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      Republicans Elevate Diverse Recruits in Bid to Win House Majority

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      The G.O.P.’s plan to win back the House rests on candidates of color who leaders hope can help broaden the party’s appeal. TUCSON, Ariz. — When Juan Ciscomani first brought his family to his new congressional campaign office in the Catalina foothills, his father asked him: “Do you know where we are?”This was the same upscale neighborhood where a teenage Juan and his father, who immigrated from Mexico and took a job driving city buses, used to come early in the mornings to wash expensive cars to help make ends meet. Years later, the younger Mr. Ciscomani is one of House Republicans’ top recruits in the country, running to flip a key congressional seat just blocks from where they once worked to scrape by. “Two blocks away — it dawned on us,” Mr. Ciscomani recalled in an interview. “Then he said his favorite phrase: ‘Only in America.’”If Republicans win back the House majority in the November elections, it will be because of candidates like Mr. Ciscomani. In the nation’s most competitive congressional districts, Republicans have aggressively recruited people of color with powerful personal stories to tell, betting that compelling candidates, equipped with disciplined messages that focus on kitchen table issues like inflation and public safety, will deliver them control of the House.Republicans saw the potency of the strategy in 2020, when handicappers and pollsters predicted that Democrats would expand their majority. Instead, Democrats did not gain a single new seat while Republican candidates — women, minorities and veterans — won 15. Party operatives attributed the success to their decision to follow Democrats’ winning formula in 2018, recruiting a diverse group of candidates who helped propel them to gaining control of the House. Now, Republicans say it is a crucial component of their strategy to build a lasting majority. “We made a significant effort to not just say we would do recruitment differently but to actually get stronger recruits, and forcefully engaging on behalf of stronger recruits, more diverse recruits, recruits that reflect their electorates and the country,” said Dan Conston, the president of the Congressional Leadership Fund, House Republicans’ super PAC. Understand the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarAfter key races in Georgia, Pennsylvania and other states, here’s what we’ve learned.Trump’s Invincibility in Doubt: With many of Donald J. Trump’s endorsed candidates failing to win, some Republicans see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024.G.O.P. Governors Emboldened: Many Republican governors are in strong political shape. And some are openly opposing Mr. Trump.Voter Fraud Claims Fade: Republicans have been accepting their primary victories with little concern about the voter fraud they once falsely claimed caused Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss.The Politics of Guns: Republicans have been far more likely than Democrats to use messaging about guns to galvanize their base in the midterms. Here’s why.It is a striking strategy for a party whose ranks are overwhelmingly white and male, and include some lawmakers who have lionized the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 and embraced nativist, anti-immigrant language. The House Democrats’ campaign arm has spotlighted the influence of the hard right among Republicans, and has criticized Republican leaders for failing to confront extremists within their own conference. Republicans know that to meet predictions that they will win back the House this year, they must appeal not only to their core political base of right-wing and conservative voters, but also to college-educated people and independents in the suburbs who are likely to be alienated by such statements and stances. And party leaders are eager to continue to fix their diversity problem, with women composing only about 16 percent of the conference and people of color composing nine percent.In Texas, three Latina women are running in the Rio Grande Valley, including Mayra Flores, who immigrated to the United States from Mexico at six years old, worked on the frontline of the pandemic as a respiratory therapist, and is married to a Border Patrol officer. Ms. Flores could come to Congress as early as this month if she wins the special election to replace former Representative Filemon Vela, a Democrat who retired before the end of his term.Black Republicans with records of military service are running for several other key seats, in districts that Mr. Biden won by only a few points. There is John James in Michigan and Wesley Hunt in Texas, who both graduated from West Point and flew Apache helicopters in Iraq; and in Georgia, Jeremy Hunt, the son of two ministers who also graduated from West Point and who served as an active-duty Army intelligence officer in Ukraine. Wesley Hunt, a Republican candidate and Iraq war veteran, speaking to community members in Cibolo, Texas.Christian K. Lee for The New York TimesIn Indiana, Jennifer-Ruth Green, an Air Force veteran who deployed to Baghdad and served as a mission commander for counterintelligence activities, is looking to unseat Democrat Frank Mrvan in his northern district. Should all four prevail, they would triple the number of Black Republicans serving in the House.Here in Arizona, Mr. Ciscomani, a senior adviser to Gov. Doug Ducey, is vying to win the Tucson-based district held by Representative Ann Kirkpatrick, a Democrat who is retiring at the end of the year. In a district evenly populated by Democratic, Republican, and independent voters, Mr. Ciscomani is running with a laserlike focus on inflation, border security, and an explicit appeal for unity. “We have to be very disciplined in saying there are more things we agree on than disagree on,” he said. “And if we stay focused on that — I think that’s what the voters want to see right now. They’re tired of the infighting and bickering. They want government to go do their job. To go actually protect our border, to handle this inflation, stop the overspending, and get things under control.”That type of message would put Mr. Ciscomani in the minority among his Republican colleagues should he be elected in November, and it stands in sharp contrast to the language used by other Republicans in the Arizona delegation. Representative Paul Gosar, who represents much of rural western Arizona, has allied himself with the white nationalist Nick Fuentes and was censured last year for posting an animated video that depicted him killing a Democratic congresswoman. Representative Andy Biggs, whose district is in the eastern portion of the state, has described the influx of migrants at the southwestern border as an “invasion,” and, like Mr. Gosar, participated in the “Stop the Steal” campaign backing former President Donald J. Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Is Jan. 6 a Winning Political Issue in California? We’re About to Find Out.

