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      Rick Caruso’s Wild Promises for Los Angeles

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      At first glance — and maybe even at a second one — it’s difficult to tell what, exactly, makes Rick Caruso a Democrat. Caruso, a billionaire real estate developer best known for his outdoor shopping malls, is a former Republican who is running to be the next Democratic mayor of Los Angeles. He has offered up a three-plank plan reminiscent of Rudy Giuliani’s second New York City mayoral campaign in 1993: an end to “street homelessness”; a return to “public safety”; and the end of civic corruption.If that alone doesn’t warrant the comparisons to Giuliani, Caruso has gained the endorsement of William Bratton, the former New York City Police commissioner who served Giuliani from 1994 to 1996 and introduced the broken-windows theory of policing to the city.Caruso’s message to his fellow Angelenos has been clear and consistent: It’s time, he says, to “get real” about crime, homelessness and the ruin of a once-great city. His ads, which play on repeat, promise: “Rick Caruso can clean up L.A.” As of the latest polling, he is in a close race with a longtime progressive congresswoman, Karen Bass.Last December, I wrote about a growing number of minority politicians in major cities who have pushed some version of let’s “get real.” The mayors of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Charlotte all fit this description. Caruso is white, but his campaign has stressed his Italian immigrant background. He has also run ads in different languages.He is a somewhat counterintuitive, yet increasingly common case in identity politics: A Democratic candidate who understands that many Latino and Asian immigrant communities are largely made up of moderates who want more policing. Caruso, who has spent over $30 million of his own money on his campaign, seems to be saying: We are all Angelenos. And we have all had enough.Like nearly every politician in California’s major cities, Caruso’s success will hinge on homelessness. If he’s elected, he promises on his first day in office to declare a “state of emergency” over homelessness. This would allow him to bypass various regulations and governmental checks and, in his words, treat the homelessness crisis “like a natural disaster.”He plans to build 30,000 new shelter beds in 300 days, roughly doubling the current number. This would require expansions of current programs, including a commitment to quadruple the number of tiny homes in the city. (Regular readers of this newsletter will be familiar with these structures. If you’re new, please read about them here or here.) Caruso would also expand Project Roomkey, the program that converts motels and hotels into shelters.When a writer for The Los Angeles Times asked how he might be able to do all this, Caruso suggested Fort Bliss, a tent camp for undocumented migrant children in Texas, as a possible model. This would certainly be a confusing choice for Los Angeles, given that Fort Bliss is filled with large, airplane hangar-size tents that would be almost impossible to place anywhere in the city without a prolonged battle with neighbors. And last year, the Department of Health and Human Services opened an investigation into poor management and living conditions inside Fort Bliss, which, as of August 2021, could only accommodate about 4,000 teenagers, 26,000 less than the number of unhoused people Caruso would hope to shelter.The ideological divide in California’s homelessness crisis lies between those who believe that the problem is mostly fueled by drug addiction and mental health issues and those who believe that a housing shortage and escalating costs of living are to blame. Given that Caruso plans to create a “Department of Mental Health and Addiction Treatment” and “compel people suffering mental illness into care,” Caruso clearly has heard the former.But he also has planks in his platform that would make even the most housing-first progressive rejoice. He has called for an expansion of permanent supportive housing and rental protections and says he would petition the federal government to triple the number of Section 8 vouchers that help struggling families afford rent. He is, in short, promising the world to both sides.His plans for public safety are just as ambitious. The story of crime in Los Angeles isn’t all that much different from most major American cities. Last year, homicides in the city hit a 15-year high, but those who say violent crime has never been worse are most likely forgetting the 1990s.His plan to reduce crime is what you’d imagine from a politician who played up an endorsement from Bratton. He wants 1,500 more cops on the streets and enforced penalties for property crimes like breaking into cars. He also says he wants to apply pressure on the city attorney to prosecute misdemeanors more regularly.In a lengthy interview with the editorial board of The Los Angeles Times, Caruso said, “We have laws now that aren’t being enforced,” referring to low-level crimes that would be taken more seriously under a broken-windows regime. “And we’re paying a deep price for it. Now, consequences should be fair. We should have a whole bunch of things in place that allows people to rehabilitate themselves. You know, I don’t believe in criminalizing everything. But we certainly have to get a handle on the behavior in this city. People are scared and they don’t feel listened to.”In theory, there is a lot to admire about Caruso’s big solutions for big problems approach. It might make sense, for example, to shoot for 30,000 shelter beds and an increase of affordable housing, because even if you end somewhere significantly short of those goals, you’re still doing better than the status quo. But the problem with the clean-up-our-cities Democrat isn’t that the message is wrong — it has proved to be popular throughout the country — but, rather, that it lives in a fantasy world where ambitions ignore both the legislative and infrastructural realities on the ground.Caruso is hardly the first politician to make big promises, but his seem especially unrealistic. If he wants 1,500 more police officers on the streets, for example, he must first contend with the fact that the L.A.P.D. is currently short 325 officers with no real clear solutions on how to fill those existing spots. Police academies in the city are significantly under-enrolled.Similarly, his plans for the homeless require a fleet of civic and nonprofit workers that don’t exist yet. The current mobilization against homelessness across the state has seen dire staffing shortages, something I wrote about back in March. The shortfall reflects a very sobering reality: It’s hard to find a lot of people who want to deal with the emotional and physical labor of working with unhoused people. Caruso cannot just snap his fingers and find these workers, some of whom would need to be highly trained professionals to work in his “Department of Mental Health and Addiction Treatment.”And given how difficult it is to build shelter for even a few dozen people — you have to find sites, convince neighbors and go through a glut of bureaucracy — where would Caruso’s Fort Bliss-like tent cities go? Which neighborhoods would host these 30,000 new beds and which ones wouldn’t? (To be fair, nearly every candidate in the Los Angeles mayoral race has promised new housing, albeit on much more reasonable