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    In Louisiana, Gov. Edwards Staves Off Certain Conservative Policies for Now

    John Bel Edwards, the only Democratic governor in the Deep South, has successfully vetoed bills that have glided into law elsewhere in the region. Soon, he’ll leave office.The Republican supermajority in the Louisiana State Legislature pushed through a bill this year banning gender-transition care for minors, along with other legislation banning Covid vaccine requirements in schools and any classroom discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation.It was the kind of aggressive social policy agenda that has gained traction in conservative states across the country. But unlike in most such states, where Republican bills glide into law, lawmakers in Louisiana had to return to the Capitol last week, more than a month after the session ended, to try to claw the legislation back from the brink of failure.The reason: John Bel Edwards, the lone Democratic governor in the Deep South. He has used vetoes with some success as a bulwark against conservative legislation in a state where Republicans have had a lock on the legislature for more than a decade.In Louisiana, governors have a history of successfully wielding vetoes; most years, lawmakers have not even bothered trying to override them.But this year, legislators decided to test that power, reconvening to consider overriding more than two dozen vetoes at a moment when Republicans have tightened their control of the legislature and when Mr. Edwards, who is finishing his second term, is on his way out.“You voted for this before,” State Representative Raymond J. Crews, a Republican, told his colleagues on Tuesday as he asked them to support overriding the veto of his bill, which would require schools to refer to transgender students by the names and genders on their birth certificates. “I hope you’ll do that again.”Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has successfully used vetoes as a bulwark against certain conservative legislation in a state where Republicans have had a lock on the legislature for more than a decade.Jodi Hilton for The New York TimesMr. Crews did not get enough votes. In fact, by the time lawmakers adjourned late Tuesday, all but one of Mr. Edwards’s vetoes still stood. The single exception was the ban on transition care for minors, a bill that the Republicans had channeled most of their energy and resources into resuscitating.The outcome of the session, which lawmakers raced through on Tuesday, was one last demonstration of how Mr. Edwards, a two-term governor leaving office next year, has succeeded at checking the influence of Republican lawmakers — to an extent.“It’s kind of hard to be too disappointed — we actually did override the veto on a very important bill,” said State Representative Alan Seabaugh, a Republican who led a faction of some of the most conservative lawmakers.Still, he acknowledged, Mr. Edwards posed a formidable obstacle. “It really shows what an influence a liberal Democrat governor has over Republican legislators,” Mr. Seabaugh said.Although many in the governor’s own party would dispute the portrayal of Mr. Edwards — an anti-abortion, pro-gun rights moderate — as a liberal, there was still widespread agreement that his departure in January could bring about a significant shift in the state’s political dynamic.Many recognize a strong possibility of a Republican succeeding Mr. Edwards, setting the stage for Louisiana to veer even more to the right, after several decades of the governorship flipping back and forth between the two parties.The Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge.Emily Kask for The New York TimesThe state has an all-party “jungle primary” in October. Polls show Jeff Landry, the state’s deeply conservative attorney general, as the front-runner, along with Shawn Wilson, a Democrat and former secretary of transportation and development.In a state where former President Donald J. Trump won by 20-point margins in 2016 and 2020, Mr. Edwards’s political survival has hinged on the appeal of his biography — he is a West Point graduate and a sheriff’s son — and on his blend of social conservatism and progressive achievements, including expanding Medicaid, that fits Louisiana’s unique political landscape.He has angered many in his own party with his vehement opposition to abortion rights and his restraint in criticizing Mr. Trump, who as president went to great lengths to campaign against Mr. Edwards’s re-election.Still, even Democrats who are critical of Mr. Edwards have seen him as a vital barrier against conservative policies that have easily advanced in neighboring states.“I do think that there’s always room for being a more vocal ally and a more staunch ally to our community,” Quest Riggs, who helped found the Real Name Campaign, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group in New Orleans, said of the governor. “But on the other hand, his vetoes have been a political tool that has been necessary to offset the mobilization by the evangelical right in Louisiana.”Last year, lawmakers succeeded in overriding a governor’s veto for the first time in three decades, reinstating a Congressional map that Mr. Edwards had objected to because it included only one district with a majority of Black voters despite the fact that one-third of the state’s population is Black. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for a legal challenge to the map to move forward.Many recognize a strong possibility of a Republican succeeding Mr. Edwards. Louisiana has an all-party “jungle primary” in October, and polls show Jeff Landry, the state’s deeply conservative attorney general, as the front-runner.