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      Tim Ryan Is Said to Plan Senate Bid

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTim Ryan, a Top Democrat in Ohio, Is Said to Plan Senate BidMr. Ryan, who mounted a long-shot campaign for president in 2019, plans to compete for the state’s open Senate seat. His campaign will test Democrats’ strength in a state tilting to the right.Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio has argued that Democrats will build enduring majorities only if they reclaim support from a multiracial, working-class coalition of voters.Credit…Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesFeb. 1, 2021, 5:34 p.m. ETRepresentative Tim Ryan of Ohio plans to run for his state’s open Senate seat, Democrats who have spoken with him said, a bid that would test whether even a Democrat with roots in the blue-collar Youngstown region and close ties to organized labor can win in the increasingly Republican state.Mr. Ryan, an 18-year House veteran, has reached out to a host of Ohio and national Democrats in recent days about the seat now held by Senator Rob Portman, a Republican who stunned officials in both parties by announcing last week that he would retire.Former Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio, a Democrat who has been encouraging Mr. Ryan to run, said of the congressman, “I think he is the person with the best chance, given this political climate we’re in and given the way Ohio has been performing.”“He has the ability to appeal to a lot of independents, and Democrats will be very excited about this candidacy,” Mr. Strickland said.Mr. Ryan has also discussed his candidacy with Representative Marcy Kaptur, the longest-serving member in Ohio’s congressional delegation, and national labor leaders, including Lee Saunders of Afscme, while also receiving a nudge from Hillary Clinton.Asked about these conversations, Mr. Ryan said on Monday that he was “encouraged by their support, enthusiasm and commitment,” adding, “The U.S. Senate needs another working-class voice, and I’m very serious about the opportunity to continue representing the people of Ohio.”He is expected to declare his candidacy by the beginning of March, according to Democrats briefed on his planning.Long one of the country’s quintessential political battlegrounds, Ohio has turned sharply right since former President Donald J. Trump’s ascent. Mr. Trump carried the state by eight percentage points in 2016 and won it again by the same margin last year, even as Joseph R. Biden Jr. emphasized his working-class appeal and made a late push in the state.Senator Sherrod Brown is the only Democrat remaining in statewide office in Ohio. And even with his fiercely populist approach, Mr. Brown has lost ground among once-reliable Democrats in eastern Ohio, including those in the industrial area south of Lake Erie and in the more rural enclaves that trace the Ohio River.Mr. Ryan hails from Niles, Ohio, just north of Youngstown, a region filled with voters who are effectively Trump Democrats, many of them union members or retirees. He outperformed Mr. Biden in his district, but Democrats there suffered a series of losses in other down-ballot races.The question, should Mr. Ryan become his party’s nominee, is if he can win back these mostly white voters.Mr. Ryan has long considered running statewide, but in the past decided on seeking re-election to the House seat he first won in 2002, when he succeeded the famously fiery, and corrupt, James Traficant.Mr. Ryan mounted a long-shot bid for the presidency in 2019 with the same message he’s expected to carry into the Senate contest — that Democrats will build enduring majorities only if they reclaim support from a multiracial, working-class coalition of voters.Beyond elevating that argument, Mr. Ryan, 47, has another compelling reason to run for the Senate: As Republicans grow stronger in eastern Ohio, his district has become increasingly competitive, and the Republican Party could redraw the state’s districts to make it even more forbidding for him in 2022.While he has risen on the Appropriations Committee, Mr. Ryan has mostly given up on his hopes to join the House leadership, having been turned back in his 2016 challenge against Nancy Pelosi, then the minority leader.In Congress, Mr. Ryan has been a close ally of unions and has generally toed the Democratic line, shifting toward a stance in support of abortion rights in recent years. Even before formally announcing his bid, Mr. Ryan drew support from the state chapter of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which on Monday released a letter endorsing his undeclared candidacy.Mr. Ryan will enter the Senate race as an early front-runner. He is one of the few Democrats left in the state’s congressional delegation, and represents a region of the state the party is desperate to reclaim. He also has deep relationships with national leaders.On Saturday, Mrs. Clinton publicly encouraged Mr. Ryan to run for the Senate, repaying him for his support for her when she ran against Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential primary race.“You’re right, Kathy!” Mrs. Clinton wrote on Twitter, promoting a message from a Democratic activist in Ohio, Kathy DiCristofaro, who wrote that “Ohio needs leaders like @timryan to fight for working people.”Mr. Ryan also has an ally in the White House, having endorsed Mr. Biden in November 2019, a low ebb in the race for the candidate.It’s unlikely, though, that the congressman will run unopposed for the Senate nomination. One Democrat whose name has been floated for the seat, Mayor Nan Whaley of Dayton, said she was “thinking about it” when asked on the day Mr. Portman announced his retirement. Ms. Whaley is also considering a run for governor, though, and many Ohio Democrats believe she and Mr. Ryan would try to avoid clashing in a primary.Equally intriguing to some Democrats in the state is Dr. Amy Acton, who as the former director of Ohio’s Department of Health ran the coronavirus response effort last year for Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican. She is considering joining the race, The Plain Dealer of Cleveland reported last week, and received her own online boost when Connie Schultz, a longtime Ohio columnist and the wife of Mr. Brown, wrote on Twitter: “Imagine Dr. Amy Acton as Ohio’s next U.S. senator. I sure can.”The Republicans are likely to have an even more crowded primary field. The race appears to be wide open after the announcement last week by Representative Jim Jordan, the far-right Trump ally whom the former president awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, that he would remain in the House.A number of other House members may run, including Representative Steve Stivers, a Columbus-area lawmaker. A host of would-be self-funders are also eyeing the seat, including Jane Timken, the chair of the Ohio Republican Party.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How to Give Senators Courage

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storylettersHow to Give Senators CourageA reader suggests that term limits might help. Also: Online incivility.Jan. 31, 2021, 12:00 p.m. ETTwo of the few Republican senators willing to defy President Trump: Mitt Romney, left, and John McCain.Credit…Brooks Kraft/Corbis, via Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Peter Beinart argues that older senators are more likely to show political courage (“The Few Courageous Senators,” Op-Ed, Jan. 16), so “Americans should elect more who are near the end of their political careers.”He may be right that older senators are more concerned with their place in history, rather than short-term political advantage. But Mr. Beinart does not mention the obvious solution to our dysfunctional Senate: Term limits might give all senators more courage.If all senators know that they are “near the end of their political careers,” they might be willing to vote their conscience, instead of cowering to avoid a tough re-election challenge. They would be compelled to think about their place in history now, rather than wait until they are septuagenarians or octogenarians.Chris RasmussenHighland Park, N.J.Cruelty in the Chat Box  Credit…Hokyoung KimTo the Editor:Re “When the Online Troll Is a Co-Worker” (Business, Jan. 25):Another work-from-home platform that invites misuse is the videoconference, and its irresistible chat function, which typically allows for private as well as full-group messaging.Although the chat can be helpful for quick clarifications or information posting, it’s also a superconductor for everything from sidebar social exchanges to critical and sometimes cruel commentary on the participants or presenter, any of which can be inadvertently sent to everyone by mistake.It’s the virtual version of passing notes or whispered conversations: distracting, dangerous and rude. The only effective antidote is to have the host of the meeting disable the chat function.What’s next? Virtual spitballs?Raleigh MayerNew YorkThe writer is a management consultant.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      I’m Not Actually Interested in Mitch McConnell’s Hypocrisy

