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      Fetterman Discloses Extent of Heart Issues: ‘I Avoided Going to the Doctor.’

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      Lt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, the Democratic nominee in what will be one of the hardest-fought Senate contests in the nation, has a heart condition called cardiomyopathy and appeared to have left other heart issues untreated for years, his doctor disclosed in a statement on Friday.Mr. Fetterman, who suffered a stroke days before the Democratic primary last month, had a pacemaker and defibrillator implanted on the day of the primary, which his campaign at the time described as a standard procedure that would address “the underlying cause of his stroke, atrial fibrillation.” His campaign offered few other details about his condition in the days that followed, but doctors questioned the campaign’s characterization of the use of a defibrillator, noting that they are not typically used for atrial fibrillation, and are more often used for conditions like cardiomyopathy — a weakened heart muscle.“Yesterday I talked to John about how, while afib was the cause of his stroke, he also has a condition called cardiomyopathy,” Ramesh R. Chandra, his doctor, wrote in a note. “The prognosis I can give for John’s heart is this: If he takes his medications, eats healthy, and exercises, he’ll be fine. If he does what I’ve told him, and I do believe that he is taking his recovery and his health very seriously this time, he should be able to campaign and serve in the U.S. Senate without a problem.”Cardiomyopathy “is a disease of the heart muscle that makes it harder for the heart to pump blood to the rest of the body,” according to the Mayo Clinic. “Cardiomyopathy can lead to heart failure.”Dr. Chandra said the defibrillator and pacemaker appeared to be “working perfectly and he is doing well.”Dr. Chandra also wrote that when Mr. Fetterman was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation and a decreased heart pump in 2017, he was prescribed medicine, lifestyle changes and follow-up appointments, but he “did not go to any doctor for 5 years and did not continue taking his medications.”“Like so many others, and so many men in particular, I avoided going to the doctor, even though I knew I didn’t feel well,” Mr. Fetterman said in a statement. “As a result, I almost died. I want to encourage others to not make the same mistake.”Dr. Chandra is Mr. Fetterman’s cardiologist, but after the stroke he was initially treated by other doctors at Lancaster General Hospital. They have not been made available for questions.Former Vice President Dick Cheney had a defibrillator implanted in 2001. He finished two terms in the White House, including a hard-fought re-election campaign in 2004. “Doctors have told me I need to continue to rest, eat healthy, exercise, and focus on my recovery, and that’s exactly what I’m doing,” Mr. Fetterman said. “It will take some more time to get back on the campaign trail like I was in the lead-up to the primary. It’s frustrating — all the more so because this is my own fault — but bear with me, I need a little more time. I’m not quite back to 100 percent yet, but I’m getting closer every day.”When he does return to the campaign trail, it appears his Republican opponent will be Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity television physician. With a statewide recount still underway on Friday in the Republican Senate primary and no official race call, David McCormick conceded the race to Dr. Oz.Ed Rendell, a Democratic former governor of the state and a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in an interview on Friday that he had no qualms about Mr. Fetterman’s fitness to serve. He downplayed how much Mr. Fetterman’s health would weigh on the minds of voters, saying that he did not think it would be an issue.“When I was governor, the Republicans used to say I was one cheese steak away from having a heart attack, and I never did,” said Mr. Rendell. Nancy Patton Mills, the chairwoman of the Pennsylvania Democrats, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee did not immediately comment on Friday.Mr. Fetterman has been off the campaign trail since his stroke and has occasionally released brief videos since then. In a sign that Mr. Fetterman was moving back toward some political engagement, Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, wrote on Twitter that he’d had a “virtual double date” with Mr. Fetterman and his wife, Gisele Barreto Fetterman, earlier Friday afternoon.“Looking forward to many more on the campaign trail this summer!” Mr. Casey wrote.Gina Kolata More

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      Democrats Attack Both Oz and McCormick in Pennsylvania Senate Race Ads

