeks to oust him from office.But, if history is any indicator, Bush has his work cut out for him.In March, Paxton topped the primary field with 43 percent of the votes, short of the 50 percent required to win the nomination outright. Bush placed second with 23 percent, and their runoff election is on Tuesday.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More