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      In New England, Republicans Run As Moderates, Pushing to Flip More Seats

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      PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Allan Fung, a former mayor who would be the first Republican in more than 20 years to represent this city in Congress, could hardly make it five feet without being stopped by a supporter on a recent Thursday evening as he tried to maneuver his way from the lobby of a Crowne Plaza to a tent where local business owners had gathered to meet him.In nearby Connecticut, George Logan, a Republican former state senator, switched effortlessly between Spanish and English as he went door to door telling voters in suburban New Britain that he wanted to lower their taxes.“I want to work with Democrats and Republicans,” Mr. Logan, a former state senator, said in an interview between door knocks. “There is no one congressman or woman that I agree with on every topic, 100 percent of the time.”Farther north in Maine, former Representative Bruce Poliquin says in his ads that he wants to bring “Maine common sense” back to Congress, working to distance himself from the far-right tilt of his party as he campaigns to reclaim the seat he lost to Representative Jared Golden four years ago.In an aggressive push in the homestretch of the midterm congressional campaign, Republicans have stepped up their efforts to lay claim to seats in New England, a region that once boasted a proud tradition of electing independent-minded Republicans, but that has more recently slid out of reach of a party that has lurched to the right.They have done so by promoting candidates who are billing themselves as centrists with broad appeal — a far different brand from the hard-right figures and election deniers who make up the critical mass of the G.O.P. — hoping to bolster their chances of winning a substantial House majority in a cycle that has favored Republicans.In Rhode Island, Allan Fung, the former mayor of Cranston and a two-time candidate for governor, is campaigning for Congress on fighting inflation and increasing public safety.Philip Keith for The New York TimesThe turf has hardly been friendly to the G.O.P. in recent years. Republican representation in New England was nearly wiped out in 2006, when only one of the region’s 22 House races was won by a Republican. By 2018, the party was shut out entirely after Mr. Poliquin lost his re-election campaign to Mr. Golden. That left Senator Susan Collins of Maine as the sole remaining congressional Republican in New England.Now, Republican leaders are working to revive the party’s standing with an estranged but critical swath of voters in the region who prefer politicians who do not operate in lock step with the national parties.And Democrats, who have watched with alarm as the Republicans have gained traction, are scrambling to persuade voters that however mainstream these New Englanders may seem, electing them would empower an extremist G.O.P.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.A Pivotal Test in Pennsylvania: A battle for blue-collar white voters is raging in President Biden’s birthplace, where Democrats have the furthest to fall and the most to gain.Governor’s Races: Democrats and Republicans are heading into the final stretch of more than a dozen competitive contests for governor. Some battleground races could also determine who controls the Senate.Biden’s Agenda at Risk: If Republicans capture one or both chambers of Congress, the president’s opportunities on several issues will shrink. Here are some major areas where the two sides would clash.Ohio Senate Race: Polls show Representative Tim Ryan competing within the margin of error against his G.O.P. opponent, J.D. Vance. Mr. Ryan said the race would be “the upset of the night,” but there is still a cold reality tilting against Democrats.In an interview, Seth Magaziner, a Democrat and former teacher and state treasurer who is running against Mr. Fung for an open seat in southern and central Rhode Island, cited his opponent’s support for former President Donald J. Trump and his opposition to a state marriage equality law as evidence that Mr. Fung is no centrist.“The Republicans are trying to package someone who is not a moderate as a moderate,” said Mr. Magaziner, who has trailed Mr. Fung in recent polls. “That has never been his record.”Top Republicans are spending freely to try to strengthen the New England Republicans’ chances.Seth Magaziner, a Democrat, is a former teacher and state treasurer who is running against Mr. Fung.Philip Keith for The New York TimesMr. Magaziner has trailed Mr. Fung in recent polls.Philip Keith for The New York TimesLast week, the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Representative Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican and minority leader, poured an additional $1 million into Mr. Fung’s race, tripling its investment. Calvin Moore, a spokesman for the group, said the PAC had spent $3.5 million for Mr. Logan and $5.5 million for Mr. Poliquin.Mr. McCarthy visited Rhode Island in August to raise money for Mr. Fung, and Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the minority whip, attended a fund-raiser for Mr. Fung last week..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the third-ranking Republican who denies that the 2020 election was fair, also appeared with Mr. Logan this month at a fund-raising event.One reason the region appeals to Republicans as they look to expand their footprint into even the bluest of states is the makeup of the electorate: Between a third and half of registered voters in New England do not have a party affiliation. They have long been known for rewarding politicians who reach across the political aisle, like Ms. Collins and Senator Angus King, a Maine independent, both of whom have been involved in bipartisan negotiations and supported Democratic-led bills.Republicans are hoping that disaffected Democrats and independent voters will turn to “Republican candidates who are running local races and delivering a more pragmatic message” as a check on Democratic dominance in their states, said Samantha Bullock, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.At a recent debate, Mr. Logan, who is challenging Representative Jahana Hayes, a second-term Democrat, described himself as a “Connecticut Republican”: moderate on social issues, fiscally conservative. He admonished the Biden administration for its economic policies, blaming Democrats’ large spending bills for rising inflation. But he appeared to share Ms. Hayes’s views on some issues, saying he supported infrastructure investments and abortion rights.Mr. Logan appeared to share the views of Representative Jahana Hayes, the Democratic incumbent, on some issues, saying he supported infrastructure investments and abortion rights.