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      Democratic candidates have shied away from talking about the Capitol siege. That could change if voters flock to a former federal prosecutor running for a House seat in California.On Tuesday, we’ll get an unusually clear test of the political power of Jan. 6 at the ballot box.In California’s newly drawn 41st Congressional District, a pro-business Republican who voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election faces a primary for a House seat against a Democratic former federal prosecutor who worked cases against several alleged Capitol rioters.No race provides a starker contrast between voters’ usual kitchen-table concerns and what the leading challenger cast in an interview as a battle for “the future of democracy.”A G.O.P. House veteran and a young DemocratThe Republican incumbent, Representative Ken Calvert, embodies a changing G.O.P.He has represented the area for three decades, though the district’s boundaries, which now stretch from suburban areas east of Los Angeles to Palm Springs, have changed over the years. He was first elected to the House in 1992 as a traditional, Chamber of Commerce-style conservative, but has moved rightward along with his party.He voted on Jan. 6, 2021, against certifying President Biden’s victory, but later published an op-ed article denouncing the mob at the Capitol. Donald Trump has endorsed him, though Calvert’s website makes no mention of that fact. He prefers to talk about the price of gas in a state where the average gallon now costs $6.25.Calvert has faced accusations of ethical lapses during his time in office, though he has always denied wrongdoing. After the police discovered him in a parked car with a woman in 1993, he acknowledged having sex with a prostitute, saying he had been “lonely” after a recent divorce.In California’s unusual primary system, voters in the district will decide which two candidates advance to the general election, regardless of party.The leading Democratic challenger is Will Rollins, a 37-year-old former assistant U.S. attorney in California who has made Jan. 6 the central theme of his campaign. In his ads, such as this introductory video, he talks about the danger to democracy posed by domestic extremism and misinformation — ideas most other candidates in his party rarely emphasize.Rollins saw a “huge rise in domestic terrorism cases” during his five years as a Justice Department prosecutor focused on national security and counterterrorism, he said in an interview, culminating in his work assisting colleagues in Washington reel in alleged participants in the Capitol riot.One of the cases he helped with was that of Gina Bisignano, a Louis Vuitton-clad salon owner from Beverly Hills who gained notoriety for shouting “They will not take away our Trumpy Bear” through a bullhorn on Jan. 6. Bisignano initially pleaded guilty to six federal charges, but later sought to withdraw her plea.“It was the experience of working on those cases and seeing ordinary American citizens, radicalized enough to invade the U.S. Capitol for the first time since the War of 1812, that got me thinking more seriously about how broken our information system is,” Rollins said.Among other ideas, he proposes to revive and modernize the Fairness Doctrine, a Cold War-era law that required broadcasters to report evenhandedly on political topics.“That doctrine wasn’t perfect,” Rollins said. “But it did enable us to defeat fascism and win the Cold War because we didn’t waste time debating nonsense, like whether the polio vaccine had microchips in it, or whether the moon landing was faked, or whether it was actually Nixon who beat Kennedy in 1960.”Rollins said he was first inspired to pursue a career in public service by the Sept. 11 attacks, which took place when he was a junior in high school. He considered joining the military, but was discouraged by laws that still discriminated against gay service members.“I wanted to enlist, but I had a government that told me that there was something defective about who I was,” Rollins said. He chose the law instead, clerking for Jacqueline Nguyen, a federal appeals court judge, before becoming a prosecutor.A centrist insurgency, of sortsUnseating an incumbent is an expensive proposition, but Rollins is showing an ability to raise the kind of money that could carry him into a general election.He has raised a little more than $1 million since the start of his campaign, lagging behind the nearly $1.9 million Calvert has raised this cycle. As of mid-May, Calvert had most of that cash — $1.2 million — still on hand, while Rollins had just shy of $445,428 left heading into Tuesday’s primary.Rollins’s largest donors are three PACs focused on L.G.B.T.Q. issues, including the political wing of the Congressional L.G.B.T.Q.+ Equality Caucus, which donated $5,000 and endorsed his campaign. More than $145,200 of his war chest came from people who gave less than $200.Take Back the House 2022, a joint fund-raising committee led by Republican leaders, has given $95,575 to Calvert. Corporate PACs, including those affiliated with Northrop Grumman, Booz Allen Hamilton and Raytheon, are also among Calvert’s biggest financial supporters.Through a campaign spokesman, Calvert declined an interview, but emailed a statement.