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      The key races to watch in the 2022 US midterms

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      ExplainerThe key races to watch in the 2022 US midterms Control of the Senate could hang on results in a handful of states while votes for governor and secretary of state could affect the conduct of future elections

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      Arizona governor: Katie Hobbs (D) v Kari Lake (R)Hobbs is currently secretary of state in what used to be a Republican stronghold. Lake is a former TV news anchor who relishes sparring with the media and promoting Donald Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Victory for Lake – who has appeared with figures linked to QAnon on the campaign trail – would be a major boost for the former president and ominous for 2024.US midterms 2022: the key candidates who threaten democracyRead moreArizona secretary of state: Mark Finchem (R) v Adrian Fontes (D)Secretary of state elections have rarely made headlines in past midterms but this time they could be vital to the future of American democracy. The battle to become Arizona’s top election official pits Fontes, a lawyer and former marine, against Finchem, who falsely claims that voter fraud cost Trump the state in 2020 and who was at the US Capitol on January 6 2021.Arizona Senate: Mark Kelly (D) v Blake Masters (R)Kelly is a retired astronaut who became well known in the state when his wife, then-congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, was shot and critically injured at an event in Tucson in 2011. Masters, a 36-year-old venture capitalist and associate of mega-donor Peter Thiel, gained the Republican nomination with the help of Trump’s endorsement but has since toned down his language on abortion, gun control and immigration.Florida attorney general: Aramis Ayala (D) v Ashley Moody (R)Ayala is the first Black female state attorney in Florida history. Moody, the incumbent, is a former prosecutor and judge who recently joined 10 other Republican attorneys general in a legal brief that sided with Trump over the justice department regarding the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home. Like her predecessor Pam Bondi, Moody could be a powerful ally for Trump as the state’s top law enforcement official.Georgia governor: Stacey Abrams (D) v Brian Kemp (R)Abrams, a voting rights activist, is bidding to become the first Black female governor in American history. But she lost narrowly to Kemp in 2018 and opinion polls suggest she could suffer the same fate in 2022. Kemp now enjoys the advantages of incumbency and a strong state economy. He also has momentum after brushing aside a primary challenge from Trump-backed challenger David Perdue.Georgia Senate: Herschel Walker (R) v Raphael Warnock (D)Warnock’s victory in a January 2021 runoff was critical in giving Democrats’ control of the Senate. Now the pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist church – where Martin Luther King used to preach – faces Walker, a former football star with huge name recognition but scant experience (he recently suggested that China’s polluted air has replaced American air). Polls show a tight race between the men, both of whom are African American.Ohio Senate: Tim Ryan (D) v JD Vance (R)The quintessential duel for blue-collar voters. Ryan, a Democratic congressman, has run an energetic campaign, presented himself as an earthy moderate and accused Vance of leaving the state for San Francisco to make millions of dollars in Silicon Valley. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy, seen as a kind of Rosetta Stone for understanding the Trump phenomenon in 2016, used to be a Trump critic but has now gone full Maga.Pennsylvania governor: Doug Mastriano (R) v Josh Shapiro (D)Mastriano, a retired army colonel and far-right state senator, led protests against pandemic restrictions, supported efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat and appearing outside the US Capitol during the January 6 riot. Critics say that, as governor, he could tip a presidential election to Trump in 2024. Shapiro, the state’s attorney general, is running on a promise to defend democracy and voting rights.Pennsylvania Senate: John Fetterman (D) v Mehmet Oz (R)One of the most colourful duels on the ballot. Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, is 6ft 8in tall, recovering from a stroke that has affected his speech and hearing, and running aggressive ads that mock Oz for his lack of connections to the state. Oz, a heart surgeon and former host of the daytime TV show The Dr Oz Show, benefited from Trump’s endorsement in the primary but has since backed away from the former president’s claims of a stolen election.Wisconsin Senate: Mandela Barnes (D) v Ron Johnson (R)This is Democrats’ best chance of unseating an incumbent senator: Johnson is the only Republican running for re-election in a state that Biden won in 2020. First elected as a fiscal conservative, he has promoted bogus coronavirus treatments such as mouthwash, dismissed climate change as “bullshit” and sought to play down the January 6 insurrection. Barnes, currently lieutenant governor, is bidding to become the first Black senator in Wisconsin’s history.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022RepublicansDemocratsUS politicsArizonaFloridaGeorgiaexplainersReuse this content More