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesMr. Logan later clarified to reporters that he did not think Congress had the constitutional power to codify Roe v. Wade, as Democrats sought to do after the Supreme Court decision this year overturning it.In Rhode Island, Mr. Fung, the first Chinese American to be elected mayor of Cranston and a two-time candidate for governor, is campaigning on fighting inflation and increasing public safety. Mr. Fung said in an interview that he would have supported the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law that President Biden signed last year, as well as an industrial policy measure enacted over the summer, and that he would back legislation to protect abortion access.He denied that he had shifted his positions to appear more moderate, saying that Democrats were “running a lot of this national cookie-cutter playbook, and I just don’t fit their mold.”Mr. Poliquin may be the least centrist of the three, having aligned himself more closely with Mr. Trump and embraced conservative positions on social issues, such as opposition to gun control measures.National Democrats have invested huge sums to counter the G.O.P.’s inroads into New England, working to portray Mr. Fung and the other Republican candidates as far outside the mainstream. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and allied political action committees have spent more than $2.3 million in the Rhode Island race, $3.6 million in Ms. Hayes’s district and nearly $10 million in Mr. Golden’s, according to a spokesman for the Democratic committee.Democratic ads show a smiling Mr. Fung wearing a Trump beanie. Ads against Mr. Poliquin emphasize his support for abortion bans, including his previous backing for legislation that would prohibit abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.And in Waterbury, Conn., the campaign staff for Ms. Hayes held signs at a rally before a televised debate that read “Logan [hearts] Trump.” After the debate, Ms. Hayes told reporters that a moderate would not have invited House leaders to campaign in the district or appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program to share his message, as Mr. Logan did this month.Ms. Hayes tried to paint Mr. Logan as a conservative, referring to his ties to congressional leadership and an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesMr. Logan’s campaign headquarters. Republicans are hoping that disaffected Democrats and independent voters will turn to moderate Republicans.Hilary Swift for The New York Times“He has inextricably connected himself to national Republican leadership,” she said. “They are propping up his campaign with millions of dollars.”Not all voters are swayed by the connection.Dr. Earl Bueno, an anesthesiologist and independent voter from Connecticut, said he supported Mr. Logan, likening the Republican candidate to one of the state’s Democratic senators.“I don’t see him as an extremist that people are painting him as right now,” Dr. Bueno said. “I’m pro-George Logan because, like Senator Chris Murphy, you can actually reach out and have a conversation with him.”Some Democrats are resorting in the final weeks of the campaign to reminding voters that electing any Republican — even a moderate one — could hand the G.O.P. control of Congress.Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, made that point at a recent dinner for Mr. Magaziner at a golf course in Providence.“Please,” he told a group of voters at the dinner, “don’t make Allan Fung the vote that makes Kevin McCarthy speaker of the House of Representatives.” More

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      Eric Adams Raises $850,000 for Re-election in 2025

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      Mayor Eric Adams has traveled across the country to court donors, receiving contributions from casino and sports betting executives.When Mayor Eric Adams was confronted last month with troubling poll numbers, he gave an optimistic interpretation: He said he had earned a C grade from many New Yorkers.In terms of combating the city’s crime problem, the mayor was less certain, giving himself a grade of incomplete.But when it comes to fund-raising, Mr. Adams would more than likely give himself an A, for effort and for results.The mayor raised more than $850,000 for his 2025 re-election campaign barely six months after taking office, according to filings with the city’s Campaign Finance Board released on Friday night.The campaign haul is a result of Mr. Adams’s traveling across the country to raise money for a second term, even as he is confronting major issues at home, from crime to soaring rents. He has held fund-raisers in Chicago and Beverly Hills and has courted wealthy donors in the Hamptons during the honeymoon stage of his first term when his popularity is still relatively high.Here’s a look at some quick takeaways from the campaign filings:The mayor’s national reachNearly half of Mr. Adams’s campaign donations — more than $400,000 — came from outside New York City, from donors in places including Palm Beach, Fla., and Santa Barbara, Calif.His trips to other cities have helped establish a national profile for Mr. Adams, who has called himself the “future of the Democratic Party” and is rumored to be interested in running for president someday, like a handful of New York City mayors before him.In March, Mr. Adams, the city’s second Black mayor, held an event in Chicago at the home of Desirée Rogers, the former White House social secretary for President Barack Obama. Ms. Rogers donated $2,500 to Mr. Adams’s campaign.The mayor had 28 total donations from Chicago, from donors including Brett Hart, the president of United Airlines; La Shawn Ford, an Illinois lawmaker; and Toi Salter, a wealth manager. Mr. Adams’s West Coast donors included Breck Eisner, the director of the 2005 film “Sahara.”