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      Stacey Abrams and Lauren Groh-Wargo: How to Turn Your Red State Blue

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      Credit…June ParkSkip to contentSkip to site indexOpinionStacey Abrams and Lauren Groh-Wargo: How to Turn Your Red State BlueIt may take 10 years. Do it anyway.Credit…June ParkSupported byContinue reading the main storyStacey Abrams and Ms. Abrams was the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia in 2018. Ms. Groh-Wargo was her campaign manager. They opened Fair Fight Action in late 2018.Feb. 11, 2021We met and became political partners a decade ago, uniting in a bid to stave off Democratic obsolescence and rebuild a party that would increase the clout of regular, struggling Georgians. Our mission was clear: organize people, help realize gains in their lives, win local races to build statewide competitiveness and hold power accountable.But the challenge was how to do that in a state where many allies had retreated into glum predictions of defeat, where our opponents reveled in shellacking Democrats at the polls and in the Statehouse.That’s not all we had to contend with. There was also a 2010 census undercount of people of color, a looming Republican gerrymander of legislative maps and a new Democratic president midway into his first term confronting a holdover crisis from the previous Republican administration. Though little in modern American history compares with the malice and ineptitude of the botched pandemic response or the attempted insurrection at the Capitol, the dynamic of a potentially inaccurate census and imminent partisan redistricting is the same story facing Democrats in 2021 as it was in 2011. State leaders and activists we know across the country who face total or partial Republican control are wondering which path they should take in their own states now — and deep into the next decade.Georgians deserved better, so we devised and began executing a 10-year plan to transform Georgia into a battleground state. As the world knows, President Biden won Georgia’s 16 electoral votes in November, and the January runoff elections for two Senate seats secured full congressional control for the Democratic Party. Yet the result wasn’t a miracle or truly a surprise, at least not to us. Years of planning, testing, innovating, sustained investment and organizing yielded the record-breaking results we knew they could and should. The lessons we learned can help other states looking to chart a more competitive future for Democrats and progressives, particularly those in the Sun Belt, where demographic change will precede electoral opportunity.We realize that many people are thinking about Stacey’s political future, but right now we intend to talk about the unglamorous, tedious, sometimes technical, often contentious work that creates a battleground state. When fully embraced, this work delivers wins — whether or not Donald Trump is on the ballot — as the growth Georgia Democrats have seen in cycle after cycle shows. Even in tough election years, we have witnessed the power of civic engagement on policy issues and increases in Democratic performance. This combination of improvements has also resulted in steady gains in local races and state legislative races, along with the continued narrowing of the statewide loss margin in election after election that finally flipped the state in 2020 and 2021.The task is hard, the progress can feel slow, and winning sometimes means losing better. In 2012, for example, we prevented the Republicans from gaining a supermajority in the Georgia House of Representatives, which would have allowed them to pass virtually any bill they wanted. We won four seats they had drawn for themselves, and in 2014 we maintained those gains — just holding our ground was a victory.The steps toward victory are straightforward: understand your weaknesses, organize with your allies, shore up your political infrastructure and focus on the long game. Georgia’s transformation is worth celebrating, and how it came to be is a long and complicated story, which required more than simply energizing a new coterie of voters. What Georgia Democrats and progressives accomplished here — and what is happening in Arizona and North Carolina — can be exported to the rest of the Sun Belt and the Midwest, but only if we understand how we got here.Understand why you’re losing.To know how to win, we first had to understand why a century of Democratic Party dominance in Georgia had been erased. For most of the 20th century, Georgia Democrats had existed in a strained alliance of rural conservatives, urban liberals and suburbanites, all unconvinced that voting Republican would serve their ends. After serving as the incubator of the Gingrich revolution in the early 1990s, Georgia turned sharply to the right. When Democrats lost U.S. Senate seats in 2002 and 2004, as well as the governorship in 2002, it showed that former conservative Democrats had fully turned Republican. The Democratic Party lost its grip on power. By 2010, Democrats were losing every statewide race, and in 2012 the State Senate fell to a Republican supermajority. Clearly, Democrats had to change tactics. More

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      Why Bill Cassidy Broke With Senate Republicans and Backed Trump’s Trial