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      Expect the Trump-DeSantis animosity to evolve into open warfare after midterms

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      AnalysisExpect the Trump-DeSantis animosity to evolve into open warfare after midtermsRichard LuscombePolls show DeSantis positioned to win re-election on Tuesday but political opponents say his focus is locked on a White House run The simmering animosity between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor emerging as Trump’s most likely challenger for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, looks set to evolve into open warfare following the midterm elections.‘A new political hellscape’: sweeping gains for Republicans could stifle Biden’s presidencyRead morePolls show DeSantis comfortably positioned to win re-election on Tuesday but political opponents say his focus is locked on the national stage and a White House run.The two Republicans’ feuding became evident during a rally for Senate candidate Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania on Saturday, when Trump, who is expected to announce his presidential campaign imminently, introduced his new nickname for the rising conservative star: Ron DeSanctimonious.It is a tactic that has cowed previous pretenders to Trump’s crown as the Republican leader and kingmaker. In the 2016 election cycle, senior Republican hopefuls “Little Marco” Rubio, “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz and “Low Energy” Jeb Bush were derided then swept aside.“There it is, Trump at 71. Ron DeSanctimonious at 10%,” Trump said in Pennsylvania as he perused a screen showing what he claimed were approval ratings for the Republican 2024 nomination.“Mike Pence at seven. Oh, Mike’s doing better than I thought,” Trump added, mocking his former vice-president who he has castigated for refusing to endorse the lie that his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud.With no discernible irony, Trump called Rubio “my great friend” at a rally for the senator and other Republican candidates in Miami on Sunday, an event at which DeSantis was conspicuously absent.Until now, DeSantis and Trump have mostly kept each other at arm’s length. But clues to their fractured relationship were evident as early as August 2020, when the notoriously prickly DeSantis denounced as “a phony narrative” an assertion he was the then-president’s “yes man” in Florida.The governor subsequently criticized Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, saying earlier this year he regretted “not speaking out” sooner against Trump’s call for a nationwide lockdown. In response, Trump called DeSantis “gutless” for refusing to reveal if he had been given a Covid booster vaccine.In June, Trump began readying his anti-DeSantis rhetoric, telling the New Yorker he would beat his rival in a nomination contest and claiming it was only his endorsement that revived the three-term congressman’s faltering campaign for governor in 2017.Now, with the distraction of the midterms almost out of the way, and with Trump seeking a clear run for his third presidential run as a Republican, DeSantis too has been granted a derogatory nickname.DeSantis’s apparent focus on 2024 – notwithstanding reports he has told donors he may wait until 2028, when Trump will be out of the way – became an issue during the governor’s debate in Florida last month. Charlie Crist, the Democratic nominee, repeatedly challenged DeSantis to say if he would commit to a full four-year term if re-elected.Seizing on DeSantis’s refusal to answer, Crist said: “It’s not a tough question. It’s a fair question. He won’t tell you.”DeSantis described Crist, a Republican Florida governor turned Democratic congressman, “a worn out old donkey” he was looking to “put out to pasture”.At the Miami rally on Sunday, Trump declined to criticize DeSantis again but offered only tepid support for him in Tuesday’s elections, compared to his comments about Rubio and other Republicans in congressional and state races.“You’re going to re-elect the wonderful, the great friend of mine, Marco Rubio to the United States Senate. And you are going to re-elect Ron DeSantis as your governor,” Trump said.Despite Trump’s attacks, DeSantis remains in a strong position, winning straw polls of grassroots supporters and becoming ever more visible on the national stage.According to Politico, he also has the backing for any presidential run of the Republican mega-donor Ken Griffin, who donated more than $60m to the party’s candidates during the midterms.“I don’t know what he’s going to do. It’s a huge personal decision,” Griffin said. “He has a tremendous record as governor of Florida, and our country would be well-served by him as president.”TopicsRon DeSantisDonald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsFloridaanalysisReuse this content More

