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      Democrats See Headwinds in Georgia, and Everywhere Else

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      Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams, viewed as strong candidates by their party, will be running against President Biden’s low ratings as well as their G.O.P. rivals.ATLANTA — Standing at the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church, the spiritual home of Martin Luther King Jr., the Rev. Raphael Warnock led a sermon on the last Sunday before Georgia’s Tuesday primaries that was about “getting to where you need to go” — and navigating the challenges ahead.“Rise up and transform every opposition, every obstacle, into an opportunity,” Mr. Warnock urged. He was not explicitly talking about his other job as a United States senator, or the fact that he is one of the most endangered Democrats in the country in 2022, or the headwinds confronting his party. But he might as well have been.“Don’t you dare sleep on Tuesday,” he said.For months, nearly all the political oxygen in Georgia and beyond has been sucked up by ferocious Republican primaries, intraparty feuds that have become proxy wars for Donald J. Trump’s power and fueled by his retribution agenda. But the ugliness of the G.O.P. infighting has at times obscured a political landscape that is increasingly tilted in the Republican direction in Georgia — and nationally.Democrats were excited for Stacey Abrams, the former state legislator and voting-rights activist, to jump into the 2022 governor’s race, promising a potential rematch of the 2018 contest she only narrowly lost. Mr. Warnock has emerged not only as a compelling speaker but also as one of his party’s strongest fund-raisers. Yet the growing fear for Democrats is that even the strongest candidates and recruits can outrun President Biden’s wheezing approval ratings by only so much, and are at risk of getting washed away in a developing red wave.“I think 2020 was a referendum on Trump,” said Ashley Fogle, a 44-year-old Democrat who lives in Atlanta and attended Ebenezer church on Sunday. “I just don’t know if there’s that same energy in 2022.”Already, a Republican-led remapping in Georgia has effectively erased one Democratic House seat and made another vulnerable, as the Republican advantage in the state delegation could balloon to 10-4, from the current 8-6 edge.The challenges facing Democrats are cyclical and structural.The Democratic majorities on Capitol Hill could scarcely be narrower. The party in power almost always loses in a president’s first midterm election — even absent the current overlapping national crises, some of which are beyond Mr. Biden’s control.Gasoline prices just hit their highest level ever nationwide over the weekend. The president’s approval rating plunged in an Associated Press poll to a new low of 39 percent. The stock market dropped for the seventh consecutive week. Violent crime rates have spiked. A baby formula shortage has alarmed parents. And inflation remains high.“The problem is not messaging — the problem is reality,” said Representative Ritchie Torres, Democrat of New York, citing inflation as the “greatest obstacle to retaining the majority.”The greatest hope for Democrats appears to be potential Republican acts of self-sabotage: the party nominating outside-the-mainstream candidates or failing to coalesce after divisive primaries.In Washington, much of the Biden agenda is frozen in a congressional morass. The party’s left wing and centrists are busily blaming each other for the state of affairs and clashing over what to do next, with student loan forgiveness emerging as one divisive flashpoint.Inside the White House, whose political operation has been a subject of quiet griping in some corners for months, a furious effort is afoot to reframe the 2022 elections as a choice between the two parties, rather than a referendum on Democratic rule. Anita Dunn, an aggressive operator and longtime Biden adviser, has rejoined the administration to sharpen its messaging.“The Democratic base is quite demoralized at this moment,” Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, one of the party’s leading progressive voices, put it bluntly.If Georgia was the scene of the highest highs for Democrats in the 2020 cycle — turning blue at the presidential level for the first time since 1992, flipping two Senate seats to cement control of the chamber and providing Democrats their only tightly contested House pickup in the nation — it is not clear whether the ideologically sprawling and multiracial Biden coalition that unified to oust Mr. Trump is replicable.Energized Black voters, moderate white suburbanites, Asian Americans and some Hispanic Americans all played a role in propelling Democratic victories in the state in 2020 and 2021, while some of the rural Republican base stayed home in the January Senate runoffs.This fall, Mr. Warnock is expected to face Herschel Walker, the Republican former football star with scant political experience. Mr. Warnock has already begun leveraging a $23 million war chest to tell voters that he feels their pain — and to make plain the limits of his power as a freshman senator.“People are hurting. People are tired,” Mr. Warnock said in his first television ad this year. More recently, he took a different approach, almost pleading with disaffected voters: “I’m not a magician.”Representative Carolyn Bourdeaux, left, will face a primary on Tuesday against Representative Lucy McBath.Jenni Girtman/EPA, via Shutterstock, pool photo by Greg NashRepresentative Carolyn Bourdeaux, whose Georgia district was redrawn after she captured what had been a Republican-held seat in 2020, is now facing a primary on Tuesday against Representative Lucy McBath outside Atlanta. Ms. Bourdeaux, a moderate, had a warning for her party.“They need to do more to communicate clearly with voters that they are a steady hand at the wheel of getting the economy back on track for people,” Ms. Bourdeaux said. But she, too, saw a chance to draw a sharp contrast with what she cast as ascendant far-right Republicans. “The other side, candidly, has lost its mind,” she said, pointing to efforts to restrict voting rights and abortion rights.In the Republican race for governor, Gov. Brian Kemp has been locked in a primary with former Senator David Perdue, who was recruited by Mr. Trump. The former president remains angry at the governor for certifying the 2020 election and, according to people close to him, unlikely to ever endorse Mr. Kemp.Ms. Abrams has emerged as a national star among Democrats. But privately Democratic strategists fear that her high-water mark might have come in 2018, when she lost in a Democratic wave year.Most polling shows a close race for governor and Senate, with a slight Republican advantage.As general-election matchups come into focus, Mr. Biden’s advisers argue that there is still time to crystallize a clear choice between the president and congressional Democrats, and the other side. Republicans have already elevated candidates like State Senator Doug Mastriano, a far-right 2020 election denier who is the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania. And as the Supreme Court appears poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, many Republicans have embraced stringent anti-abortion positions, views that are often out of step with the majority of Americans, polling shows.Democrats are seeking to cast Republican candidates as extremists more consumed with culture wars than finding solutions to the nation’s most pressing problems, and the president’s advisers and allies say Democrats will continue to push the message that they are doing everything possible to lower prices.But Ms. Bourdeaux, who is locked in a primary battle of her own, said that the kind of Democratic intraparty “infighting that you’re seeing right now” complicates the party’s messaging.President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were greeted by Senator Raphael Warnock as they visited Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta in January.Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Warnock told his congregation he met with Mr. Biden at the White House, putting up a photo on the screen of a selfie he took with a picture of Ebenezer Baptist Church that hung in the halls of the West Wing.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? 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      Herschel Walker: the ex-football star running for Senate in Trump’s shadow

