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      Why Democratic Departures From the House Have Republicans Salivating

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      A growing number of Democrats in battleground districts are either retiring or leaving to seek higher office, imperiling the party’s control of the House and President Biden’s expansive agenda. WASHINGTON — With 18 months left before the midterms, a spate of Democratic departures from the House is threatening to erode the party’s slim majority in the House and imperil President Biden’s far-reaching policy agenda.In the past two months, five House Democrats from competitive districts have announced they won’t seek re-election next year. They include Representative Charlie Crist of Florida, who on Tuesday launched a campaign for governor, and Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio, who will run for the Senate seat being vacated by Rob Portman. Three other Democrats will leave vacant seats in districts likely to see significant change once they are redrawn using the data from the 2020 Census, and several more are weighing bids for higher office.An early trickle of retirements from House members in competitive districts is often the first sign of a coming political wave. In the 2018 cycle, 48 House Republicans didn’t seek re-election — and 14 of those vacancies were won by Democrats. Now Republicans are salivating over the prospect of reversing that dynamic and erasing the Democrats six-seat advantage.“The two biggest headaches of any cycle are redistricting and retirements and when you have both in one cycle it’s a migraine,” said former Representative Steve Israel of New York, who led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2012 and 2014.Democrats face other vexing challenges as well: Republican legislators control redistricting in key states where they can draw boundaries in their favor. Reapportionment alone — with red states picking up additional seats — could provide Republicans the seats they need to control the House. And historic political trends almost always work against the president’s party in midterm elections.The prospect of losing the House majority adds a greater level of urgency for the Biden Administration and congressional Democrats eager to push through expansive policy proposals. It also raises questions about the staying power of Democrats, after an election in which they barely ousted an unpopular president while suffering a surprising number of downballot losses in races they expected to win. The results appeared to blunt the momentum the party generated in 2018 when it picked up 41 seats in the House. Democrats’ failure to qualify for the runoff in a Dallas-area special House election Saturday only added to the party’s anxiety. While Republicans were always heavy favorites to retain the seat, which became vacant when Representative Ron Wright died from the coronavirus, not placing a candidate among the top two finishers is likely to hurt recruiting efforts, Democratic officials said.This could be just the beginning of the Democratic departures: The high season for congressional retirements typically comes in early fall after members spend the August recess taking the political temperature of their districts. Further complicating the picture for Democrats is the Census Bureau’s months-long delay in completing the reapportionment process and delivering to states the final demographic and block-level population data. That has left the House committees in a state of suspended animation, unable in many instances to recruit candidates and devise electoral strategy. While each day brings announcements of new 2022 candidates, many are not being specific about which district they’re running in and dozens more are waiting until the fall, when they see the new boundaries, to decide whether they will formalize their campaigns.“It’s like going to war on a battlefield but you don’t know where you’re fighting, when you’re fighting or who you’re fighting,” Mr. Israel said.Representative Charlie Crist, Democrat of Florida, announced on Tuesday that he would run for governor.Chris O’Meara/Associated PressThe largest concentration of competitive and vacant House seats may be in Central Florida. In addition to Mr. Crist, who represents St. Petersburg, two other Democratic representatives, Stephanie Murphy of Winter Park and Val Demings of Orlando, are weighing runs for statewide office. All three now hold seats in districts President Biden carried handily last November, but with Republicans in control of Florida’s redistricting process, the state’s congressional map is likely to soon be much better for Republicans than it is now.Each of them would be exceedingly expensive for a new candidate to run in because of the high cost of media in Florida, further stretching the party’s resources in what is expected to be a difficult election cycle.