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyI’m Not Actually Interested in Mitch McConnell’s HypocrisyTo make his case for the filibuster, he has essentially rewritten the history of the Senate.Opinion ColumnistJan. 29, 2021Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesOn Tuesday, Mitch McConnell, now the Senate minority leader, spoke in defense of the legislative filibuster.“When it comes to lawmaking, the framers’ vision and our history are clear. The Senate exists to require deliberation and cooperation,” McConnell declared. “James Madison said the Senate’s job was to provide a ‘complicated check’ against ‘improper acts of legislation.’ We ensure that laws earn enough buy-in to receive the lasting consent of the governed. We stop bad ideas, improve good ideas and keep laws from swinging wildly with every election.”He went on: “More than any other feature, it is the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to end debate on legislation that achieves this.”It’s hard to take any of this seriously. None of McConnell’s stated concern for the “lasting consent of the governed” was on display when Senate Republicans, under his leadership, tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act by majority vote. Nor was there any interest in “deliberation and cooperation” when Republicans wanted a new round of corporate and upper-income tax cuts.If anything, the filibuster stymies that deliberation and cooperation by destroying the will to legislate at all. It makes bipartisanship less likely by erasing any incentive to build novel coalitions for particular issues. If, under the filibuster, there’s no difference between 51 votes for immigration reform and 56 votes (or even 59), then what’s the point of even trying? Why reach out to the other side if there’s almost no way you’ll reach the threshold to take action? And on the other side, why tinker with legislation if you know it’s not going to pass? When there’s no reason to do otherwise, why not act as a rigid, unyielding partisan?It’s obvious that McConnell’s commitment to the filibuster is instrumental. The filibuster on executive branch nominations of appointees and federal judges was sacred — he condemned the Democrats’ use of the “nuclear option” to get rid of it in 2013 — until President Trump needed Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and then it was bye-bye to the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees that McConnell’s predecessor as Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, had left intact. If the reconciliation process didn’t exist, and Republicans needed 60 votes for upper-income tax cuts, there’s almost no doubt McConnell would have killed the legislative filibuster in 2017, for the sake of his party’s signature priority.I’m not actually that interested in McConnell’s hypocrisy. I’m interested in his history. To make his case for the indispensable importance of the legislative filibuster, McConnell has essentially rewritten the history of the Senate. He has to create a new narrative to serve his current interests.The truth is that the filibuster was an accident; an extra-constitutional innovation that lay dormant for a generation after its unintentional creation during the Jefferson administration. For most of the Senate’s history after the Civil War, filibusters were rare, deployed as the Southern weapon of choice against civil rights legislation, and an occasional tool of partisan obstruction.Far from necessary, the filibuster is extraneous. Everything it is said to encourage — debate, deliberation, consensus building — is already accomplished by the structure of the chamber itself, insofar as it happens at all.In the form it takes today, the filibuster doesn’t make the Senate work the way the framers intended. Instead, it makes the Senate a nearly insurmountable obstacle to most legislative business. And that, in turn, has made Congress inert and dysfunctional to the point of disrupting the constitutional balance of power. Legislation that deserves a debate never reaches the floor; coalitions that could form never get off the ground.In quoting Madison, McConnell frames the filibuster as part of our constitutional inheritance. It is not. The filibuster isn’t in the Constitution. The Senate, like the House of Representatives, was meant to run on majority rule.Remember, the framers had direct experience with supermajority government. Under the Articles of Confederation, each state had equal representation and it took a two-thirds vote of the states for Congress to exercise its enumerated powers. Without the consent of nine states (out of 13), Congress could not enter treaties, appropriate funds or borrow money. And the bar to amendment, unanimity, was even higher. The articles were such a disaster that, rather than try to amend them, a group of influential elites decided to scrap them altogether.For a taste of this frustration, read Alexander Hamilton in Federalist no. 22, which contains a fierce condemnation of supermajority rule as it was under the articles:The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching toward it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority.Hamilton is especially angry with the effect of the supermajority requirement on governance.In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must, in some way or other, go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good.Delegates to the constitutional convention considered and rejected supermajority requirements for navigation acts (concerning ships and shipping), regulation of interstate commerce and the raising of armies. Majorities would have the final say everywhere except for treaties, amendments and conviction in an impeachment trial.To make the Senate slow-moving and deliberative, the framers would not raise barriers to action so much as they would insulate the body from short-term democratic accountability. That meant indirect election by state legislatures, staggered terms of six years and a small membership of two senators per state. And at ratification, that is where the Senate stood: a self-consciously aristocratic body meant to check the House of Representatives and oversee the executive branch, confirming its appointments and ratifying its foreign agreements.The filibuster doesn’t enter the picture until years later, as an accident of parliamentary bookkeeping. In 1806, on the advice of Vice President Aaron Burr (who thought it redundant), the Senate dropped the “previous question” — a motion to end debate and bring an item up for immediate vote — from its rules. Without a motion to call the previous question, however, an individual senator could, in theory, hold the floor indefinitely.It took 31 years for someone to actually do it. The first known filibuster took place in 1837, when several Whig senators tried unsuccessfully to block a Democratic bill to reverse an 1834 censure of President Andrew Jackson and expunge it from the congressional record. Even then, the filibuster was not widely used until the second half of the 19th century, as the parties, and thus the Senate, grew more polarized along party lines.The filibuster as we understand it developed in the 20th century. In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson called on Senate Democrats to reform the filibuster as a war measure after Republicans successfully filibustered a bill to arm merchant