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      Herschel Walker: the ex-football star running for Senate in Trump’s shadow The Georgia candidate represents a relatively rare political being: a Black, Trump-supporting Republican – and his base seems to be entirely white conservativesA sign on the town square in the Johnson county seat of Wrightsville pays homage to the county’s namesake, Herschel Vespasian Johnson, Georgia’s 41st governor. A relative rarity for his time, Johnson was one of 89 men who voted against secession in 1861 against more than 200 of their peers.But Herschel Johnson is a historical footnote here. Now, the only Herschel that most people know around here is Herschel Walker, a former football star and political novice running for US Senate. Like Johnson, Walker represents a relatively rare political being: he is a Black Republican who supports Donald Trump.Republican ‘big lie’ supporters triumph in sign of Trump’s enduring powerRead moreCrisscross the backroads of Johnson and its neighboring counties and you’ll find plenty of signs for Walker, with their logo of football laces arching over the candidate’s name. You just won’t find many of them in front of the homes of African Americans; Walker’s support, at times, seems to come entirely from white conservatives.“I love where he’s come from and what he’s done,” said Sheree Manley, a 52-year-old Black woman sitting in front of her nutritional store in nearby Emanuel county. “But how can he forget where he came from?”Talk to Black voters in and around Wrightsville and Manley’s complaint is a common refrain: Walker left Wrightsville and never looked back. Talk to white voters, though, and they will laud him for his involvement with the community. There’s the park he helped with, and the youth sports programs he holds in the summer, a white voter says. You mean the park that was built when he graduated high school in 1980 and the one time a few years ago he held a summer sports program, a Black voter will retort.African Americans are hesitant to say anything bad about Walker, but they are certainly not jumping at the chance to praise him. Whites, meanwhile, speak of Walker as the personification of the American Dream: he came from nothing, and now he’s something. Both sides note that he and his family are good, church-going people.“He’s just a good, Christian guy,” says Kevin Price, owner of a downtown antique store, summing up his support for Walker with one of the two C’s that matter most in places like Johnson county. “He’s conservative,” two men in the barber shop across the street agree is one of Walker’s best attributes.There is little question that Walker will win the Republican primary on Tuesday – he heads into election day with an almost 60-point lead over his nearest rival – but questions about his actual policies abound. At a rare press gaggle on Thursday, he went straight to immigration when asked by the Guardian what specific policy areas he would focus on as senator, then defended his community involvement in Wrightsville and Johnson county.“I bet in Wrightsville I’m gonna get 90% of their votes, probably even more,” Walker said, adding that claims that Black voters had questioned his involvement in the community were “a lie”, and eventually pivoting to immigration issues at the border, about 1,300 miles away.“Other countries have walls around them; it’s OK for us to have a wall,” Walker told the Guardian.A self-described “runner” with enough power to run over opponents on the football field and enough grace to go around them, Walker passed up offers from around the country to play for his home state’s University of Georgia Bulldogs. He led the team to a national championship in 1982, taking the sport’s highest honor, the Heisman Trophy. A semi-successful NFL career followed, after which came a brief stint in an upstart football league partly owned by Donald Trump, then some time as a mixed martial arts fighter. After leaving sports, Walker became a businessman, running food supply and service industry companies that may not have been as profitable as he has claimed.Living in Texas in recent years, Walker became an immediate Republican frontrunner when he announced his candidacy last year. Since then, he has held few large events beyond a March rally helmed by Trump, has taken almost no questions from the press other than friendly, far-right news outlets, and has refused to participate in debates with any of his five opponents on Tuesday’s ticket. Beyond the myriad questions on specific policies, his ability to hold forth in any setting where he might face tough questions, and his questionable claims of business acumen, Walker has faced scrutiny for past claims of domestic violence. His ex-wife has claimed he threatened to kill her multiple times, incidents that Walker and his campaign have said were the result of a mental health condition most commonly known as multiple personality disorder. For voters, TV and radio advertisements tout Walker’s issues as something of a redemption story, and one of relatability for anyone who has struggled with mental health.Walker sidestepped the issue when pressed by a local reporter on it on Thursday, instead pivoting to an attack on one of his opponents, Gary Black, who has said he won’t vote for Walker until he addresses the allegations of domestic violence that have been levied against him. “God bless Gary,” Walker said with a smile. “I’m going to win and he knows it.”Johnson county and its voters are just a small factor in what it will take to push Walker past his primary opponents – almost a statistical given – and his eventual opponent in November, Senator Raphael Warnock. A political newcomer himself, Warnock ran alongside fellow Democrat Jon Ossoff in 2020. With neither candidate gaining more than 51% of the vote, both were forced into a runoff election in January 2021. Ossoff beat the former senator David Perdue – now running for Georgia governor on a Trumpian election denier platform – and Warnock narrowly defeated Trump-backed Kelly Loeffler. Not only did the dual victories result in Georgia’s first Black senator in Warnock and its first Jewish senator in Ossoff, but the wins helped Democrats take control of the Senate.Already a statewide hero thanks to his performance on the football field during the Bulldogs’ national championship run, Walker has the type of name recognition most politicians could only dream of. “In the primary, I’m voting for him because he’s Herschel, and because he knows what it’s like to come from a little podunk town,” Loran Powell, who runs Yates Insurance on Wrightsville’s downtown square, said.Just being Herschel, a devoted Christian and a self-described conservative, will probably be enough for Walker’s chances on Tuesday. But for many African-Americans, Walker’s proximity to Trump will be a problem if and when he faces Warnock, former pastor at Martin Luther King Jr’s Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta, in November. Trump has never fared well with Black voters in Georgia and across the country. In 2020, 90% of African Americans voted for Joe Biden, according to one poll.But the rise of Trump brought back memories of an ugly past, Manley said. Those prone to prejudice and poor treatment of Blacks were “emboldened” by Trump, according to the single mother, a retired corrections officer. Trump is an outright racist, others said.