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      G.O.P. Senate Candidate in North Carolina Thrives as 2 Key Backers Squabble

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      HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. — Rick Griswold, a 74-year-old lifelong Republican, doesn’t know much about Ted Budd, the congressman he plans to support on Tuesday in the party’s Senate primary election. But he knows exactly why he’ll cast his ballot for Mr. Budd.“Trump endorsed him,” Mr. Griswold, an Army veteran, said as he collected tools at his part-time job at O’Reilly Auto Parts. “I like Trump.”The former president’s branded “complete and total endorsement” doesn’t guarantee victory in a Republican primary. However, operatives working in Senate campaigns this year said that playing up Donald J. Trump’s imprimatur is the single most effective message in intraparty battles.In North Carolina, Mr. Budd is proving the potency of pairing the former president’s endorsement with another from one of Mr. Trump’s on-again, off-again allies: the Club for Growth, an influential anti-tax group that has spent $32 million on federal races this year.That amount is twice as much as that by any other outside group — and much of that spending has been against candidates Mr. Trump has endorsed, according to campaign finance data compiled by Open Secrets.Mr. Trump has been furious about the Club for Growth’s campaigning against his picks. During a heated battle in the Ohio Senate primary, the group aired a TV spot of Mr. Trump’s choice in that race, J.D. Vance, criticizing the former president. Mr. Trump ordered an aide to text the group’s president, David McIntosh, telling him off in a vulgar message.Mr. McIntosh, meanwhile, has said privately that he hoped the group’s recent endorsement of Kathy Barnette in Pennsylvania would help exact some revenge on Mr. Trump, according to people with knowledge of the conversations.Understand the Pennsylvania Primary ElectionThe crucial swing state will hold its primary on May 17, with key races for a U.S. Senate seat and the governorship.Hard-Liners Gain: Republican voters appear to be rallying behind far-right candidates in two pivotal races, worrying both parties about what that could mean in November.G.O.P. Senate Race: Kathy Barnette, a conservative commentator, is making a surprise late surge against big-spending rivals, Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick.Democratic Senate Race: Representative Conor Lamb had all the makings of a front-runner, but John Fetterman, the state’s shorts-wearing lieutenant governor, is resonating with voters.Abortion Battleground: Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states where abortion access hangs in the balance with midterm elections this year.Electability Concerns: Starting with Pennsylvania, the coming weeks will offer a window into the mood of Democratic voters who are deeply worried about a challenging midterm campaign environment.But in North Carolina, Mr. Budd was battling former Gov. Pat McCrory and former Representative Mark Walker after Mr. Trump announced his endorsement in June. Mr. Budd appeared to separate from the pack, helped by an $11 million advertising campaign from the Club for Growth mostly revolving around the former president’s endorsement. The group’s most-watched TV spot of the race was footage of Mr. Trump’s announcement of his endorsement of Mr. Budd.Last week, Mr. Budd was 27 percentage points ahead of the rest of the field, according to a poll from Emerson College, The Hill and WNCN-TV, the CBS affiliate in the Research Triangle of North Carolina. The Club for Growth has also curtailed its spending on the race, signaling its calculation that Mr. Budd is safely ahead.The winner of the state’s Republican Senate primary will head into the November general election with a distinct advantage over the Democratic nominee, who polls indicate will be Cheri Beasley, a former State Supreme Court justice. Republicans have won the last four North Carolina Senate races and the past three presidential contests in the state.Doug Heye, a Republican who has worked on three North Carolina Senate campaigns, said Mr. Budd was a strong but relatively unknown candidate across the state. His rise, Mr. Heye noted, showed the power of a well-funded, Trump-endorsed primary campaign.“It’s not surprising Budd is emerging,” he said. “But these margins look pretty big, especially considering he’s running against a former governor and a former congressman.”Mr. McCrory disputed the polling and criticized the Club for Growth, a 23-year-old conservative outfit he described as a political gun-for-hire that had strayed from its original mission of promoting low-tax, limited-government policy.“The Club for Growth is trying to buy the North Carolina Senate race,” Mr. McCrory said. “And we’re trying to do everything we can to stop them.”A Club for Growth spokesman declined to comment.Mr. Budd, 50, promoted himself as a gun shop owner during his first congressional campaign in 2016. He had been involved in several businesses after divesting in 2003 from the Budd Group, a company started by his father that provides janitorial, landscaping and other corporate facility maintenance, a spokesman said.This year, Mr. Budd has mostly kept his head down. He has visited all 100 counties during the campaign, which his team said was a factor behind Mr. Budd’s skipping all four Republican primary debates.“We’ve been focused on the fundamentals, like getting organized in all 100 counties,” said Jonathan Felts, a senior adviser to Mr. Budd.Mr. Budd compiled a staunchly conservative voting record during his six years in the House, one that aligned closely with both Mr. Trump and the Club for Growth.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Dr. Oz, Celebrity Candidate in the Pennsylvania Senate Race. What’s Trump Not to Like?