“This filing shows strong support for Mayor Adams and his plans for the city,” his campaign lawyer, Vito Pitta, a prominent lobbyist, said in a statement.Attention from real estate and casino executivesNew Yorkers did not exactly open their wallets for Mr. Adams: Only $83,000 of the donations is believed to qualify for the city’s generous matching-funds program, which is designed to reward candidates who receive small-dollar donations from local residents.But given that his re-election is still more than three years away, the slow pace of small local donations is understandable.Still, some donors — specifically, leaders from real estate, casino and sports betting businesses — seemed to have more immediate reason to give to the mayor’s campaign.They included Stephen Green, a founder of SL Green Realty, one of the city’s biggest landlords, and Darcy Stacom, the head of New York City capital markets for CRBE, a major commercial real estate firm.As New York City prepares to welcome three new casinos, executives from a Hard Rock hotel and casino in Florida donated to the mayor. Sean Caffery, a casino development executive at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood, and Jeff Hook, another executive there, each gave $2,000. Two other Hard Rock executives, Jon Lucas and Edward Tracy, also donated.And with sports betting having recently been legalized in New York, Jason Robins, the chief executive of DraftKings, the sports betting company, and Stanton Dodge, the company’s chief legal officer, gave $2,000 to the campaign. Matt King, chief executive at Fanatics Betting and Gaming, was another donor.Fund-raisers at Osteria La Baia and Casa CiprianiMr. Adams’s campaign has spent about $100,000 so far, leaving him with $746,000 on hand.The campaign’s largest single payment was $30,000 to Suggs Solutions, a company run by his fund-raiser, Brianna Suggs. Ms. Suggs has also raised money for the Democratic Party in Brooklyn and worked for Mr. Adams when he was Brooklyn borough president.The campaign has been paying $7,500 a month to Pitta L.P., the law firm where Mr. Pitta, the campaign lawyer, is a managing partner, since February.Other payments went to fund-raisers at some of the mayor’s favorite restaurants, including $1,000 in March to Osteria La Baia, an Italian restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, and $1,600 in March to Casa Cipriani, a members’ club in Lower Manhattan.The campaign also paid for flights on JetBlue and United Airlines and for hotels, including $1,280 to the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills.The City Council is also getting an early startMr. Adams may have more than a passing interest in the future of the City Council, knowing that next year’s election, in which every Council seat will be on the ballot, could affect Mr. Adams’s agenda. A majority of the Council — 41 of its 51 members — sent Mr. Adams a letter this week calling on him to restore funding for schools that have faced vexing budget cuts.Adrienne Adams, the City Council speaker, led the Council in recent fund-raising, reporting about $127,000 in contributions from powerful donors that included the New York State Laborers and the Building and Construction Trades Council. Ms. Adams, a Democrat, also received $250 from John Catsimatidis, the Republican billionaire, and $1,600 from his wife, Margo.Other Council members have raised significant amounts, including Linda Lee, a member from eastern Queens, who raised $51,000; Sandra Ung, a member who represents Flushing, Queens, and raised $33,000; and Crystal Hudson and Justin Brannan, two members from Brooklyn who each raised $25,000.A PAC tied to the Partnership for New York City, an influential business group, donated to at least three Council members: Ms. Adams, Ms. Hudson and Mr. Brannan. More

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      Just 5 Months Into His Term, Adams Is Busy Raising Money to Win Another

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      The mayor has kicked off a cross-country fund-raising blitz for re-election, taking his tour to Chicago and Beverly Hills, even as he confronts major challenges in New York City.Not long after celebrating his first 100 days as mayor this spring, Eric Adams was poolside in Beverly Hills, Calif., already thinking about the future.Wearing a crisp blue suit and fuchsia tie, Mr. Adams spoke to a crowd of vegan enthusiasts about his allegiance to a plant-based diet in an event at the midcentury home of Naren Shankar, a Hollywood showrunner and producer of “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.”The underlying motivation, however, was about another passion: raising money for his re-election campaign in 2025.The fund-raising event was hastily organized while Mr. Adams was in town to speak on a technology panel at the Milken Institute Global Conference — part of a three-day trip in May where he also socialized with the comedian Dave Chappelle and the heiress Paris Hilton.Even as Mr. Adams has struggled to address a series of pressing challenges in New York, he has launched an unusually early fund-raising blitz to secure a second term, a feat that no Black mayor of New York City has achieved.The fund-raisers coincide with Mr. Adams’s efforts to establish a national profile. In March, the mayor held an event in Chicago at the home of Desirée Rogers, the former White House social secretary for President Barack Obama, which was attended by Robert Blackwell Jr., an entrepreneur and Obama ally.Robert Blackwell Jr., a Chicago-based entrepreneur and long-supporter of former President Barack Obama, recently attended a fund-raiser for Mr. Adams in Chicago.Pigi Cipelli/Mondadori, via Getty ImagesSometime this summer, Charles Phillips, the managing partner of Recognize, a technology investment firm, is planning to hold a fund-raiser for Mr. Adams — probably “out east,” in the Hamptons, he said in an interview.The mayor’s team is hoping he will max out his fund-raising by the end of the summer, according to a Democratic consultant who was briefed on the campaign’s plans. A $2 million haul, coupled with the city’s generous matching funds program, could enable him to hit the $7.9 million spending cap for the 2025 mayoral primary. Collecting a huge war chest now could fend off potential competitors and capitalize on what remains of the mayor’s honeymoon period, when he is still relatively popular and donors are eager to get his attention.