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      In Palm Springs, L.G.B.T.Q. Voters Could Sway a Key House Race

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      Representative Ken Calvert, a long-serving Republican, is facing a tough re-election race in a redrawn district that now includes Palm Springs, proclaimed to be the gayest city in America.PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — Tucked away in the California desert, where windmills line the sprawling hills and rainbows adorn the crosswalks, a sizable progressive L.G.B.T.Q. community has turned a once reliably Republican stronghold into a battleground in the fight for control of Congress, giving Democrats hope for picking up a House seat that has long been beyond their reach.Representative Ken Calvert, a Republican who has served in Congress for three decades, has almost never faced a tough re-election contest in this ruby-red corner of Southern California. But a redrawn political map in the state has reshaped his district this year, adding Palm Springs, a liberal bastion that residents proclaim to be the gayest city in America. The new district lines have put his seat at risk as he faces off against an openly gay Democrat, Will Rollins, a former federal prosecutor.The shift has made Mr. Calvert’s district one of only a handful of Republican-held House seats that Democrats have a hope of flipping in November’s midterm elections, in which they are bracing for losses that could cost them the House majority. While Mr. Calvert has an edge in fund-raising and the power that comes with years of incumbency, the shifting political ground has made his re-election race more competitive than it has been in over a decade.Much of the shift has been driven by heavily L.G.B.T.Q. Palm Springs, which in this year’s primary election had the highest turnout rate in the district, with just under 54 percent of eligible voters casting a ballot, well above the 34 percent turnout level for the district overall, according to Political Data Intelligence, a California-based political and voter data firm.“People flock here from across the Inland Empire for safety and comfort,” Christy Holstege, a bisexual member of Palm Springs’ all-L.G.B.T.Q. City Council, said of the surrounding region as she gazed up at the statue of Marilyn Monroe that overlooks the city. “They know that this is a little sliver of safety, and since our turnout is high, it makes us that much more powerful.”Christy Holstege, a member of the City Council in Palm Springs, said people “know that this is a little sliver of safety.”Adam Perez for The New York TimesChad Gardner, a local business owner and chef who is gay, said he was moved by the influence that his community has in the election.Adam Perez for The New York TimesThe city was known in its early days as a retreat for Hollywood celebrities, and it later became home to thousands of gay men who relocated there during the AIDS epidemic for the warm climate, affordable housing and access to health care. It is now the epitome of kitsch and rich, with its midcentury architecture, pastel pink at every corner and a lively nightlife.Chad Gardner, a local business owner and chef who is gay, said he was moved by the influence that his community has in the election.“We do have some areas that are more conservative in the Inland Empire, so it’s going to come down to how we can energize our base,” Mr. Gardner said, lounging in a plush white chair in an air-conditioned upscale restaurant to escape the 100-degree heat on a recent morning.Mr. Calvert, who received a zero on the Human Rights Campaign’s most recent scorecard rating members of Congress on issues of interest to the L.G.B.T.Q. community, appears to have taken notice. In July, he joined 46 other Republicans in voting in favor of a bill that would recognize same-sex marriage at the federal level, a reversal after years of opposing legislation to protect L.G.B.T.Q. rights.“As I have said for years, I believe the legality of same-sex marriage is settled law and I do not support revisiting that determination,” Mr. Calvert said in a statement. He declined to be interviewed.Representative Ken Calvert has rarely faced a tough election in his three decades in Congress.Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call, via Associated PressDespite the turnabout, he may have an uphill slog to earn the backing of the gay and lesbian voters in his new district, many of whom have bitter memories of the last time Mr. Calvert faced a gay opponent.In 1994, in his race against Mark Takano, who is gay but had not yet come out publicly, Mr. Calvert circulated pink mailers questioning whether Mr. Takano would be “a congressman for Riverside … or San Francisco?” (Eight years later, Mr. Takano won election to represent a different House district in California, becoming the first openly gay person of Asian descent to serve in Congress.) More

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      They Were at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Now They’re Running for Congress.