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      Trump-DeSantis Rift Grows, With Dueling Rallies and Name-Calling

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      The Republican Party’s top two stars are campaigning, separately, in the midterms’ last days.SUN CITY CENTER, Fla. — Former President Donald J. Trump hasn’t endorsed Gov. Ron DeSantis this year because, as he has explained, his fellow Floridian never asked. Mr. DeSantis didn’t attend the Trump rally on Sunday in Miami, his allies said, because he wasn’t personally invited.Bruised egos are commonplace in politics. But rarely has a rift at the top of a party spilled so fully into view at such a pivotal moment. At a rally on Saturday night in Latrobe, Pa., Mr. Trump bestowed one of his signature nicknames on Mr. DeSantis: Ron DeSanctimonious.Their escalating tensions took center stage on Sunday, with dueling campaign rallies in Florida just two days before voting concludes in the 2022 midterm elections. Mr. Trump campaigned in South Florida with Senator Marco Rubio and other Florida Republicans, while Mr. DeSantis made his case for re-election during a set of events along the state’s west coast.Mr. Trump didn’t repeat the taunt on Sunday, and Mr. DeSantis didn’t mention the former president at his events, but the collateral damage from their impasse looms as a distraction for their party in the final days of the midterms and could threaten deeper divisions among Republicans as they aim to recapture the White House in 2024.“Nothing like trashing a Republican Governor 4 days before Election Day when his name is on the ballot. #team,” Josh Holmes, a Republican strategist and former campaign manager for Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, wrote on Twitter.Mr. Trump has been telling supporters, both publicly and privately, that he will announce another presidential bid soon. Mr. DeSantis is widely viewed as the leading alternative for the Republican nomination, speculation fueled by his raising a staggering $200 million to support his re-election bid (including about $90 million unspent) and running a nationalized campaign in which he attacks President Biden more often than his Democratic challenger, former Representative Charlie Crist.Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis are the most popular politicians in the refashioned Republican Party: the 76-year-old former host of “The Apprentice” and the 44-year-old lawyer who has positioned himself to take over as master.The former president has long claimed a kind of ownership stake in the rise of Mr. DeSantis, who was a relatively anonymous backbencher for six years in Congress when his underdog campaign for governor in 2018 was lifted by Mr. Trump’s endorsement.But Mr. Trump’s generosity carries a price, and he has repeatedly expressed bewilderment that Mr. DeSantis hasn’t displayed a satisfactory amount of loyalty, according to people close to the former president.Mr. Trump has been particularly irritated by the separation Mr. DeSantis has created between them, from criticizing the Covid-19 vaccines developed during the Trump administration to endorsing Joe O’Dea, the Republican Senate candidate in Colorado, just days after the former president criticized him.A sculpture of Gov. Ron DeSantis was a draw on Friday in Coconut Creek, Fla.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesMr. Trump has been privately testing derisive nicknames for Mr. DeSantis with his friends and advisers, including the put-down he used on Saturday. Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser, appeared to test-drive the nickname for the former president on Oct. 27 when he used it in a post on Mr. Trump’s social media website, Truth Social.Mr. Trump has expressed reluctance over criticizing the Florida governor too aggressively before the midterms. But some people close to him said the decision to cast Mr. DeSantis as hypocritically pious solidified itself after the governor’s team released a video Friday aimed at infusing his candidacy with a sense of the divine.