“You have to assume that because Republicans get to control reapportionment, that it’s not going to get any easier,” said Adam Goodman, a Florida-based Republican media strategist, who predicted the G.O.P. would take two of the three seats now held by Mr. Crist, Ms. Demings and Ms. Murphy. “The Crist seat — it took a Charlie Crist type of person to hold that seat in ’20. The Democrats won’t have that person this time.” Nikki Fried, Florida’s agriculture commissioner who is weighing her own run for governor, echoed that assessment as she tweaked Mr. Crist at her own news conference that competed for attention with his campaign launch. “It’s a time when we need his voice and his vote up in Washington, D.C.,” Ms. Fried said. “His seat is one that only probably Charlie Crist can hold on to, so really would like to have encouraged him to stay in Congress.”Democratic strategists said it is hardly unusual for members of Congress to seek a promotion to statewide office. “A lot of us lived through 2009 and 2010 and we’re not seeing that level of rush to the exits that we did then,” said Ian Russell, a former D.C.C.C. official. “It’s not surprising that members of Congress look to run statewide, that has been happening since the founding of the republic and doesn’t indicate a bigger thing.” Representative Tim Ryan, Democrat of Ohio, will run for an open Senate seat next year.Sarah Silbiger/ReutersRepublicans, optimistic about being on offense for the first time since 2014, cited potential pickup opportunities in western Pennsylvania, where Representative Conor Lamb is weighing a run for the state’s open Senate contest; New Hampshire, where Representative Chris Pappas may run for governor rather than seek re-election to a district likely to become more Republican; and Iowa, where Representative Cindy Axne told the Storm Lake Times last month that her first two options for 2022 are running for Senate or governor. “House Democrats are sprinting to the exits because they know their chances of retaining the majority grow dimmer by the day,” said Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. Representative Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona, who last year entered an alcohol rehabilitation program after falling on the Washington Metro, also chose not to seek re-election. Representative Cheri Bustos, whose district covering a swath of Central and Northwest Illinois swung to Donald J. Trump, announced her retirement last week. Last year Ms. Bustos led the House Democrats’ campaign arm through a disappointing cycle, when the party lost 13 seats after they expected to flip Republican-held districts. Along with Florida, Republicans are expected to draw themselves more favorable congressional districts in Georgia, where Democrats hold two competitive districts in Atlanta’s northern suburbs, and Texas, which will add two new seats for the 2022 elections. Mr. Ryan’s Democratic district in northeast Ohio is likely to disappear when Ohio Republicans draw a map with one fewer House seat, and Representative Filemon Vela of Texas, whose Rio Grande Valley district became eight percentage points more Republican from 2016 to 2020, chose retirement rather than compete in what was likely to be his first competitive re-election bid. “This is where Democratic underperformance in 2020 really begins to hinder Democrats downballot,” said Ken Spain, a veteran of the House Republicans’ campaign arm. “Republicans fared well at the state level last cycle and now they’re going to reap the benefits of many of those red states drawing a disproportionate number of the seats.” Because Republicans hold majorities in more state legislatures, and Democrats and voters in key states such as California, Colorado and Virginia have delegated mapmaking authority to nonpartisan commissions, the redistricting process alone could shift up to five or six seats to Republicans, potentially enough to seize the majority if they don’t flip any other Democratic-held seats. Democrats are expected to press their advantages where they can, particularly in Illinois and New York, states that lost one House district each in last week’s reapportionment. New York’s new map is certain to take a seat from Republicans in Upstate New York, and one Republican-held seat in Central Illinois may be redrawn to be Democratic while another is eliminated. For the moment there are more House Republicans, six, not seeking re-election, than the five House Democrats retiring or running for aiming for a promotion to statewide office. But of the Republicans, only Representatives Lee Zeldin and Tom Reed of New York represent districts that are plausibly competitive in 2022. With Democrats holding supermajority control of the New York State Legislature, Mr. Zeldin, who is running for governor, and Mr. Reed, who retired while apologizing for a past allegation of groping, could both see their districts drawn to become far more competitive for Democrats. Reid J. Epstein reported from Washington and Patricia Mazzei reported from Miami. More