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      “His show is great. He’s on that screen. He’s in the bedrooms of all those women telling them good and bad.”This was Donald Trump at a May 6 rally in Greensburg, Pa., looking to sell Republican voters on Mehmet Oz, the celebrity surgeon he has endorsed for Senate.“Dr. Oz has had an enormously successful career on TV,” reasoned Mr. Trump, “and now he’s running to save our country.”As political pitches go, this one may sound vague and vacuous and more than a tad creepy. But Mr. Trump was simply cutting to the heart of the matter. Dr. Oz’s chief political asset — arguably his singular asset in this race — is his celebrity. Beyond that, it is hard to imagine why anyone would consider him for the job, much less take him seriously.By championing the good doctor, Mr. Trump is putting his faith in the political value of celebrity to its purest test yet. Upping the drama are signs that the move could backfire. In recent days, there has been a grass-roots surge by another candidate in the Republican primary on Tuesday, Kathy Barnette, a hard-right gun-rights champion, abortion foe and Fox News commentator seen as harnessing conservative unease and annoyance over Mr. Trump’s Oz endorsement.The bomb-throwing Ms. Barnette has made the race even more chaotic and is freaking out some Republicans — including Mr. Trump. “Kathy Barnette will never be able to win the general election,” he asserted Thursday, citing “many things in her past which have not been properly explained or vetted.” Doubling down on Dr. Oz, Mr. Trump insisted that “a vote for anyone else in the primary is a vote against victory in the fall!”Kathy Barnette, who is challenging Dr. Mehmet Oz in the Republican primary.Matt Rourke/Associated PressThe decision to go all in on Dr. Oz tells you much about Mr. Trump’s view of what makes a worthy candidate — and maybe even more about his vision for the Republican Party.It is hard to overstate the importance of the Pennsylvania Senate contest. The seat being vacated by Pat Toomey, a Republican, is widely considered the Democrats’ best hope for a pickup in November, making the race crucial in the brawl for control of the Senate, now split 50-50 with Vice President Kamala Harris casting tiebreaking votes.Dr. Oz drifted into the Republican battle last fall, just over a week after Mr. Trump’s first endorsee, Sean Parnell, bowed out following accusations of abuse from his estranged wife. There were other Republican contenders happy to debase themselves in pursuit of Mr. Trump’s blessing, most notably David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive and Bush administration official. But Mr. Trump — surprise! — ultimately went with the sycophant who was also a television star. That really is his sweet spot.“You know when you’re in television for 18 years, that’s like a poll,” Mr. Trump has explained of his decision. “That means people like you.”Even after Mr. Trump’s endorsement, the race has remained tight. At the Greensburg rally, some in the crowd repeatedly booed the mention of Dr. Oz. Many had questions about his authenticity and values — or, more basically, what the heck a longtime Jersey guy is doing in their state.Anyone who takes public service and leadership seriously should be troubled by Dr. Oz’s glaring lack of experience in or knowledge of policy, government and so on. That, sadly, applies to few people in today’s Republican Party, which regards experience, expertise and science as a steaming pile of elitist hooey.Even more disturbing may be Dr. Oz’s devolution from a highly regarded, award-winning cardiothoracic surgeon to a snake-oil peddling TV huckster. Before this race, his closest involvement with the Senate was when he was called before a panel in 2014 to testify about the sketchy weight-loss products he had been hawking on his show.Then again, Republicans elected a shameless TV huckster to the presidency. This clearly isn’t a deal breaker for them.But MAGA world has its own concerns about Dr. Oz. For starters, his Turkish heritage — he holds dual citizenship and trained in the Turkish Army — has put him crosswise to the Republican Party’s ascendant nativism. His primary opponents and their supporters have suggested his Turkish ties make him a national security risk. Mike Pompeo, Mr. Trump’s former secretary of state and C.I.A. director, has said Dr. Oz owes voters a clear sense of the “scope and the depth of his relationship with the Turkish government.”The fact that Dr. Oz is a Muslim also disquiets some in the party.In combating suspicions that he is an outsider, it does not help that Dr. Oz doesn’t have deep ties to Pennsylvania. He lived in New Jersey for decades, and The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that he used his in-laws’ address to register to vote in Pennsylvania in 2020.As for his values, over the years Dr. Oz has committed numerous conservative heresies: pointing out the scientific inaccuracy of some fetal-heartbeat bills; discussing transgender kids in something other than horrified, apocalyptic terms; promoting Obamacare; acknowledging systemic racism. He has repeatedly come across as squishy on gun rights. Perhaps worst of all, he had Michelle Obama as a guest on his show. And he was nice to her! This has all made great fodder for his primary opponents.Not that such messy details matter. For Mr. Trump, Dr. Oz’s lack of political and policy chops — or even firm principles — is a feature, not a bug. The fewer established positions or values that a candidate holds, the easier it is for Mr. Trump to bend him to his will.In fact, Mr. Trump can only be delighted at the cringe-inducing desperation with which Dr. Oz has been refashioning himself into a MAGA man. The campaign ad of the candidate talking tough and playing with guns is particularly excruciating.For Mr. Trump, the perfect political candidate is one who has no strongly held views of his own. Whether candidates are in touch with the needs and values of their constituencies is of no interest — and could, in fact, be an inconvenience. Mr. Trump clearly prefers a nationalized Republican Party populated by minions willing to blindly follow orders in his unholy crusade for political restoration and vengeance.In part, Pennsylvania Republicans will be choosing between someone like Ms. Barnette, whose candidacy is focused on her (extreme and somewhat terrifying) beliefs and someone like Dr. Oz, whose candidacy is all about his personal fame — and his dependence on Mr. Trump.“When you’re a star, they let you do it,” Mr. Trump once vilely bragged of his penchant for groping women. “You can do anything.”What the former president values these days in Republican candidates are stars willing to let him do anything he wants.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Trump Endorses Doug Mastriano for Pennsylvania Governor