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.House Democrats: Several moderates elected in 2018 in conservative-leaning districts are at risk of being swept out. That could cost the Democrats their House majority.A Key Constituency: A caricature of the suburban female voter looms large in American politics. But in battleground regions, many voters don’t fit the stereotype.Crime: In the final stretch of the campaigns, politicians are vowing to crack down on crime. But the offices they are running for generally have little power to make a difference.Abortion: The fall of Roe v. Wade seemed to offer Democrats a way of energizing voters and holding ground. Now, many worry that focusing on abortion won’t be enough to carry them to victory.The 96-second black-and-white video, which invokes God 10 times, was fashioned after a famous “So God Made a Farmer” speech in the 1970s by the radio broadcaster Paul Harvey.The original speech, which Ram Trucks reused in a Super Bowl commercial in 2013, was aimed at highlighting the importance of farming. Mr. DeSantis’s version, posted by his wife, Casey, promotes his political brand.“And on the eighth day,” a deep-voiced narrator says in Mr. DeSantis’s video, “God looked down on his planned paradise and said: ‘I need a protector.’ So God made a fighter.”The video seemed aimed at turning Mr. DeSantis into an object of veneration, much as Mr. Trump has for some time been viewed by many Christian nationalists and other fervent supporters as an almost messianic figure.Mr. Trump, who was in Pennsylvania on Saturday to support a slate of Republican candidates, casually dropped the new epithet into his speech while pointing out his wide lead over Mr. DeSantis in early polls of a hypothetical Republican primary field.A branding magnate who has affixed his family name to everything from cuts of steak to lines of clothing, Mr. Trump used a pair of giant TV screens flanking the stage at his rally to display a half-dozen slides of poll numbers that underscored his political strength among Republicans.In Florida, Mr. DeSantis has downplayed talk about a potential presidential bid, but he pointedly refused to say during a debate with Mr. Crist whether, if re-elected, he would serve all four years.Mr. DeSantis scheduled 13 rallies across Florida between Friday and Monday, including three on Sunday, leaving some Republican candidates in the awkward position of having to choose whether to campaign with the governor or the former president. Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott were in Miami, as were seven members of Congress. Jimmy Patronis, the state’s elected chief financial officer, introduced Mr. DeSantis at the campaign stop in Sun City Center.Mr. DeSantis devoted much of his hourlong speech to about 500 people at a community hall to his response to the Covid-19 pandemic.He made sure to point out that his pandemic policies separated him from Democrats — and even some Republicans.“As a leader, I need to be more concerned about jobs for the people I represent than worrying about my own,” Mr. DeSantis said.Mr. DeSantis at a campaign event on Friday in Coconut Creek. Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesAfter the event, Mary Bishop, a 73-year-old retiree from Sun City Center, said she was upset that Mr. Trump had attacked Mr. DeSantis. She said she had voted twice for Mr. Trump but preferred Mr. DeSantis in 2024.“We need someone who can bring us together and doesn’t constantly divide the races and religions,” she said. “It’s always the same playbook with Trump.”In Miami, Mr. Trump praised at length “the wonderful” Senator Marco Rubio, calling him a friend and saying the people of Florida would re-elect him.“You’re going to re-elect Ron DeSantis as your governor,” Mr. Trump added.That was the only mention of his potential 2024 rival in his 90-minute, grievance-filled speech, during which Mr. Trump blasted Democrats as soft on crime and boasted about Hispanic voters shifting toward the Republican Party.“I will probably have to do it again,” he said about seeking the presidency in 2024, “but stay tuned.”At the Trump rally, Lainie Guthrie, 57, of Royal Palm Beach, said that Mr. DeSantis should have attended the rally with the former president. Mr. Trump, she said, should “be able to finish” what he started in his first term.“He was doing a great job for our country, whether people like him or not,” Ms. Guthrie said. “He’s entitled to run again. That’s owed to him.”In Pennsylvania on Saturday, Mr. Trump’s attack on Mr. DeSantis drew a mix of laughs and groans from the crowd. “Oh no!” shouted one woman.Jess Rhoades, a 38-year-old university employee from Blair County, Pa., left her first Trump rally on Tuesday energized by the experience but conflicted over how she would choose between her two favorite Republicans.“I don’t know what I’d do,” she said.Michael C. Bender More

