Elections, Governors

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      5 Primary Takeaways: Election Deniers Thrive Even as Trumpism Drifts

      by

      Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate contest, the biggest and most expensive race of a five-state primary night, is a photo finish between David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity surgeon. It appears headed to a statewide recount.The night delivered a split decision for former President Donald J. Trump, with his choice for Idaho governor falling well short, Dr. Oz in a virtual tie and his candidates for Senate in North Carolina and governor in Pennsylvania triumphant.On the Democratic side, voters pushed for change over consensus, nominating a left-leaning political brawler for Senate in Pennsylvania and nudging a leading moderate in the House closer to defeat in Oregon as votes were counted overnight.Here are a few key takeaways from Tuesday’s primaries, the biggest day so far of the 2022 midterm cycle:Republican voters mostly rewarded candidates who dispute the 2020 election results.The Republican candidates who did best on Tuesday were the ones who have most aggressively cast doubt on the 2020 election results and have campaigned on restricting voting further and overhauling how elections are run.Doug Mastriano, the far-right candidate who won the G.O.P. nomination for Pennsylvania governor in a landslide, attended the rally on Jan. 6, 2021, that led to the assault on the Capitol and has since called for decertifying the results of the 2020 election.Representative Ted Budd of North Carolina, who beat a former governor by over 30 percentage points in the state’s Republican primary for Senate, voted last year against certifying the 2020 election results — and, in the aftermath of that contest, texted Mark Meadows, then the White House chief of staff, to push the bogus claim that Dominion Voting Systems might have had a connection to the liberal billionaire George Soros.On Tuesday, Mr. Budd refused to say that President Biden was the legitimate 2020 victor.Representative Ted Budd easily won North Carolina’s Republican primary race for Senate.Allison Lee Isley/The Winston-Salem Journal, via Associated PressVoters in Pennsylvania’s Republican primary for Senate sent a more mixed message: Kathy Barnette, a far-right commentator who centered her campaign on Mr. Trump’s election falsehoods, trailed her narrowly divided rivals Mr. McCormick and Dr. Oz early Wednesday.But Ms. Barnette, with roughly 25 percent of the vote, performed far better than many political observers had expected just two weeks ago, when she began a last-minute surge on the back of strong debate performances.Mr. McCormick and Dr. Oz are hardly tethered close to reality on election matters. Both have refused to acknowledge Mr. Biden as the rightful winner in 2020, playing to their party’s base of Trump supporters.The success of the election deniers comes after a year and a half in which Mr. Trump has continued to fixate on his 2020 loss and, in some places, has called on Republican state legislators to try to decertify their states’ results — something that has no basis in law.The G.O.P. will feel bullish about the Pennsylvania Senate race. The governor’s contest is another story.Republicans avoided what many saw as a general-election catastrophe when Ms. Barnette, who had a long history of offensive comments and who federal records show had finished ninth in the fund-raising battle in Pennsylvania’s Senate race, slipped far behind Mr. McCormick and Dr. Oz.Both Mr. McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, and Dr. Oz, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump, have largely self-financed their campaigns and could continue to do so, though neither would have much trouble raising money in a general election.The eventual winner will face Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat who has long been a favorite of progressives but has recently tacked to the center as his primary victory became assured.David McCormick waited with supporters in Pittsburgh as votes were counted. Jeff Swensen/Getty ImagesWith nearly all of the vote counted, the margin between Mr. McCormick and Dr. Oz was well under one-half of one percent, the threshold to trigger automatic recounts for statewide races in Pennsylvania. Before that can happen, thousands of mailed-in votes are still to be counted from counties across the state.Whoever emerges from the Republican Senate primary will be on a ticket with, and will probably be asked to defend positions taken by, Mr. Mastriano. He has run a hard-right campaign and enters the general election as an underdog to Josh Shapiro, the state’s Democratic attorney general.Trump’s endorsement is still worth a lot. But Republican voters often have minds of their own.In Ohio this month, J.D. Vance received 32 percent of the vote. In Nebraska last week, Charles W. Herbster got 30 percent. And on Tuesday alone:Dr. Mehmet Oz was hovering around 31 percent of the vote in Pennsylvania.Bo Hines took 32 percent in a House primary in North Carolina.Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin of Idaho lost her primary for governor with about a quarter of the vote.All of these candidates were endorsed by Mr. Trump in competitive primaries. And the outcome of these races has established the value of his endorsement in 2022: About one-third of Republican primary voters will back the Trump candidate.In some races, like Mr. Vance’s for Senate and Mr. Hines’s, that’s enough to win and for the former president to claim credit. Elsewhere, as in Mr. Herbster’s bid for governor, the Trump-backed candidate fell short.To be sure, Mr. Trump has won far more races than he has lost, and he saved face on Tuesday night with his late endorsement of Mr. Mastriano as polls showed the Pennsylvania candidate with a strong lead.Mr. Trump’s early endorsement of Mr. Budd in North Carolina’s Senate race choked off support and fund-raising for Mr. Budd’s establishment-minded rivals, including former Gov. Pat McCrory.But in Nebraska, Mr. Herbster and Mr. Trump couldn’t compete with a local political machine and millions of dollars from Gov. Pete Ricketts. In Pennsylvania, some local Republicans never warmed to Dr. Oz despite the Trump endorsement.None of this bodes well for Mr. Trump’s Georgia picks, who are facing cash disadvantages and, unlike in the primary contests so far this year, entrenched incumbents. The Georgia primaries are next week.Conor Lamb said electability matters most. Voters agreed — and chose John Fetterman.When he burst onto the national political scene in 2018 by winning a special election to a House district Mr. Trump had carried by 18 points, Conor Lamb presented himself as the Democrat who could win over Republican voters in tough races.Mr. Lamb made electability his central pitch to Pennsylvania voters in this year’s Senate race. Democratic voters didn’t disagree — they just decided overwhelmingly that his opponent, Mr. Fetterman, was the better general-election choice in the race.Representative Conor Lamb with supporters on Tuesday in Pittsburgh. He had far more endorsements than Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, but less voter enthusiasm.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMr. Fetterman, who left the campaign trail on Friday after suffering a stroke and had a pacemaker installed on Tuesday, outclassed Mr. Lamb in every aspect of the campaign.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