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentliveTrial HighlightsDay 2: Key TakeawaysVideo of Jan. 6 RiotWhat to Expect TodayWhat Is Incitement?Trump’s LawyersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhy Bill Cassidy Broke With Senate Republicans and Backed Trump’s TrialThe Louisiana senator, usually a reliable conservative vote, angered Republicans by voting to continue with the impeachment trial. But he has increasingly shown an inclination toward pragmatism.Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, voted this week to move forward with the Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump.Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesFeb. 10, 2021Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana did not just vote this week with Democrats to proceed with the impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump — he also effectively shamed his fellow Republican senators by voicing, and acting on, what many of them were surely thinking.Mr. Cassidy blistered Mr. Trump’s lawyers as “disorganized” and seemingly “embarrassed by their arguments,” explaining that their poor performance and the compelling case by the Democratic House impeachment managers had persuaded him to break from his party’s attempt to dismiss the proceedings on constitutional grounds.“If I’m an impartial juror, and one side is doing a great job, and the other side is doing a terrible job, on the issue at hand, as an impartial juror, I’m going to vote for the side that did the good job,” he told reporters on Tuesday. He did, though, emphasize on Wednesday that his view on constitutionality did not “predict my vote on anything else,” namely whether to convict Mr. Trump, saying only that he had an “open mind.”By becoming the only Senate Republican to switch his position from the one he held last month on a similar question about the constitutionality of holding an impeachment trial for a person no longer in public office, however, Mr. Cassidy delighted Louisiana Democrats, angered Republicans in his home state and presented himself as a one-man testimony of why Mr. Trump’s eventual acquittal is all but inevitable.“There is literally nothing that the Trump lawyers could do to change any of these other Republicans’ minds,” said Senator Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat. “They couldn’t have tanked it on purpose any worse than they did, and they still only lost one.”That Mr. Cassidy was that sole senator to be lost, joining the five Republicans who also sided with Democrats in January on the constitutionality of the trial, may have seemed surprising at first glance. After all, he has been a fairly reliable conservative vote since being elected to the Senate in 2014, and Louisiana just handed Mr. Trump a 19-percentage-point victory over President Biden.Yet Mr. Cassidy, a 63-year-old physician, also has an iconoclastic streak and can be quirky. A devoted fan of his alma mater’s football program, Mr. Cassidy can rattle off the precise number of Louisiana State University football players who have left college early to be drafted into the N.F.L.One fellow Louisianian, former Representative Cedric Richmond, who in 2014 said that the “dude is weird,” put it more delicately on Wednesday. “He has always been independent,” said Mr. Richmond, a Democrat who served in Congress with Mr. Cassidy and is now a senior adviser to Mr. Biden, calling the senator’s vote a “profile in courage.”Mr. Cassidy is part of an increasingly vocal group of red-state Senate Republicans who, having spent more time in their careers confirming judges than legislating, are eager to work with Mr. Biden and their Democratic colleagues.Mr. Cassidy signaled his very public turn toward pragmatism less than a month after cruising to re-election last year by 40 points.First, he became the most prominent Louisiana Republican, and one of only a few G.O.P. senators in the South, to acknowledge in November that Mr. Biden had won the election.Then he left no doubt about his intentions with a decidedly Louisiana touch. He showed up at a Capitol Hill news conference in December bearing Mardi Gras beads to make the case for state and local aid in a coronavirus relief package, warning that cities like New Orleans were being financially battered without tourist dollars.In joining a bipartisan Senate “gang” after his landslide re-election to push for what eventually became the $900 billion measure that Mr. Trump signed in December, a seemingly liberated Mr. Cassidy indicated that he would use his next, and perhaps final, six-year term as a constructive force in Congress for a state confronting profound economic, public health and environmental challenges exacerbated by the pandemic.“I’m 63 years old, I am a senator because I love my country, I love my state, and I am going to work my hardest for my state and my country,” he said after that December news conference, adding with a shrug: “I want my state and my country to do well and what comes, comes.”If that approach makes for a sharp contrast with Senator John Kennedy — his fellow Louisiana Republican, who delights in dishing one-liners on cable television — it puts him in league with an emerging group of G.O.P. lawmakers more interested in accruing legislative accomplishments than Fox News appearances.This coalition includes some of the Republican senators who visited the White House to discuss the next virus package with Mr. Biden this month. Their ranks include not just moderate stalwarts like Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska but also more conservative lawmakers like Todd Young of Indiana, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Jerry Moran of Kansas.