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      A handful of Republicans who heeded President Donald J. Trump’s call to march to the Capitol are now vying to return to Washington, this time as lawmakers.WASHINGTON — As rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Derrick Van Orden, a retired Navy SEAL, had a front-row seat to the mayhem, perching on the grounds beside a tall, intricately carved, sandstone lantern pier.J.R. Majewski, an Air Force veteran from Ohio, was also at the Capitol that day, alongside a live-streamer who frequently elevates the QAnon conspiracy theory. So was Sandy Smith, a self-described entrepreneur and farmer from North Carolina who attended former President Donald J. Trump’s speech at the Ellipse and then marched up Capitol Hill.“I still stand with President Trump and believe he won this election!” Ms. Smith wrote on Twitter the night of Jan. 6, 2021. She had posted that afternoon that she had come to Washington to “#FightForTrump.”All three are seeking to return to the Capitol next year — this time as members of Congress.Nearly two years after the deadly attack, which sent lawmakers and the vice president fleeing for their lives, people who were on hand for the riot are seeking to become members of the institution that the mob assaulted. They are running for Congress in competitive districts, in some cases with the support of Republican leaders.It is the latest sign of how the extreme beliefs that prompted the Capitol assault — which was inspired by Mr. Trump’s lies of a stolen election and fueled by a flood of disinformation — have entered the mainstream of the party. And it underscores how Republican leaders whose lives were in peril on Jan. 6 are still elevating those voices in the hopes of taking control of the House.J.R. Majewski has repeatedly maintained that he “committed no crimes” and “broke no police barriers” during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.Jon Stinchcomb/News Herald, via Imagn Content ServicesHistorically, party leaders have sought to recruit mainstream, broadly appealing candidates to run in competitive districts, wary of alienating independent and moderate voters whose support is typically needed. In many areas of the country, House Republicans have followed that model, elevating diverse candidates with compelling personal stories.But as they near the prospect of winning back the House majority, Republican leaders have also thrown their backing behind extreme right-wing candidates who are devoted to Mr. Trump and have been active in his political movement, including his efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat.A handful of them answered his call to march to the Capitol on Jan. 6, as he sought to intimidate members of Congress into rejecting the electoral votes that would confirm Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. Should those candidates prevail in the midterm elections, they would grow the ascendant ranks of hard-right lawmakers who have reshaped the Republican Party in Mr. Trump’s image. And if the party succeed in its drive to retake the House, they would add to the extremist wing of the new majority.Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader who is in line to become House speaker if Republicans prevail, campaigned last month for Mr. Majewski in Fremont, Ohio. Mr. McCarthy criticized an ad by Representative Marcy Kaptur, the veteran Democratic incumbent, that portrayed Mr. Majewski as an extremist who broke through police barricades at the Capitol on Jan. 6.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 9Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsMaking a case against Trump. More

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      Sarah Palin Lost a Shot at a House Seat, but She Has a Second Chance

