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      What We’re Watching For in the Nebraska and West Virginia Primaries

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      Republican voters in the two states will choose nominees for governor and the House in races that pit Trump-backed candidates against rivals supported by each state’s governor.Two states are holding primary elections on Tuesday. In one, Joe Biden couldn’t crack 40 percent of the vote in 2020; in the other, he couldn’t even get to 30 percent.You guessed it: Most of the action is on the Republican side.In West Virginia, two Republican incumbents are battling for a newly drawn congressional district. In Nebraska, the Republican primary for governor has become a dead heat among three candidates.Across the aisle in Nebraska, Democrats are preparing to take another crack at an Omaha-based House seat — one with particular national relevance, considering it’s the one congressional district in the state that gave Joe Biden an Electoral College vote in 2020.Here’s what we’re watching.Trump’s endorsement battles with sitting G.O.P. governors Because Nebraska and West Virginia are so deeply Republican, the winners of Tuesday’s Republican primaries will be heavily favored to win in the November general election. The results will probably decide whether acolytes of Donald Trump will be elected to Congress and state executive offices.“That’s why all the attention is on the primary,” said Sam Fischer, a Republican strategist in Nebraska.Trump notched a victory in Ohio last week when J.D. Vance surged to the top of a crowded Republican primary after being endorsed by the former president. On Tuesday, the power of a Trump endorsement will be put to the test again.But in Nebraska and West Virginia, two of the candidates who lack support from Trump have a different asset: an endorsement from the state’s current governor.Unlike in Ohio, where Gov. Mike DeWine declined to endorse a Senate candidate as he faced a primary challenge of his own, the Republican governors of Nebraska and West Virginia appear to have had few qualms about endorsing candidates overlooked by Trump. In fact, both leaders — Gov. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska and Gov. Jim Justice of West Virginia — have publicly criticized Trump’s endorsement decisions in their respective states.In Nebraska, Trump backed Charles Herbster, a wealthy owner of an agriculture company. Ricketts, the departing governor, is term-limited, and has not only thrown his support behind a different candidate — Jim Pillen, a University of Nebraska regent — but also publicly disparaged Herbster.In West Virginia, Governor Justice threw his support to Representative David McKinley in the state’s House race after Trump had endorsed Representative Alex Mooney. Justice recently said he thought Trump had made a mistake.Which is more important in G.O.P. races: The messenger or the message?In both West Virginia and Nebraska, the candidates endorsed by the governor have accused Trump’s picks of being outsiders.McKinley calls his Trump-backed opponent “Maryland Mooney,” drawing attention to the congressman’s past in the Maryland Legislature and in the Maryland Republican Party. Keeping with the “M” theme, Pillen has criticized his rival as “Missouri Millionaire Charles Herbster,” citing reports that Herbster has a residence in Missouri.But if the messenger is more important than the message, the candidates endorsed by Trump have the edge.Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist who has worked with Mitch McConnell and George W. Bush, said that with high Republican enthusiasm this year, he expected strong turnout, meaning that some voters who would normally turn out only during a presidential race — that is, when Trump is on the ticket — are likely to vote in the midterms.Those voters are some of Trump’s most loyal followers — and some of the most wary of any other politician, Jennings said.“These are the new Trump Republicans who came into the party with him, and these are the people least likely to care what an establishment or incumbent politician would say,” he said.Two Republican candidates for governor in Nebraska, Brett Lindstrom, left, and Jim Pillen, at an election forum in Lincoln.Justin Wan/Lincoln Journal Star, via Associated PressIn Nebraska, the feud between Herbster and Pillen might have an unintended consequence. While they compete to be the Trumpiest and most authentically local candidates, voters could tire of the political sniping and throw their support behind Brett Lindstrom, a state senator who is the third main contender.“The main question is, are Nebraska primary voters going to ignore the negative attacks by Herbster and Pillen?” said Fischer, the Republican strategist in the state. “And will Lindstrom benefit from that?”There would be precedent. In a Republican primary for Senate in Nebraska in 2012, Deb Fischer won a narrow race after a bitter battle between two other candidates. And in another G.O.P. Senate primary in Indiana in 2018, two of the state’s congressmen engaged in a prolonged feud stemming from college decades earlier. Exhausted voters went with the little-known Mike Braun, now the state’s junior senator.How much do sexual misconduct allegations matter in Republican primaries? While Herbster has the most prized asset in the primary — Trump’s endorsement — he also faces the most serious questions about his personal history. Two women, including a Republican state senator, have publicly accused him of groping them at a political event in 2019.Herbster has taken an approach long embraced by Trump, denying the allegations and calling them a political hit job by his detractors.How voters respond to the allegations could signal — at least in Nebraska — where the G.O.P. base stands in tolerating candidates accused of mistreating women.“If you can win with these allegations in Nebraska, you can probably win anywhere,” said Mike DuHaime, a Republican strategist. But if Herbster loses, DuHaime said, Trump can point to the allegations against him as the culprit, rather than the waning power of his endorsement.Later this year in Georgia, another Trump-endorsed candidate who has faced allegations of domestic violence, Herschel Walker, is running for Senate, though he does not face a competitive primary.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Roe’s Fall Would Alter Political Battle Lines. But in What Way?