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      Biden, in Midterm Campaign Pitch, Focuses on Social Security and Medicare

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      MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — President Biden pressed his argument on Tuesday that a Republican victory in next week’s midterm congressional elections would endanger Social Security and Medicare, bringing his case to the retirement haven of Florida, where the politics of the two programs resonate historically.During a whirlwind one-day swing through vote-rich South Florida, Mr. Biden took credit for legislation he pushed through Congress to curb the cost of prescription drugs for Medicare recipients and asserted that Republicans plan to undermine the foundations of the two major government programs benefiting older Americans.“They’re coming after your Social Security and Medicare, and they’re saying it out loud,” Mr. Biden told a crowd at his first full-fledged campaign rally since Labor Day. By contrast, he boasted that Social Security just approved an 8.7 percent increase in benefits, the largest in four decades. “The checks are going to go up and the Medicare fees are going to go down at the same time. And I promise you: I’ll protect Social Security. I’ll protect Medicare. I’ll protect you.”The president has turned increasingly to stark warnings about Social Security and Medicare in the closing days of the campaign, banking on a traditional Democratic issue to galvanize older voters, who tend to turn out more reliably during midterm elections than other generations. Republicans complain that such “Mediscare” tactics unfairly distort their position and reflect desperation by Democrats on the defensive over inflation, which is near a 40-year high.As he presented Republicans as the party of radicalism during his stops on Tuesday, Mr. Biden chastised some of its prominent figures for not taking an attack early Friday on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband seriously and spreading conspiracy theories about it.More on Social Security and RetirementEarning Income After Retiring: Collecting Social Security while working can get complicated. Here are some key things to remember.An Uptick in Elder Poverty: Older Americans didn’t fare as well through the pandemic. But longer-term trends aren’t moving in their favor, either.Medicare Costs: Low-income Americans on Medicare can get assistance paying their premiums and other expenses. This is how to apply.Claiming Social Security: Looking to make the most of this benefit? These online tools can help you figure out your income needs and when to file.“Look at the response of Republicans, making jokes about it,” Mr. Biden said at an earlier fund-raising reception for former Gov. Charlie Crist, who is seeking to reclaim his old office. “The guy purchases a hammer to kneecap” the woman who stands second in line to the presidency, he said of the assailant, and some Republicans brushed it off. “These guys are extremely extreme,” he said.The president’s trip to Florida opened a final week of campaigning before next Tuesday’s vote, but it did not go without its bumps. Mr. Biden, who at 79 is the oldest president in American history, fumbled at one point during his first talk of the day, confusing the American war in Iraq with the Russian war in Ukraine. While trying to correct himself, he then misstated how his son Beau, who served in the Delaware Army National Guard in Iraq, died in 2015.“Inflation is a worldwide problem right now because of a war in Iraq and the impact on oil and what Russia is doing,” Mr. Biden told a crowd at O.B. Johnson Park in Hallandale Beach. “Excuse me, the war in Ukraine,” he said. To explain, he told the audience, “I think of Iraq because that’s where my son died.” Then he seemed to catch himself again and sought to amend his words one more time. “Because, he died,” he said, apparently referring to his belief that Beau’s brain cancer stemmed from his service in Iraq and exposure to toxic burn pits.In addition to Florida, Mr. Biden’s travels this week are expected to take him to New Mexico, California, Pennsylvania and Maryland. With