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      Sarah Palin’s bid for a political comeback just got a lot harder.Ms. Palin, a household name and former Republican Party vice-presidential nominee, lost a special House election this week that will send Mary Peltola, a Democrat, to Congress until January. But she will enter a rematch with Ms. Peltola and other opponents this fall as they seek to fill Alaska’s lone congressional seat from 2023 onward.Ms. Palin failed to consolidate the support of Republican voters, contending with low approval ratings and a ranked-choice system that favored moderate candidates. The question is whether she can overcome the same challenges in the fall.Former President Donald J. Trump had endorsed Ms. Palin, 58, a former Alaska governor, but she came in second behind Ms. Peltola by a few percentage points late Wednesday after two rounds of tabulations in a new election system that allowed voters to rank their top three choices in order of preference. Ms. Peltola will now finish the term of Representative Don Young, who died in March after serving in Washington for nearly 50 years.After the results were released Wednesday, Ms. Palin appeared stunned and frustrated in a video filmed at her campaign headquarters in Anchorage.“When it comes down to second- and third-place votes, that’s going to decide who’s going to win?” she asked, criticizing the election system as she raised her arms in exasperation.For Ms. Peltola and Alaska, her win is historic, if temporary.Mary Peltola will be the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress.Ash Adams for The New York TimesMs. Peltola, 49, a former state lawmaker who is Yup’ik, will become the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress and the first woman to hold the House seat. It also will provide a significant boost of momentum for Democrats, who have not notched a major statewide victory since Mark Begich defeated Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican, in 2008 after Mr. Stevens’s tenure was marred by a conviction on corruption charges.Ms. Peltola’s victory adds to a string of strong showings for Democrats, most recently in the special election for New York’s 19th Congressional District. Democrats have grown more confident about their chances of holding on to the Senate in November as debate over abortion has energized their voters and President Biden’s approval ratings have ticked up slightly. Still, most Democrats acknowledged that retaining control of the House will be more difficult.The general election in November for the House seat in Alaska, a conservative-leaning state with a strong libertarian and independent streak, is considered a tossup, in part because of the uncertainties of the ranked-choice system. Candidates still have a chance to revise their strategies, and the ballot will include a fourth top candidate to rank, the largely unknown Christopher Bye, a combat veteran who is running as a libertarian. (In the special election, the fourth candidate, an independent named Al Gross, dropped out and expressed support for Ms. Peltola.)“Sarah Palin still has a path forward because it was still quite close,” a Republican pollster, Matt Larkin, said. “It will come down to how she and the other candidates adapt.”In the special election, roughly 60 percent of Alaskans listed a Republican as their first choice on the ballot. Ms. Peltola and Ms. Palin earned the top two spots, but neither had 50 percent of the vote. So votes from the ballots that had ranked Nick Begich III, also a Republican, as first choice were then allocated between Ms. Palin and Ms. Peltola based on whether either woman had been listed second.That tally showed that Ms. Palin had not united Republican voters behind her: Of the ballots that ranked Mr. Begich first, only about half listed her as a second choice. Roughly 30 percent ranked Ms. Peltola second, and a further 21 percent were considered “exhausted,” or inactive — meaning they had no second choice or they listed a candidate who had already been eliminated.The numbers suggest that thousands of Republican voters cast their second-choice votes for a Democrat, another candidate or no one, rather than Ms. Palin.In the end, Ms. Palin drew nearly 86,000 votes, or roughly 48.5 percent, coming nearly three percentage points behind Ms. Peltola, who won more than 91,000 votes, or 51.5 percent, according to the Alaska state election results that are expected to be certified this week.Sarah Palin’s campaign headquarters in South Anchorage. On the trail, she told voters to rank only her on the ballot. Ash Adams for The New York TimesMs. Palin’s campaign on Thursday did not respond to multiple requests for interviews.In early signs, Ms. Palin did not seem willing to change or moderate her tone or strategy. Videos of her reaction to the results at her campaign headquarters captured her renewing criticism of the system, saying she had long encouraged supporters not to comply. On the campaign trail, she told voters to rank her and her alone.Ms. Palin’s attempt at a political comeback had stirred wide debate among Alaskans from the beginning over whether she was interested in public service or in seeking more celebrity. She has so far run a campaign that leans on a solid base of support among evangelical conservatives and Trump supporters. In the final weeks before the Aug. 16 special election and primary, she sparred heavily