    • 63 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      John Fetterman: ‘Unfussy and Plain-Spoken’

      by

      John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, isn’t like most politicians in his party.Only 38 percent of American adults have a bachelor’s degree. Yet college graduates have come to dominate the Democratic Party’s leadership and message in recent years.The shift has helped the party to win over many suburban professionals — and also helps explain its struggles with working-class voters, including some voters of color. On many social issues, today’s Democratic Party is more liberal than most Americans without a bachelor’s degree. The party also tends to nominate candidates who seem more comfortable at, say, Whole Foods than Wal-Mart.All of which makes John Fetterman such an intriguing politician.Last night, Fetterman — Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor — comfortably won the state’s Democratic Senate primary, with 59 percent of the vote. Conor Lamb, a more traditional Democratic moderate, finished second.In the general election this fall, Fetterman will face either Mehmet Oz, a celebrity doctor endorsed by Donald Trump, or David McCormick, a former business executive. Their primary remains too close to call.The basic theory of Fetterman’s candidacy is that personality and authenticity matter at least as much as policy positions. On many issues, his stances are quite liberal. He has supported Bernie Sanders and taken progressive positions on Medicare, marijuana, criminal justice reform and L.G.B.T. rights. “If you get your jollies or you get your voters excited by bullying gay and trans kids, you know, it’s time for a new line of work,” Fetterman said at a recent campaign stop.He is also 6-foot-8, bearded and tattooed, and he doesn’t like to wear suits. “I think he is a visual representation of Pennsylvania,” one voter recently said.Fetterman is the former mayor of Braddock, a blue-collar town in western Pennsylvania where about 70 percent of residents are Black. He declined to move into the lieutenant governor’s mansion near Harrisburg and spends many nights at his home in Braddock. He talks about having been around guns for most of his life. And he does take some positions that clash with progressive orthodoxy, like his opposition to a fracking ban.Fetterman “does not sound like any other leading politician in recent memory,” my colleague Katie Glueck wrote from the campaign trail. Holly Otterbein of Politico called him “unfussy and plain-spoken” in contrast to “a party often seen as too elite.” One suburban voter in Pennsylvania — making the same point in a more skeptical way — told The Times, “I think sometimes he might come off as not a polished person.”To be clear, Fetterman may lose the general election. This year is shaping up as a difficult one for Democrats, and the Republican campaign will no doubt use his progressive positions to claim he is a leftist out of step with Pennsylvania’s voters. Republicans may also point out that Fetterman has a graduate degree from Harvard and that he pulled a gun on a jogger in Braddock during a disputed 2013 encounter.Still, I find Fetterman to be notable because Democrats have nominated so few candidates like him in recent years. The party is more likely to choose ideologically consistent candidates whose presentation resembles that of a law professor or think-tank employee. Fetterman, like many working-class voters, has a mix of political beliefs. On the campaign trail, he wears shorts and a hoodie.Describing his appeal to voters, Sarah Longwell, a Republican political strategist, said: “It’s not that he’s progressive that they like or don’t like. They like that he’s authentic.”Although the specifics are different, he shares some traits with Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, who comes off as “simultaneously progressive, moderate and conservative,” as the political scientist Christina Greer wrote in The Times. Adams won his election despite losing Manhattan, New York’s most highly educated, affluent borough.Fetterman also has some similarities with Senator Sherrod Brown, a populist Democrat who has managed to win in Ohio and who revels in “his less than glamorous image,” as Andrew J. Tobias of Cleveland.com has written.For years, most Democrats trying to figure out how to win over swing voters have taken a more technocratic approach than either Adams or Fetterman. Centrist Democrats have often urged the party to move to the center on almost every issue — even though most voters support a progressive economic agenda, such as higher taxes on the rich.Liberal Democrats have made the opposite mistake, confusing the progressive politics of college campuses and affluent suburbs with the actual politics of the country. Some liberals make the specific mistake of imagining that most Asian, Black and Latino voters are more liberal than they are. As a shorthand, the mistake is sometimes known as the Latinx problem (named for a term that most Latinos do not use).It remains unclear whether Fetterman represents a solution to the Democrats’ working-class problem. But the problem is real: It is a central reason that Democrats struggle so much outside the country’s large metro areas. And if Democrats hope to solve it, they will probably have a better chance if more of their candidates feel familiar to working-class voters.Politics isn’t only about policy positions. People also vote based on instinct and comfort.For more: In Times Opinion, Michael Sokolove asks whether Fetterman is the future of the Democratic Party.The latest resultsIn the primaries for