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      When Will We Have Results in Ohio and Indiana’s Primary Contests?

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      As we have said before, predicting the timing of election results is not an exact science. It can be downright messy. And surely, every election night is different.Many factors can contribute to how late, or how early, results are reported: when polls close, what time election officials can start tabulating absentee ballots and how close races are, to name a few.For the marquee races in Ohio, like the closely watched U.S. Senate primary, the secretary of state said it would begin posting unofficial results on its website at 8 p.m. Eastern time, half an hour after voting ends. In 2020, about half the vote had been counted by 8:30 p.m. in Ohio, said Stephen Ohlemacher, the election decision editor for The Associated Press.Absentee ballots can’t be tabulated in Ohio until the polls close, and are then counted first, according to Rob Nichols, a spokesman for the secretary of state. As of Friday, about 162,000 ballots had already been cast in Ohio through the mail or via early, in-person voting, which ended on Monday, according to The A.P. In 2018, there were about 280,000 ballots cast before the primary in Ohio, which The A.P. estimated was 17 percent of the total vote.Results for U.S. House races in Ohio will appear on county-level board of election websites before the secretary of state’s, putting the onus on the candidates, political parties and news media to tally results for each county in a congressional district. The secretary of state’s office cited Ohio’s back-and-forth on redrawing congressional maps as the root cause of the delay in updating their website.Indiana expects to start posting results on the secretary of state’s website shortly after polls close — which is 6 p.m. local time, whether in the part of the state that is in the Eastern time zone or in the Central time zone. Election officials in the state can begin counting absentee ballots on the day of an election, but cannot post any results until after the polls close.As of Monday morning, 146,365 ballots had been cast statewide, both through the mail and early, in-person voting, which ended on Monday in Indiana, according to The A.P. The total ballots cast in the 2018 primary was 173,000. More

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      What to Watch in Ohio and Indiana Primary Elections Tuesday

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      Ohio’s primary elections almost weren’t going to happen Tuesday. A heated and confusing legal battle over the redrawing of congressional districts kept voters waiting for a final map. And in last-hour negotiations, elections officials took all of the statehouse races off the May 3 primary ballot, leaving them to be decided at a later date.But all eyes remain on the state, with one marquee matchup at the top of the list: the crowded, heated and expensive Republican Senate primary.More so than many other contests across the nation, the Ohio Senate race to replace Rob Portman, an establishment Republican who is retiring, will test former President Donald J. Trump’s influence on his party, and whether Republican voters have an appetite for hard-right, anti-establishment figures in his mold — or only for those with his seal of approval. The results could also give Democrats a better idea of their chances to secure the open seat in November.Once considered a national bellwether in the industrial heart of the country, Ohio has tilted Republican in the last two presidential elections, and Republicans control all levels of government. Senate candidates from both parties have been aggressively courting the white working-class voters who have left the Democratic Party in droves since Mr. Trump was first on the ballot in 2016.The campaign has been at times contentious and ugly. It has also been high-priced. Cash has poured into the race — from major super PACs and from candidates’ personal coffers — making it one of the most expensive of this election cycle. Major donors include the Protect Ohio Values PAC, largely funded by the billionaire Peter Thiel, who is supporting Mr. Vance, and the Buckeye Leadership Fund, which is backing Matt Dolan, a former Ohio state senator whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team.Indiana’s primary also features some notable elections with implications for the direction of the Republican Party. This year, more incumbents at the state level are facing primary challengers from the right than in at least a decade, according to a review by The Indianapolis Star, potentially resulting in an even more conservative legislative supermajority.North of Indianapolis, in Hamilton County, the re-election campaign of the prosecutor D. Lee Buckingham against Greg Garrison, a conservative talk-show host, is garnering outsize attention: Mr. Garrison has the support of former Vice President Mike Pence.Former President Donald J. Trump at a rally in Delware, Ohio last month.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesTrump’s role as kingmakerMr. Trump rocked the Senate race landscape in Ohio last month when he threw his highly coveted endorsement behind J.D. Vance. A venture capitalist and the author of the best-selling 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” Mr. Vance has been heavily backed by Mr. Thiel, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Jr.On the campaign trail, Mr. Vance has sought to atone for his past negative comments about Mr. Trump. Polls have shown a significant bump for Mr. Vance, but no clear front-runner has emerged.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The 2022 election season is underway. See the full primary calendar and a detailed state-by-state breakdown.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.David McIntosh’s anti-tax Club for Growth, which had first opposed Mr. Trump’s 2016 before supporting him, is pitching for a battle. The G.O.P. group has put its support behind Josh Mandel, a former Ohio state treasurer, who went from reluctant Trump supporter in 2016 to one of the nation’s most ardent backers of Trumpism.Other Republican Senate hopefuls include Jane Timken, a former chairwoman of the Ohio Republican Party, who has been endorsed by Mr. Portman and has campaigned with the former Trump aide Kellyanne Conway, and Mike Gibbons, a financier who has outspent all of the candidates in the race. He has at times been at the top of the polls with a sales pitch similar to Mr. Trump’s, reminding audiences he is not a politician but a businessman.Still, Ohio voters might decide they do not want a Trump-centered candidate at all. The only Republican running in this lonely lane has been Mr. Dolan, who says he supports Mr. Trump but has made him less of a focus in the campaign. Unlike the top candidates in the race, he recognizes President Biden as the nation’s legitimate leader.Is there an ‘exhausted majority’?On the Democratic side of the Senate race, Representative Tim Ryan is considered the front-runner. He faces a challenge from the left by Morgan Harper, a progressive lawyer and a senior adviser at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under former President Barack Obama.Mr. Ryan has been visiting with voters across the state in a bet that they have had enough of the extremism in American politics and might be willing to elect a Democrat to a seat formerly held by a Republican. He is seeking to appeal to the “exhausted majority,” a phrase coined by researchers to describe the estimated two-thirds of voters who are less polarized and who feel overlooked.It will be interesting to see if such an electorate manifests itself in Ohio — and if it goes for Mr. Ryan or for Mr. Dolan on the other side of the aisle.Success for Mr. Ryan in the fall could carry lessons for Democrats across the Midwest on how to counter the appeal of Trumpism and the erosion of support for the party among the white working-class — voters who once formed a loyal part of the Democratic base.Representative Shontel Brown with supporters in Lakewood, Ohio.