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      Crist Enters Race to Face DeSantis, With More Democrats Likely to Follow

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      Charlie Crist has an extensive political history in Florida and is widely known throughout the state. But his candidacy is not likely to deter other Democrats like Val Demings and Nikki Fried.MIAMI — Representative Charlie Crist, Democrat of Florida, entered the race for governor on Tuesday, becoming the first challenger to Ron DeSantis, a Republican who raised his profile by shunning lockdowns during the pandemic and is now a leading contender for his party’s presidential nomination in 2024.“Every step of the way, this governor has been more focused on his personal political fortune than the struggle of everyday Floridians,” Mr. Crist said under the blazing sun in St. Petersburg as he made his announcement. “That’s just not right. Just like our former president, he always takes credit but never takes responsibility.”His candidacy signaled the start of a long, expensive and most likely bruising campaign in a battleground state that has been swinging away from Democrats since 2016. Florida’s exceptionally tight governor’s races have been decided by around one percentage point since 2010, always in Republicans’ favor. The last Democrat to win election to the governor’s mansion was Lawton Chiles, who won a second term in 1994.Mr. Crist’s advisers see him as the Democrat with the most experience running statewide and appealing to a coalition of liberal and moderate voters in the way that President Biden did nationally — though not in Florida, which former President Donald J. Trump won by three percentage points.Mr. Crist has an extensive political history in Florida and is widely known throughout the state. He served as governor as a Republican from 2007 to 2011 before running unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate as an independent, losing to Marco Rubio. After switching parties, he later lost a Democratic bid for governor in 2014 against the Republican incumbent, Rick Scott.The arc of his political evolution was evident in the video he used on Tuesday to announce his candidacy. It featured footage of the hug with former President Barack Obama that led to Mr. Crist’s departure from the Republican Party 11 years ago.But Mr. Crist’s experience is unlikely to deter other Democratic candidates from joining the race. His clout has been diminished by years of electoral failures and by a party that is increasingly open to a wider range of more diverse public figures to be its standard bearers. Two women, Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried and Representative Val Demings of Orlando, are considering their own runs for the governor’s mansion as Democrats.Ms. Fried scheduled a news conference in the State Capitol for the same time as Mr. Crist’s announcement. “As the only statewide elected Democrat, it makes absolute sense for me to be running for governor,” she said, but she added that she was not making an announcement at that time.Ms. Demings released a video on Tuesday that, while not declaring a candidacy, highlighted her career as Orlando police chief, impeachment manager in Congress and a shortlisted vice-presidential pick for Mr. Biden.Similar jockeying — though not quite as intense — is underway among Democrats looking to go up against Mr. Rubio, who also faces re-election next year.Asked about Mr. Crist’s announcement on Tuesday, Mr. DeSantis mocked Mr. Crist’s party-switching. “Which party is he going to run under, do we know for sure?” he said.Referring to Democrats in general, he said: “I implore them, from my political interest: Run on closing schools. Run on locking people down. Run on closing businesses.” He added, “I would love to have that debate.”In advance of Mr. Crist’s announcement, Mr. DeSantis held an official event on Monday at Mr. Crist’s favorite seafood restaurant in St. Petersburg, touting the wins he had racked up during the session the Republican-controlled Legislature concluded last week — which he and Republican lawmakers used to champion policies that will appeal to Florida’s increasingly conservative electorate.And on Monday, Mr. DeSantis signed a bill and an executive order doing away with most of Florida’s remaining pandemic restrictions, contrasting his administration’s aversion for mandates to the restrictions in states led by Democrats.Still, Mr. Crist was withering in his criticism of the governor on Tuesday.“Gov. DeSantis’s vision of Florida is clear: If you want to vote, he won’t help you,” Mr. Crist said. “If you’re working, he won’t support you. If you’re a woman, he will not empower you. If you’re an immigrant, he won’t accept you. If you’re facing discrimination, he won’t respect you. If you’re sick, he won’t care for you.” More

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      Charlie Crist Challenges DeSantis in Florida Governor's Race

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      MIAMI — Representative Charlie Crist, Democrat of Florida, entered the race for governor on Tuesday, becoming the first challenger to Ron DeSantis, a Republican who raised his profile during the pandemic and is now one of the best-known governors in the country and a leading contender for his party’s presidential nomination in 2024.“Today, Florida has a governor that’s only focused on his future, not yours,” Mr. Crist said in a video posted on Twitter, ahead of a planned announcement later in the morning in his hometown of St. Petersburg.Mr. Crist has a long political history in Florida and is widely known throughout the state. He served as governor as a Republican from 2007 to 2011 before running unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate as an independent, losing to Marco Rubio. After switching parties, he later lost a Democratic bid for governor in 2014 against the incumbent, Rick Scott.But Mr. Crist’s experience is unlikely to deter other Democratic candidates. His clout has been diminished by years of electoral failures and by a party that is increasingly open to a wider range of more diverse public figures to be its standard bearers. Two women, Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried and Representative Val Demings of Orlando, are considering their own Democratic runs for the governor’s mansion. In advance of Mr. Crist’s announcement, Mr. DeSantis held an official event Monday in St. Petersburg, touting the wins he racked up during the annual legislative session that concluded last week — a session that he and Republicans in control of the Legislature used to champion policies that will appeal to Florida’s increasingly conservative electorate. More

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      With Florida Bill, Republicans Continue Unrelenting Push to Restrict Voting