ships. Democrats obliged and created a “cloture” rule to end debate with a two-thirds vote of the chamber. In 1975, the Senate reduced that threshold from two-thirds to three-fifths, or 60 votes in a 100-member body.Throughout this time, filibusters were uncommon. It was perfectly possible for the Senate to debate, deliberate and come to consensus without the supermajority requirement McConnell and the Republican caucus have imposed on virtually all legislation since 2009.The point of comparison for the Senate as McConnell has shaped it is the middle of the 20th century, when a conservative coalition of Republicans and Dixiecrats made the chamber a graveyard of liberal legislation and social reform. Consensus didn’t matter. Power did. And it wasn’t until liberals wrested power from this coalition — in the House as well as the Senate — that they could take the initiative and begin work on an otherwise popular agenda.There is no question the Senate is supposed to be slow, even sluggish. But it’s not supposed to be an endless bottleneck. The framers wanted stability in government, not stagnation. What we have now, with the filibuster intact, is a Senate that can barely move.This isn’t just a problem for President Biden and the Democratic Party; it’s a problem for the entire constitutional order. Our system is built around Congress; Congress makes laws, Congress holds the purse strings, Congress hands out mandates, Congress checks the president and makes sure the judiciary stays in its lane.When Congress doesn’t act, other actors take up the slack. The story of our democracy these last 10 years is, in part, the story of how a listless, sclerotic Senate broke Congress and pushed the other branches to govern in its stead, with the president and the courts making as much policy as they can without congressional input, with all the capriciousness, whiplash and uncertainty that can come from that.If you don’t like presidents governing through executive order, then you should want an active, energetic Congress that embraces its constitutional mandate to rule over the whole country and direct its government. If you want that, you should oppose the filibuster.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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Marco Rubio Deserves Ivanka Trump

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyMarco Rubio Deserves Ivanka TrumpWill the senator’s sycophancy and shape-shifting come to naught?Opinion ColumnistJan. 29, 2021Credit…Ben WisemanIt’s a measure of the Republican Party’s current depravity that I think of the period when Marco Rubio was besmirching Donald Trump’s genitalia as the good old days.It was early 2016, Trump hadn’t yet locked down the Republican presidential nomination and Rubio, smarting from Trump’s nickname for him (“Little Marco’) and cracks about his overactive sweat glands, began pointing voters toward Trump’s private parts.“He’s, like, 6-2, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who’s 5-2,” Rubio told voters at a campaign rally in late February that year. “Have you seen his hands? And you know what they say about men with small hands.”In that age of innocence, we were talking and even laughing about the nether regions of Republican anatomy. Five years later, we’re talking and most certainly not laughing about the nether regions of Republican morality, which Rubio plumbs as shamelessly as his more exposed Senate colleagues Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton do.All four seem to have dreams of 2024 and don’t want to run afoul of Trump and his base, no matter how thoroughly that debases them. They’re vain weather vanes of his hold on the party, the strength and stubbornness of which are evident in the populous crowd of Trump-smooching presidential aspirants (these four, Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley, etc.) versus the sparse crew of Trump-spanking ones (Larry Hogan, Ben Sasse and that’s about it).As Trump’s impeachment trial looms, everything that these young or youngish senators say and do can be seen as an audition for his mantle, which Hawley and Cruz reached for with special cynicism when they joined six other senators in voting not to certify Joe Biden’s election. Rubio and Cotton didn’t go quite that far, but I’m sure Rubio was tempted. Ever since, he has mustered extra energy for showing what a fierce Trump loyalist he can be.On Fox News recently, he dismissed Trump’s upcoming Senate trial as “stupid,” seemingly daring Hawley, Cruz and Cotton to top his disdain and his adjective. He paired that exalted commentary with an inadequately punctuated, inelegantly worded and ineptly reasoned tweet: Five people died when a Trump-loving mob, whipped into a violent frenzy by his and his Republican enablers’ lies about election fraud, stormed and trashed the Capitol. But sure, Senator Rubio, Democrats’ upset is purely theatrical. Absolutely, the lesson here is the bloodthirst of “the radical left.”That’s no garden-variety misdirection. That’s pure derangement.Marco Rubio greeted Ivanka Trump at the Capitol in 2017.Credit…Erica Werner/Associated PressIt also smacks of desperation. “Little Marco,” you see, may have big trouble. It’s blond, it’s relentless, it has a new address in Florida and it’s spelled I-V-A-N-K-A. The shiniest Trump and her smug husband, pariahs now in New York City, have moved on, and there’s some speculation that their relocation presages a Senate candidacy for her in 2022, when Rubio is up for re-election.She’d potentially challenge him in the Florida Republican primary. Now there’s a reason to sweat. Rubio confronts what Republican lawmakers all over the country do, the prospect of being ousted, en route to their general elections, by rivals who are even Trumpier than they are. Only there’s no out-Trumping an actual Trump. And there’s no defaming this Trump progeny without inflaming the Trump patriarch.Ivanka would be Rubio’s worst nightmare. She’d also be his perfect comeuppance. He would have done all that shape-shifting, summoned all that sycophancy and sold out for naught.Maybe Ivanka would take pity on him and take a pass.Yes, that was a joke.As, at this point, is Marco Rubio.I can remember back to 2013, when, as a member of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” in the Senate, he helped to draft legislation for comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for millions of people in this country illegally. He was then styling himself as a pragmatist determined to broaden the Republican Party’s tent.Now he rails against “amnesty.” He’s a Trump-style populist, content with a clownish part in the Republican Party’s circus.I remember how his parents’ flight to the United States from Cuba was the supposed cornerstone of his political convictions, the prompt for a hawkish foreign policy with no tolerance for autocrats at odds with our democratic values.But he just spent four years blowing kisses at an American president more autocratic and more contemptuous of those values than any in his lifetime.I remember how, for much of 2016, he pledged that he would not-not-not run for re-election to the Senate, framing that resolve as a point of honor. He said that it was an impotent institution and that lawmakers needed to limit their time in Congress, lest they become hacks. He expressed indignation at any suggestion that he would change his mind, tweeting: “I have only said like 10000 times I will be a private citizen in January.”That was in mid-May of that year. Little more than a month later, he announced his re-election bid. So much for private citizenry.Rubio says whatever he feels that the moment demands, whatever keeps the wind in his sails, because he’s unfazed by the fact that he once said something completely different, by the possibility that he’ll contradict himself down the line or by the bald selectiveness of his self-righteousness.He’s a creature of Republican vogues, so he’s polishing his anti-elitist riffs, like a tweet with which he slammed the emerging Biden administration: Politeness! Order! The horror! But that’s not the best part. Biden stands out from his five immediate predecessors in the White House, including Trump, for not having the Ivy League degrees that they did. Where there’s fancy education aplenty is in Rubio’s