time tables. The early days of the race were like an auction in which the candidates tried to outbid each other with shelter beds.)I try to be a pragmatist about progressive politics. I do not think it does anyone any favors to pretend, for example, that Angelenos should look at spiking homicides and console themselves with the knowledge that things were worse before. I also get that the homelessness in Los Angeles and the Bay Area has gone well beyond a crisis point. Those who believe that hundreds of tent encampments throughout the state and escalating overdose deaths from fentanyl do not require a wide-scale intervention are deluding themselves.What Caruso seems to be banking on is that the public, when faced with rising violent crime and homelessness, will seek out desperate solutions, especially hard-line tactics of the past like broken-windows policing. He may very well be right. The public’s exhaustion with crime, homelessness and drug overdoses is real.Going forward, progressive politicians who don’t want a Rick Caruso in every city should take some lessons from some of the things he does well. It’s good to take concerns about crime and homelessness seriously. It’s also good to appeal to a communal city for all Angelenos. But progressives need to take those ideas and back them with their own solutions:compassion for the less fortunate, care for the mentally ill and a reasonable and humane deployment of police power. These also have the benefit of being more achievable.Serious, progressive solutions might be a tough sell these days, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Not all crises in America need to be solved by billionaires and their wild promises.Have feedback? Send a note to kang-newsletter@nytimes.com.Jay Caspian Kang (@jaycaspiankang), a writer for Opinion and The New York Times Magazine, is the author of “The Loneliest Americans.” More

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      Young Kim and Republicans Aim to Fend Off Rival to Her Right in California House Race

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      After Representative Young Kim, a Republican, flipped an Orange County House seat in 2020, she was hailed as one of the new faces of the Republican Party: a 58-year-old Korean American politician who was able to win a seat even as Joe Biden carried the district at the top of the ticket.After redistricting, the seat was drawn even more in her favor in 2022. Instead of having a Democratic tilt, analysts say, it now favors Republicans — and seemingly Kim.And yet an expensive rescue mission on Kim’s behalf has been not so quietly underway in recent weeks ahead of California’s June 7 primary, which was supposed to have been a cakewalk for the incumbent Republican.Why?Because those favorable redrawn district lines, with nearly 80 percent of voters in the district new to Kim, mean that lots of voters know little about her — and a Trump-style Republican is running to her right. The result has been about $1 million in Republican television ads during what was supposed to be a sleepy primary.Now, California has an unusual primary system. There aren’t separate ballots for the Republican and Democratic primaries. Instead, every candidate runs on a single ballot, with their titles and party affiliations detailed.All voters choose their candidate from the list. The two candidates who receive the most votes progress to the general election. And there’s no guarantee that both major parties will have a candidate in the general election.For many candidates — even incumbents like Kim — there is a real risk in getting lost in a list of names.Notably, she isn’t just promoting herself. She is also attacking her Republican opponent, Greg Raths, a retired combat fighter pilot for the Marines who drives for Uber and recently issued an apology for comments that had been criticized as antisemitic.Kim’s operation spliced Raths’ image together with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Biden in one television ad that her campaign has paid more than $570,000 to air — a huge sum for a single ad in a House primary.Even more notable: The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC that is aligned with Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, and is devoted to making him speaker, has also jumped in, with even more ads attacking Raths.Understand the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarAfter key races in Georgia, Pennsylvania and other states, here’s what we’ve learned.Trump’s Invincibility in Doubt: With many of Donald J. Trump’s endorsed candidates failing to win, some Republicans see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024.G.O.P. Governors Emboldened: Many Republican governors are in strong political shape. And some are openly opposing Mr. Trump.Voter Fraud Claims Fade: Republicans have been accepting their primary victories with little concern about the voter fraud they once falsely claimed caused Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss.The Politics of Guns: Republicans have been far more likely than Democrats to use messaging about guns to galvanize their base in the midterms. Here’s why.The total anti-Raths spending is now around $1 million, according to AdImpact, the ad-tracking service — a sign of the importance of the race, for which there has been scant public polling.“Following redistricting, Young Kim has a largely new district and it’s important voters know that she’s the only credible conservative in the race,” said Calvin Moore, a spokesman for the Congressional Leadership Fund. “It’s a must-win race for November, and we’re going to do all we can to make sure a standout leader like Kim prevails.”Orange County: A blue-red battlegroundAfter years as a Republican stronghold, Orange County had already been shifting to the left before Donald Trump accelerated the change. In 2016, Kim lost her Orange County seat in the State Assembly to a Democrat.In that campaign, she faced attacks comparing her to Trump, including an Auto-Tuned music video titled “Young Kim Is Like Donald Trump.” In 2018, she ran for Congress and fell short. That year, Democrats flipped all seven House seats in Orange County.After the 2018 blue wave, however, Republicans recovered some of that lost ground. Kim and Michelle Steel, two of the first three Korean American women in Congress, were the only Republicans to flip Orange County seats in 2020.“It says a lot about how the times have changed,” Kim, whose campaign declined to make her available for an interview, told The New York Times after she won her 2020 race. “Our Republican Party has been very aggressive in recruiting quality candidates who happen to be women.”Democrats have made defeating both Kim and Steel top priorities in 2022, despite a national environment that favors Republicans.Enter Greg Raths.Unlike Kim, he hasn’t been a successful federal candidate. A member of the Mission Viejo City Council who has also served as mayor, he has lost three congressional elections since 2014.Greg Raths, a retired fighter pilot, in front of a “Top Gun: Maverick” movie poster. A member of the Mission Viejo City Council who once served as mayor, he also drives for Uber.Greg Raths for CongressRaths has called himself the “only conservative in this race,” and he recently tweeted a photo of himself, wearing a leather jacket and aviator sunglasses, standing in front of Tom Cruise on a “Top Gun: Maverick” poster.This campaign, Raths said in an interview, feels different — or, at least, it did until the huge spending against him began a few weeks ago.Raths hasn’t had the resources to air ads in the expensive Los Angeles media market, but he said he had knocked on so many doors that he had probably lost 30 pounds. He also drives for Uber at night — in a Lexus hybrid because, he says, he is an “environmentalist” — and estimates that he has reached 2,000 voters alone by driving them around.