Pennsylvania governor, Doug Mastriano — a far-right state senator endorsed by Trump — won the Republican nomination, while Josh Shapiro, the state attorney general, won the Democratic race. Mastriano’s victory caused The Cook Political Report to say that the general election was no longer a toss-up and Shapiro was favored to win.In North Carolina, Madison Cawthorn lost the Republican primary for his House seat. Cawthorn was endorsed by Trump, but had feuded with others in his party after a series of scandals.Representative Ted Budd, also backed by Trump, won North Carolina’s Republican Senate primary. He will face the Democrat Cheri Beasley.Brad Little, Idaho’s Republican governor, beat back a primary challenge by Janice McGeachin, the Trump-endorsed lieutenant governor.THE LATEST NEWSWar in UkraineBuses with surrendered Ukrainian troops under Russian escort yesterday.Alexander Ermochenko/ReutersHundreds of Ukrainian soldiers who defended the steel mill in Mariupol are in Russian custody.Negotiators on both sides say peace talks have collapsed.On a Russian talk show, a retired colonel stunned his colleagues by saying that the invasion wasn’t going well.The VirusPublic schools in the U.S. have lost at least 1.2 million students since 2020, with some switching to home-schooling and others dropping out.The F.D.A. authorized Pfizer’s booster for children 5 to 11.Hospitalizations are rising in New York City, nearing the threshold to reinstate an indoor mask mandate.The White House will send Americans eight more at-home tests, through covidtests.gov.PoliticsA memorial outside the Tops supermarket in Buffalo.Doug Mills/The New York TimesPresident Biden visited the site in Buffalo where a gunman killed 10 people. “White supremacy is a poison,” he said.A Pentagon investigation found no wrongdoing in a 2019 airstrike in Syria that killed dozens of people, including women and children.The Justice Department requested transcripts from the Jan. 6 committee, potentially as evidence in future cases.In a hearing on U.F.O.s, Pentagon officials revealed video of an unidentified craft flying past a fighter jet.The Justice Department sued the casino mogul Steve Wynn, saying he lobbied Trump on China’s behalf.Other Big StoriesThe suspect in the Buffalo massacre invited a small group of people to review his plan on the chat app Discord. None of them alerted law enforcement.The shortage of baby formula has hospitalized two children who can’t absorb nutrients properly.Gun manufacturing has nearly tripled in the U.S. since 2000, fueled by sales of handguns.Johnny Depp’s lawyer challenged Amber Heard’s account of abuse, asking her why she had not presented medical records to back up her story.OpinionsIbrahim RayintakathWe want to call heat waves, wildfires and other deadly weather events “extreme,” but climate change has made them increasingly common, David Wallace-Wells writes.The baby formula shortage is more proof that new mothers, venerated in theory, are unsupported in practice, Elizabeth Spiers says.MORNING READSLife hacks: How to become an early bird.Hype man: A trash-talking crypto bro caused a $40 billion crash.Stanley tumbler: The sisterhood of social media’s favorite water bottle.A Times classic: How to talk to someone who’s sick.Advice from Wirecutter: Freeze your food — without freezer burn.Lives Lived: Urvashi Vaid, a lawyer and activist, was a leading figure in the fight for L.G.B.T.Q. equality for more than four decades. She died at 63.ARTS AND IDEAS The music supervisor Randall Poster.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesA boxed set for birdsRandall Poster had never appreciated the songbirds of the Bronx, where he has lived for most of his life, until the quiet the pandemic brought in 2020. After speaking with an environmentalist friend, Poster — a music supervisor for filmmakers — was inspired. What if he harnessed his industry connections into a fund-raiser for bird conservation?This week, Poster will release the first volume of “For the Birds,” a star-studded, 242-track collection of original songs and readings based on birdsong. It benefits the National Audubon Society.“For the Birds” features electronic trance, fiddle tunes and field recordings. Alice Coltrane and Yoko Ono make appearances, and a song from Elvis Costello shares space with a Jonathan Franzen reading.“Of all the things we need to work harder to protect, birds, like music, speak to everyone,” said Anthony Albrecht, an Australian cellist who has led similar conservation efforts. “They’re such a visible — and audible — indicator of what we stand to lose.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookDavid Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.Use up seasonal produce by adding tangy rhubarb to sheet-pan chicken.What to WatchManuel Garcia-Rulfo plays the lead in Netflix’s “The Lincoln Lawyer.” It’s a tricky job when your first language isn’t English.What to ReadNell Zink’s “Avalon” is about a girl who has a menacing stepfamily and a great ambition.Late NightThe hosts celebrated Sweden and Finland’s NATO applications.Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was backfill. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Blue hue (four letters).If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — DavidP.S. The Times covered the first same-sex marriages in Massachusetts on the front page 18 years ago today.Here’s today’s front page.“The Daily” is about a Ukrainian soldier. On “The Argument,” a debate about inflation.Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      In Tuesday’s Primaries, Who Won, Who Lost and What Races Haven’t Been Called Yet