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      Mr. Mastriano, who has promoted many false claims of a stolen 2020 election, was the leading Republican candidate for governor even before Donald Trump’s endorsement.Former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday endorsed Doug Mastriano, a retired colonel and state senator who has propagated myriad false claims about the 2020 election and attended the protest leading up to the Capitol riot, in the Republican primary race for governor of Pennsylvania.Mr. Trump made his choice three days before the state’s Tuesday primary, a political blessing that serves to increase the former president’s standing as much as Mr. Mastriano’s.“There is no one in Pennsylvania who has done more, or fought harder, for election integrity,” Mr. Trump said in a statement, adding that Mr. Mastriano would also “fight violent crime, strengthen our borders, protect life, defend our under-siege Second Amendment, and help our military and our vets.”A Fox News poll released Tuesday showed Mr. Mastriano with a lead of 12 percentage points over his closest primary rival, former Representative Lou Barletta.Since then, Mr. Barletta has sought to coalesce support from Republicans wary of nominating Mr. Mastriano. Two fellow candidates dropped out and endorsed Mr. Barletta, as have a few prominent former elected officials, including former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.Mr. Trump, whose chosen candidate for governor of Nebraska lost a primary on Tuesday, is at risk of another blemish on his record in Pennsylvania’s Senate race. His pick, the television personality Dr. Mehmet Oz, has failed to put daylight between himself and a field of candidates.Mr. Mastriano has long been an outspoken supporter of Mr. Trump. He used campaign money to organize buses to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, and, last month, campaigned at an event that promoted the outlandish QAnon conspiracy theory.Pennsylvania Republicans not aligned with the Mastriano campaign have said he cannot win a general election against Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania attorney general who is the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor. Mr. Shapiro’s campaign recently began airing television advertisements that appeared intended to lift Mr. Mastriano’s standing among Republican primary voters.In a statement after the endorsement on Saturday, Mr. Barletta said, “Throughout this campaign I have proved that I’m the best Republican to unite the Republican Party and defeat Josh Shapiro, and I will continue unifying our grass-roots conservatives towards our shared goal.”He added, “I look forward to having President Trump’s endorsement Wednesday morning.” More

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      Fox News Hosts Splinter as Chaotic Pennsylvania Primaries Heat Up

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      Fox News is having another one of its moments.The network’s internal fissures were on public display this week as host after host, at times seemingly in dialogue with one another, either defended or threw rhetorical spitballs at different candidates in Pennsylvania’s ghost-pepper-hot Republican primary races.It was a reminder of how the battle for hearts and minds within the G.O.P. is playing out across the conservative news media, an ever-evolving ecosystem that has grown only more complex since Donald Trump’s famous glide down that golden escalator. And it was a sharp illustration of how Fox News grants extraordinary latitude to its biggest stars — with each prime-time show often operating as its own private fief.Thursday night alone was pretty wild, with Sean Hannity pumping up Dr. Mehmet Oz, Trump’s choice for Senate, and talking down Kathy Barnette, a conservative media commentator whose late surge in the May 17 primary has alarmed Republican Party insiders and thrilled the rambunctious G.O.P. grass-roots in Pennsylvania.An hour later, Laura Ingraham was defending Barnette against what she called “smears.”To viewers, it presented the illusion of a real-time debate between warring factions of what remains the nation’s most powerful cable news channel. Fox News did not offer an on-the-record comment by publication time.“This is the closest thing to a head-to-head competition we’ve seen between two Fox hosts in quite some time,” said Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a nonprofit group aligned with the Democratic Party that monitors conservative news outlets.“When you’re watching at home, it appears seamless,” said Greta Van Susteren, a former Fox News host, who said that Ingraham probably hadn’t watched Hannity while preparing for her show. “But when I was at Fox, we all had our own real estate, and nobody ever told me what to say or do.”And it’s not just Fox. Various lesser-known conservative media stars have joined the boisterous public discussion over whether Republican voters should tap Oz, widely seen within the party’s base as a faux Trumper — or Barnette, who comes off as very much the real thing.On the Full MAGA end of the right-wing media spectrum, the likes of Sebastian Gorka and Steve Bannon were giving softball interviews to Barnette, who rose to prominence largely outside of Fox News. Meanwhile, Hugh Hewitt, a syndicated radio host who once was considered more of an establishment figure but now supports Trump, was endorsing David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive who has appeared to fade in the Senate primary as the other two leading contenders have risen.“It’s too delicious,” said Charlie Sykes, the never-Trump host of The Bulwark Podcast, who disdainfully refers to the conservative news media as the “entertainment wing of the Republican Party.”“The irony is that the entertainment wing will build someone up and then realize, ‘Oh, my gosh, we’ve grown a monster,’” Sykes said. “It’s like watching the Republican Party grow a baby crocodile in the bathtub and be shocked when it grows into a beast and starts devouring people.”An Inside Look at Fox NewsThe conservative cable news network is one of the most influential media outlets in the United States.Tucker Carlson: The star TV host stoked white fear to conquer cable news. In the process, he transformed Fox News and became Donald J. Trump’s heir.Empire of Influence: ​​A Times investigation looked at how the Murdochs, the family behind a global media empire that includes Fox News, have destabilized democracy on three continents.What Trump Helped Build: Together, the channel and Donald Trump have redefined the limits of acceptable political discourse.How Russia Uses Fox News: The network has appeared in Russian media as a way to bolster the Kremlin’s narrative about the Ukraine war.Leaving Fox News: After 18 years with the network, the anchor Chris Wallace, who left for the now shuttered streaming service CNN+, said working at Fox News had become “unsustainable.”