“How many candidates do you know who make money while they’re campaigning?” he asked.On the stump, he reminds voters that Kim voted to censure Trump and to remove Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from congressional committees. Raths said he flew to an event at Mar-a-Lago in February to try to win over Trump’s support, but wasn’t successful.Not just any RepublicanThe potential concern for national Republicans is that if Kim doesn’t make it past the primary, the seat could be in danger.Raths isn’t concerned. He believes that any Republican who wins the primary will be strongly favored to win the general election over Asif Mahmood, the only Democrat on the ballot, and his $1.3 million war chest. When asked if he’d need to win over Biden voters in the general election, Raths pointed to his “worldly experience,” including working with the federal government as a colonel in the Marines, and his service on the Mission Viejo City Council, where he is a self-described “fiscal hawk.”But there is another factor at play with the involvement of the McCarthy-linked Congressional Leadership Fund.The super PAC wants more Republicans, of course. But it also wants more Republicans who will help the party — and McCarthy — govern effectively if the G.O.P. takes back the House. The goal is for Republicans to end up with a majority big enough to overpower some of the furthest-right members of the party, which will be crucial if McCarthy and a Republican-controlled House actually want to get anything done.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Republican Governors Lose Their Dread of Trump

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      There are two Republican parties.That’s a vast oversimplification, of course. Republican pollsters have been known to sort G.O.P. voters into seven categories or more, ranging from committed Christians to pro-business types to squishy never-Trumpers.But when it comes to choosing sides in primaries, a split is widening. There’s the national party, led by Donald Trump in Florida and Kevin McCarthy, the top Republican in the House, with Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, toggling between foe and ally as the occasion warrants.And then there’s the G.O.P. that is rooted in state power, run by a core group of pragmatic, often less hard-line governors who represent states as different as libertarian-leaning Arizona and deep-blue Massachusetts.This week, the Republican Governors Association happened to be gathering in Nashville for its annual meeting. The guest of honor: Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, fresh off his 50-percentage-point drubbing of David Perdue, a former senator and businessman who had been dragooned into a primary by Trump. Kemp spoke at a dinner in Nashville on Wednesday night, thanking his donors and fellow governors for their support.It was a celebratory moment for a tight-knit, fraternal group that was often in close contact during the crises of the coronavirus pandemic and the chaotic end of Trump’s presidency. Trump has leaned particularly hard on two of the most influential governors of the bunch, Kemp and Doug Ducey of Arizona, to support his fictional stolen-election narrative.Many G.O.P. governors emerged from the Trump years in strong political shape, despite intense criticism. All 10 of the most popular governors in the country are Republicans, according to polling by Morning Consult. And sitting Republican governors have kept their hands mostly clean of Jan. 6, a toxic subject among corporate donors in particular.To an extraordinary degree, these G.O.P. governors have joined forces to fight off Trump’s handpicked challengers as well as those currying his favor — raising millions and intervening in primaries to support their colleagues like never before.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.Selling Trump: Mr. Trump has continued to trade on his political fame in pursuit of profit, while entrepreneurial conservatives are cashing in on MAGA merchandise.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.“The president was on this campaign of vengeance,” said Bill Palatucci, a Republican National Committee member from New Jersey who is close to former Gov. Chris Christie, describing the thinking of those gathered in Nashville this week.“But for lots of former and current Republican governors, it’s about doing the right thing for colleagues who have acquitted themselves well,” Palatucci added. Christie, a previous R.G.A. chairman who now helps run one of the group’s main fund-raising arms, remains actively involved in the organization.Those running for office, like Kemp, have studiously avoided tangling with Trump. But others have been remarkably open about standing up to the man in Mar-a-Lago, unlike most of their colleagues in Washington.Pete Ricketts, the governor of Nebraska and current co-chairman of the governors group along with Ducey, sided against Trump’s pick in his state’s Republican primary, Charles Herbster, and flew to Georgia to help Kemp.Larry Hogan, the governor of Maryland and an R.G.A. board member, has spoken of fighting “Trump cancel culture” and called for a “course correction” away from Trump; Christie seems to be quoted criticizing the former president daily, including in a recent article in The Washington Post detailing the governors’ plans to stop what he called Trump’s “vendetta tour.”A money machineOpposing Trump is costly, though.Governor’s races don’t tend to attract the same big money that Senate races do. Why not? Because more donors across the country care more about the next majority leader than, say, who runs Nebraska.But the cash Republican governors have raised to support one another is significant.They spent $4 million in Ohio to help Gov. Mike DeWine, $5 million to help Kemp in Georgia, $2 million to support Gov. Kay Ivey in Alabama and put more than $80,000 behind Gov. Brad Little in Idaho, who was fending off a bizarre challenge from his own lieutenant governor.To complicate matters further, there are states where Trump and the R.G.A. are on the same side. In Texas, Trump and the governors supported Gov. Greg Abbott. In South Carolina, both sides are backing Gov. Henry McMaster. And Trump is also supporting Mike Dunleavy, the governor of Alaska.Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona has said he “reserves the right” to endorse a candidate in the Republican primary, but has not done so yet.Ross D. Franklin/Associated PressAn open race in ArizonaIt gets trickier when there is no incumbent governor.The most interesting test is coming up in Arizona, where Trump has endorsed Kari Lake, a charismatic former television presenter who is an avid proponent of his baseless election-fraud claims. Lake is leading in polls of the primary, ahead of the favorite of the local Republican establishment and the business community, Karrin Taylor Robson, and Matt Salmon, a former member of the U.S. House who was the Republican nominee for governor in 2002, losing by a whisker to Janet Napolitano.Ducey, who is term-limited, has said that he “reserves the right” to endorse a candidate in the primary, and Robson, a developer who founded her own land-use strategy firm, would be the logical choice. In 2017, he appointed her to the Arizona Board of Regents, which governs the state’s public universities. Robson was in Nashville this week, according to a local ABC affiliate in Phoenix.The primary begins earlier than the Aug. 2 date on the calendar suggests. Arizonans vote heavily by mail, and early ballots go out to voters in July. That means the next few weeks are critical, and an endorsement could happen soon.Will Ducey come off the sidelines? His confidants aren’t saying. If he did so, it would be in his personal capacity. But because he is co-chairman of the R.G.A., his imprimatur would send a signal to donors and other insiders that Robson is the one to back.It would also set off another confrontation with Trump, who has blamed Ducey for failing to overturn Arizona’s election results in 2020.Back in the fall, when Ducey was contemplating a run for Senate, Trump blasted him as “the weak RINO Governor from Arizona” and said he would “never have my endorsement or the support of MAGA Nation!”He said much the same about Kemp — and lost.What to readFive Republican candidates for Michigan governor were disqualified from the ballot because of petitions that officials said contained thousands of forged signatures — sending the party’s effort to challenge Gov. Gretchen Whitmer into chaos.Why won’t Republican lawmakers budge on their resistance to even modest gun safety measures? Carl Hulse explores the answer.California, on the other hand, already has tough gun laws, but Democratic leaders are looking to clamp down further after the Texas school shooting.— BlakeIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      3 Questions About Tuesday’s Big Elections

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      Will Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” candidates accept defeat? Can Democrats find reasons for hope? And for other Republicans, what’s the price of Trump’s cold shoulder?Tuesday’s primaries will give us fresh data on the electoral power of Donald Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election, while offering clues as to how energized Democrats are for November.In Alabama, Arkansas and Georgia, we’ll get more tests of Trump’s endorsement sway, with two Senate seats and three governor’s mansions up for grabs in November. As our colleague Azi Paybarah notes, Trump has taken some “noteworthy losses” thus far this year.In Texas, which is holding runoff elections today, we’ll learn if Democrats in Laredo want to re-elect their anti-abortion congressman for a 10th term, or if they are looking for progressive change in the Rio Grande Valley. And we’ll find out if the state’s scandal-ridden attorney general can defeat the scion of a fading political dynasty.Polls will close tonight in Georgia at 7 p.m. Eastern time, Alabama at 8 p.m., Arkansas at 8:30 p.m. and Texas between 8 and 9 p.m. There’s also a special U.S. House election in Minnesota to replace the late Representative Jim Hagedorn. You can find live results here and our live election night analysis here.Our colleague Maya King sent you her questions about today’s contests this afternoon. Here are a few more to ponder as the results start trickling in:Perdue has trailed badly behind Gov. Brian Kemp in polls.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesIf Trump’s ‘Stop the Steal’ candidates lose, will they accept defeat?In Pennsylvania, lawyers for the top two finishers in the Republican primary for Senate are still duking it out over whether certain ballots should be counted or not — a fight that the former president and two national party committees are already wading into. The candidates, Mehmet Oz and David McCormick, are separated by about 1,000 votes, and a recount appears almost certain.We don’t know if any of Georgia’s big contests will be that close. Although Gov. Brian Kemp is comfortably ahead of David Perdue in the Republican primary for governor, there has been scant polling on the secretary of state’s race. The Trump-backed candidate, Representative Jody Hice, faces Brad Raffensperger, the incumbent secretary who provoked Trump’s wrath in 2020 by refusing his demand that he “find 11,780 votes” and declare him the winner.Perdue, an avid proponent of Trump’s baseless election claims, told reporters this week that he would have to see if there was “fraud” before committing to accept Tuesday’s results. The Hice-Raffensperger grudge match could be tight enough for a runoff, and it’s anybody’s guess what Trump will say or do in that scenario.There’s also a controversy brewing in the attorney general’s race over John Gordon, a lawyer who is challenging Chris Carr, the Republican incumbent. Like Hice and Perdue, Gordon has insisted that Trump won Georgia in 2020, and called that year’s election a “coup d’état.”But Gordon faces questions about his eligibility for office, fueled by the Carr campaign, which has challenged whether Gordon has been an active member of the State Bar of Georgia for the required seven years. If Gordon wins the primary, expect litigation.Stacey Abrams is preparing for a rematch against Kemp, who narrowly beat her in 2018.Audra Melton for The New York TimesCan Democrats find hope in today’s outcomes?The mood on the left is grim, with reports that some Democrats are searching for a replacement for President Biden atop the ticket in 2024. Inflation is at a 40-year high, with the average price of gasoline creeping toward $5 a gallon. To the alarm of party leaders, youth turnout — typically a Democratic strength — has been low in recent elections.All that aside, Democratic donors are still pouring money into party committees and candidates at a fast clip — and the marquee campaigns in Georgia should be well financed, at least.Senator Raphael Warnock raised more than $13.5 million in the first three months of 2022, and has at least $23 million in the bank now. Those sums put him well ahead of Herschel Walker, the likely Republican nominee.Donors gave Stacey Abrams, who is running for governor for the second time, about $11.7 million in the first quarter. Abrams ran unopposed in the primary, but her campaign has been spending most of that money as it comes in; she entered January with $7.2 million in cash on hand and exited March with just $8 million.She’ll need far more than that if she is to knock off Kemp in November, assuming he defeats Perdue. More than $100 million was spent on the 2018 governor’s race, which Kemp won narrowly. Democratic super PACs have already spent at least $2 million to attack Kemp this campaign, and the Georgia arm of the Democratic Governors Association has donated $1 million to One Georgia, a leadership PAC set up to help Abrams’s campaign.“Stacey will absolutely have the resources to compete” in the fall, Representative Nikema Williams, the chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Georgia, said in an interview. “But it takes money to organize voters. This isn’t about waiting until after Labor Day.”For now, Abrams is getting some rhetorical help from the former president, who has said it would be “OK with me” if she ousted Kemp. Trump has attacked the governor relentlessly, including in a statement on Tuesday that called Kemp “very weak.” The former president added: “Most importantly, he can’t win because the MAGA base — which is enormous — will never vote for him.”Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Georgia, a New Battleground State, Is Once Again the Center of Attention