“Riverside County families are confronting a number of challenges in their daily lives,” he said. “Between record-breaking gas prices, high food costs, and baby formula shortages, most of these challenges were created under President Biden’s failed leadership.”“I have consistently spoken out against political or any other kind of violence,” he added.Although national Republicans say they aren’t worried about Calvert, the new 41st District has become more Democratic. It now includes Palm Springs, a left-leaning city that Rollins has made his base. And for the first time, it contains more registered Democrats than Republicans. The area voted for Trump by just one percentage point in 2020.Official Democratic Party groups, daunted by President Biden’s low approval ratings and by a national map that is forcing them to defend dozens of seats, have yet to show interest in the race.But Rollins has drawn about $65,000 in support from Welcome PAC, a relatively new Democratic-aligned outfit that applies insurgent tactics to support center-left candidates in swing districts.Liam Kerr, a founder of the group, said that Rollins was the committee’s first major investment because Calvert had rarely faced a serious challenge, and because the district ought to be winnable for the right Democratic candidate.“People are consuming a lot of polarization porn and underestimating how many swing voters there are out there,” Kerr said.Coming attraction: Hearings on Jan. 6Privately, many Democratic campaign strategists are skeptical that voters will reward their party for focusing on the Capitol siege.They describe it as a “base issue,” or rank the topic somewhere below higher priorities for voters, such as inflation or abortion rights. What preoccupies the Beltway, they say, doesn’t always resonate out in the districts where congressional majorities are won and lost.Which is not to say that Democrats aren’t talking about Jan. 6 at all. The Center for American Progress Action Fund has commissioned a monthslong research project to learn how best to go after the MAGA brand and portray pro-Trump Republicans as insurrectionists and extremists, and has disseminated its findings to Democratic strategists and groups.And next week, the House committee that has been investigating the Capitol riot will hold its first public hearing on its findings, scheduled for 8 p.m. Eastern on Thursday — prime-time viewing. Although the panel is bipartisan, Democrats plan to use the hearings to highlight Republicans’ links to the Capitol rioters, culminating in a final report to be delivered a few weeks before Election Day in November.Rollins doesn’t necessarily have the primary sewn up. Shrina Kurani, a charismatic engineer who is running as a problem-solver who can address California’s never-ending water crises, has her share of admirers among Democrats.But if Rollins performs well on Tuesday and starts to gain momentum, expect to hear more about Jan. 6.Alan Feuer More

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      Chris Jacobs Drops Re-Election Bid After Bucking His Party on Guns

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      In the wake of deadly mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, Representative Chris Jacobs of New York, a congressman serving his first full term in the House, stunned fellow Republicans by embracing a federal assault weapons ban and limits on high-capacity magazines.Speaking from his suburban Buffalo district a week ago, about 10 miles from the grocery store where 10 Black residents were slaughtered, Mr. Jacobs framed his risky break from bedrock Republican orthodoxy as bigger than politics: “I can’t in good conscience sit back and say I didn’t try to do something,” he said.It took only seven days for political forces to catch up with him.On Friday, facing intense backlash from party leaders, a potential primary from the state party chairman and a forceful dressing down from Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Jacobs announced that he would abandon his re-election campaign.“We have a problem in our country in terms of both our major parties. If you stray from a party position, you are annihilated,” Mr. Jacobs said. “For the Republicans, it became pretty apparent to me over the last week that that issue is gun control. Any gun control.” Citing the thousands of gun permits he had issued as Erie County clerk, Mr. Jacobs emphasized that he was a supporter of the Second Amendment, and said he wanted to avoid the brutal intraparty fight that would have been inevitable had he stayed in the race. But he warned Republicans that their “absolute position” on guns would hurt the party in the long run and urged more senior lawmakers to step forward.