‘Everything’s a little more fractured’The conservative news media has fragmented since the advent of Trump, with the dominant trend being a raucous battle for the former president’s ear and favor. But shrewd observers of the landscape say this year’s midterm elections have ushered in a fresh level of chaos.“There’s a new intensity around it, I think,” said Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review. “It just feels like everything’s a little more fractured.”John Fredericks, a Virginia-based radio host who supports Oz and plans to campaign for him next week, said in an interview that while Barnette was a “nice lady,” she would get “blown out in the fall.”Fredericks predicted that Oz would win comfortably on Tuesday despite Barnette’s sudden ascent in public polls, including in a Fox News survey published this week that turbocharged the conservative news media’s debate over the Pennsylvania primaries.Dr. Mehmet Oz has found himself in a close three-way race with Barnette and David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesInternal G.O.P. polling has found that undecided voters are tending to break for the Trump-backed candidate in the last five days or so before a primary election.Democrats have giddily circulated their own research indicating that Barnette is leading the field in the Senate race by about 10 percentage points, but that survey was conducted before Trump issued a statement reiterating his support for Oz and suggesting that Barnette’s past had not been thoroughly examined.Much of that scrutiny is taking place within the conservative media, fueled in some instances by allies of McCormick and Oz, who have been promoting hastily assembled opposition research about Barnette in recent days.During Thursday night’s program, Hannity singled out Barnette’s history of offensive tweets, including Islamophobic and homophobic ones, and said she could not win a general election. Oz, who is of Turkish descent, is a nonpracticing Muslim.Hannity later wrote a series of tweets aimed directly at Barnette, beginning with: “As you know my staff has reached out to you repeatedly in the last 48 hours, it’s great to FINALLY get a response from you. Why have you been ignoring their calls and texts?”Articles in the conservative news media have zeroed in on aspects of Barnette’s biography. Salena Zito, a Pennsylvania-based columnist for The Washington Examiner, raised questions about Barnette’s military service record; The Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross wrote about how Barnette’s campaign manager hung up the phone on him when he grilled her on the subject.Mike Mikus, a veteran Democratic consultant based near Pittsburgh, said the ferment among conservative news outlets reflected the fact that to win a modern Republican primary, “you don’t need the traditional press.”For instance, the campaign of Doug Mastriano, a leading Republican contender for governor of Pennsylvania, rarely responds to queries from mainstream news organizations, and has barred journalists working for The Philadelphia Inquirer, the state’s most influential source of political news and commentary, from its events.“When an Inquirer reporter showed up at a campaign event in Lancaster County last month, two security guards asked him to leave,” the Inquirer reporters Juliana Feliciano Reyes and Andrew Seidman wrote in an article on May 4. “A printout of his photograph and those of other journalists was visible at the check-in desk.”A porous media-campaign barrierFox opinion hosts enjoy a high degree of autonomy, leading at times to a blurring of journalistic and campaign roles that would be anathema at many other outfits — including the network’s archrival, CNN, which fired Chris Cuomo last year as the scope of his entanglement with his brother, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, became clear.Tucker Carlson of Fox News helped slingshot J.D. Vance into the G.O.P. nomination for a Senate seat in Ohio, for instance, helping him gain a following and honing his pitch to voters — and, perhaps most important, to Trump. According to a New York Times analysis of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” transcripts, Vance has appeared as Carlson’s guest on the program nine times so far this year. He appeared 13 times in 2021, five times in 2020 and six times in 2019.For his part, Hannity has appeared at Trump rallies and even offered his private advice to Trump while he was in office, according to a trove of text messages published by CNN. Oz appeared on Hannity’s prime-time Fox show 20 times in 2021 and 2022, according to Media Matters.In that sense, Hannity’s crossover into a campaign role is hardly a new phenomenon in the extended Trump universe, though rarely have the porous borders between the conservative entertainment wing and the official Republican Party collapsed in such a compressed time frame.But that broader pro-Trump media world now extends well beyond Fox, and the network is losing its monopoly on the Republican base, as the party’s panic over Barnette’s ascent dramatically shows.By lunchtime on Friday, Fredericks was hosting Trump himself for a radio interview, in which the former president reiterated his skepticism of Barnette and plugged his choice, Oz.Karen Yourish More

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      Trump Criticizes Kathy Barnette as She Surges in Pennsylvania’s G.O.P. Senate Primary