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesNina Turner speaks with children during a campaign event in South Euclid, Ohio.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesThe rematch between Nina Turner and Shontel BrownRepresentative Shontel Brown narrowly defeated Nina Turner, a former state senator and a top surrogate for Bernie Sanders, in a Democratic primary last year that was seen as somewhat of a proxy battle between the party’s progressive and establishment wings.The two were vying for a seat vacated by Marcia L. Fudge after President Biden appointed her as the secretary of housing and urban development. The race attracted big Democratic names and millions of dollars, with Ms. Brown, then a Cuyahoga County councilwoman, drawing support from Hillary Clinton and the highest-ranking Black member of the House, James E. Clyburn of South Carolina.This year, major establishment figures have once more endorsed Ms. Brown, including President Biden and Mr. Clyburn. She now also has the backing of the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC.Ms. Turner previously was attacked for taking anti-Israel positions — and for using language that some said echoed anti-Semitic tropes — as well as for a crass denunciation of President Biden. This time around, she has aggressively courted Jewish voters. She has the ground-game support of Our Revolution, a progressive political action organization that emerged from Mr. Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign. The group’s 150 volunteers have centered on building support for Ms. Turner through one-on-one conversations with voters.Will Ohio have a shot at a female governor?The former congressman Jim Renacci is one of several Republican candidates who are trying to seize on their party’s internal divisions to unseat G.O.P. governors. But Mr. Renacci seems to be gaining little traction against Gov. Mike DeWine, a longtime Ohio politician who has been working to attract the support of Mr. Trump’s most loyal supporters.In the Democratic primary, two former mayors — John Cranley of Cincinnati and Nan Whaley of Dayton — are facing off, with Ms. Whaley seeking to become the first woman elected governor in the state. More

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      National Democrats Make Last-Gasp Push to Keep N.Y. District Maps

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      Democrats are seeking to reinstate congressional district maps that were declared unconstitutional last week by New York’s highest court.With the balance of the House of Representatives at stake, national Democrats made an 11th-hour appeal to a federal court on Monday to intervene in New York’s heated redistricting dispute, hoping to reinstate House maps thrown out by the state’s highest court last week.In a 17-page complaint, they argued that there simply was not enough time to implement the order from the State Court of Appeals for new district lines and still comply with a longstanding federal court order meant to protect the rights of Americans casting ballots from overseas.The Democrats asked a panel of federal judges to exercise its authority to effectively block the state court from enforcing its decision, and instead require New York to hold this year’s elections in late June, as originally scheduled, on the map adopted by the Democrat-dominated Legislature.“The state has an obligation to timely redistrict,” the complaint said. “Since it has failed to do so, this court must act.”The unusual legal maneuver, funded by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on behalf of five New York voters, amounted to a last-gasp effort by party leaders to save a set of lines that could net their party as many as three new seats in the battle for control of the House.The State Court of Appeals tossed the maps last week, ruling that Democratic state leaders had violated a 2014 amendment to the State Constitution, including a ban on partisan gerrymandering. In a far-reaching decision, the judges ordered a court-appointed special master to draw the new lines instead and set the stage for the primary to be delayed until Aug. 23.While it is not unheard-of for federal courts to temporarily allow elections to proceed on flawed maps for pragmatic reasons, it was far from clear that Democrats’ arguments would prevail here.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.A federal judge could, for example, be persuaded that there was enough time to draft new maps to satisfy the state court this year under the revised primary calendar. Other states frequently hold late-summer primaries and are able to comply with overseas ballot requirements.Republicans said they were confident the state ruling would stand unimpeded.“It’s a Hail Mary and a sign of desperation,” said John Faso, a former congressman who helped bring the Republicans’ initial legal challenge. “An Aug. 23 primary fully complies with the requirements of the federal military voters act.”National Democratic leaders on Monday coupled the lawsuit with a public campaign to openly pressure the state courts to alter the process for drawing the new district lines, in case they do not prevail in court.Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the No. 5 House Democrat, criticized the judge overseeing the case for creating a process that makes it difficult for voters of color in his Brooklyn district to have any say in the final maps at all.The judge, Patrick F. McAllister, has ordered that anyone wishing to offer input to the special master must do so in person at a courthouse in Bath, N.Y., on Friday.Mr. Jeffries noted, in arguments that echoed parts of the lawsuit, that it was a five-hour drive from New York City and virtually inaccessible by public transportation — an arrangement he called “not acceptable.”“The court must immediately schedule additional hearings at locations accessible throughout our state, including in New York City, Albany and Buffalo, before ruling on legislative and congressional districts drawn by an unelected, out-of-town special master,” he wrote to the judge.The initial lawsuit, filed against New York State Democratic leaders, was financed and supervised by Republicans in Albany and Washington, and filed before Justice McAllister, a conservative Republican in Steuben County, N.Y.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      How Ohio’s Map Will Test J.D. Vance’s Political Allure