ranks: Hawley has degrees from Stanford and Yale, Cruz from Princeton and Harvard and Cotton from Harvard two times over.Maybe Rubio was slyly knocking those potential 2024 competitors, too, and previewing a line of 2024 attack. His own degrees are from the University of Florida, the University of Miami and the School of Unchecked Opportunism.To his anti-elitism he has added overwrought, indiscriminate media bashing, as when he responded to the coronavirus’s rampage through America with a tweet last March that accused journalists of “glee & delight in reporting that the U.S. has more #CoronaVirus cases than #China” and called it “grotesque.”I don’t recall such glee. I’ll tell you what’s grotesque: training more of your fury about the pandemic’s devastation at the unelected people covering it than at the elected one minimizing and mismanaging it.He was preening for Trump. He was parroting him. He still is, and he’s proving that while Trump may be gone from the White House, he remains deeply present in Washington, because it’s lousy with minions who remade themselves in his image.Rubio’s fate was to become what Trump once called him, not just exuberantly but prophetically: a little man, at least by the yardstick of integrity, which is the only endowment that matters.I invite you to sign up for my free weekly email newsletter. You can follow me on Twitter (@FrankBruni).AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Why Pennsylvania Republican Leaders Are All-In for Trump More Than Ever

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhy Pennsylvania Republican Leaders Are All-In for Trump More Than EverPennsylvania G.O.P. leaders have made loyalty to the defeated ex-president the sole organizing principle of the party, and would-be candidates are jockeying to prove they fought the hardest for him.Representative Scott Perry in December with members of the House Freedom Caucus who were asking that Bill Barr, the attorney general, release findings of investigation into allegations of 2020 election fraud.Credit…Al Drago for The New York TimesJan. 28, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETAs a second impeachment trial for Donald J. Trump approaches next month, Republicans in states across the country are lining up behind the former president with unwavering support.Perhaps no state has demonstrated its fealty as tenaciously as Pennsylvania, where Republican officials have gone to extraordinary lengths to keep Trumpism at the center of their message as they bolster the president’s false claims of a “stolen” election.Eight of nine Republicans in Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation voted to throw out their state’s own electoral votes for President Biden on Jan. 6, just hours after a mob had stormed the Capitol.A majority of Republicans in the state legislature had endorsed that effort.And one House member from the state, Scott Perry, was instrumental in promoting a plan in which Mr. Trump would fire the acting attorney general in an effort to stay in office.In the weeks since the Nov. 3 election, Republicans in Pennsylvania have made loyalty to the defeated ex-president the sole organizing principle of the party, the latest chapter in a rightward populist march repeated across other states. As elsewhere, the Pennsylvania G.O.P. was once led by mainstream conservatives, but it is now defined almost exclusively by Trumpism. It faces major statewide races in 2022, for offices including governor and the Senate, with an electorate that just rejected Mr. Trump in favor of Mr. Biden.Far from engaging in self-examination, Pennsylvania Republicans are already jockeying ahead of the 2022 primaries to prove that they fought the hardest for Mr. Trump, who, in spite of the losses by his party in the White House, the Senate and the House, still exerts a strong grip over elected Republicans and grass-roots voters.As the Republican base has shifted — suburbanites leaning more Democratic, and rural white voters lining up behind Republicans over culture-war issues — G.O.P. leaders recognize the extent to which the former president unleashed waves of support for their party. In Pennsylvania, just as in some Midwestern states, a surge of new Republican voters with grievances about a changing America was triggered by Mr. Trump, and only Mr. Trump.Supporters of President Trump marched outside the Pennsylvania Capitol in December as state electors met to cast their Electoral College votes.Credit…Mark Makela for The New York Times“Donald Trump’s presidency and his popularity has been a big win for the Republican Party of Pennsylvania,” said Rob Gleason, a former chair of the state G.O.P. Even though numerous state and federal courts rejected the Trump campaign’s baseless claims of voter fraud, Mr. Gleason said the belief that the voting was rigged “lingers in the minds of a lot of people.”He predicted it would drive Republican turnout in upcoming races. He said he had met this week with a prosecutor who “feels the election was stolen” and was pondering a run for a statewide judgeship this year.Other Republicans are more skeptical that lock-step support of the former president is the best path forward in Pennsylvania, a critical battleground state that is likely to be up for grabs in the next several election cycles.“We have become, over four years, the party of Trump, and it has been one test after the other,” said Ryan Costello, a former G.O.P. House member from the Philadelphia suburbs who has been critical of Mr. Trump and is exploring a run for Senate. “It is not a sustainable growth strategy to double and triple and quadruple down on Trump when he gets divisive.”Despite Mr. Costello’s apprehension, most Republicans thought to be mulling runs for Senate or governor have made it clear that they are prepared to pass a Trump loyalty test.They include members of the Republican congressional delegation, hard-line members of the legislature, and even Donald Trump Jr. The president’s oldest son is the subject of persistent rumors that he will run for high office in the state — mostly because of his ties to Pennsylvania, where he went to prep school and college. The Trump family spent an enormous amount of time campaigning in Pennsylvania in 2020, and as it seeks its next political stage, the state remains a big one.The transformation of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania has been stark. Less than two decades ago, it was led by political centrists such as former Senator Arlen Specter and former Gov. Tom Ridge, who became the first secretary of homeland security.Now it is embodied by Mr. Perry, a member of the hard-line Freedom Caucus who won a fifth term in November for his Harrisburg-area seat. His Democratic opponent, Eugene DePasquale, said he lost the race “fair and square.” But he called the Republican congressman’s efforts on behalf of Mr. Trump in a scheme involving the Justice Department “a radical attempt to overthrow the election.”Demonstrators with a cut-out replica of former Mr. Trump outside the Pennsylvania Capitol this moth.Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York TimesMr. Perry, a purveyor of misinformation about the presidential election, acknowledged on Monday his role in introducing Mr. Trump to an official in the Justice Department. That official, Jeffrey Clark, was willing to abet Mr. Trump in pressing Georgia to invalidate its electoral votes for Mr. Biden.The plan never unfolded. But Mr. Perry, a retired National Guard general who dodged the new metal detectors in the Capitol, rejected calls by Democrats to resign.Just as resolute in their defense of Mr. Trump were the other Pennsylvania House Republicans who voted to reject the state’s electoral votes for Mr. Biden on Jan. 6. Representative Conor Lamb, a Democrat from western Pennsylvania, said on the House floor that his Republican colleagues should be “ashamed of themselves” for spreading lies that led to the breach of the Capitol. His impassioned speech nearly precipitated a fistfight.