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      Republican lawmakers are marching ahead to overhaul voting systems in states where they control the government, frustrating Democrats and even some G.O.P. election officials. Next up: Texas.The pleas from Florida election officials were direct and dire: Passing the state’s new voting bill would be a “grave security risk,” “unnecessary” and a “travesty.”The restrictions imposed by the new law, they warned, would make it harder to vote and hurt confidence in the balloting process.But their objections were brushed aside on Thursday night as the Legislature gave final passage to a bill that would limit voting by mail, curtail the use of drop boxes and prohibit actions to help people waiting in line to vote, among other restrictions, while imposing penalties on those who do not follow the rules. It was perhaps the clearest sign yet that Republicans are determined to march forward across state capitols to establish new restrictions on voting.The Republican effort puts added pressure on Democrats in Congress to find a way to pass federal voting laws, including a sweeping overhaul known as the For the People Act. But in Washington, just as in state capitols across the country, Republicans have remained united and steadfast against the Democratic efforts.Georgia Republicans in March enacted far-reaching new voting laws that limit ballot drop-boxes and forbid the distribution of food and water to voters waiting in line. Iowa has also imposed new limits, including reducing the period for early voting and in-person voting hours on Election Day.Next up is Texas, where Republicans in the legislature are trampling protestations from corporate titans like Dell Technologies and American Airlines and moving on a vast election bill that would be among the most severe in the nation. It would impose new restrictions on early voting, ban drive-through voting, threaten election officials with harsher penalties and greatly empower partisan poll watchers. The main bill passed a key committee in a late-night session on Thursday, and could head to a full floor vote in the House as early as next week.Bills to restrict voting have also been moving through Republican-led legislatures in Arizona and Michigan.Throughout the process, Republican legislators have been largely unmoved by opposition to new voting laws by Fortune 500 companies, major American sports leagues, Black faith leaders and elections administrators. Nor has the lack of popular support for many of the bills deterred them. Even as some of the more strident initial proposals have been watered down, there has rarely been a pause, even for a moment, in the drive to pass new legislation on voting.“I don’t think anybody was concerned about it,” Joe Gruters, a Florida state senator and the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, said of outside criticism.Tightening his state’s election laws, Mr. Gruters has said, is a top priority not just of Republican lawmakers but also of the party’s base. Though he characterized Florida’s election system as a national “gold standard” and said he wasn’t aware of any fraud in the 2020 election, Mr. Gruters said in a phone interview on Friday that his state’s voting could always be improved.“It’s just like when the Tampa Bay Bucs won the Super Bowl — they’re still making improvements and signing new players,” he said.Joe Gruters, a Florida state senator and the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, said tightening voting laws was a top priority for lawmakers and the party’s base.Wilfredo Lee/Associated PressA representative for Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Friday that he “is supportive” of the Florida bill, and he is widely expected to sign it. But state election officials were still protesting the measure on Friday morning, barely 12 hours after it had passed.The group representing Florida election supervisors issued a statement lamenting the new limits on voting by mail, saying the changes would make it “harder” to cast a mail ballot. “After days of debate, our hope is that the initial and unnecessary call for election reform will not detract from the confidence that was well-earned in 2020,” Craig Latimer, the head of the group, said in the statement.The unrelenting push by Republicans to roll back voting access has left Democrats exasperated. In an emotional floor speech before the final vote in Florida on Thursday night, State Representative Angela Nixon of Tampa both pleaded with her colleagues to vote against the bill and chastised those supporting it.