with her top Republican opponent, Mr. Begich, shunned the establishment and mostly ignored the press.In interviews in Anchorage, Palmer and her hometown, Wasilla, her most ardent supporters were often conservative women who had long tracked her political rise and wished to see her tussle with powerful Democratic women like Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “It would be so fun to watch Nancy Pelosi swear her in,” said T.J. DeSpain, 51, an art therapist who attended an outdoor concert in Palmer days before the Aug. 16 special election.But several voters complained Ms. Palin had spent most of her time on the reality TV circuit or in the lower 48 states after she resigned from the governor’s office in 2009 while facing ethics complaints and legal bills. Alaska Survey Research found in late July that 31 percent of registered Alaska voters viewed her positively and 61 percent viewed her negatively. In a different analysis, Mr. Larkin, the Republican pollster, argued that it was most likely that Ms. Peltola or Mr. Begich would win the special election, based on Ms. Palin’s low approval numbers.Nick Begich III with supporters in Anchorage last month. He sought to define himself as a young and idealistic fiscal conservative.Ash Adams for The New York TimesMr. Begich, 44, the founder and chief executive of a software development company, criticized his opponent for what he described as her failure to campaign more aggressively in the state. He sought to define himself as an idealistic fiscal conservative, despite sharing a last name with the best-known Democratic family in the state, including his uncle, former Senator Mark Begich.In an interview Thursday, Mr. Begich said he had told his supporters to rank Ms. Palin second,but that she did not reciprocate the call.“I think Alaskans have made clear that they don’t want to see Sarah Palin in office again,” he said. “Poll after poll showed that Sarah Palin would be unable to beat a Democrat in Alaska, and now that has been proven by the result we saw yesterday.”The refrain was echoed by Ms. Peltola’s supporters, who argued that their top choice captured the energy of Alaskans and the independent-streak legacy of Mr. Young, who was close friends with her father. Ms. Palin “is so played out, and that shows in the results,” said Amber Lee, a Democratic strategist who is backing Ms. Peltola.Ms. Peltola, who is friends with Ms. Palin, ran a largely positive campaign that sharply diverged from her Republican opponents in substance. She strongly championed abortion rights, called for higher taxes on the wealthy and sought an approach to development of Alaska’s resources focused on sustaining communities over corporate interests.Heather Kendall, who is Athabascan and a retired lawyer with the Native American Rights Fund, called Ms. Peltola’s victory “a combination of an earthquake and a tsunami for Alaskan politics all at once.”In the undertow of the electoral contest has been Mr. Trump, who made a rare visit to Anchorage in July to hold a rally for Ms. Palin, whom he hailed as “legendary.”Mr. Trump won Alaska by 10 percentage points in 2020, but those results represented a drop from his 15-point victory in 2016 as he has alienated thousands of moderate Republicans and independents. Before Ms. Palin’s loss this week, some analysts had speculated that Mr. Trump’s endorsement of Ms. Palin could push those Republicans who did not favor him away from her, even as it might have drawn others to her side.For now, her defeat in the special election calls into question whether she retains a strong political base in the state that powered her political rise. She served as mayor of Wasilla, a city of about 10,000 people, before becoming governor and then contending for a job in 2008 that would have put her second in line to the presidency.After Barack Obama defeated Ms. Palin’s running mate, Senator John McCain, in that presidential election, Ms. Palin faced a reckoning from Republican Party leaders who attributed his defeat to her uneven political performance and lack of deep policy knowledge.Tell-all books from that campaign mocked her verbal blunders and dished on her rough treatment of staff, who clashed frequently with her over issues as varied as her aggressive political rhetoric and her wardrobe.Mr. McCain, who died of brain cancer in 2018, grew estranged from his former vice-president-to-be in his later years. The two stopped speaking to one another, and Ms. Palin was not invited to Mr. McCain’s funeral at his family’s insistence.But it was Ms. Palin who better represented the mood and style of the angry, growing base of Republican voters — a group that would later become the molten core of Mr. Trump’s stunning upset against Mrs. Clinton eight years after the defeat of Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin.As news broke that Ms. Peltola had defeated Ms. Palin late Wednesday, the longtime conservative radio host Mike Porcaro fielded reactions from Republicans who seemed to find no middle ground on Ms. Palin. “She is loved or not,” he said.One caller stuck with him in particular, a 30-year-old Republican who said he had ranked Mr. Begich first and Ms. Peltola second because he had grown tired of Ms. Palin and Mr. Trump. “It is pretty obvious the Republicans have more people, but they seem to be at odds with each other, and it opens the door for the Democrat,” Mr. Porcaro said.Blake Hounshell More