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesAlso last year, Mr. Edwards allowed a bill that excluded female transgender students from school sports to become law without his signature, predicting a veto would be overridden.Mr. Edwards said last week that he had issued 319 vetoes in his eight years as governor, and that 317 of them had been sustained. “Usually, we have been able to find common ground to move Louisiana forward,” he said.On Tuesday, lawmakers blitzed through the vetoed bills, including measures that denied parole for dangerous offenders and prevented “foreign adversaries” from owning agriculture land.Overriding a veto requires a two-thirds majority vote in both houses, and the Republicans have a supermajority by just a thin margin. Two Republican state representatives were absent on Tuesday, and a few in the House and Senate crossed party lines to oppose some overrides, infuriating their more conservative colleagues.When the ban on gender-transition care came up, lawmakers described conflicting perceptions of what it means to protect children. Supporters of the bill said it would safeguard young people from treatments they claim are dangerous and untested, even though there is broad agreement among major medical associations in the United States that such care can be beneficial for many patients.Critics of the ban argue that it would imperil a small, vulnerable population of young people by denying them medically necessary care. Most of the 20 other states that have passed similar legislation are facing lawsuits, and judges have already temporarily blocked a few of the bans.In the House, the vote to override the veto passed 76 to 23, with seven Democrats joining the Republicans. In the Senate, it passed 28 to 11. Republicans seized the sole successful override as a victory.“We sent a clear signal,” Mr. Landry, the attorney general and candidate for governor, said in a video posted online, “that woke liberal agendas that are destructive to children will not be tolerated in Louisiana.”Lawmakers and observers contemplated how the political climate would be different during next year’s legislative session, particularly if Republicans were to maintain their supermajority and win the governor’s race.“What happens when they don’t have to hold back anymore?” said Robert E. Hogan, a political science professor at Louisiana State University, referring to Republican lawmakers if Democrats lose the governor’s race. “You’ll have a governor that’s powerful and on your side.”That prospect has inspired trepidation among some, especially within the L.G.B.T.Q. community, but has amplified ambitions among conservatives.Mr. Seabaugh, who is leaving the House because of term limits but is running for a Senate seat, envisions passing some of the same bills next year without the threat of a veto and rolling back Mr. Edwards’s agenda. “I don’t think we can do it all in one year,” Mr. Seabaugh said, “but I’m sure going to try.” More

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    Chris Sununu Won’t Run for Re-Election as Governor of New Hampshire

    The decision by Mr. Sununu, a moderate Republican, sets up a competitive race next year to lead a battleground state, and Democrats will be eager to take advantage.Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, a Republican, said on Wednesday that he would not run for re-election in 2024, opening up a seat in a battleground state that Democrats will be eager to take.Mr. Sununu made the announcement in an email to supporters.“This was no easy decision as I truly love serving as governor,” he wrote. “Public service should never be a career, and the time is right for another Republican to lead our great state.”Almost immediately, Chuck Morse, a Republican who served as president of the New Hampshire Senate and lost a primary for U.S. Senate last year, announced that he would run for the Republican nomination to fill the seat — praising Mr. Sununu’s economic policies and saying he was running “to build on those successes.” Another Republican, former Senator Kelly Ayotte, also hinted that she might jump into the race.Two Democrats — Cinde Warmington, a member of the New Hampshire Executive Council, and Joyce Craig, the mayor of Manchester — had already begun campaigns before Mr. Sununu bowed out.The vacancy will be a big opportunity for the Democratic Party, which has won the last five presidential elections in New Hampshire and holds both of the state’s Senate seats.Like some other Northeastern states, New Hampshire has often voted for Republicans for state offices despite leaning blue in national elections. But Democrats flipped two such governorships last year — in Maryland and Massachusetts — after popular, moderate Republicans in the same mold as Mr. Sununu retired.“No matter which MAGA candidate becomes the nominee, the D.G.A. is eager to hold them accountable to flip this seat and elect a new Democratic governor who will at long last fix the biggest issues impacting working families,” the Democratic Governors Association said in a statement.Mr. Sununu, 48, is serving his fourth two-year term as governor, having been re-elected last year by more than 15 percentage points. He recently decided against two opportunities to run for higher office: He declined to run in last year’s Senate race, and for president in 2024. His next steps are unclear. More

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    Arizona Judge Tosses Kari Lake’s 2022 Election Lawsuit