“It’s very frustrating, and it’s super hard to be in this chamber, and to be cool with people and cordial with people who are making policies that are detrimental to our communities,” said Ms. Nixon, her voice shaking at times.The fixation on voting laws reflects how central the issue has become to the Republican Party, driven by a base that still adheres to former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Pledges to ensure voting integrity have become common in political ads and stump speeches, and opposition to the federal voting rights bills in Congress is universal among Republican members.A number of Republicans running for office in 2022 have begun campaigns with messaging that pushes the false narrative that the nation’s voting systems are flawed. They include Representative Ted Budd of North Carolina, who on Wednesday announced a Senate bid with a three-minute video in which he called for fair and secure elections, adopting Republicans’ rationale for revamping the voting laws.In a political era in which partisan primaries are often the only challenge a candidate faces, the party’s base has become a chief driver of legislative action. A CNN poll released on Friday found that while 97 percent of Democrats believed President Biden “legitimately won enough votes to win the presidency,” 70 percent of Republicans surveyed said he did not.And polling from Quinnipiac University in April found that a vast majority of Republicans — 78 percent — were opposed to expanding vote by mail, and 84 percent believed that voter fraud was a greater threat than voter suppression. (Numerous audits, court cases and reports have found no significant fraud in the 2020 election.)Republicans have been largely dismissive of the business community’s objections to new voting restrictions, part of a longer-running split between the parties and local chambers of commerce that began when corporations vocally opposed laws enacted by Republican-run states in the 2010s that sought to protect businesses from having to recognize same-sex marriage.An array of corporations also denounced the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and said they would not donate to Republican members of Congress who voted to overturn the election results. That threat didn’t sway most lawmakers from their fealty to Mr. Trump, and in the weeks since the attack, some companies have pulled back from that pledge.Indeed, some Republicans have turned public opposition from major businesses and outside entities into a political weapon; rather than seek to appease businesses, lawmakers have instead taunted them, castigating corporate activism and daring businesses to act.“Major League Baseball caved to fear and lies from liberal activists,” Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia announced the day after the decision by Major League Baseball to move its All-Star Game from Atlanta. Free and fair elections, he said, “are worth the threats.” He added, “They are worth the boycotts, as well as the lawsuits. I want to be clear: I will not be backing down from this fight.’’Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia said he would continue to defend the state’s new voting restrictions after Major League Baseball moved its All-Star Game from Atlanta this year.Brynn Anderson/Associated PressLt. Gov. Dan Patrick of Texas was just as firm. “Texans are fed up with corporations that don’t share our values trying to dictate public policy,” he said after American Airlines released a statement denouncing one of the voting bills in the state. “The majority of Texans support maintaining the integrity of our elections, which is why I made it a priority this legislative session.”Republicans not in thrall to Mr. Trump see the standoff with businesses as an ominous sign. “We say the party has gone full Trump, but what we mean is the party has gone full populist and nationalist,” said Michael Wood, an anti-Trump Republican running in Saturday’s 23-candidate special election to Congress in the Dallas suburbs. “We’ve turned away from our roots as a pro-business party, a pro-small business party, and that, if we don’t correct course, is going to be really bad for America.”Yet Republicans are also seizing on a potential political opportunity. The aftermath of the 2020 election, and Mr. Trump’s insistence that the vote was rigged, provided the party with the first major public support from its partisans to pursue new voting legislation, after the Supreme Court hollowed out the Voting Rights Act in 2013.Indeed, many of the laws being proposed and passed by Republicans would most likely have been challenged by the Justice Department under what was known as the preclearance provision in Section 5 of the act.“We saw something like this in 2010 after Obama got elected,” said Myrna Pérez, the director of the Voting Rights and Elections Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “But we had more of a pushback and were able to block or blunt many of those laws. Now there’s not the kind of guardrails that we had in the past, and voters are suffering because of it.”Michael Wood, left, a Republican congressional candidate in Texas, criticized his party for going “full populist and nationalist.”LM Otero/Associated PressMr. Wood, the Texas Republican running in Saturday’s special election, worries that this could drive away supporters.“It’s keeping Republicans from talking honestly to themselves about why we’re getting a smaller and smaller share of the vote in Texas,” he said. “We can either have that conversation, or keep screaming about quote unquote ‘election integrity’ and watch the state become progressively more Democratic.”That debate could well be decided soon when the Texas Legislature takes up its own voting bill.Patricia Mazzei contributed reporting. More