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      A late surge from Kathy Barnette in Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate primary is officially on former President Trump’s radar.Mr. Trump criticized Ms. Barnette, a conservative author and political commentator, on Thursday and said she was unvetted and unelectable. “Kathy Barnette will never be able to win the general election against the radical left Democrats,” Mr. Trump said in a statement.Ms. Barnett’s momentum in the polls has jeopardized Mr. Trump’s second attempt to influence the primary race, which comes to a close on Tuesday. He endorsed Dr. Mehmet Oz, a longtime television host, after his first choice for the seat, Sean Parnell, suspended his campaign in November amid a court battle over the custody of his children.Ms. Barnette’s sudden rise comes as Dr. Oz has been locked in a contentious primary fight with David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive with deep ties to Mr. Trump’s political orbit. A Fox News Poll on Tuesday showed her at 19 percent, behind Mr. McCormick at 20 percent and Dr. Oz at 22 percent.Her climb has surprised many watching the Pennsylvania race — including Mr. Trump, who never seriously considered supporting her before he announced his endorsement of Dr. Oz less than five weeks ago, according to two people familiar with the decision who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss private conversations.But Ms. Barnette’s candidacy is being taken seriously by the Club for Growth, which endorsed her on Wednesday and announced a $2 million TV ad buy to support her. Her opponents, meanwhile, are scrambling to dig up dirt, like a 2016 tweet in which she claimed then-President Barack Obama was a Muslim. (Mr. Trump repeatedly raised doubts about Mr. Obama’s faith and questioned whether he was a Muslim.)Another sign of the staying power of Ms. Barnette’s surge: Mr. Trump’s criticism of her record allowed for the possibility that she may win. That contrasts sharply with how he has repeatedly attacked Mr. McCormick.“She has many things in her past which have not been properly explained or vetted,” Mr. Trump said in his statement, “but if she is able to do so, she will have a wonderful future in the Republican Party — and I will be behind her all the way.” More

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      Hard-Liners Gain in Pennsylvania G.O.P. Races, Worrying Both Parties

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      Doug Mastriano and Kathy Barnette are amplifying Donald Trump’s stolen-election lie in two key races. Republicans fear they could lose in November. Democrats fear they could win.ERIE, Pa. — Republican voters in Pennsylvania, one of the nation’s most hotly contested political battlegrounds, appear to be rallying behind two hard-right candidates for governor and the Senate who are capturing grass-roots anger, railing against the party’s old guard and amplifying Donald Trump’s stolen-election myth.With less than a week until the state’s primary election on Tuesday, polls show that State Senator Doug Mastriano — one of the state’s central figures in the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election — has emerged as the clear front-runner in the G.O.P. race for governor. The candidate for Senate, Kathy Barnette, an underfunded conservative commentator who has never held public office, has made a surprise late surge in the contest that had been dominated by two big-spending rivals, Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick.Mr. Mastriano has made claims of election fraud a central plank of his bid to lead a state that could be decisive in the 2024 presidential race. Ms. Barnette has a history of incendiary remarks, including repeatedly calling former President Barack Obama an adherent of Islam, which she said should be banned, and derisively writing about “the homosexual agenda.” Both candidates have endorsed each other, forging an important alliance.Now, Republicans are concerned about losing both races in November if primary voters embrace such out-of-the-mainstream candidates.Several Republican rivals to Mr. Mastriano have been gathering on private conference calls in recent days in a last-minute attempt to stop him. All agree that he would be a drag on the party, though Mr. Mastriano has yet to sustain any serious coordinated attacks. Two rivals, State Senator Jake Corman and former Representative Lou Barletta, have set a joint event on Thursday, suggesting that the field might soon consolidate, at least slightly.Democrats harbor their own fear: that the bleak 2022 political environment could nonetheless sweep into power Republicans who, in a less hostile climate, might seem unelectable.Kathy Barnette, a Republican candidate for Pennsylvania’s open U.S. Senate seat, at a candidate forum in Newtown, Pa., on Wednesday.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York Times“Like a lot of Democrats, I’m schizophrenic on this — rooting for the crazy person because it gives us the best chance to win. But at the same time it could give us a crazy senator or a crazy governor, or both,” said Mike Mikus, a Pennsylvania-based Democratic strategist.For years, Pennsylvania has been one of the nation’s quintessential swing states, in which the clearest path to power was through the middle ground between the Democratic and Republican parties. This year’s open seats are because Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican, is retiring and Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, is term-limited.“Pennsylvania is not real good about that extreme on either side,” said Rob Gleason, a former Pennsylvania Republican Party chairman, who was one of Mr. Trump’s chief supporters in the state in 2016 but now worries about Mr. Mastriano in 2022. “No matter what you say, it’s kind of a down-the-middle type of a state.”In Pennsylvania, the governor appoints the secretary of state, the position that oversees state elections, meaning whoever wins the governorship will be overseeing the administration of one of the most coveted swing states in the 2024 presidential race.State Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the presumptive Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania governor, met with environmental advocates in Philadelphia last month.Matt Rourke/Associated PressFor months, the Senate race has been seen chiefly as a heavyweight bout between Dr. Oz, the television personality, and Mr. McCormick, the former chief executive of the world’s largest hedge fund. They and their allies have combined to spend nearly $40 million on television ads. Ms. Barnette, who ran for the House in 2020 in a Philadelphia suburb and lost by nearly 20 percentage points, had rated somewhere between afterthought and asterisk in the race until recently. But a Fox News poll on Tuesday showed the race a virtual three-way tie.To date, Ms. Barnette’s growth has been almost entirely organic, fueled by her sharp debate performances, conservative media appearances and compelling life story, which she told in her book, “Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain: Being Black and Conservative in America.”A “byproduct of a rape,” as she describes herself, when her mother was only 11, Ms. Barnette talks about growing up “on a pig farm” in Alabama