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      Senate Race in California Reflects Fight for Democrats’ Future

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      With Senator Dianne Feinstein’s retirement, the party is gearing up for a clash on issues including gender, race, ideology and even geography.LOS ANGELES — Even before Senator Dianne Feinstein of California announced her retirement on Tuesday, the race taking shape for the seat she has held since November 1992 was poised to become one of the most competitive and expensive in the country. Now, the incumbent’s imminent departure has raised an urgent question for California Democrats: Whose turn is it?Two members of Congress have jumped in, with a third expected to join soon, and the 2024 contest is already revealing ideological, generational, regional and racial divides within the party in America’s most populous — and arguably bluest — state.Representatives Katie Porter and Adam Schiff, two Democrats who amassed national profiles opposing former President Donald J. Trump and his administration officials, have announced campaigns to replace Ms. Feinstein, 89, who said on Tuesday that she would retire at the end of her term. Ms. Porter and Mr. Schiff have spent recent weeks aggressively accruing major endorsements, reporting seven-figure fund-raising hauls and crisscrossing the state to court voters and donors.And Representative Barbara Lee, the highest-ranking Black woman appointed to Democratic leadership, is planning to join the field before the end of Black History Month. No Black women are in the Senate, and there have been only two in the chamber’s more-than-230-year history: Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois, who served one term in the 1990s, and Kamala Harris, who became vice president in 2021.Representative Adam Schiff has already raised millions for the Senate race, and he has a notable endorsement: Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker.Mario Tama/Getty ImagesThe race for Ms. Feinstein’s seat is unlikely to determine control of the Senate — at least five other states will be fiercely contested by the two parties. In deep-blue California, Republicans have become all but irrelevant in the higher echelons of government. But the departure of a defining figure of the state’s politics opens up a seat with outsize influence because of the size of California’s economy and population.The next senator will help oversee a state that has been transformed during Ms. Feinstein’s 30 years in office. Its Latino population has become its largest demographic. Its Democratic Party is trying to redefine itself in the aftermath of the Trump era, and the divide between a wealthier and whiter San Francisco and a poorer and more diverse Los Angeles has only widened.More on CaliforniaA Settlement: San Mateo County has agreed to pay $4.5 million to the family of a Black man who died in 2018 after a deputy used a Taser on him during a struggle that began when officers saw him jaywalking.Covid State of Emergency: The state’s coronavirus emergency declaration, which gave Gov. Gavin Newsom broad powers to slow the spread of the virus, is set to expire on Feb. 28.In the Wake of Tragedy: California is reeling after back-to-back mass shootings in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay.Medical Misinformation: A federal judge has temporarily blocked enforcement of a new law allowing regulators to punish doctors for spreading false or misleading information about Covid-19.Ms. Porter, Mr. Schiff and Ms. Lee would all usher in an ideological shift, one decidedly to the left of Ms. Feinstein, who in recent years has drawn anger from the left flank of her party over her bipartisan approach and deference to Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices. Ms. Porter and Ms. Lee have served in leadership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and though Mr. Schiff has not joined the group, he has increasingly struck progressive tones after once counting himself a member of the Blue Dogs, a group of conservative Democrats. A victory for either Ms. Porter, 49, or Mr. Schiff, 62, would signal a long-awaited break in a generational logjam, as well as a change in regional power.Representative Katie Porter has had both substantial fund-raising and the endorsement of Senator Elizabeth Warren.Brian Snyder/ReutersUntil recently, the Bay Area has dominated the state’s politics, producing some of its most marquee figures, including Ms. Feinstein, Ms. Harris, the former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Gov. Gavin Newsom. Ms. Porter’s district is in Orange County, and Mr. Schiff represents a northern slice of Los Angeles. Given California’s demographic shifts, some Democrats believe the state’s next senator should also capture its growing racial and ethnic diversity.It is not the first time that California has been at a similar inflection point. When Ms. Feinstein first ran, in 1992, women were outraged at the treatment of Anita Hill during the confirmation hearings for Justice Clarence Thomas. Four women won Senate seats that year in a watershed moment for American politics, and California became the first state in the nation to be represented by two female senators.Nearly three decades later, after the 2020 presidential election, women’s groups and Black leaders lobbied Gov. Gavin Newsom of California to choose a Black woman to fill the seat vacated by Kamala Harris, who had been the only Black woman in the upper chamber until she was elected as vice president. Mr. Newsom ultimately named Senator Alex Padilla, the state’s first Latino senator and its secretary of state at the time. But Mr. Newsom pledged to choose a Black woman to fill Ms. Feinstein’s seat should she retire before her term ended. The former Senator Barbara Boxer, who won the 1992 election along with Ms. Feinstein and served in the upper chamber until she chose not to seek re-election in 2016, played up the highly qualified bench of candidates and said they would all have the chance to make their cases. Ms. Boxer was still weighing her endorsement, but she said she believed the moment called for a strong progressive unafraid “to fight some of the forces that have been unleashed by Donald Trump.”