“You want to raise money as a show of strength,” said Chris Coffey, the chief executive of Tusk Strategies and a manager of Andrew Yang’s campaign for mayor. “You don’t want to spend your last year running around doing fund-raisers.”There is little precedent for such an early push. Bill de Blasio, in his first year as mayor, focused on raising money for candidates for the State Senate and for the Campaign for One New York, a nonprofit group that supported his agenda — both of which became part of federal and state investigations into his fund-raising. Michael R. Bloomberg did not have to bother with fund-raising; he used his own fortune to run for a second term, then wielded his personal philanthropy to gain support to overturn term limits in 2008, spending a record $102 million on a third term.There are also political risks to Mr. Adams’s fund-raising strategy, which could potentially cast him as an absentee leader unduly focused on politics.When the mayor was in Beverly Hills, the risk level for coronavirus cases had just increased in New York City, raising fresh concerns about the city’s economic recovery. Federal officials were weighing a takeover of the troubled Rikers Island jail in response to rising violence and inmate deaths there. A police officer was slashed in Brooklyn by a man carrying a 16-inch knife.And when his return flight from California was abruptly canceled, Mr. Adams had to scrap most of his events for the day, including a rally at City Hall to put pressure on the State Legislature to extend mayoral control of city schools.Mr. Adams has already seen his approval rating drop as he faces growing pressure to address rising crime and an affordable housing crisis. Only 29 percent of New Yorkers said his performance was good or excellent, and 56 percent said the city was headed in the wrong direction, according to a recent poll by NY1 and Siena College.Mr. Adams defended his polling numbers, arguing that New Yorkers were tough graders and that many had given him a “fair” rating, which he considered a C grade.“Listen, a C is not an A, but a C is not an F,” Mr. Adams told reporters.Charles Phillips, the managing partner of Recognize, a technology investment firm, said he planned to hold a summer fund-raiser for Mr. Adams.Cindy Ord/Getty ImagesThe mayor has proved to be a prolific fund-raiser. He raised more than $9 million for the Democratic primary and the general election last year and another $10 million in matching funds. Mr. Adams spent much of last summer traveling to the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard to court wealthy donors who favored his brand of centrism, attending as many as five fund-raisers a day.Mr. Adams, a former state senator and Brooklyn borough president, has at times tested the boundaries of campaign-finance and ethics laws. He was investigated for his role in backing a video lottery terminal bidder for the Aqueduct Racetrack and has been criticized for taking money from developers who were lobbying him to support crucial zoning changes.As a mayoral candidate, Mr. Adams raised money from a wide array of donors, including real estate developers, billionaires, cannabis investors, hedge fund executives, Republicans and working-class New Yorkers. He raised more than $2.8 million from donors outside New York City, and a super PAC supporting his campaign raised about $7 million.Now as mayor, Mr. Adams has again embraced fund-raising with vigor. On June 3, after delivering a commencement speech in Queens, Mr. Adams attended a fund-raiser at a construction company’s offices in Midtown Manhattan, hosted by the Bravo Group chief executive, Ehab Shehata. At the middle-of-the-workday event, Mr. Adams told the crowd that the city could only rebound if crime levels dropped and that he was the man for the job, according to a person who attended the event.Mr. Shehata did not respond to requests for comment. But he is hardly the only local executive eager to curry favor with the mayor.Marc Holliday, chief executive of SL Green Realty Corp., which co-owns the new One Vanderbilt skyscraper near Grand Central Terminal, reached out to fellow real estate executives in April on behalf of Mr. Adams’s 2025 campaign. The tower has been home to at least two mayoral appearances, including the Wells Fargo product launch in April where the mayor partied with the model and actress Cara Delevingne, earning himself a spread in the gossip pages.Mr. Adams has made at least two appearances at the new One Vanderbilt skyscraper, including in October when he posed with Marc Holliday, the chief executive of SL Green, the company that co-owns the building.Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency, via Getty Images“At a time when NYC needed it the most, Eric has stepped into the mayoralty and has quickly become the face and driving force behind New York’s recovery,” Mr. Holliday wrote in an email. “Anything you can do would be very much appreciated.”The first public disclosures for the 2025 mayor’s race are due next month and will provide a clearer picture of the donors Mr. Adams is relying on.Barry Gosin, the chief executive officer of Newmark Group, a commercial real estate firm, is hosting a fund-raiser for Mr. Adams on Wednesday on the fifth floor of a skyscraper near Grand Central Terminal. Attendees are requested to donate between $400 and $2,000 apiece.