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      With Peltola’s Defeat of Palin, Alaska’s Ranked-Choice Voting Has a Moment

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      Mary Peltola, whose victory in a special election on Wednesday makes her the first Democrat in nearly half a century to represent Alaska in the House, won the contest for the remainder of Representative Don Young’s term with an upbeat campaign that appealed to Alaskan interests and the electorate’s independent streak.But Alaska’s new voting system also played a big role in Ms. Peltola’s three-percentage-point victory over former Gov. Sarah Palin, her Republican opponent.Ms. Peltola, who will become the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress and the first woman to hold the House seat, won at least in part because voters had more choices. While more voters initially picked a Republican candidate, that didn’t matter. Given a second choice, many Republican voters opted for a Democrat — Ms. Peltola — over Ms. Palin.Speaking to reporters on Wednesday night, Ms. Palin criticized the new voting system as “weird.” Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas called the system a “scam to rig elections” against Republicans.But proponents of systems like Alaska’s say this is how it is supposed to work. When voters have more choices, they’re less likely to vote along strict party lines, reducing polarization and giving independent-minded or more centrist candidates a better shot.The changes to how Alaskans choose their representatives in state and federal elections were decided on in 2020, when allies of Lisa Murkowski — the state’s senior senator, who ran in 2010 as a write-in candidate after losing that year’s Republican Party primary — promoted and bankrolled a ballot initiative that passed by a narrow margin — precisely 3,781 votes, out of more than 344,000.The consequences for Alaskan politics, and for the country, could be seismic. New York, Maine and Utah also have some form of ranked-choice voting, as do dozens of American cities. But the Alaska approach — which combines ranked-choice voting across party lines with an instant runoff between several top candidates — goes further in disrupting political parties’ influence.Second choices matterIn the first stage of the complex new system, voters in a primary pick from a list of candidates from all parties and ideological stripes.The top four finishers then make the ballot for the general election, when voters rank up to four choices in order of preference: first, second, third and fourth — or none at all.Over multiple rounds of what is known as instant runoff or ranked-choice voting, election officials first eliminate candidates with no chance of winning and then reallocate the second, third and fourth choices of their voters to others.Former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska doing interviews at a rally hosted by former President Donald J. Trump in Anchorage in July.Ash Adams for The New York TimesNicholas Begich III, a Republican, failed to meet the threshold, meaning his votes were reallocated based on their second choices. But 15,000 voters who preferred Mr. Begich crossed party lines to select Ms. Peltola as their backup pick instead of Ms. Palin. A further 11,000 Begich voters opted for no second choice or another candidate. In total, that meant that nearly half of Mr. Begich’s voters, presumably Republicans, did not vote for Ms. Palin.Scott Kendall, a leading proponent of the Alaska system, said in an interview on Thursday: “The campaign that Nick Begich ran was a clinic in how to have your party lose a ranked-choice election.” More

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      Mary Peltola, a Democrat, Defeats Sarah Palin in Alaska’s Special House Election