“We’re looking for solutions,” said Mr. Young, who until recently was the chairman of the Senate Republican campaign arm and is eager to turn back to policy.Mr. Schatz, who is friendly with some of these senators, put a finer point on their motivation: “If I’m going to suffer through the Trump era, then I may as well enact some laws.”In Louisiana, though, the thoroughly Trumpified Republican Party expects only continued fealty to the former president.Mr. Cassidy confronted immediate criticism for his vote and comments on Tuesday.“I received many calls this afternoon from Republicans in Louisiana who think that @SenBillCassidy did a ‘terrible job’ today,” Blake Miguez, the State House Republican leader, wrote on Twitter, repurposing Mr. Cassidy’s critique of Mr. Trump’s lawyers. “I understand their frustrations and join them in their disappointment.”Even a fellow member of the Louisiana congressional delegation, Representative Mike Johnson, weighed in. “A lot of people from back home are calling me about it right now,” noted Mr. Johnson, a Republican, who said he was “surprised” by Mr. Cassidy’s move.Perhaps he should not have been.As Stephanie Grace, the longtime political columnist for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, wrote in a December piece anticipating Mr. Cassidy’s shift, he “has long been part of bipartisan efforts to solve problems, even if his solutions probably go too far for some Republicans and stop way short of what many Democrats want.”Mr. Cassidy, a former Democrat like Mr. Kennedy and many Southern Republicans their age, has long been less than dogmatic on health care, a viewpoint he formed working in his state’s charity hospitals. This has always been more than a little ironic to Louisiana political insiders, given that in 2014 he unseated Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, thanks to conservative attacks on former President Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act. (On Wednesday, Ms. Landrieu said of Mr. Cassidy, “Many people in Louisiana are proud of him, including me.”)Yet by 2017, during the heated debate over whether to repeal the health care law, Mr. Cassidy was warning that to kick people off their insurance or make coverage unaffordable would only shift costs back to taxpayers by burdening emergency rooms.“If you want to be fiscally responsible, then coverage is better than no coverage,” he said at the time, conceding that Congress had established “the right for every American to have health care.”Such remarks, like much else policy-related in the Trump era, were overshadowed by the incessant White House drama. But Mr. Cassidy’s turn toward the political middle isn’t lost on Louisiana Democrats now.“He seems to be developing this moderate, deal-making persona,” said Mandie Landry, a state representative from Louisiana. “Kennedy has become so out there and embarrassing that it gives Cassidy some space, especially if he’s not running again.”That was clear enough from the senator’s comportment on Wednesday morning, when he seemed to evoke the most memorable lyrics of the Louisiana-inspired song “Me and Bobby McGee”: “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”Happily striding to the microphone set up for television cameras in the Capitol basement to take questions, Mr. Cassidy acknowledged that the reaction in Louisiana to his vote had been “mixed.”Then he continued.“It is Constitution and country over party,” he said of his approach. “For some, they get it. And for others, they’re not quite so sure. But that’s to be expected.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      John Fetterman, Senate Candidate, Revisits Gun Incident Involving Black Jogger

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJohn Fetterman, Senate Candidate, Revisits Gun Incident Involving Black JoggerAs a mayor in 2013, Mr. Fetterman, a Democrat, used a gun to stop Christopher Miyares, a Black man jogging nearby, after saying he heard gunshots. The police found no weapons on Mr. Miyares and released him.John Fetterman, the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania and one of the state’s most prominent Democrats, this week entered the race for an open U.S. Senate seat in 2022.Credit…Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesTrip Gabriel and Feb. 9, 2021Updated 8:37 p.m. ETAt the height of protests last year over police violence against Black people, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, John Fetterman, called for police officers to be better trained to defuse incidents where those involved did not threaten public safety.“We must fall on the side of de-escalation every time,” Mr. Fetterman wrote, citing his experiences as mayor of the town of Braddock, outside Pittsburgh.But as Mr. Fetterman — one of Pennsylvania’s most prominent Democrats — enters the race for U.S. Senate this week, an incident from his past highlights his own judgment in the heat of one such moment.In 2013, when he was mayor, Mr. Fetterman used his shotgun to stop an unarmed Black jogger and detain him, telling the police that he had heard shots fired near his home and spotted the man running, according to the police report. “Fetterman continued to yell and state that he knows this male was shooting,” the police report says.An officer who patted down the man, Christopher Miyares, then 28, found no weapons. The officer noted that Mr. Miyares was wearing running clothes and headphones. Mr. Miyares was released.On Tuesday, in response to questions from The