    Lawyers for Ms. Lake, a Trump ally who lost the governor’s race, claimed Maricopa County did not properly review mail-in ballot signatures. A judge said the arguments “do not clear the bar.”An Arizona judge threw out a lawsuit filed by Kari Lake over her defeat in last year’s race for governor, ruling that she had failed to prove that the state’s most populous county, Maricopa, had neglected to review voters’ signatures on mail-in ballot envelopes.The decision, issued late Monday, is the latest legal setback for Ms. Lake, a Republican who was backed by former President Donald J. Trump in one of the nation’s most prominent governors’ races in 2022.During a three-day bench trial last week in state Superior Court in Maricopa County, Ms. Lake’s lawyers argued that election workers worked too quickly to properly review 300,000 signatures that accompanied mail-in ballots.But in a six-page decision, Judge Peter A. Thompson wrote that the process had complied with state law, which requires signatures to be compared to ones in public voter files, but does not include specific guidelines for how much time a worker must spend on each ballot.“Plaintiff’s evidence and arguments do not clear the bar,” he wrote, adding: “Not one second, not three seconds, and not six seconds: No standard appears in the plain text of the statute.”At a news conference on Tuesday in Arizona, Ms. Lake said that she would appeal the ruling and that her lawyers were exploring various pathways forward.“We can’t trust the buffoons running our elections in Maricopa County anymore,” she said, later adding, “You’ve not seen the last of our case.”The case was the latest in a string of court losses over the election for Ms. Lake, who has claimed, without evidence, that mail-in voting compromises election integrity. Other claims in her lawsuit had previously been rejected by the court.Ms. Lake has suggested she may run for office again. This year, she said she was considering a run for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who left the Democratic Party in December to become an independent.Clint L. Hickman, the chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which helps oversee elections in the county, praised the judge’s decision in a statement on Monday.“Wild claims of rigged elections may generate media attention and fund-raising pleas, but they do not win court cases,” he wrote. “When ‘bombshells’ and ‘smoking guns’ are not backed up by facts, they fail in court.” More

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    Daniel Cameron, Ally of Mitch McConnell, Wins GOP Primary for Kentucky Governor

    Daniel Cameron, the attorney general, will face Andy Beshear, a popular Democrat who is seeking re-election in a typically deep-red state.Daniel Cameron, Kentucky’s attorney general and a close ally of Senator Mitch McConnell, clinched the state’s Republican nomination for governor on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, fending off a spirited and costly challenge by Kelly Craft, a wealthy former ambassador to the United Nations.Mr. Cameron’s double-digit victory sets up what is likely to be the most closely watched and fiercely contested statewide race remaining in 2023. Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat running for re-election, is one of the most popular governors in the country, and even Republicans believe he will be difficult to beat in November.The result on Tuesday also served as a setback for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida as he nears an expected presidential campaign. On Monday, he had endorsed Ms. Craft, abruptly turning the race into a proxy battle between himself and former President Donald J. Trump, who backed Mr. Cameron in June 2022.In his victory speech on Tuesday night, Mr. Cameron said, “The Trump culture of winning is alive and well in Kentucky” — a pointed jab at Mr. DeSantis’s recent remarks criticizing the Republican Party’s “culture of losing.”With more than 90 percent of the vote counted, Ms. Craft, who belongs to one of the biggest Republican megadonor families in the country, trailed Mr. Cameron by roughly 30 percentage points. She was also behind a third candidate, Ryan Quarles, Kentucky’s agricultural commissioner.Republicans have long viewed Mr. Cameron as a potential political star who could join the next generation of the party’s leaders. Mr. Cameron has had a trailblazing career — he was the first Black man to be elected attorney general in Kentucky and the first Republican elected to the post in 50 years — and his campaign is likely to draw the support of operatives and donors beyond Kentucky.Mr. Cameron turned to the general election in his victory speech. “The new religion of the left casts doubt on the greatness of America,” he said. “They embrace a picture of this country and this commonwealth that is rooted in division, that is hostile to faith and that is committed to the erosion of our education system.”And he took aim at his November opponent: “Andy Beshear is resigned to live in a commonwealth where violent crime is high and the work-force participation rate is low. He’s content to preside over the abandonment of our inner cities and the desolation of our rural communities.”Part of Mr. Beshear’s strength stems from Republicans’ dominance of the state. The party holds supermajorities in the Legislature, making it difficult for the governor to wield much power without a veto. Yet that dynamic has allowed Mr. Beshear to avoid contentious showdowns with Republicans on hot-button issues and has let him focus on using state resources to help repair infrastructure and improve the economy.Mr. Beshear, who coasted in his primary on Tuesday, remained mostly quiet during the Republicans’ battle, running a scaled-down digital ad campaign centered on his record of expanding voting rights and presiding over economic expansion in the state.“I’m honored to be your Democratic nominee for governor, Kentucky,” Mr. Beshear wrote on Twitter on Tuesday night. “Together, we’re going to continue to build on the progress of the past 3 years — moving our commonwealth not left or right, but forward. Let’s do this.”And in his victory speech, Mr. Beshear sought to project an uplifting tone, and said the Republican candidates presented a stark contrast from himself. “They’re trying to pit us against each other,” he said, “calling anybody who disagrees with them names, telling you it’s OK to yell, even hate your fellow human being. We are so much stronger than that.”Though Mr. Cameron was elected as Kentucky’s attorney general in 2019, he fully arrived on the national scene with a prime-time address during the 2020 Republican National Convention.He immediately became a favorite of Mr. Trump, who endorsed his campaign nearly a year before the primary election. Mr. Cameron made Mr. Trump’s support central to his campaign to lead Kentucky, which the former president carried by more than 25 percentage points in 2020.Mr. Cameron’s tenure as attorney general has included numerous clashes with the federal government. They include his fighting vaccine requirements for federal contractors and trying to stop the Biden administration from allowing the lapse of Title 42, the Covid-era Trump immigration policy that ended on Thursday. He has also brought lawsuits against Mr. Beshear, including seeking new limits to abortion access.These legal tussles became a cornerstone of his stump speech.