“We are in one of those moments in history where we need the toughest leaders and those who are really not fearful,” she said.Even before Ms. Feinstein announced her plans to step away after her term ends in January 2025, California political strategists and observers had begun to debate just who that progressive might be. This month, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and 14 other members of the California delegation said they would endorse Mr. Schiff if Ms. Feinstein chose to retire.There was not much surprise at Ms. Pelosi’s endorsement of Mr. Schiff, a loyal lieutenant whom she elevated to some of the toughest jobs in Congress. But Ms. Pelosi rarely weighs in on Democrat-on-Democrat races, and the timing was unusual because the election is not until November 2024. Asked why she believed it was important to endorse Mr. Schiff early, Ms. Pelosi said she believed he would make “a fabulous senator.”“And I did what I wanted to do,” she said in a brief interview last week, as she briskly left the House gallery.Ms. Boxer called Ms. Pelosi’s decision “brave” and “very typical Nancy.” “She is straightforward with people,” Ms. Boxer said.But the move drew criticism, too. Aimee Allison, the founder and president of She the People, a political group that supports progressive women of color in politics, called the decision “cynical” because it curtailed the path to victory for a Black candidate with a stellar party track record. She was referring to Ms. Lee, who has been known for progressive stances, and who was the sole lawmaker in Congress to vote against invading Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks.Women of color and Black women in particular face barriers to fund-raising and support from the Democratic establishment, Ms. Allison said. “They have hashtags to thank us,” she said of Democrats. “But Black, Latina, Asian American women — AAPI women — Native American women, we want to be represented.”Representative Barbara Lee is expected to join the Senate race soon. She will be at a fund-raising disadvantage at the outset.Sarahbeth Maney for The New York TimesIn interviews last week, some Democratic voters were split on how much they would factor issues of race and gender into their decisions, with some arguing that the state’s leadership was already diverse and others contending that its highest ranks were not diverse enough. Others pointed to the profanity-laced audio recordings of Latino City Council members mocking people in racist terms as evidence that even representation based on identity was no guarantee of an inclusive perspective.Mr. Schiff and Ms. Porter, for their part, acknowledged the importance of issues of race and gender in the Senate race, though they said how much they factored into the result would ultimately be up to voters. The two also have also sought to draw sharp contrasts between their candidacies.On a chilly, overcast Saturday, Mr. Schiff, a former prosecutor who led Mr. Trump’s first impeachment trial, billed himself as a staunch defender of democracy and a progressive leader committed to creating jobs and tackling climate and gun safety issues. In Congress, he said, he had dedicated himself to becoming an expert on national security issues, exposing torture and working to overhaul the nation’s surveillance system.“I took on these fights because they mattered, because they made Americans’ lives better, our system more just, our kids’ future more secure,” he said before some 600 supporters at the union hall parking lot in Burbank, where he launched his first run for Congress more than two decades ago. “And then I took on the biggest fight of my life against Donald J. Trump.”At a parks and recreation center in Huntington Park, where Ms. Porter met with Latino environmental justice activists and community leaders on Friday, the congresswoman described herself as a political newcomer and a single mother who had never taken corporate PAC money and who would be willing to challenge both parties on issues like child care and paid family leave.Ms. Porter, who studied under Elizabeth Warren at Harvard, garnered national prominence as she grilled corporate executives and government officials in congressional hearings, often turning to a handy whiteboard to explain complex topics. She pointed to her victories in a competitive swing district as evidence that she could win without compromising her progressive values.“I have had three really hard races and have won every one of them,” she said in an interview.Karina Macias, a Huntington Park council member who had taken a walk through the neighborhood with Ms. Porter that morning, said she had not made an endorsement in the race.“Obviously, diversity is important, being a Latina woman myself,” she said. “For me, it is that, but also who is coming to talk to these cities that have been screaming for years to get some attention from Congress to make sure that we get that discussion on our issues.” More