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      The recount of Pennsylvania’s photo-finish Republican Senate primary will not be revealed until June 8, but Democrats aren’t waiting to try to stain both possible winners, Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick.The Democrats’ Senate campaign arm released prototypes of attack ads against both candidates on Thursday, leaning into the theme that Dr. Oz, the celebrity physician, and Mr. McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, are out-of-state carpetbaggers. The ads preview how the general election could unfold in one of the most critical midterm contests for Senate control.The 30-second spots portray Dr. Oz, who held a tiny lead going into the recount and has declared himself the “presumptive” nominee, as “pretending to be from Pennsylvania.’’ Mr. McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, is attacked for having “moved from Connecticut to buy a Senate seat.”The ad maker, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, is not paying for the spots to run on the airwaves or on digital screens; it offered them to the news media as previews of a paid campaign in the fall, and in the expectation that they would be shared on social media. Axios earlier reported on the ads.The committee has reserved an initial $3 million for ads in Pennsylvania’s Senate race, where the retirement of Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican, has created an open seat.The attacks — including that Dr. Oz is a Hollywood type who promoted dubious medical claims on television, and that Mr. McCormick is a friend of China’s who outsourced jobs at a Pittsburgh company — are likely already familiar to many Pennsylvania voters, who were barraged with the same material in the primary. Both of the super-wealthy candidates and their allies spent tens of millions of dollars in attack ads ahead of the May 17 primary.Dr. Oz led by fewer than 1,000 votes, or .07 percent, when the recount began on Friday. Armies of lawyers for both candidates continue to scrap for every vote before county election boards and in court.With the race in suspense for more than two weeks, the Democratic nominee, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, has been largely out of the spotlight, which may benefit him politically as he recuperates from a stroke suffered just before Election Day. He has made no public appearances since then and has none currently planned. His campaign repeated this week that he is on the path to a full recovery, yet questions about his health have swirled as his campaign declined requests from reporters to speak with Mr. Fetterman or his doctors about his condition. On Tuesday, he posted to Twitter a short speech thanking Democratic House members from Pennsylvania for their endorsements.A spokeswoman for Dr. Oz, Brittany Yanick, did not respond directly to the Democratic committee’s attack ad, but called the “Biden/Fetterman agenda” wrong for Pennsylvania. “John Fetterman’s radical agenda harms Pennsylvanians and makes our communities less safe,” she said.Mr. McCormick’s campaign responded similarly, focusing on the “agenda of Biden and John Fetterman” but arguing that Mr. McCormick is the candidate best positioned to defeat Mr. Fetterman this fall. More

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      ‘The G.O.P. Has Gone Even Farther to the Right Than I Expected’: Three Writers Talk About the Midterms

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      Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted an online conversation with Lis Smith, a Democratic communications strategist, and Matthew Continetti of the American Enterprise Institute about a month of primaries, how they have shaped the midterms and what Democrats and Republicans can hope for and expect.FRANK BRUNI: On Tuesday, at least 19 children and two teachers were killed in the latest mass school shooting in a country that has witnessed too many of them. In my heartfelt (and heartsick) opinion, that should change the political landscape. But, realistically, will it?LIS SMITH: It should, but I unfortunately don’t think it will move the needle a ton.MATTHEW CONTINETTI: I agree. Unfortunately, history suggests that the political landscape won’t change after the horror in Texas.There’s a long and terrible list of school shootings. Each incident has been met with public horror and with calls for gun controls. But little has happened to either reduce the number of guns in America or to shift power to advocates for firearm regulation.SMITH: After Sandy Hook, we did see a number of states — Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, New York — take strong action on gun control, and I still believe that we will most likely see gun-control legislation on the state versus the federal level.And this does raise the stakes of the midterms. It will allow Democrats in marginal, suburban seats to use the issue against their Republican opponents, given that nearly every Republican in the House voted against H.R. 8, which would implement background checks and common-sense restrictions of the sort that have had broad public support.BRUNI: After that cheery