“When Governor Beshear decided to shut down churches, I went into federal court and, after nine days, got churches reopened in Kentucky,” Mr. Cameron said at a campaign stop in Shepherdsville last month, referring to early pandemic regulations.Mr. Cameron, a former aide to Mr. McConnell, was expected to cruise to the nomination on the back of his ties to the powerful Senate minority leader and to Mr. Trump. But the race tightened after Ms. Craft, who is married to a coal billionaire, Joe Craft, began pouring millions of her own money into the race, flooding the airwaves with ads. Mr. Cameron did not have the resources to keep pace.The bruising nature of the primary raised worries among some Kentucky Republicans about their prospects in the general election.For nearly two months, Ms. Craft was the only major candidate with ads from her or her allies on broadcast television. Combined, she and her allies spent more than $7 million on advertising, compared with just $2.6 million by Mr. Cameron and his supporters, according to AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm.Her campaign attacked Mr. Cameron for supporting the closure of a coal plant (the coal plant in question was in West Virginia) and rebuked him for not fighting the Justice Department’s investigation into the Louisville Police Department after police officers shot and killed Breonna Taylor during a botched raid on her apartment in 2020. She also sought to paint Mr. Cameron as a “follower” of Mr. McConnell, a rare public dig at a man who has guided Kentucky politics for nearly 40 years.Mr. Cameron received a late boost from an allied political action committee, Bluegrass Freedom Action, which received most of its funding from the Concord Fund, which is part of a network of influential conservative groups managed by the activist Leonard A. Leo. The group spent $2.1 million in the final six weeks of the primary, aiding Mr. Cameron and attacking Ms. Craft.Other ElectionsIn PennsylvaniaA special election in a district that could have flipped the State House to the Republicans instead stayed in Democratic hands, according to The Associated Press.Top Democrats, led by President Biden and Gov. Josh Shapiro, had urged voters to mobilize for Heather Boyd, the party’s candidate in the three-person race. They had framed the election as crucial to protecting reproductive rights in Pennsylvania, saying that Republicans would seek to use their legislative majority to bypass the governor’s veto power by placing an abortion ban amendment on the ballot for voters to decide.Ms. Boyd, a former legislative aide and onetime teacher, beat Katie Ford, a Republican who was a combat medic for the U.S. Army Reserve and also has an education background.Mr. Shapiro hailed the result in a post on Twitter. “Heather Boyd is a teacher, mom, and public servant — now, she’s Delaware County’s newest state rep.,” he wrote. “Together, we’ll work to get things done for Pennsylvanians and protect real freedom. And to Delco: Thank you for showing up to defend our rights and the Democratic House majority.”The special election, in the 163rd Legislative District in southeast Delaware County, was prompted by the March resignation of Mike Zabel, a Democrat who was accused of harassment.In another special State House election on Tuesday, Republicans maintained power in the 108th Legislative District in north-central Pennsylvania as Michael Stender, a Republican school board member and a firefighter, was victorious in a three-candidate race, according to The A.P.The safe G.O.P. seat opened up this year when Lynda Schlegel Culver, the longtime incumbent, resigned after winning a vacant seat in the State Senate.In FloridaDonna Deegan, a Democrat, won a runoff for the mayor’s office in Jacksonville, Fla., beating Daniel Davis, a Republican backed by Mr. DeSantis. Mr. Davis conceded the race on Tuesday evening.Ms. Deegan will be the first woman to lead her city as mayor. “We made history tonight,” she said in her victory speech. “It is a brand-new day for Jacksonville, Florida.”Neil Vigdor More

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    DeSantis’s Candidate for Kentucky Governor Loses to Trump-Backed Rival

    The 2024 hopeful made a dramatic, election-eve show of support in the Kentucky governor’s race, only for his chosen candidate to get clobbered. Another favored candidate in Jacksonville, Fla., lost, too.On Monday, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida went out on a limb. On Tuesday, it snapped.A day after he swooped into the Republican primary for Kentucky governor with a last-minute endorsement — a move that turned the race into an obvious proxy fight between himself and former President Donald J. Trump — Mr. DeSantis watched his chosen candidate lose in a landslide to the Trump-backed rival.To make matters worse for Mr. DeSantis, a Republican he had endorsed conceded to a Democratic opponent in the mayor’s race in Jacksonville, the largest city in his state.Mr. DeSantis’s preparations to enter the 2024 primary are intensifying. He has held a series of private dinners in Tallahassee with top donors, and on Tuesday he took a direct shot at Mr. Trump over his dodging whether he would sign a six-week abortion ban.But on Monday, Mr. DeSantis made a last-minute endorsement and robocall for Kelly Craft, a former United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump and a member of a Republican megadonor family.The move confounded Kentucky Republicans and those working for her rivals: While Ms. Craft spent heavily on the race, polls had suggested she was headed for defeat to Daniel Cameron, the state’s attorney general, an ally of Senator Mitch McConnell who had garnered Mr. Trump’s endorsement in June 2022. Representatives for Mr. DeSantis declined to comment.