“I do know Donald Trump, and I don’t think he’s a racist,” Walker told the Guardian last week. “And right now racism has been brought in so much to separate people, which is kind of crazy, because we’re a good country. There’s other countries that are not as good as America. We’re a new country; we’ve come a long ways. I think if you continue to bring racism in, you’re trying to take us back.”For Manley and other African Americans, it was Trump that took the country back. “He divided the country, and we already didn’t need somebody to divide it,” she said. “These white supremacists weren’t out like the way they are now, after Trump.”For Powell, who said he was a Republican but not a “staunch” one, Walker’s chances of becoming just the second Black senator in Georgia history depend on the two great motivators of any election.“There’s two ways to get somebody to vote for you: make them love you, or make them hate your opponent,” Powell said behind the reception desk of his small insurance business in Wrightsville last week. After Tuesday’s expected win for Walker, the main question will be whether Republicans’ love for him and Trump outweighs Democrats’ appreciation of Warnock – and their animosity toward the former president, according to Powell.If Walker is to stand a chance in November, he will have to do something other than just be Herschel Walker.“I don’t know if he can win if he doesn’t come out and say, ‘This is who I am, and this is what I stand for,’” Powell said.TopicsGeorgiaUS midterm elections 2022US politicsRepublicansDonald TrumpfeaturesReuse this content More

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      What Donald Trump Didn’t Count On in Georgia

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      Brian Kemp, the incumbent governor, is at the top of the former president’s enemies list. But to many Georgia Republicans, he is ‘one of us.’THOMASTON, Ga.— Brian Kemp, Georgia’s incumbent governor and a prominent fixture on former President Donald J. Trump’s enemies list, was clip-clopping around in a pair of cowboy boots in this small city on a recent morning, glad-handing his way through an adoring Republican throng at a place called Greatest Generation Memorial Park. Soon he was confronted by a smiling man wearing a baseball cap adorned with a cursive letter “A.”It was a University of Alabama hat. Mr. Kemp, a sports nut, is a famous partisan of the University of Georgia, his alma mater and one of Alabama’s gridiron rivals. He has even adopted the Bulldog football team’s motivational catchphrase, “Keep choppin’,” as his own.There was a brief moment of good-natured sports-guy ribbing. Then Mr. Kemp turned to his left and addressed a man with a badge. “We need to lock this guy up, sheriff,” he deadpanned. The crowd chuckled.With his boots, his football fixation and a distinctively folksy Southern voice — one that rarely, in campaign mode, nails the “g” at the end of a gerund — Mr. Kemp presents himself as the most Georgian of Georgians. And it is his gift for both reflecting and rewarding his conservative Georgia constituency that has given him a surprisingly cushy lead in the polls in advance of Tuesday’s Republican primary, even as Mr. Trump, who remains tremendously popular in Georgia, continues to disparage him as a “Republican in name only” and demands that voters punish Mr. Kemp for declining to help him overturn the state’s presidential election results of November 2020.What the former president wasn’t counting on, apparently, was the willingness of many Georgia Republicans to remain simultaneously loyal to both Mr. Trump and Mr. Kemp.Former President Donald Trump and former U.S. Senator David Perduee at a Save America rally in Commerce, Ga., in March. Mr. Trump has endorsed Mr. Perdue in the gubernatorial primary.Audra Melton for The New York TimesJust after the campaign event in Thomaston, Sheriff Dan Kilgore of Upson County identified himself as a Trump voter. But he said that Mr. Kemp seemed like a natural fit for the state. “He’s of the people,” Mr. Kilgore said. “He’s one of us.”How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.A Modern-Day Party Boss: Hoarding cash, doling out favors and seeking to crush rivals, Mr. Trump is behaving like the head of a 19th-century political machine.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.Linda Reeves, a retired government worker, said that she and her husband, Clarence, voted for Mr. Trump and even believed his assertion that the Georgia election was stolen, an argument that proved baseless. “We are Trump supporters,” she said. “But everything that comes out of someone’s mouth is not necessarily true.” Mr. Kemp, she said, had proven his bona fides, most recently by signing a law limiting the discussion of race in public-school classrooms, and another allowing Georgians to carry firearms without a permit.“Brian Kemp is a very conservative governor,” she said.While Mr. Kemp has kept socially conservative Republicans appeased with legislation, he has also strengthened his hand with important economic-development wins, including a planned Rivian electric truck plant east of Atlanta and a new Hyundai electric vehicle plant to be built outside of Savannah. The state budget he signed this month includes pay raises for teachers and state government employees. Former Vice President Mike Pence is planning to come to Georgia on Monday to campaign on Mr. Kemp’s behalf; in a statement, he called Mr. Kemp “one of the most successful conservative governors in America.”Mr. Trump has endorsed former U.S. Senator David Perdue, the former chief executive of the Dollar General discount chain, who has repeated Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 election. But Mr. Perdue, who lives in the exclusive community of Sea Island, has struggled to gain traction in his primary against the governor.This week, NBC News reported that the former president has been privately complaining about Mr. Perdue’s performance and had essentially written him off. Mr. Trump pushed back Friday with a social media post calling the reporting “FALSE.”“I am with David all the way because Brian Kemp was the WORST Governor in the Country on Election Integrity!” he wrote.Mr. Trump’s record in influencing Republican primary outcomes this season has been mixed. Successful Trump-backed candidates include J.D. Vance, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author and U.S. Senate candidate from Ohio, and Doug Mastriano, a candidate for Pennsylvania governor who echoes Mr. Trump’s untrue claims of election fraud. But other Trump candidates have lost high-profile Republican primary contests in North Carolina, Nebraska and Idaho.Attendees listen to Mr. Kemp speak in Greensboro, Ga., on Thursday. Mr. Kemp has a cushy lead in the polls in advance of Tuesday’s Republican primary.