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      Kari Lake Teases Arizona Senate Run

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      Ms. Lake, a Republican who lost to Katie Hobbs in the state’s governor’s race, previewed opening salvos against Senator Kyrsten Sinema and Ruben Gallego.WASHINGTON — Kari Lake, the fiery former news anchor who narrowly lost a race for governor of Arizona last year, said in an interview that she is considering a Republican campaign for the U.S. Senate in Arizona next year.She has also scheduled campaign-style events this month in Iowa — home to her party’s first presidential nominating contest — that typically signal White House ambitions.Additionally, she is still contesting her November defeat in the Arizona governor’s race, despite her claims of misconduct being rejected in court. She has continued raising money to help finance legal bills related to her court challenges, and has also given several paid speeches, but declined to say for whom.Ms. Lake’s maneuvering in recent months has signaled that she’s eager to build out her fledgling political résumé following a midlife career shift.After spending decades as a local television reporter and anchor, Ms. Lake burst onto the political scene last year after winning a brutal primary election with a potent mix of election lies and cultural grievances. Her skills as a polished and ruthless communicator helped her come within 17,000 votes of winning Arizona’s most politically powerful office as a first-time candidate — and earned her the praise of former President Donald J. Trump, whose style she has often imitated.“Here’s your headline: Kari Lake is on the warpath,” Ms. Lake said in an interview Thursday night.But it was unclear exactly where that path would lead.Seated in the corner booth of a Washington hotel bar, Ms. Lake drank a pint of Guinness and previewed opening salvos in a potential Senate race, attacking both Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who left the Democratic Party in December to become an independent, and Representative Ruben Gallego, a Democrat who is running for Ms. Sinema’s seat, as “radical leftists.”Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.2024 G.O.P. Field: Nikki Haley is expected to join the race for the party’s presidential nomination soon, but other contenders are taking a wait-and-see approach before challenging former President Donald J. Trump.Democrats’ Primary Calendar: The contest to become the party’s presidential nominee has long been shaped by where it begins: Iowa. That process could soon be overhauled.First Acts: From the symbolic to the substantive, here is what nine new governors elected last year have done in their first weeks in office.Rural-Urban Rivalries: The relationships between big cities and rural-dominated state legislatures have often been hostile. But a dispute in Nashville suggests the nation’s partisan divide is making things worse.Ms. Lake attempted to cast doubt on Ms. Sinema’s reputation as a moderate, pointing to data that showed the Arizona incumbent often votes with President Biden. An NBC poll last year showed that American voters were split over whether Mr. Biden was moderate or liberal.