      by

      The marquee election on Tuesday evening, the Republican Senate primary in Pennsylvania, is going down to the wire, but consequential races were decided, setting up general election matchups for the fall.Here is a rundown of the winners and losers in some of the most important contests:The Mehmet Oz, Dave McCormick and Kathy Barnette race in Pennsylvania is too close to call, despite Trump’s endorsement.The high-spending Republican Senate race in Pennsylvania, between Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity television physician, and Dave McCormick, the wealthy leader of a hedge fund, is nail-bitingly close. Neither candidate conceded, and an official recount is likely.Both Dr. Oz and Mr. McCormick are rich, resided in other states for years, and spent millions attacking one another. Though former President Donald J. Trump endorsed Dr. Oz, the race was extremely tight, with thousands of mail-in ballots to be counted starting Wednesday.Another candidate, the author and 2020 election denier Kathy Barnette, surged to an unexpectedly strong third-place showing, in part by casting herself as the more authentic MAGA candidate. Ms. Barnette, who publicly espoused homophobic and anti-Muslim views for years, also benefited by a late advertising blitz from the influential anti-tax group Club for Growth.Doug Mastriano, an election denier, won the Republican primary election for governor in Pennsylvania.Doug Mastriano, a retired colonel and state senator who has propagated myriad false claims about the 2020 election and attended the protest leading up to the Capitol riot, won the Republican nomination for Pennsylvania governor.He defeated a crowded field of challengers and was endorsed just a few days ago by Mr. Trump. He will face Josh Shapiro, the attorney general of Pennsylvania who emerged unopposed from the Democratic primary for governor.Mr. Shapiro’s victory lap on Tuesday was cut short. He announced earlier that day that he had tested positive for the coronavirus with mild symptoms and was isolating.With Mr. Mastriano’s victory, Republicans will now try to win a battleground state with a central figure in trying to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.John Fetterman got a pacemaker hours before winning the Democratic Senate primary in Pennsylvania.John Fetterman, the lieutenant governor, had a stroke on Friday and a pacemaker put in on Tuesday, which kept him off the campaign trail in the waning days of the race.In November, he will try to help Democrats pick up a key Senate seat that is being vacated by Republican Patrick J. Toomey, a fiscal conservative who occasionally broke with his party.Gisele Barreto Fetterman speaking at the watch party for her husband, John Fetterman, after he won the Democratic Senate primary.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMr. Fetterman dominated the race, wearing a uniform of sweatshirts and shorts while tapping into voters’ frustration with Washington. In the primary, he defeated Representative Conor Lamb, a moderate some thought could appeal to white, blue-collar workers the party has been losing for years, and Malcolm Kenyatta, a young state legislator and rising star in the party who got married just over two months ago.Ted Budd, anointed by Trump, won North Carolina’s Republican Senate primary in a runaway victory.Representative Ted Budd, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump and the influential anti-tax group Club for Growth, won the Republican nomination for Senate. Mr. Budd, who skipped all four debates in the race, defeated nine other candidates, including Pat McCrory, a former governor, and former Representative Mark Walker.Cheri Beasley, a former chief justice of North Carolina’s Supreme Court and the first Black woman to have served in that role, will face Mr. Budd after cruising to victory in the Democratic primary for Senate. The outcome never appeared to be in doubt, with Democrats clearing the field of serious challengers for Ms. Beasley, who would become North Carolina’s first Black senator if elected.Republicans are done with Madison CawthornCrumbling under the weight of repeated scandals and blunders, Representative Madison Cawthorn was ousted on Tuesday by Republican primary voters in western North Carolina, a stinging rejection of the Trump-endorsed candidate.Mr. Cawthorn, 26, lost to Chuck Edwards, a state senator, in a crowded primary in the 11th District that resembled a recall effort for many Republicans, who grew fed up with Mr. Cawthorn’s antics.Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina shortly before conceding his race Tuesday night.Logan R. Cyrus for The New York TimesAt about 10:30 p.m., Mr. Cawthorn conceded the race to Mr. Edwards, who had gained the support of many prominent Republicans in North Carolina, including Senator Thom Tillis.Mr. Cawthorn, who entered Congress as a rising star in 2020, was besieged by scandal, from falsely suggesting that his Republican colleagues routinely throw cocaine-fueled orgies, to being detained at an airport after trying to take a loaded gun through security. Last month, after salacious images of him surfaced online showing him wearing women’s lingerie as part of a cruise ship game, he wrote on Twitter that “digging stuff up from my early 20s to smear me is pathetic.”A 26-year-old political novice won a House primary in North Carolina with Trump’s helpBo Hines, a 26-year-old political novice who enthralled Mr. Trump, drawing inevitable comparisons to another North Carolinian — Mr. Cawthorn — catapulted to a win in the Republican primary for a House seat outside Raleigh.Mr. Hines, a onetime football phenom who was an All-American at North Carolina State University before transferring to Yale, topped seven other candidates in the primary in the 13th District.His victory is perhaps the most audacious example of Mr. Trump’s influence over the Republican Party, with the former president endorsing Mr. Hines in March in the newly drawn tossup district. Mr. Hines was also backed by the Club for Growth, the influential anti-tax group.Mr. Hines will face Wiley Nickel, a two-term state senator and criminal defense lawyer who did advance work for President Barack Obama. He positioned himself as a progressive who can work with people on both sides of the aisle.Idaho’s Republican governor stamped out a Trump insurgent: the lieutenant governorGov. Brad Little of Idaho weathered a Republican primary challenge by Janice McGeachin, the lieutenant governor, who had been endorsed by Mr. Trump and made headlines for defying Mr. Little’s pandemic orders.Ms. McGeachin had sought to win over ultraconservatives in the deep-red state that Mr. Trump overwhelmingly carried in 2016 and 2020. She had played up how she had issued a mutinous but short-lived ban on coronavirus mask mandates when Mr. Little had briefly left the state.But Ms. McGeachin appeared to muster less than 30 percent of the vote in Idaho, which holds separate primaries for governor and lieutenant governor — the genesis of the strained pairing.An establishment Democrat thwarted a far-left rival running for the House in KentuckyIn an open-seat race in Kentucky’s only blue House district, Democrats favored an establishment candidate in Tuesday’s primary over a rival state lawmaker who ran on the far left and has been a vocal leader of the police accountability movement in Louisville.The party favorite, Morgan McGarvey, the Democratic leader in the State Senate, defeated Attica Scott, a state representative, in the Third District. The two had been vying to succeed to Representative John Yarmuth, who was first elected in 2006 and is retiring. The chairman of the House Budget Committee, Mr. Yarmuth is the lone Democrat from Kentucky in Congress. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      For Hochul, Shooting in Buffalo Is a Hometown Tragedy