start, let’s pull back and zoom out to a bigger picture. Have the primaries so far conformed to your expectations — or are there particular results or general patterns that surprise you and that challenge, or throw into doubt, your assumptions about what will happen in November?CONTINETTI: I’d say they are shaping up as one might expect. The president’s party rarely does well in midterms. The Biden Democrats appear to be no exception. What has surprised me is the depth of public disillusionment with President Biden, his party and the direction of the country. My guess is Democrats are surprised as well.SMITH: We have seen common-sense Democrats like Shontel Brown in Ohio, Valerie Foushee in North Carolina and Morgan McGarvey in Kentucky win against far-left Democrats, and that’s a good thing for the party and our chances in November.The G.O.P. has gone even farther right than I expected. Just look at Doug Mastriano, who won the Republican governor’s primary in Pennsylvania. He funded buses to shuttle people to the Capitol on Jan. 6 and helped efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state. He opposes abortion without exceptions. He makes Ron DeSantis look like Charlie Baker.BRUNI: Matt, do ultra-MAGA Republican candidates like him or for that matter Ted Budd in the North Carolina Senate race potentially undermine what might otherwise be a red-wave year? I’m thinking about a guest essay you wrote for The Times not long ago in which you raised the concern that Donald Trump and his minions would spoil things. Does that concern persist?CONTINETTI: Indeed, it does. Where Republicans got the idea that Trump is a political winner is a mystery to me. By the end of his presidency, Democrats were in full control of government. And he has been unpopular with the independents and suburban moderates necessary for any party to win a majority.I draw a distinction, though, between Mastriano and Budd. Mastriano is, as you say, ultra-MAGA. Even Trump was wary of him until the very end of the primary. Budd is a more typical fusion of conservative movement traits with Trump MAGA traits. If I had to guess, Budd is more likely to win than Mastriano.BRUNI: Lis, is Matt splitting hairs? I mean, in the House, Budd voted to overturn the 2020 election results. I worry that we’re cutting certain Republican conspiracists a break because they’re not as flagrant conspiracists as, say, Marjorie Taylor Greene or Madison Cawthorn.SMITH: It’s splitting hairs a bit. But he’s right — Mastriano proved so polarizing and so toxic that you had a former Trump adviser in Pennsylvania, David Urban, say that he was too extreme. He was too MAGA for the MAGA crowd. The G.O.P. has been more welcoming of Budd, but he also wanted to overturn 2020 and he also opposes abortion in every instance. North Carolina voters have a history of turning back candidates with extreme social views. That’s one of the reasons Roy Cooper won his first race for governor — the G.O.P. overreached on the bathrooms issue, the law that restricted restroom access for transgender people.BRUNI: What shall we call “too MAGA for MAGA”? Mega-MAGA? Meta-MAGA? Maxi-MAGA? Regardless, we keep asking, after every primary: What does this say about Trump’s level of sway? Is that question distracting us from bigger, more relevant ones?SMITH: Trump is a factor here, but Democrats really need to keep the focus on these candidates and their beliefs and make this an election between the Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate. As we saw in Virginia, Democrats can’t rely on painting their opponents as Trump 2.0 — they need to explicitly define and disqualify the opposition, and these mega-MAGA extremists give us plenty of material. The people who aren’t as out there as Mastriano give us plenty of material, too.BRUNI: Matt, I know you’re not here to help Democrats, but if you were advising them, what would you tell them to do to head off a possible or probable midterms drubbing?CONTINETTI: If I were a Democratic consultant, the first thing I would tell my clients would be to take shelter from the storm. There is no escaping Biden’s unpopularity. The best hope for Democratic incumbents is to somehow denationalize their campaigns. Even that probably won’t be enough to escape the gravitational pull of Biden’s declining job approval.BRUNI: Lis, the “plenty of material” you refer to must include abortion. Along those lines, do you see anything potentially happening in the months ahead that could change the trajectory of the midterms? For example, what if the Supreme Court in June in fact overturns Roe or further weakens gun regulations? What about hearings on the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol?SMITH: Roe is an example of something that could change the trajectory of the election. I usually think of the presidential election as when the broad electorate turns out and midterms as when pissed-off voters come out to vote. The Supreme Court taking away something that has been a fundamental right for 50 