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      The Looming End to Abortion Rights Gives Liberal Democrats a Spark

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      The progressive wing of the Democratic Party appeared to be flagging until a draft Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade leaked — and shook the political world.The Democratic primary in North Carolina’s first congressional district had been a low-key affair, despite a new Republican-drawn map that will make the longtime stronghold for Black Democrats a key battleground in the fall.Then the Supreme Court’s draft decision that would overturn the constitutional right to an abortion was leaked, thrusting a searing issue to the forefront of the contest. Now, voters in North Carolina’s northeast will choose sides on Tuesday in a proxy war between Erica Smith, a progressive champion of abortion rights with a wrenching personal story, and Donald Davis, a more conservative state senator with the backing of the establishment who has a record of votes against abortion rights.“There’s a political imperative for Democrats to have pro-choice nominees this cycle,” said Ms. Smith, a pastor and former state senator who was once given a choice between ending a pregnancy or risking her own life to deliver a dangerously premature baby. She chose to give birth, only to lose the child tragically five years later, but said she would never take that choice away from a woman in her circumstances.Around the country — from South Texas to Chicago, Pittsburgh to New York — the looming loss of abortion rights has re-energized the Democratic Party’s left flank, which had absorbed a series of legislative and political blows and appeared to be divided and flagging. It has also dramatized the generational and ideological divide in the Democratic Party, between a nearly extinct older wing that opposes abortion rights and younger progressives who support them.President Biden and Democrats in Congress have told voters that the demise of Roe means that they must elect more “pro-choice” candidates, even as the party quietly backs some Democrats who are not.The growing intensity behind the issue has put some conservative-leaning Democrats on the defensive. Representative Henry Cuellar of Texas, the only House Democrat to vote against legislation to ensure abortion rights nationwide, insisted in an ad before his May 24 runoff with Jessica Cisneros, a progressive candidate, that he “opposes a ban on abortion.”Candidates on the left say the potential demise of Roe shows that it’s time for Democrats to fight back.“We need advocates. We need people who are going to work to change hearts and minds,” said Maxwell Alejandro Frost, who, at 25 years old, is battling an established state senator 20 years his senior, Randolph Bracy, for the Orlando House seat that Representative Val Demings is leaving to run for the Senate.Kina Collins, who is challenging longtime Representative Danny Davis of Chicago from the left, said, “We came in saying generational change is needed,” adding, “We need fighters.”But the youthful candidates of the left will have a challenge exciting voters who feel as demoralized by the Democrats’ failure to protect abortion rights as they are angry at Republicans who engineered the gutting of Roe v. Wade.From Opinion: A Challenge to Roe v. WadeCommentary by Times Opinion writers and columnists on the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.Gail Collins: The push to restrict women’s reproductive rights is about punishing women who want to have sex for pleasure.Jamelle Bouie: The logic of the draft ruling is an argument that could sweep more than just abortion rights out of the circle of constitutional protection.Matthew Walther, Editor of a Catholic Literary Journal: Those who oppose abortion should not discount the possibility that its proscription will have some regrettable consequences. Even so, it will be worth it.Gretchen Whitmer, Governor of Michigan: If Roe falls, abortion will become a felony in Michigan. I have a moral obligation to stand up for the rights of the women of the state I represent.Summer Lee, a candidate for an open House seat in the Pittsburgh area, pressed the point that in states like Pennsylvania the future of abortion rights will depend on governors, and “the only way we’re going to win the governor’s seat in November is if, in crucial Democratic counties like this one, we put forth inspiring and reflective candidates that can expand our electorate up and down the ballot to turn out voters.”There is little doubt that the draft Supreme Court decision that would end the 50-year-old constitutional right to control a pregnancy has presented Democrats with a political opportunity in an otherwise bleak political landscape. Republicans insist that after an initial burst of concern the midterms will revert to a referendum on the Democrats’ handling of pocketbook issues like inflation and crime.But the final high court ruling is expected in June or July, another jolt to the body politic, and regardless of how far it goes, it is likely to prompt a cascade of actions at the state level to roll back abortion rights.Jessica Cisneros, a progressive candidate from Texas who is challenging the last anti-abortion Democrat in the House, has retooled her closing argument around abortion rights.