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      Trump Vowed Vengeance, but Georgia Voters Rejected His Meddling

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      Donald J. Trump barreled into Georgia vowing to marshal voters against his enemies and punish Republicans who crossed him in 2020. Instead, Georgia voters punished him for meddling in their state.Mr. Trump picked losers up and down the ballot, most strikingly missing the mark on a third governor’s race in three weeks. The dismal record, particularly for chief executives, illustrates the shortcomings of Mr. Trump’s revenge tour.Since leaving the White House, and the structure it provided, the former president has erratically deployed his political power, often making choices on a whim or with little clear path to execution. That approach has repeatedly left him empty-handed and raised new doubts about the viselike grip he has held on the Republican Party.In Georgia, Mr. Trump tried to wipe out a triumvirate of Republican statewide officeholders who refused to help overturn the 2020 presidential results: Gov. Brian Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Attorney General Chris Carr. But the three men all coasted to victory — and handed Mr. Trump a stinging rebuke in a state that has become one of the nation’s most important presidential battlegrounds.Henry Barbour, a Republican National Committee member from Mississippi, said Mr. Trump’s endorsements this year had been “driven by who he dislikes and whoever’s running against them.”“Sometimes that may work out, but I think as we see in Georgia, it’s very unlikely to,” Mr. Barbour said.Mr. Trump’s poor showing in state capitals — his endorsed candidates for governor have now lost as many races as they’ve won this year — can be partly blamed on the degree of difficulty of his undertaking. Successful campaigns for governor often must be precisely tailored to address nuanced regional and local issues. House and Senate bids — where Mr. Trump’s endorsement record as yet is nearly unblemished — can more easily harness national political winds.Unseating incumbent governors in a primary, as Mr. Trump tried to do in Georgia and Idaho, is even more challenging. According to the Eagleton Center on the American Governor at Rutgers University, governors defeat primary challengers about 95 percent of the time. Two incumbent governors haven’t lost primaries in the same year since 1994.But Mr. Trump has shown the unlikely to be practically impossible when decisions about endorsements for high-profile public offices are based on falsehoods, vengeance and personal pride. His refusal to take a more cautious approach and protect his political capital ahead of a likely 2024 presidential campaign has resulted in unforced errors that could unspool for months.Gov. Brian Kemp in Atlanta on Tuesday night after winning the Republican primary.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesIn Georgia, for example, Republicans have worried about the unnecessary political damage Mr. Trump has inflicted on Mr. Kemp, who will face a rematch in November with Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee who lost their 2018 contest by 54,700 votes, or less than one-half of one percentage point. Political control of the governor’s office carries significant influence over election laws and regulations heading into the 2024 voting.“I don’t believe Kemp can do it,” Mr. Trump said during a tele-rally on Monday about the governor’s chances of defeating Ms. Abrams. “He’s got too many people in the Republican Party that will refuse to vote. They’re just not going to go out.”Mr. Trump’s loss in Georgia also meant a major victory for the Republican Governors Association, which has circled the wagons around incumbents and resisted the former president’s attacks on their members.The group spent $5 million on Mr. Kemp’s race and dispatched a cavalry of current and former governors to campaign for him, including two potential challengers to Mr. Trump in 2024: Chris Christie of New Jersey and former Vice President Mike Pence, who, like Mr. Kemp, refused to help Mr. Trump overturn the 2020 election.Whether the Georgia results will provide a toehold for a challenge to Mr. Trump’s supremacy in the party remained unclear, but signs that he has lost some political altitude have been unmistakable throughout the 2022 primary season.Mindful that potential 2024 presidential rivals are watching for openings against him, Mr. Trump has been toying for months with announcing his candidacy ahead of the midterm elections this year, according to people who have spoken with him.Earlier talk of similar moves went nowhere, including a “Draft Trump” movement floated by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina shortly after Mr. Trump left office and an idea to announce an exploratory committee as recently as March.But Mr. Trump has spoken to aides recently about declaring his candidacy this summer as a way to box out other candidates. Other advisers said he viewed an announcement as a way to link himself to the success that Republicans expect in the midterm elections this November.Herschel Walker with former President Donald J. Trump at a March rally in Commerce, Ga.Audra Melton for The New York TimesMr. Trump had a smattering of success on Tuesday night, notably with his former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who is almost certain to become the next governor of Arkansas after winning the Republican primary. And Herschel Walker, the former football star whom Mr. Trump urged to run for Senate, easily won his Georgia primary. Still, they were exceptions, and faced weak opposition.In a statement, Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, ignored the string of defeats Tuesday night, calling it “another huge night of victories for his endorsed candidates.”In an interview last week, Mr. Trump defended his endorsement record, saying he had backed candidates he believed in, not just those he expected to win. He pointed to J.D. Vance’s win in the Ohio Senate primary, Mr. Trump’s biggest victory of the primary season so far.There, Mr. Trump acted after polling late in the race suggested his endorsement could make the difference for Mr. Vance, who was behind in the polls at the time — and his announcement propelled Mr. Vance to a decisive victory.But that deliberate decision-making was a departure from the more scattershot approach seen in Mr. Trump’s endorsements for governor.In Nebraska, where Mr. Trump’s endorsed candidate, the agriculture executive Charles Herbster, was defeated on May 10, Mr. Trump has privately faulted the Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, complaining that she pushed him to back Mr. Herbster, and going so far as to suggest to some people that Ms. Pirro and Mr. Herbster had dated.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Herschel Walker, backed by Trump, sails to the G.O.P. nomination in Georgia’s Senate race.