“The Trump people were putting out a message: ‘We better see you publicly fighting for us,’” Mr. Lamb said in an interview this week. “The 2022 midterm is shaping up to be choosing the candidate who loves Trump the most,” he said of G.O.P. primary contests.But he called that an opportunity for Democrats to talk about issues affecting people’s lives, such as the economy and the pandemic, while Republicans remain fixated on the 2020 election. “They’re making their main political argument at this point based on a fraud; they’re not making it based on real-world conditions,” he said. “The election was not stolen. Biden really beat Trump.”Mr. Lamb, who has won three races in districts that voted for Mr. Trump, has been mentioned as a contender for the open Senate seat. “I would say I will be thinking about it,” he said.Apart from the House delegation, much of the Trumpist takeover in Pennsylvania has occurred in the legislature, where Republicans held their majorities in both chambers in November (a result that the party fails to mention in its vehement claims of election fraud in the presidential race).In contrast to states such as Georgia and Arizona, where top Republican officials debunked disinformation from Mr. Trump and his allies, in Pennsylvania no senior Republicans in Harrisburg pushed back on false claims about election results, some of them created by lawmakers themselves or by Mr. Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani.A majority of Republicans in the General Assembly urged the state’s congressional delegation in December to reject the state’s 20 electoral votes for Mr. Biden after the results were legally certified. Such was the pressure from grass-roots Trump supporters that the majority leader of the State Senate, Kim Ward, said in an interview last month that if she refused to sign on to such an effort, “I’d get my house bombed tonight.”The full embrace of Mr. Trump’s lies about a “stolen” election followed months of Republican lawmakers’ echoing his dismissals of the coronavirus threat. Lawmakers who appeared at “ReOpen PA” rallies in Harrisburg in May, flouting masks and limits on crowd sizes, morphed into leading purveyors of disinformation about election fraud after Nov. 3.One state senator, Doug Mastriano, who is widely believed to be considering a run for governor, paid for buses and offered rides to the “Save America” protests in Washington on Jan. 6 that preceded the breach of the Capitol. Mr. Mastriano has said he left before events turned violent.State Senator Doug Mastriano with supporters of Mr. Trump outside the Pennsylvania Capitol in November.Credit…Julio Cortez/Associated PressAs the legislature convened its 2021 session, Republicans recommitted to a hard-line agenda. Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat, was removed by the Republican majority as president of the State Senate at a legislative session on Jan. 5. Mr. Fetterman had strenuously objected to Republicans’ refusal to seat a Democratic lawmaker whose narrow victory had been officially certified.Republicans in the State House are seeking to change how judges are elected to ensure a Republican majority on the State Supreme Court, after the current court, with a Democratic lean, ruled against claims in election fraud cases last year.Republican lawmakers have also plunged into a lengthy examination of the November election, even though no evidence of more than trivial fraud has surfaced, and courts rejected claims that election officials overstepped their legal mandates.Republicans announced 14 hearings in the House. Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, was grilled in the first one last week. Dismissing the series of hearings as a “charade,” she called on Republicans not to sow further distrust in the integrity of the state’s election, which drew a record 71 percent turnout despite a pandemic.“We need to stand together as Americans,” Ms. Boockvar said in an interview, “and tell the voters these were lies, that your votes counted, they were checked, they were audited, they were recounted many places, and the numbers added up and they were certified.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How Nan Whaley, Dayton’s Mayor, Sees Ohio Politics and Portman’s Senate Seat

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHow Nan Whaley, Dayton’s Mayor, Sees Ohio Politics and Portman’s Senate SeatIn an interview, Ms. Whaley, a Democrat, discusses what her party needs to do to start winning more statewide races in Ohio, including the 2022 races for Senate and governor that she is mulling.Nan Whaley, the mayor of Dayton, Ohio, during a 2019 rally for Pete Buttigieg in South Bend, Ind. Ms. Whaley is considering a 2022 campaign for governor or for the Senate seat currently held by Rob Portman.Credit…Darron Cummings/Associated PressJan. 26, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETSenator Rob Portman’s announcement on Monday that he would not seek a third term in 2022 sent a shock wave through Ohio politics and dealt a setback to national Republicans who were counting on Mr. Portman, 65, to easily keep his seat in G.O.P. hands next year. By the afternoon, a throng of ambitious Republicans were circling the race, including the far-right Representative Jim Jordan, as well as a few prominent Democrats.One of those Democrats was Mayor Nan Whaley of Dayton. A 45-year-old progressive who campaigned for Pete Buttigieg in the 2020 presidential primaries, Ms. Whaley has long been seen as a likely candidate for governor or Senate. In 2019, she led her city through the aftermath of a mass shooting in which nine people were killed.Democrats in Ohio have seen the political tide turn hard against them over the past decade, and they have lost three races for governor, two out of four Senate campaigns and nearly every other statewide election, leaving Senator Sherrod Brown, 68, as a lonely Democrat holding high office there. Though Barack Obama won Ohio twice, Donald J. Trump carried it by eight percentage points in both 2016 and 2020.In an interview with The Times on Monday evening, Ms. Whaley confirmed her interest in being a candidate in 2022 and said President Biden must move swiftly to deliver economic relief to the people in her state. The interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.What’s it going to take for Democrats to get back in the game statewide?We have all recognized, from the close governor’s race in ’18 and the tough presidential races, that we have to have an Ohio-specific message. So, regardless if it’s a federal race or a local race, there is a message like the message Sherrod Brown delivers that resonates very well in this state. It’s not necessarily being a moderate. It’s a message of being very real and talking about the issue that affects Ohioans the most, first — and that is the fact that for three decades, they have been working harder and harder and getting further behind.The true civil war in the Republican Party gives Democrats in this state a great opportunity.In a backward-looking way: Do you think Obama’s success in Ohio gave people an unrealistic sense of how purple it is, or do you think Trump’s strength there has given people an unrealistic sense of how red it is?I think it’s both, honestly. I think what people forget about Ohio is, it’s an economic populist state, and its economic populism is why Sherrod does so well here. When Trump was like, “$2,000 stimulus checks for everyone,” I was like, “Absolutely, I agree with Trump, that’s right.”What people want in Ohio — it’s not complicated. They want to work and they want to get paid decent for that work. It’s not rocket science. And over three decades, both parties have not been paying attention to that.I think ’22 gives us a real opportunity to localize some of these issues in Ohio.When you say “localize” — how much is that an admission that, look, the national brand and the national cultural orientation of the Democratic Party is just a big problem in Ohio?I am frustrated sometimes with the national messaging, and it’s not just the Democratic Party. Just, a lot of times, the elitism that comes off from the coasts. That’s a challenge.The Michigan Democratic message? That’s a good message for Ohio.How does that elitism translate in the political message of the party?It’s what we choose to talk about first.You know, I was on a call this week with John Kerry and Gina McCarthy about the work on climate change, which we all agree on. But the key, for us, if you look at what Bill Peduto has moved forward with mayors from Ohio and the Ohio River Valley, the