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesWomen would be confronted with the immediate loss of access that would ripple across the nation, said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who has been studying what she calls a “game-changing” political event.“It’s not going to die down,” she said.And while Republican consultants in Washington are telling their candidates to lay low on the issue, some of the candidates have different ideas. Three contenders for attorney general in Michigan suggested at a forum that the right to contraception established by the Supreme Court in 1965 should be decided on a state-by-state basis, assertions that Dana Nessel, Michigan’s Democratic attorney general, latched onto in her re-election bid.Yadira Caraveo, a pediatrician and Democratic state lawmaker in Colorado running for an open House seat, is already being attacked by a would-be Republican challenger, Lori Saine, who is proclaiming herself as “strongly pro-life” and seeking to “confront and expose these radical pro-abortion Democrats.”“They’ve already shown they can’t keep away from these issues,” Ms. Caraveo said, adding, “I want to focus on the issues that matter to people, like access to medical care and costs that are rising for families every day.”For liberal candidates in primary contests, the timing of the leak is fortuitous. Their calls for a more confrontational Democratic Party are meshing with the inescapable news of the looming end to Roe v. Wade and the Democratic establishment’s futile efforts to stop it.That is especially true for women of childbearing age. This week, five Democratic candidates squared off at a debate ahead of Tuesday’s primary for the House seat in Pittsburgh. Ms. Lee, the candidate aligned with the House Progressive Caucus, was the only woman on the stage. After one of her male rivals worried aloud about a post-Roe world for his daughters, she made it personal. She was the only one in the race directly impacted.“Your daughters, your sisters, your wives can speak for themselves,” she said.Ms. Cisneros, the liberal insurgent in South Texas challenging the last Democratic abortion rights opponent in the House, Mr. Cuellar, appeared to have a steep uphill battle in March after she came in second in the initial balloting, with Mr. Cuellar’s seasoned machine ready to bring out its voters for what is expected to be a low-turnout runoff on May 24.The State of Roe v. WadeCard 1 of 4What is Roe v. Wade? More

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      Can Trump Get Bo Hines, a 26-Year-Old Political Novice, Elected to Congress?

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      In Ohio, Donald Trump yanked J.D. Vance out of third place to win the Republican Senate primary. In a West Virginia House race last night, Trump catapulted a longtime Maryland politician over the choice of the state’s sitting governor.Still not convinced of Trump’s extraordinary hold on the G.O.P. base? Keep an eye on Bo Hines. He’s the purest test of the former president’s influence yet.Hines, a 26-year-old former college football recruit often compared to Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina before Cawthorn’s recent string of troubles, is running for a U.S. House seat representing the exurban area just south of Raleigh.And that’s just the start of his ambitions. “Governor of North Carolina, and the ultimate goal would be president,” Hines said of his future aims in an interview in 2015 — when he was not yet old enough to buy alcohol.Hines is just one of eight candidates in the Republican primary, which will take place Tuesday, but both Trump and the Club for Growth, the influential anti-tax group, have backed his bid.Thanks to their combined muscle, he might well become the G.O.P. nominee in what could be North Carolina’s only competitive House race this fall. If so, it would be a testament to Trump’s power to vault a total electoral novice into contention — and a profound statement about the reality of modern American politics.“He’s good-looking, he’s got no experience — so he’s perfect,” said Christopher A. Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University.A talented athlete who entered politicsThe story Hines and his allies prefer to tell is of a bright young MAGA star on the rise, while making a virtue of his football record. Announcing his endorsement, Trump called him a “proven winner both on and off the field” and a “fighter for conservative values.”An introductory ad shows the candidate jumping rope and lifting weights in the gym. “Bo Hines trained for the gridiron,” the narrator says, “learning the values only true competition can teach.”Hines was indeed a highly regarded athlete. A football phenom as a preparatory school student in Charlotte, he was named a freshman all-American as a wide receiver at North Carolina State. Before he quit football a few years later, citing chronic shoulder injuries, scouts considered him a potential N.F.L. prospect. At his peak, he ran an impressive 4.41-second 40-yard dash.Hines returning a punt for North Carolina State in 2014.Mark Konezny/USA TODAYBut then he began to veer toward politics.