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      In an upset with the potential to reverberate nationally, Mary Peltola has won a special House election in Alaska, according to The Associated Press, and will finish the remaining few months of the term of Representative Don Young, who died in March after serving nearly 50 years as his state’s lone congressman.Ms. Peltola, a Democratic former state lawmaker and Alaska Native, defeated two other candidates who survived the raucous special primary election in June: Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee, and Nicholas Begich III, a Republican from the state’s most prominent Democratic political family. Voters participated in a new system, ranking the three in order of preference.Ms. Peltola’s victory adds to a series of recent wins for Democrats, most notably the special election for New York’s 19th Congressional District. Democrats have grown more confident about their chances of holding on to the Senate in November as Republicans squabble among themselves, although most acknowledge that retaining control of the House will be more difficult.David Axelrod, a former adviser to President Barack Obama who is now the director of the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, said Ms. Palin’s defeat and the Republicans’ loss of Mr. Young’s seat “would be read as a huge victory for Democrats and defeat for MAGA Republicans.” He added: “Obviously, there are mitigating factors that should temper the impulse to generalize.”At 49, Ms. Peltola will become the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress and the first woman to hold the House seat, albeit only temporarily — unless she wins a full term in November.She ran a relentlessly upbeat campaign that implicitly contrasted her reputation for kindness with the bombast and penchant for drama associated with Ms. Palin, even though the two women have been friends since serving together in the Statehouse as expectant mothers. They even exchanged text messages on the day of the general election for the temporary seat, with Ms. Palin advising Ms. Peltola to dress warmly for her final round of canvassing.“I think respect is just a fundamental part of getting things done and working through problems,” Ms. Peltola told reporters as the first votes rolled in on Aug. 16.Al Gross, an independent candidate who previously ran for Senate in 2020 against Dan Sullivan, a Republican, dropped out after the primary and endorsed Ms. Peltola, who also finished ahead of write-in candidates, including Tara Sweeney, a former Trump administration official.Ms. Peltola cobbled together a winning coalition in the special election by appealing to the same independent streak and devotion to Alaskan interests that Mr. Young was known for. Her father and the longtime congressman were close friends, and, as a young girl, she would tag along as he campaigned for Mr. Young. But she sharply diverges from Mr. Young and her top Republican opponents, including Ms. Palin, in her support for abortion rights, her concern about climate change and her calls for developing Alaska’s resources with greater sensitivity to the needs of local communities.Ms. Peltola has sought to highlight her Native roots in a state where more than 15 percent of the population identifies as Indigenous. As a Yup’ik woman, she said, she has sought to use the teachings of her community in her broader appeals for bipartisanship. “Dry fish and pilot bread — that is how I got other legislators in the room when I was rebuilding the bipartisan Bush caucus,” she said in an ad introducing herself to voters. (“Bush caucus” refers to a group of legislators from rural Alaska.)Ms. Peltola served in the Alaska House from 1999 to 2009 before becoming the executive director of the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, which works with tribes to manage salmon resources. She has also served as a councilwoman in Bethel, a small city in western Alaska, and as a judge on the Orutsararmuit Native Council Tribal Court.She made that experience central to her campaign message, a uniquely Alaskan appeal to voters in a state where many rural communities depend on reliable stocks of fish for their very subsistence. Ms. Peltola’s ads were critical of out-of-state trawlers — high-volume fishing ships, often from China or Russia, that sweep up prized salmon and halibut along with lower-value species such as pollock.The Supreme Court’s move in June to overturn Roe v. Wade was another major theme of Ms. Peltola’s campaign. More than 60 percent of Alaskans favor abortion rights, breaking with the position held by Republicans like Ms. Palin, who hailed the decision as a victory for states’ rights. Abortion remains legal in Alaska, though the law requires that a patient receive counseling intended to discourage the practice.Ms. Peltola will face voters again this fall as she tries to retain the seat in Congress beyond the remainder of Mr. Young’s term.Voters in November will rank their choices from the top four finishers of the regular primary on Aug. 16. Ms. Peltola finished ahead of Ms. Palin in that primary, followed by Mr. Begich.Ms. Palin’s defeat in the special election is likely to raise doubts about her viability in November.Former President Donald J. Trump visited Anchorage in July to hold a rally for Ms. Palin, whose campaign was being managed by one of his longtime political lieutenants, Michael Glassner. Mr. Trump hailed her as “legendary.”At that rally, Ms. Palin attacked Mr. Begich, her chief Republican opponent, as a “RINO,” or Republican in Name Only. And she nodded in jest to the complaints of her critics, who have accused her of erratic behavior and of abandoning the state after her 2008 loss.“We have been mocked and ridiculed and falsely accused and told to sit down and shut up,” she said. “The stuff that you’ve heard about me — it’s a lie. I’m way worse than what you’ve heard.”Mr. Trump expended most of his energy at the rally attacking Senator Lisa Murkowski, who broke with him frequently on abortion and other issues and who voted for his impeachment after the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Both Ms. Murkowski and Kelly Tshibaka, whom Mr. Trump endorsed, advanced in the state’s Senate primary race and will face off again in November.Mr. Trump is a divisive figure in Alaska, which has long had an independent streak. He remains highly popular among hard-core Republican voters but has alienated thousands of more moderate Republicans and independents.Although Mr. Trump won Alaska by 10 percentage points in 2020, besting Joseph R. Biden Jr., those results represented a decrease from his commanding 15-point victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016.Mr. Trump’s waning overall popularity has led some analysts to speculate that his endorsement of Ms. Palin could do as much to mobilize his political opponents against her this fall as it could to help her. And Ms. Palin’s starkly low approval ratings in her quest to win Mr. Young’s former seat permanently indicate that another candidate might squeak through in November. If the special election and Aug. 16 primary results are any indication, Ms. Peltola appears well positioned to do so.Jazmine Ulloa More