without running water and how her success represents the kind of American dream story that is now at risk.In the final week, Ms. Barnette is receiving some crucial institutional backing: the endorsement of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List on Tuesday and a $2 million television advertising blitz funded by the Club for Growth, which is broadcasting her up-from-the-bootstraps message statewide.The Club for Growth, one of the biggest spenders in Republican politics, has feuded recently with Mr. Trump after running ads attacking J.D. Vance, the Republican Senate candidate in Ohio, even after Mr. Trump endorsed him. Mr. Vance won that primary, and Mr. Trump has endorsed Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania.Kathy Barnette, second from left, and Mehmet Oz, third from left, with other Republican candidates for Senate last month at a forum in Camp Hill, Pa.Matt Rourke/Associated PressIn some ways, Ms. Barnette’s candidacy is a test of whether the movement that elected Mr. Trump has taken on a life of its own. “MAGA does not belong to President Trump,” Ms. Barnette said in one April debate.Both Dr. Oz and Mr. McCormick have wooed Mr. Trump’s supporters, though it has been an awkward fit. Dr. Oz was booed at a Trump rally, Mr. McCormick was rejected by Mr. Trump, and both have faced questions of carpetbagging in a state where they did not recently live full time.Ms. Barnette has offered herself as an authentic and unfiltered version of what the Republican base wants. “Listen, this time, you do not have to hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils,” she said at another debate.She has also made plain that there will be no pivot to the middle if she makes it to the fall campaign.“There’s been a longstanding tradition that we want to get as moderate of a Republican coming out of the primary — someone palatable — for the general,” she said in an interview on Wednesday night at a candidate forum in eastern Pennsylvania. “In doing this, how has that worked out for them? It hasn’t really worked out very well.”In the governor’s race, the presumptive Democratic nominee, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, began running television ads last week featuring a narrator touting Mr. Mastriano’s conservative credentials: “If Mastriano wins, it’s a win for what Donald Trump stands for.” Mr. Trump has not endorsed in that contest.On Tuesday, Mr. Mastriano campaigned in Erie, Pa., with Jenna Ellis, the former co-counsel for the Trump campaign’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.“Doug Mastriano, I like to say, is the Donald Trump of Pennsylvania,” Ms. Ellis said.Mr. Mastriano was a key figure in Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the results in Pennsylvania, a state he lost by 81,000 votes. As a freshman state senator, he held a hearing in November 2020 featuring Ms. Ellis and the Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, visited the White House shortly afterward and remained in close contact with the Trump team. State Senator Doug Mastriano speaking to Trump supporters outside the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg a few days after Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the presidential election in 2020.Julio Cortez/Associated PressHe posted an event on Facebook offering bus rides to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, and his campaign reported spending at least $3,000 chartering buses. But he has claimed that he left before the protest turned violent. In Erie, Mr. Mastriano, whose campaign did not respond to requests for comment, defended the rally.“It’s like, God have mercy on your soul if you dare to go and exercise your First Amendment freedom to go to D.C. on Jan. 6?” Mr. Mastriano said. “You did nothing wrong.”Among those quietly vying to coalesce Republicans around an alternative to Mr. Mastriano is Andy Reilly, one of Pennsylvania’s three Republican National Committee members. Mr. Reilly, who has not endorsed in the race, said the Shapiro campaign’s ads had “raised concerns” and sparked discussions.“The fact that the Democrats are running pro-Mastriano ads tells us that they believe he would be the weakest candidate,” said Charlie Gerow, a longtime Pennsylvania Republican operative who is running for governor and polling in the low single digits.Interviewed while stumping at a bakery in Erie, Mr. Barletta, a former congressman who beat a Democratic incumbent in 2010, called himself the strongest Mastriano alternative.Lou Barletta, a candidate for governor, with his wife and granddaughter last month in Hazleton, Pa.John Haeger/Standard-Speaker, via Associated Press“It’s been myself and Doug Mastriano” at the top of every poll, Mr. Barletta said. “Now people have to make a decision, and a lot of those undecideds need to look at who do they think has a better chance to beat Josh Shapiro.”Bill McSwain, who served as the U.S. attorney for eastern Pennsylvania during the Trump administration, is also running and has spent as much on television as the rest of the field combined, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm. But he is also the only candidate in the race to be attacked by Mr. Trump. “Do not vote for Bill McSwain, a coward, who let our Country down,” Mr. Trump said last month in a statement attacking Mr. McSwain for not sufficiently pressing Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud in Pennsylvania.Mr. Gleason, the former party chairman, is backing Mr. McSwain anyway, fearful that Mr. Mastriano would lose a general election. “He would be toxic,” he said.Representative Brendan Boyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat, said he was approached on the House floor this week by colleagues from other states excited that Republicans could pick two such far-right nominees. But he said that he still remembers 2010, when seemingly unelectable Tea Party Republicans won, and then 2016, when Mr. Trump carried Pennsylvania and the presidency.“I should be happy that Republicans seem to be on the way to blowing both of these races,” Mr. Boyle said. But, he added, “I am very nervous that, lo and behold, two Republican extremists would be elected governor and senator.”For her part, Ms. Barnette, appearing this week on the podcast of Stephen Bannon, the former Trump adviser, dismissed Republican concerns that she was “too MAGA” to win in November.“Do these people have a crystal ball?” she asked. “Are they Jesus incarnate? How do they know?”Tracey Tully More

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      Can Trump Get Bo Hines, a 26-Year-Old Political Novice, Elected to Congress?