      by

      The governor grew up in the Buffalo suburbs and lives in the city now. The shooting has taken on political overtones in the 2022 race for governor of New York.Hours after an 18-year-old gunman killed 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket, Gov. Kathy Hochul convened a news conference just blocks away.She mourned for the tight-knit community and for the lives shattered by the cruelty of white supremacy. She spoke of the danger of hatred circulating online. And she talked knowingly of the neighborhood and the streets she had walked — and how it all hit so close to home.Ms. Hochul grew up in the Buffalo suburbs and lives with her husband in the city’s downtown area, less than four miles from the East Side, the mostly Black neighborhood where a white gunman orchestrated one of the deadliest racist massacres in recent memory.“This is personal” Ms. Hochul said a day later at True Bethel Baptist Church, a Black church one mile away from the site of the shooting. “You’ve hurt our family.”In recent days, Ms. Hochul has called out tech companies that she said were not doing enough to stop the spread of online hate that motivated the gunman, and denounced Washington for its failure to impose what she said should be common-sense gun control laws.On Tuesday, she appeared with President Biden as he visited Buffalo, a postindustrial city in western New York on the shores of Lake Erie. And in the coming days, Ms. Hochul has hinted that she plans to unveil a new gun safety package.With the Democratic primary for governor six weeks away, and Ms. Hochul running for her first full term, the shooting has presented the governor with both an opportunity to engage with voters in a moment of crisis and a challenge to demonstrate whether she is up to the task.From Opinion: The Buffalo ShootingCommentary from Times Opinion on the massacre at a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo.The Times Editorial Board: The mass shooting in Buffalo was an extreme expression of a political worldview that has become increasingly central to the G.O.P.’s identity.Jamelle Bouie: G.O.P. politicians and conservative media personalities did not create the idea of the “great replacement,” but they have adopted it.Paul Krugman: There is a direct line from Republicans’ embrace of crank economics, to Jan. 6, to Buffalo.Sway: In the latest episode of her podcast, Kara Swisher hosts a discussion on the role of internet platforms like 4chan, Facebook and Twitch in the attack.Indeed, the shooting, which law enforcement officials said was motivated by a white supremacist ideology fanned by some factions of the country’s right wing, has swiftly taken on political overtones in the escalating race for governor of New York, where gun violence has become a central issue.One of Ms. Hochul’s primary opponents, Representative Thomas R. Suozzi, was in Buffalo when the shooting occurred. He immediately used the event as a political cudgel, proclaiming on Twitter, “Hochul refuses to make fighting crime a priority. I will.”Mr. Suozzi, a centrist Democrat from Long Island, later issued a statement that took issue with Ms. Hochul’s record in Congress and endorsement during that time by the National Rifle Association, which has vehemently opposed gun control measures, including background checks.“That is not leadership,” said Mr. Suozzi, who has received an F rating from the N.R.A. “It is hypocritical and it does nothing to protect New Yorkers from this kind of tragedy happening again.”Ms. Hochul, at a Sunday prayer service in Buffalo, lives less than four miles from the scene of the shooting.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesRepresentative Lee Zeldin, a Suffolk County Republican who is running to be his party’s nominee for governor, issued a statement over the weekend that pushed for the reinstatement of the death penalty in New York State, which was declared unconstitutional nearly two decades ago.“Those who commit fatal hate crimes, acts of terrorism and other extreme violence should be brought to justice, and in some of these cases, the only fitting form of justice is the death penalty,” said Mr. Zeldin, who, visited the shooting scene on Monday to pay his respects to those killed, but did not take questions from reporters and avoided overtly political remarks.But for Ms. Hochul, the shooting has more obvious resonance.“I think the governor feels it on a whole different level, because she’s passed by the Tops, if not been in the Tops,” said Darius G. Pridgen, a pastor at the True Bethel Baptist church.In the days since the shooting, the governor has visited churches and gone on television and radio, giving interviews to nearly a dozen outlets, from MSNBC and CNN to Buffalo’s long-running morning radio show, “Janet & Nick in the Morning.”She has highlighted the state’s existing gun safety laws, seizing the opportunity to emphasize actions she has already taken as governor, such as an interstate task force that she assembled last year to tackle the illegal flow of guns.And she has denounced the killings as “white supremacist acts of terrorism,” calling on white Americans to take a stand against racism.“To say that she is taking this personally is to say the least,” said Jeremy Zellner, the chair of the Democratic Party in Erie County.The governor has lived with her husband in a condo in the waterfront area of the city’s downtown area since 2013, shortly after she lost her seat in Congress — though she often splits her time between Albany and New York City since becoming governor in August.Ms. Hochul got her start in politics as a member of the town board in Hamburg, a suburban town just south of Buffalo that is overwhelmingly white. While she briefly represented the East Side as clerk of Erie County, the House district she was elected to in 2011 was largely rural and suburban and did not include Buffalo.Ms. Hochul, at a news conference on Sunday, once represented the East Side of Buffalo when she was Erie County’s clerk.Malik Rainey for The New York TimesShe later helped promote economic development projects and job training programs aimed at the city as lieutenant governor to former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. As governor, she visited the East Side as recently as March to tout the construction of new affordable housing.One of Ms. Hochul’s major priorities for the region involves addressing the racial and economic inequalities that were exacerbated by a stretch of highway that was built through the East Side. Ms. Hochul is spearheading a plan to reconnect neighborhoods that were divided by the Kensington Expressway over 60 years ago, saying last month that there was $1 billion available in federal and state funds for a project to potentially cover the expressway, or part of it.“She’s from the suburbs, but in no way, shape or form a stranger to that part of the city,” said State Senator Sean Ryan, a Democrat who represents parts of the city’s West Side. “She’s a known commodity in terms of boots on the ground in neighborhood centers.”The mass shooting came as New York’s gubernatorial primary, scheduled for June 28, looms large.Ms. Hochul has amassed a gargantuan $20 million war chest and a huge polling advantage, but her campaign has faltered in recent weeks, battered by the arrest of her lieutenant governor, Brian Benjamin, on corruption charges, and criticism of a deal she secured to subsidize the construction of a new football stadium for the Buffalo Bills with taxpayer money.Mirroring many Democrats nationwide, Ms. Hochul had recently pivoted her attention to the likelihood that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade, radically redrawing the national landscape for women’s health care. Ms. Hochul has begun speaking more extensively about making New York a refuge for reproductive rights, vowing to enshrine abortion rights into state law and using her executive authority to create a $35 million fund to support abortion providers.Her campaign released a television ad this week that highlighted her commitment on the issue, even as the shooting’s aftermath overtook most of her public schedule.And on Monday, Ms. Hochul took the stage with Mr. Biden at a community center, seeking to draw parallels between Buffalo and the president’s hometown, Scranton, Pa. She said both leaders were used to their native cities failing to get the “respect” they deserved.“I’m a daughter of Buffalo, and I’m so proud to be governor,” she said ahead of the president’s remarks. “But right now I’m a daughter of Buffalo.” More