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      Behind the wild language, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author’s bid for a Senate seat follows a traditional Republican playbook.Theodore Roosevelt, a renowned political animal and polymath, once said, “I think there is only one thing in the world I can’t understand, and that is Ohio politics.”It is indeed a complicated place, shaped by its history as America’s first frontier state. Since the country’s founding, Ohio has been settled over the years by various ethnic groups searching for prosperity west of the Appalachian Mountains. Once a bellwether in American politics, Ohio is losing that status as its population grows older, whiter and more culturally conservative. But its patchwork of wildly different regions makes it a fascinating state to watch regardless.“Ohio is one of those places whose narrative is more often told from the outside rather than from within,” said David Giffels, the author of “Barnstorming Ohio,” a book on the state’s political and cultural geography.“We are the boring middle of American politics,” Giffels added. “And I do mean that in a loving way.”Ohio’s major population centers form a diagonal axis that slashes across the state from Cleveland in the northeast through Columbus down to Cincinnati in the southwest, along the I-71 corridor. There are as many as 12 media markets in the state, whose population of 11.8 million people sprawls across nearly 45,000 square miles.As a result, said Kyle Kondik, an election forecaster and author of a book about Ohio politics, “there’s not really a strong center to the vote in the state.”Ohio is holding primary elections on Tuesday that will give us the first major electoral test of Donald Trump’s influence on the Republican Party since he left office. By endorsing J.D. Vance in the state’s Republican Senate primary, Trump has single-handedly vaulted Mr. Vance, the venture capitalist and celebrity author, to the front of a crowded field.A forecast for low turnoutBut Vance’s victory in the primary is no sure thing. Although the candidates have spent nearly $70 million bludgeoning one another on television, voters don’t seem to be especially motivated by the chance to pick a replacement for Senator Rob Portman, who is retiring. Turnout in the race is expected to be low.“With Trump not on the ballot, I don’t think this race is top of mind for most voters,” said Thomas Sutton, the director of the Community Research Institute at Baldwin Wallace University, which conducts polls of Ohio voters.That could help Matt Dolan, a traditional Republican who is likely to draw support from party regulars and upper-income voters in the suburbs. Under this theory, casual voters who may be swayed by Trump’s late endorsement of Vance are less likely to show up.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The 2022 election season is underway. See the full primary calendar and a detailed state-by-state breakdown.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.Dolan allies suggest, too, that because the other candidates will divide the hard-core Trump vote among themselves, Dolan, a state senator whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians, has an opportunity to eke out a plurality of the vote by scooping up more casual Trump fans. They also speculate that Gov. Mike DeWine’s strength in the primary for governor could lift Dolan among rank-and-file Republicans.Mike Murphy, a former Republican consultant, said that because Dolan hadn’t been the subject of many attack ads, “he’s become the fresh face in the closing moments after the rest have a ton of damage, both self-inflicted and from paid media.”Trump held a rally last month in Delaware, Ohio, a city north of Columbus.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe five states of OhioMost analysts of Ohio divide the state into five regions: Northeast, around Cleveland; Northwest, including Toledo and the prosperous farmlands around it; Central, the booming areas in and around Columbus; Southeast, the Appalachian part of the state; and Southwest, dominated by Cincinnati and its suburbs.The Northeast is Ohio’s Democratic stronghold, the most populous, most industrialized and most diverse part of the state. But it’s also home to tens of thousands of Republican voters, so the candidates have all campaigned and advertised heavily in the region.The Southwest, which includes Vance’s hometown, Middletown, is the traditional center of Republican politics in Ohio. More Southern in perspective, it is full of bedrock Republican voters: conventional in their cultural outlook, they tend to favor free enterprise and worry about issues like crime, drugs and immigration. Vance, who now lives in Cincinnati, is holding his election night party in the city.The Southeast has been a swing area in Ohio politics, though it is also the least diverse at nearly 95 percent white. Hobbled by job losses and buffeted by the forces of globalization and economic modernization, with a lower percentage of people with college degrees, Ohio’s Appalachian region is full of “people who are angry at the world,” said John C. Green, the emeritus director of the Bliss Institute at the University of Akron.As a result, Green said, the region has a “much higher tolerance for the rough and tumble of politics” — and could gravitate toward Josh Mandel, who has campaigned as much on attitude as he has on any particular conservative ideas. A super PAC backing Mandel has been running ads on rural radio stations in the area attacking Vance as “a fraud.”In the 2016 Republican presidential primary, the Ohio map divided sharply between John Kasich, who was the sitting governor at the time, and Trump, who would of course go on to win the Republican nomination and the presidency. Kasich won Ohio’s most populous counties on his way to carrying the state, while Trump cleaned up in the Appalachian communities along the Ohio River.Vance’s balancing actOne question on the minds of many Ohio watchers: How will college-educated Republicans respond to Vance?Will they flock to the Yale-educated, worldly investor lurking inside the angry MAGA warrior Vance has become? Or will they be repelled by how far right he has moved to court Trump’s base?Vance’s schedule and ad spending in the last few days of the race show a focus on suburban and small-town areas. Since Saturday, he has visited Circleville, a city south of Columbus; Cuyahoga Falls, a city north of Akron; Westlake, a suburb west of Cleveland; Dublin, a northwestern suburb of Columbus; and Mason, a northeastern suburb of Cincinnati.A super PAC supporting Vance, Protect American Values, has spent heavily on TV advertisements in Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, as well as Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown.“On the surface, it looks like the campaign is pursuing middle-of-the-road Republican voters,” Green said.It’s a deceptively conventional strategy that you would hardly expect from the protagonist of “Hillbilly Elegy” — a story of rural communities wracked by poverty, drug addiction and what he called “learned helplessness.” Back in 2016, Vance was urging Americans to seize their own destiny, as he did by transcending his troubled childhood.“We’re no longer a country that believes in human agency, and as a formerly poor person, I find it incredibly insulting,” he said in one interview.In this campaign, Vance has courted the support of far-right characters who traffic in conspiracy theories and invective like Steve Bannon and Representatives Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene. In recent days, he has accused President Biden of deliberately flooding Ohio with fentanyl, a preposterous charge without evidence.