“She’s the furthest thing from an independent,” Ms. Lake said. “Someone somewhere said she did a couple of courageous things, well, she should do courageous stuff here every day. If you are blessed to be elected by the people, when you show up in Washington, D.C., you should be doing courageous acts every damn day.”A spokeswoman for Ms. Sinema declined to comment.Ms. Lake also attacked Mr. Gallego, a progressive Democrat from Phoenix, as a socialist and highlighted complaints by a former staff member, Ne’Lexia Galloway, who criticized him after leaving her job last year for not doing more to “speak up about the injustices” to people of color in his district. A spokeswoman for Mr. Gallego declined to comment.Ms. Lake practiced similar attack lines against Mr. Gallego, who would be the state’s first Latino elected to the Senate, during a rally last week in Arizona and on Twitter.Mayor Corey Woods of Tempe, who is Black, defended Mr. Gallego, saying Ms. Lake’s claims were misleading.“I’ve personally known Ruben Gallego for 15 plus years and I know he always stands up for what’s right,” Mr. Woods, who endorsed Mr. Gallego on Wednesday, posted on Twitter last week.Mr. Gallego also appeared to be gathering support from the Black community. Roy Tatem Jr., the former leader of the East Valley NAACP in Phoenix, spoke at a Gallego campaign event last week. Pastor Aubrey Barnwell, head of the African American Christian Clergy Coalition, delivered the invocation at the same event.A handful of other high-profile Arizonans have told Republican officials that they are considering Senate campaigns, including Mark Lamb, the sheriff of Pinal County; Jim Lamon, a wealthy businessman who ran for Senate in 2022; Blake Masters, the party’s Senate nominee who lost to incumbent Senator Mark Kelly last year; and Karrin Taylor Robson, a businesswoman who lost to Ms. Lake in the governor’s primary.Ms. Lake expressed confidence that she would easily beat any field of Republican opponents and declared that her popularity among conservative voters in the state was rivaled only by that of Mr. Trump.She disputed the notion that she was a divisive figure inside her party, saying she reached out to rivals after her primary victory last year but that many didn’t return her calls.She also played down the ill will she stirred with her attacks on John McCain, the longtime Arizona senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee who died in 2018.In August, she claimed during one speech that her candidacy “drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine,” while making a stabbing motion with her arm. In the final days of the race, video surfaced from an event a year earlier when she asked if there were any McCain Republicans in the audience and ordered them to “get the hell out.”Ms. Lake said in the interview that some Republicans had taken the barbs more personally than the former senator would have.“I think McCain would have laughed,” Ms. Lake said. “I truly do.”Ms. Lake said her top priority remained challenging the results of the race for governor, despite court rulings against her and the swearing-in of her Democratic opponent, Katie Hobbs, on Jan. 2.Ms. Lake’s claims that officials in Maricopa County, Ariz., had deliberately caused ballot printers to malfunction in order to purposefully sway the election were rejected in December following a two-day trial in Phoenix. Ms. Lake has appealed the decision.Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson ordered Ms. Lake to pay $33,000 in fees to cover the cost of expert witnesses hired by Ms. Hobbs. More