“Kelly shares the same vision we do in Florida,” Mr. DeSantis said in a recording that was sent to Republican voters on the eve of the primary.It ended up being far from close. With nearly 90 percent of ballots counted, she was in a distant third, earning just 17 percent of the vote to Mr. Cameron’s 47 percent.“Let me just say,” Mr. Cameron said in his victory speech, “the Trump culture of winning is alive and well in Kentucky!”His choice of words was telling: As Mr. DeSantis nears the announcement of a presidential campaign, his stump speech has often called on the Republican Party to end its “culture of losing” during the Trump era. On Monday, the phrase was splashed across the front page of The Des Moines Register after the governor campaigned in Iowa over the weekend.The Trump team cheered Mr. Cameron’s line. In fact, one of Mr. Trump’s top advisers, Chris LaCivita, had presaged it less than an hour before Mr. Cameron spoke. When the race was called, Mr. LaCivita wrote on Twitter, “so much for the #alwaysbackdown culture of winning.”Never Back Down is the name of the main super PAC backing Mr. DeSantis. One of that super PAC’s top strategists is Jeff Roe, whose consulting firm also worked for Ms. Craft.The unsuccessful election-eve endorsement of Ms. Craft was similar to the last-minute backing that Mr. DeSantis gave to Harmeet Dhillon in the race to lead the Republican National Committee in January.Mr. DeSantis called for “new blood” the day before that vote. The incumbent, Ronna McDaniel, won easily the next day.Meanwhile, Mr. DeSantis’s night did not get better in Jacksonville, where Daniel Davis, the Republican endorsed by the governor, lost to Donna Deegan, a Democrat, for an open seat. Mr. DeSantis had provided little support to Mr. Davis beyond his endorsement, not visiting the city to campaign. Early results showed Ms. Deegan leading Mr. Davis with roughly 52 percent of the vote.Jacksonville has had Republican mayors for most of the last 30 years. More

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    Kentucky and Philadelphia Hold Crucial Elections: What to Watch

    In Kentucky, Republicans are choosing a nominee to take on the popular Democratic governor. In Philadelphia, Democrats are knotted in a crowded primary to lead the influential liberal city.Though 2023 is an off year for American politics, largely dominated by the emerging Republican presidential primary race and a series of scandals and controversies, there are still critical elections this year, offering an early window into the mood of voters in both parties before 2024.In Kentucky, a divisive Republican primary for governor will come to a close on Tuesday. Two pillars of the state’s Republican apparatus have escalated attacks on each other as they seek to challenge Gov. Andy Beshear, a rare Democratic leader of a red state who also happens to be one of the most popular governors in the country. On Monday, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida waded into the race with an endorsement of one top contender, turning the contest into something of a last-minute 2024 proxy battle against Donald J. Trump, who long ago backed the other leading candidate.In Philadelphia, the nation’s sixth most populous city and a liberal stronghold in purple Pennsylvania, voters will pick the Democratic nominee for mayor, who is all but certain to become the city’s next leader and has the potential to become a high-profile player in next year’s presidential election. And two special elections in the state could determine control of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, where Democrats have a slim majority.Clockwise from upper left, some of the candidates in the Democratic primary for mayor in Philadelphia: Rebecca Rhynhart, Allan Domb, Cherelle Parker and Helen Gym.Rachel Wisniewski for the New York Times; Matt Rourke/Associated PressAnd in Delaware County, one of the suburban “collar counties” outside Philadelphia, a surprisingly close special election for an open State House seat in a once reliably Democratic district will determine who controls the Pennsylvania legislature.There is also a notable mayoral contest unfolding in Jacksonville, Fla., the most populous American city to have a Republican mayor. The candidates to succeed Mayor Lenny Curry are Donna Deegan, a Democrat who has the support of abortion rights groups, and Daniel Davis, a Republican who has emphasized his party’s messages on crime and policing.Political celebrity vs. cash vs. old schoolFirst test of a rising star: Daniel Cameron was already a trailblazer as the first Black man elected attorney general in Kentucky and the first Republican elected to the post in nearly 50 years. But his political celebrity skyrocketed after he delivered a prime-time speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention.Mr. Cameron is a close ally of Senator Mitch McConnell’s; some in the state call him Mr. McConnell’s protégé. The Republican nomination for governor appeared to be his to lose after he announced his candidacy a year ago.But what was once a double-digit lead over the rest of the field dwindled significantly during the spring as Kelly Craft, a former ambassador to the United Nations and part of a Republican megadonor family, poured millions of her own money into an aggressive ad campaign, attacking Mr. Cameron and heightening her own name identification. Though she has not completely closed the gap in polling, Republican operatives in the state have deemed it a race that is suddenly too close to call.On Monday, Mr. DeSantis added even more uncertainty to the race by endorsing Ms. Craft, recording a message on her behalf to be used in automated phone calls. The move pits Mr. DeSantis, who is expected to announce a 2024 campaign soon, directly against Mr. Trump, who backed Mr. Cameron in June 2022.Daniel Cameron, the Kentucky attorney general, and Kelly Craft, a member of an influential political family, are rivals in the race for the Republican nomination for Kentucky governor.