years will definitely piss people off and bring some of the Biden voters who might have otherwise voted Republican this year back into our corner. But voters have more reasons to be angry than just Roe.BRUNI: What are you thinking of? I’d like to hear it and then what Matt has to say about it.SMITH: We need to be screaming from the rooftops about what the Republicans in Congress are doing. They voted against the American Rescue Plan (then took credit for the checks that went to American households), mostly voted against infrastructure (then took credit for projects in their districts), mostly voted against capping the price of insulin, voted against stopping oil companies from price gouging, mostly voted against a bill that would include importing baby formula.Why? Because they want to impose as much misery as possible on the American people so that voters blame Biden and vote Republican in November. It’s really cynical, dark stuff. And then when they win, they want to criminalize abortions and ensure that we never have free and fair elections again. That’s my rant.CONTINETTI: Voters will hear a lot of what Lis is saying before November, but the Democrats’ problem is that they are in power as inflation comes roaring back after a 40-year absence. I am open to the idea that the end of Roe v. Wade may induce pro-choice voters off the sidelines in some swing districts, but in the weeks since the leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion, the evidence of a pro-abortion-rights surge among voters is scattered at best. As the great Mark Shields likes to say, “When the economy is bad, the economy is the only issue.” Right now the economy is the issue, and it’s hurting the Democratic Party.BRUNI: As we were all typing, Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat who’s running for governor in Texas, where this latest horrible massacre occurred, interrupted a news conference being held by the incumbent Republican governor, Greg Abbott, to shout at Abbott that he was doing nothing to stop such bloodshed. In its urgency and passion, is that smart politics that could make a difference, Lis?SMITH: That’s a great example of going on the offensive, generating the emotion and pissed-off-ness that Democrats need to turn out our voters in the midterms. We often lose the gun debate because it’s about policy particulars. If Democrats can channel the outrage that a lot of Americans feel — particularly parents — toward the politicians who are just sitting behind tables and choosing inaction and make this about political courage, we can potentially flip the script. Sometimes these sorts of confrontations can come across as a little stunt-y, but in this case, it was executed well and made Governor Abbott and his lackeys look cowardly.CONTINETTI: O’Rourke is running 10 points behind Abbott, and I don’t think his outburst will help him close that gap. Many Democrats believe that pissed-off-ness is the key to winning elections, but I don’t know what evidence there is for that case. The key to winning elections is to appeal to independent voters and moderates in the suburbs.SMITH: Trump’s whole pitch is to play on grievances! And midterm elections are traditionally where voters air their grievances: They’re mad about inflation, mad about gas prices — in 2018, they were mad about Republicans’ trying to repeal Obamacare. This is a strategy that appeals to independent and moderate voters in the suburbs — they are often with Democrats on abortion, with us on guns.CONTINETTI: As you know, Trump did not win the popular vote in either 2016 or 2020. Pissed-off-ness gets you only so far. I agree that it helps when you are the out party in a national election and can blame the incumbent for poor economic and social conditions. Whether getting angry will work in Texas this year and for this candidate is another matter.BRUNI: Matt, why aren’t the Republicans who are losing to other Republicans in these primaries, as Lis put it earlier, “screaming from the rooftops” about election irregularities and rigged results the way they do when they lose to Democrats? Either a state holds trustworthy elections or it doesn’t, no?CONTINETTI: We’ve been reminded in recent weeks of what you might call Trumpian Exceptionalism. Whenever Trump loses, he says the result is fraudulent. He’s been urging his choice in the Pennsylvania Senate primary, Mehmet Oz, to declare victory in a race too close to call. Yet Oz has refrained, as have other Trump picks like the former senator David Perdue, who lost in a landslide in Georgia to the incumbent governor, Brian Kemp. Is there a Republican future in which candidates regularly ignore Trump? Some of us hope so. Though we’ve learned not to hope too much.BRUNI: Let’s end with a lighting round of short questions. At this point, just over five months out, what percentage chance would you say the Democrats have of holding the House? The Senate?CONTINETTI: Math, much less statistics, has never been my strong suit. Let’s just say that the Democrats