    • 50 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      Your Tuesday Evening Briefing

      by

      Here’s what you need to know at the end of the day.(Want to get this newsletter in your inbox? Here’s the sign-up.)Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Tuesday.President Biden and Jill Biden, at a memorial outside the Tops supermarket in Buffalo, today.Doug Mills/The New York Times1. In a speech in Buffalo today, President Biden called white supremacy “a poison” and Saturday’s racist massacre “domestic terrorism” and shared each victim’s name and story.Biden and his wife, Jill, met with victims’ families before the speech, in which Biden denounced “replacement theory” and condemned those “who spread the lie for power, political gain and for profit.” Biden added, “I don’t know why we don’t admit what the hell is going on.” But he stopped short of naming influential proponents of the conspiracy theory, like Tucker Carlson.Not all residents welcomed his words: “I could care less about what Biden said. I want to see action,” one resident said. “I want to see our community actually get help.”Biden voiced support for getting assault weapons off the streets but, before leaving, said he could do little on gun control via executive action and that it would be hard to get Congress to act.The Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, on Sunday.Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters2. By early Tuesday, more than 260 Ukrainian fighters at the Mariupol steel mill had surrendered to Russia. Their fate is uncertain, as is that of hundreds more still in the plant.The soldiers laid down arms under orders from their country’s military, after very secretive negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. The surrender seems to end the war’s longest battle so far, solidifying one of Russia’s few major territorial gains.What happens next is unclear. The evacuated soldiers were taken to Russian-controlled territory, where Ukrainian officials said the fighters would be swapped for Russian prisoners. But the Kremlin did not confirm the swap and signaled that it might level war-crimes charges against the soldiers.Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine appear farther apart than ever on peace negotiations.Voters in Asheville, N.C., cast their ballots today.Logan R. Cyrus for The New York Times3. Five states held primaries today.No state is more closely watched than Pennsylvania. Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who spent the day recovering from a stroke, is the front-runner for the Democratic Senate nomination over Representative Conor Lamb. Three candidates are neck and neck in the Republican Senate race; Dr. Mehmet Oz, a celebrity physician endorsed by Donald Trump, was slightly ahead in polls. The former president also endorsed Doug Mastriano, a far-right loyalist who has promoted conspiracy theories and is the leading Republican candidate for governor. Officials said that final election results might not come tonight.Madison Cawthorn, the controversial G.O.P. representative, is in a closely watched race in North Carolina. In Idaho, an extreme far-right candidate is running against its conservative governor. Oregon and Kentucky also held primaries; check in with us for results.Attorney General Merrick Garland in the White House Rose Garden.Sarah Silbiger for The New York Times4. The Justice Department is requesting transcripts from the Jan. 6 committee.The House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol has interviewed more than 1,000 people so far. And the Justice Department has asked the committee to send transcripts of any interviews it is conducting — including discussions with Trump’s inner circle, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.The transcripts could be used as evidence in potential criminal cases or to pursue new leads. The move comes amid signs that Attorney General Merrick Garland is ramping up the pace of his painstaking investigation into the Capitol attack, which coincided with the certification of the election that the former president lost.Capistrano Unified School District, in Orange County, Calif., has lost over 2,800 students since 2020.Alisha Jucevic for The New York Times5. America’s public schools have lost at least 1.2 million students since 2020.Experts point to two potential causes: Some parents became so fed up with remote instruction or mask mandates that they started home-schooling their children or sending them to private schools that largely remained open during the pandemic. Other families were thrown into such turmoil by pandemic-related job losses, homelessness and school closures that their children dropped out.While a broad decline was underway as birth and immigration rates have fallen, the pandemic supercharged that drop in ways that experts say will not easily be reversed.Elon Musk, chaos agent.Susan Walsh/Associated Press6. Is he in or out?The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, raised further doubts about his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, saying (on Twitter) that “this deal cannot move forward” until he gets more details about the volume of spam and fake accounts on the platform.Musk has latched onto the issue of fake accounts, which Twitter says make up fewer than 5 percent of its total, in a move that some analysts figure is an attempt to drive down the acquisition price, or walk away from the deal.The social media company is pressing ahead. In a lengthy regulatory filing, Twitter’s board urged shareholders to vote in favor of the deal, and provided a play-by-play view of how the board reached an agreement with Musk last month.A baby formula display shelf at Rite Aid in San Diego, Calif. on May 10, 2022.Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times7. More baby formula may be on the way.As a national shortage of infant formula put many parents on edge, the F.D.A. announced an agreement with Abbott Laboratories to reopen the company’s shuttered baby formula plant.Russia-Ukraine War: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 4In Mariupol. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Republican ‘Chaos’ in Pennsylvania Threatens to Upend the Midterms