Times, Mr. Fetterman’s campaign shared a new two-and-a-half minute video in which the candidate described the incident and defended himself — a sign that his campaign anticipated that the events from eight years ago would resurface with potential political fallout for his Senate bid.In the video, Mr. Fetterman says that he was outside his home with his 4-year-old son when he heard “this crushing burst of gunfire,” and “I immediately made a series of split-second decisions.”He said he saw someone “dressed entirely in black and a face mask” running in the direction of an elementary school. Noting that the date, in January 2013, was not long after the Sandy Hook school shooting, Mr. Fetterman said, “I made the decision to stop him from going any further until the first responders could arrive.”According to accounts Mr. Fetterman gave in 2013 to local media, he chased the man in his pickup truck and used a 20-gauge shotgun he kept in the truck to hold him until the police appeared.“I believe I did the right thing,” Mr. Fetterman told WTAE-TV at the time. “But I may have broken the law in the course of it. I’m certainly not above the law.”Mr. Miyares told the TV station in 2013 that Mr. Fetterman had pointed the gun at his chest; the mayor denied doing so. Mr. Miyares said the incident unnerved him, and he maintained that what Mr. Fetterman took to be gunshots were bottle rockets set off by a group of kids. Mr. Fetterman said no traces of fireworks were found in the area.No charges related to the incident were brought against Mr. Fetterman, who was in his second of four terms as mayor. A search of public court records did not find any complaint or action taken by Mr. Miyares following the incident. A spokesman for the Allegheny County Police Department said on Tuesday that Mr. Miyares never filed a complaint with the department.Mr. Fetterman is the first declared candidate in what is expected to be one of the marquee Senate races nationwide next year, and he is running at a time when law enforcement violence against Black men, racial profiling and other policing abuses are urgent concerns among Democratic voters. Mr. Fetterman has highlighted his work developing a community policing plan for Braddock with buy-in from the town’s predominantly Black population, and firing police officers with a history of complaints.Defined by his progressive politics as well as an imposing appearance — he is 6-foot-8, has a shaved head and favors work clothes over suits — Mr. Fetterman built a national profile during his 14 years as mayor of Braddock, a town of fewer than 3,000 in the shadow of closed steel factories and struggling with high poverty. The dates of nine murders in the town are tattooed on his right forearm, a symbol of his commitment to stopping street violence. His efforts to revive Braddock with arts programs and urban farms earned him widespread media coverage, and he was elected lieutenant governor in 2018.Last month, Mr. Fetterman quickly raised $1.5 million after emailing supporters and telling his 400,000 Twitter followers that he was exploring a Senate race. In his campaign announcement video he pledged to unify voters with left-wing politics and those in left-behind communities who flocked to former President Donald J. Trump. He is expected to face challenges in the Democratic primary by two or more of the state’s centrist members of Congress, including Representatives Conor Lamb and Chrissy Houlahan.Mr. Fetterman’s nascent Senate campaign on Tuesday first emailed The Times a five-page document with contemporary news accounts that sought to emphasize that Mr. Fetterman did not know Mr. Miyares’s race when he pursued him, and to place their encounter in the context of what the document called a spate of gang-related gun violence in Braddock. The campaign then sent the video and a statement by Mr. Fetterman; he declined a request to be interviewed.In 2018, Mr. Miyares was charged with multiple felonies in a separate incident, including kidnapping for ransom, making terroristic threats and reckless endangerment, according to publicly available court records. He is currently incarcerated in state prison in Somerset County, Pa., and could not be reached for comment.Mr. Fetterman’s run-in with Mr. Miyares surfaced briefly in 2016 during an earlier Senate bid by Mr. Fetterman, when he ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary. At the time, he told The Philly Voice that his pursuit and detainment of the runner had nothing to do with race.“The runner could have been my mother for all I knew, thanks to what the jogger was wearing,” he said.In his statement released along with the video, Mr. Fetterman said the incident with the jogger had been spread by political opponents since 2015 “and it’s never gone anywhere because people here know that I did the right thing for my community.”Most recently, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully last year for a House seat from western Pennsylvania, Sean Parnell, tweeted about the incident in July 2020. Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son, retweeted Mr. Parnell.“I’m not going to just sit here while a bunch of Republicans who have never given a damn about racial justice launch these bad-faith attacks from the safety of their gated communities,” Mr. Fetterman said in his statement. “They’ve never had stray bullets hit their home, or had a bullet whiz by so close that you can feel the air move. When I ran for mayor, I made a commitment to do whatever I could to confront this gun violence — and that’s exactly what I’ve done.”He noted that he was re-elected in 2013 by voters in Braddock, which is 80 percent Black.That year, Mr. Fetterman won 75 percent of the 247 votes cast in the Democratic primary, and he ran unopposed in the general election.Susan Beachy and Sheelagh McNeil contributed research.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Richard Shelby, Veteran Senator From Alabama, Won’t Seek 7th Term