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      Democrats who were privately hoping for a surprise development to shake up the midterms have gotten their wish. Nobody expected it to come in the form of a leaked draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, however.It’s a political bombshell. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to discern where the shrapnel lands.Democrats we spoke with on Tuesday were furious about Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion, which was presented in the document as the view of the court’s conservative majority. Universally, these Democrats viewed it as an assault on the fundamental rights of women to control their own bodies.But in coldly rational political terms, they expect the news to energize their base and motivate key swing groups, such as suburban college-educated women. They also pointed to polling showing that banning abortion, as a number of states have indicated they would do if Roe were overturned, would be unpopular with the broader public.“The more you see Republicans cheering the decision, the more you’re going to have voters saying, ‘Wait a second, this is not what I thought they were going to do,’” said Margie Omero, a Democratic pollster.“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito wrote in the draft, which a representative for the court emphasized in a statement was not necessarily a final opinion. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”Understand the Challenge to Roe v. WadeThe Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization could be the most consequential to women’s access to abortion since 1973.The Arguments: After hearing arguments in December, the court appeared poised to uphold the Mississippi law at the center of the case that could overturn Roe v. Wade.Under Scrutiny: In overturning Roe v. Wade, would the justices be following their oath to uphold the Constitution or be engaging in political activism? Here is what legal scholars think.An America Without Roe: The changes created by the end of abortion rights at the federal level would mostly be felt by poor women in Republican states.An Extraordinary Breach: The leak of the draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade suggests an internal disarray at odds with the decorum prized by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.Familiar Arguments: The draft opinion, by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., draws on two decades-old conservative critiques of the Roe v. Wade decision.Legislative Activity: Some Republican-led state legislatures have already moved to advance abortion restrictions ahead of the court’s decision. Here is a look at those efforts.Omero pointed to an April 26 polling memo by Navigator, a Democratic messaging group she is involved with, arguing that a Supreme Court ruling along these lines “would motivate Democrats and pro-choice Americans significantly more to turn out in 2022 than Republicans and those who are pro-life.”Now that Roe’s elimination is no longer hypothetical, Omero said, she expects voters will begin paying more attention to the issue. “We’re going to have a decision that is going to lay bare the differences between the parties,” she said.What Republicans are sayingSo far, top Republicans would rather talk about the leak itself than the potential decision’s political implications.Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, called the disclosure “an attack on the independence of the Supreme Court.” It was “a judicial insurrection,” said Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. “An act of institutional sabotage,” said Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska.“They’re always unsure how to talk about abortion,” said Rachel Bovard, a senior director of policy at the Conservative Partnership Institute, a right-leaning think tank. Bovard said she had spent the past day discussing the implications of the leak with nervous Republican lawmakers and aides.Privately, Republicans are still trying to gauge how the issue will affect the midterms. On Tuesday, the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent a memo urging candidates to “be the compassionate consensus-builder” on abortion, while also highlighting what Republicans say are extreme views among Democrats.Indicating some concern about how Democrats and activists on the left might try to portray Alito’s draft opinion, the memo also recommended that G.O.P. candidates “forcefully refute” statements by Democrats that Republicans want to ban contraception and “throw doctors and women in jail.”Several G.O.P. operatives said that the issue could ultimately play to Republicans’ advantage if the debate becomes about whether to enact restrictions on the timing of abortions rather than about whether there ought to be a federal right in the first place.“Running on overturning Roe is not a winning issue” in a general election, said Garrett Ventry, a Republican political consultant. “Late-term abortion is.”Other Republicans expressed skepticism that abortion, rather than inflation or crime, would move many voters in November.“The battle lines on this issue have been drawn for a long time,” said Sean Spicer, a former press secretary for the Trump White House and Republican National Committee strategist.But the decision is likely to affect how candidates, donors and activists approach the political fights ahead of them, funneling millions of dollars into Senate and state-level races that could determine the shape of the post-Roe world.“If you’re running for Senate, you are tied to the national ideological debate,” said Kristin Davison, a Republican consultant involved in midterm races across the country. Running for governor is more complicated, she added, because “now you have to do something about it.”For social conservatives who have waited decades to overturn Roe, the fight is just beginning.“There’s no doubt the battle goes to the state level,” said Bob Vander Plaats, a Christian conservative leader in Iowa, who added that the next focus for the anti-abortion movement would be pushing across the country for laws on fetal cardiac activity. “It’s not a political issue. It’s a right or wrong issue.”What to readWhat would the end of Roe v. Wade look like? Here is our map showing where various states stand on abortion, and here are key questions and answers.The leak of the draft decision on Roe was an extraordinary breach and left the Supreme Court seriously shaken. Our reporter Adam Liptak explores the possible motives, methods and whether defections are still possible.Outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday, scores of supporters and opponents of abortion rights gathered with megaphones and signs. Here’s what they had to say.— 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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      How Ohio’s Map Will Test J.D. Vance’s Political Allure