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      The Key Senate Races to Watch in 2024

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      Emily Elconin for The New York TimesIn Michigan, which has an open seat, Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat who comfortably won re-election in November, is also taking steps toward a possible Senate run in 2024. Her moves include forming a national campaign team and meeting with leaders across the state, a person close to the congresswoman confirmed last week. More

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      Adam Schiff Announces Senate Run in California

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      Mr. Schiff, who led the first impeachment trial of President Donald J. Trump and later served on the House panel investigating the Capitol riot, will seek the seat held by Senator Dianne Feinstein.WASHINGTON — Representative Adam B. Schiff, the California Democrat who emerged as one of President Donald J. Trump’s chief congressional tormentors from his perch atop the House Intelligence Committee, announced on Thursday that he would seek the Senate seat long held by Dianne Feinstein.Mr. Schiff, 62, is the second member of California’s Democratic congressional delegation to join the 2024 race, after Representative Katie Porter. He enters the campaign with the largest national profile, built from his position as the manager of Mr. Trump’s first impeachment trial. He later served on the House committee responsible for investigating the origins of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.Ms. Feinstein, 89, has not said whether she will run again in 2024 but is widely expected not to do so as she faces Democratic worries about her age and ability to serve. Last year, she declined to serve as president pro tem of the Senate, and in 2020 she ceded her post as the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee after coming under pressure from her party during the Supreme Court confirmation hearing of Justice Amy Coney Barrett.More on CaliforniaA Wake of Tragedy: California is reeling after back-to-back mass shootings in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay.Storms and Flooding: A barrage of powerful storms has surprised people in the state with an unrelenting period of extreme weather that has caused extensive damage across the state.New Laws: A new year doesn’t always usher in sweeping change, but in California, at least, it usually means a slate of new laws going into effect.Wildfires: California avoided a third year of catastrophic wildfires because of a combination of well-timed precipitation and favorable wind conditions — or “luck,” as experts put it.A former federal prosecutor, Mr. Schiff served in California’s State Senate before being elected to a Los Angeles-area House seat in 2000.In Congress, he became a close ally of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who tapped him to play a leading role in Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial and then on the Jan. 6 committee. Last fall, Mr. Schiff passed on a chance for a slot on the post-Pelosi House leadership team to focus on a planned run for the Senate.During and after the Trump years, Mr. Schiff became one of the most prodigious fund-raisers in Congress. During the 2018 election cycle, he raised $6.3 million, and then his fund-raising surged to $19.6 million in 2020 and $24.5 million in 2022 — without a competitive election of his own to wage. He has not faced a serious challenge since arriving in Congress, winning each of his general elections by at least 29 percentage points.According to the latest Federal Election Commission reports, Mr. Schiff had $20.6 million in campaign money at the end of November, compared with $7.7 million for Ms. Porter and $54,940 for Ms. Lee.Other California Democrats considering running include Representative Ro Khanna of Silicon Valley. Because of California’s all-party primary system, the election is not likely to feature a competitive Republican candidate; in 2016 and 2018, two Democrats advanced to the Senate general election. Last year, a Republican won 39 percent of the vote against Senator Alex Padilla, who had been appointed to finish Vice President Kamala Harris’s term.California, the nation’s most populous state with nearly 40 million residents, has not hosted a highly competitive contest for an open Senate seat since 1992, when Ms. Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, a fellow Democrat, were both elected for the first time.Ms. Feinstein, who is in her sixth term, has been trailed by questions about her fitness to serve. Problems with her short-term memory have become an open secret on Capitol Hill, though few Democrats have been willing to discuss the subject publicly.She has made no moves to suggest she will seek re-election in 2024. She has not hired a campaign staff and, in the latest campaign finance report for the period ending in September, had less than $10,000 in cash on hand, a paltry sum for a sitting senator. More

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      Representative Ruben Gallego Running for Kyrsten Sinema’s Senate Seat