“In a way,” Giffels said, “he’s kind of selling the victimhood he railed against in the book.”What to readFrom Columbus, Ohio, our colleague Trip Gabriel reports on what’s next for Josh Mandel, a Republican whose Senate campaign has been defined by his support of Donald Trump, now that Trump has endorsed someone else.A second woman has publicly accused Charles Herbster, a Republican candidate for governor in Nebraska who has Trump’s backing, of groping her.Even as Biden enjoyed high approval ratings early in his presidency, his lead pollster warned that immigration and inflation could cost him support.With six months until the midterms, Democrats are deeply divided over how to connect with voters and brighten the party’s prospects, Katie Glueck reports.how they runSenator Joe Manchin, left, with Representative David McKinley last year in Morgantown, W.Va.Michael Swensen/Getty ImagesManchin wades into a G.O.P. primary in West VirginiaIt’s not often that you see a Democrat endorse a Republican candidate. But the usual political bets are off in West Virginia.Republicans hold all three of the state’s House seats. But after West Virginia lost a district in the once-a-decade reapportionment process, there’s room for only two of them in the next Congress. That has left two Republican congressmen, Alex Mooney and David McKinley, fighting for the new Second District.Over the weekend, Senator Joe Manchin, the nation’s most famous right-leaning Democrat, announced in an ad that he was supporting McKinley, a longtime West Virginia politician and engineer by trade who was first elected to Congress in 2010. The primary is May 10.The endorsement adds another layer to an incumbent-on-incumbent race that has already become a proxy war of sorts. Donald Trump endorsed Mooney, while his former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, endorsed McKinley. Manchin joins Gov. Jim Justice — a Republican who left the Democratic Party after Trump was elected — in endorsing McKinley. Mooney, notably, is seen as a potential Senate challenger to Manchin in 2024.Mooney has a similar résumé to McKinley’s, although across state lines. He spent a decade in Maryland’s Legislature before leading its state Republican Party, history that has provided McKinley with alliterative fodder in his attack ads against “Maryland Mooney.”Both men are campaigning on typical Republican talking points, like immigration and gun rights. But they’ve dedicated most of their television ads to attacking each other, trading accusations of working with Democrats and betraying Trump.Perhaps twisting the knife for his Democratic critics, Manchin praised McKinley in his ad for rejecting what was once the centerpiece of President Biden’s social policy agenda — an agenda, of course, that was doomed in part by Manchin’s opposition.“For Alex Mooney and his out-of-state supporters to suggest David McKinley supported Build Back Better is an outright lie,” Manchin says to the camera.At the same time, Manchin is supporting one of the few Republicans who supported the Biden administration’s signature legislative achievement. McKinley was one of just a dozen Republicans who voted for Biden’s infrastructure legislation last year.— Blake & LeahIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Madison Cawthorn is Under Pressure as Scandals Pile Up

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      Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, once a bright young star in the conservative firmament, finds himself besieged by accusations and insinuations.WASHINGTON — Besieged by multiplying scandals and salacious accusations, Representative Madison Cawthorn, Republican of North Carolina, is under mounting pressure from both parties to end his short career in Congress.In rapid succession, Mr. Cawthorn, who entered Congress as a rising star of the party’s far right, has been accused of falsely suggesting that his Republican colleagues routinely throw cocaine-fueled orgies, insider trading and an inappropriate relationship with a male aide. This week, he was detained at an airport, where police said he tried to bring a loaded handgun onto an airplane, the second time he has attempted that.That came just days after pictures surfaced of him wearing women’s lingerie as part of a cruise ship game, imagery that might not go over well in the conservative stretches of his Western North Carolina district. And last month he was charged with driving with a revoked license for the second time since 2017.The deluge of revelations and charges have left him on an island even within his own party. A political group supporting Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, has been pouring money into an ad campaign accusing Mr. Cawthorn of being a fame-seeking liar. The group is supporting the campaign of a more mainstream Republican, State Senator Chuck Edwards, who is running against Mr. Cawthorn. And the far-right, anti-establishment wing of the party now views the first-term congressman with similar skepticism, as someone who is falsely selling himself as a gatekeeper in his state to former President Donald J. Trump.After initially blaming Democrats for the onslaught, Mr. Cawthorn on Friday said it was Republicans who were targeting him because he threatens the status quo.“I want to change the GOP for the better, and I believe in America First,” he wrote on Twitter. “I can understand the establishment attacking those beliefs, but just digging stuff up from my early 20s to smear me is pathetic.”At 26 years old, Mr. Cawthorn is not far removed from his early 20s, and Republicans running to unseat him in the May 17 North Carolina primary said the drumbeat of revelations could put his seat at risk if he secures the nomination for a second term.Washington Republicans scoff at the notion that a solidly conservative district could be at risk during a year in which they are heavily favored, but early voting began this week as the avalanche of accusations against Mr. Cawthorn was gaining steam.“He could absolutely lose,” said Michele Woodhouse, one of seven Republicans challenging Mr. Cawthorn in the primary.His leading Democratic opponent, the Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, continues to raise money off her Republican opponent’s foibles. Ms. Beach-Ferrara called Mr. Cawthorn “a troubled young man.”“I hold him in my prayers, but I believe he is not fit to serve in office,” she said in an interview.Still, the dirt being dished is coming from Republicans — not in Washington but in North Carolina, said David B. Wheeler, president of American Muckrakers PAC, a group he said was put together to “hold Cawthorn accountable.”Mr. Wheeler’s group, run by Western North Carolina Democrats, filed an incendiary ethics complaint on Wednesday that included a video of Mr. Cawthorn with a senior aide, Stephen L. Smith. In the video, Mr. Cawthorn, in the driver’s seat of a car, appears to say, “I feel the passion and desire and would like to see a naked body beneath my hands.”The camera then pans back to Mr. Smith who says, “Me too” as he places his hand onto Mr. Cawthorn’s crotch.The ethics complaint said Mr. Cawthorn has provided loans to Mr. Smith in violation of House rules. It also suggested that Mr. Cawthorn, who, according to the complaint, lives with the aide, has violated rules put in place during the #MeToo movement that bar lawmakers from having sexual relationships with employees under their supervision.After the story broke in The Daily Mail, Mr. Cawthorn posted on Twitter, “Many of my colleagues would be nowhere near politics if they had grown up with a cell phone in their hands” — not exactly a denial but a suggestion that other members should not cast stones.Mr. Wheeler provided The Times with a screenshot of the anonymous text he received that included the video, and he said he believed the tipster to be a former Cawthorn campaign aide. Another former aide, Lisa Wiggins, went public in an audio recording released by Mr. Wheeler with her consent, saying, “We all want the ultimate goal of him never serving again.”Republicans in the state insist that accusations of lawlessness and neglect of his district are more damaging than details of his sex life. Democrats say they are most concerned with Mr. Cawthorn’s support for the protesters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. A legal effort led by North Carolina Democrats to label him as an “insurrectionist” and constitutionally disqualify him from the ballot failed last month.But the revelations about his conduct are making a splash. The photos of Mr. Cawthorn in women’s