Marshall Plan for Middle America — we have to bring these jobs to the middle of the country.It can’t just be, “This is great for the climate.” It’s also, “It’s a great job creator.” And that’s what we should lead with in these states.Are there things that national Democrats talk about that you feel like, it’s not even a question of emphasis or angle, but it needs to not be on the agenda — period?No, I don’t. I don’t think there’s anything like that. But I think what we lead with a lot of times comes off in a way that doesn’t resonate.One of the challenges in our party is, we have a lot of smart people in the party and everyone wants to be the smartest person in the room. And shouldn’t we be focused on what makes people’s lives better, even if it’s a regular person’s idea?Do you think Biden could have won the state?Yes, I do.What would it have taken?Not to be in Covid. We did no voter reg in the state. They [Republicans] did.And then we didn’t do any voter contact on the ground, and they did. I’m glad we saved lives, don’t get me wrong. But that affected our turnout in urban communities, it affected their turnout in rural communities. We did nothing.What do you think people in Ohio need to see from Biden in the next year, or even in the next three months, in order to ——They need the rescue package. They need to see that something is different, and it’s moving quickly. They need to see that they don’t have to worry every month on whether or not they’re going to get bailed out at the last minute on unemployment and eviction, even though it’s no fault of theirs that the pandemic happened to them, and that they happen to work on frontline jobs that people can’t go to now because the pandemic is raging. And that we’ve got their back.Do you think they care about legislation like that being bipartisan, or do you think they just want it fast?No. No. They want it fast. Nobody cares what happens in D.C. and who voted what. They just want it done, and we should provide that.Where is your head, about your options for 2022?We’re going to make the decision in the coming weeks. I’ve gotten a lot of encouragement today, with probably every Ohio Democrat giving me their opinion on what I should do, which has been really nice.Are both the governor’s race and the Senate race on the table?Yeah.Do you expect to be on the ballot, one way or the other?I hope so.If Jim Jordan decides to run [for Senate], it is highly likely he will win that primary. We recognize that the soul of our state is at stake, and that’s a motivation to all of us.What would your message be to a Democrat from outside Ohio — let’s say someone on the coast — who looks at the results from the last election and the results from Georgia this month, and says, “Why are we even bothering in these states where we’re getting our [rear ends] kicked when there are states that are moving our way?”I would say, there are four states that put Biden over, and they were won collectively by a little more than 100,000 votes. So, you ignore this, as a party, at your own peril. We won, decisively, the popular vote, but democracy is really at stake if we don’t pay attention to places like Ohio.You look at the Senate, you look at our long-term play, and we’ve still got a lot of work to do.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      As Trump Seeks to Remain a Political Force, New Targets Emerge

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAs Trump Seeks to Remain a Political Force, New Targets EmergeAs Donald Trump surveys the political landscape, there is a sudden Senate opening in Ohio, an ally’s bid for Arkansas governor, and some scores to settle elsewhere.Former President Donald J. Trump has an enduring base of Republican support across the country.Credit…Pete Marovich for The New York TimesMaggie Haberman and Jan. 25, 2021Updated 10:00 p.m. ETFormer President Donald J. Trump, determined to remain a force in G.O.P. politics, is gaining new opportunities with a crucial Senate seat unexpectedly coming open in Ohio, an ally announcing for governor of Arkansas and rising pressure on Republicans in Congress who did not stand with him during this month’s impeachment vote.The surprise announcement on Monday by Senator Rob Portman of Ohio that he would not seek a third term sparked a political land rush, with top strategists in the state receiving a flood of phone calls from potential candidates testing their viability. One consultant said he had received calls from five would-be candidates by midday.That opening, along with another statewide contest next year in which Gov. Mike DeWine is expected to face at least one Trump-aligned primary challenger, is likely to make Ohio a central battleground for control of the Republican Party, and an inviting one for Mr. Trump, who held on to Ohio in the election while losing three other Northern battleground states.Mr. Portman’s announcement came hours after Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Mr. Trump’s former White House press secretary, began her campaign for Arkansas governor. The Republican primary there already includes the state’s lieutenant governor and attorney general, but private polling indicates that Ms. Sanders is beginning well ahead, and Mr. Trump endorsed her candidacy on Monday night. Mr. Trump has only been out of the presidential office five days and has little in the way of political infrastructure. He has told aides he would like to take a break for several months. But the former president has remained the party’s strongest fund-raiser, with tens of millions in PAC money at his disposal, and he retains an enduring base of Republican support across the country. Perhaps most important, he harbors a deep-seated desire to punish those he believes have crossed him and reward those who remain loyal.So far he has focused primarily on Georgia, where he believes the Republican governor and secretary of state betrayed him by certifying his loss there. Both are up for re-election in 2022. And he took something of a test run over the weekend by getting involved in the leadership fight in Arizona’s Republican Party, after Kelli Ward, the firebrand chairwoman, asked for his help in gaining re-election, according to a person familiar with the discussions.Already there is a movement at the state and local levels to challenge incumbent members of Congress seen as breaking with the former president, starting with the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach him this month.The overwhelming consensus among Ohio Republicans is that a Trump-aligned candidate would be best positioned to win a competitive Senate primary, and no potential candidate has a better claim to Mr. Trump’s voters in the state than Representative Jim Jordan, who was Mr. Trump’s chief defender during his first impeachment trial and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom during the former president’s final days in office.“Jim is well positioned if in fact he’s ready to take that leap; I’m not sure there’s anybody that would beat him,” said Ken Blackwell, a former Ohio secretary of state and longtime Portman ally who last month served as an Electoral College voter for Mr. Trump. Referring to Mr. Trump’s legion of supporters, Mr. Blackwell added: “In Ohio, it’s going to be who has the track record to show that their agenda respects the newly realigned party base.”Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio was Mr. Trump’s chief defender during his first impeachment trial and could seek the Republican nomination for an open Senate seat in 2022.Credit…Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesMr. Trump is now ensconced at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where aides are building something that can serve as an office. He’s been golfing several times, and was spotted by people at his club in Florida playing with the brother of the former tennis star Anna Kournikova on Sunday.His advisers have had discussions about whether to get him back on some form of social media platform, although they insist that he does not need to be on Twitter or Facebook to raise money, and that his email solicitations continue to work well. On Monday he formally opened the Office of the Former President, to manage his “correspondence, public statements, appearances, and official activities.”As President Biden’s inauguration approached, Mr. Trump began telling some allies that he was considering forming a third party if Republicans moved to convict him in the Senate trial. But by Saturday, after his own advisers said it was a mistake, Mr. Trump started sending out word that he was moving on from his threat.