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesLess a fracture than a freeze: The heated primary in Kentucky hasn’t fractured the party like similarly contentious primaries last year, mostly because the top candidates belong to the conservative wing of the party yet do not embrace its more fringe issues, like voting machine conspiracy theories.And of course, money plays a role. Though no Republican in the state is eager to dampen Mr. Cameron’s trajectory, they also don’t want to be on the wrong side of the Crafts, who are some of the most prolific donors in Republican politics.The friendly wild card: Attention in the race has largely focused on Mr. Cameron and Ms. Craft. But there is a third candidate with a viable path to victory: Ryan Quarles, the agricultural commissioner and a longtime fixture in Frankfort.Rather than splashy ads or television appearances, Mr. Quarles’s campaign has instead focused heavily on local endorsements, earning the backing of more than 230 mayors, magistrates and county officials. Those endorsements, coupled with significant support from the farming community, could give Mr. Quarles enough of a base to win an election in which support is splintered among all three.Trump as kingmaker? Or could it be DeSantis?What scandals? Even as he faces mounting legal challenges and an unfavorable verdict in the civil case in which he was successfully sued by E. Jean Carroll, Mr. Trump remains the most popular and influential figure in a Republican primary election, especially in a state like Kentucky, which he carried by more than 25 points in 2020.When asked during a debate about a jury’s finding Mr. Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming Ms. Carroll, Mr. Cameron reiterated that he was “honored” to still have the support of the former president.No, he endorsed me. Both candidates can claim the affection of the former president. Ms. Craft served in his administration, has donated to his campaigns and was joined by Mr. Trump at the Kentucky Derby in 2022. She has run several ads comparing her style to Mr. Trump’s.But Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Cameron (granted, that was before Ms. Craft had officially entered the race), a fact Mr. Cameron mentions several times in his stump speeches and ads.“Despite what some others might tell you,” Mr. Cameron told a crowd at a Republican dinner in Meade County last month, “President Donald J. Trump has endorsed this campaign for governor.”Now, of course, Mr. DeSantis has endorsed Ms. Craft — and they will both hope that his late support will be fresher in voters’ minds as they head to the polls.Mr. Cameron, the Kentucky attorney general, greeted supporters during the Meade County dinner in Guston, Ky.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesMs. Craft, a former member of the Trump administration and a candidate for Kentucky governor, spoke during a campaign stop.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesEducation and ‘woke’ politics at the forefront2017 redux? Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican in light-blue Virginia, built his surprise victory in 2017 through a relentless focus on education. He portrayed Democrats as intent on introducing inappropriate material to young students and argued that a school’s curriculum was something parents, and not teachers, should decide.Both Mr. Cameron and Ms. Craft have made education reform the bedrock of their campaign speeches. Mr. Cameron said that it was the No. 1 issue he had heard about from voters, and he has pledged to fire the Democratic-appointed commissioner of the education department. Ms. Craft, during her stump speeches, holds up copies of books she would ban.“Woke” wars: Both candidates repeatedly blast “woke” ideology in their pitches. For months, visitors to Ms. Craft’s website were greeted with a video denouncing “woke” policies.This loosely defined conservative catchall — a term frequently used by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida as well — has certainly taken root in the Republican base. It is often the biggest applause line for both Ms. Craft and Mr. Cameron.But beyond the primary, it remains to be seen how voters in a general election will respond to an explicitly anti-“woke” campaign, even in deeply red Kentucky.A battle over Philadelphia’s futureA test of left-wing strength: In the crowded Democratic mayoral contest, the former City Council member Helen Gym has emerged as the most prominent progressive candidate, bolstered by national left-wing leaders including Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.Both of them rallied with her on Sunday, and Brandon Johnson, who won the Chicago mayor’s race last month, has endorsed her and raised funds for her.A win for Ms. Gym, a veteran community organizer who is especially focused on schools, would be celebrated by national progressive leaders as the latest in a stretch of left-leaning victories in major cities, though their success at the national level in recent years has been far more mixed.But whatever the outcome, many political observers in Pennsylvania caution against drawing sweeping conclusions about the mood of the city from a race that may have low turnout or could be decided by a narrow margin — or both. Sparse polling has suggested a tight and unpredictable contest.In a crucial Democratic primary contest for Philadelphia’s next mayor, Helen Gym, second from left, has earned the support of progressive