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      Florida lawmakers pass new voting restrictions mirroring Georgia and Michigan

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      The Florida legislature has passed tight new voting restrictions, placing the crucial swing state at the forefront of a nationwide wave of Republican efforts to suppress turnout on the back of Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.The bill, which closely mirrors similar Republican ploys in Georgia and Michigan, is likely to make it more difficult for millions of voters to have their democratic say. The new barriers to voting are expected to particularly impact minority communities.The legislation introduces a plethora of new hurdles to voting by mail in the wake of the surge in mail-in voting by Democrats in the 2020 election. It also imposes restrictions on providing water to citizens standing in line to cast their ballot.Black lawmakers expressed dismay when the bill passed on Thursday night. The Democratic representative Angela Nixon said she was “distraught and disheartened”, the Washington Post reported.“You are making policies that are detrimental to our communities,” she told her Republican peers.Fellow Democratic lawmaker Anna Eskamani told the Miami Herald: “We had, as the Republican governor said, one of the best operated elections in the country, and yet today, the majority party through last minute maneuvers passed a voter suppression bill.”As Eskamani highlighted, the move by Florida Republicans to clamp down on voting is especially awkward, even by the contorted logic that the Republican party has deployed in states across the country. The restrictions were passed in the name of “voter integrity”, following the former president’s false claim that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election.Yet in Florida, Republicans boasted – and continue to boast – about how well the presidential race was conducted. Trump won the traditional battleground state, which commands a critical 29 electoral college votes, by about 3%.Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, was caught by his own contradictory rationale when he told Fox News on Thursday night that he would now sign the bill into law. “So we think we led the nation,” he said, referring to how the 2020 ballot went in his state, “but we’re trying to stay ahead of the curve to make sure that these elections are run well.”Florida’s attack on voting rights forms part of a staggering assault by Republicans on the heart of American democracy. According to the Brennan Center, which monitors voting rights, about 361 bills containing restrictive provisions have been introduced in what its analysts call “a backlash to 2020’s historic voter turnout, under the pretense of responding to baseless and racist allegations of voter fraud”.The Florida bill focuses especially on voting by mail. It targets the use of drop boxes in which mail ballots can be deposited, and forces voters to reapply for mail ballots every two years rather than four – a move which critics fear will sow confusion and suppress turnout.The attack on mail-in voting is ironic given that the state has a long track-record of using that electoral method without any notable challenges. In several previous cycles, mail-in voting was used predominantly by Republican voters with no objections raised.But in 2020 there was a steep increase in Democratic voters who turned to casting their ballots by mail as a safety measure in the pandemic. Out of a total of more than 11m Floridians who voted in the presidential race, almost 5m did so by mail – about 44%.Suddenly, the practice of voting by mail has become a threat to voter integrity, according to the Republican party. More