“After my freshman year, I transferred to Yale University to study political science and witness the legislative process firsthand on Capitol Hill,” the sparse biography on his campaign website reads. “After graduating from Yale, I pursued a law degree from the Wake Forest School of Law to escape the leftist propaganda of the Ivy League.”Interviews from around the time of his transfer find Hines speaking openly about his political aspirations. But before this campaign, his working political experience consisted of internships in the offices of several Republican politicians.One of those internships, for Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota, was for just 12 days, according to LegiStorm, a website that tracks congressional staffing. He was paid $216.65 for a job he has described as helping Rounds develop alternatives to the Affordable Care Act.Another was for Eric Holcomb, the governor of Indiana. Hines told an interviewer the job entailed “minimizing bureaucracy in Indiana.”‘Pretty potent’ campaign advantagesHines, whose parents are wealthy entrepreneurs, has plowed three-quarters of a million dollars of family money into his campaign. Voting records in North Carolina show he has voted in only three elections in the state, none of which were primaries.In the first three months of 2022, his campaign reported zero donations greater than $199 from people within the district and just six from within the entire state of North Carolina. Any individual donation smaller than $200 can be made anonymously.Luckily for Hines, Club for Growth Action, the group’s super PAC arm, has said it plans to spend $1.3 million backing him in the primary. That’s an enormous sum for a House race.Before settling on the 13th District, Hines had shopped around for a suitable perch. He announced his intention to challenge Representative Virginia Foxx, a longtime Republican incumbent in the western side of the state, before redistricting altered those plans. In April, he and his wife changed their address to a house in Fuquay-Varina, a town in southern Wake County, the most densely populated portion of the district.Some Republicans in deep-red Johnston County, a fast-growing rural community, have criticized Hines for, in the words of one local group’s leader, “coming in, just trying to cherry-pick a district he can win.” And Hines’s main opponent, a lawyer named Kelly Daughtry who is the daughter of a former majority leader of the State House, has attacked him as a carpetbagger.The Hines campaign, which declined to make him available for an interview but fielded a series of detailed questions about his candidacy, notes his upbringing in Charlotte and his time at N.C. State, which is in Raleigh, just north of the district line.Daughtry has spent more than $2.5 million on the race so far, while contributing nearly $3 million of her own money. She also has taken heat for her past donations to Democrats, including Cheri Beasley, the presumptive Democratic nominee for Senate, and Josh Stein, the state’s attorney general.Multiple people with access to private polling said Hines appeared to be ahead of Daughtry by a few percentage points, with everyone else way behind. In North Carolina, if no candidate wins at least 30 percent of the vote, the top two finishers advance to a runoff.The question for Hines is whether Trump’s endorsement and the Club for Growth’s advertisements are enough to put him over the top, while Daughtry’s campaign is hoping that her local bona fides and success as a lawyer will appeal to the sorts of older party stalwarts who tend to show up to vote in primary elections. Early vote numbers so far suggest relatively low turnout in the district.Charles Hellwig, a Republican political consultant who is advising Daughtry, said he expected the race to be close, but he noted, “Trump backed by money is a pretty potent combination in a Republican primary.”‘Make sure you know what you believe’Hines has described his political philosophy in different terms over the years. In a 2017 interview with The Hartford Courant, he said he was “not a social conservative.”He added: “I call myself a social libertarian, I guess. I’m a lot more liberal on certain social issues. I think it’s part of our generation. I’m hoping the Republican Party in the future will not be so bogged down by the 80-year-olds sitting in Congress who want to regulate how people live their lives.”Those comments, which the campaign says were “taken out of context,” have earned Hines a negative ad from a super PAC supporting one of his opponents. Hines’s position on reproductive rights is that “abortion should be made illegal throughout the United States. No exceptions.”Although Hines previously spoke of Cawthorn in glowing terms — hailing him as a “steadfast leader in the conservative movement,” appearing in Instagram posts together and highlighting his endorsement — he has lately sought to distance himself from the congressman, who has alienated many Republicans in Washington and in North Carolina with his claims that lawmakers had used cocaine and had orgies, his cavalier driving habits and a leaked nude video.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      4 Summer Election Days? New York Faces Chaos in Voting Cycle.