“Look, if you’re not going to take a stand on something like this, I don’t know what you’re going to take a stand on,” Mr. Jacobs added, citing the pain of families in Buffalo, Uvalde and elsewhere.The episode, which played out as President Biden pleaded with lawmakers in Washington to pass a raft of new laws to address gun violence, may be a portent for proponents of gun control, who had welcomed Mr. Jacobs’s evolution on the issue as a sign that the nation’s latest mass tragedies might break a decades-old logjam in Washington.It also serves as a crisp encapsulation of just how little deviation on gun policy Republican Party officials and activists are willing to tolerate from their lawmakers, despite broad support for gun safety measures by Americans.Mr. Jacobs’s decision to go against his party on gun control drew an immediate and vitriolic response: Local gun rights groups posted his cellphone number on the internet, and local and state party leaders began pulling their support, one by one.Understand the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarAfter key races in Georgia, Pennsylvania and other states, here’s what we’ve learned.Trump’s Invincibility in Doubt: With many of Donald J. Trump’s endorsed candidates failing to win, some Republicans see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024.G.O.P. Governors Emboldened: Many Republican governors are in strong political shape. And some are openly opposing Mr. Trump.Voter Fraud Claims Fade: Republicans have been accepting their primary victories with little concern about the voter fraud they once falsely claimed caused Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss.The Politics of Guns: Republicans have been far more likely than Democrats to use messaging about guns to galvanize their base in the midterms. Here’s why.Just last week, Mr. Jacobs, who is the scion of one of Buffalo’s richest families and was endorsed by the National Rifle Association in 2020, had been an easy favorite to win re-election, even after a court-appointed mapmaker redrew his Western New York district to include some of the state’s reddest rural counties, areas he does not currently represent.Now, his choice to not seek re-election has set off a scramble among Republicans in Western New York to fill his seat, including Carl Paladino, the Buffalo developer and the party’s nominee for governor in 2010, who said Friday that he would run. Mr. Paladino, who has had to apologize for making insensitive and racist remarks, immediately gained the endorsement of Representative Elise Stefanik, the powerful Republican congresswoman from New York’s North Country. After a mass shooting at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, Mr. Jacobs backed a federal assault weapons ban and limits on high-capacity magazines.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesParty leaders and allies who spoke to Mr. Jacobs in recent days said he clearly understood the political ramifications of his decision to support powerful gun control measures — but he nonetheless refused to back away from it.Mr. Jacobs, 55, announced his support for a federal ban on assault weapons last week without having first consulted many of his political advisers, according to a person familiar with his decision who was not authorized to discuss it.After making his remarks, he conducted a poll that suggested he might have still had a path to re-election, though not an easy one.“His heart is in a good place, but he’s wrong in his thinking as far as we are concerned,” Ralph C. Lorigo, the longtime chairman of the Erie County Conservative Party, said before Friday’s announcement. “This quick jump that all of the sudden it’s the gun that kills people as opposed to the person is certainly not 100 percent true.”Mr. Lorigo said he had vouched for Mr. Jacobs earlier this year when other conservatives doubted him. But this past Monday, he demanded the congressman come to his office and made clear he would encourage a primary challenge.“He understood that this was potentially political suicide,” Mr. Lorigo said.Even before he made his decision not to run again, several Republicans were already lining up to face off against Mr. Jacobs, angered at both his comments and the way in which he had surprised fellow members of his party, including some who had already endorsed him.In addition to Mr. Paladino, other potential Republican challengers included Mike Sigler, a Tompkins County legislator; Marc Cenedella, a conservative businessman; and State Senator George Borrello.“We deserved the courtesy of a heads up,” said Mr. Borrello, a second-term Republican from Irving, N.Y., south of Buffalo.Mr. Borrello added that Mr. Jacobs’s actions were particularly galling considering the congressman had “actively and aggressively” sought out the support of pro-gun groups like the N.R.A. and the 1791 Society.“And those people rightfully feel betrayed,” he said.The most formidable threat to Mr. Jacobs, though, may have come from Nicholas A. Langworthy, a longtime Erie County Republican leader who currently serves as the chairman of the state’s Republican Party.Mr. Langworthy, who has yet to formally announce whether he will seek the seat, had been a supporter of Mr. Jacobs, helping him secure former President Donald J. Trump’s endorsement, but he began circulating petitions to get on the ballot himself in recent days and told associates that he would consider challenging Mr. Jacobs.Mr. Langworthy declined to comment on Friday.Gun control advocates and Democrats denounced the reaction to the congressman’s remarks, saying it showed the intolerance of Republicans’ hard-line approach to gun rights.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More