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMr. Trump has endorsed an extensive slate of Republican candidates in Georgia, where he and some of his allies are under investigation in Fulton County for potentially violating state criminal law in their attempts to interfere with the presidential election results. But the outcomes of Georgia’s Trump squad members this primary season may vary.A recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll of likely Republican voters shows the U.S. Senate candidate and former University of Georgia running back Herschel Walker with a big lead in his primary race, likely aided by both Mr. Trump’s endorsement and Mr. Walker’s status as a football legend. The same poll shows the Trump-backed candidate for secretary of state, U.S. Representative Jody Hice, in a tight primary race against incumbent Brad Raffensperger. The April AJC poll shows Mr. Kemp with a 23-point lead over Mr. Perdue; a more recent Fox News poll showed the governor ahead by more than 30 points. Mr. Perdue, whose appearances this week included a Bikers for Trump event in Plainville, Ga., is hoping that heavy early-voting turnout is a sign that Trump voters are quietly moving the needle in his direction and will at least allow him to force Mr. Kemp into a runoff.The Kemp campaign has vastly out-raised and outspent the Perdue campaign, a sign that much of the Georgia donor class, which tends to be wary of political turbulence, prefers the status quo. And though Mr. Perdue has benefited from outside groups’ TV ads featuring Mr. Trump, the Perdue campaign has not been on the air with its own ads since late April, according to Adimpact, an ad-tracking firm.Mr. Kemp, meanwhile, has countermanded Mr. Trump’s wrath with a relentless focus on affairs in his own backyard. On Wednesday, Norman Allen, the Upson County Commission chairman, praised Mr. Kemp for personally taking his calls in 2020 and promising extra help from state government as the county suffered in the first months of the coronavirus pandemic.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMr. Kemp has also strategically dispensed executive spoils, including coveted government appointments, keeping fellow Georgia Republicans in his camp, or at least on the sidelines. That appeared to be the case earlier this year, when the state board that oversees Georgia’s public college system, which is stocked with Kemp loyalists, chose as system chancellor Sonny Perdue, a former Georgia governor and Trump cabinet official who happens to be David Perdue’s cousin.Before his stump speech in Thomaston, Mr. Kemp mingled with the crowd, with the sleeves of his red-gingham shirt rolled up, shaking hands with old acquaintances, talking about tailgate parties from football seasons past and praising the moxie of his octogenarian mother.Mr. Kemp is aware that this kind of warm welcome, from a rural, mostly white crowd, coexists with a strong distaste for him on the left and from influential voices outside of Georgia. In 2018, a number of high-profile Democrats described some moves he made as secretary of state as voter suppression tactics. Some of them used variations of the word “steal” to describe Mr. Kemp’s defeat of the Democrat Stacey Abrams that year in the governor’s race. Ms. Abrams, who also alleged that Mr. Kemp engaged in voter suppression, never conceded in that contest.His four years in office have brought more controversy. President Biden described the sweeping law that Mr. Kemp signed in the wake of the 2020 election to restrict voting access “Jim Crow in the 21st century.” And Mr. Kemp was heavily criticized for his decision, in April 2020, to allow many businesses in the state to reopen in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.In his speech in Thomaston, Mr. Kemp said he knew those criticisms were wrong, because he had listened to voters. “I knew how bad they were hurting, because I was hearing from them,” he said of Georgia business owners and workers affected by the pandemic. “I was talking to them. I was talking to barbers and the cosmetologists and the waitresses and the restaurant owners.”The governor made no mention of David Perdue, or of Mr. Trump, but rather looked ahead, with multiple mentions of Ms. Abrams, whom he will face off against in the general election if he gets there. “We’re in a fight for the soul of our state, y’all,” he said. “We’re getting up every single morning to make sure that Stacey Abrams is not going to be our governor or our next president,” he said.He added: “Keep choppin’, God bless you, and thanks for coming.” More

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      Perdue Had Trump. In Georgia, Kemp Had Everything Else.

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      David Perdue challenged Gov. Brian Kemp because of Donald Trump’s fury over his 2020 loss. Thoroughly outflanked and failing to gain traction, he is now staring down defeat.In September 2021, former Senator David Perdue was hemming and hawing about running for governor of Georgia. Over dinner with an old friend on Sea Island, he pulled out his iPhone and showed the list of calls he’d gotten from Donald J. Trump, lobbying him to take the plunge.“He said Trump called him all the time,” said Martha Zoller, a former aide to Mr. Perdue who now hosts a talk radio show in Gainesville, Ga. “He showed me on his phone these multiple recent calls and said they were from the president.”Ms. Zoller and a legion of other former Perdue aides and advisers told the former senator that running was a bad idea. He listened to Mr. Trump instead.Now, Mr. Perdue is staring down an epic defeat at the hands of Gov. Brian Kemp, the Republican whom Mr. Trump has blamed for his 2020 loss more than any other person. The Perdue campaign is ending the race low on cash, with no ads on television and a candidate described even by his supporters as lackluster and distracted.“Perdue thought that Trump was a magic wand,” said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and a Trump ally, who was among Mr. Perdue’s highest-profile Georgia supporters. “In retrospect, it’s hard to understand David’s campaign, and it’s certainly not the campaign those of us who were for him expected.”Mr. Perdue’s impending downfall in Tuesday’s primary for governor looms as the biggest electoral setback for Mr. Trump since his own defeat in the 2020 election. There is perhaps no contest in which the former president has done more to try to influence the outcome. Mr. Trump recruited, promoted and cleared the field for his ally, while assailing Mr. Kemp, recording television ads and giving $2.64 million to groups helping Mr. Perdue — by far the most he has ever invested in another politician.Yet the race has exposed the limits of Mr. Trump’s sway, especially against entrenched Republican incumbents.Gov. Brian Kemp campaigning with former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey in Alpharetta, Ga., this past week. A recent poll showed him leading the Republican primary by more than 30 percentage points.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMr. Perdue’s failures were not just of his own making. He was outflanked by a savvy incumbent in Mr. Kemp who exploited the powers of his office to cut off Mr. Perdue from allies — including Mr. Perdue’s own cousin Sonny, a former governor and Trump agriculture secretary whom Mr. Kemp’s allies appointed chancellor of the University System of Georgia.Mr. Kemp also appeared to punish those who crossed him: One congressional seat was drawn to exclude the home of a candidate whose father, a Perdue supporter, had publicly criticized the governor.And he offered goodies to voters, including a gas-tax holiday that conveniently runs through the end of May, just past the primary.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.A Modern-Day Party Boss: Hoarding cash, doling out favors and seeking to crush rivals, Mr. Trump is behaving like the head of a 19th-century political machine.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.On Thursday, as Mr. Perdue campaigned outside the Semper Fi Bar and Grille in Woodstock, Ga., he was not conjuring up a path to victory but haggling over the scope of his widely expected defeat, after a Fox News survey showed him down 32 percentage points.