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      Representative Tom Reed is resigning, Representative Antonio Delgado is taking a new job, and New York’s redistricting process is up in the air, muddying the election schedule.To understand the chaos upending New York’s election season, consider the plight of Marc Molinaro, the Dutchess County executive trying to run for Congress as a Republican somewhere near his home in the Hudson Valley.Just two weeks ago, the state’s highest court unexpectedly invalidated the new congressional district in which Mr. Molinaro had spent months campaigning, throwing the battlefield into limbo as a special master redraws it and every other House seat in the state.Then last week, his likely Democratic opponent, Representative Antonio Delgado, took a job as New York’s lieutenant governor. The departure will prompt a special election this summer to fill the district whose current contours will be gone by January, just months before November’s election on lines that do not yet exist.“I’m a man in search of a horse,” Mr. Molinaro said in an interview on Wednesday. “I have no district, no opponent, and a million dollars.”With control of the House of Representatives on the line, no one expected this year’s redistricting cycle to be an afternoon by the Finger Lakes. But to a degree few foresaw, New York is lurching through what may be the most convoluted election cycle in living memory, scrambling political maps, campaigns and the calendar itself.It only got murkier this week, when Representative Tom Reed, a Republican from the Southern Tier of the state, announced that he would leave his seat earlier than expected to work for a Washington lobbying firm, setting up a second special congressional election this summer. (Mr. Reed decided not to seek re-election last year in the face of a groping allegation.)What’s left behind is a fog of confusion over when people are going to vote, who is running in which districts and when Gov. Kathy Hochul will schedule two special elections that could have an immediate impact on the narrowly divided House of Representatives in Washington.For now, neither Mr. Delgado nor Mr. Reed has officially resigned from their seats, according to the governor’s office.Representative Tom Reed, who said last year that he would not seek re-election, announced on Tuesday that he would resign.Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times“We are working with the lieutenant governor-designate’s team on the transition and have not yet received Congressman Reed’s resignation,” Hazel Crampton-Hays, a spokeswoman for Ms. Hochul, said on Wednesday. “But when we do, the governor will call a special election as required by law.”It is not implausible that New York could hold Election Days for statewide and Assembly primaries on June 28; for congressional and State Senate primaries on Aug. 23; and for the seats of Mr. Delgado and Mr. Reed on separate Tuesdays in August. (Republicans believe that Mr. Delgado may be delaying his House resignation so that his district’s special election can coincide with the Aug. 23 primaries in an effort to boost Democratic turnout.)What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Deepening Divides: As political mapmakers create lopsided new district lines, the already polarized parties are being pulled even farther apart.“I joked with our staff last night, maybe tomorrow the locusts will set in?” said Nick Langworthy, the state Republican Party chairman. “We just have so many catastrophes politically.”Some greater clarity may yet be on the horizon.The court-appointed special master is scheduled to unveil the new congressional and State Senate districts on Monday, and if they are approved by Patrick F. McAllister, a judge in Steuben County, candidates will be able to begin plotting summertime campaigns.On Wednesday, Judge McAllister, who is overseeing the redistricting case, shut the door on a related but belated attempt to strike down State Assembly districts. The judge also laid out the process by which candidates can qualify to run in the newly redrawn districts once they are unveiled.If Republicans tend to view the absurdities in a more humorous light than Democrats do, it is because each change has played out to their benefit.The lines passed by the Democrat-dominated Legislature in February, only to be struck down in late April by the New York State Court of Appeals, would have given Democrats a clear advantage in 22 of the state’s 26 congressional districts. While the new lines remain a mystery, they are widely expected to create more swing seats that Republicans could conceivably win.The departure of Mr. Delgado in the 19th Congressional District was another unforeseen gift to the Republicans. While the exact shape of the new district will matter, Mr. Molinaro’s prospects will be enhanced by not having to run against a popular incumbent with a track record of winning tough races.The district, which includes all or parts of 11 counties, has been one of the state’s most competitive, with tight races in 2016 (a Republican win for John Faso), and in 2018, when Mr. Delgado won his first term. Mr. Delgado won by a more comfortable margin in 2020 against Kyle Van De Water, a Republican and former officer in the U.S. Army.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      4 Takeaways From Tuesday’s Primaries in Nebraska and West Virginia