have a very slim chance of holding the House and a slightly less-than-even chance of holding the Senate.SMITH: Emphasis on “at this point”: 51 percent chance Democrats hold the Senate, 15 percent House.BRUNI: In 2028 or 2032, will we be talking about Sarah Huckabee Sanders, possible Republican presidential nominee?!?!SMITH: Wow, I’ve never thought of that, but I can see it. At some point the Republicans will nominate a woman for president — let’s hope that you didn’t just conjure this one.CONTINETTI: I can see that, too — maybe that’s when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will make her presidential debut as well.BRUNI: Thoughts on Herschel Walker (potentially) in the Senate, in five words or less.SMITH: Death of an institution.CONTINETTI: Fun to watch.BRUNI: Lastly, in one sentence without too many conjunctions and clauses, give me a reason not to feel too despondent-verging-on-hopeless about our political present and immediate future?SMITH: We’ve gotten through worse.CONTINETTI: When you study history, you are reminded that America has been through a lot like this before — and worse — and has not only endured but prospered. We’ll get through this moment. It will just take time.Sorry, that’s three sentences — but important ones!Frank Bruni (@FrankBruni) is a professor of public policy at Duke, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk,” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter and can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Matthew Continetti (@continetti) is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism.” Lis Smith (@Lis_Smith), a Democratic communications strategist, was a senior adviser to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign and is the author of the forthcoming memoir “Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      At Least Trump Didn’t Get What He Wanted This Week

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      Well, the people have spoken. Sort of.Several major elections this week, and the big story was Georgia. The race Donald Trump certainly seemed to care about most was a Republican primary there involving his enemy Gov. Brian Kemp.Trump, as the world knows, hates hates hates Kemp for insisting on reporting the accurate results of Georgia’s voting in the 2020 presidential race. The rancor runs so deep that Trump’s Save America PAC actually coughed up at least $500,000 toward Kemp’s defeat.Normally, our ex-president sits on his cash like a nesting hen. Must have tugged at his heartstrings to see it being carted away. And to no avail, hehehehehehe. Trump recruited former Senator David Perdue to run against his enemy, and Kemp demolished Perdue by more than three to one.Same story with Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, who Trump told to “find 11,780 votes” after the presidential election and give him the win. Didn’t happen! Yet this week, Raffensperger did so well with Georgia Republican voters that he’s not even going to face a primary runoff.If you’ve got an optimistic nature, here’s a spin you can put on the whole story: Tuesday’s results showed regular Republicans aren’t all still steaming about how the 2020 presidential election was stolen from their man. And they’re not all going to the polls to get revenge.They’re ready to — dare I say it? — move on. No better example than Mike Pence. “I was for Brian Kemp before it was cool,” the former vice president told a crowd near Atlanta.Yes, he really said that. It will be remembered as yet another sign of the wrecked relationship between Trump and his former No. 2. It was also perhaps the only moment in American history when Mike Pence was linked with the word “cool.”OK, that’s enough voter happiness. Back down to Planet Earth. The newly reaffirmed Governor Kemp announced on Tuesday that he and his family were “heartbroken” by the “incomprehensible” school shooting in Texas.Now, Kemp recently signed a bill that will allow Georgians to carry handguns in public pretty much whenever they feel like it — no license or background check required. You’d think — at least wish — that he’d consider a possible link between the wide, wide availability of firearms in this country and the tragic line of mass shooting deaths. Anything can make a difference.Compared with the elementary school shooting in Texas, everything else about this week will be a political footnote. But some of the footnotes are certainly interesting. If we want to pick a theme for Tuesday’s elections, it might be that Donald Trump’s influence isn’t nearly as strong as he thinks it is, and that he may be the only American voter whose chief preoccupation is revisiting the 2020 election on an hourly basis.Getting over it is something Trump can’t abide. Consider the primary in Alabama for a Republican Senate candidate. Perhaps you remember — if you’re very, very, very into elections — that Trump began by backing Representative Mo Brooks, then changed his mind and unendorsed him? Cynics believed Trump had just decided Brooks was a loser, but it’s also possible the congressman had offended our former president by urging voters to “look forward.”That’s the wrong direction to mention when you’re hanging out with the Trump camp.