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      In Ohio, Donald Trump yanked J.D. Vance out of third place to win the Republican Senate primary. In a West Virginia House race last night, Trump catapulted a longtime Maryland politician over the choice of the state’s sitting governor.Still not convinced of Trump’s extraordinary hold on the G.O.P. base? Keep an eye on Bo Hines. He’s the purest test of the former president’s influence yet.Hines, a 26-year-old former college football recruit often compared to Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina before Cawthorn’s recent string of troubles, is running for a U.S. House seat representing the exurban area just south of Raleigh.And that’s just the start of his ambitions. “Governor of North Carolina, and the ultimate goal would be president,” Hines said of his future aims in an interview in 2015 — when he was not yet old enough to buy alcohol.Hines is just one of eight candidates in the Republican primary, which will take place Tuesday, but both Trump and the Club for Growth, the influential anti-tax group, have backed his bid.Thanks to their combined muscle, he might well become the G.O.P. nominee in what could be North Carolina’s only competitive House race this fall. If so, it would be a testament to Trump’s power to vault a total electoral novice into contention — and a profound statement about the reality of modern American politics.“He’s good-looking, he’s got no experience — so he’s perfect,” said Christopher A. Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University.A talented athlete who entered politicsThe story Hines and his allies prefer to tell is of a bright young MAGA star on the rise, while making a virtue of his football record. Announcing his endorsement, Trump called him a “proven winner both on and off the field” and a “fighter for conservative values.”An introductory ad shows the candidate jumping rope and lifting weights in the gym. “Bo Hines trained for the gridiron,” the narrator says, “learning the values only true competition can teach.”Hines was indeed a highly regarded athlete. A football phenom as a preparatory school student in Charlotte, he was named a freshman all-American as a wide receiver at North Carolina State. Before he quit football a few years later, citing chronic shoulder injuries, scouts considered him a potential N.F.L. prospect. At his peak, he ran an impressive 4.41-second 40-yard dash.Hines returning a punt for North Carolina State in 2014.Mark Konezny/USA TODAYBut then he began to veer toward politics.“After my freshman year, I transferred to Yale University to study political science and witness the legislative process firsthand on Capitol Hill,” the sparse biography on his campaign website reads. “After graduating from Yale, I pursued a law degree from the Wake Forest School of Law to escape the leftist propaganda of the Ivy League.”Interviews from around the time of his transfer find Hines speaking openly about his political aspirations. But before this campaign, his working political experience consisted of internships in the offices of several Republican politicians.One of those internships, for Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota, was for just 12 days, according to LegiStorm, a website that tracks congressional staffing. He was paid $216.65 for a job he has described as helping Rounds develop alternatives to the Affordable Care Act.Another was for Eric Holcomb, the governor of Indiana. Hines told an interviewer the job entailed “minimizing bureaucracy in Indiana.”‘Pretty potent’ campaign advantagesHines, whose parents are wealthy entrepreneurs, has plowed three-quarters of a million dollars of family money into his campaign. Voting records in North Carolina show he has voted in only three elections in the state, none of which were primaries.In the first three months of 2022, his campaign reported zero donations greater than $199 from people within the district and just six from within the entire state of North Carolina. Any individual donation smaller than $200 can be made anonymously.Luckily for Hines, Club for Growth Action, the group’s super PAC arm, has said it plans to spend $1.3 million backing him in the primary. That’s an enormous sum for a House race.Before settling on the 13th District, Hines had shopped around for a suitable perch. He announced his intention to challenge Representative Virginia Foxx, a longtime Republican incumbent in the western side of the state, before redistricting altered those plans. In April, he and his wife changed their address to a house in Fuquay-Varina, a town in southern Wake County, the most densely populated portion of the district.Some Republicans in deep-red Johnston County, a fast-growing rural community, have criticized Hines for, in the words of one local group’s leader, “coming in, just trying to cherry-pick a district he can win.” And Hines’s main opponent, a lawyer named Kelly Daughtry who is the daughter of a former majority leader of the State House, has attacked him as a carpetbagger.The Hines campaign, which declined to make him available for an interview but fielded a series of detailed questions about his candidacy, notes his upbringing in Charlotte and his time at N.C. State, which is in Raleigh, just north of the district line.Daughtry has spent more than $2.5 million on the race so far, while contributing nearly $3 million of her own money. She also has taken heat for her past donations to Democrats, including Cheri Beasley, the presumptive Democratic nominee for Senate, and Josh Stein, the state’s attorney general.Multiple people with access to private polling said Hines appeared to be ahead of Daughtry by a few percentage points, with everyone else way behind. In North Carolina, if no candidate wins at least 30 percent of the vote, the top two finishers advance to a runoff.The question for Hines is whether Trump’s endorsement and the Club for Growth’s advertisements are enough to put him over the top, while Daughtry’s campaign is hoping that her local bona fides and success as a lawyer will appeal to the sorts of older party stalwarts who tend to show up to vote in primary elections. Early vote numbers so far suggest relatively low turnout in the district.Charles Hellwig, a Republican political consultant who is advising Daughtry, said he expected the race to be close, but he noted, “Trump backed by money is a pretty potent combination in a Republican primary.”