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      Behind the wild language, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author’s bid for a Senate seat follows a traditional Republican playbook.Theodore Roosevelt, a renowned political animal and polymath, once said, “I think there is only one thing in the world I can’t understand, and that is Ohio politics.”It is indeed a complicated place, shaped by its history as America’s first frontier state. Since the country’s founding, Ohio has been settled over the years by various ethnic groups searching for prosperity west of the Appalachian Mountains. Once a bellwether in American politics, Ohio is losing that status as its population grows older, whiter and more culturally conservative. But its patchwork of wildly different regions makes it a fascinating state to watch regardless.“Ohio is one of those places whose narrative is more often told from the outside rather than from within,” said David Giffels, the author of “Barnstorming Ohio,” a book on the state’s political and cultural geography.“We are the boring middle of American politics,” Giffels added. “And I do mean that in a loving way.”Ohio’s major population centers form a diagonal axis that slashes across the state from Cleveland in the northeast through Columbus down to Cincinnati in the southwest, along the I-71 corridor. There are as many as 12 media markets in the state, whose population of 11.8 million people sprawls across nearly 45,000 square miles.As a result, said Kyle Kondik, an election forecaster and author of a book about Ohio politics, “there’s not really a strong center to the vote in the state.”Ohio is holding primary elections on Tuesday that will give us the first major electoral test of Donald Trump’s influence on the Republican Party since he left office. By endorsing J.D. Vance in the state’s Republican Senate primary, Trump has single-handedly vaulted Mr. Vance, the venture capitalist and celebrity author, to the front of a crowded field.A forecast for low turnoutBut Vance’s victory in the primary is no sure thing. Although the candidates have spent nearly $70 million bludgeoning one another on television, voters don’t seem to be especially motivated by the chance to pick a replacement for Senator Rob Portman, who is retiring. Turnout in the race is expected to be low.“With Trump not on the ballot, I don’t think this race is top of mind for most voters,” said Thomas Sutton, the director of the Community Research Institute at Baldwin Wallace University, which conducts polls of Ohio voters.That could help Matt Dolan, a traditional Republican who is likely to draw support from party regulars and upper-income voters in the suburbs. Under this theory, casual voters who may be swayed by Trump’s late endorsement of Vance are less likely to show up.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The 2022 election season is underway. See the full primary calendar and a detailed state-by-state breakdown.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.Dolan allies suggest, too, that because the other candidates will divide the hard-core Trump vote among themselves, Dolan, a state senator whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians, has an opportunity to eke out a plurality of the vote by scooping up more casual Trump fans. They also speculate that Gov. Mike DeWine’s strength in the primary for governor could lift Dolan among rank-and-file Republicans.Mike Murphy, a former Republican consultant, said that because Dolan hadn’t been the subject of many attack ads, “he’s become the fresh face in the closing moments after the rest have a ton of damage, both self-inflicted and from paid media.”Trump held a rally last month in Delaware, Ohio, a city north of Columbus.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe five states of OhioMost analysts of Ohio divide the state into five regions: Northeast, around Cleveland; Northwest, including Toledo and the prosperous farmlands around it; Central, the booming areas in and around Columbus; Southeast, the Appalachian part of the state; and Southwest, dominated by Cincinnati and its suburbs.The Northeast is Ohio’s Democratic stronghold, the most populous, most industrialized and most diverse part of the state. But it’s also home to tens of thousands of Republican voters, so the candidates have all campaigned and advertised heavily in the region.The Southwest, which includes Vance’s hometown, Middletown, is the traditional center of Republican politics in Ohio. More Southern in perspective, it is full of bedrock Republican voters: conventional in their cultural outlook, they tend to favor free enterprise and worry about issues like crime, drugs and immigration. Vance, who now lives in Cincinnati, is holding his election night party in the city.The Southeast has been a swing area in Ohio politics, though it is also the least diverse at nearly 95 percent white. Hobbled by job losses and buffeted by the forces of globalization and economic modernization, with a lower percentage of people with college degrees, Ohio’s Appalachian region is full of “people who are angry at the world,” said John C. Green, the emeritus director of the Bliss Institute at the University of Akron.As a result, Green said, the region has a “much higher tolerance for the rough and tumble of politics” — and could gravitate toward Josh Mandel, who has campaigned as much on attitude as he has on any particular conservative ideas. A super PAC backing Mandel has been running ads on rural radio stations in the area attacking Vance as “a fraud.”In the 2016 Republican presidential primary, the Ohio map divided sharply between John Kasich, who was the sitting governor at the time, and Trump, who would of course go on to win the Republican nomination and the presidency. Kasich won Ohio’s most populous counties on his way to carrying the state, while Trump cleaned up in the Appalachian communities along the Ohio River.Vance’s balancing actOne question on the minds of many Ohio watchers: How will college-educated Republicans respond to Vance?Will they flock to the Yale-educated, worldly investor lurking inside the angry MAGA warrior Vance has become? Or will they be repelled by how far right he has moved to court Trump’s base?Vance’s schedule and ad spending in the last few days of the race show a focus on suburban and small-town areas. Since Saturday, he has visited Circleville, a city south of Columbus; Cuyahoga Falls, a city north of Akron; Westlake, a suburb west of Cleveland; Dublin, a northwestern suburb of Columbus; and Mason, a northeastern suburb of Cincinnati.A super PAC supporting Vance, Protect American Values, has spent heavily on TV advertisements in Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, as well as Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown.“On the surface, it looks like the campaign is pursuing middle-of-the-road Republican voters,” Green said.It’s a deceptively conventional strategy that you would hardly expect from the protagonist of “Hillbilly Elegy” — a story of rural communities wracked by poverty, drug addiction and what he called “learned helplessness.” Back in 2016, Vance was urging Americans to seize their own destiny, as he did by transcending his troubled childhood.“We’re no longer a country that believes in human agency, and as a formerly poor person, I find it incredibly insulting,” he said in one interview.In this campaign, Vance has courted the support of far-right characters who traffic in conspiracy theories and invective like Steve Bannon and Representatives Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene. In recent days, he has accused President Biden of deliberately flooding Ohio with fentanyl, a preposterous charge without evidence.