“Mo Brooks of Alabama made a horrible mistake recently when he went ‘woke’ and stated, referring to the 2020 presidential election scam, ‘Put that behind you, put that behind you,’” Trump said as he retracted his endorsement.The outcome of all this drama was that Brooks got less than a third of the vote, behind Katie Britt, the former chief of staff of retiring Senator Richard Shelby. Since Britt failed to get 50 percent, there will be a runoff. Winner will face Democratic nominee Will Boyd this fall.One addendum — which you should really skip over if you’re feeling even modestly depressed: Both Britt and Brooks are in the gun camp as deep as humanly possible. Britt has ads in which she’s aiming a rifle and promising to “shoot straight.” The N.R.A., which endorsed Brooks, praised his efforts to protect “interstate transportation of firearms.” Those of us in states that are desperately trying to keep gun proliferation under control would appreciate it if he focused his energies on something else.Trump’s biggest election night triumph may have been Herschel Walker, the former football player he backed for a Georgia Senate nomination. But Walker’s competition wasn’t exactly top-notch, and now he’ll be running against Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, who will probably take note of a few items on Walker’s résumé that Trump overlooked. Including allegations of domestic violence, refusal to take part in debates, and the day on the campaign trail when Walker expressed doubt about the theory of evolution. (If it were true, Walker mused, “Why are there still apes? Think about it.”)On the plus side, there was Walker’s eagerness to spend $200,000 entertaining people at Mar-a-Lago. Nothing, it appears, raises the former president’s enthusiasm for a candidate like a willingness to make Donald Trump wealthier.All told, reporters found that seven of the Republicans Trump endorsed this year spent a total of more than $400,000 in campaign money at the resort. So yeah, our ex-president lost a lot politically this election season. But he gained a chunk of cash.Maybe he’ll use some of it for tips when he speaks on Friday at the N.R.A.’s three-day convention in Houston.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Pennsylvania’s G.O.P. Senate primary is officially headed to a recount.

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      The Republican primary for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania will go to a recount, with Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician backed by former President Donald J. Trump, clinging to a narrow advantage over David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, in one of the nation’s most intensely watched midterm contests.Dr. Oz was leading Mr. McCormick by 902 votes as of Wednesday, according to Leigh M. Chapman, the state’s acting secretary of the commonwealth, who said that all 67 of Pennsylvania’s counties had reported unofficial tallies to the state.The recount could lead to a series of lawsuits and challenges in the marquee primary, one that could ultimately determine control of the closely divided Senate. That legal wrangling has already begun: On Monday, Mr. McCormick filed a lawsuit demanding that undated mail-in ballots should be counted.A victory for Mr. McCormick — a West Point graduate and the former chief executive of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund — would be a significant rebuke to Mr. Trump, who supported Dr. Oz and campaigned for him in Pennsylvania. The seat will be open after Senator Patrick J. Toomey, a Republican, steps down this year.Pennsylvania presents perhaps the best chance for Democrats to add a seat to their fragile 50-50 control of the Senate, in which Vice President Kamala Harris holds the tiebreaking vote. The seat is the only one open in a state that President Biden won in 2020. For Republicans, holding the seat would ease their path to the majority in a year when the political winds are at their back.Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician, leads the Senate race against David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, by 902 votes. Pennsylvania law calls for an automatic recount if the margin in a statewide race is 0.5 percent or less of the total vote.Alexandra Wimley/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, via Associated PressAt a news conference in Harrisburg, Pa., the state capital, Ms. Chapman said that the recount would be conducted transparently and would allow for observers from the campaigns.Counties can begin the recount on Friday and must start no later than June 1, she said. They must complete the process by June 7 and report their results to the state by June 8. Pennsylvania law calls for an automatic recount if the margin in a statewide race is 0.5 percent or less of the total vote.State elections officials acknowledged that the recount could be a slog, one that they said could cost taxpayers in Pennsylvania more than $1 million.