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      Herschel Walker, the former University of Georgia football star pressed into politics by former President Donald J. Trump, won Georgia’s Republican Senate primary on Tuesday, cruising past a crowded field. His victory, called by The Associated Press, sets him up to challenge the Democratic nominee, Senator Raphael Warnock, in November.With Mr. Trump’s endorsement, Mr. Walker faced five opponents for the nomination — but no real challenge. His closest competitor was Gary Black, the state’s agriculture commissioner. Mr. Walker ran largely on Mr. Trump’s endorsement and his own popularity in the state, which has lingered since he powered the University of Georgia to a national championship in 1980 and then won the Heisman Trophy in 1982.Though Mr. Black ultimately could not compete, he may have caused trouble for Mr. Walker. He doggedly raised allegations of domestic violence against Mr. Walker, some of which Mr. Walker admitted to and some of which he denied, as well as questions about Mr. Walker’s inflated claims of academic and business achievements.Mr. Black called the accusations of violent behavior and the mental health struggles that Mr. Walker had admitted to “disqualifying,” and said he could not endorse him in the general election.Other Republicans in the state have also said Mr. Walker needs a better answer to charges that he threatened to kill himself and his wife, threatened to kill a girlfriend and stalked a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader when he played professional football.But the Republican electorate appeared comfortable with its choice. At large rallies with Mr. Trump and smaller stump speeches, Mr. Walker was cheered for his displays of humility, his story of transformation from an overweight boy with a speech impediment to a star in football, track and even bobsledding, and his assurances to largely white audiences that racism is overblown.Mr. Walker is a political newcomer who has never held elective office. But Mr. Warnock, who was the pastor at the same church where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, does not have much more experience, with just two years in the Senate. And in what is expected to be a strong year for Republicans, the general election contest between the two could be among the closest, most expensive and most closely watched in the country. More

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      McCormick Sues to Count Undated Mail-In Ballots, Trailing Oz

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      In a lawsuit filed on Monday in Pennsylvania, the Republican Senate candidate David McCormick demanded that undated mail-in ballots should be counted in his primary race against the celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz, whom he trailed by less than 1,000 votes.Mr. McCormick, a former hedge fund chief, asked the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania to allow election officials in the state’s 67 counties 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, one that Republicans have fought to preserve.The legal action could be a prelude to a cascade of lawsuits and challenges in one of the nation’s most intensely watched primaries, one that could ultimately determine control of the divided Senate. The seat will be open after Senator Patrick J. Toomey, a Republican, steps down this year.The filing preceded a May 26 deadline for Pennsylvania’s secretary of state to determine whether a recount is triggered in the race, an automatic step when the top two candidates are within half a percentage point. About two-tenths of a percentage point separated Mr. McCormick on Monday from Dr. Oz, whom former President Donald J. Trump has been nudging to declare victory. The McCormick campaign was said to have invested heavily in its absentee-voting efforts.“These ballots were indisputably submitted on time — they were date-stamped upon receipt — and no fraud or irregularity has been alleged,” Ronald L. Hicks Jr., a lawyer for Mr. McCormick, wrote in the 35-page lawsuit.Mr. Hicks, a trial and appellate lawyer in Pittsburgh, was part of a phalanx of lawyers enlisted by Mr. Trump who unsuccessfully sought to challenge mail-in ballots after the 2020 presidential election. He later moved to withdraw from that case.In the McCormick campaign’s lawsuit, Mr. Hicks took the opposite view of mail-in ballots, saying that election boards in Allegheny County in Western Pennsylvania and Blair County in the central part of the state have balked at counting the undated ballots. Those counties, he said, were delaying taking action until after Tuesday when they are required to report unofficial results to the state.“The boards’ refusal to count the ballots at issue violates the protections of the right to vote under the federal Civil Rights Act and the Pennsylvania Constitution,” Mr. Hicks wrote.In the lawsuit, the McCormick campaign cited a recent ruling by a federal court panel that barred elections officials in Lehigh County, Pa., from rejecting absentee and mail-in ballots cast in the November 2021 municipal election because they were not dated.“Every Republican primary vote should be counted, including the votes of Pennsylvania’s active-duty military members who risk their lives to defend our constitutional right to vote,” Jess Szymanski, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCormick’s campaign, said in an email on Monday night.Understand the Battle Over U.S. Voting RightsCard 1 of 6Why are voting rights an issue now? More

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      Georgia, a New Battleground State, Is Once Again the Center of Attention

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      It’s the crucible of American politics.Georgia’s got everything: disputed elections, rapid demographic change, celebrity Democrats, a restrictive new voting law, an open criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s meddling in the 2020 election, a deep rural-urban divide and unending drama between the Trump wing of the Republican Party and the local G.O.P. establishment.It’s a longtime Republican stronghold that has become a battleground state. Trump won Georgia by more than 200,000 votes in 2016, then lost it by fewer than 12,000 votes four years later. Georgia was where President Biden made his doomed final push to pass voting rights legislation in the Senate. It was where Democrats picked up two crucial Senate seats on Jan. 5, 2021, giving them the barest control of both chambers of Congress.But those gains are fragile, and Republicans are confident they can win the governor’s race and regain one of the Senate seats. It’s largely for the usual reasons: high prices for the two Gs — gas and groceries — as well as Biden’s low job approval ratings. Either way, millions of campaign dollars will flow into Georgia between now and November.Before all that, though, we’ll have to get through Tuesday’s primaries. Here is what else is going on:Trump vs. PenceOn Monday, Trump and Mike Pence, his former vice president, held dueling events for their respective candidates in the Republican primary for governor: David Perdue, a former senator and Dollar General executive who entered the race at Trump’s insistence, and Brian Kemp, the incumbent.Pence attended a rally for Kemp at the Cobb County