      by

      The G.O.P. thought it had 2022 all figured out. Then along came Kathy Barnette and Doug Mastriano.To a degree surpassing any other contest in the 2022 midterms so far, Donald Trump has poured his personal prestige into Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate primary race, which is going through a final spasm of uncertainty as Kathy Barnette, an insurgent candidate with a sparse résumé, gives a last-minute scare to Trump’s pick, Dr. Mehmet Oz.The outcome of that election, as well as the G.O.P. contest for governor, is threatening to implode the state’s Republican Party — with a blast radius that might be felt in states as far away as Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina over the coming weeks and months.The turbulence also has major implications for Trump’s hold on the party, which is growing more alarmed that the former president’s involvement in primaries could scupper Republicans’ chances of reclaiming the Senate despite President Biden’s unpopularity.Trump endorsed Oz, a celebrity physician, over the advice of many Republicans inside and outside Pennsylvania. The bill is coming due, those Republicans now say.Many of Trump’s own voters have expressed skepticism of Oz, who has fended off millions of dollars in negative advertising highlighting his past Republican heterodoxies on issues as varied as abortion and gun rights. As of Monday, Oz is leading by nearly three percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls in the primary, which roughly matches the Oz campaign’s latest daily tracking poll, I’m told.It’s not clear how late-deciding Republicans will ultimately vote, although a new poll by Susquehanna University found that 45 percent of respondents who had made up their minds “in the last few days” were backing Barnette.A late endorsementOn Saturday, Trump finally endorsed Doug Mastriano, a conspiracy-theory-minded retired military officer who leads polls in the governor’s race, in an apparent attempt to hedge his bets.“He’s clearly upset that it’s not going his way,” said David Urban, a political operative and early Trump backer who led the former president’s efforts to win Pennsylvania in the 2016 election.Urban is supporting Dave McCormick, a fellow West Point graduate, in the Senate race, and said he had not spoken to Trump recently about the primary.The McCormick camp is hoping the fireworks between Barnette and Oz will earn him a second look from voters, who seem to be wavering between the three leading contenders.Understand the Pennsylvania Primary ElectionThe crucial swing state will hold its primary on May 17, with key races for a U.S. Senate seat and the governorship.Hard-Liners Gain: Republican voters appear to be rallying behind far-right candidates in two pivotal races, worrying both parties about what that could mean in November.G.O.P. Senate Race: Kathy Barnette, a conservative commentator, is making a surprise late surge against big-spending rivals, Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick.Democratic Senate Race: Representative Conor Lamb had all the makings of a front-runner, but John Fetterman, the state’s shorts-wearing lieutenant governor, is resonating with voters.Abortion Battleground: Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states where abortion access hangs in the balance with midterm elections this year.Electability Concerns: Starting with Pennsylvania, the coming weeks will offer a window into the mood of Democratic voters who are deeply worried about a challenging midterm campaign environment.Not everyone’s buying it.One veteran Republican operative in Pennsylvania who is not aligned with any Senate campaign likened McCormick to Hans Gruber, the villain in the movie “Die Hard,” who tries to fire upward at Bruce Willis’s character even as he is falling from the top of Nakatomi Plaza.Barnette has endorsed Mastriano and vice versa, and the two have held events together — almost as if they are running together as a kind of super-MAGA ticket. She has fended off questions about her background in recent days, including about her military service and her past Islamophobic comments.Kathy Barnette speaking at a campaign rally for Doug Mastriano, left.Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesOz, who if elected would become America’s first Muslim senator, called those comments “disqualifying” and “reprehensible” in an interview on Saturday with The Associated Press.In the governor’s race, Republicans aligned with the party establishment are desperate to stop Mastriano from winning the nomination, and have urged other candidates to unite around former Representative Lou Barletta, who is running for governor with the help of several former top Trump campaign aides.One of the first members of Congress to embrace Trump, former Representative Tom Marino of Pennsylvania, blasted the former president at a news conference this weekend for what he said was a lack of “loyalty” to Barletta.In a follow-up interview, Marino said he hadn’t been planning to endorse anyone in the race, but decided to back Barletta because he felt that Barletta had earned Trump’s support by risking his career to throw his lot in with Trump early in the 2016 campaign.“I did what I did because I was just so outraged” over Trump’s endorsement of Mastriano, Marino said. “Loyalty is important to me.”The wider fallout for 2022Watching the events in Pennsylvania, which included the leading candidate in the Democratic race for Senate, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, suffering a stroke on Friday, plugged-in observers in both parties used words like “gobsmacked” and “stunned.”“It’s just bang-bang crazy here,” said Christopher Nicholas, a Republican consultant based in Harrisburg.Recriminations are flying over why the Pennsylvania Republican Party failed to appreciate the rise of Barnette and Mastriano until it was too late to arrest their momentum. Ballots have already been printed, fueling despair among party insiders that the efforts to unify the party against one or both outsider candidates might ultimately prove futile.“The press paid very little attention to Barnette until the last two weeks,” said G. Terry Madonna, an expert on Pennsylvania politics who ran polling at Franklin and Marshall College for many years.National Democrats are watching the events in Pennsylvania closely, and many predicted that the results of Tuesday’s contests would affect other Republican primaries for Senate in the weeks to come.And while the public’s anger over inflation and supply-chain disruptions is weighing in the G.O.P.’s favor, Democrats hope to compete in the fall against candidates they perceive as easier to defeat, like Barnette.The greatest impact of Trump’s meddling might be felt in Arizona, where he has yet to issue an endorsement. Trump has slammed the establishment candidate, Attorney General Mark Brnovich, for failing to overturn Biden’s victory there in 2020, but has not yet chosen an alternative.David Bergstein, the communications director at the Democratic Senate campaign committee, said that Trump’s meddling in G.O.P. primaries was having an even greater effect on the Republican Party than many Democrats had anticipated. “Chaos begets chaos,” he said.What to readNicholas Confessore and Karen Yourish explain the origins of “replacement theory,” a once-fringe ideology that was espoused by the suspect in the Buffalo massacre on Saturday.Democrats are making a mockery of campaign finance laws through the use of “little red boxes,” Shane Goldmacher reports. And it’s all happening in plain sight.In North Carolina, Representative Ted Budd is proving the political potency of pairing endorsements from Donald Trump and the Club for Growth, Jazmine Ulloa and Michael Bender report.Jazmine just returned from North Carolina’s mountainous west, where she found strong opinions about Madison Cawthorn, the troubled first-term congressman facing a primary challenge. In Idaho, a feud between the state’s governor and its lieutenant governor is coloring the Republican Party as the far right seeks to take over the state. Mike Baker was there.Follow all of our live daily political coverage here.how they runFormer Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina is trailing in the polls as he seeks the Republican nomination for Senate in his state.Travis Long/The News & Observer, via Associated PressA new day for Pat McCrory When Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina signed legislation that critics called the “bathroom bill” in 2016, it set off a firestorm.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      A Fracture in Idaho’s G.O.P. as the Far Right Seeks Control