anemic approval ratings, the president is avoiding some of the most competitive states, like Arizona, Georgia and Ohio, where Democrats are not eager to have him at their side. But he will join former President Barack Obama on Saturday in Pennsylvania, where Mr. Biden was born, to bolster John Fetterman’s campaign for Senate, one of the hottest and tightest races in the country.Florida would seem to be fertile territory for Mr. Biden, given that the Inflation Reduction Act, which he signed into law after it passed on party-line votes this summer, caps out-of-pocket prescription drug expenses for Medicare recipients, limits the cost of insulin and empowers the government to negotiate lower prices with pharmaceutical companies, longtime goals of many older Americans. “We beat Big Pharma,” Mr. Biden said on Tuesday.But when national Democrats talk about states where they believe they have good prospects next week, Florida does not make the list. Even though statewide races have been close in recent cycles, Democrats have felt burned by narrow losses and have been reluctant to invest the sizable amounts of money required in a state with so many media markets only to be disappointed again.In addition to Mr. Crist, who is seeking to oust the incumbent Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, Mr. Biden appeared with Representative Val B. Demings, the Democratic challenger to Senator Marco Rubio. Mr. DeSantis leads by roughly nine percentage points and Mr. Rubio by about seven percentage points, according to an aggregation of polls by the political data website FiveThirtyEight.Democrats chose a modest arena at Florida Memorial University, a historically Black college, for the rally, assembling a far smaller crowd than typically mustered by former President Donald J. Trump, a Florida resident.Addressing a largely Black audience, Mr. Biden boasted of his nomination of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and other diverse appointees. “Guess what? I promised you I would have a Black woman on the Supreme Court,” he said. “She’s on the Supreme Court. And she’s smarter than the rest of them.”He went after some Republicans by name. He called Mr. DeSantis “Donald Trump incarnate.” He accused Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the would-be new speaker, of being “reckless and irresponsible.” And he assailed Republicans like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, the onetime QAnon follower who has worked to push the party to the right, for criticizing his effort to forgive some student loan debt while having their own Covid-19 loan debt forgiven.The president appeared most irritated by attacks on him over inflation. In Hallandale Beach, he pointed to his efforts to limit health care costs for seniors. “They talk about inflation all the time,” he said. “What in God’s name?” He added: “If you have to take a prescription and it cost you an arm and a leg and I reduce that, you don’t have to pay as much. That reduces your cost of living. It reduces inflation.”To bolster his contention that Republicans are aiming to undercut Social Security and Medicare, Mr. Biden once again cited a legislative agenda put forth by Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, that has been disavowed by other Republicans, most notably Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the party’s leader in the upper chamber. Mr. Scott’s legislative agenda called for “sunsetting” all federal legislation every five years, meaning programs like Social Security and Medicare would expire unless reauthorized by Congress.Before the president’s trip to Florida, Mr. Scott said on Sunday that his position had been twisted and that “I don’t know one Republican” who favors cutting Social Security payments or cutting Medicare benefits.“I believe we’ve got to preserve them and make sure that we keep them,” Mr. Scott told Dana Bash on “State of the Union” on CNN. “What I want to do is make sure we live within our means and make sure we preserve those programs. People paid into them. They believe in them. I believe in them. I’m going to fight like hell to make sure we preserve Medicare and Social Security.” More