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      Representative Ruben Gallego of Phoenix is set to challenge Ms. Sinema from the left, after she resigned from the Democratic Party.Representative Ruben Gallego, a progressive Democrat from Phoenix, announced on Monday that he would run for the Senate in 2024, setting up a potential face-off with Senator Kyrsten Sinema over her seat that could carry high stakes for Democrats’ control of the upper chamber.Mr. Gallego, a 43-year-old former state lawmaker and U.S. Marine veteran, began his campaign with a video in which he declares his run to a group of fellow veterans at American Legion Post 124 in Guadalupe, Ariz., near Phoenix. In it, he highlights his humble Chicago origins and his combat experience in Iraq, and he pledges to fight to extend the American dream to more families.“It’s the one thing that we give every American, no matter where they’re born in life,” he says, crediting belief in the dream for his own climb into the halls of Congress. Ms. Sinema, whose opposition to key elements of her party’s agenda had angered Democrats, left the party in December and registered as an independent. Democrats in Arizona quickly turned their attention to her seat. It is expected that Ms. Sinema will seek re-election, but she has not yet announced her intentions.In his campaign ad, Mr. Gallego sought to draw sharp contrasts between himself and Ms. Sinema, taking subtle swipes at the first-term senator over her leadership and ties to corporate interests.Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.2023 Races: Governors’ contests in Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi and mayoral elections in Chicago and Philadelphia are among the races to watch this year.Voting Laws: The tug of war over voting rights is playing out with fresh urgency at the state level, as Republicans and Democrats seek to pass new laws before the next presidential election.2024 Presidential Race: As the 2024 primary approaches, the wavering support of evangelical leaders for Donald J. Trump could have far-reaching implications for Republicans.Democrats’ New Power: After winning trifectas in four state governments in the midterms, Democrats have a level of control in statehouses not seen since 2009.“We could argue different ways about how to do it, but at the core, if you’re more likely to be meeting with the powerful than the powerless, you’re doing this job incorrectly,” he says in the video, which was released in English and Spanish. “I’m sorry that politicians have let you down, but I’m going to change that.”A head-to-head matchup between Mr. Gallego and Ms. Sinema in the general election is likely to split the coalition of Democrats and independents who have powered Democratic victories in Arizona in recent elections. The divide could provide an opening for a Republican to retake a seat that has helped Democrats retain their narrow majority in the Senate.Democrats in Arizona previously made motions that they intended to rally behind Ms. Sinema’s Democratic challenger. Mr. Gallego’s campaign team includes veterans from Senator Mark Kelly’s re-election bid in Arizona, as well as Democratic consultants who served on the successful 2022 Senate campaigns for Raphael Warnock in Georgia and John Fetterman in Pennsylvania. Mr. Gallego’s campaign also has taken on Chuck Rocha, a longtime Democratic strategist focused on mobilizing Latino voters.Representative Greg Stanton, a Democrat who had also shown interest in running for the seat, said this month that now was “not the right time,” clearing the path for Mr. Gallego in the primary.Among the Republicans weighing Senate runs are Kari Lake, the Trump-endorsed news anchor who last year lost her race for governor, and Blake Masters, who was defeated in a Senate race by Mr. Kelly.For both Mr. Gallego and Ms. Sinema, the greatest factor will be the Republican nominee, said Mike Noble, a longtime nonpartisan pollster based in Phoenix.A center-right candidate could consolidate Republican and right-leaning independent voters, most likely narrowing the chances for both Ms. Sinema and Mr. Gallego. A hard-right candidate like Ms. Lake or Mr. Masters, on the other hand, would most likely intensify the contest between Mr. Gallego and Ms. Sinema for moderates and the state’s large independent electorate, about one-third of voters.“Heading into next year’s election, Kyrsten Sinema would like nothing else for Christmas than to have Kari Lake as the Republican nominee come 2024,” Mr. Noble said. “They both would love it.”Ms. Sinema was elected to the Senate in a groundbreaking victory in 2018, in the first Democratic triumph since 1976 in a contest for an open Senate seat in Arizona. Her victory pointed to broader political shifts in the state. Once a longtime conservative bastion, Arizona has become a national battleground as the state’s Republican Party has veered further right, while growing numbers of Latino and independent voters have pushed the state to the center.Ms. Sinema embraced solidly centrist positions in defeating her Republican opponent. Voter drives to register more Latinos, who generally vote Democratic in Arizona, also paid off for Ms. Sinema. But distaste for the senator has been growing among Latino activists and other parts of her Democratic base as she has positioned herself as a bulwark against major parts of her former party’s agenda, mainly attempts to increase taxes on corporate America and Wall Street.National Democrats have been tight-lipped about their approach to the 2024 race, as some worry that a full-on offensive against Ms. Sinema in the general election might inadvertently help elect a Republican.Mr. Gallego, who has been among Ms. Sinema’s fiercest critics, had been fielding input from his family over the holidays over whether he would run. He would be the first Latino senator from Arizona should he prevail.In his campaign video released Monday, he describes his hard upbringing as one of four children raised by a single mother in Chicago. He made it to Harvard and worked to pay his way through school before enlisting in the Marine Corps. His combat experience on the front lines in Iraq, where he came under heavy fire and lost some of his closest friends, left him with post-traumatic stress disorder but also inspired him to go into public service, he said.The ad positions Mr. Gallego as an advocate of strong government and a fighter for working-class families who he said “feel they are one or two paychecks away from going under.”“The rich and the powerful, they don’t need more advocates,” he said. “It’s the people that are still trying to decide between groceries and utilities that need a fighter for them.” More

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      Matt Dolan, a Republican, Will Challenge Senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio

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      Mr. Dolan, a state senator whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team, will compete for the Republican nomination against one of the most vulnerable Democratic senators.State Senator Matt Dolan of Ohio, a Republican, announced on Tuesday that he would run for the United States Senate against Sherrod Brown, one of the most vulnerable Democrats in 2024.It will be Mr. Dolan’s second Senate campaign, after he finished third in the Republican primary for an open seat in Ohio last year. The winner of that primary, J.D. Vance, went on to win the general election.Mr. Dolan’s family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team, and he used millions of dollars of his own money to fund his first campaign, in which he won about 23 percent of the primary vote — finishing significantly behind Mr. Vance and narrowly behind the second-place finisher, Josh Mandel.In his campaign announcement on Tuesday, Mr. Dolan, the chairman of the Ohio Senate’s finance committee, emphasized border security, fighting inflation and his support for the police. He accused Mr. Brown of “blind loyalty to his party.”“Ohioans want a problem solver who has successfully faced big challenges impacting our quality of life, not the political blame game that lacks commonsense solutions,” he said. “I have a proven conservative record of success that has yielded results for Ohio families, workers and businesses.”A tough line on immigration was also a hallmark of Mr. Dolan’s 2022 campaign, though he broke from his opponents’ hard-right line on at least one specific policy: He supported the preservation of H-1B visas that allow immigrants to work temporarily in certain industries.Mr. Dolan is a former chief assistant prosecutor in Geauga County, east of Cleveland, and a former assistant state attorney general.Ohio, a former swing state that has moved toward Republicans in recent years, represents one of several opportunities for the G.O.P. to pick up a Senate seat in 2024, with Democratic incumbents in the red states of Montana and West Virginia also up for re-election.Mr. Brown, a three-term senator and former representative, has won difficult races before, though, including in 2018, when he won re-election by more than six percentage points just two years after Donald J. Trump won in Ohio by eight.Mr. Brown has shown strong — and enduring, even in the past few years — appeal among the blue-collar voters who are essential in Ohio elections. As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, he has pushed for more oversight of Wall Street and more consumer protections. He has also been a vocal proponent of expanding the child tax credit and other elements of the social safety net, including the Supplemental Security Income program for disabled and older Americans.A spokesman for Mr. Brown did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Mr. Dolan’s announcement, but Mr. Brown’s campaign quickly sent a fund-raising email to supporters calling Mr. Dolan “the first of what we expect to be many challengers jumping into the race.”Among others, Republicans are watching Frank LaRose, the Ohio secretary of state, who has not announced whether he will run but is widely expected to do so. More

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      Representative Jim Banks Announces Senate Bid in Indiana

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      The seat will be open as Senator Mike Braun runs for governor instead.Representative Jim Banks, a staunch conservative with the backing of a deep-pocketed political action committee, opened his bid for an Indiana Senate seat on Tuesday with an ad highlighting his deployment to Afghanistan and issuing a broadside against “radical socialist Democrats.”Mike Braun, who currently holds the seat and is one of the state’s two Republican senators, will run for governor next year, creating an opening that could lead to a crowded primary fight in the reliably Republican state. Mr. Banks, who recently led the House’s Republican Study Committee, a conservative caucus that is broader and less confrontational than the House’s Freedom Caucus, turned to the Senate after he lost his bid to be whip, the No. 3 Republican position in the G.O.P.’s new House majority.He enters the contest with the backing of the Club for Growth, a moneyed conservative political action committee that spent millions of dollars to get its preferred House and Senate candidates across the line in the November midterms. The group and its super PAC “are prepared to spend whatever it takes to help Banks secure the nomination and victory,” its president, David McIntosh, said Tuesday.The Club for Growth is already spending money against another possible candidate, the former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, whom it considers too conciliatory. Mr. Banks signaled that he too would focus on Mr. Daniels, who was also president of Purdue University and a White House budget director under President George W. Bush. Mr. Daniels a decade ago called for a truce on cultural issues, a stance Mr. Banks appeared to call out in an interview with Politico, saying that issues like abortion and gender “matter more than at any point in my lifetime.”“I’ll never be calling for a truce on social issues or cultural issues,” he told Politico.Mr. Banks also has the endorsement of Representative Larry Bucshon, another Indiana Republican, and Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas.But Indiana’s current governor, Eric Holcomb, who is facing a term limit, is considering a run for the Senate, as is Representative Victoria Spartz, whose Ukrainian birth has elevated her voice in Congress.In his announcement, Mr. Banks called himself “a small-town kid from a working-class home” with deep roots in Indiana and a record fighting overseas and in Congress for “conservative Hoosier values.” He threw in a nod to former President Donald J. Trump, calling him “the strongest president in my lifetime.”Mr. Braun, a businessman who had little political experience when he ran against Senator Joe Donnelly, a Democrat, in 2018, beat him by six percentage points. His victory came two years after Representative Todd Young breezed past Evan Bayh, a Democrat and former senator who had come out of retirement to try a comeback. Those defeats signaled just how difficult a Democratic comeback in the state would be.In November, Mr. Young won re-election with nearly 59 percent of the vote. More