“He understands that the best thing for his movement and conservatism is to move forward together, that third parties will lead to dominance by Democrats,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who is a close ally of Mr. Trump.Advisers to the president say he has just over $70 million in his PAC, Save America, with few restrictions on what he can do with it. For now, most of his staff is on a government payroll afforded to former presidents for a period of time after they leave office.Officials are working to mend Mr. Trump’s relationship with Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the House minority leader, whom Mr. Trump called a vulgarity for his House floor speech denouncing the former president’s rally address before the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6. A senior Republican said that aides to the two men were trying to arrange a meeting or a call in the coming days.Mr. Trump would like to seek retribution against House members who voted against him, and he has been particularly angry with Representatives Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio and Fred Upton of Michigan, advisers said. He will also at some point focus on the governor’s race in Arizona, where Doug Ducey cannot seek re-election; Gov. Greg Abbott’s re-election bid in Texas; and the Senate race in North Carolina, as places where he can show strength, the advisers said. (One adviser disputed that Mr. Trump would have an interest in the Texas race.)In Ohio, Mr. Gonzalez faces a potential primary challenge from Christina Hagan, a former state legislator whom he defeated in a 2018 primary. Ms. Hagan lost in the general election last year to Representative Tim Ryan, a Democrat, in a neighboring district. She said in an interview Monday that she would decide which, if any, race to enter in 2022 after Ohio redraws its congressional districts; the state is likely to lose one seat and Republicans control all levers of redistricting.“A lot of people elected what they thought was conservative leadership and now are witnessing somebody cutting against their values,” Ms. Hagan said, alluding to Mr. Gonzalez’s vote to impeach. Mr. Gonzalez’s office did not respond to emails seeking comment.Mr. Trump’s deepest hostility is reserved for Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, advisers said, and they expect he will expend the most energy trying to damage Mr. Kemp’s re-election bid. The governor’s original sin was in choosing Kelly Loeffler over Mr. Trump’s favored candidate, Doug Collins, to fill a vacant Senate seat in 2019, but it evolved into something more consuming as Mr. Trump repeated his debunked claims of widespread fraud in the state and held Mr. Kemp responsible for not doing enough to challenge the election results.Mr. Collins, a hard-line Trump backer, hasn’t decided whether to challenge Mr. Kemp or seek the Republican nomination against Senator Raphael Warnock, the Democrat who defeated Ms. Loeffler in a special election and will face voters again in 2022, or if he will choose not to run for anything, a Collins aide said Monday.Mr. Trump is likely to support a primary challenge to Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, in Georgia.Credit…Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesNext on Mr. Trump’s personal hit list is Representative Liz Cheney, the Republican from Wyoming, people close to him said. Ms. Cheney was the only member of the House G.O.P. leadership to vote to impeach. It’s unclear whether Mr. Trump will target her seat, or simply her leadership post in the House, but advisers said they anticipated that he would take opportunities to damage her.Sarah Longwell, the executive director of the Republican Accountability Project, an anti-Trump group, said she and her colleagues planned to raise and spend $50 million to defend the 10 pro-impeachment House Republicans in primary contests and attack those who voted to object to the Electoral College results after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. She said the group would aim to defeat Mr. Jordan in an Ohio Senate primary if he runs against an establishment-minded Republican.Mr. Jordan’s spokesman did not respond to messages on Monday.The 2022 map will be the first real test of Mr. Trump’s durability in the party. While Ms. Sanders is running for governor in Arkansas, rumors that his daughter Ivanka would run for Senate in Florida are unlikely to develop further. And though his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, was said to be considering a Senate run in North Carolina, people close to the family say it is less clear what she will do now that Mr. Trump lost.Mr. Trump’s advisers are more focused on the looming impeachment trial. He is working closely with Mr. Graham, who has argued to his colleagues that Mr. Trump’s Senate trial sets a bad precedent.Mr. Graham helped him retain a South Carolina-based lawyer, Butch Bowers, who is also working to fill out a legal team with colleagues from the state, Mr. Graham and others said. Mr. Bowers is expected to work with a Trump adviser, Jason Miller, on some kind of response operation.Unlike his first impeachment trial, when the Republican National Committee engaged in a constant defense of the president, including paying for his lawyers, this time it is expected to focus only on rapid response, including calling the Senate trial unconstitutional and a procedural overreach, two people familiar with the committee’s plans said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      What We Know About Trump Allies Like Sarah Huckabee Sanders Running for Office

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySarah Huckabee Sanders Is Running for Office. Will Other Trump Allies Follow?The names of Lara Trump, Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and others have been floated as potential political candidates. Here’s what we know about the chances they could run and their considerations.Sarah Huckabee Sanders has already started to build a statewide operation in her campaign for governor of Arkansas.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesJan. 25, 2021, 8:22 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who served as White House press secretary under former President Donald J. Trump, announced Monday that she was running for governor in Arkansas, her home state, competing for a seat once held by her father.“I took on the media, the radical left and their cancel culture, and I won,” Ms. Sanders, 38, said in a nearly eight-minute video, signaling that she planned to frame herself not as a policy-driven candidate but as a vessel for Republican rage, in a test of the endurance of Mr. Trump’s grievance politics.Ms. Sanders, who was encouraged by Mr. Trump to run when she left the White House in 2019 and had long planned her announcement, is one of several former Trump officials and family members whose names have been floated for political races of their own. But as of now, she appears to be alone in hatching firm plans for a campaign after Mr. Trump’s defeat.Ivanka Trump, the president’s elder daughter, is in the process of moving to Florida, where there had been talk of a potential primary challenge to Senator Marco Rubio, her onetime partner on a child care tax credit. While she is not ruling anything out, she is unlikely to seek office.While her sister-in-law, Lara Trump, had been eyeing an open Senate seat in North Carolina, her home state, in 2022, it is now less clear if she will enter the race.Vice President Mike Pence is still wondering if he can carry the Trump mantle in a Republican presidential primary in 2024, a gambit that would depend on Mr. Trump’s choosing not to run or being convicted in the coming Senate impeachment trial.Ms. Sanders may be a unique case study. She is stepping over both the Arkansas lieutenant governor and the state attorney general, who waited their turn and supported Mr. Trump but who can’t claim as close a connection to him as Ms. Sanders can. Mr. Trump was expected to endorse her on Monday night, an adviser to the former president said. She also has powerful family connections in the deep-red state, where the only race that really matters is the Republican primary.