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      Florida Voting Rights: Republican Bill Adds New Limits

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      The bill, which Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign, is the latest Republican effort to restrict voting after the 2020 election. It will make Florida the first major swing state won by Donald Trump to pass such a law.MIAMI — Republicans in the Florida Legislature passed an election overhaul bill on Thursday that is set to usher in a host of voting restrictions in one of the most critical battleground states in the country, adding to the national push by G.O.P. state lawmakers to reduce voting access.The bill makes Florida the first major swing state won by former President Donald J. Trump to pass significant voting limits and reflects Republicans’ determination to reshape electoral systems even in states where they have been ascendant. Mr. Trump carried the state last year by more than three percentage points, other Republicans also performed strongly, and the party raised new hopes of its ability to appeal to Latino voters.But Republicans in Florida argued that its elections needed to be more secure, despite the fact that voting unfolded smoothly in 2020 and arguments by Democrats and voting rights experts that some of the new measures would disproportionately affect voters of color. Now the state is on the verge of weakening key parts of an extensive voting infrastructure that was slowly constructed after the state’s chaotic 2000 election and was rapidly enlarged last year because of the coronavirus pandemic.The new bill would limit the use of drop boxes; add more identification requirements for those requesting absentee ballots; require voters to request an absentee ballot for each election, rather than receive them automatically through an absentee voting list; limit who could collect and drop off ballots; and further empower partisan observers during the ballot-counting process. The legislation would also expand a current rule that prohibits outside groups from providing items “with the intent to influence” voters within a 150-foot radius of a polling location.Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has indicated his support for the voting overhaul and is expected to sign it. The bill passed largely along a party-line vote in both chambers, 77 to 40 in the House and 23 to 17 in the Senate, though one Republican state senator, Jeff Brandes of St. Petersburg, voted against it.The legislation follows a similar law passed recently by Georgia, and comes as Texas, Arizona and other states led by Republicans pursue limits on access to the ballot. G.O.P. lawmakers have been fueled by a party base that has largely embraced Mr. Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud and a stolen 2020 election. In Florida, Republican legislators promoted the voting bill while providing little evidence of any problems with fraud, and despite their continued claims that the state’s 2020 election was the “gold standard” for the country.“There was no problem in Florida,” said Kara Gross, the legislative director and senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. “Everything worked as it should. The only reason they’re doing this is to make it harder to vote.”Once the bill is signed into law, Florida will become the first state to create new barriers to voting after businesses across the country embarked on a public pressure campaign to oppose such measures. Major corporations, after speaking out against voting bills in states like Georgia and Texas, remained largely muted on the Republican push in Florida.Hovering over Florida’s debate about the bill was the state’s strong and exceptionally popular tradition of voting by mail — and a recent sea change in which party benefited most from it.In the 2016 and 2018 elections, roughly a third of the state’s voters cast ballots through the mail. And in both years, more Republicans than Democrats voted by mail.But in 2020, more than 2.1 million Democrats cast mail ballots, compared with roughly 1.4 million Republicans, largely because of a Democratic push to vote remotely amid the pandemic and Mr. Trump’s false attacks on the practice. (The former president and his family, however, voted by mail in Florida in the June 2020 primary.)Florida has a popular tradition of voting by mail, a method that favored Republicans until 2020, when Democrats encouraged the practice during the pandemic.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesGiven that history in Florida, its bill will act as a unique test of the national Republican push to curtail voting access, especially absentee and mail voting. And the G.O.P. effort carries risks: Was the Democratic surge in mail balloting a sign of a new normal for the previously Republican-dominated voting method, or a blip caused by the extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic?The legislation has already become something of a political balancing act, as state Republicans try to appease a Trump-friendly base hungry for new voting limits while not harming the party’s turnout. In 2022, the state is poised to yet again become a marquee political battleground as Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican, and Mr. DeSantis seek re-election.Democrats in the Legislature seized on Republicans’ justification for the bill.“So what’s the problem that we’re trying to fix?” Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democratic representative from Orlando, asked rhetorically. “Oh, here’s the problem: Florida Democrats cast 600,000 more vote-by-mail ballots.”But Republicans defended the bill, saying that it was popular with “our constituents” and noting that voting options in Florida were still far more extensive than in other states. Florida will still have no-excuse absentee voting and will mandate at least eight days of early voting.“If the opposition says that we are creating barriers to voting, those barriers already exist in other states,” said Blaise Ingoglia, a Republican state representative from Hernando County who helped lead the push for the bill. “But we never hear a peep from the opposition about those laws.”Other Republican legislators echoed language used by Mr. Trump and his allies during their challenges to the 2020 election.“I believe that every legal vote should count,” said Travis Hutson, a Republican senator from Northeast Florida. “I believe one fraudulent vote is one too many. And I’m trying to protect the sanctity of our elections.”Data requested by lawmakers themselves suggested there was little need for the legislation. The Republican-led House Public Integrity and Elections Committee surveyed the state’s 67 election supervisors in February, asking them about past elections. Almost all of the supervisors responded and said that, over the past four years, they had reported very few instances of possible fraud — one of lawmakers’ stated reasons for pushing the legislation — and that most of their drop boxes were already monitored, through either physical or video surveillance, public records show.“It seems like the Legislature is ignoring — I would say deliberately ignoring — the facts that they have in their possession,” said Stephen F. Rosenthal of Miami, who is part of a group of Democratic lawyers that requested the records. The group also queried elected state prosecutors about voter fraud, finding a minuscule number of prosecuted cases.The supervisors’ answers to the House committee also revealed that election supervisors had received millions of dollars in grant funding from outside organizations in 2019 and 2020. That money will now be prohibited, with no obvious substitute for it in the future.Republicans, when pressed for details on any reported fraud that would prompt the need for the bill, often demurred.“I don’t know, but I’m sure it was going on,” Mr. Ingoglia responded to a question on the House floor about any reported instances of illegal ballot collection. “Just the fact that they weren’t caught doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s not happening.”The bill was not without criticism from notable Republicans inside and outside the Legislature. D. Alan Hays, a conservative Republican who had previously served in the State Senate for 12 years and is now the election supervisor in Lake County, told his former colleagues at a legislative hearing last month that their bill was a “travesty.”Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is expected to sign the bill into law, will face re-election in 2022.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThe new bill is likely to face legal challenges from Democrats; hours after Gov. Brian Kemp signed Georgia’s voting bill into law, a coalition of Democrats and civil rights groups filed a federal lawsuit challenging its legality.Democrats in the Florida Legislature focused heavily on the bill’s potential impact on communities of color.“Typically, in communities of color, households are very diverse,” said State Representative Bobby DuBose, the minority leader, taking issue with the restriction that says a person could collect only two absentee ballots from other voters to bring and drop off at a polling location. “And so, if the intent was to add two — and in many households, there are more than two — why the number two and why not expand beyond two if your intent was to open up the accessibility to voting?”Mr. Ingoglia said he believed allowing two ballots per person was sufficient, but Democrats disagreed, likening the rule to racially discriminatory laws of the past. Over and over, they framed the bill as a solution in search of a problem.One Democratic representative, Fentrice Driskell of Tampa, framed the debate as similar to the hunt for the chupacabra, the mythical, nightmarish mammal-gobbling and goat-blood-sucking beast.“Members, I’ve got no evidence for you on the chupacabra, and I got no evidence for you about ballot harvesting,” Ms. Driskell said. “But what I can tell you is this: that our system worked well in 2020, by all accounts, and everyone agreed. And that for so many reasons, we don’t need this bad bill.” More