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

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

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      How Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Plan Is Dividing Democrats

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      President Biden’s executive order Wednesday to cancel thousands of dollars in college debt for millions of Americans has divided Democratic candidates like few other policies of his administration, with some Democrats using the plan to distance themselves from a president who could prove to be a heavy burden in their states and districts.The responses were starkly divided along racial and generational lines, with Black candidates and younger voters more likely to approve and Democrats running as centrists more likely to be critical. But among Democratic candidates in tough campaigns, there was little consistency to be found.Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes of Wisconsin, both Black and both hoping to be in the Senate next year, were supportive. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, a Democrat in a tight race for re-election and running as a moderate conciliator, was highly critical.Yet Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, another Democrat seeking re-election in a swing state as a bipartisan moderate, backed the plan.Lt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, a Senate candidate hoping to appeal to working-class voters, praised the move as relief to struggling Pennsylvanians too often forgotten by policymakers. Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio, also running for the Senate as a voice of the working class, decried it as a gift to those already on a path to success at the expense of Ohioans shut out of higher education.“While there’s no doubt that a college education should be about opening opportunities, waiving debt for those already on a trajectory to financial security sends the wrong message to the millions of Ohioans without a degree working just as hard to make ends meet,” Mr. Ryan said in a statement.The sharp divisions over the debt relief order were somewhat surprising considering how long the plans were under consideration and the lengthy journey the issue has taken from a rallying cry at Occupy Wall Street protests more than a decade ago to a Biden campaign promise in 2020.The provenance of the plan was no doubt from the left wing of the party — including Senators Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, and Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts — that campaigned on promises of far more generous debt forgiveness. The fact that Mr. Biden issued a moderate version a little more than two months before the November midterm elections might have been expected to unite the party, not divide it.But the move was coming from an unpopular president at a time when Republicans — and some Democratic economists — have been portraying any expensive social welfare proposal as jet fuel for skyrocketing inflation.“There’s still a real debate in the party on how interventionist the government should be,” said Waleed Shahid, a liberal strategist and spokesman for Justice Democrats, a progressive group that has strongly pushed for student debt relief. He added, “Some of these Democrats feel like they have to punch back at the president in purple states, and this is what they have chosen to punch back on.”Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, Democrat of Nevada, said the debt relief was not targeted enough at low-income Americans.John Locher/Associated PressBeneath the raw politics of the moment are substantive criticisms. Mr. Biden’s action would cancel $10,000 in debt for Americans earning less than $125,000 per year and cancel $20,000 for low-income students who received Pell grants.Ms. Cortez Masto and Mr. Ryan both said the debt relief was not targeted enough at low-income Americans or college students entering fields with low pay and desperate need, like rural health care or emergency medicine. More