      by

      Ahead of a primary vote, traditional Republicans are raising alarm about the future of the party, warning about the growing strength of militia members, racists and the John Birch Society.BONNERS FERRY, Idaho — At a school gymnasium in northern Idaho, Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin regaled a crowd with stories of her feuds with the current governor, a fellow Republican, including the time when he briefly left the state and she issued a mutinous but short-lived ban on coronavirus mask mandates.Gov. Brad Little had worked in recent years to slash taxes and ban abortion, but for Ms. McGeachin and the hundreds gathered at a candidates’ forum sponsored by the John Birch Society in late March, the governor was at cross purposes with their view of just how conservative Idaho could and should be.They clapped as one candidate advocated “machine guns for everyone” and another called for the state to take control of federal lands. A militia activist, who was once prosecuted for his role in an infamous 2014 standoff with federal agents in Nevada, promised to be a true representative of the people. A local pastor began the meeting with an invocation, asking for God to bless the American Redoubt — a movement to create a refuge anchored in northern Idaho for conservative Christians who are ready to abandon the rest of the country.“We’re losing our state,” said Ms. McGeachin, who is now seeking to take over the governor’s job permanently. “We’re losing our freedoms.”The bitter intraparty contest between Ms. McGeachin and Mr. Little, set to be settled in the state’s primary election on Tuesday, reflects the intensifying split that is pitting Idaho’s conventional pro-gun, anti-abortion, tax-cut conservatives against a growing group of far-right radicals who are agitating to seize control of what is already one of the most conservative corners of the Republican Party in the country.The state has long been a draw for ultraconservatives disillusioned with the liberal drift in other parts of the nation, many of them settling off the grid in the mountains of northern Idaho or among like-minded people in towns like Bonners Ferry. Over the years, the Idaho panhandle has been home to white supremacist groups and people ready to take up arms against the U.S. government. Such groups and their allies have been particularly wary of the changing nature of Idaho’s cities, including the legions of other newcomers responding to a booming job market in Boise.Fearing the growth of the party’s extremist wing, some Republicans are waging a “Take Back Idaho” campaign. In northern Idaho’s Kootenai County, the disputes have led to a formal rift, with two Republican Party factions separately battling to convince voters that they represent the true nature of the party.Todd Engel, second from left, who is running to be a state representative, joined other Republican candidates at a recent forum, Grant Hindsley for The New York TimesBoundary County Middle School in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, where a candidates forum was held for Republicans running in the primary. Grant Hindsley for The New York TimesSimilar debates are playing out across the country, as more moderate Republicans confront challenges from an increasingly powerful segment energized by the continuing influence of former President Donald J. Trump. In Idaho, where Mr. Trump won 64 percent of the vote in 2020, carrying 41 of the state’s 44 counties, many longtime Republicans fear the party’s name, identity and deep conservative values are being commandeered by the state’s fringe elements.“If traditional Republican principles in Idaho want to survive, then the traditional Republicans are going to have to work harder,” said Jack Riggs, a former lieutenant governor who recently joined with other former elected officials to form a separate association, the North Idaho Republicans, to challenge what he sees as a dangerous shift within the existing party leadership in Kootenai County.Understand the Pennsylvania Primary ElectionThe crucial swing state will hold its primary on May 17, with key races for a U.S. Senate seat and the governorship.Hard-Liners Gain: Republican voters appear to be rallying behind far-right candidates in two pivotal races, worrying both parties about what that could mean in November.G.O.P. Senate Race: Kathy Barnette, a conservative commentator, is making a surprise late surge against big-spending rivals, Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick.Democratic Senate Race: Representative Conor Lamb had all the makings of a front-runner. It hasn’t worked out that way.Abortion Battleground: Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states where abortion access hangs in the balance with midterm elections this year.Electability Concerns: Starting with Pennsylvania, the coming weeks will offer a window into the mood of Democratic voters who are deeply worried about a challenging midterm campaign environment.Mr. Riggs said the local party has been increasingly taken over by zealots motivated by a desire to limit the influence of government, sometimes at the expense of the traditional Republican goals of promoting business and growth. Many of the new activists, he said, express a willingness to fight the U.S. government, with arms if necessary.One of the growing powers in the region is the John Birch Society, which dominated the far right in the 1960s and 1970s by opposing the civil rights movement and equal rights for women while embracing conspiratorial notions about communist infiltration of the federal government. The group was purged from the conservative movement decades ago but has found a renewed foothold in places like the Idaho panhandle.Ms. McGeachin, the lieutenant governor, has angled to seize the support of that wing of the party. A few weeks before she traveled to the gymnasium event in northern Idaho, she made a video address to the America First Political Action Conference, an event organized by a prominent white nationalist, Nick Fuentes. In an interview, Ms. McGeachin said she had no regrets about doing so.“It’s my job to listen to a broad perspective,” she said.With Mr. Trump’s endorsement, Ms. McGeachin has tried to portray Mr. Little, a third-generation sheep and cattle rancher who has worked to position Idaho as a low-regulation state friendly to businesses and small-government conservatives alike, as unwilling to uphold Idaho’s true values. She cites the governor’s actions during the pandemic as an example.Idaho endured some particularly challenging waves during the coronavirus pandemic that led hospitals to a state of crisis. Overwhelmed facilities in northern Idaho were forced to redirect some patients to neighboring Washington State.Engaged in a bitter intraparty contest, Gov. Brad Little has been trying to tout his conservative credentials. Otto Kitsinger/Associated PressOutside of Coeur d’Alene, on a quiet Friday morning in April.Grant Hindsley for The New York TimesMr. Little angered many in the medical community by refusing to issue a statewide mask mandate and by fighting President Biden’s vaccine mandates in court. But he allowed cities and school districts to issue mask mandates of their own, and that became a point of contention between him and the lieutenant governor. When Mr. Little left the state to participate in a meeting of Republican governors in Tennessee last year, Ms. McGeachin issued an executive order banning mask mandates from government entities in the state, including school districts. Mr. Little reversed the order upon his return.Mr. Little signed some of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws, including a provision that prohibits abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy and allows people, including the family members of rapists, to sue the abortion provider. Ms. McGeachin has pushed to go further, calling for a special session to remove exemptions offered in a state law limiting abortions and saying Idaho’s law should be the strictest in the country.The only exemptions in the law are for rape, incest and the life of the motherAnd while Mr. Little has won an endorsement from the National Rifle Association, Ms. McGeachin said she wants to offer incentives to increase production of firearms and ammunition in the state.Mr. Little has sought to tout his other conservative credentials, reminding voters that since he took office in 2019, he has slashed taxes, pursued deregulation and sent National Guard members to the U.S.-Mexico border.“In Idaho, we cherish our liberty, and we fight for our jobs,” Mr. Little says in a new campaign ad.Idaho is in the midst of dramatic change, recording some of the nation’s fastest population growth in recent years, especially during the pandemic. What the newcomers mean to Idaho politics remains unclear. Depending on whom you ask, they are either importing some of their home state’s liberal values — Californians face particular scorn — or they are bringing new money and energetic grievances that could help drive Idaho further to the right.Republicans already hold supermajorities in the State House and State Senate, and a Democrat has not won a statewide race since 2002. For many of the races on the ballot, the winner of Tuesday’s primary will coast to victory in November.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More