“In a way,” Giffels said, “he’s kind of selling the victimhood he railed against in the book.”What to readFrom Columbus, Ohio, our colleague Trip Gabriel reports on what’s next for Josh Mandel, a Republican whose Senate campaign has been defined by his support of Donald Trump, now that Trump has endorsed someone else.A second woman has publicly accused Charles Herbster, a Republican candidate for governor in Nebraska who has Trump’s backing, of groping her.Even as Biden enjoyed high approval ratings early in his presidency, his lead pollster warned that immigration and inflation could cost him support.With six months until the midterms, Democrats are deeply divided over how to connect with voters and brighten the party’s prospects, Katie Glueck reports.how they runSenator Joe Manchin, left, with Representative David McKinley last year in Morgantown, W.Va.Michael Swensen/Getty ImagesManchin wades into a G.O.P. primary in West VirginiaIt’s not often that you see a Democrat endorse a Republican candidate. But the usual political bets are off in West Virginia.Republicans hold all three of the state’s House seats. But after West Virginia lost a district in the once-a-decade reapportionment process, there’s room for only two of them in the next Congress. That has left two Republican congressmen, Alex Mooney and David McKinley, fighting for the new Second District.Over the weekend, Senator Joe Manchin, the nation’s most famous right-leaning Democrat, announced in an ad that he was supporting McKinley, a longtime West Virginia politician and engineer by trade who was first elected to Congress in 2010. The primary is May 10.The endorsement adds another layer to an incumbent-on-incumbent race that has already become a proxy war of sorts. Donald Trump endorsed Mooney, while his former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, endorsed McKinley. Manchin joins Gov. Jim Justice — a Republican who left the Democratic Party after Trump was elected — in endorsing McKinley. Mooney, notably, is seen as a potential Senate challenger to Manchin in 2024.Mooney has a similar résumé to McKinley’s, although across state lines. He spent a decade in Maryland’s Legislature before leading its state Republican Party, history that has provided McKinley with alliterative fodder in his attack ads against “Maryland Mooney.”Both men are campaigning on typical Republican talking points, like immigration and gun rights. But they’ve dedicated most of their television ads to attacking each other, trading accusations of working with Democrats and betraying Trump.Perhaps twisting the knife for his Democratic critics, Manchin praised McKinley in his ad for rejecting what was once the centerpiece of President Biden’s social policy agenda — an agenda, of course, that was doomed in part by Manchin’s opposition.“For Alex Mooney and his out-of-state supporters to suggest David McKinley supported Build Back Better is an outright lie,” Manchin says to the camera.At the same time, Manchin is supporting one of the few Republicans who supported the Biden administration’s signature legislative achievement. McKinley was one of just a dozen Republicans who voted for Biden’s infrastructure legislation last year.— 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 Primaries in May Will Test Trump’s Continued Pull

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      If you doubt the power of Donald Trump’s endorsement, look no further than the Ohio Senate race.Since April 15, when Trump backed J.D. Vance in the Republican primary, the venture capitalist and author of “Hillbilly Elegy” has zoomed to the top of the public polls. Vance jumped from 11 percent of likely voters in March to 23 percent now, according to Fox News.The real test of Trump’s party boss mojo, however, is fast approaching: actual elections, beginning with Ohio’s on Tuesday. Trump has endorsed candidates in at least 40 Republican primaries that are taking place in May, my colleague Alyce McFadden has tabulated. Most of these contests involve an incumbent who faces no serious challenger. But in statewide races from Pennsylvania to Georgia and Idaho to North Carolina, Trump’s imprimatur could prove decisive.Republicans are watching these races closely for signs that Trump’s hold over the party is waning. Privately, many G.O.P. operatives view the former president as a liability. And while he has shown a unique ability to energize the party’s base and turn out new voters, those operatives are still dreading the likelihood that he runs again in 2024, anchoring candidates up and down the ballot to an erratic, divisive figure who was rejected by swing voters in 2020.Everyone knows Trump still has juice. But nobody is sure just how much juice.“The risk for Trump is that if the candidates he has endorsed end up losing, his influence over Republican primary voters looks substantially diminished,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster.Already, there are signs of what one G.O.P. strategist called a “re-centering” of Republican politics — with Trump as the party’s strongest voice, but no longer its sole power broker.In Alabama, he withdrew his endorsement of Representative Mo Brooks, an ardent Trump loyalist who has floundered as a Senate candidate. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Trump’s top 2016 foe, has endorsed his own slate of candidates, as have conservative groups like the Club for Growth. And Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, is drawing rapturous receptions within the party as he gears up for a likely presidential run in 2024.The stakes for American democracy are high. In Georgia, Trump is trying to unseat Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, two Republicans whose refusal to help overturn the 2020 election results have made them the former president’s top targets. In both cases, Trump is backing challengers who have embraced his false narrative of a stolen election.Trump’s endorsement is no magic wand. In a recent poll by Quinnipiac University, 45 percent of Republicans said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate endorsed by Trump, whereas 44 percent said it would make no difference.“Every candidate has to lose or win their race themselves,” cautioned Ryan James Girdusky, an adviser to a super PAC supporting Vance.With that caveat in mind, here’s a look at the key primaries to watch:J.D. Vance appears to be on the rise in Ohio after Trump endorsed him.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesOhio Senate, May 3Vance was looking wobbly before Trump’s endorsement. His fund-raising and campaign organization were anemic; his past comments, such as his comparison of Trump to “cultural heroin,” were hurting him.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.Now, G.O.P. strategists largely expect that Vance will win the primary. Support for Mike Gibbons, a businessman who spent more than $13 million of his own money on ads, is crumbling. Most of his voters appear to be migrating toward Vance rather than Josh Mandel, the other leading candidate in the race, said Jeff Sadosky, a former political adviser to Senator Rob Portman, who is retiring.But Mandel, a well-known quantity in Ohio conservative politics, appears to be holding his ground.