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      A federal candidate backed by former President Donald J. Trump won a contested primary for the second consecutive week on Tuesday, as Representative Alex Mooney resoundingly defeated Representative David McKinley in West Virginia in the first incumbent-vs.-incumbent primary race of 2022.But Mr. Trump’s endorsement scorecard took a hit in Nebraska, where his preferred candidate for governor, Charles W. Herbster, lost in a three-way race to Jim Pillen, a University of Nebraska regent who had the backing of the departing Gov. Pete Ricketts.Here are four takeaways from primary night in Nebraska and West Virginia:Trump successfully notched a win in West Virginia.On paper, West Virginia’s new Second Congressional District should have given an advantage to Mr. McKinley, 75, who had previously represented a larger area of its territory as he sought a seventh term. But Mr. Mooney, 50, who once led the Republican Party in neighboring Maryland, nonetheless romped across nearly the entire district, with the exception of the state’s northern panhandle, on Tuesday.Mr. Trump’s endorsement is widely seen as powering the Mooney campaign in one of the states where the former president has been most popular.Representative Alex Mooney of West Virginia at a rally last week in Greensburg, Pa., hosted by former President Donald J. Trump.Gene J. Puskar/Associated PressThroughout the race, Mr. Mooney slashed at Mr. McKinley as a “RINO” — “Republican in name only” — and took aim at some of his aisle-crossing votes, including for the bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed Congress last year and the bipartisan legislation to create the commission examining the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.Mr. Trump sided with Mr. Mooney early on, and invited him to appear alongside him at a rally in Pennsylvania last week. There, Mr. Trump joked that Mr. Mooney should defeat Mr. McKinley “easily.” He largely did, with landslide-level margins topping 70 percent in some of the eastern counties that border Maryland.The race comes a week after Mr. Trump helped J.D. Vance win an expensive Ohio Senate primary, and it again showed his influence when endorsing House and Senate candidates.Biden’s approach to governance suffered a defeatPresident Biden was not on the ballot in the West Virginia House race. But his belief that voters will reward members of Congress who put partisanship aside to get things done took another blow.Mr. McKinley seemingly fit very much in the long West Virginia tradition of bring-home-the-bacon lawmakers (See: Robert C. Byrd).Mr. McKinley had campaigned alongside Gov. Jim Justice, a Democrat-turned-Republican, and turned to Senator Joe Manchin III, a Democrat, in the closing stretch as a pitchman.But Republican primary voters were in no mood for compromise.“Liberal David McKinley sided with Biden’s trillion-dollar spending spree,” said one Mooney ad that began with the narrator saying he had a “breaking MAGA alert.”On Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Biden delivered a speech acknowledging that he had miscalculated in his belief that Trump-style Republicanism would fade with Mr. Trump’s departure. “I never expected — let me say — let me say this carefully: I never expected the Ultra-MAGA Republicans, who seem to control the Republican Party now, to have been able to control the Republican Party,” Mr. Biden said.On Tuesday evening, voters in West Virginia reaffirmed where the power in the party lies.Trump’s pick stumbles in a governor’s raceMr. Herbster had tried to make the Nebraska governor’s primary a referendum on Mr. Trump. He called it “a proxy war between the entire Republican establishment” and the former president. He cited Mr. Trump at every opportunity. He appeared with him at a rally.But the race became about Mr. Herbster himself, after he faced accusations of groping and unwanted contact from multiple women in the final weeks of the race.Voters instead went with Mr. Pillen, a former University of Nebraska football player, who had also run as a conservative choice with the backing of the departing governor. A third candidate, Brett Lindstrom, a state senator from outside Omaha, had campaigned for support from the more moderate faction of the party.Charles W. Herbster on Tuesday night in Lincoln, Neb., after losing the Republican primary for governor.Terry Ratzlaff for The New York TimesMr. Herbster becomes the first Trump-endorsed candidate to lose in a 2022 primary — but most likely not the last.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      West Virginia First Congressional District Primary Election Results 2022

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      Source: Election results and race calls from The Associated Press. The Times estimates the number of remaining votes based on historic turnout data and reporting from The Associated Press. These are only estimates and they may not be informed by official reports from election officials.The New York Times’s results team is a group of graphics editors, engineers and reporters who build and maintain software to publish election results in real-time as they are reported by results providers. To learn more about how election results work, read this article.The Times’s election results pages are produced by Michael Andre, Aliza Aufrichtig, Neil Berg, Matthew Bloch, Sean Catangui, Andrew Chavez, Nate Cohn, Alastair Coote, Annie Daniel, Asmaa Elkeurti, Tiffany Fehr, Andrew Fischer, Will Houp, Josh Katz, Aaron Krolik, Jasmine C. Lee, Rebecca Lieberman, Ilana Marcus, Jaymin Patel, Rachel Shorey, Charlie Smart, Umi Syam, Urvashi Uberoy and Isaac White. Reporting by Alana Celii, Reid J. Epstein, Azi Paybarah and Jonathan Weisman; editing by Wilson Andrews, Kenan Davis, Amy Hughes and Ben Koski. More

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      West Virginia Second Congressional District Primary Election Results 2022

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      The incumbent vs. incumbent Republican House primary in West Virginia’s second district has developed into a near-perfect distillation of the split in the G.O.P., with Representative David B. McKinley, who is soft spoken and intent on getting things done, facing a more hard-edged, Trump-aligned ideological candidate, Representative Alex X. Mooney. Mr. McKinley has an advantage: […] More