airport in suburban Atlanta, while Trump appeared remotely for Perdue, who took a racist swipe at Stacey Abrams, the presumptive Democratic nominee, during a news conference at a wings-and-beer restaurant north of the city. As Jonathan Martin writes, Pence and Trump are circling each other warily in advance of a possible clash in the presidential primary in 2024, so their standoff in Georgia has national implications.It’s not looking good for Trump’s leading candidate in the state, for the reasons our colleagues Reid Epstein and Shane Goldmacher reported this weekend. Polls show Kemp ahead by an average of 25 percentage points, leading Perdue to try to reset expectations last week. “We may not win Tuesday,” he said, “but I guaran-damn-tee you we are not down 30 points.”Along with Representative Jody Hice, who is hoping to unseat Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Perdue is running a campaign that is almost single-mindedly focused on Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.Understand the Georgia Primary ElectionThe May 24 primary will feature several Trump-backed candidates in closely watched races.A New Battleground: Republicans have fought bitter primaries in Georgia. But just two years after Democrats flipped the state, it’s trending back to the G.O.P.G.O.P. Governor’s Race: David Perdue’s impending loss to Brian Kemp looms as the biggest electoral setback for Donald Trump since his own 2020 defeat.Trump vs. Pence: With the ex-president backing Mr. Perdue and his former vice president supporting Mr. Kemp, the G.O.P. governor’s race has national implications for 2024.Fighting Headwinds: Democrats in Georgia — and beyond  — are worried that even the strongest candidates can’t outrun President Biden’s low approval ratings.Perdue and Hice are speaking to a “small and shrinking crowd in Georgia,” said Chris Clark, the president and chief executive of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, which is backing Kemp and Raffensperger.“Nobody asks about it at events,” Clark added, referring to the 2020 election. “They’re asking about jobs and inflation.”Alexis Hill, a canvasser with the New Georgia Project, went door to door in Fairburn, Ga., to encourage people to register to vote.Alyssa Pointer/ReutersDemocrats look ahead to a difficult autumnThe Rev. Raphael Warnock, the preacher turned senator, and Stacey Abrams, the former state lawmaker and voting rights champion, ran unopposed in their primaries for Senate and governor this year. That doesn’t mean they’ll have an easy time of it in the fall, with a base that leading Democrats are describing openly as “quite demoralized.”Abrams is one of those Democrats, like Beto O’Rourke in Texas or Amy McGrath in Kentucky, whose national stardom and appeal among activists sometimes outstrip their local support. Polls show her behind Kemp by about five points in head-to-head matchups.“When you lift someone up that high, people love to see you fall,” said Martha Zoller, a former aide to Perdue who now hosts a talk radio show in Gainesville, Ga.Abrams’s campaign released a memo on Sunday outlining what it described as her strengths heading into November. It makes three basic points:Democratic turnout is holding up. The Abrams team says that “Democrats are on track to break records” in Tuesday’s primary, a fact that has Republicans arguing that Georgia’s new voting law has not suppressed voting.As Nick Corasaniti and Maya King reported on Monday morning, however, “It is too soon to draw any sweeping conclusions, because the true impact of the voting law cannot be drawn from topline early voting data alone.” We’ll know more after tomorrow.So-called crossover voters will go for Democrats in November. Abrams aides say they have identified “nearly 35,000 voters who we expect to vote for the Democratic ticket in November but who cast Republican ballots for the primary,” a group they are calling “crossover voters.” Of the 855,000 Georgia voters who had cast their ballots as of Friday, when early voting closed, the Abrams campaign estimates that more than half — 52.9 percent — were Republicans, while only 46.5 percent were Democrats. (Georgia does not register voters by political party.)The Abrams team spins this as “a remarkably close margin,” given all the attention the news media has paid to Georgia’s big G.O.P. primaries, which are more competitive than the major Democratic ones. But it also could be an ominous sign for Democrats that Republican voters are more energized heading into the fall.Georgia is growing more diverse, and that will help Democrats. The speed of voter registration has slowed in Georgia, which was once a model for the ability of grass-roots organizing to overcome entrenched obstacles to voting. That slowdown could hurt Democrats in the fall, although the Abrams campaign says it has identified about 42,000 Georgians who have already voted in this year’s primary but did not vote in the 2018 general election. Her team also says it has found more than 100,000 Black voters who skipped the 2018 primary but have already voted this year, as well as 40,000 additional white voters and an unspecified number of new Asian American and Latino voters. Abrams lost her first race for governor against Kemp by just under 55,000 votes, so those new voters could be significant.It’s not a safe assumption that voters of color will choose Democrats at the same rates they have in the past, however. Biden has lost support among Black and Latino Americans since taking office. As of April, the president’s approval rating was just 67 percent among Black adults, down 20 percentage points since the start of his term. Not only is turnout a question mark, but it’s also by no means clear that Democrats will be able to hang on to all of those voters if inflation continues to bite into their pocketbooks in November.What to readPresident Biden pledged to defend Taiwan against attack, moving a step beyond longstanding U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity.” Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Peter Baker report from Tokyo and Seoul.Representative Mo Brooks, a hard-right Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama, seems to be making an unlikely comeback after his low poll numbers prompted Donald Trump to take back his endorsement, Trip Gabriel reports.In Texas, the closely watched House race between Representative Henry Cuellar and his progressive challenger, Jessica Cisneros, encapsulates the tensions within the Democratic Party on immigration, Jazmine Ulloa and Jennifer Medina report.how they run George P. Bush talking to members of Texas Strong Republican Women before an event for the attorney general’s race.Shelby Tauber for The New York TimesPaxton’s legal troubles haven’t amounted to political onesKen Paxton, the Texas attorney general, has faced his share of legal concerns in recent years, something that George P. Bush, his rival in the primary this year and the state’s land commissioner, has seized upon as he seeks to oust him from office.But, if history is any indicator, Bush has his work cut out for him.In March, Paxton topped the primary field with 43 percent of the votes, short of the 50 percent required to win the nomination outright. Bush placed second with 23 percent, and their runoff election is on Tuesday.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      After Fetterman’s Stroke, Doctors Look at Senate Campaign Prospects