“Hell no, I’m not down 30 points,” insisted Mr. Perdue, whose campaign did not respond to requests for comment for this article. “We may not win Tuesday,” he added, “but I guaran-damn-tee-you we are not down 30 points.”The key threshold on Tuesday is 50 percent: Mr. Kemp must win an outright majority in the five-candidate field to avoid a one-on-one runoff in June.The story of Mr. Perdue’s effort is less one of political collapse and more of a failure to launch. From the moment he announced his candidacy in December, Mr. Perdue never demonstrated the same commitment to winning that he displayed in his first Senate race in 2014.His case for ousting Mr. Kemp was always largely based on support from the former president. Mr. Perdue argued at his campaign introduction that the governor had so alienated the party’s Trump faithful that they would not rally around Mr. Kemp against Stacey Abrams, the presumptive Democratic nominee and a leading villain for Republicans.But Mr. Perdue, 72, a wealthy former chief executive of Dollar General, never came close to matching the $3.8 million of his own money he put into his 2014 Senate race. He invested just $500,000 in his bid for governor.That is less than he and his wife spent last year for a waterfront lot on a secluded peninsula on scenic St. Simons Island, a purchase made not long after his runoff defeat at the hands of a then-33-year-old Democrat that delivered Senate control to Democrats. A permit to build a nearly 12,000-square-foot mansion worth an estimated $5 million — on land including “over 625 feet of lake frontage,” according to the listing — was granted two weeks after he declared his candidacy, records show.Mr. Perdue’s home remains under construction on St. Simons Island in Georgia. Parker Stewart for The New York TimesMr. Trump has simultaneously invested heavily in Mr. Perdue, with his $2.64 million, and sought to avoid blame as the candidate has faltered, telling The New York Times in April that the news media’s focus “should be on the endorsements — not the David Perdue one” to measure his influence.Mr. Trump’s last rally in Georgia came in late March. He did not return, as Perdue allies had hoped, instead holding a conference call for supporters in early May.“I am with David all the way because Brian Kemp was the WORST governor in the Country on Election Integrity!” Mr. Trump insisted Friday on his Truth Social messaging platform.Mr. Perdue, like candidates for governor in Idaho and Nebraska this month, learned that a Trump endorsement alone does not assure the support of Trump voters or Trump donors.“The Trump endorsement is very important, but it’s only an endorsement,” said former Representative Jack Kingston, who lost the 2014 Senate primary to Mr. Perdue and is a former Trump adviser. “It’s not an army of infrastructure and door-knockers the way it would be if you have the Sierra Club or the N.R.A. or the A.F.L.-C.I.O.”Mr. Perdue, second from left, with Senator Kelly Loeffler, left, President Donald J. Trump and Melania Trump shortly after the 2020 election. Mr. Perdue and Ms. Loeffler lost to Democrats in early 2021.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe juxtaposition between the Kemp and Perdue camps was particularly stark on Friday.Mr. Kemp was outside Savannah, announcing that Hyundai was investing $5.5 billion in an electric battery and vehicle manufacturing plant, one of the largest economic development projects in Georgia history. There was a champagne toast.Mr. Perdue was nearby holding an endorsement event with Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, who is making her own comeback attempt in a House race in Alaska.“I would rather be standing on the stage announcing 7,500 jobs than standing next to Sarah Palin,” said Mr. Kemp’s lieutenant governor, Geoff Duncan, a fierce Trump critic who opted not to run for re-election this year.Randy Evans, a Perdue supporter who served as ambassador to Luxembourg in the Trump administration, said the Kemp operation had been ruthless in using what he called the “bullying” powers of the governorship.Mr. Evans’s son, Jake, is running for Congress in the Atlanta suburbs. When Kemp-aligned Republican legislators drew new lines in redistricting, the younger Mr. Evans was suddenly drawn out of the district in which he had been planning to run.“They cut a sliver about the size of your little finger,” the elder Mr. Evans said. “Jake had to move, buy a new house.”Mr. Kemp, 58, leveraged the powers of incumbency in other crucial ways. He signed a measure to provide tax refunds of up to $500 for married couples, then announced on May 11, after early voting had begun, that those checks were in the mail. He appealed to rural Georgians by raising pay for teachers, and pleased conservatives by signing sweeping legislation to restrict voting access, expand gun rights and forbid school mask mandates.Mr. Kemp at a campaign stop in Canton, Ga., this past week. He has signed several conservative priorities into law over the past year.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMr. Perdue’s efforts could seem feeble in comparison. In March, he attacked Mr. Kemp for recruiting an electric truck maker to open a factory in rural Georgia — creating thousands of jobs — because George Soros, the prominent Democratic donor, had recently invested in the company.The Kemp-Perdue contest was steeped in the drama of personal betrayal.Mr. Kemp had spent weeks campaigning with Mr. Perdue before the senator’s defeat in the January 2021 Senate runoff election. By then, Mr. Kemp had infuriated Mr. Trump by defending the legitimacy of Georgia’s presidential results.Last spring, Mr. Kemp’s aides said, Mr. Perdue assured Mr. Kemp that he did not intend to run for governor. That June, Mr. Perdue introduced the governor at the Georgia Republican Party’s annual convention.In 2018, Mr. Perdue and Mr. Kemp appeared together during Mr. Kemp’s campaign for governor.Audra Melton for The New York TimesBut Mr. Kemp, cannily, had already begun the process of installing Sonny Perdue, a popular former governor, to run Georgia’s state universities — an appointment that effectively put him on the sidelines. (Sonny Perdue, through a spokesman, declined to comment.)Mr. Kemp also pre-emptively secured the loyalty and fund-raising might of Alec Poitevint, a South Georgia businessman who had served as campaign chairman for David Perdue’s Senate campaigns and Sonny Perdue’s campaigns for governor — one of many ways the Kemp operation boxed out Mr. Perdue financially.Mr. Poitevint said he was among a host of longtime David Perdue supporters who had urged him not to run.“I didn’t think it was serious,” Mr. Poitevint said. “I expressed the fact that I didn’t agree with it, that I thought that the governor had done a great job and deserved re-election.”Shunned by the state’s political establishment, Mr. Perdue tried framing himself as a political outsider — “I’ve been an outsider since I got into politics,” he said on Thursday — but that is a difficult case to make for a former senator boasting of his support from a former president.Even Mr. Trump’s $2.64 million infusion was swamped by the $5.2 million in television ads paid for by the Republican Governors Association to aid Mr. Kemp.For all of Mr. Trump’s attacks on Mr. Kemp, the governor never struck back. Mr. Kemp’s advisers believe that discipline helped provide permission for even the most devoted Trump supporters to stick with the governor.Mr. Perdue’s campaign, meanwhile, was laser-focused on falsehoods about 2020 — repeating Mr. Trump’s lie and blaming Mr. Kemp for President Biden’s election.Mr. Evans, the former ambassador who in early 2021 had tried to broker a peace deal between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kemp, campaigned for Mr. Perdue but said he saw little effort to define a distinctive platform.​​ “As far as having an existence that existed independent of Trump, I really didn’t see that materialize,” Mr. Evans said.Mr. Kemp’s lieutenant governor, Mr. Duncan, summarized the arc of the Perdue candidacy.“David Perdue made a bad bet six months ago when he jumped in the race and thought, ‘Because Donald Trump likes me, I’m going to win,’” Mr. Duncan said. “He bet wrong.”Maya King More