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      It’s the crucible of American politics.Georgia’s got everything: disputed elections, rapid demographic change, celebrity Democrats, a restrictive new voting law, an open criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s meddling in the 2020 election, a deep rural-urban divide and unending drama between the Trump wing of the Republican Party and the local G.O.P. establishment.It’s a longtime Republican stronghold that has become a battleground state. Trump won Georgia by more than 200,000 votes in 2016, then lost it by fewer than 12,000 votes four years later. Georgia was where President Biden made his doomed final push to pass voting rights legislation in the Senate. It was where Democrats picked up two crucial Senate seats on Jan. 5, 2021, giving them the barest control of both chambers of Congress.But those gains are fragile, and Republicans are confident they can win the governor’s race and regain one of the Senate seats. It’s largely for the usual reasons: high prices for the two Gs — gas and groceries — as well as Biden’s low job approval ratings. Either way, millions of campaign dollars will flow into Georgia between now and November.Before all that, though, we’ll have to get through Tuesday’s primaries. Here is what else is going on:Trump vs. PenceOn Monday, Trump and Mike Pence, his former vice president, held dueling events for their respective candidates in the Republican primary for governor: David Perdue, a former senator and Dollar General executive who entered the race at Trump’s insistence, and Brian Kemp, the incumbent.Pence attended a rally for Kemp at the Cobb County airport in suburban Atlanta, while Trump appeared remotely for Perdue, who took a racist swipe at Stacey Abrams, the presumptive Democratic nominee, during a news conference at a wings-and-beer restaurant north of the city. As Jonathan Martin writes, Pence and Trump are circling each other warily in advance of a possible clash in the presidential primary in 2024, so their standoff in Georgia has national implications.It’s not looking good for Trump’s leading candidate in the state, for the reasons our colleagues Reid Epstein and Shane Goldmacher reported this weekend. Polls show Kemp ahead by an average of 25 percentage points, leading Perdue to try to reset expectations last week. “We may not win Tuesday,” he said, “but I guaran-damn-tee you we are not down 30 points.”Along with Representative Jody Hice, who is hoping to unseat Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Perdue is running a campaign that is almost single-mindedly focused on Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.Understand the Georgia Primary ElectionThe May 24 primary will feature several Trump-backed candidates in closely watched races.A New Battleground: Republicans have fought bitter primaries in Georgia. But just two years after Democrats flipped the state, it’s trending back to the G.O.P.G.O.P. Governor’s Race: David Perdue’s impending loss to Brian Kemp looms as the biggest electoral setback for Donald Trump since his own 2020 defeat.Trump vs. Pence: With the ex-president backing Mr. Perdue and his former vice president supporting Mr. Kemp, the G.O.P. governor’s race has national implications for 2024.Fighting Headwinds: Democrats in Georgia — and beyond  — are worried that even the strongest candidates can’t outrun President Biden’s low approval ratings.Perdue and Hice are speaking to a “small and shrinking crowd in Georgia,” said Chris Clark, the president and chief executive of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, which is backing Kemp and Raffensperger.“Nobody asks about it at events,” Clark added, referring to the 2020 election. “They’re asking about jobs and inflation.”Alexis Hill, a canvasser with the New Georgia Project, went door to door in Fairburn, Ga., to encourage people to register to vote.Alyssa Pointer/ReutersDemocrats look ahead to a difficult autumnThe Rev. Raphael Warnock, the preacher turned senator, and Stacey Abrams, the former state lawmaker and voting rights champion, ran unopposed in their primaries for Senate and governor this year. That doesn’t mean they’ll have an easy time of it in the fall, with a base that leading Democrats are describing openly as “quite demoralized.”Abrams is one of those Democrats, like Beto O’Rourke in Texas or Amy McGrath in Kentucky, whose national stardom and appeal among activists sometimes outstrip their local support. Polls show her behind Kemp by about five points in head-to-head matchups.“When you lift someone up that high, people love to see you fall,” said Martha Zoller, a former aide to Perdue who now hosts a talk radio show in Gainesville, Ga.Abrams’s campaign released a memo on Sunday outlining what it described as her strengths heading into November. It makes three basic points:Democratic turnout is holding up. The Abrams team says that “Democrats are on track to break records” in Tuesday’s primary, a fact that has Republicans arguing that Georgia’s new voting law has not suppressed voting.As Nick Corasaniti and Maya King reported on Monday morning, however, “It is too soon to draw any sweeping conclusions, because the true impact of the voting law cannot be drawn from topline early voting data alone.” We’ll know more after tomorrow.So-called crossover voters will go for Democrats in November. Abrams aides say they have identified “nearly 35,000 voters who we expect to vote for the Democratic ticket in November but who cast Republican ballots for the primary,” a group they are calling “crossover voters.” Of the 855,000 Georgia voters who had cast their ballots as of Friday, when early voting closed, the Abrams campaign estimates that more than half — 52.9 percent — were Republicans, while only 46.5 percent were Democrats. (Georgia does not register voters by political party.)The Abrams team spins this as “a remarkably close margin,” given all the attention the news media has paid to Georgia’s big G.O.P. primaries, which are more competitive than the major Democratic ones. But it also could be an ominous sign for Democrats that Republican voters are more energized heading into the fall.Georgia is growing more diverse, and that will help Democrats. The speed of voter registration has slowed in Georgia, which was once a model for the ability of grass-roots organizing to overcome entrenched obstacles to voting. That slowdown could hurt Democrats in the fall, although the Abrams campaign says it has identified about 42,000 Georgians who have already voted in this year’s primary but did not vote in the 2018 general election. Her team also says it has found more than 100,000 Black voters who skipped the 2018 primary but have already voted this year, as well as 40,000 additional white voters and an unspecified number of new Asian American and Latino voters. Abrams lost her first race for governor against Kemp by just under 55,000 votes, so those new voters could be significant.It’s not a safe assumption that voters of color will choose Democrats at the same rates they have in the past, however. Biden has lost support among Black and Latino Americans since taking office. As of April, the president’s approval rating was just 67 percent among Black adults, down 20 percentage points since the start of his term. Not only is turnout a question mark, but it’s also by no means clear that Democrats will be able to hang on to all of those voters if inflation continues to bite into their pocketbooks in November.What to readPresident Biden pledged to defend Taiwan against attack, moving a step beyond longstanding U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity.” Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Peter Baker report from Tokyo and Seoul.Representative Mo Brooks, a hard-right Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama, seems to be making an unlikely comeback after his low poll numbers prompted Donald Trump to take back his endorsement, Trip Gabriel reports.In Texas, the closely watched House race between Representative Henry Cuellar and his progressive challenger, Jessica Cisneros, encapsulates the tensions within the Democratic Party on immigration, Jazmine Ulloa and Jennifer Medina report.how they run George P. Bush talking to members of Texas Strong Republican Women before an event for the attorney general’s race.Shelby Tauber for The New York TimesPaxton’s legal troubles haven’t amounted to political onesKen Paxton, the Texas attorney general, has faced his share of legal concerns in recent years, something that George P. Bush, his rival in the primary this year and the state’s land commissioner, has seized upon as he seeks to oust him from office.But, if history is any indicator, Bush has his work cut out for him.In March, Paxton topped the primary field with 43 percent of the votes, short of the 50 percent required to win the nomination outright. Bush placed second with 23 percent, and their runoff election is on Tuesday.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      A Pennsylvania Election Storm Brews Again, This Time in a G.O.P. Primary

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      The Republican primary for Senate in Pennsylvania is about to get even wilder.The campaigns for David McCormick and Dr. Mehmet Oz, that election’s top two finishers, are obsessively monitoring the steady drip of numbers coming from the secretary of state’s office as well as from key counties.As of early Thursday evening, McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, and Oz, a celebrity surgeon who was endorsed by Donald Trump, were separated by a little over 1,000 votes, although the statewide results often lag the results in individual counties. Election officials have not yet declared a winner, and are not likely to do so anytime soon. Both campaigns are preparing for the possibility of a bruising recount.So, apparently, is Trump, who urged Oz to “declare victory” on Wednesday in a post on his Truth Social website.“It makes it much harder for them to cheat with the ballots that they just happened to find,” Trump added, though no evidence has emerged of any wrongdoing by the McCormick campaign or its allies.On a background call with reporters on Thursday, a senior official with the McCormick campaign argued that the combination of outstanding votes in several counties, plus military ballots that are yet to be counted, would put McCormick ahead. The official said the campaign believed there were more than 15,000 absentee ballots still uncounted, adding that the McCormick operation had invested heavily in its absentee voting program.“Facts show that the counting of valid absentee ballots is very likely to put @DaveMcCormickPA on top,” tweeted Mike Pompeo, a former secretary of state under Trump who is a top surrogate for McCormick. Both men are alumni of West Point, where McCormick was captain of the wrestling team before going on to serve in Iraq as a member of the 82nd Airborne Division.The Oz campaign likewise is projecting victory, citing the fact that Oz led McCormick in the official statewide count as of Thursday afternoon. But the gap has narrowed since Tuesday.The office of the Pennsylvania secretary of the commonwealth estimated that there were about 8,700 Republican absentee and mail ballots to be counted as of Thursday evening, a spokeswoman said in an email. Counties are required to report their unofficial results by 5 p.m. on May 24.McCormick leads by nine percentage points among mail absentee ballots cast so far, according to an analysis by Nate Cohn of The New York Times. If he leads among the uncounted mail ballots by a similar amount — and that’s not assured, Cohn says, as late-arriving mail ballots can differ from early mail ballots — then McCormick could squeak ahead of Oz as early as Friday.Pennsylvania law mandates a recount if the results of an election are within half a percentage point, and many close observers expect that might still be the case by next Thursday, the deadline for election officials to order a statewide re-examination of votes.“It seems almost certain to me that the vote will be within 0.5 percent,” said Bruce Marks, a lawyer who in 2020 filed an amicus brief on Trump’s behalf disputing the election results in Pennsylvania.The Republican Senate candidate David McCormick in Pittsburgh on Tuesday as votes were being counted.Jeff Swensen/Getty ImagesBracing for legal challengesThe McCormick campaign, meanwhile, recently hired a G.O.P. operative known for his expertise in the dark arts of challenging election results.According to federal election records, the McCormick campaign paid the operative’s firm, Michael Roman and Associates, $7,000 on April 21 for “consulting services.”Roman was the director of Election Day operations for Trump’s re-election campaign in 2020, and he later played an instrumental role in advancing claims of voter fraud in Pennsylvania that courts repeatedly ruled were unfounded.In February, Roman was issued a subpoena by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The committee said it had obtained communications that showed his “involvement in a coordinated strategy to contact Republican members of state legislatures in certain states that former President Trump had lost and urge them to ‘reclaim’ their authority by sending an alternate slate of electors.”Roman worked closely with Rudolph Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, who promoted baseless conspiracy theories and pushed without success to overturn President Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania.Roman’s hiring suggests that McCormick’s campaign was gearing up for a potentially protracted fight even before Tuesday, the day of the primary. It also means that an operative who helped lead Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election results will now be pitted against a candidate endorsed by the former president.Marks said he had not been hired by either campaign, though he is close to Roman. In 1993, Roman helped Marks overturn a Pennsylvania State Senate election after arguing that the results had been tainted by voter fraud.The full scope of Roman’s duties was not immediately clear as of midday on Thursday, although two people familiar with his hiring said he had been brought on at least in part to help with the possibility of a disputed result. Roman did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.Asked about Roman’s responsibilities, Jess Szymanski, the press secretary for the McCormick campaign, said only, “We’ve got a lot of lawyers across the state.”What to readThe 2020 census undercounted the population of six states and