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      What really is the prognosis for John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate nominee from Pennsylvania who had a stroke on May 13?The 52-year-old lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania clinched his party’s nomination just a few days later, setting up one of the most consequential Senate contests of the midterm elections. But urgent medical questions remain.He was discharged from the hospital, his campaign said on Sunday, and Mr. Fetterman has said doctors assured him that he would make a complete recovery — but the campaign has not said when he will be able to return to campaigning.“I am going to take the time I need now to rest and get to 100 percent so I can go full speed soon and flip this seat blue,” Mr. Fetterman said in a statement on Sunday, adding that he felt “great” but intended to “continue to rest and recover.”With such an important race in the balance, one that could decide the Senate majority, the state of Mr. Fetterman’s health is of intense public interest. Yet, despite repeated requests, his campaign did not make him or his doctors available to discuss his stroke and his medical treatment.And specialists in stroke, heart disease and electrophysiology said that some of the campaign’s public statements do not offer a sufficient explanation for Mr. Fetterman’s described diagnosis or the treatment they say he has received.The stroke, he said in a statement released by his campaign, was caused by a blood clot. He said the clot was the result of atrial fibrillation, a condition in which the upper chambers of the heart beat chaotically and are out of sync with the lower chambers of the heart. The campaign said the clot was successfully removed by doctors at a nearby community hospital, Lancaster General Hospital.On May 17, the day of the primary election, Mr. Fetterman had a pacemaker and a defibrillator implanted in his heart which, his press office said in a statement, “will help protect his heart and address the underlying cause of his stroke, atrial fibrillation (A-fib), by regulating his heart rate and rhythm.” His press office said he is expected to fully recover from his stroke.Medical specialists asked questions about Mr. Fetterman’s treatment with a defibrillator. They say it would make sense only if he has a different condition that puts him at risk of sudden death, like cardiomyopathy — a weakened heart muscle. Such a heart condition may have caused the blood clot. Or, the doctors say the campaign could be correct about afib causing the clot.Thrombectomy, the method likely used to remove the clot, also indicates that Mr. Fetterman experienced more than a tiny stroke, although prompt treatment may have averted damage and saved his brain.“I was just in the hospital for over a week,” Mr. Fetterman said in a statement. “I am aware that this is serious, and I am taking my recovery seriously.”In a brief interview on May 20, Gisele Barreto Fetterman, Mr. Fetterman’s wife, told the story of his stroke, from her perspective.“We had been on the road campaigning,” she said. “We had had breakfast, and he was feeling fine.”The couple got into a car to go to an event at Millersville University when, she said, “the left side of his mouth drooped for just a second.”“I had a gut instinct that something was happening,” Ms. Fetterman said. “I yelled to the trooper, ‘I think he’s having a stroke.’ He said, ‘I’m fine. What are you talking about? I feel fine.’”Gisele Barreto Fetterman, Mr. Fetterman’s wife, spoke at a watch party in Pittsburgh on May 17.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe state trooper soon drove Mr. Fetterman to Lancaster General Hospital where his treatment began. Ms. Fetterman said it involved going through his groin, which suggests he had a thrombectomy, a procedure in which doctors slide a small plastic tube through the groin, advance it into the brain and then pull the blood clot out using suction or a wire mesh.It was not until two days later that his campaign reported that Mr. Fetterman had been hospitalized with a stroke. Asked about the delay, Ms. Fetterman said, “Less than 48 hours is pretty impressive timing when dealing with sensitive medical issues.”Shortly after that question, Rebecca Katz, a senior adviser in Mr. Fetterman’s campaign, abruptly ended the call with Ms. Fetterman.Medical specialists said that some aspects of the story were difficult to reconcile with their knowledge of stroke treatment.Dr. Lee Schwamm, a stroke specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, said doctors do a thrombectomy only when a large artery in the brain is blocked.“You typically wouldn’t do it for someone with just a little bit of facial droop,” he said. Dr. Schwamm wondered if the doctors who examined Mr. Fetterman in the hospital had noticed other symptoms, like a loss of vision on his left side or lack of awareness of his left side, often called “neglect.”“These strokes tend to be very severe,” Dr. Schwamm said. “He is fortunate that he went to a hospital that could treat it.”Pressed about the stroke symptoms as described by Ms. Fetterman, a spokesman for Mr. Fetterman wrote in an email that he “told The Associated Press last week that Gisele ‘noticed that John was not himself, and shortly after he started slurring his speech.’”But what caused the stroke?Ms. Fetterman said her husband knew he had atrial fibrillation, which confers a high risk of stroke, and that he had taken anticoagulants, a standard method of reducing the stroke risk in people with atrial fibrillation, “on and off.”But the treatment with a pacemaker and defibrillator is a puzzle if all he had was atrial fibrillation, medical specialists said.“This doesn’t entirely make sense,” said Dr. Brahmajee Nallamothu, an interventional cardiologist at the University of Michigan.Dr. Elaine Wan, an associate professor of medicine in cardiology and cardiac electrophysiology at Columbia University Medical Center, said defibrillators — which always come with pacemakers — are used to prevent sudden death. They usually are implanted in people with weakened heart muscle, or those who survived an episode in which the heart stopped, or in people with a genetic predisposition for sudden cardiac death.“We would not use it for atrial fibrillation,” Dr. Wan said.Dr. Rajat Deo, an associate professor of medicine and a cardiac electrophysiologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, agreed about the use of defibrillators and said he shared Dr. Wan’s suspicion that Mr. Fetterman has a damaged heart.“I think it would be fair to say he has at least two separate issues,” Dr. Deo said of Mr. Fetterman. “One is afib, from which he most likely suffered a stroke that was successfully treated.”He added, “The second issue is that he likely has some underlying cardiac condition that increases his risk for ventricular arrhythmias and thus sudden cardiac death.”The afib could be related to the other condition, Dr. Deo said. Patients with a weakened heart muscle are also at risk of developing atrial fibrillation.On the other hand, Dr. Deo says, Mr. Fetterman’s atrial fibrillation may have nothing to do with his weakened heart. Without more information from his doctors it is impossible to know.Dr. Deo added that if Mr. Fetterman is receiving appropriate state-of-the-art medical therapies and is protected with a defibrillator from sudden cardiac death, “he should do quite well while he continues his campaign.”Experts also raised concerns about the prospects for former Vice President Dick Cheney, who had a defibrillator implanted in 2001. He finished two terms in the White House, including a hard-fought re-election in 2004.And there is time before general election campaigning in Pennsylvania begins in earnest: It is unclear who Mr. Fetterman’s opponent will be, as the Republican race remains too close to call and may head to a recount.But Dr. Wan was less sanguine than Dr. Deo about Mr. Fetterman.“He is at risk for sudden cardiac death,” she said. “For someone on the campaign trail that might raise concerns.” More