lingerie, first published in Politico, stemmed from a bawdy game aboard a cruise that he took before he was elected to the House, said Melissa Burns, a self-described conservative Republican from Tennessee who witnessed the game, part of an onboard show.For the finale, the audience was divided into teams, each of which selected a man to dress as a woman, “the sexier ‘she’ is, the more points you get,” Ms. Burns said in an email. Mr. Cawthorn volunteered.The description is consistent with a description that Mr. Cawthorn provided in a link on Twitter, when he dismissed the photos, saying, “I guess the left thinks goofy vacation photos during a game on a cruise (taken waaay before I ran for Congress) is going to somehow hurt me?”Ms. Burns also provided a link to a dating app for the cruise from someone identified as “Cawthorn,” using the same photo that was published in Politico, saying, “Im in search of sexy women or couples for some wild sexapades. You wont be disappointed.”Luke Ball, a spokesman for Mr. Cawthorn, did not deny Ms. Burns’ description of the lingerie game, but he said the dating app was a fake that used the wrong age, wrong hometown and wrong name of the ship.The hits are taking a toll. The far-right wing of the party once viewed Mr. Cawthorn, a telegenic congressman who uses a wheelchair after a car crash at the age of 18, as a young leader with potential. Now its members keep him at arm’s length and view him as a troubled individual who isn’t always aligned with the base on the issues.They describe Mr. Cawthorn as someone who is “Twitter famous,” but who does not work the district and lacks grass-roots support at home. Many of them have noted that even Donald Trump Jr., a popular figure on the right, has stayed quiet and made no attempt to come to his defense.“I don’t see MAGA voters being quite this forgiving,” said Jason Miller, an adviser to the elder Mr. Trump.Still, the former president himself endorsed Mr. Cawthorn last year and has continued to stand by him; Mr. Trump invited the congressman to appear at a rally with him this month in Selma, N.C.The Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with House Republicans, and the National Republican Congressional Committee, which don’t involve themselves in primaries in states where a G.O.P. candidate is positioned to win a general election, are staying out of the fracas.But Mr. Wheeler said his group will keep up the pressure. He said legal authorities have taken no action after Mr. Cawthorn’s two firearms charges, his brush with law enforcement over expired licenses or his failure to obtain hunting and fishing licenses, despite boasting that he does both.“The guy hasn’t been held accountable,” Mr. Wheeler said. More

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      How N.Y. Democrats Lost a Critical Redistricting Battle

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      When an independent redistricting commission failed to reach consensus, Democratic leaders decided to make their own maps and risk a lawsuit.It was 2020, more than a year before New York began its once-in-a-decade redistricting process, when Carl Heastie, the Assembly speaker, foresaw a problem.New York voters had empowered a bipartisan commission to guide the task of drafting new legislative maps for the House and local state districts. But Mr. Heastie worried that constitutional language behind the new process would give incentive to Republicans to undermine the commission, according to two Democrats familiar with the discussions.If the commission failed to complete its work, Republicans could try to push the mapmaking process directly to the courts, rather than the Democrat-dominated Legislature.With a handful of crucial House and State Senate seats hanging in the balance, that outcome could have been disastrous for Democrats. They drafted a constitutional amendment to head off Republicans, but voters soundly rejected it last November. Lawmakers then tried another workaround, passing a bill authorizing the Legislature to act if the commission failed to complete its work.Mr. Heastie’s fears came to pass in January, when Republican commissioners refused to approve a final recommendation to the Legislature.But rather than defer to the courts, Democratic leaders decided to make a bet: They disregarded the commission’s work, unilaterally approved maps that positioned their party to pick up key House seats, and hoped that their legal change would withstand scrutiny.Carl Heastie, the Assembly speaker, had warned colleagues that a new redistricting commission might intentionally deadlock.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesOn Wednesday, the Democrats’ maneuver imploded.In a sharply worded decision, the New York State Court of Appeals said that the Legislature’s actions violated the State Constitution, accusing Democratic leaders of placing partisan interests above the will of the voters who, in 2014, created the commission and outlawed partisan gerrymandering.A majority of the seven-judge panel — all appointed by Democrats — explicitly found fault with Mr. Heastie’s attempted procedural fix, ruled that the congressional maps had been “drawn with impermissible partisan purpose,” and empowered a court-appointed special master to redraft the congressional and State Senate lines.The ruling threw New York politics into chaos and scrambled the national fight for control of the House of Representatives this fall.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.“Any Democrat in New York today who you get on the phone and tells you anything other than this was an unmitigated disaster, is just not telling you the truth,” said Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who helps lead the Republicans’ national redistricting effort.Democrats had been counting on the new maps in New York to provide as many as three new House seats, offsetting expected Republican gains through redistricting in other states.The final outcome of the 2022 battlefield may still depend on whether Florida courts strike down Republicans’ new map there as a gerrymander. But for now, Republicans appear poised to best the Democrats nationally for the second consecutive redistricting cycle, making it increasingly difficult for Democrats to hold onto their slim House majority.The situation in New York was even more tenuous. Not only will it take a court-appointed special master weeks to draw new lines — significantly scrambling contests that have already been going on for months — but election lawyers said on Thursday that they were not certain how the state could even comply with the order and other election-related requirements.For instance, while it at first appeared that primaries for statewide offices like governor and lieutenant governor had not been affected by the ruling, those contests may be called into question, after all. To qualify for the ballot, the State Board of Elections requires candidates for statewide office to collect petitions from voters in multiple congressional districts. No one could immediately say whether those petitions, filed weeks ago, were now invalid.“Boy, that could really upend the elections much more than I originally thought,” said Jerry H. Goldfeder, a Democratic elections lawyer who wrote a leading textbook on New York election law, as he puzzled through the ruling Thursday morning.Mr. Goldfeder and other Democrats strenuously disagreed with the Court of Appeals’ decision, the first time in half a century that the judges have struck down a map approved by lawmakers. They called it judicial overreach and heaped blame back on Republicans, who they say intentionally sabotaged the commission’s work in hopes of achieving the outcome they ultimately won in court.