overcounted in eight, but that won’t change the number of House seats allotted to each state during reapportionment, Michael Wines reports.The Oklahoma Legislature passed a bill that would be the country’s strictest abortion law, defining life as beginning at fertilization.Herschel Walker, the likely Republican nominee for a Georgia Senate seat, said that a ban on abortion should not include exceptions, Jonathan Weisman reports.Administration officials struggled to explain how President Biden’s authorization of the use of the Defense Production Act will alleviate a shortage of baby formula, reports Michael Shear.HOW THEY RUNRepresentative Mo Brooks with supporters in Huntsville, Ala.Elijah Nouvelage/ReutersUnder the radar, Mo Brooks reboundsRepresentative Mo Brooks’s Senate campaign seemed dead in the water after Donald Trump withdrew his endorsement. But nearly two months after Trump’s change of heart and one week before the Alabama primary, Brooks shouldn’t be counted out.In Alabama, a primary candidate must receive at least 50 percent of the vote to win the nomination. That’s unlikely to happen in this relatively crowded Republican Senate race, where the leading candidates are polling in the low 30s. The goal is to place in the top two before a runoff, which now seems within reach for Brooks.Different pollsters show Brooks battling with Michael Durant for the second spot, with Katie Britt consistently in the lead. But recently, these polls also indicate that Brooks has improved his standing.Shortly before Trump rescinded his endorsement in March, a Republican poll from The Alabama Daily News and Gray Television found Brooks lagging far behind in third place, with 16 percent. But a follow-up poll conducted in May found Brooks in second place with 28.5 percent. Separately, a poll from Emerson College and The Hill found Brooks improving his status from 12 percent in March to 25 percent in May.“Mo Brooks has just kept making his case to Alabama that he’s the most conservative guy in the race and voters seem to have responded,” Stan McDonald, the chairman of Brooks’s campaign, said in a statement.But part of Brooks’s recent success might be a result of something else. As his top two rivals spar, he has been on the receiving end of fewer television attack ads. Since April 26, candidates and outside groups have spent nearly $540,000 against Britt and $830,000 against Durant on broadcast television, according to AdImpact, compared with only $75,000 against Brooks.And while Brooks might be improving, Britt has held a lead in every recent public poll.“It’s clear from our strong momentum that Alabamians know that I am the best candidate to defend our Christian conservative values, fight for the America First agenda, and preserve the country that we know and love for our children and our children’s children,” Britt said in a statement.— Blake & LeahIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Republican Panic Grows After Mastriano Wins

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      The aftershocks of Tuesday’s big primaries are still rumbling across Pennsylvania, but one impact is already clear: Republican voters’ choice of Doug Mastriano in the governor’s race is giving the G.O.P. fits.Conversations with Republican strategists, donors and lobbyists in and outside of Pennsylvania in recent days reveal a party seething with anxiety, dissension and score-settling over Mastriano’s nomination.In the run-up to Tuesday night, Republicans openly used words and phrases like “suicide mission,” “disaster” and “voyage of the Titanic” to convey just what a catastrophe they believed his candidacy will be for their party.An adviser to several Republican governors, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said there was wide displeasure with the outcome, calling him unelectable. The Mastriano campaign did not respond to a request for comment.Some in Pennsylvania blame Jeff Yass, a billionaire options trader and the state’s most powerful donor, for sticking with Bill McSwain for governor despite Donald Trump’s blistering anti-endorsement; others point the finger at Lawrence Tabas, the state party chairman, for failing to clear the field; still others say that Trump should have stayed out of the race altogether instead of endorsing Mastriano. Tabas did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.An 11th-hour effort to stop Mastriano failed when both McSwain and Dave White, a self-funding candidate who spent at least $5 million of his own money, refused to drop out and support former Representative Lou Barletta, whose supporters insisted he was the more viable option.Many Republicans thought that idea was futile and far too late; several said a serious effort to prevent Mastriano from winning should have begun last summer, while others said that Yass and his allies could have dropped McSwain sooner.“Had they kept their powder dry, they could have seen the lay of the land, when Mastriano’s lead was 8-10, and backed Barletta,” said Sam Katz, a former Republican candidate for governor who now backs Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee.“Had they spent $5 million in three weeks, they might have forced Trump to make a different choice and changed everything,” Katz added.Mastriano had amassed nearly 45 percent of the vote as of Wednesday afternoon.Matthew Brouillette, head of Commonwealth Partners, which bankrolled McSwain’s campaign, noted that his organization also backed Carrie DelRosso, who won the lieutenant governor’s race. He said the criticism was coming largely from “consultants and rent-seekers who don’t like us as we disrupt their gravy trains.”After the Pennsylvania and North Carolina PrimariesMay 17 was the biggest day so far in the 2022 midterm cycle. Here’s what we’ve learned.Trump’s Limits: The MAGA movement is dominating Republican primaries, but Donald J. Trump’s control over it may be slipping.‘Stop the Steal’ Endures: G.O.P. candidates who aggressively cast doubt on the 2020 election have fared best, while Democratic voters are pushing for change. Here are more takeaways.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.Ties to Jan. 6 and QAnonMastriano’s vulnerabilities are legion, G.O.P. operatives lament.The state senator and retired U.S. Army colonel has taken a hard line on abortion, which he has said should be illegal under all circumstances. He organized buses to Washington for the Jan. 6, 2021, rally in Washington and can be seen on video crossing police lines at the Capitol as the rally became a riot. He has also been a leading advocate of the baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.Mastriano’s name has appeared in documents released by the committee investigating the Capitol riot, and he claims to have been in close personal contact with Trump about their shared drive to overturn President Biden’s victory. In February, the committee demanded “documents and information that are relevant to the select committee’s investigation” in a letter to Mastriano. He has refused to say whom he would appoint as secretary of state, a critical position overseeing election infrastructure and voting.Mastriano has appeared at events linked to QAnon, the amorphous conspiracy theory that alleges there is a secret cabal of elite pedophiles running the federal government and other major U.S. institutions. He also has made statements that veer into Islamophobia.He is likely to be an especially weak candidate in the