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      Pence, Tiptoeing Away From Trump, Lays Groundwork for ’24 Run

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      The former vice president is part of a group of Republicans who have visited early nominating states as they weigh a challenge to their party’s most dominant force.AMES, Iowa — For months, former Vice President Mike Pence has been edging away from his alliance of convenience with former President Donald J. Trump.After four years of service bordering on subservience, the increasingly emboldened Mr. Pence is seeking to reintroduce himself to Republican voters ahead of a potential presidential bid by setting himself apart from what many in the G.O.P. see as the worst impulses of Mr. Trump. He’s among a small group in his party considering a run in 2024 no matter what Mr. Trump decides.Mr. Pence first used high-profile speeches to criticize the former president’s push to overturn the 2020 election results, stating flatly that Mr. Trump was “wrong” in his assertion that Mr. Pence could have blocked the Electoral College ratification on Jan. 6, 2021. Mr. Pence then unsubtly visited the Charlottesville, Va., memorial to Heather Heyer, who was killed in the 2017 white supremacist riot there that Mr. Trump sought to rationalize by faulting “both sides.”Now, on Monday outside Atlanta, Mr. Pence is taking his boldest and most unambiguous step toward confronting his former political patron. On the eve of Georgia’s primary, the former vice president will stump with Gov. Brian Kemp, perhaps the top target of Mr. Trump’s 2022 vengeance campaign against Republicans who didn’t bow to his election lies.Mr. Pence grew close with Mr. Kemp during the pandemic and 2020 campaign, and now he is lining up against Mr. Trump’s handpicked candidate, former Senator David Perdue. But more than that, Mr. Pence is seeking to claim a share of credit in what’s expected to be the starkest repudiation yet of Mr. Trump’s attempt to consolidate power, with Mr. Kemp widely expected to prevail.It is an emphatic break between the onetime running mates, who have not spoken for nearly a year but have also not publicly waged a proxy war until now. Mr. Pence, his aides say, knows full well what going down to Georgia represents and the symbolism alone will stand without him targeting Mr. Trump or even Mr. Perdue in his remarks.In a statement ahead of Mr. Pence’s visit to Georgia, Mr. Trump belittled his vice president through a spokesman. “Mike Pence was set to lose a governor’s race in 2016 before he was plucked up and his political career was salvaged,” said Taylor Budowich, the spokesman. “Now, desperate to chase his lost relevance, Pence is parachuting into races, hoping someone is paying attention. The reality is, President Trump is already 82-3 with his endorsements, and there’s nothing stopping him from saving America in 2022 and beyond.”Georgia may represent only the beginning of a new rivalry.In Texas on Jan. 6, 2021, a Trump supporter cut Pence’s name from a campaign sign.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesMr. Pence on Monday will stump with Gov. Brian Kemp, perhaps the top target of Donald Trump’s 2022 vengeance campaign.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesIn an interview before a speech last month in Iowa, Mr. Pence pointedly declined to rule out running even if Mr. Trump also enters the 2024 primary. “We’ll go where we’re called,” Mr. Pence said, explaining that he and his wife would act on prayer. “That’s the way Karen and I have always approached these things.”How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.A Modern-Day Party Boss: Hoarding cash, doling out favors and seeking to crush rivals, Mr. Trump is behaving like the head of a 19th-century political machine.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.Recalling the gratitude he gets from resisting Mr. Trump’s demands that he block Congress from affirming President Biden’s victory, he said: “I have been very moved traveling around the country how much people have made a point to express appreciation, it has been very humbling to me.”Yet in the same interview, he recalled spending “five years in the foxhole” with Mr. Trump, noting that he was “incredibly proud of the record,” before giving a dinner speech trumpeting the “Trump-Pence” administration multiple times.His approach amounts to the first soundings of a sort of Trump-without-the-chaos strategy, a bet that Republican primary voters crave the policy record of the last administration but without the impulsiveness, norm-breaking and naked demagogy.There may yet be a constituency for such an appeal, as this year’s G.O.P. primaries demonstrate how Trumpism is flourishing no matter whom its architect blesses.However, it’s far from clear that the sober-minded Mr. Pence is the best vessel for that message at a time many G.O.P. voters thrill more to closed-fist Trumpian pugnacity than paeans to the power of prayer.As of now, Mr. Trump is the clear favorite. Yet all his hints about becoming the first former president in over a century to try to reclaim the office haven’t stopped a host of other potential aspirants.Mr. Pence and the president he served for four years on the campaign trail in Michigan in 2020.Doug Mills/The New York TimesWhether it’s Mr. Pence or former Trump cabinet members or a range of other elected officials, ambitious Republicans are already visiting early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire, courting influential lawmakers and cultivating relationships with donors.Even if Mr. Trump runs, many Republicans believe there will still be a hotly contested race.“I don’t think it ends the primary,” said Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, who is mulling a presidential campaign. “My sense is you’re still going to have a very robust primary here just because everyone has to earn it.”So far, Republican contenders are voting with their feet.Among those who have beaten a path to the early nominating states: Mr. Pence; former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley; and Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Tim Scott of South Carolina and Rick Scott of Florida.Should Mr. Trump run, he would most likely sideline some Republicans who would either find him difficult to beat or just as soon wait it out. A smaller group of contenders, however, may find the less crowded field more appealing.Those ranks include former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who was one of Mr. Trump’s earliest and most prominent supporters in 2016, but who has broken with him since the 2020 election.