“This is an opportunity to support a great, authentic mayor,” Mr. Gosin said. “He’s working his butt off, and I think the things he’s doing are the things that should be done. But that’s my opinion.”Barry Gosin, center, a commercial real estate executive, is hosting a fund-raiser for Mr. Adams on Wednesday.Kelly Sullivan/Getty Images for BenchMarksIn his trip to Chicago in March, Mr. Adams also held a news conference with Mayor Lori Lightfoot to discuss gang violence. Mr. Adams invited himself to Ms. Lightfoot’s office in City Hall and announced the appearance before she could alert the local press, The Chicago Sun-Times reported.The Chicago fund-raiser was attended by Mr. Blackwell, the leader of a table tennis company who donated $400 to Mr. Adams’s mayoral campaign last year. It was co-hosted by Ms. Rogers and Carol Adams, the former president of the DuSable Museum of African American History.“To run for office, it takes money — expensive city, expensive ad market,” Mr. Phillips said. “And you have to tell your story before someone else does.”Another fund-raiser in May at the Kimberly Hotel in Midtown Manhattan was attended by Taj Gibson, the New York Knicks forward, and Jean Shafiroff, a fixture on the charity circuit who attended a soiree for Mr. Adams in the Hamptons last summer.“We have to give him a chance,” she said. “I like what he stands for. It’s really not fair to judge anyone after three months.” More

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      6 Takeaways From Tuesday’s Elections

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      For the most part on Tuesday, primary voters in seven states from New Jersey to California showed the limits of the ideological edges of both parties.A liberal district attorney, Chesa Boudin, was recalled in the most progressive of cities, San Francisco, but conservative candidates carrying the banner of former President Donald J. Trump did not fare well, either.For all the talk of sweeping away the old order, Tuesday’s primaries largely saw the establishment striking back. Here are some takeaways.California called for order.Wracked by the pandemic, littered with tent camps, frightened by smash-and-grab robberies and anti-Asian-American hate crimes, voters in two of the most progressive cities sent a message on Tuesday: Restore stability.In Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest city, Rick Caruso, a billionaire former Republican who rose to prominence on the city’s police commission, blanketed the city with ads promising to crack down on crime if elected mayor.His chief opponent, Karen Bass, a veteran Democratic congresswoman, argued that public safety and criminal justice reform were not mutually exclusive, and disappointed some liberal supporters by calling to put more police officers on the street. The two are headed for a November mayoral runoff.Rick Caruso with supporters at his election night event Tuesday in Los Angeles.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesAnd in San Francisco, voters who were once moved by Chesa Boudin’s plans as district attorney to reduce the number of people sent to prison ran out of patience with seemingly unchecked property crime, violent attacks on elderly residents and open drug use during the pandemic. They recalled him.Statewide, the Democratic attorney general, Rob Bonta, advanced easily to the general election runoff. Mr. Bonta is a progressive, but was careful to stress that criminal justice reform and public safety were both priorities.The choices seemed to signal a shift to the center that was likely to reverberate through Democratic politics across the nation. But longtime California political observers said the message was less about ideology than about effective action. “This is about competence,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, who served in local government in Los Angeles for nearly four decades and is now the director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles.“People want solutions,” he said. “They don’t give a damn about left or right. It’s the common-sense problem-solving they seem to be missing. Government is supposed to take care of the basics, and the public believes the government hasn’t been doing that.”For House Republicans, the Jan. 6 commission vote still matters.In May 2021, 35 House Republicans voted for an independent, bipartisan commission to look at the events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.At first blush, the vote should not have mattered much: The legislation creating the commission was negotiated by the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, John Katko of New York, with the blessing of the Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy of California. Besides, the commission was filibustered by Republicans in the Senate and went nowhere.Representative Michael Guest voting on Tuesday in Brandon, Miss.Hannah Mattix/The Clarion-Ledger, via Associated PressBut Tuesday’s primaries showed that the vote still mattered. In Mississippi, Representative Michael Guest, one of the 35, was forced into a June 28 runoff with Michael Cassidy, who ran as the “pro-Trump” Republican and castigated the incumbent for voting for the commission. In South Dakota, Representative Dusty Johnson, another one of the 35, faced similar attacks but still mustered 60 percent of the vote.In California, Representative David Valadao, who also voted for the commission, struggled to keep pace with his Democratic challenger, State Assemblyman Rudy Salas, as a Republican rival, Chris Mathys, took votes from his supporters on the right.In all, now, 10 of the 35 will not be back in the House next year, either because they resigned, retired or were defeated in primaries. And more are likely to fall in the coming weeks.In New Jersey, it is all about name recognition.In New Jersey on Tuesday, two familiar names won their party nominations to run for the House in November: for the Republicans, Thomas Kean Jr., the son and namesake of a popular former governor; for the Democrats, Robert Menendez, son and namesake of the sitting senator.Robert Menendez Jr. with voters in West New York, N.J., last week.