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      in US Politics

      Florida lawmakers pass ‘cruel’ bill banning trans women and girls in school sports

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      Transgender women and girls will be banned from participating in school sports in Florida, if the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signs what critics call a “cruel and horrific” bill rushed through by state legislators in a controversial late-night session.The politicians revived, then passed, the bill that prohibits trans athletes competing in high school and college sports in short order on Wednesday, employing what opponents have called “shady, backroom tactics” to bind it to unrelated legislation on charter schools.A previous, standalone bill passed the Florida house earlier this month, but died in the state senate after warnings from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) that it would not stage championship games and tournaments in states with discriminatory policies.“It’s horrific,” said Gina Duncan, the director of transgender equality at Equality Florida. “This bill shows not only their lack of humanity but their astounding ignorance about the transgender community, not understanding that trans girls are girls and transgender women are women.“Despite impassioned pleas by legislators who have gay and transgender kids and grandkids imploring supporters of this bill to understand the harm that it will do, Republicans followed their marching orders to implement this orchestrated culture war and move this bill forward.”The move in Florida, where both chambers are controlled by Republicans, is part of a wave of anti-trans legislation sweeping across the nation, with dozens of measures proposed or passed in numerous states.Earlier this month, Asa Hutchison, the governor of Arkansas, vetoed a state law banning gender-confirming treatments for trans youth – which the state legislature immediately overturned.Joe Biden reacted to the Republican anti-trans push in his first joint address to Congress on Wednesday night. “To all transgender Americans watching at home, especially the young people: you’re so brave. I want you to know your president has your back,” he said.The House of Representatives passed the landmark Equality Act in February, but it faces an uncertain future in the equally divided Senate.The sponsor of Florida’s original trans-sports bill, the state representative Kaylee Tuck, told colleagues the law was necessary because trans athletes had an unfair advantage in women’s athletic competitions. “We don’t need to wait until there’s a problem in Florida for us to act,” she said, acknowledging that there was no evidence of the issue causing problems in the state.Both the NCAA and the Florida high school athletic association have policies that allow trans athletes to compete on teams consistent with their gender identity, and opponents of the new bill say it would result in girls being kicked off those teams.“This cruel legislation is creating an issue where one doesn’t exist, picking on young people for political gain,” Charlie Crist, a Democratic US congressman and Florida’s former governor, said in a statement that called on DeSantis to veto the bill.“I challenge Republican legislators in Tallahassee to imagine being a kid who is in this situation, what it says to them to be singled out by lawmakers in such a mean-spirited way.”Crist said he had a different message for every trans kid in Florida. “You are welcome here and you are loved. And millions of Floridians feel the same way as I do. We’re ready to fight for your right to play and live as exactly who you are.”The earlier version of the bill, which passed the Florida House 77-40 on 14 April, contained a dispute resolution clause that would have allowed a school to inspect the genitals of any athlete subject to a complaint. The amended version of the bill passed by the Florida senate allowed scrutiny of a student’s birth certificate to suffice.“We are told it’s a compromise because we’re no longer inspecting the genitals of children in schools,” the Democratic house representative Carlos Guillermo Smith, who identifies as LGBTQ, said on Wednesday during the house debate. “Members, not inspecting children’s genitals is not a compromise.”Duncan, the Equality Florida activist, said opponents will lobby DeSantis to reject the bill.“It’s terribly harmful to our transgender young people, and there will be substantive revenue drains from passing this bill because the NCAA has made it very clear that they are going to be collaborating with states that do not discriminate, that are inclusive and welcoming for all,” she said.“Economic recovery from the pandemic is so critical to states and to the country. Instead of focusing on that, and on how we provide funding to support people, feed people and house people, we’re passing a bill to discriminate against transgender young people?”DeSantis has not indicated if he will sign the bill. The governor was heavily criticized in 2019 for omitting from a remembrance proclamation that many of the 49 victims of the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando came from the LGBTQ+ community.Staffers blamed it on a mistake and the proclamation was reissued. More

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      in Elections

      Will Miami's Mayor Francis Suarez be Nikki Haley’s Vice Presidential Pick for 2024?

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      Big names in tech including Peter Thiel and Keith Rabois have moved to Miami in the past year. Mayor Francis Suarez is welcoming them with open arms in his zeal to transform Miami into the next tech hub. The sell? Sunshine, low taxes and a mayor who is always willing to take their calls (or, as Kara Swisher puts it, “pet them.”)In this conversation, Swisher presses Suarez on whether Miami — a city with rising sea levels and without an institution like Stanford in its back yard — can really become the next Silicon Valley. She also asks what he’s angling for in the long term. Suarez, a Republican, attracted national attention during the pandemic for his tensions with Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, and President Donald Trump.He’s now rumored to be a contender to be Nikki Haley’s running mate in the 2024 presidential race — speculation that he also welcomes with open arms. “I certainly was not shy about wanting to build a bond and a relationship with her,” he says. So, does Suarez want to be on a Republican ticket? His answer: “I wouldn’t say no.”Illustration by The New York Times; photograph by Pete Marovich for The New York TimesThoughts? Email us at sway@nytimes.com. Transcripts of each episode are available midday.Special thanks to Shannon Busta, Liriel Higa, Michelle Harris and Isvett Verde.“Sway” is produced by Nayeema Raza, Blakeney Schick, Heba Elorbany, Matt Kwong and Daphne Chen, and edited by Nayeema Raza and Paula Szuchman; fact-checking by Kate Sinclair; music and sound design by Isaac Jones; mixing by Erick Gomez. More