“Given the problems the country is facing at home and abroad, if you only feel up for it if somebody else doesn’t run, well, then you better not run,” Mr. Christie said. “Everybody who is considering running for president in ’24 should have a moral obligation to make that decision regardless of who else runs.”As for his own plans, he said: “Sure, I’m thinking about it.”Mr. Trump’s populist and pugilist imprint on the party has been cemented, whether he runs or not. That’s why Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is being so closely watched by conservative voters, donors and activists.Seizing on every chance to confront the left and the news media, and to draw coverage on right-wing media for both, Mr. DeSantis has risen to second place behind Mr. Trump in a series of way-too-early polls of Republican voters.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who split with Mr. Trump over the 2020 vote, campaigning for Governor Kemp in Georgia.Elijah Nouvelage/Getty ImagesConservative voters, donors and activists are watching for a possible run by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesBut he’s steadfastly refused to visit Iowa and New Hampshire as a would-be White House candidate, leaving Florida mostly just to stockpile more money for his re-election. That’s not to say he’s not keeping his eye on national politics — he reached out to Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa to wish her well before her response to President Biden’s State of the Union address this year.Mr. DeSantis, though, is hardly beloved among his fellow Republican governors, a group that’s unlikely to rally around him in the same fashion they did George W. Bush, then the Texas governor, in 2000.“I know there’s a lot of talk on Fox News and stuff like that on the national level or in Florida but there’s really not talk about him here in New Hampshire,” Mr. Sununu said of Mr. DeSantis.What there is there, said the longtime Republican strategist Jim Merrill, is a quiet but persistent appetite among many in the rank-and-file to turn the page on Mr. Trump, at least as the party’s nominee.“There is a desire to move on here and it’s not just among the John Kasich and Bill Weld crowd,” said Mr. Merrill, alluding to two former Republican governors who ran as anti-Trump moderates in the state’s primary.Yet if Mr. Trump faces a divided Republican field as he did in the first wave of caucuses and primaries in 2016, he could again claim the nomination with a plurality rather than a majority in many states because of his seemingly unshakable hold on a third of his party’s electorate.At a county G.O.P. dinner in Ames — a college community that’s more upscale, and decidedly less Trump oriented, than much of Iowa — it was not difficult to find Republicans eager to find a fresh nominee, even if they edged into saying as much with Midwest Nice euphemisms.“He’s calm and predictable so that’s a good thing,” Eric Weber said of Mr. Pence.Mr. Trump was “too divisive even though what he did is great,” Mr. Weber said as his wife, Carol, suggested another Trump bid “may divide people.”Yet they weren’t ready to sign up with Mr. Pence, as both noted their affection for Mr. Cotton and Mr. DeSantis.Mr. Pence’s speech was received well if not overwhelmingly so. It had all the bearings of a Republican in Iowa leaning toward a presidential bid — knowing references to local politicians, Midwest totems like John Deere and attacks on the Democrats in power in Washington.Yet it also had the distinct air of a pre-Trump brand of Republicanism, with only the slightest criticism of the news media (and that was even gloved with “all due respect”), references to becoming a grandfather and G-rated jokes that could have just as easily been delivered by Mitt Romney (it involved Washington, D.C., and “hot air.”)Mr. Pence’s Iowa speech featured references to local politicians and attacks on the Democrats in power in Washington.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesFew at the gathering liked Mr. Pence as much as Kevin and Linda Lauver.Their phones blaring with tornado warnings, the Lauvers took shelter in the Ames Country Club basement ahead of the April G.O.P. dinner. And they bumped into the evening’s keynote speaker.“We want somebody from the Midwest,” Ms. Lauver told Mr. Pence, nudging him to run for president in 2024. “I like Mike,” Mr. Lauver chimed in.Mr. Pence earnestly patted his heart and offered his thanks.As Mr. Lauver headed back upstairs after the tornado false alarm, he wanted to be clear that he liked Mr. Trump.“He did what he said what he was going to do,” said Mr. Lauver, before adding in Iowa deadpan: “When he said the least it was the best.”Now, he continued, “We need him to say, ‘OK, I’ll step aside.’” Then Mr. Lauver paused.“I don’t know if he’ll do that.” More

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      Democrats See Headwinds in Georgia, and Everywhere Else

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      Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams, viewed as strong candidates by their party, will be running against President Biden’s low ratings as well as their G.O.P. rivals.ATLANTA — Standing at the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church, the spiritual home of Martin Luther King Jr., the Rev. Raphael Warnock led a sermon on the last Sunday before Georgia’s Tuesday primaries that was about “getting to where you need to go” — and navigating the challenges ahead.“Rise up and transform every opposition, every obstacle, into an opportunity,” Mr. Warnock urged. He was not explicitly talking about his other job as a United States senator, or the fact that he is one of the most endangered Democrats in the country in 2022, or the headwinds confronting his party. But he might as well have been.“Don’t you dare sleep on Tuesday,” he said.For months, nearly all the political oxygen in Georgia and beyond has been sucked up by ferocious Republican primaries, intraparty feuds that have become proxy wars for Donald J. Trump’s power and fueled by his retribution agenda. But the ugliness of the G.O.P. infighting has at times obscured a political landscape that is increasingly tilted in the Republican direction in Georgia — and nationally.Democrats were excited for Stacey Abrams, the former state legislator and voting-rights activist, to jump into the 2022 governor’s race, promising a potential rematch of the 2018 contest she only narrowly lost. Mr. Warnock has emerged not only as a compelling speaker but also as one of his party’s strongest fund-raisers. Yet the growing fear for Democrats is that even the strongest candidates and recruits can outrun President Biden’s wheezing approval ratings by only so much, and are at risk of getting washed away in a developing red wave.