crowded suburbs around Philadelphia, the state’s most important political battleground. On the other side of the state, the editorial page of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has already all but officially endorsed Shapiro as “the only statewide candidate who did everything the Pennsylvania way.”Operatives in both parties expect Shapiro to blitz Mastriano with advertising portraying him as a dangerous extremist while Mastriano’s shoestring organization struggles to raise money.Even before Mastriano clinched the nomination, Shapiro’s campaign aired an ad highlighting his views on abortion and the 2020 election as well as his ties to Trump, who lost the state to Biden by 80,000 votes.Mastriano gave scant indication during Tuesday’s victory speech that he was ready to shift toward a more palatable general election message. Listing his early priorities as governor, he said, “mandates are gone,” “any jab for job requirements are gone,” critical race theory is “over,” “only biological females can play on biological female teams” and “you can only use the bathroom that your biological anatomy says.”The Mastriano matchup also plays to Shapiro’s carefully cultivated image as a fighter for democracy, though his campaign plans to focus primarily on bread-and-butter economic issues such as jobs, taxes and inflation.As attorney general, Shapiro was directly involved in the Pennsylvania government’s litigation after the 2020 election, and oversaw at least 40 cases of alleged voter fraud — winning every single one.Josh Shapiro campaigning in Meadville, Pa.Jeff Swensen for The New York TimesWait-and-see modeWill national Republicans help Mastriano or shun him? Right now, the major players in governor’s races appear to be waiting to see how the race develops before making that determination.Some Republicans believe the national “tailwinds” blowing in their favor might help Mastriano win despite all of his weaknesses, but for now, Democrats are thrilled to be facing him in November. They note that Shapiro performed better than Biden did in Pennsylvania during his re-election race as state attorney general, and expect Shapiro to be flooded with donations from in and outside the state.On Tuesday night, the Republican Governors Association issued a lukewarm statement acknowledging Mastriano’s victory, but suggesting he was on his own for now.“Republican voters in Pennsylvania have chosen Doug Mastriano as their nominee for governor,” Executive Director Dave Rexrode said. “The R.G.A. remains committed to engaging in competitive gubernatorial contests where our support can have an impact.”The statement left room for the possibility that the G.O.P. governors might help Mastriano should the Pennsylvania race be close in the fall.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Three Questions About Today’s Consequential Primaries

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      How will progressive Democrats fare against moderate rivals? What signals will North Carolina Republicans send? And in Pennsylvania, will Kathy Barnette concede a loss?PHILADELPHIA — Tonight’s big races in Pennsylvania and North Carolina are sending tremors across the Republican Party, as its MAGA wing vies for dominance with other flavors of Trumpism.Democrats have held quieter primaries, but their party’s center-left establishment has battled progressive uprisings in places like the Raleigh-Durham region and Pittsburgh.New York Times reporters have fanned out across the states, and polls close in Pennsylvania at 8 p.m. Eastern and in North Carolina at 7:30 p.m. Eastern. Follow our live coverage of developments here, and view the results as they come in here. For now, we’ve got some questions about the wider implications of today’s races:Will Kathy Barnette claim the election was stolen if she loses?Barnette, a conservative commentator, has rocketed toward the top of polls in the Republican primary for Senate in Pennsylvania.She rose to prominence for embracing conspiracy theories about the 2020 election — including ones about her own failed race that year for a House seat in the Philadelphia suburbs, which she lost by nearly 20 percentage points to Representative Madeleine Dean, the Democratic incumbent. Barnette refused to concede, despite no evidence of problems with the election.The campaigns for Barnette’s top rivals, Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dave McCormick, projected confidence in conversations with senior campaign aides and surrogates today, but both are bracing for the possibility that Barnette will make similar claims if tonight’s results are especially close or uncertain.“We’re focused on running our race and we’re confident that Kathy will have a good night,” said Ryan Rhodes, a spokesman for the Barnette campaign.The McCormick campaign, which has the largest legal and communications infrastructure of all its rivals, has deployed 500 poll monitors to watch for any irregularities.Barnette’s late surge has frazzled and dismayed Republicans in Pennsylvania and beyond. They fear that her biography has not been subject to serious scrutiny, and many G.O.P. operatives in Washington would prefer Oz or McCormick, who are widely deemed better candidates for the general election.Republican strategists are weighing how to respond if the results tonight are close. Some counties are not expected to begin counting mail-in ballots until tomorrow.“If Kathy alleges fraud, I hope it will be for good reason,” said Josh Novotney, a Philadelphia-based lobbyist for SBL Strategies. “If not, it will hurt our party.”“A candidate crying election fraud against a Trump-backed candidate will probably have to be put in Webster’s as the new definition of irony,” he added.How does the progressive movement fare? Not every Democratic primary today falls neatly into the bucket of progressives versus the establishment. But there are few exceptions.One House primary in Oregon stands out because it’s not for an open seat. The incumbent, Representative Kurt Schrader, a leading moderate, has support from House Democrats’ campaign arm and an endorsement from President Biden.In Congress, progressive leaders haven’t flocked to support his challenger, Jamie McLeod-Skinner. But she has received the backing of one prominent Democrat — Senator Elizabeth Warren — as well as support from smaller left-leaning groups and several county Democratic Party organizations in Oregon that would normally be expected to back the incumbent or remain neutral.The clearest example of a left-versus-center showdown might be in Pittsburgh, where Representative Mike Doyle, a Democrat, is retiring. The top contenders to replace him are Summer Lee, a state legislator backed by progressives including Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders, and Steve Irwin, a Democrat supported by Doyle.Summer Lee, a progressive House candidate in Pennsylvania, with Mayor Ed Gainey of Pittsburgh today.Jeff Swensen/Getty Images“It’ll be a real bellwether for where the progressive movement is today,” said Aren Platt, a Democratic strategist in Pennsylvania.The United Democracy Project, a super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, aired an ad that questioned Lee’s loyalty to Biden and the Democratic Party. The progressive group Justice Democrats has also been on air questioning whether Irwin is a “real Democrat” by trying to tie him to Republicans.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More