“If Vance wins, it’ll be because of the Trump endorsement,” said Michael Hartley, a Republican consultant in Columbus who is not backing any of the candidates.Mehmet Oz is locked in a tight primary race for Senate in Pennsylvania.Hannah Beier/ReutersPennsylvania Senate and governor, May 17In some ways, Pennsylvania offers the purest test of Trump’s appeal.Trump recently endorsed Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor, in the Republican Senate primary. But unlike in other states, the public polls haven’t moved much. Democratic strategists still see David McCormick, a wealthy former hedge fund executive and the other leading Republican candidate, as a potent threat.“No one here thinks it’s locked up,” said Christopher Nicholas, a Republican consultant in Harrisburg, though the Oz campaign’s internal polling has shown a shift in the doctor’s favor.Trump has yet to endorse a candidate for governor here, but his shadow looms large. He issued an anti-endorsement to Bill McSwain, a former U.S. attorney who served in the Trump administration, calling him “a coward, who let our country down” by not stopping “massive” election fraud in 2020.Two other candidates are ardent backers of his stolen election claims: former Representative Lou Barletta, whose campaign is managed by former Trump advisers; and Doug Mastriano, a state lawmaker and retired colonel who helped organize transportation to the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6.With Trump cheering him on, Senator David Perdue is trying to oust Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia.Audra Melton for The New York TimesGeorgia, May 24The biggest test of Trump’s influence will come in Georgia, where control of the machinery of democracy itself is on the ballot.It was Georgia where Trump pressured the state’s top elections official to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn the presidential election results, a phone call that is under investigation. Trump is hoping to oust Raffensperger, the secretary of state, who was on the receiving end of that phone call. The former president has backed Representative Jody Hice, who supports Trump’s debunked election fraud claims. Court documents released by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot place Hice at a meeting at the White House to discuss objections to certifying the election.In the governor’s race, Trump dragooned former Senator David Perdue into trying to unseat Kemp, the incumbent.Perdue, who lost to Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, in 2021, has dutifully made 2020 the theme of his campaign. But polls show Kemp comfortably ahead, suggesting that dwelling on the past is not a path to victory despite the power of Trump’s endorsement.Lightning roundA few other primaries we’re watching:May 10: In West Virginia’s Second Congressional District, redistricting has pitted two Republican incumbents against each other. Trump endorsed Representative Alex Mooney, who voted against the bipartisan infrastructure law, while Gov. Jim Justice is backing Representative David B. McKinley, who voted for it.May 17: In North Carolina, Trump’s preferred Senate candidate, Representative Ted Budd, is surging in the polls against former Gov. Pat McCrory and Representative Mark Walker. May 17: Gov. Brad Little of Idaho faces a primary challenge from a field that includes his own lieutenant governor, Janice McGeachin, who has Trump’s endorsement. The two have feuded bitterly, to the point where McGeachin issued her own executive orders while Little was traveling out of state. McGeachin also has a history of associating with extremists. In February, she gave a virtual speech at an event sponsored by white nationalists, leading to calls for her resignation.Alyce McFadden contributed reporting.What to readReporting from Columbus, Ohio, Jazmine Ulloa notes a new fixation in G.O.P. messaging: the baseless claim that unauthorized immigrants are voting.Jonathan Weisman, from Toledo, Ohio, reports that Democrats are in jeopardy because they can no longer rely on firm support from unions.Patricia Mazzei explores how, under Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida has become a laboratory for right-wing policies.Emily Cochrane spoke with Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska about whether her centrist credentials will appeal to Republican voters in November.how they runMadison Gesiotto Gilbert, a Republican House candidate in Ohio, was endorsed by Trump.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThis Ohio House race has everythingIt’s a shining example of Democrats’ challenges in 2022, the confusion caused by whiplash over new congressional maps and, yes, the power of a Trump endorsement: This is the race for Ohio’s 13th Congressional District.The district — whose lines are changing and whose current representative, Tim Ryan, is running for Senate — is one of just a few in Ohio expected to be competitive in the fall.President Biden would have carried this newly drawn district by just three percentage points, making it a must-win for Democrats as they face challenges in maintaining their House majority.“If 2022 is as bad for Democrats as most everybody else, myself included, expects it to be, Republicans will flip this district,” said Ryan Stubenrauch, a Republican strategist in Ohio who grew up in the area.An added wrinkle is that the boundaries of the district aren’t technically final: Ohio’s redistricting process has been tied up in the courts, and the State Supreme Court could still rule against the current maps. But most experts believe that the lines will remain in place through the general election.For Democrats, the primary election on Tuesday should be straightforward. Emilia Sykes, a state representative and former minority leader, will be the only Democrat on the ballot. The Sykes name is well known in the Akron area, where her father, Vernon Sykes, remains in the state legislature. His wife, Barbara, also once served in the state House.On the Republican side, Trump endorsed Madison Gesiotto Gilbert, a conservative commentator who worked on Trump’s campaigns in 2016 and 2020. She faces Shay Hawkins, a Republican who narrowly lost a state House race in 2020. He’s the only candidate who has aired a campaign TV ad, but he trails Gilbert in fund-raising. A third Republican to watch, Gregory Wheeler, has an endorsement from The Plain Dealer.No candidates have had much time to make a mark. They learned their district lines — tentatively — just a few weeks before early voting started. And with the primaries split, with state legislative voting postponed to later this year, turnout is a big question.Some of the usual efforts to inform voters about important dates, like when to register and the deadline for early voting, didn’t happen this year with details in flux, said Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, which is in litigation over the maps in front of the Supreme Court.“The delay and the fact that we have to have a second primary for the State House maps is really confusing for voters,” Miller said.— 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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      Democrats Ask if They Should Hit Back Harder Against the G.O.P.