“I think 2020 was a referendum on Trump,” said Ashley Fogle, a 44-year-old Democrat who lives in Atlanta and attended Ebenezer church on Sunday. “I just don’t know if there’s that same energy in 2022.”Already, a Republican-led remapping in Georgia has effectively erased one Democratic House seat and made another vulnerable, as the Republican advantage in the state delegation could balloon to 10-4, from the current 8-6 edge.The challenges facing Democrats are cyclical and structural.The Democratic majorities on Capitol Hill could scarcely be narrower. The party in power almost always loses in a president’s first midterm election — even absent the current overlapping national crises, some of which are beyond Mr. Biden’s control.Gasoline prices just hit their highest level ever nationwide over the weekend. The president’s approval rating plunged in an Associated Press poll to a new low of 39 percent. The stock market dropped for the seventh consecutive week. Violent crime rates have spiked. A baby formula shortage has alarmed parents. And inflation remains high.“The problem is not messaging — the problem is reality,” said Representative Ritchie Torres, Democrat of New York, citing inflation as the “greatest obstacle to retaining the majority.”The greatest hope for Democrats appears to be potential Republican acts of self-sabotage: the party nominating outside-the-mainstream candidates or failing to coalesce after divisive primaries.In Washington, much of the Biden agenda is frozen in a congressional morass. The party’s left wing and centrists are busily blaming each other for the state of affairs and clashing over what to do next, with student loan forgiveness emerging as one divisive flashpoint.Inside the White House, whose political operation has been a subject of quiet griping in some corners for months, a furious effort is afoot to reframe the 2022 elections as a choice between the two parties, rather than a referendum on Democratic rule. Anita Dunn, an aggressive operator and longtime Biden adviser, has rejoined the administration to sharpen its messaging.“The Democratic base is quite demoralized at this moment,” Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, one of the party’s leading progressive voices, put it bluntly.If Georgia was the scene of the highest highs for Democrats in the 2020 cycle — turning blue at the presidential level for the first time since 1992, flipping two Senate seats to cement control of the chamber and providing Democrats their only tightly contested House pickup in the nation — it is not clear whether the ideologically sprawling and multiracial Biden coalition that unified to oust Mr. Trump is replicable.Energized Black voters, moderate white suburbanites, Asian Americans and some Hispanic Americans all played a role in propelling Democratic victories in the state in 2020 and 2021, while some of the rural Republican base stayed home in the January Senate runoffs.This fall, Mr. Warnock is expected to face Herschel Walker, the Republican former football star with scant political experience. Mr. Warnock has already begun leveraging a $23 million war chest to tell voters that he feels their pain — and to make plain the limits of his power as a freshman senator.“People are hurting. People are tired,” Mr. Warnock said in his first television ad this year. More recently, he took a different approach, almost pleading with disaffected voters: “I’m not a magician.”Representative Carolyn Bourdeaux, left, will face a primary on Tuesday against Representative Lucy McBath.Jenni Girtman/EPA, via Shutterstock, pool photo by Greg NashRepresentative Carolyn Bourdeaux, whose Georgia district was redrawn after she captured what had been a Republican-held seat in 2020, is now facing a primary on Tuesday against Representative Lucy McBath outside Atlanta. Ms. Bourdeaux, a moderate, had a warning for her party.“They need to do more to communicate clearly with voters that they are a steady hand at the wheel of getting the economy back on track for people,” Ms. Bourdeaux said. But she, too, saw a chance to draw a sharp contrast with what she cast as ascendant far-right Republicans. “The other side, candidly, has lost its mind,” she said, pointing to efforts to restrict voting rights and abortion rights.In the Republican race for governor, Gov. Brian Kemp has been locked in a primary with former Senator David Perdue, who was recruited by Mr. Trump. The former president remains angry at the governor for certifying the 2020 election and, according to people close to him, unlikely to ever endorse Mr. Kemp.Ms. Abrams has emerged as a national star among Democrats. But privately Democratic strategists fear that her high-water mark might have come in 2018, when she lost in a Democratic wave year.Most polling shows a close race for governor and Senate, with a slight Republican advantage.As general-election matchups come into focus, Mr. Biden’s advisers argue that there is still time to crystallize a clear choice between the president and congressional Democrats, and the other side. Republicans have already elevated candidates like State Senator Doug Mastriano, a far-right 2020 election denier who is the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania. And as the Supreme Court appears poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, many Republicans have embraced stringent anti-abortion positions, views that are often out of step with the majority of Americans, polling shows.Democrats are seeking to cast Republican candidates as extremists more consumed with culture wars than finding solutions to the nation’s most pressing problems, and the president’s advisers and allies say Democrats will continue to push the message that they are doing everything possible to lower prices.But Ms. Bourdeaux, who is locked in a primary battle of her own, said that the kind of Democratic intraparty “infighting that you’re seeing right now” complicates the party’s messaging.President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were greeted by Senator Raphael Warnock as they visited Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta in January.Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Warnock told his congregation he met with Mr. Biden at the White House, putting up a photo on the screen of a selfie he took with a picture of Ebenezer Baptist Church that hung in the halls of the West Wing.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? 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      Scorned by Trump, Mo Brooks Rises in Alabama Senate Race

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      Mr. Brooks, a hard-right representative, seems to be making an unlikely comeback in a Senate race in which the Trump endorsement may not determine votes of Trump supporters.CLANTON, Ala. — Two months ago, Representative Mo Brooks, whose hard-right credentials were unblemished, seemed to be imploding in the Alabama Republican Senate race.Under a rain of attack ads, polls showed him falling behind two rivals. Former President Donald J. Trump humiliated Mr. Brooks by rescinding an earlier endorsement.But Mr. Brooks has staged a compelling comeback, with recent polling putting him in a statistical tie for the lead in a tight three-candidate race ahead of the primary on Tuesday.In a twist of fate, the Brooks bounce-back appears to be driven by voters who identify as “Trump Republicans” — another bit of evidence, after recent primaries from Nebraska to Pennsylvania, that the former president’s political movement may no longer be entirely under his command.