“It would have been impossible for us to actually meet the threshold laid out by the Court of Appeals because the Republicans refused to come to a meeting to vote,” said David Imamura, the Democratic appointee who chaired the redistricting commission.He called the current system “unworkable” and warned that the Court of Appeals decision, while attempting to vindicate the will of the voters, would actually ensure that one party or the other always has a political incentive to deprive the Legislature of the ability to draw lines.Jack Martins, Mr. Imamura’s Republican counterpart, did not return requests for comment.In reality, both parties entered this year’s redistricting cycle knowing that the commission was legally untested and had serious flaws that made it different from those that have worked in other states.Created out of a compromise between former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Republicans who controlled the Senate at the time, the panel consisted of even numbers of Democratic and Republican appointees. It lacked clear incentives to compromise, and its work could always be overruled by the Legislature if lawmakers rejected two consecutive proposals by the body.But voters, sick of years of political mapmaking in New York, enthusiastically enshrined it in the State Constitution alongside language outlawing partisan gerrymandering.For a time, the commission appeared to be working. That changed late last year, when the members began to draft final congressional, State Senate and Assembly maps. Rather than sending the Legislature one set of maps to consider in January, the commission sent competing partisan maps.When those maps were rejected, the commission simply collapsed without submitting a second proposal required by the State Constitution, eventually laying the groundwork for the Republicans to sue.Democratic lawmakers insist that after the commission failed, they proceeded in good faith, acting on what courts in New York have long recognized as the authority of the representative branch of government to draw maps.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Republican Primaries in May Will Test Trump’s Continued Pull

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      If you doubt the power of Donald Trump’s endorsement, look no further than the Ohio Senate race.Since April 15, when Trump backed J.D. Vance in the Republican primary, the venture capitalist and author of “Hillbilly Elegy” has zoomed to the top of the public polls. Vance jumped from 11 percent of likely voters in March to 23 percent now, according to Fox News.The real test of Trump’s party boss mojo, however, is fast approaching: actual elections, beginning with Ohio’s on Tuesday. Trump has endorsed candidates in at least 40 Republican primaries that are taking place in May, my colleague Alyce McFadden has tabulated. Most of these contests involve an incumbent who faces no serious challenger. But in statewide races from Pennsylvania to Georgia and Idaho to North Carolina, Trump’s imprimatur could prove decisive.Republicans are watching these races closely for signs that Trump’s hold over the party is waning. Privately, many G.O.P. operatives view the former president as a liability. And while he has shown a unique ability to energize the party’s base and turn out new voters, those operatives are still dreading the likelihood that he runs again in 2024, anchoring candidates up and down the ballot to an erratic, divisive figure who was rejected by swing voters in 2020.Everyone knows Trump still has juice. But nobody is sure just how much juice.“The risk for Trump is that if the candidates he has endorsed end up losing, his influence over Republican primary voters looks substantially diminished,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster.Already, there are signs of what one G.O.P. strategist called a “re-centering” of Republican politics — with Trump as the party’s strongest voice, but no longer its sole power broker.In Alabama, he withdrew his endorsement of Representative Mo Brooks, an ardent Trump loyalist who has floundered as a Senate candidate. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Trump’s top 2016 foe, has endorsed his own slate of candidates, as have conservative groups like the Club for Growth. And Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, is drawing rapturous receptions within the party as he gears up for a likely presidential run in 2024.The stakes for American democracy are high. In Georgia, Trump is trying to unseat Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, two Republicans whose refusal to help overturn the 2020 election results have made them the former president’s top targets. In both cases, Trump is backing challengers who have embraced his false narrative of a stolen election.Trump’s endorsement is no magic wand. In a recent poll by Quinnipiac University, 45 percent of Republicans said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate endorsed by Trump, whereas 44 percent said it would make no difference.“Every candidate has to lose or win their race themselves,” cautioned Ryan James Girdusky, an adviser to a super PAC supporting Vance.With that caveat in mind, here’s a look at the key primaries to watch:J.D. Vance appears to be on the rise in Ohio after Trump endorsed him.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesOhio Senate, May 3Vance was looking wobbly before Trump’s endorsement. His fund-raising and campaign organization were anemic; his past comments, such as his comparison of Trump to “cultural heroin,” were hurting him.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.A Modern-Day Party Boss: Hoarding cash, doling out favors and seeking to crush rivals, Mr. Trump is behaving like the head of a 19th-century political machine.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.Now, G.O.P. strategists largely expect that Vance will win the primary. Support for Mike Gibbons, a businessman who spent more than $13 million of his own money on ads, is crumbling. Most of his voters appear to be migrating toward Vance rather than Josh Mandel, the other leading candidate in the race, said Jeff Sadosky, a former political adviser to Senator Rob Portman, who is retiring.But Mandel, a well-known quantity in Ohio conservative politics, appears to be holding his ground.“If Vance wins, it’ll be because of the Trump endorsement,” said Michael Hartley, a Republican consultant in Columbus who is not backing any of the candidates.Mehmet Oz is locked in a tight primary race for Senate in Pennsylvania.Hannah Beier/ReutersPennsylvania Senate and governor, May 17In some ways, Pennsylvania offers the purest test of Trump’s appeal.Trump recently endorsed Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor, in the Republican Senate primary. But unlike in other states, the public polls haven’t moved much. Democratic strategists still see David McCormick, a wealthy former hedge fund executive and the other leading Republican candidate, as a potent threat.