“I know Pennsylvanians and indeed people throughout the country have been following this race attentively and are eagerly awaiting the results,” said Ms. Chapman, who was appointed to her post last December by Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat.The lawsuit from Mr. McCormick asks the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania to allow county election officials to accept mail-in ballots from voters who turned them in by the May 17 deadline but did not write the date on the outer return envelopes.That step is required by a state law, which Republicans have fought to preserve.“Because all ballots are time-stamped by the County Boards of Elections on receipt, a voter’s handwritten date is meaningless,” said Chuck Cooper, Mr. McCormick’s chief legal counsel, in a statement on Monday.But G.O.P. leaders objected to the counting of these ballots. The Pennsylvania Republican Party and Republican National Committee were expected to intervene in the case.Ms. Chapman, who was named as a defendant in Mr. McCormick’s lawsuit, along with dozens of county election boards, said that the office’s guidance to counties was to segregate the ballots at issue and tabulate them separately, pending the outcome of litigation.“It’s our position that undated ballots and incorrectly, wrongly dated ballots should count,” Ms. Chapman said, calling the handwritten dates immaterial.Jonathan M. Marks, the deputy secretary of the commonwealth who oversees elections and commissions, said at the news conference that about 10,000 mail-in, absentee and provisional ballots statewide were still being adjudicated. A breakdown of whether those ballots were cast by Republicans or Democrats was not available because they were still being tabulated by the counties.Mr. McCormick said on Twitter on Tuesday night that he looked forward to a swift resolution so that Republicans could unite against Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic primary winner.“We are proud our campaign received nearly 418,000 votes, won 37 of 67 counties, and contributed to a historic turnout with a razor-thin difference between myself and Mehmet Oz,” Mr. McCormick said.Dr. Oz’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.“I thank everyone for their patience as we count every vote,” said Ms. Chapman, a lawyer who previously led a nonprofit that promoted mail-in voting, a flashpoint in recent elections in the state.The Republican primary, which included five major candidates, was dominated by the nearly $40 million in television ads spent by the two front-runners and their allies, much of it on attacks bludgeoning opponents.Both Dr. Oz and Mr. McCormick tried to transform themselves from members of the East Coast elite with middle-of-the-road politics into staunch Trump supporters.Their bitter feud opened a lane, late in the race, for Kathy Barnette, a hard-right conservative who stood out in debates, primarily for her attacks on Dr. Oz over his late-to-the-party opposition to abortion. Ms. Barnette appeared to siphon votes away from Dr. Oz, who did not have a monopoly on Trump supporters.Trip Gabriel More

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      Four Takeaways From Tuesday’s Elections

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      Tuesday was a booming repudiation of former President Donald J. Trump’s relentless preoccupation with the 2020 election. In Georgia, his voter-fraud-focused choices for governor and attorney general were roundly defeated, while his pick for secretary of state lost to a man who stood up to those false claims two years ago.But it would be a mistake to interpret these results as a wholesale rejection of Mr. Trump himself. His gravitational pull on Republican voters warped every one of Tuesday’s primaries, shaping candidates’ positions and priorities as they beat a path to Mar-a-Lago.It was a bittersweet evening for progressives, who remain in suspense about the fate of their challenger to a conservative Democratic incumbent in Texas. But in another House race in the Atlanta suburbs, the party’s left flank ousted one of the “unbreakable nine” Democrats who balked at President Biden’s social spending plans. Here are a few key takeaways from this week’s primaries, among the most consequential of the 2022 midterm cycle:Republican governors are standing up to Trump. And winning.David Perdue, a wealthy former senator recruited by Mr. Trump to challenge Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, told reporters in the race’s final days that despite his poor standing in polls, “I guaran-damn-tee you we’re not down 30 points.”Mr. Perdue was correct. He lost by about 50 percentage points.Mr. Kemp easily swatted away Mr. Perdue’s lackluster bid, shoring up local support and rallying fellow Republican governors