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      Lucy McBath and Carolyn Bourdeaux Battle Over A Georgia District

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      A primary for the new Seventh District, outside Atlanta, is forcing two popular incumbents, Lucy McBath and Carolyn Bourdeaux, to do battle.In 2018, a Democratic gun control and racial justice activist named Lucy McBath flipped a Republican-held Georgia congressional seat that, in a different configuration, had once been held by Newt Gingrich.In 2020, a college professor named Carolyn Bourdeaux prevailed in another suburban Atlanta district a little farther east, becoming the only Democratic House candidate to flip a seat in the general election that year.And now, Ms. McBath and Ms. Bourdeaux — two female lawmakers who have similar voting records and reflect the ascendant Democratic coalition in Georgia — are on a collision course, battling to represent the state’s newly redrawn Seventh District in a House member-versus-member primary election on Tuesday.“It’s a shame that we had to choose between them,” said Andrew Young, a former congressman, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and mayor of Atlanta. “But that is the kind of trickery that went into reapportionment.”Mr. Young has endorsed Ms. Bourdeaux, though he said his wife was rooting for Ms. McBath.Under the once-in-a-decade redistricting process, Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, signed into law a new map that transformed Ms. McBath’s district to favor Republicans overwhelmingly. Ms. Bourdeaux’s nearby district, the Seventh, became strongly Democratic, and Ms. McBath chose to run there.Representative Carolyn Bourdeaux,left, with a supporter at an event marking the one-year anniversary of the Atlanta spa shootings.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesThe result is a matchup that has left party leaders in the district anguished — one of several bruising House primaries around the country pitting incumbents against one another in newly drawn districts.After the Pennsylvania and North Carolina PrimariesMay 17 was the biggest day so far in the 2022 midterm cycle.The Stakes: G.O.P. voters are showing a willingness to nominate candidates who parrot Donald J. Trump’s 2020 lies, making clear that this year’s races may affect the fate of free and fair elections in the country.Trump’s Limits: The MAGA movement is dominating Republican primaries, but Mr. Trump’s control over it may be slipping.Trump Endorsements: Most of the candidates backed by the former president have prevailed. However, there are some noteworthy losses.Up Next: Closely watched races in Georgia and Alabama on May 24 will offer a clearer picture of Mr. Trump’s influence.More Takeaways: ​​Democratic voters are pushing for change over consensus, nominating a left-leaning political brawler for Senate in Pennsylvania. Here’s what else we’ve learned.In Georgia, many Democrats fault Republican machinations around the reapportionment process for, in their view, effectively squeezing out an incumbent House Democrat.At a virtual rally Thursday night, Ms. McBath implicitly cast her decision to run in the Seventh District as a rebuke to the Republicans, declaring that she “refused to let the Republicans silence me.”State Representative Donna McLeod, who is campaigning energetically but lags in fund-raising, is also running in the contest, which could head to a runoff.The intraparty battle comes roughly a year and a half after Georgia, a longtime Republican bastion, not only helped deliver the presidency to the Democrats, but also elected two Democratic senators, cementing the party’s Senate majority. Those victories were propelled by a broad constellation of constituencies, including a surge in turnout by Black Georgians and a thorough rejection of Donald J. Trump in the state’s diverse suburbs.Ms. McBath is a Black woman from the suburbs of Atlanta who has been embraced by several liberal organizations and some progressives like Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, but she is not typically seen as a left-wing candidate. Ms. Bourdeaux, a white moderate, was also skilled at appealing to those in historically center-right territory. Both represent, in many ways, parts of the sprawling Biden coalition that Democrats are straining to hold together headed into a challenging midterm election season.Ms. Bourdeaux is regarded as the more centrist candidate in the race. She joined other House moderates, for instance, in saying she would not support a budget resolution meant to pave the way for President Biden’s sweeping social policy package until a bipartisan infrastructure measure became law, a stance that outraged many Democrats who had planned to pair the priorities.But in contrast to Democratic primaries elsewhere, the primary contest in Georgia’s Seventh District has not been a searing ideological fight over the direction of the party, or a race dominated by negative advertising. Both women emphasize issues like protecting abortion rights and voting rights, and they received a joint endorsement from the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.Yet there are clear stylistic and strategic differences as they vie to represent a racially and ethnically diverse district.Ms. McBath, widely regarded as the front-runner, is running on her personal story, recently earning national attention from prominent Democrats, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for her starkly emotional testimony about her struggles with pregnancy as she advocated for abortion rights.Linking to a video clip of Ms. McBath, Mrs. Clinton wrote on Twitter: “Please listen to @RepLucyMcBath as she speaks for so many women who have had miscarriages and stillbirths — tragic losses the right wing seeks to criminalize.”Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      On Race, Herschel Walker’s Offer of Absolution Divides Georgia Voters

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      MACON, Ga. — Herschel Walker, the former football star leading Georgia’s Republican primary for Senate, had a mixed message about racial issues for 70 or so supporters, mainly white, who came to hear his stump speech this week at the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame.He started with a joking aside — “I don’t know if you know this, but I’m Black” — before asking, “Where is this racism thing coming from?” Accusations of bigotry, he suggested, are often thrown around as a way to silence people like those in the crowd.He did say that he had recently been called a racial slur, repeating the word and adding, “Can you believe that?” But, he went on, that was OK, because raccoons are smart animals, and the Bible does not talk about Black and white, just believers and nonbelievers.The white members of the audience cheered. The few Black onlookers had a different reaction, wondering what race-blind Georgia he seemed to be referring to.As Mr. Walker nears his coronation on Tuesday as the Republican nominee for one of Georgia’s Senate seats, it is clear that racial issues will be a major factor this fall, when he is all but certain to face Senator Raphael Warnock, the incumbent Democrat.The contest between Mr. Warnock, a longtime civil rights champion, and Mr. Walker, whose ambivalence on the issue has long dogged him, is expected to be tight. Either way, Georgia will still have a Black senator. But just because both men are Black doesn’t mean race will be nullified as a factor.