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      Culture wars, abortion and conspiracy theories: what the midterms tell us about the US – podcast

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      Florida used to be seen as a swing state but in recent years it has lurched further and further to the right. Now there are worries democracy itself is under threat

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      Ahead of the US midterm elections, Oliver Laughland travelled around Florida to find out what really mattered to the people getting ready to vote. He told Michael Safi how he travelled to Disney World, and found the “happiest place on Earth” had become a political battleground thanks to a controversial bill curtailing the teaching of sexuality and gender identity in schools. Elsewhere he met Charlie Crist, the politician trying to take on Ron DeSantis – the Florida governor who is seen by many as the successor to Donald Trump. And he heard how the Democrats are hoping the backlash against the scrapping of Roe v Wade, which protected the right to abortion in the US, could help their party. Finally, with so many voters in the US refusing to believe Joe Biden was lawfully elected, he asks what these elections tell us about the fragility of democracy in the country. More

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      DeSantis’s old law firm received millions in Florida state funds, investigation finds

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      DeSantis’s old law firm received millions in state funds, investigation findsDaily Beast reports that Holland & Knight, where governor once worked, made nearly $3m in state contracts from 2018 to 2020 The old law firm of Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has received millions in state funds during his tenure, according to a new investigation.Biden to scrap Trump missile project but critics attack US ‘nuclear overkill’Read moreThe Daily Beast reported that two law firms, Holland & Knight and Holtzman Vogel, received millions of dollars in state business in recent years from DeSantis’s administration.According to data the Beast reviewed, Holland & Knight – where DeSantis previously worked as a civil litigator before his 2012 congressional campaign – pocketed “only $2,750 in contracts with the state of Florida” up until 2018.However, from 2018 to 2020, the law firm made nearly $3m from representing the state in various lawsuits, including on mail-in voter restrictions, foster-home care inadequacies and a major case on felons’ voting rights.All the work was reportedly assigned to one lawyer from the firm, George Meros, who counseled the Florida state government as an outside adviser.Meros’s son, Nick Meros, is currently DeSantis’s deputy general counsel.In August 2020, George Meros left the firm. Since then, it has not signed any new contracts with state agencies, according to state data reviewed by the outlet.That year, Meros became the center of a public records lawsuit after he allegedly pressured his law firm into dropping a case from its client, the Miami Herald, asking the state to hand over Covid-19 data on its senior care facilities.In the past year, Holtzman Vogel also received an uptick in contracts from state agencies, with the Daily Beast reporting that it has done more than $4m in business with the Florida government. The firm, which represented Donald Trump in his 2020 election lawsuits, had previously not received any contracts from state agencies, according to state data.According to state records reviewed by the Daily Beast, the firm’s first contracts in October 2021 were worth $550,000 and $2.2m, both dealing with “two controversial election laws”.In September, DeSantis appointed partners from both Holland & Knight and Holtzman Vogel to the first district court of appeals judicial nominating commission.TopicsFloridaRon DeSantisUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022newsReuse this content More

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      Moral panic, culture wars and Ron DeSantis: will Florida stay red in 2022? – video

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      Oliver Laughland travels to Walt Disney World, Florida, to see how a law restricting the teaching of LGBTQ+ issues is affecting voters in the run-up to the midterm elections. Republicans extended their majority in the state in 2020, and with far-right Governor Ron DeSantis up for re-election, will his divisive culture wars help him win a second term? More

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      Campaign Press Aides Move From the Shadows to Social Media Stardom