“The Republican base is not interested in serious governing candidates,” said Tim Miller, who served as an adviser to former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida. “They want people who will ‘own the libs,’ and Sarah is perfect for that.”While a grievance-first strategy may be ruinous to the party’s chances in swing states like Pennsylvania and Virginia, it resonates in a conservative state like Arkansas. “Pro-coup Trumpism is a meal ticket to success in a Republican primary,” Mr. Miller said.Ms. Sanders has already started to build a statewide operation, and because of her father, former Gov. Mike Huckabee, she has high name recognition and a political identity in Arkansas beyond an association with Mr. Trump.Here are other Trump officials and family members who have been seen as possible contenders for higher office, but who may face a more difficult path.Lara Trump is married to former President Donald J. Trump’s son Eric.Credit…Pete Marovich for The New York TimesLara TrumpMs. Trump, 38, the president’s daughter-in-law, who emerged during the 2020 presidential campaign as a fierce defender of Mr. Trump, has been eyeing an electoral future of her own in North Carolina, her home state. She and her husband, Eric Trump, have yet to relocate their family from New York, but in the months leading up to the presidential election, she had been actively considering a rare Senate seat that will open there in 2022, when Senator Richard Burr retires at the end of his term, people familiar with her plans said.Ms. Trump’s combativeness was seen as potentially appealing to Republican primary voters. During the 2020 campaign, she went where Ivanka Trump would not: repeating Mr. Trump’s ad hominem attacks on Hunter Biden and casting doubt on the integrity of the election. Political strategists have compared her to Kelly Loeffler, the recently defeated Georgia senator, but say that she has more skill on the campaign trail.The upsides of a Lara Trump candidacy were that she would immediately have more name recognition and an ability to raise cash online that would most likely dwarf that of the more experienced Republicans in the race. Her last name already prompted Mark Meadows, a former congressman from North Carolina who served as Mr. Trump’s final White House chief of staff, to say publicly that he would not run for Senate in the state, a race that his advisers had expected him to consider.But since Mr. Trump’s defeat, it is less clear whether his daughter-in-law will enter the race, perhaps a concession to the fact that simply aligning herself with the former president to win the Republican primary would not gird her for the potential backlash in a general election in a swing state.Ivanka Trump, the former president’s elder daughter, served as a senior aide in his White House.Credit…Pete Marovich for The New York TimesIvanka TrumpIn October, when Ivanka Trump described herself as “pro-life, and unapologetically so,” her comment was seen as the surest sign to date that the ambitious, spotlight-seeking Trump daughter was serious about a career of her own in Republican politics.Over the past four years, Ms. Trump, 39, has undergone a political transformation, from a registered New York Democrat to what she has described as a “proud Trump Republican.” During the 2020 campaign, she was considered by Trump campaign officials to be the top surrogate for her father, often speaking on his behalf to suburban women. For years, she has promoted articles and had her staff pitch stories about how she rivaled top Democratic presidential candidates in her fund-raising abilities.She is still packing up her mansion in the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington, but will relocate in the coming weeks to Florida, where her advisers say she is weighing her options when it comes to elected office. That includes not popping a trial balloon about a potential primary challenge next year to Mr. Rubio, who Republican critics note could be vulnerable because he did not vote to sustain any objections to the state’s electors.Other observers have dismissed that scenario as a difficult way to begin a political career and said Mr. Rubio needed to take it less seriously after the Capitol riot on Jan. 6. Running for state office is off the table for Ms. Trump because Florida law requires seven years of residency. Some people who know her say that her ambitions are higher, that she likes the ring of “first female president” and that there’s simply no downside to keeping her name afloat.She has surprising allies promoting it for her. “Ivanka would be a terrific candidate, with her presence, grace and beauty,” said Stephen K. Bannon, the former chief White House strategist who received a pardon from Mr. Trump. Once an enemy of Ms. Trump’s in the White House, he is now intent on propping her up. “She’s also the most populist because she’s fully focused on working families,” he said.“From Huckabee to Lara Trump to Don Jr. to Kayleigh McEnany, this is the new vanguard of the MAGA movement,” Mr. Bannon added. “I anticipate these people will be either running in 2022 or 2024.”Ms. McEnany, for her part, has already relocated to her home state, Florida, and there was briefly some talk of her mounting her own bid for the Senate, a person familiar with those conversations said. But it’s not clear how serious it was.Donald Trump Jr. has spent time campaigning for Republicans around the country in recent years.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesDonald Trump Jr.Over the past four years, Donald Trump Jr., 43, the president’s eldest son, has carved out a political lane for himself as a top surrogate and fund-raiser who can channel the emotional center of the MAGA movement. With 11 million followers on his various social media streams, he has been seen as a key player in the Republican messaging ecosystem, someone with a strong connection to his father’s supporters and to conservative voters who are passionate about the Second Amendment.His advisers insist that he’s not interested in being a candidate anytime in the near future — partly because there is not a clear office for him to run for right now. That hasn’t stopped strategists from floating his name as a potential candidate in states including Montana and Florida. For now, the advisers said, he wants to stay engaged and relevant politically, along with his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, helping to elect conservatives he likes and to take down the ones he doesn’t.On Monday he tweeted an article from The Federalist, a right-wing publication, that called for Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming to “Step Away From Leadership For GOP Voters.” He also vowed to help Ms. Sanders win her race.Before serving as Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows was a congressman from North Carolina.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMark MeadowsMr. Meadows, 61, has told people he has ruled out running for office again. But his friends and his own wife don’t believe him, or don’t want to. Others say they haven’t been able to get a straight answer out of him about his future plans. During his tenure in the White House, Mr. Meadows, the former chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, competed with Vice President Mike Pence to be seen as the heir to the president’s agenda and as Mr. Trump’s right hand. He even slept at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center when the president was being treated there for the coronavirus.Mr. Meadows still lives in Washington and has no immediate plans to move back to North Carolina, his home state. His wife has speculated that he should run for president in 2024, according to people familiar with those conversations. But his friends have not ruled out a future run for Senate or governor in North Carolina, and Ms. Trump’s fading interest in the North Carolina Senate race could give him back an opening.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More