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      Many of the party’s voters are hungry for their candidates to go on offense against Republican cultural attacks, even if it puts them on less comfortable political terrain.If Democrats could bottle Mallory McMorrow, the Michigan state senator who gave a widely viewed speech condemning Republicans’ push to limit discussions about gender and sexuality in schools, they would do it.McMorrow’s big moment, which we wrote about on Monday, made her an instant political celebrity on the left. Her Twitter following has rocketed past 220,000. Democrats raising money for state legislative races have already found her to be a fund-raising powerhouse.McMorrow’s five minutes of fury was so effective, Democrats said, in part because it was so rare.It tapped into a frustration many Democrats feel about their party leaders’ hesitation to engage in these cultural firestorms, said Wendy Davis, a former Texas lawmaker whose filibuster of an abortion bill in 2013 made her a national political figure.‘What we’re fighting for’“There comes a point when you simply need to stand up and fight back,” Davis said.“The strategy of not meeting the right wing where they are can only take you so far,” she added. “I think people have been really hungry to see Democrats pushing back and pushing back strongly, like Mallory did.”Other Democrats are urging candidates to defend their beliefs more aggressively, rather than ignoring or deflecting Republicans’ cultural attacks by changing the subject to pocketbook issues.“Democrats are afraid to talk about why we’re fighting about what we’re fighting for,” said Tré Easton, a progressive strategist. “It was exactly the kind of values-focused rebuttal that I want every Democrat to sound like.”Finding the messageAnother lesson of McMorrow’s speech, said Rebecca Katz, a senior adviser to Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democratic Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, is that voters are searching for authenticity and passion rather than lock-step ideological agreement.“Voters want candidates who talk like actual people instead of slick, poll-tested performers,” Katz said. “They like candidates who are unfiltered, not calculated and scripted. And even if they don’t always agree with you, if a candidate is direct and honest, voters tend to respect that.”Fetterman, who is leading polls ahead of the May 17 primary, is a progressive aligned with the Bernie Sanders wing of the party. His main opponent is Representative Conor Lamb, a centrist from a suburban district outside Pittsburgh. Fetterman has worked to reassure Democratic Party leaders in and outside the state that he is not too far left to win a seat that is crucial to their hopes of retaining their Senate majority.But the fault lines within the party are about how to communicate with the public just as much as they are about traditional arguments between progressives and moderates.Party strategists in Washington, led by centrist lawmakers facing tough re-election bids, have settled on a heavily poll-tested midterm message that emphasizes the major legislation Democrats have passed in Congress: the $1.9 trillion economic relief package known as the American Rescue Plan and the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law.It’s an approach that leaves some Democrats wanting a little more Mallory McMorrow.“I agree that we should be making sure every single day to tell the American people what we’re doing to benefit them and their families,” Davis said, measuring her words carefully. “But we also need to fight fire with fire.”What to readNew York’s highest court ruled that Democratic leaders had violated the State Constitution when drawing new congressional and State Senate districts, ordering a court-appointed expert to draw replacements for this year’s critical midterm elections.Democratic lawmakers released a report alleging that in 2020, top Trump administration officials had awarded a $700 million pandemic relief loan to a struggling trucking company over the objections of Defense Department officials.The White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner is returning in person on Saturday after a two-year pandemic absence. It has some in Washington calculating the risks involved. President Biden will be there. Anthony Fauci is skipping it.pulseSeventy-three percent of college-educated women have an unfavorable opinion of Trump, while 59 percent have a very unfavorable view of him.Sergio Flores/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt’s the gender gap, stupidIt might be the most important rift in American politics: the gender gap between the two major parties. And it’s growing larger.New public opinion research by the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank in Washington, explores just how far apart Democrats and Republicans now are on a bevy of issues, including their contrasting approaches to sex and sexuality and their spiritual practices.Driving the split, in large part, is the steady migration of college-educated women to the Democratic Party. In 1998, the study’s authors note, only 12 percent of Democrats were women with a college degree. That figure is now 28 percent — making them a dominant bloc in the party. For comparison, men without college degrees now make up 22 percent of the Republican Party, up from 17 percent in 1998.That gender gap is a quiet driver of political polarization, said Daniel Cox, the director and founder of A.E.I.’s Survey Center on American Life.He was struck by the stark differences of opinion between women with college degrees and men without them on two issues in particular: climate change and abortion.Sixty-five percent of college-educated women favor protecting the environment over faster economic growth, A.E.I. found, versus only 45 percent of men without college degrees. Seventy-two percent of college-educated women say abortion ought to be legal in most cases, while just 43 percent of men without a college education agree.The gender gap was growing well before Donald Trump, Cox said. But his election “supercharged” the political activism of millennial women in particular, he said.It was primarily college-educated women who rallied on the National Mall in 2017 to express their opposition to Trump, a Republican president swept into office by — as he put it — “the poorly educated.”College-educated women rallied to Joe Biden during the 2020 election, repelled by Trump’s brash and aggressive political style.Those feelings have only intensified. Seventy-three percent of college-educated women have an unfavorable opinion of Trump, A.E.I. found, while 59 percent have a very unfavorable view of him. By contrast, 48 percent of men without college degrees view Trump unfavorably.— 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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      Kay Ivey Races to the Right in Alabama Governor Race