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRichard Shelby, Veteran Senator From Alabama, Won’t Seek 7th TermMr. Shelby, Alabama’s longest-serving senator, will retire after a career in which he headed four congressional committees and directed billions of dollars to his home state.“I didn’t mean to stay there that long,” said Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama, who was first elected to the House from Tuscaloosa in 1978 and the Senate in a strong year for Democrats in 1986.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesFeb. 8, 2021Updated 5:44 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Senator Richard C. Shelby, a shrewd force in the Senate for more than 30 years and a longtime political powerhouse in his home state of Alabama, said on Monday that he would not seek a seventh term.Mr. Shelby, 86, a onetime conservative Democrat who switched to the Republican Party in 1994, had been hinting that he would not run again next year, and said in an interview that he had decided to bring his time in Washington to a close.“There is a season for all of this, and I recognize that,” he said. “I had a good run, and I still have a couple of years left.”“I didn’t mean to stay there that long,” added Mr. Shelby, who was first elected to the House from Tuscaloosa in 1978 and the Senate in a strong year for Democrats in 1986.His retirement will touch off an intramural scramble for the open seat among Republicans, but Democrats have little chance of picking off a seat in deep-red Alabama, particularly in a midterm election with a Democrat in the White House. He is the fourth Senate Republican to disclose he will not run in 2022, joining Rob Portman of Ohio, Richard M. Burr of North Carolina and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania.During his long career, Mr. Shelby achieved the rare feat of becoming chairman of four Senate committees: Banking, Intelligence, Rules and, finally, Appropriations, a perch he used to direct billions of federal dollars back home for space and law enforcement-related facilities as well as transportation projects that provided jobs and other opportunities for Alabamians.“I have tried to help Alabama on meritorious things,” said Mr. Shelby, saying that he wanted to create conditions where his constituents could have work and educational opportunities. “I have always thought just giving someone a check is short term.”Mr. Shelby was elected to the Senate in 1986, defeating Jeremiah Denton, a former Vietnam prisoner of war and one of a wave of Republicans elected on Ronald Reagan’s coattails in 1980. Mr. Shelby was considered a “boll weevil,” a group of conservative Southern Democrats who often formed a bloc with Republicans against liberal Democratic initiatives, named for a pest common in the South that destroys cotton crops and is difficult to eradicate.Mr. Shelby clashed repeatedly with President Bill Clinton after his election in 1992, drawing rebukes from the White House for his opposition, including when he responded to one of Mr. Clinton’s budget proposals with the phrase “the tax man cometh.” Mr. Clinton threatened to move NASA jobs from Alabama to Texas and also limited Mr. Shelby to a single pass for the White House ceremony honoring the University of Alabama’s national championship football team in 1992, a petty gesture but a cardinal sin in Crimson Tide terms.The morning after the 1994 Republican midterm sweep that gave Republicans control of the House for the first time in 40 years, Mr. Shelby announced with great fanfare that he was switching to the Republican Party. The high-profile move left his Democratic colleagues incensed but kept him on course for a long career in the Senate. Mr. Shelby intimidated would-be challengers by amassing a huge campaign war chest that typically deterred anyone considering a run.In 2017, Mr. Shelby injected himself into the state’s race for the Senate seat left vacant when Jeff Sessions became attorney general.In a television interview, Mr. Shelby made clear that he could not vote for the Republican nominee, Roy S. Moore, a former judge who had been accused of trying to establish relationships with teenage girls while he was in his 30s. Mr. Shelby’s rejection of him was considered a factor in Mr. Moore’s loss in the election to the Democrat Doug Jones, who was defeated last year in his bid for a full term.After Mr. Jones’s 20-point loss to the Republican Tommy Tuberville, the most intense action in Alabama will take place among Republicans, with a crowded primary field likely.Mr. Shelby has spoken highly of Katie Britt, one of his former aides who now runs Alabama’s most influential business lobby. Representative Gary Palmer or former Representative Bradley Byrne, who ran for Senate but lost in last year’s primary, may also enter the race.If the party remains on its populist trajectory, however, a candidate more in the vein of former President Donald J. Trump could emerge as the front-runner. Representative Mo Brooks, the hard-right conservative, may be that contender, and on Monday he expressed