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesMr. Menendez goes into the general election the heavy favorite to win New Jersey’s heavily Democratic Eighth Congressional District and take the seat of Albio Sires, who is retiring.The younger Mr. Kean has a good shot, too. He narrowly lost in 2020 to the incumbent Democrat, Representative Tom Malinowski, but new district lines tilted the seat toward the Republicans, and Mr. Malinowski has faced criticism for his failure to disclose stock trades in compliance with a recently enacted ethics law.MAGA only gets you so far.Candidates from the Trump flank of the Republican Party could have done some real damage to the prospects of a so-called red wave in November, but with the votes still being counted, far-right candidates in swing districts did not fare so well.National Republicans rushed in to shore up support for a freshman representative, Young Kim, whose narrowly divided Southern California district would have been very difficult to defend, had her right-wing challenger, Greg Raths, secured the G.O.P.’s spot on the ballot. It looked as though that would not happen.In Iowa’s Third Congressional District, establishment Republicans got the candidate they wanted to take on Representative Cindy Axne in State Senator Zach Nunn, who easily beat out Nicole Hasso, part of a new breed of conservative Black Republicans who have made social issues like opposing “critical race theory” central to their political identity.And if Mr. Valadao hangs on to make the November ballot for California’s 22nd Congressional District, he will have vanquished a candidate on his right who made Mr. Valadao’s vote to impeach Mr. Trump central to his campaign.Ethics matter.Two primary candidates entered Republican primaries on Tuesday with ethical clouds hanging over their heads: Representative Steven Palazzo in Mississippi and Ryan Zinke in Montana.In 2021, the Office of Congressional Ethics released a report that said Mr. Palazzo had used campaign funds to pay himself and his wife at the time nearly $200,000. He reportedly used the cash to make improvements on a riverside property that he was hoping to sell. Voters in Mississippi’s Fourth District gave him only about 32 percent of the vote, forcing him into a runoff on June 28.Former Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke with voters in Butte, Mont., last month.,Matthew Brown/Associated PressMr. Zinke left what was then Montana’s only House seat in 2017 to become Mr. Trump’s first interior secretary. He departed that post in 2019 with a number of ethics investigations examining possible conflicts of interest and questionable expenditures of taxpayer funds. Still, when Mr. Zinke declared to run for Montana’s new First District, he was widely expected to waltz back to the House.Instead, he was in an extremely tight race with Dr. Al Olszewski, an orthopedic surgeon and former state senator who had come in a distant third when he tried to run for his party nomination for governor in 2020, and fourth when he vied for the Republican nomination to run for the Senate in 2018.If at first you don’t succeed …Dr. Olszewski may not win, but his improved performance could be an inspiration to other past losers. The same goes for Michael Franken, a retired admiral who on Tuesday won the Democratic nomination to challenge Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa in November.Mr. Franken has the résumé for politics: He is an Iowa native and led a remarkable career in the Navy. But losing often begets more losing, and in 2020, he came in a distant second to Theresa Greenfield for the Democratic nod to take on Senator Joni Ernst.Ms. Greenfield was defeated that November, and for all his tales of triumph over past adversity, Mr. Franken is likely to face the same fate this fall. Mr. Grassley will be 89 by then, but Iowans are used to pulling the lever for the senator, who has held his seat since 1981. Despite Mr. Grassley’s age, the seat is considered safely Republican. More

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      Rick Caruso and Karen Bass Head for Runoff in Los Angeles Mayor’s Race

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      LOS ANGELES — Rick Caruso, a billionaire real estate developer, and Representative Karen Bass are heading to a November runoff election to become mayor of Los Angeles, in a race that has focused on voters’ worries about public safety and homelessness in the nation’s second-largest city.Though neither candidate earned more than 50 percent of the vote, which would have allowed them to win outright on Tuesday, they both comfortably outperformed their opponents. The runoff was declared by The Associated Press.The liberal city’s surge of support for Mr. Caruso, a longtime Republican who changed his registration to Democratic days before declaring his candidacy, is likely to deepen the Democratic Party’s divisions on issues of crime, policing and racial justice. San Francisco voters also moved on Tuesday to recall Chesa Boudin, the city’s progressive district attorney.As Mr. Caruso gave a speech to supporters at the Grove, his flagship shopping center in Los Angeles, he portrayed himself as an optimist with grand plans to address the city’s twin problems of crime and homelessness.“We are not helpless in the face of our problems,” he said, flanked by his wife and their four children. “We will not allow this city to decline. We will no longer accept excuses. We have the power to change the direction of Los Angeles.”Ms. Bass was widely seen as the front-runner in the crowded primary before Mr. Caruso’s entrance in February, but his lavish spending and tough-on-crime message quickly propelled him, leading several other candidates to drop out of the race to replace Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is term limited.The developer of several popular luxury shopping centers, Mr. Caruso, 63, tightly tied his campaign to the spotless image he has cultivated in the faux town squares of those properties. His campaign spent nearly $41 million, including $39 million of his own money, much of it on television, digital and radio ads that seemed to blanket the airwaves in recent weeks, portraying him as a successful businessman who could “clean up” Los Angeles.Mr. Caruso may face a steeper uphill climb during the general election if high-profile Democrats rally behind Ms. Bass.