leaders.Matt Rourke/Associated PressPublic safety debates dominate: Like many major American cities, Philadelphia has struggled with gun violence and other crime in the wake of the pandemic. The full picture of safety in the city is complex, but there is no question that it has been the defining issue in the mayor’s race.The Democrats running for mayor have differed on issues like police stops of citizens — and in particular, the use of stop-and-frisk — and whether to emphasize adding more police officers to the force.But across the ideological spectrum, they have stressed their commitment to making the city safer, and there is broad agreement on the need to both fill police vacancies and denounce police abuse.Control of the Pennsylvania legislatureConcerns for Democrats: Democrats have a single-vote majority in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, but there are two special elections on Tuesday that could flip control back to Republicans.One empty seat is in the 108th Legislative District in north-central Pennsylvania, where voters will most likely elect a Republican.The race for the 163rd Legislative District in southeast Delaware County should be a layup for Democrats. It was vacated by former State Representative Mike Zabel, who resigned in March after being accused of harassment. But Mr. Zabel won his district by roughly 30 points in November, and the seat is in a reliably Democratic area.Yet there are growing concerns that the seat may not be as safe as it has seemed, and Democrats across the state are mobilizing voters in the area to turn out to the polls. Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, recently made a 30-second video highlighting the race.Abortion rights: Democrats are framing the race as critical to protecting abortion rights in Pennsylvania, where abortion is still legal. If Republicans take control of the House, they could, along with the Republican-controlled Senate, put a potential abortion ban on the ballot as a constitutional amendment.But such bans largely failed in 2022, and were often a galvanizing force for Democratic candidates or causes — most notably in deep-red Kansas, where voters rejected an abortion ban months before the 2022 midterms.Reid J. Epstein More

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    Can Brandon Presley Help Mississippi Break from the Past?

    It’s been 23 years since a Democrat was elected governor of Mississippi and 41 years since a Democrat was elected one of the state’s U.S. senators. The Republican lock on the state — along with the policies and noxious traditions that have kept it in the basement among U.S. states for most indicators of social health — sometimes seems impenetrable.Mike Espy, the former Democratic congressman from Mississippi and U.S. agriculture secretary, tried twice to become senator, in 2018 and 2020, but never got more than 46 percent of the vote. Jim Hood, then state attorney general, did a little better in the 2019 governor’s race, getting nearly 47 percent of the vote, but the current Republican governor, Tate Reeves, prevailed.This year, with Mr. Reeves up for re-election in November, there are once again hopes that Mississippi could take a few steps up from the bottom and elect a governor willing to make a break from the past. And even though Donald Trump won the state by more than 16 percentage points in 2020, there are reasons to think it could happen.For one thing, thanks to a significant scandal involving the misappropriation of welfare funds, Mr. Reeves is extraordinarily unpopular for an incumbent Republican, with 60 percent of voters saying they would prefer another candidate, according to a Mississippi Today/Siena College poll that came out last week. For another, he has a promising and energetic Democratic opponent named Brandon Presley who has been polling fairly well and is making a strong case that the state desperately needs a change, advocating a series of popular policies that could make a real difference in the lives of Mississippians, particularly those on the lower economic rungs. The contest is already turning into one of the most interesting races of 2023.Mr. Presley, 45, is one of three elected members of the state Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities, and is the former mayor of Nettleton, a small town in the bright-red northeast section of Mississippi. He talks energetically about the need to expand Medicaid and save rural hospitals, and why it’s important to eliminate the extremely regressive state grocery tax, and would rather discuss the lives of poor families than his own family ties to a certain popular singer of the same last name from Tupelo, up the road from Nettleton. (Elvis was his second cousin.)His most effective tactic is his unrelenting attack on Mr. Reeves and the welfare scandal that has swirled around him and the previous Republican governor, Phil Bryant. A 2020 state audit found that as much as $94 million in federal anti-poverty money was improperly diverted to two nonprofit groups that used it for favors to lobbyists, celebrities and some lawmakers. The celebrities included Brett Favre, the former N.F.L. quarterback, who, according to text messages uncovered by the nonprofit news site Mississippi Today, arranged to spend $5 million in welfare funds for a volleyball stadium at the University of Southern Mississippi, his alma mater. At the same time, the state was rejecting a large majority of requests from families for Mississippi’s meager $170 a month in welfare payments.Mr. Reeves was lieutenant governor when all this was going on, and several people at the center of the scandal have been his friends and supporters. Last summer, his administration fired the lawyer who had been officially assigned to investigate the scandal and recoup the money, after the lawyer issued a subpoena to the university’s athletic foundation regarding the volleyball money. Though Mr. Reeves hasn’t been implicated in the diversion of most of the money, Mississippi Today published text messages in August showing that the former state welfare director, who pleaded guilty to federal and state fraud and theft charges last fall, said he was acting on behalf of Mr. Reeves when he siphoned $1.3 million of the welfare money to a fitness program run by the governor’s longtime personal trainer, Paul LaCoste.That was all Mr. Presley needed.