interest in the opening.But it was far from certain that he could secure the former president’s endorsement in the primary. Mr. Brooks infuriated some people in Mr. Trump’s inner circle by attempting to shift blame to the White House for his role in organizing the Jan. 6 rally in Washington that turned into a deadly mob attack on the Capitol.The broader challenge for any Republican in Alabama is that without Mr. Sessions, who had become a nemesis of Mr. Trump’s by the time he ran to reclaim his old Senate seat last year, in the field this time, the former president may be reluctant to intervene. Alabama is one of the few states where he had previously offered an endorsement in a contested primary only to see his candidate defeated, as former Senator Luther Strange was by Mr. Moore in 2017.Mr. Shelby will exit as his state’s longest-serving senator. Though he has had some health problems in the past, he said he is “spry” these days.“Although I plan to retire, I am not leaving today,” he said in a statement. “I have two good years remaining to continue my work in Washington. I have the vision and the energy to give it my all.”Jonathan Martin More

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      Why Arizona’s Senators May Collide With Democrats Who Elected Them

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhy Arizona’s Senators May Collide With Democrats Who Elected ThemSenators Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly ran on bipartisan approaches to governing, but some Democrats in Arizona view their openness to Senate Republicans with skepticism.Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, at the 2020 State of the Union address. She and Senator Mark Kelly have assumed unusual stature amid all the talk about bipartisanship.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesFeb. 2, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETDemocrats control the U.S. Senate by a single vote. President Biden has placed bipartisanship near the top of his agenda. Republican senators are pushing for deals, including on Covid-19 during a meeting on Monday with the president. On the economy, on immigration, on health care — the Biden administration will need votes from every senator it can get.Which is where Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly come in.Arizona’s two Democratic senators, both moderates, have assumed unusual stature amid all the talk about bipartisanship. Ms. Sinema made waves and frustrated progressives last month when she aligned with Republicans to maintain the filibuster, which empowers the minority party. Mr. Kelly was part of a bipartisan group of 16 senators who recently met with White House officials to discuss Covid relief. The pair represent a state that Mr. Biden narrowly flipped in November; pleasing Arizona is a new Democratic priority.But if Ms. Sinema and Mr. Kelly are emerging as players in Washington, the politics back home are more complicated. Arizona Democratic Party officials and activists threw themselves into the two senators’ races, despite the fact that many of these Democrats are more progressive than either Ms. Sinema or Mr. Kelly. Now they are eager for their senators not just to embrace the middle, but also to adopt the policies the left is pressing for as well. Many view the senators’ openness to Republicans with skepticism.Mr. Kelly and his wife, former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, after his swearing-in ceremony in December.Credit…Al Drago for The New York Times“So many things went into Kelly and Sinema’s victory that no one effort can take credit, but also everything was necessary, so nothing can be sacrificed,” said Ian Danley, the executive director of Arizona Wins, who helped coordinate voter outreach among dozens of liberal organizations last year. “They’re both in a tough spot. Those different strategies from a policy perspective can be in conflict.”Ms. Sinema, who was elected in 2018, and Mr. Kelly, who won last year, both ran for office on bipartisan approaches to government. And given the narrow Democratic control in the Senate, both senators are likely to prove essential to the Biden agenda as well as any major legislative deal-making on issues central to the state, including immigration, health care and Covid relief.Their importance was on clear display last week when Vice President Kamala Harris included the Phoenix ABC affiliate and The Arizona Republic’s editorial board in a round of interviews as she promoted the administration’s Covid relief package. Though Ms. Harris did not mention Ms. Sinema or Mr. Kelly by name, she left no doubt that their loyalty was paramount.“If we don’t pass this bill, I’m going to be very candid with you: We know more people are going to die in our country,” Ms. Harris said in the interview with The Republic. “More people will lose their jobs and our children are going to miss more school. We’ve got to be here collectively to say that that is not an option in America.”That same day, Ms. Harris offered similar comments to a television station and newspaper in West Virginia. Later, Senator Joe Manchin III, a Democrat who has represented the state since 2010 and relishes his reputation as an independent, voiced his own frustration, saying her interview was “not a way of working together.”Ms. Sinema and Mr. Kelly made no such comments, and some progressives viewed their silence as worrisome.