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      Katie Porter Announces Run for US Senate

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      Ms. Porter is the first announced challenger to Senator Dianne Feinstein, 89, who has yet to declare her 2024 plans but is widely expected to not seek re-election.WASHINGTON — Representative Katie Porter, a third-term California Democrat who studied under Elizabeth Warren at Harvard University and became a social media darling of liberal Democrats, said Tuesday that she would run in 2024 for the Senate seat held by Dianne Feinstein.Ms. Porter, 49, is the first announced challenger to Ms. Feinstein, 89, who has not declared her intentions about 2024 but is widely expected to not seek re-election amid Democratic worries about her age and ability to serve. Last year, Ms. Feinstein declined to serve as president pro tem of the Senate and earlier relinquished her post as the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee under immense pressure after the Supreme Court confirmation hearing of Justice Amy Coney Barrett.“It’s time for new leadership in the U.S. Senate,” Ms. Porter said in a video announcing her campaign. Ms. Feinstein, in a statement released by her office, said she would “make an announcement concerning my plans for 2024 at the appropriate time.” She said she was focused on addressing the deadly storms battering California. Ms. Porter’s early campaign announcement — which carries echoes of Ms. Warren’s entrance to the 2020 presidential contest, when she was the first major Democrat to embark on a bid — jump-starts a race that is certain to be among the most expensive intraparty contests in the country. A vaunted fund-raiser, Ms. Porter became widely known for her combative treatment of witnesses from the financial sector and Trump administration officials who appeared before her on the House Oversight Committee.More on CaliforniaStorms and Flooding: A barrage of powerful storms has surprised residents across Central and Northern California with an unrelenting period of extreme weather stretching over weeks.Facebook’s Bridge to Nowhere: The tech giant planned to restore a century-old railroad to help people in the Bay Area to get to work. Then it gave up.U.C. Employee Strike: Academic employees at the University of California voted to return to work, ending a historically large strike that had disrupted research and classes for nearly six weeks.Wildfires: California avoided a third year of catastrophic wildfires because of a combination of well-timed precipitation and favorable wind conditions — or “luck,” as experts put it.The Iowa-born Ms. Porter was a leading surrogate for Ms. Warren’s 2020 campaign and often hosted small events promoting her mentor. She worked as a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and in 2012 was appointed by Kamala Harris, then the California attorney general, to oversee a $9 billion settlement after the mortgage crisis. She was elected to Congress in 2018.Ms. Porter won re-election in November by 3.4 percentage points in a district made much more Republican in California’s redistricting process, after prevailing in 2020 by seven points. Her seat may be tougher for Democrats to hold in 2024 without a candidate on the ballot who has Ms. Porter’s fund-raising acumen. Other California Democrats who have not announced campaigns for Ms. Feinstein’s Senate seat but are believed to be considering bids include Representative Adam Schiff, who has already hired staff members in preparation for a statewide campaign; Representative Barbara Lee, who has told donors of her plans to run; and Representative Ro Khanna, an aide for whom said Mr. Khanna would decide on the Senate race “in the next few months.” “It’s going to be a very exciting race with fabulous people — several have already talked to me,” said former Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who served for four terms alongside Ms. Feinstein before retiring in 2016. “The fact that Katie Porter has announced, I think, is going to open the door for a lot of early announcements.” California, the nation’s most populous state with nearly 40 million residents, has not hosted a highly competitive contest for an open Senate seat since 1992, when Ms. Feinstein and Ms. Boxer were both elected for the first time.Ms. Feinstein, in her sixth term, has been dogged by questions about her fitness to serve. Issues with her short-term memory have become an open secret on Capitol Hill, though few Democrats have been willing to discuss the subject publicly.She has made no moves to suggest she will seek re-election in 2024. She has not hired a campaign staff and, in the latest campaign finance report for the period ending in September, had less than $10,000 in cash on hand, a paltry sum for a sitting senator. More