“Together we can make our city a place where you can afford to live, where you want to live, because you feel safe, because the air you breathe is clean, because people are no longer dying on the streets,” Ms. Bass told supporters at the W Hollywood hotel on Tuesday night. “Not with empty promises from the past but with a bold path forward.”A victory for Mr. Caruso would be a significant shift in this overwhelmingly liberal city, where Senator Bernie Sanders easily won the Democratic presidential primary two years ago. The city’s longstanding battles over housing, homelessness and crime have reached a new level of urgency during the pandemic.Mr. Caruso has portrayed the city as one in deep decay, promising to hire 1,500 more police officers and build 30,000 shelter beds in 300 days. The message has resonated among voters who are deeply frustrated with homeless encampments throughout the city, visible on residential sidewalks, nestled in parks and sprawling under freeway overpasses.Casting himself as an outsider, Mr. Caruso has blamed career politicians, including Ms. Bass, for the city’s ills. After voting in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Boyle Heights, Mr. Caruso criticized his rival for suggesting that it could take more than four years to solve homelessness in the city, an objection he repeated in his speech on Tuesday night.But experts and critics say many of Mr. Caruso’s promises may not be possible because of federal court mandates that allow people to camp in public spaces, as well as the city’s byzantine zoning rules. Compared with leaders of other large cities, the mayor of Los Angeles has relatively little power. Much of the sprawling region is controlled by the five members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, who oversee a $38.5 billion budget.Ms. Bass, 68, who spent years organizing in South Los Angeles after the 1992 riots before being elected to the State Legislature and then Congress, has described her campaign as a kind of homecoming and pledged to address questions of equity in this profoundly stratified city.Representative Karen Bass is a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, and was on President Biden’s shortlist as a possible vice president.Alisha Jucevic for The New York TimesThe campaign between the two is also poised to become a test of whether voters this year favor an experienced politician who has spent nearly two decades in government or an outsider running on his business credentials.Latino voters are expected to play a pivotal role in the November election and will be courted aggressively by both candidates. Polling has also indicated a striking gender gap, with Black and Latino men appearing more likely to choose Mr. Caruso over Ms. Bass.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Rick Caruso’s Wild Promises for Los Angeles

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      At first glance — and maybe even at a second one — it’s difficult to tell what, exactly, makes Rick Caruso a Democrat. Caruso, a billionaire real estate developer best known for his outdoor shopping malls, is a former Republican who is running to be the next Democratic mayor of Los Angeles. He has offered up a three-plank plan reminiscent of Rudy Giuliani’s second New York City mayoral campaign in 1993: an end to “street homelessness”; a return to “public safety”; and the end of civic corruption.If that alone doesn’t warrant the comparisons to Giuliani, Caruso has gained the endorsement of William Bratton, the former New York City Police commissioner who served Giuliani from 1994 to 1996 and introduced the broken-windows theory of policing to the city.Caruso’s message to his fellow Angelenos has been clear and consistent: It’s time, he says, to “get real” about crime, homelessness and the ruin of a once-great city. His ads, which play on repeat, promise: “Rick Caruso can clean up L.A.” As of the latest polling, he is in a close race with a longtime progressive congresswoman, Karen Bass.Last December, I wrote about a growing number of minority politicians in major cities who have pushed some version of let’s “get real.” The mayors of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Charlotte all fit this description. Caruso is white, but his campaign has stressed his Italian immigrant background. He has also run ads in different languages.He is a somewhat counterintuitive, yet increasingly common case in identity politics: A Democratic candidate who understands that many Latino and Asian immigrant communities are largely made up of moderates who want more policing. Caruso, who has spent over $30 million of his own money on his campaign, seems to be saying: We are all Angelenos. And we have all had enough.Like nearly every politician in California’s major cities, Caruso’s success will hinge on homelessness. If he’s elected, he promises on his first day in office to declare a “state of emergency” over homelessness. This would allow him to bypass various regulations and governmental checks and, in his words, treat the homelessness crisis “like a natural disaster.”He plans to build 30,000 new shelter beds in 300 days, roughly doubling the current number. This would require expansions of current programs, including a commitment to quadruple the number of tiny homes in the city. (Regular readers of this newsletter will be familiar with these structures. If you’re new, please read about them here or here.) Caruso would also expand Project Roomkey, the program that converts motels and hotels into shelters.When a writer for The Los Angeles Times asked how he might be able to do all this, Caruso suggested Fort Bliss, a tent camp for undocumented migrant children in Texas, as a possible model. This would certainly be a confusing choice for Los Angeles, given that Fort Bliss is filled with large, airplane hangar-size tents that would be almost impossible to place anywhere in the city without a prolonged