to his side. By the campaign’s final weeks, Mr. Perdue had pulled back on television advertising — usually a telltale sign of a doomed candidacy.And even though Mr. Trump had transferred more than $2.5 million to Mr. Perdue from his political operation, it wasn’t enough. Mr. Perdue’s own allies were openly critical of his halfhearted efforts on the stump, as well his inability to move beyond false claims about the 2020 election.Republican governors were quick to cast Mr. Kemp’s resounding victory as a rejection of Mr. Trump. Minutes after Mr. Perdue conceded, Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and a sometime Trump ally, praised Georgia voters for refusing to be “willing participants in the DJT Vendetta Tour.”Mr. Perdue’s performance suggests that Mr. Trump’s endorsement can be “poison,” said Jon Gray, a Republican political consultant in Alabama, by giving candidates a false sense of complacency.David Perdue at a campaign event in Plainville, Ga., last week. By the race’s final weeks, he had pulled back on television advertising. Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s involvement can also skew an entire primary contest to the right, as it did in Alabama and Georgia. Mr. Kemp now faces a rematch in the general election against Stacey Abrams, an experienced and well-funded Democrat he defeated by fewer than 55,000 votes in 2018.So far, Mr. Trump’s record in primaries that are actually contested is more mixed than his overall win-loss score suggests.His favored Senate candidates won the Republican nomination in Georgia, North Carolina and Ohio, but struggled in Alabama and Pennsylvania.In governor’s races, he endorsed Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his first White House press secretary, who won by a commanding margin in Arkansas, where she is political royalty. Mr. Trump was occasionally critical of Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama, who nevertheless managed to avoid a runoff in her primary.But he also unsuccessfully opposed Republican incumbents in Georgia and Idaho, while his choice for governor of Nebraska, Charles Herbster, lost by nearly four percentage points this month to Jim Pillen, the favorite of the local establishment.“It’s silly to obsess over individual endorsements and what they mean,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican consultant who is working against many of Mr. Trump’s candidates across the country, “when the whole field has gone Trumpy.”‘Stop the Steal’ is often a political loser. But not always.Candidates who made Mr. Trump’s narrative of a stolen election the centerpiece of their campaigns fared badly. But those who embraced it only partially did just fine.In the Republican primary for Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger won an outright victory over Representative Jody Hice, whose wholesale embrace of Mr. Trump’s conspiracy-mongering about the 2020 election was not enough to force a runoff.The incumbent in the Republican primary for attorney general, Chris Carr, brushed off a feeble challenge from John Gordon, a lawyer who had represented Mr. Trump’s bogus election-fraud claims in court. Mr. Raffensperger may have had help from Democrats, thousands of whom reportedly crossed over to vote on the Republican side.“Not buckling under the pressure is what the people want,” Mr. Raffensperger said on Tuesday night at his election watch party.That said, few Republican candidates who have forthrightly denounced Mr. Trump’s lies about 2020 have survived elsewhere.In Ohio, the one Senate candidate who did so, Matt Dolan, finished in third place. In Pennsylvania, the Republican nominee for governor, Doug Mastriano, was deeply involved in Mr. Trump’s plot to overturn the state’s 2020 results, while the two leading Senate candidates, Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick, have equivocated about whether Mr. Biden was fairly elected.Representative Mo Brooks, an erratic, hard-right congressman who was once one of Mr. Trump’s staunchest supporters in Congress, gained notoriety for wearing body armor to the “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021.But Mr. Brooks came in second place in the Republican primary for Senate in Alabama to Katie Britt, who ran a campaign tightly focused on local issues and will now face Mr. Brooks in a runoff election next month. Even so, Ms. Britt told reporters she would have objected to the 2020 election results had she been in office at the time.Mr. Brooks attacked her anyway on Tuesday night. “Alabama, your choice is Katie Britt, who hid in her foxhole when a voter fraud fight was brought,” he said, or himself, “who led the fight against voter fraud in the U.S. Congress.”Pro-business Republicans can still win a big race. Maybe.Ms. Britt’s first-place finish in Alabama is a reminder that Mr. Trump’s endorsement is not all-powerful. But it’s also a testament to the enduring political clout of corporate America.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More