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      MINDEN, Nev. — As Adam Laxalt, the Republican candidate for Senate in Nevada, ambled along a throng of Trump supporters at a recent rally and posed for pictures, it was his campaign’s communications director, Courtney Holland, who was really working the crowd.With an iPhone in her left hand, Ms. Holland used her right one to whip up more enthusiasm from the red-capped Republicans gathered behind her boss. As the crowd took the cue, Ms. Holland framed her shot and blasted the footage out onto the campaign’s various social media channels — as well as her own.With more than 100,000 followers on Twitter and nearly 70,000 others on Instagram, Ms. Holland reflects a new breed of campaign aides — those whose online profiles more closely resemble social media influencers than traditional behind-the-scenes press operatives.The shift seizes on the transformation in how American voters receive information about their candidates, and is changing the way campaign press shops function. Both parties are increasingly using social media to build loyalty to a particular political brand, and targeting critics and journalists to energize supporters and drive online contributions. Instead of drafting political positions for their candidates, these staff members take to social media to make their own statements.Working her first political campaign, Ms. Holland has shown little interest in dealing with mainstream reporters to shape stories about Nevada’s closely watched Senate race — and she didn’t respond to a request for comment for this article. She has used her Twitter account, however, to repeatedly post negative information about Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, and criticize Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, the Democratic incumbent in the race, for not participating in more TV interviews.Ms. Holland’s posts on Instagram — posing with fellow conservatives or modeling Republican merchandise — have regularly drawn hundreds or even thousands of likes. Several of her memes attacking Mr. Biden have been viewed more than 100,000 times.“Influencers are being subsumed into the political apparatus on the right and the left,” said Samuel C. Woolley, who has studied social media and politics as the project director of the propaganda research team at the University of Texas at Austin. “There has been a blurring of the line between influencers and their positions as staffers that has historically been behind the camera.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz clashed in one of the most closely watched debates of the midterm campaign. Here are five takeaways.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Strategy Change: In the final stretch before the elections, some Democrats are pushing for a new message that acknowledges the economic uncertainty troubling the electorate.In Florida, Christina Pushaw had about 2,000 Twitter followers before Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed her as his press secretary in May 2021. She now has more than 220,000 followers — far more than Lt. Gov Jeanette Nuñez and nearly as many as Casey DeSantis, Florida’s first lady.Ms. Pushaw built her following with an aggressive social media persona that sometimes includes five or six dozen postings a day, often attacking Democrats and the mainstream media. She has called the president a “seemingly senile 79-year-old aspiring dictator” and suggested that a neo-Nazi rally in Orlando had been staged by Democrats, although she later deleted that tweet.Last summer, Twitter locked her account for 12 hours for violating rules on “abusive behavior” after The Associated Press said her conduct led to a reporter receiving threats and other online abuse.Ms. Pushaw, who is now the DeSantis campaign’s rapid response director, has recently urged her fellow Republicans to stop engaging at all with the mainstream media, which she often refers to as “liberal,” “corporate” or “legacy media.”“My working theory is that if ALL conservatives simply stop talking to them, the legacy media will lose any shred of credibility or interest to Americans who follow politics,” Ms. Pushaw wrote in August.In Florida, Christina Pushaw had about 2,000 Twitter followers before Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed her as his press secretary in May 2021.Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty ImagesMs. Pushaw didn’t respond to a request for comment. But Mr. DeSantis has defended his aide, saying he views the criticism of her as a sign of her success.“You can try to smear me or anyone in my administration all you want to,” he told reporters in June. “All that’s going to do is embolden us to continue moving forward for the people of Florida.”The pugnacity from Ms. Pushaw and other Republicans has been deeply influenced by former President Donald J. Trump, whose combative political style has been defined by both his aggressiveness on social media and his sparring with the media. Mr. Trump bestowed his top social media aide in the White House, Dan Scavino, with the title of “assistant to the president,” while former President Barack Obama’s digital director, Jason Goldman, was a deputy assistant.Still, Mr. Obama and his team helped pave the way for turning press teams into content creators. The Obama White House regularly produced photos and videos packaged specifically for direct consumption among their own followers on social media.More recently, some of the 2020 Democratic presidential campaigns were loosely linked to armies of fanatical social media followers who teamed up to bully critics, fellow Democrats and reporters.During that race, a relentless group of superfans for Vice President Kamala Harris, known as #KHive, targeted Senator Bernie Sanders, her rival in that campaign, and numerous reporters.Reecie Colbert, one of the group’s more outspoken members, issued a warning during the campaign to Ms. Harris’s critics in a podcast about the group, saying, “I wanted them to know I will stomp a hole in you if you come for Kamala.” She later told The Los Angeles Times that she was speaking for herself, not the group.Ms. Harris has thanked KHive for its support of her on Twitter, and her husband, Doug Emhoff, regularly interacts with them.Lis Smith, a Democratic strategist, has long maintained an active social media profile. In 2012, when she was working on Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign as the rapid response director, Twitter temporarily locked her profile after she sent so many tweets during a presidential debate that she set off an internal alarm at the company designed to identify bots.But Ms. Smith warned that campaigns can go too far in letting their social media presence define them.“Social media is an increasingly big part of the job, but not in a good way,” she said. “Candidates who use social media in an authentic way can reinforce their strengths. But if you let Twitter supplant the hard work of dealing with reporters, you’re essentially breaking down a legitimate line of communications with the public.”Ryan James Girdusky, a conservative activist with over 110,000 followers on Twitter, said having staff members whose agility on social media could drive attention to a candidate’s message could be a significant advantage during a campaign.“When you have a new social media account, you have to build followers,” said Mr. Girdusky, a co-author of the book, “They’re Not Listening: How the Elites Created the National Populist Revolution.”“When you’re behind the eight ball, it’s definitely a major plus to have people who are known in the conservative movement and bring that level of credibility,” he added. More