“No one here thinks it’s locked up,” said Christopher Nicholas, a Republican consultant in Harrisburg, though the Oz campaign’s internal polling has shown a shift in the doctor’s favor.Trump has yet to endorse a candidate for governor here, but his shadow looms large. He issued an anti-endorsement to Bill McSwain, a former U.S. attorney who served in the Trump administration, calling him “a coward, who let our country down” by not stopping “massive” election fraud in 2020.Two other candidates are ardent backers of his stolen election claims: former Representative Lou Barletta, whose campaign is managed by former Trump advisers; and Doug Mastriano, a state lawmaker and retired colonel who helped organize transportation to the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6.With Trump cheering him on, Senator David Perdue is trying to oust Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia.Audra Melton for The New York TimesGeorgia, May 24The biggest test of Trump’s influence will come in Georgia, where control of the machinery of democracy itself is on the ballot.It was Georgia where Trump pressured the state’s top elections official to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn the presidential election results, a phone call that is under investigation. Trump is hoping to oust Raffensperger, the secretary of state, who was on the receiving end of that phone call. The former president has backed Representative Jody Hice, who supports Trump’s debunked election fraud claims. Court documents released by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot place Hice at a meeting at the White House to discuss objections to certifying the election.In the governor’s race, Trump dragooned former Senator David Perdue into trying to unseat Kemp, the incumbent.Perdue, who lost to Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, in 2021, has dutifully made 2020 the theme of his campaign. But polls show Kemp comfortably ahead, suggesting that dwelling on the past is not a path to victory despite the power of Trump’s endorsement.Lightning roundA few other primaries we’re watching:May 10: In West Virginia’s Second Congressional District, redistricting has pitted two Republican incumbents against each other. Trump endorsed Representative Alex Mooney, who voted against the bipartisan infrastructure law, while Gov. Jim Justice is backing Representative David B. McKinley, who voted for it.May 17: In North Carolina, Trump’s preferred Senate candidate, Representative Ted Budd, is surging in the polls against former Gov. Pat McCrory and Representative Mark Walker. May 17: Gov. Brad Little of Idaho faces a primary challenge from a field that includes his own lieutenant governor, Janice McGeachin, who has Trump’s endorsement. The two have feuded bitterly, to the point where McGeachin issued her own executive orders while Little was traveling out of state. McGeachin also has a history of associating with extremists. In February, she gave a virtual speech at an event sponsored by white nationalists, leading to calls for her resignation.Alyce McFadden contributed reporting.What to readReporting from Columbus, Ohio, Jazmine Ulloa notes a new fixation in G.O.P. messaging: the baseless claim that unauthorized immigrants are voting.Jonathan Weisman, from Toledo, Ohio, reports that Democrats are in jeopardy because they can no longer rely on firm support from unions.Patricia Mazzei explores how, under Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida has become a laboratory for right-wing policies.Emily Cochrane spoke with Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska about whether her centrist credentials will appeal to Republican voters in November.how they runMadison Gesiotto Gilbert, a Republican House candidate in Ohio, was endorsed by Trump.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThis Ohio House race has everythingIt’s a shining example of Democrats’ challenges in 2022, the confusion caused by whiplash over new congressional maps and, yes, the power of a Trump endorsement: This is the race for Ohio’s 13th Congressional District.The district — whose lines are changing and whose current representative, Tim Ryan, is running for Senate — is one of just a few in Ohio expected to be competitive in the fall.President Biden would have carried this newly drawn district by just three percentage points, making it a must-win for Democrats as they face challenges in maintaining their House majority.“If 2022 is as bad for Democrats as most everybody else, myself included, expects it to be, Republicans will flip this district,” said Ryan Stubenrauch, a Republican strategist in Ohio who grew up in the area.An added wrinkle is that the boundaries of the district aren’t technically final: Ohio’s redistricting process has been tied up in the courts, and the State Supreme Court could still rule against the current maps. But most experts believe that the lines will remain in place through the general election.For Democrats, the primary election on Tuesday should be straightforward. Emilia Sykes, a state representative and former minority leader, will be the only Democrat on the ballot. The Sykes name is well known in the Akron area, where her father, Vernon Sykes, remains in the state legislature. His wife, Barbara, also once served in the state House.On the Republican side, Trump endorsed Madison Gesiotto Gilbert, a conservative commentator who worked on Trump’s campaigns in 2016 and 2020. She faces Shay Hawkins, a Republican who narrowly lost a state House race in 2020. He’s the only candidate who has aired a campaign TV ad, but he trails Gilbert in fund-raising. A third Republican to watch, Gregory Wheeler, has an endorsement from The Plain Dealer.No candidates have had much time to make a mark. They learned their district lines — tentatively — just a few weeks before early voting started. And with the primaries split, with state legislative voting postponed to later this year, turnout is a big question.Some of the usual efforts to inform voters about important dates, like when to register and the deadline for early voting, didn’t happen this year with details in flux, said Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, which is in litigation over the maps in front of the Supreme Court.“The delay and the fact that we have to have a second primary for the State House maps is really confusing for voters,” Miller said.— Blake & LeahIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Labor’s Disenchantment in Ohio Puts Even Democratic Veterans at Risk

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      TOLEDO, Ohio — Representative Marcy Kaptur, the blue-collar daughter of this blue-collar city, is on the cusp of a milestone: If elected in November to her 21st term, she will become the longest-serving female member of Congress, breaking Barbara Mikulski’s combined House and Senate record.But for Ms. Kaptur, 75, a famously pro-union, old-school appropriator, the political ground has washed away beneath her feet. A new Republican-drawn district has robbed her of reliable Democratic votes on the outskirts of Cleveland. The national Democratic Party has saddled her with an agenda of phasing out internal combustion engines and the fossil fuels that power them that sits poorly in the region that put the first Jeeps into mass production.And Donald J. Trump rattled the underpinnings of Democratic appeal to labor, with his trade protectionism, thundering denunciations of China and professed belief in job creation at all cost.As Republican voters go to the polls on Tuesday to select Ms. Kaptur’s opponent for the fall election, some of her oldest, firmest allies in the union world are having their doubts — about Ms. Kaptur’s future, and more broadly, the future of the Democratic Party in the industrial heartland.“Listen, Marcy is a friend,” said Shaun Enright, executive secretary and business manager of the 17,000-strong Northwest Ohio Building Trades Council. “But I have to go to membership, whatever the election cycle is, and say, ‘This is the most important election of your life. You have to vote.’ And I’m tired of doing it. Members are tired of hearing it.”Ms. Kaptur’s longevity was supposed to underscore a truism that union families knew their friends and would not abandon them. Democratic senators like Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia have banked on it. Representative Tim Ryan is testing it with his run for an Ohio Senate seat that so far has revolved around blue-collar appeals.Mr. Trump would have won Ms. Kaptur’s newly drawn district by three percentage points, but in the parts that overlapped the old map, Ms. Kaptur outperformed Joseph R. Biden Jr. by six percentage points, giving some hope — at least numerically — that her name recognition, long record and general popularity could still deliver that 41st year in Congress.“My service has now afforded me the ability to make a difference,” she said in an interview, boasting of her seat on the powerful Appropriations Committee and her chairmanship of the subcommittee that doles out energy and water funding.Ms. Kaptur with President Biden last year. The national Democrats’ policy goals, especially on energy, are harder to sell in her district.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBut her struggle to reach that historical mark attests to what Republicans and some union leaders here have been saying since the rise of Trumpism: Labor politics have changed forever. There are fewer union voters, and the ones who remain are less Democratic, said Jeff Broxmeyer, a political scientist at the University of Toledo. Since 1990, the percentage of Ohio workers represented by unions has slipped from 23.2 percent to 13 percent.“The organizational capacity of the Democratic Party in northwest Ohio is the organizational capacity of organized labor, and organized labor is much diminished,” he said. “Now we’re at the endgame.”The State of Jobs in the United StatesJob openings and the number of workers voluntarily leaving their positions in the United States remained near record levels in March.March Jobs Report: U.S. employers added 431,000 jobs and the unemployment rate fell to 3.6 percent ​​in the third month of 2022.Job Market and Stocks: This year’s decline in stock prices follows a historical pattern: Hot labor markets and stocks often don’t mix well.New Career Paths: For some, the Covid-19 crisis presented an opportunity to change course. Here is how these six people pivoted professionally.Return to the Office: Many companies are loosening Covid safety rules, leaving people to navigate social distancing on their own. Some workers are concerned.The state legislature lopped off the tail of Ms. Kaptur’s oddly drawn district along Lake Erie — nicknamed the Snake on the Lake — then extended it west through rural Ohio to the Indiana border. That, Professor Broxmeyer said, signaled that Republicans “are coming for the last Democrat.”It was not that long ago, 2012, that Barack Obama won Ohio’s union families, 61 percent to Mitt Romney’s 37 percent. But Mr. Trump took 54 percent of those same voters in 2016, then 55 percent in 2020. While on the coasts, prognosticators fret over the former president’s continued hold on the Republican Party, in northwest Ohio, the party’s embrace of Trump-era protectionism, immigration exclusion and anti-environmentalism is cheered heartily.“A lot of those union workers, they’re not happy with their unions right now,” said Craig Riedel, a state representative running in the Republican primary to challenge Ms. Kaptur. “They realize that a lot of those union bosses, they’re part of the Democratic machine, and oftentimes, they’re looking at a political outlook of their unions that is in disalignment with their own.”Union leaders agree that it is becoming much more difficult to paper over disagreements between local Democrats and their national party when Trump-aligned Republican candidates are using the same anti-China, anti-trade rhetoric that Ohio Democrats use. Erika White, president of the Communications Workers of America local in northwest Ohio, said Mr. Trump had given voice to the anger of white workers, even if he did not deliver on his promises.Ms. White, who is Black, said she spends much of her time listening to the frustrations of the white men who make up about half of her union.“I personally cannot stand the guy, but you think of his persona,” she said of Mr. Trump. “Where people are, I don’t know if they’re afraid of accountability or where we’re headed, but instead of personal responsibility, they say, ‘I’d rather blame you for all my problems, and then not only am I going to blame you, I’m going to be mean and aggressive with it.’”Erika White, president of a union local, said Mr. Trump had given voice to the anger of white workers, even if he did not deliver on his promises.Cydni Elledge for The New York TimesMs. Kaptur sees it too, and sees Mr. Trump’s appeal, despite his failure to deliver tangible benefits.“Our party, for the most part, is very coastally oriented,” she said, adding, “Our part of the country just doesn’t have much voice, and so partly what he reflects is that vacuum of people feeling left out, and I can understand that.”In Toledo, a burning issue is a natural gas and crude oil pipeline called Line Five that runs on the floor of the Great Lakes from Canada to Ohio, supplying a refinery here that employs 1,200 union workers.The Democratic administration of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan has labeled it a “ticking time bomb” that needs to be shut down, and allies in the environmental movement say workers need to face reality: As the auto industry shifts to electric vehicles, oil pipelines and refineries will no longer be needed.But what national Democrats see as a planetary imperative, union leaders like Mr. Enright see as an immediate mortal threat, and they fully expect the politicians they back to fight for their jobs. That means keeping Line Five open and the shift to electric vehicles in the lowest possible gear.“Democrats say they’re the ones working on behalf of people’s pocketbooks, but how do I tell my members that’s the guy working to help your pocketbook when that’s the guy who is shutting down the pipeline to your refinery?” Mr. Enright asked.An issue like Line Five is easy for the Republicans in the race. It unites unions and business, without alienating any other constituency.Theresa Gavarone, a state senator, is a leading Republican in the campaign to run against Ms. Kaptur in the fall.Cydni Elledge for The New York Times“I mean, it’s 1,200 direct jobs, and thousands of indirect jobs, which include union workers in good paying jobs, and Marcy Kaptur has been silent,” said State Senator Theresa Gavarone, a leading Republican in the race, as she shook hands at Archbold High School in the rural west of the newly drawn district.Ms. Gavarone has used the Line Five issue to make allies in the building trades unions, and used those allies to separate herself from Mr. Riedel, who is openly anti-union.Ms. Kaptur responded defensively, but she also showed the crosscurrents she faces. As chairwoman of the Energy and Water Appropriations subcommittee, she said she had done what she could to protect and move to strengthen the pipeline. But she also leads the Great Lakes Caucus in the House, and protecting the largest body of freshwater on Earth, she said, also has to be a priority.That Mr. Trump never seemed bothered by such conflicts frustrates her, and she does not seem clear on how to overcome his appeal in a region drained by globalization and left behind, first by free trade, then by the changing priorities of environmental protection and an information and technology economy.But she is perfectly clear about her constituents’ point of view.“He was able to prick the despair that results from economic opportunity being jerked out from under you like a rug, and he was able to do it even though he didn’t do anything for them,” Ms. Kaptur fumed. “These are people who’ve worked hard all their lives, and then an earthquake happened. That’s not their fault, and largely Washington never saw it.” More