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      in Elections

      Democrats Sense a Shift in the Political Winds, but It May Not Be Enough

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      Energized abortion-rights voters. Donald J. Trump back in the spotlight. Stronger-than-expected special elections, including a surprising win early Wednesday in New York.Democratic leaders, once beaten down by the prospect of a brutal midterm election in the fall, are daring to dream that they can maintain control of Congress this November.An unexpected victory by Pat Ryan, a Democrat, in a special House election to fill a vacancy in New York’s Hudson Valley offered Democrats solid evidence that their voters were willing to come out and that their message was resonating. It followed strong Democratic showings in other special elections, in Nebraska, Minnesota and upstate New York, since the Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade. Mr. Ryan placed abortion rights front and center while his Republican opponent, Marc Molinaro, sidestepped the issue to focus on the problems his party still believes will drive voters — inflation, crime, the economy. It didn’t work.“Kevin McCarthy made a big mistake by measuring the drapes too early and doubling down on Trumpism, and it’s proving to be fatal,” said Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, referring to the House Republican leader.But the House map in 2022 favors Republicans, thanks to Republican-led redistricting and a slew of retirements of Democratic lawmakers. That means the shifting political winds are more likely to merely blunt any Republican wave in the House rather than save the Democratic majority.Primary races and special elections, which fill seats that are vacated before the end of a lawmaker’s term, are not necessarily reliable predictors of general election turnout, Republicans note.“Majorities are won in November, not August,” said Michael McAdams, the communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House Republicans’ official campaign arm. “We look forward to prosecuting the case against Democrats’ failed one-party rule that’s left American families worse off.”That endeavor is becoming harder. Falling gas prices have robbed Republicans of the starkest visual evidence of inflation. Passage in recent weeks of legislation to control prescription drug prices, tackle climate change, extend health insurance subsidies, bolster domestic semiconductor manufacturing and impose tighter gun controls on teenagers and the mentally ill have given Democrats achievements to run on while countering accusations of a do-nothing Congress.And the F.B.I.’s seizure of hundreds of highly classified documents from Mr. Trump’s Florida home has put the former president back into the spotlight as Democrats press their efforts to cast Republicans as extremists and make the November election a choice between the two parties, not a referendum on President Biden.Demonstrators against former President Donald J. Trump near Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., shortly after the FBI recovered boxes of government documents.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesFor the first time since the fall of 2021, polling averages indicate a narrow majority of voters who say they prefer Democratic over Republican control of Congress.Even some Republicans own up to nervousness.“It looks like troubling clouds on the horizon to me,” said Representative Billy Long, a Republican from Missouri. “The Republicans need to heed Satchel Paige’s advice of ‘Don’t look back. Something may be gaining on you.’”And yet, for all the trend lines tilting toward Democrats, there is still the unavoidable math of the midterms.Read More on Abortion Issues in AmericaFetal Personhood: A push to grant fetuses the same legal rights as people is gaining momentum, as anti-abortion activists move beyond bans and aim to get the procedure classified as murder.Struggling to Decode Laws: Doctors’ concerns about complying with new abortion bans left a pregnant Louisiana woman with a fatal diagnosis for her fetus, but no clear path for an abortion.Surrogacy Industry: Fearful of legal and medical consequences of new abortion laws, gestational surrogates and those working with them are rewriting contracts and changing the way they operate.A Rare Prosecution: A teenager used pills to terminate her pregnancy at home with the aid of her mother. Their Facebook messages are now key evidence in a rare prosecution over abortion.Republicans need a mere five seats to win a House majority — and their candidates are in strong positions to win the bulk of nine districts that Mr. Trump would have won easily two years ago if the new maps had been in place. Seven of those nine seats do not have a Democratic incumbent to defend them. Republicans might have their pick of another seven Democratic seats that Mr. Trump would have won in 2020, though by narrower margins. Four of those have no incumbent to defend them.The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates 10 Democratic seats as leaning toward or likely to be Republican, against three Republican seats that lean Democratic. That works out to a Republican majority.“The Republicans don’t need a wave to win back the House,” said Nathan L. Gonzalez, a nonpartisan House election analyst. “There will be some Democrats who win in Trump districts, but they will be the exceptions, not the rule.”Still, more than a dozen interviews with Democratic candidates illustrated the consistency of their optimism. They all saw Democratic and independent voters as newly energized by the abortion issue. They believed recent Democratic achievements had changed their image as an ineffectual majority to an effective one. And they detected real fear among voters of a resurgent, anti-democracy right wing, abetted by the Republican leadership. More