battle with neighbors. And last year, the Department of Health and Human Services opened an investigation into poor management and living conditions inside Fort Bliss, which, as of August 2021, could only accommodate about 4,000 teenagers, 26,000 less than the number of unhoused people Caruso would hope to shelter.The ideological divide in California’s homelessness crisis lies between those who believe that the problem is mostly fueled by drug addiction and mental health issues and those who believe that a housing shortage and escalating costs of living are to blame. Given that Caruso plans to create a “Department of Mental Health and Addiction Treatment” and “compel people suffering mental illness into care,” Caruso clearly has heard the former.But he also has planks in his platform that would make even the most housing-first progressive rejoice. He has called for an expansion of permanent supportive housing and rental protections and says he would petition the federal government to triple the number of Section 8 vouchers that help struggling families afford rent. He is, in short, promising the world to both sides.His plans for public safety are just as ambitious. The story of crime in Los Angeles isn’t all that much different from most major American cities. Last year, homicides in the city hit a 15-year high, but those who say violent crime has never been worse are most likely forgetting the 1990s.His plan to reduce crime is what you’d imagine from a politician who played up an endorsement from Bratton. He wants 1,500 more cops on the streets and enforced penalties for property crimes like breaking into cars. He also says he wants to apply pressure on the city attorney to prosecute misdemeanors more regularly.In a lengthy interview with the editorial board of The Los Angeles Times, Caruso said, “We have laws now that aren’t being enforced,” referring to low-level crimes that would be taken more seriously under a broken-windows regime. “And we’re paying a deep price for it. Now, consequences should be fair. We should have a whole bunch of things in place that allows people to rehabilitate themselves. You know, I don’t believe in criminalizing everything. But we certainly have to get a handle on the behavior in this city. People are scared and they don’t feel listened to.”In theory, there is a lot to admire about Caruso’s big solutions for big problems approach. It might make sense, for example, to shoot for 30,000 shelter beds and an increase of affordable housing, because even if you end somewhere significantly short of those goals, you’re still doing better than the status quo. But the problem with the clean-up-our-cities Democrat isn’t that the message is wrong — it has proved to be popular throughout the country — but, rather, that it lives in a fantasy world where ambitions ignore both the legislative and infrastructural realities on the ground.Caruso is hardly the first politician to make big promises, but his seem especially unrealistic. If he wants 1,500 more police officers on the streets, for example, he must first contend with the fact that the L.A.P.D. is currently short 325 officers with no real clear solutions on how to fill those existing spots. Police academies in the city are significantly under-enrolled.Similarly, his plans for the homeless require a fleet of civic and nonprofit workers that don’t exist yet. The current mobilization against homelessness across the state has seen dire staffing shortages, something I wrote about back in March. The shortfall reflects a very sobering reality: It’s hard to find a lot of people who want to deal with the emotional and physical labor of working with unhoused people. Caruso cannot just snap his fingers and find these workers, some of whom would need to be highly trained professionals to work in his “Department of Mental Health and Addiction Treatment.”And given how difficult it is to build shelter for even a few dozen people — you have to find sites, convince neighbors and go through a glut of bureaucracy — where would Caruso’s Fort Bliss-like tent cities go? Which neighborhoods would host these 30,000 new beds and which ones wouldn’t? (To be fair, nearly every candidate in the Los Angeles mayoral race has promised new housing, albeit on much more reasonable time tables. The early days of the race were like an auction in which the candidates tried to outbid each other with shelter beds.)I try to be a pragmatist about progressive politics. I do not think it does anyone any favors to pretend, for example, that Angelenos should look at spiking homicides and console themselves with the knowledge that things were worse before. I also get that the homelessness in Los Angeles and the Bay Area has gone well beyond a crisis point. Those who believe that hundreds of tent encampments throughout the state and escalating overdose deaths from fentanyl do not require a wide-scale intervention are deluding themselves.What Caruso seems to be banking on is that the public, when faced with rising violent crime and homelessness, will seek out desperate solutions, especially hard-line tactics of the past like broken-windows policing. He may very well be right. The public’s exhaustion with crime, homelessness and drug overdoses is real.Going forward, progressive politicians who don’t want a Rick Caruso in every city should take some lessons from some of the things he does well. It’s good to take concerns about crime and homelessness seriously. It’s also good to appeal to a communal city for all Angelenos. But progressives need to take those ideas and back them with their own solutions:compassion for the less fortunate, care for the mentally ill and a reasonable and humane deployment of police power. These also have the benefit of being more achievable.Serious, progressive solutions might be a tough sell these days, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Not all crises in America need to be solved by billionaires and their wild promises.Have feedback? Send a note to kang-newsletter@nytimes.com.Jay Caspian Kang (@jaycaspiankang), a writer for Opinion and The New York Times Magazine, is the author of “The Loneliest Americans.” More