“We need to be able to depend on these senators that we worked so hard to elect,” said Tomás Robles, an executive director of LUCHA, a civil rights group that knocked on tens of thousands of doors in Arizona for Democrats last year. “If they’re going to act like a moderate Republican, we will remember by the time elections come. We expect them to recognize that Latinos voted overwhelmingly for those two, and we expect them to repay our loyalty.”Nayeli Jaramillo-Montes, a canvasser with the Arizona advocacy group LUCHA, which knocked on tens of thousands of doors for Democrats last year.Credit…Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York TimesFor many immigration activists, a sense of pessimism has already begun to sink in. They fear that Democrats will try to strike a deal with Republicans who are unlikely to approve the sweeping changes Mr. Biden has proposed — similar to the strategy that failed during the Obama administration.Erika Andiola, a Phoenix-based immigration activist, became the first known undocumented congressional aide when she worked for Ms. Sinema in 2013, drawn to what she saw as Ms. Sinema’s intense interest and commitment in the issue. Now, Ms. Andiola said she viewed her former boss as moving to a more conservative stance on immigration — more often emphasizing border security than creating a path to citizenship for the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.“There is a window of time now and there is a way for Democrats to get something done on immigration — and they can do it on their own,” Ms. Andiola said. “In the moment of crisis, you have to choose your battles, you have to choose what you can win. Pick the right strategy. Compromising with Republicans is not going to get us anywhere.”Both Ms. Sinema and Mr. Kelly declined to be interviewed for this article, but statements from their offices emphasized bipartisanship and border security, as well as support for Dreamers, who were brought to the United States as children of unauthorized immigrants and have been threatened with deportation at times. Mr. Kelly is already part of the group of 16 senators tasked with finding bipartisan agreement on the relief package. Ms. Sinema has been one of the most outspoken critics of Arizona’s response to the pandemic, and some Arizona Democrats believe she will be supportive of the Biden administration’s package.Raquel Terán, the newly elected chair of the Arizona Democratic Party and a state representative, acknowledged that the two senators “didn’t campaign on the progressive end of spectrum.” But she said that while there might be some disagreements, she expected both to side with Mr. Biden on the relief package, health care and immigration.Raquel Terán, the new chair of the Arizona Democratic Party, said she expected the state’s senators to back President Biden’s agenda.Credit…Bob Christie/Associated Press“They will vote for the Democratic agenda, the agenda that Joe Biden has put forward — they supported him in the election and what they put on the table, so I am hopeful,” Ms. Terán said. “I hope that they will do everything to ensure that his agenda is not blocked.”Arizona has a long history with high-profile, independent-minded senators willing to buck party lines, and others who amassed political power — John McCain and Jon Kyl were long seen as two of the most influential senators during their time in office, and Jeff Flake became one of the first Republicans in the Senate to openly criticize former President Donald J. Trump.“There is no state in America that is going to play a more pivotal role in the direction of congressional legislation in the next two years,” said Glenn Hamer, the president of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce. “Every major piece of legislation is going to go right through Arizona, and the role many of us want our senators to play is as someone who reaches across the aisle.”Many Democrats point out that the political atmosphere of the state has changed drastically since 2018, with voters flipping both Senate seats and a Democrat presidential candidate winning in Arizona in November for only the second time in five decades. And since the riot in Washington last month, more than 5,000 Republicans have dropped their party affiliation.Still, Mr. Hamer warned that both senators were in a precarious political position, particularly Mr. Kelly, who won a special election and is up for re-election in 2022. (The Chamber of Commerce endorsed his opponent in the election last year, and did not make an endorsement in Ms. Sinema’s race.)Approving major changes like a $15-an-hour minimum wage or an immigration package that does not include more enforcement, Mr. Hamer said, would turn off the moderate voters who also helped propel the pair to Washington.“I don’t believe you can have unity in America without bipartisan legislation, and I really believe both of them have a role to play in that,” he said. “That would be far better and more durable than trying to blow up the filibuster.”Mr. Danley, a longtime liberal activist, similarly warned that the two senators could not take new voters in the state for granted.“If we’re going to turn out voters who support you, we need ammunition, we need to have something that is real and legitimate,” Mr. Danley said. “We can’t keep going out saying they are better than the bad guys — that is too low of a bar. What about actually being good for these folks who showed up and who have expectations?”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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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