“If anything, it could be put on steroids,” said Kevin Harris, an African American Democratic strategist active in Southern campaigns.Mr. Walker is clearly sensitive about the subject. Asked how he would distinguish himself from Mr. Warnock, the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, Mr. Walker snapped: “Don’t say that. He’s running on separation.” He has struck similar themes in the past, arguing that civil rights leaders want the races divided.White Republicans here welcomed Mr. Walker’s assurances that accusations of racism and injustice are all about division, when the nation needs unity.George Jackson, who grew up in Mr. Walker’s hometown, Wrightsville, Ga., and went to high school with the candidate’s older brother, reassured his friends after the speech, “Herschel is not racist” — a signal that for some voters, racism by Black Americans, not by white ones, is the problem.“Christ doesn’t look at race,” Kathy Peterson, 60, of Perry, Ga., who is white, said approvingly after the speech. “We’re all the same. We’ve been divided by the leadership we have now for too long.”The few Black members of the audience, however, saw Mr. Walker’s longtime ties to Donald J. Trump — and the former president’s endorsement of him — as a red flag, and an indication that Mr. Walker was merely a vessel for the G.O.P. and Mr. Trump’s ambitions.“I can’t get a brother from Wrightsville, Ga., jumping on the Trump campaign, you know?” Roderick McGee, 54, said at the Hall of Fame. “I can’t wrap my mind around that.”He added, “He’s a puppet on a string, and somebody’s pulling those strings really good.”Roderick McGee, who attended Mr. Walker’s campaign event in Macon, was skeptical of Mr. Walker because of the candidate’s ties to former President Donald J. Trump.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMr. Walker’s early years are a major part of his appeal. He loves to recount his days as a shy, bullied, “big-boned” — “which meant I was fat” — kid with a speech impediment, who took it upon himself to grow supremely athletic so he could stand up for himself.He often riffs about what he calls an agonizing choice between joining the Marines or playing college football, then choosing a college as the most recruited high school athlete in the country.Left unmentioned is another event from those days that Mr. Jackson readily offered up, a civil rights showdown in 1980 in little Wrightsville between the Black community and local law enforcement that brought Black leaders like Hosea Williams to town from Greater Atlanta, as well as Ku Klux Klansmen like J.B. Stoner.Black local leaders wanted their most celebrated athlete to weigh in, but barely 18 and a high school senior debating his college choices, Mr. Walker stayed away.“He said: ‘I don’t believe in race. I believe in right and wrong,’” Mr. Jackson, who is white, said approvingly.George Jackson grew up in Wrightsville, Ga., Mr. Walker’s hometown.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesDarrell Robinson said the Senate race between Mr. Walker and Senator Raphael Warnock would be pivotal.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesRepublicans hope Mr. Walker will peel away just enough Black votes from Mr. Warnock to take back a coveted seat in a Senate now divided 50-50. Driven by Mr. Trump’s quick endorsement, many in the party have looked past the football star’s history of domestic violence, his admitted struggles with mental illness, and his lack of political experience to chant his slogan: “Run, Herschel, run.”Voters, Black and white, appeared aware of the stakes.“This Senate race right here is going to be the most important race of them all,” said Darrell Robinson, 54, a Black man from Macon who attended the Walker event.But it may not work the way the Republican establishment hopes. After the murders of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Ga., 170 miles southeast of Macon, many Black voters are in no mood for the broad absolution of white people that Mr. Walker appears to be offering.“People need to stop being afraid to have these hard conversations,” said LaTanja Taylor, 45, who was walking with a friend through downtown Macon. “That’s the only way we’re going to heal.”As for Mr. Walker’s confidence that racism is not a problem, she quipped: “He’s blind. Something’s wrong with him.”Celebrity might also not be the draw some think. Georgia’s booming population is young and includes many new arrivals to the state. To them, Mr. Walker’s Heisman Trophy in 1982 is ancient history. “I wasn’t even born then,” said Tiffany Clark, 38, Ms. Taylor’s friend, who laughed as she confessed she was not a sports fan and did not know who Mr. Walker was.Ms. Clark, who is Black, said that her concern was health care for her aging parents, and that she liked Mr. Warnock’s efforts to expand the reach of health insurance in Georgia, despite successive Republican governors’ refusal to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. He has her vote, she said.Mr. Warnock has been outspoken on racial issues, especially on voting rights. He castigated a restrictive voting law passed last year by Georgia’s Republican-led legislature, calling it racism in action.Mr. Warnock has often connected the issues of race and voting rights, and has denounced Georgia’s recently passed voting restrictions.Erin Schaff/The New York Times“We are witnessing right now a massive and unabashed assault on voting rights and voter access unlike anything we have seen since the Jim Crow era,” he declared in a March 2021 Senate speech that ran through his state’s history of violent racial repression and its breakthrough civil rights moments.Mr. Walker has taken a different path. At a hearing last year on reparations for the descendants of enslaved African Americans, he appeared remotely at the behest of Republicans.He lamented, “We use Black power to create white guilt. My approach is biblical: How can I ask my heavenly father to forgive me if I can’t forgive my brother?” He continued: “My religion teaches togetherness. Reparations teach separation.”At a rally in September with Mr. Trump in Perry, Ga., Mr. Walker told the crowd: “I’m going to tell you a secret. Don’t let the left try to fool you with this racism thing, that this country is racist.”To some supporters, such assurances evince a warmth and understanding that could counter Mr. Warnock’s famous charisma. Phil Schaefer, a longtime football broadcaster at the University of Georgia, Mr. Walker’s alma mater, said: “I always felt there was something special in Herschel. There was a depth there that is now coming out.”Mr. Walker with supporters in Macon, where he spoke at the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesBut Democrats see in Mr. Walker a political neophyte who is unprepared for the general election. In a difficult political year for Democrats, he could be a perfect foil for Mr. Warnock.Mr. Harris, who helped engineer President Biden’s narrow victory in Georgia, said Republicans were so intent on recruiting a Black Senate candidate that they latched onto a man whose views on race will only alienate the Black voters they seek.“He’s a flawed messenger,” Mr. Harris said, “but this is what you get when you’re not willing to do the work, and they don’t do the work on equity and inclusion. So they get Herschel Walker.” More

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      Democrats, the Midterm Jinx Is Not Inevitable