“Brooks may be surging just at the right time,” a conservative talk radio host, Dale Jackson, said over the Birmingham airwaves on Friday.Mr. Brooks — who appeared at Mr. Trump’s Jan. 6 rally before the siege of the Capitol, where he goaded election deniers to start “kicking ass” — has returned to contention not only despite Mr. Trump’s fickleness, but also in the face of opposition by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader. A super PAC aligned with Mr. McConnell has funneled $2 million to a group attacking Mr. Brooks in television ads.In 12 years as an arch-conservative in the House, Mr. Brooks has bucked party leadership, which won him no fans among Senate Republican leaders. Mr. McConnell and his allies would prefer a different replacement for the open seat of Senator Richard Shelby, 88, who is retiring. Alabama’s deep-seated conservatism means that the Republican nominee is all but assured of winning in November.Katie Britt, a lawyer and former aide to retiring Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, is currently leading in polls for the seat Mr. Shelby is vacating. Sean Gardner/Getty ImagesA polling average by Real Clear Politics showed Katie Britt, a former aide to Mr. Shelby, in the lead with 34 percent, Mr. Brooks with 29 percent and Mike Durant, a military contractor and Army veteran, with 24 percent. If no candidate consolidates more than 50 percent on Tuesday, the top two advance to a runoff on June 21.“Slowly but surely, conservatives are figuring out I’m the only conservative in this race,” Mr. Brooks said in an interview. He called Mr. Durant “a John McCain-type of Republican” and Ms. Britt “a Mitch McConnell-establishment, open-borders, cheap-foreign-labor, special-interest-group Republican.”A poker-faced former prosecutor, Mr. Brooks nonetheless seemed to savor, at a couple of campaign appearances on Friday, his comeback from March, when he was polling in the teens and Mr. Trump abandoned him. The former president accused Mr. Brooks of having gone “woke” because he had urged a crowd, months earlier, to put the 2020 election “behind you.”Mr. Brooks, 68, “is the least woke person in the state of Alabama,” said Terry Lathan, a former chair of the Alabama Republican Party, who is a co-chair of the Brooks campaign.In style and experience, there are strong differences between the stolid Mr. Brooks and the energetic Ms. Britt, a lawyer whose first digital ad featured her marriage to Wesley Britt, a former University of Alabama football star — no small credential in a state where the other senator, Tommy Tuberville, is a former Auburn University football coach. Ms. Britt, 40, presents herself as a committed social conservative. Campaign ads feature her calling to get “kids and God back in the classroom” and, while striding through a girls’ locker room, accusing “crazy liberals” of wanting to let boys in.A poll on Thursday for The Alabama Daily News and Gray Television showed likely voters who identified as “traditional conservative Republicans” favored Ms. Britt and Mr. Durant over Mr. Brooks.But Mr. Brooks won the support of a plurality of voters who identified as “Trump Republicans” — 35 percent, up from 26 percent in an earlier survey.The race has seen millions of dollars spent on negative ads attacking all three candidates that in many ways have shaped the turbulent peaks and valleys of their campaigns.In particular, opinions of Mr. Durant and Ms. Britt, who as first-time candidates are less well-known, have been battered by assaults over the airwaves.The anti-tax Club for Growth, which supports Mr. Brooks, has spent $6 million in the state on ads, including one barraging Ms. Britt — the former head of an Alabama business group — as “really a lobbyist” who supported a state gas tax increase. One ad flashes a tweet from Donald Trump Jr. in 2021 — back when his father still liked Mr. Brooks — calling Ms. Britt “the Alabama Liz Cheney.”The share of voters with a favorable view of Ms. Britt dropped six points in the recent Alabama Daily News poll, compared with a survey in early May.Mr. Brooks, already a known quantity, better withstood attacks and is slightly above water in terms of favorable and unfavorable opinions with voters.“The story of the numbers in a way is that everyone at this point has an image that is pretty close to the water line,” said John Rogers, a strategist for Cygnal, which conducted the Alabama Daily News polling.Mike Durant, a former Army pilot, is currently trailing the other two top contenders for the Alabama Senate seat. Charity Rachelle for The New York TimesIt is Mr. Durant, a former Army pilot who figured in the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” incident in Somalia, who seems most battered — and most upset — by the blasts of negativity on the airwaves. In March, he was leading in polls. Now he is struggling to make it into a runoff, after being accused of weakness on gun rights and fighting off a false claim that he doesn’t live in Alabama.In politics, “the only thing that matters is how much money you’ve got and how low you’re willing to go,” he said with disgust on Friday. “It’s very, very disturbing. I hope it will backfire.”Mr. Brooks’s time in the barrel took place in the spring. A super PAC favoring Ms. Britt, Alabama’s Future, dredged up clips of the congressman disparaging Mr. Trump in 2016. “I don’t think you can trust Donald Trump with anything he says,” Mr. Brooks said back then. Another outside group, calling itself No More Mo, ran an ad in the Florida media market that includes Mar-a-Lago, which blared that Mr. Brooks was “a proven loser” and “Trump deserves winners.”Mr. Trump withdrew his endorsement of Mr. Brooks shortly after.His stated reason was that Mr. Brooks had gone wobbly on election denialism by urging voters to focus on future races. Mr. Brooks revealed in response that Mr. Trump had pressed him for months after Jan. 6 to illegally “rescind” the 2020 election and to remove President Biden, and that he told Mr. Trump it was impossible under the Constitution.Despite the Trumpian snub, Mr. Brooks continues to falsely maintain that the election was stolen from the former president, a view widely held by Alabama Republicans.On May 12, Mr. Brooks was subpoenaed by the House committee investigating the violence on Jan. 6, 2021. On that date, Mr. Brooks, wearing body armor, had asked the roiling crowd of Trump supporters gathered near the White House, “Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America?” Cheers erupted. He went on: “Will you fight for America?” Not long after, the protest became a riot and the Capitol was breached.On Friday night, Mr. Brooks appeared in Clanton at Peach Park, a popular roadside fruit and ice cream stand adorned with pictures of beauty queens posing with peaches, for an outdoor screening of the movie “2000 Mules.” The film is the latest conservative effort to promote the myth of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. The Georgia State Elections Board last week dismissed some claims central to the movie.“What we’re going to see tonight is a reaffirmation of what we already know,” Mr. Brooks told a sparse crowd.Awaiting the start of the film, Apryl Marie Fogel told Mr. Brooks that she had been an undecided voter, but had made up her mind to support him.Ms. Fogel is the host of “Straight Talk with Apryl Marie” on Montgomery talk radio. She told Mr. Brooks that on her show that day, “We all agreed that it’s going to be a runoff between you and Katie and that you have picked up steam.”There was speculation on air, she said, that Mr. Trump would re-endorse him.Mr. Brooks paused, his face a mask.“That would be interesting,” he allowed. More