‘Make sure you know what you believe’Hines has described his political philosophy in different terms over the years. In a 2017 interview with The Hartford Courant, he said he was “not a social conservative.”He added: “I call myself a social libertarian, I guess. I’m a lot more liberal on certain social issues. I think it’s part of our generation. I’m hoping the Republican Party in the future will not be so bogged down by the 80-year-olds sitting in Congress who want to regulate how people live their lives.”Those comments, which the campaign says were “taken out of context,” have earned Hines a negative ad from a super PAC supporting one of his opponents. Hines’s position on reproductive rights is that “abortion should be made illegal throughout the United States. No exceptions.”Although Hines previously spoke of Cawthorn in glowing terms — hailing him as a “steadfast leader in the conservative movement,” appearing in Instagram posts together and highlighting his endorsement — he has lately sought to distance himself from the congressman, who has alienated many Republicans in Washington and in North Carolina with his claims that lawmakers had used cocaine and had orgies, his cavalier driving habits and a leaked nude video.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      4 Takeaways From Tuesday’s Primaries in Nebraska and West Virginia

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      A federal candidate backed by former President Donald J. Trump won a contested primary for the second consecutive week on Tuesday, as Representative Alex Mooney resoundingly defeated Representative David McKinley in West Virginia in the first incumbent-vs.-incumbent primary race of 2022.But Mr. Trump’s endorsement scorecard took a hit in Nebraska, where his preferred candidate for governor, Charles W. Herbster, lost in a three-way race to Jim Pillen, a University of Nebraska regent who had the backing of the departing Gov. Pete Ricketts.Here are four takeaways from primary night in Nebraska and West Virginia:Trump successfully notched a win in West Virginia.On paper, West Virginia’s new Second Congressional District should have given an advantage to Mr. McKinley, 75, who had previously represented a larger area of its territory as he sought a seventh term. But Mr. Mooney, 50, who once led the Republican Party in neighboring Maryland, nonetheless romped across nearly the entire district, with the exception of the state’s northern panhandle, on Tuesday.Mr. Trump’s endorsement is widely seen as powering the Mooney campaign in one of the states where the former president has been most popular.Representative Alex Mooney of West Virginia at a rally last week in Greensburg, Pa., hosted by former President Donald J. Trump.Gene J. Puskar/Associated PressThroughout the race, Mr. Mooney slashed at Mr. McKinley as a “RINO” — “Republican in name only” — and took aim at some of his aisle-crossing votes, including for the bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed Congress last year and the bipartisan legislation to create the commission examining the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.Mr. Trump sided with Mr. Mooney early on, and invited him to appear alongside him at a rally in Pennsylvania last week. There, Mr. Trump joked that Mr. Mooney should defeat Mr. McKinley “easily.” He largely did, with landslide-level margins topping 70 percent in some of the eastern counties that border Maryland.The race comes a week after Mr. Trump helped J.D. Vance win an expensive Ohio Senate primary, and it again showed his influence when endorsing House and Senate candidates.Biden’s approach to governance suffered a defeatPresident Biden was not on the ballot in the West Virginia House race. But his belief that voters will reward members of Congress who put partisanship aside to get things done took another blow.Mr. McKinley seemingly fit very much in the long West Virginia tradition of bring-home-the-bacon lawmakers (See: Robert C. Byrd).Mr. McKinley had campaigned alongside Gov. Jim Justice, a Democrat-turned-Republican, and turned to Senator Joe Manchin III, a Democrat, in the closing stretch as a pitchman.But Republican primary voters were in no mood for compromise.“Liberal David McKinley sided with Biden’s trillion-dollar spending spree,” said one Mooney ad that began with the narrator saying he had a “breaking MAGA alert.”On Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Biden delivered a speech acknowledging that he had miscalculated in his belief that Trump-style Republicanism would fade with Mr. Trump’s departure. “I never expected — let me say — let me say this carefully: I never expected the Ultra-MAGA Republicans, who seem to control the Republican Party now, to have been able to control the Republican Party,” Mr. Biden said.On Tuesday evening, voters in West Virginia reaffirmed where the power in the party lies.Trump’s pick stumbles in a governor’s raceMr. Herbster had tried to make the Nebraska governor’s primary a referendum on Mr. Trump. He called it “a proxy war between the entire Republican establishment” and the former president. He cited Mr. Trump at every opportunity. He appeared with him at a rally.But the race became about Mr. Herbster himself, after he faced accusations of groping and unwanted contact from multiple women in the final weeks of the race.Voters instead went with Mr. Pillen, a former University of Nebraska football player, who had also run as a conservative choice with the backing of the departing governor. A third candidate, Brett Lindstrom, a state senator from outside Omaha, had campaigned for support from the more moderate faction of the party.Charles W. Herbster on Tuesday night in Lincoln, Neb., after losing the Republican primary for governor.Terry Ratzlaff for The New York TimesMr. Herbster becomes the first Trump-endorsed candidate to lose in a 2022 primary — but most likely not the last.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More