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      In November, the Democrats are widely expected to lose the House and probably also the Senate. Large defeats are the norm for a new president’s first midterm. A harbinger is a president’s approval rating, and President Biden’s stands at a lackluster 41.1 percent.But standard political history may not be a good guide to 2022. The Democrats are facing long odds, but there are several reasons this could be an unusual political year.For starters, Donald Trump is just as likely to hobble Republicans as he is to energize them. Mr. Trump will not be on the ballot, but many of his surrogates will. He has endorsed over 175 candidates in federal and state elections, and in his clumsy efforts to play kingmaker, Mr. Trump has promoted some badly compromised candidates and challenged party unity.In the Georgia primary for governor, a Trump surrogate, Sonny Purdue, is polling well behind Mr. Trump’s nemesis, the incumbent Brian Kemp. In the Georgia Senate race, Mr. Trump’s endorsed candidate, Herschel Walker, is running away from his past and locked in a tight race against the incumbent Raphael Warnock. It may not happen again, but in 2020, Mr. Trump’s meddling backfired and helped Democrats take two Senate seats.To hold the Senate, Democrats need to defend incumbents in New Hampshire, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia. But they have pickup opportunities in several states.In Pennsylvania, the popular lieutenant governor John Fetterman, an economic populist, will run against the winner of a close Republican primary, either the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz or the financier David McCormick. Mr. Oz, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump, has a very slight edge, as well as a very slight connection to Pennsylvania, having lived in New Jersey for many years. Either nominee would most likely alienate part of the Trump base, and neither is remotely populist.In Ohio, Mr. Trump’s endorsement helped the author and venture capitalist executive J.D. Vance prevail. In the general election, we will get a test of the divisive culture-war populism of Mr. Vance versus the genuine pocketbook populism of Representative Tim Ryan — the kind that keeps re-electing Ohio’s Democratic senator, Sherrod Brown.For Democrats to succeed in many of these races, their base will have to be energized — but at the moment, it is not. Still, there’s hope: Even if the ubiquitous lunacy of Mr. Trump doesn’t wake Democrats up, the likelihood of abortion being banned in half the country probably will.If the leaked opinion in the Supreme Court abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, becomes law in an official June decision, it will not just allow states to criminalize abortion, but will turn doctors into agents of the state when they treat women for miscarriages. This extremism on women’s health does not have the support of most voters.The Democratic revival of 2017-20 began with the epic women’s marches of January 2017. If Democrats are more competitive than expected this year, it will be in part because women are galvanized, especially women in the Democratic base but also independent or “soft Republican” college-educated suburban women.Something like this happened in 2017, when large numbers of liberals and moderates, appalled by Mr. Trump’s presidency, saw the 2018 election as a firebreak. That year, Democrats made a net gain of 40 seats in the House, and historic turnout gains in 2018, relative to the previous midterm, were a great benefit for Democrats.All will depend on how closely 2022 resembles 2018. With the electorate so divided, there are relatively few swing voters — but potentially dozens of swing districts. How they swing depends entirely on turnout.A Democratic effort reminiscent of grass roots groups in 2017 is beginning to gear up. For example, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland sponsors a Democracy Summer for college students who want to get out and organize. This idea has been picked up in dozens of other congressional districts.Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, in the January 2021 runoff election that won him a Senate seat, helped pioneer a technique called paid relational organizing. He hired some 2,800 Georgians to reach out to their own peer networks to win support for Mr. Ossoff. Now several people who worked with Senator Ossoff are taking this strategy national.Other events this summer may have bearing on the fall. The House panel investigating the attack of Jan. 6, 2021, will hold public hearings in June. Closer to the midterms, it will release its final report, which will put Republicans on the spot to answer for their defense of an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Mr. Trump will surely continue to insist the 2020 election was stolen, but most Republicans will be whipsawed between the demands of Mr. Trump and his base and their wish to focus on more winning issues.Mr. Trump’s own behavior is exposing all the latent fissures in the contradictory coalition that narrowly elected him. Democratic candidates will be reminding Americans of the potential menace of a second Trump term. If Mr. Trump rejoins Twitter, he will remind them himself.Even so, Republican extremism is at risk of being overshadowed by economic conditions, none more than inflation. Federal Reserve economists project that inflation could begin to subside by fall. As with so much in politics, sheer luck and timing will play a role in the Democrats’ prospects and the future of our Republic.Stranger things have happened than a Democrat midterm resurgence. A wipeout is still likely, but far from inevitable — if Democrats can get organized.Robert Kuttner is a co-editor of The American Prospect and the author of “Going Big: FDR’s Legacy, Biden’s New Deal, and the Struggle to Save Democracy.”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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      In Georgia Primary, Over 600,000 People Have Already Voted

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      A record number of people in Georgia have cast their votes early for the primary elections being held on Tuesday, as several Trump-backed candidates are in closely watched contests for governor, the Senate, secretary of state and more.More than 600,000 people have voted so far, both in person during the early voting period and by absentee mail, the office of Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, said on Thursday. Of those more than 600,000, over 567,000 voted in person and 47,500 voted by absentee mail-in ballots.The number of voters who have cast ballots in person so far represents a 189 percent increase compared to the same point in the early voting period during the 2020 primaries, according to Mr. Raffensperger’s office. Early voting in the state ends on Friday evening, at 5 p.m. in some counties and 7 p.m. in others, according to a spokesman for Mr. Raffensperger.Of the more than 600,000 total early votes, about 353,000 were cast by Republicans, roughly 258,000 by Democrats and more than 4,000 by nonpartisan voters, the office said. In a statement, Mr. Raffensperger said the high turnout was “a testament to the security of the voting system.”Mr. Raffensperger, a Republican, is facing a primary challenge from Representative Jody Hice in the highest-profile secretary of state race in the country this year. Mr. Hice has been backed by former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Raffensperger, who drew the ire of Mr. Trump after he refused the former president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, has defended the state’s handling of elections from criticisms by both Democrats and Republicans.Stacey Abrams, the presumptive Democratic candidate for governor, has said voter suppression by state officials hampered her unsuccessful previous bid for governor in 2018. More