“I got in this when I saw, as all Mississippi did, millions of dollars aimed at working families got diverted by Tate Reeves and his cronies,” he told me last week. “His own personal trainer, who taught Tate Reeves how to do jumping jacks, got a $70,000 vehicle and was paid $11,000 a month, while we’ve got children going hungry in Mississippi. Well, it made me want to puke.”Mr. Presley is funny and garrulous and is often described as the best natural politician in the state, with an easygoing manner that appeals to voters of all types. He grew up as the son of a low-income single mother and speaks with real empathy about the tens of thousands of poor families, Black and white, who can’t get clean drinking water, proper health care or broadband internet after decades of largely racist neglect by the state.His most significant plan is to fully expand Medicaid in Mississippi, which Mr. Reeves — along with Republicans in nine other states, mostly in the South — refuses to do. As The New York Times recently reported, health care is in a serious crisis in the state, where five hospitals have closed since 2005 and 36 percent of the remaining rural hospitals are at risk of closing from lack of funds. Mississippi’s stubbornness has cost it about $1.35 billion a year in federal funds to hospitals and health care providers, money that could be used for 100,000 poor adults who now have no guaranteed health coverage.“This will go down in history one of the dumbest decisions ever made in this state,” Mr. Presley said. “Our health care system is on fire because Tate Reeves is not willing to help working Mississippians, just because of some petty, cheap, childish politics.”The state has a $3.9 billion budget surplus and could easily afford its 10 percent share of the expansion cost, but Mr. Reeves would rather use the money to help prosperous earners by getting rid of the income tax, which most low-income people do not pay. Mr. Presley, on the other hand, is campaigning to eliminate the grocery tax, which at 7 percent is the highest in the nation and hurts poor people the most. Though he is too politic to say so, the grocery tax is yet another legacy of Mississippi’s structural racism, which helps explain why there is more hunger in the state than in any other.Polling shows that nearly 60 percent of state voters say they will support only a candidate for governor who wants to get rid of the grocery tax, and 55 percent will support only a candidate who wants to expand Medicaid. But that same poll shows Mr. Reeves ahead of Mr. Presley by 11 points. (The Presley campaign says its internal polling shows the race to be within the margin of error.) To a large degree, that contradiction can be explained by rote party identification in the state, but it’s also because nearly two-thirds of voters don’t know enough about Mr. Presley yet, particularly in African American areas.“In those neighborhoods, he’s still a white guy that nobody knows,” said State Representative Robert L. Johnson III, the House Democratic leader, who is Black and has been supportive of Mr. Presley. “But he’s not afraid to embrace the African American vote in this state. He’s made commitments to do things that other candidates don’t do. It’s early yet, but the governor has been so bad that I think this time might be different.”Mr. Presley has won the endorsement of Bennie Thompson, the Democratic congressman from Jackson who carries a lot of weight among Black voters, and he has one new advantage: In 2020, voters abolished the Jim Crow-era requirement that candidates for governor have to win not only the popular vote but also the most votes in a majority of the 122 state House districts, a law intended to keep Black candidates out of statewide offices. (Mr. Reeves did not support the repeal.)“I think he can win,” Mr. Espy told me. “He’s very likable, a good retail politician, and Tate Reeves is so very, very unpopular. But he’s got a big job. He needs to raise the money and do more Black outreach.”Mr. Presley said his campaign would do everything possible to get a high turnout among Black voters, noting that the issues he cares about, particularly Medicaid and the grocery tax, resonate well in those precincts.One thing that he doesn’t bring up that much, unless asked, is his support for Mississippi’s extremely restrictive abortion law, which bans abortion unless the mother’s life is in danger or the pregnancy was caused by rape. That law has an outsize effect on low-income women who can’t afford to travel outside the state for an abortion.Mr. Presley described himself as “pro-life and Christian.” But he quickly said that to him, being “pro-life” means being pro-hospital, pro-doctor and pro-emergency room, supporting full funding of the state education budget and ending the scams that have prevented federal and state welfare money from going to the families who need it.His position on abortion and his support for gun rights will not win him many friends in the national Democratic Party, but Mississippi is not like the rest of the nation. Winning there and finally beginning to reverse the detestable policies of the past — an enormously difficult task — will require a candidate who can bring together an unusual coalition of voters with very different interests, and Mr. Presley may be the one to do it. It’s been done next door in Louisiana, where Gov. John Bel Edwards is a Democrat in a similar mold, and if it can happen in Mississippi, it might bring hope to thousands of other voters who have ceaselessly struggled for better lives in the Deep South.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