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      The governor has a conservative track record, but in the face of a primary challenge, she is increasingly wading into divisive cultural issues.Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama was never a moderate Republican. But in 2018, when she ran for her first full term, she artfully dipped into conservative talking points in a mild manner.Four years later, as she runs for re-election, she’s again airing ads with music suitable for 1990s family sitcoms. The message, however, is far different.In one ad, Ivey claims that “the left teaches kids to hate America.” Later, she boasts that she ended “transgender sports” in Alabama schools. In another ad, she falsely accuses President Biden of “shipping illegal immigrants” into the country, warning that “we’re all going to have to learn Spanish.”Facing pressure from her right, Ivey has shed her image as a traditional salt-of-the-earth Alabama conservative — leading the charge on restrictive abortion laws and protecting Confederate monuments — and transformed into a Trump-era culture warrior.Her election-year shift demonstrates how even in the Deep South, Republicans whose loyalty to the party is unquestioned are tilting to the right and making red states even redder.“Politics is about doing what people like. Statesmanship is about doing what’s right,” said Mike Ball, a longtime Republican state representative who is retiring. “But before you get to be a statesman, you have to be a politician.”“I do think this campaign has moved her rhetoric too far — or a long way — to the right,” he added, though he still believes that Ivey is the best choice in the May 24 primary, which will head to a runoff if no one receives more than 50 percent of the vote.Ivey’s stepped-up ideological intensity goes beyond her ads. This year, she signed one of the most stringent laws in the country restricting transition care for transgender youths, threatening health care providers with time in prison. She also signed legislation limiting classroom discussions on gender and sexual orientation, similar to parts of the Florida law that critics call “Don’t Say Gay.”Ivey’s campaign says it is all a continuation of her record of conservatism, which has left her on solid footing for re-election. Asked about the change in her messaging from 2018 to 2022, her campaign said in a statement, “What’s changed is that Alabama is now stronger than ever.”A governor who ‘kicks so much liberal butt’Ivey’s entry to politics was gradual. Before running for office, she worked as a high school teacher, a bank officer and assistant director of the Alabama Development Office.Then, in 2003, Ivey became Alabama’s first Republican state treasurer since Reconstruction. In 2011, she won election as lieutenant governor. Six years later, she ascended to governor when the incumbent resigned amid a sex scandal.When she entered her 2018 race for re-election, Ivey faced several primary challengers. She ran ads that shored up her conservative bona fides while keeping an even tone.The Alabama N.A.A.C.P. criticized her campaign for an ad expressing support for preserving Confederate monuments. In it, Ivey argued that we “can’t change or erase our history,” but also said that “to get where we’re going means understanding where we’ve been.”Another primary ad showed two men at a shooting range, preparing to fire at their target. Then someone hits the target first. The camera turns to Ivey — a silver-haired woman in her 70s — with a gun in her hands.After that primary, her catalog of general election ads included titles like “My Dog Bear,” “Dreams Come True” and “A Former Teacher.”Now, as Ivey again fights in a primary, her first ads make clear that she’s anti-critical race theory, anti-abortion, anti-Biden and pro-Trump. Her campaign has also revamped the 2018 ad at the shooting range, with one of the men saying that Ivey “kicks so much liberal butt, I bet her leg’s tired.”A couple of weeks ago, things really took a turn.The ads keep the same peppy music, and Ivey still smiles as she narrates, but the language crosses into new territory. In the one accusing Biden of “shipping illegal immigrants,” she says, “My message to Biden: No way, Jose.”Representative Maxine Waters, a Democrat from California, told MSNBC the ad was “plain racist ignorance, in your face.”In another ad, Ivey falsely declares that the election was stolen from Donald Trump — a departure from previous ads, in which she said simply that she had worked to ensure Alabama’s elections were secure. “The left is probably offended,” she says. “So be it.”This year, Ivey signed a law restricting transition care for transgender youths, threatening health care providers with time in prison.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesPressure from the rightBut Ivey’s ads aren’t the most provocative of the Republican primary for governor. That distinction would probably go to Tim James, a businessman and son of a former governor, who said in an ad that “left-wing bigots” were teaching children things like that there are “50 genders.”Another candidate, Lynda Blanchard, a businesswoman and former diplomat, aired an ad criticizing Ivey for suggesting that unvaccinated people carried some blame for a prolonged pandemic.Ivey opened herself up to a primary challenge in part by extending a mask mandate in the spring of 2021, when many fellow G.O.P. governors were lifting them.After Biden was inaugurated, Ivey tweeted her congratulations to him and Kamala Harris. And she was one of just a few Republican governors who joined a November 2020 call about the pandemic with Biden when he was president-elect.Ivey’s campaign denies reports of a rift between her and Trump, who has not endorsed a candidate in the race. Asked about their relationship, an Ivey spokesman said: “Governor Ivey has a great relationship with President Trump and would welcome his support and endorsement. We’re going to win on May 24.” A spokesman for Trump did not respond to a request for comment.‘You can’t govern contrary to the will of the people’ Mike Ball, the retiring Alabama lawmaker, offered a deeper explanation of Ivey’s political calculus.While the governor is reacting in part to her primary challengers, he said, she is also responding to the Alabama Legislature, which Ball said was the true initiator of the recent legislation on health care for transgender youths.“She really had to sign it with the election coming up, because they would’ve killed her if she didn’t,” said Ball, who sat out the vote. Ball said that if Ivey won again, he believed she would govern with a more moderate agenda than her campaign messaging suggests, perhaps addressing prison reform and transparency in government.“I think she’s been around enough not to drink anybody’s Kool-Aid for long,” he said. “But she’s also been around enough to know what she’s got to do — that you have to build coalitions of support and you can’t govern contrary to the will of the people.”What to readKevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, feared after the Jan. 6 riot that several far-right members of Congress would incite violence against other lawmakers, identifying several by name as security risks in private conversations with party leaders, our colleagues Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin report.Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas chartered buses to send migrants to Washington in an effort to rattle President Biden. But, Eileen Sullivan and Edgar Sandoval report, Abbott’s actions have actually fit into Biden’s strategy to work with state and local governments to support migrants.The two front-runners in the Republican primary for Senate in Pennsylvania — Mehmet Oz and David McCormick — debated for the first time on Monday. Reid Epstein describes how the face-off played out.listening postKristina Karamo, a candidate for Michigan secretary of state, had a podcast on “theology, culture and politics.”Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesIn Michigan, a secretary of state candidate says yoga is a ‘satanic ritual’It turns out that Kristina Karamo has opinions about a lot more than how to administer elections.Karamo, who was endorsed on Saturday by the Republican Party of Michigan in her bid for secretary of state, espouses many of the usual conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. Given that she’s vying to oversee elections in the future, her views on the subject are receiving close scrutiny.But Karamo is also a prolific podcaster, the host of a now-defunct show on Christian “theology, culture and politics” called Solid Food. The shows tend to be delivered in a monologue, and those monologues have an unstructured, stream-of-consciousness quality to them.The commentary illustrates why some Michigan Republicans have warned that putting forward candidates like Karamo in a general election could be dangerous for the party, allowing Democrats to paint the G.O.P. as promoting fringe views. Karamo did not respond to a request for comment.Sex is a consistent topic of discussion on her podcast: Kicking off one show on Sept. 17, 2020, Karamo declares, “Satan orchestrated the sexual revolution to pull people away from God and to tie people into sexual brokenness.”She goes on to claim that Alfred Kinsey, the American biologist known for his pioneering research into human sexuality, “was totally into Satanism” — quickly amending that to say that Kinsey “never necessarily proclaimed allegiance to Lucifer, but he was inspired by Satanists for their revelry.”On another podcast episode a day later, Karamo describes the rapper Cardi B as a tool of “Lucifer.”She also describes yoga as a “satanic ritual.”“This is not just dance to dance,” Karamo says. “It is to summon a demon. Even yoga. The word ‘yoga’ really means ‘yoke to Brahman.’ So people are thinking they’re doing exercises. No, you’re doing actual — a satanic ritual and don’t even know it.”In another episode, on Nov. 24, 2020, after offering scattered thoughts on political blackmail and Jeffrey Epstein, Karamo embarks on a lengthy tangent about “sexual deviancy.”“There are people who are willing to be eternally separated from God for an orgasm,” Karamo says. “That is wild to me.”A professor at Wayne County Community College, Karamo most recently taught a class on career and professional development.Presented with Karamo’s comments, Jason Roe, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party, said simply: “Wow. Michigan is going to be nuts.”— Leah & 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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      Democrats and the 2022 Midterms: ‘It’s Going to Be a Terrible Cycle’

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      Strategists and pollsters are increasingly talking about limiting the party’s expected losses in November rather than how to gain new seats.The collective mood of Democratic insiders has darkened appreciably in recent weeks.Pollsters and prognosticators are forecasting increasingly dire results for their party in the November midterm elections. Inflation, the No. 1 issue on the minds of voters, is accelerating. And despite a booming job market, the president’s average approval rating hasn’t budged since January, when it settled into the low 40s.“Are you calling to ask me about our impending doom?” one Democratic strategist quipped at the outset of a recent phone call.“The vibes just feel very off,” said Tré Easton, a progressive consultant.Others use words like “horrible” and “debacle” to describe a political environment that has gone from bad to worse over the last three months. Many fault the White House for steering President Biden too far to the left as he sought to pass social spending legislation stuffed with progressive priorities. Some see the president as a wounded figure who has failed to establish himself as the unequivocal leader of his fractious party.“It’s going to be a terrible cycle for Democrats,” said Doug Sosnik, a former political adviser to Bill Clinton. Democrats have only a matter of weeks, he said, to try to alter the contours of a race that will largely be determined by factors beyond their control.One sign of the alarm rippling through the party: Some Democratic politicians have begun creating distance between themselves and the president. Senate candidates are stampeding to break with the administration’s immigration policies, for instance. Other moves are more subtle, such as those of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who quietly removed the president’s name from news releases about federally funded infrastructure projects.“What you’re seeing is people feeling like it’s time to head for the lifeboats rather than trying to steer the ship,” said Robert Gibbs, a former White House press secretary who worked under Barack Obama.A sense of fatalism is setting in among many, with discussions centering increasingly on how to limit the party’s expected losses rather than how to gain new seats. In Arizona, for example, some Democrats are losing confidence that they will be able to flip the State House, a major target for national party strategists this year.“We have to be cognizant and realistic about where and how we can win,” said Chad Campbell, a former state lawmaker and Democratic consultant in Phoenix. He added that it was more important for Democrats to position themselves for 2024.“Most of this is baked,” said Dmitri Mehlhorn, the confidant of a number of Democratic megadonors, referring to the historical pattern of the president’s party losing seats in the midterms.Not everyone is so pessimistic. But for those charged with solving the Democrats’ midterms conundrum, the question, increasingly, is: How many seats can they save? Control of the Senate is deadlocked at 50-50, and Democrats are clinging to a five-seat majority in the House. Few Democratic strategists expect to keep the House, but many remain hopeful about the Senate, where there’s far more room for candidates to burnish their own independent brands.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the 2022 election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.When Jim Kessler, the executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a center-left think tank, recently reviewed past midterms for a presentation to Democratic strategists and Hill Democrats, he found that the party in power typically lost around 10 percentage points during off-cycle elections.That suggested two main takeaways, he said. First, the Democratic Party’s current struggles are utterly ordinary by historical standards. And second, even candidates in safely blue political areas need to brace themselves for difficult campaigns.“If you’re a district that is Biden plus 12 or less” — meaning the president won the House district in question by that many percentage points in 2020 — “you need to run like you’re losing,” Kessler said.Wealthy donors in Silicon Valley are turning their attention to offices they have traditionally ignored: attorneys general, governors and secretaries of state in parts of the country that could prove decisive to the outcome of the presidential election in 2024.In Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, Republican candidates aligned with Donald Trump have disputed the 2020 election results, promoting dubious “audits” and conspiracy theories about voting machines. The widespread fear among donors is that, if those Trump allies are elected, they will find illegitimate ways to ensure his return to power in 2024.With Democrats’ prospects in Washington looking dim, Mehlhorn is advising donors to look for opportunities to forestall and disrupt full Republican control in those states.“Frankly,” he said, “the most important thing is to preserve the ability to have elections in the future.”‘You don’t have to outswim the shark’Democrats are still weighing, too, how much to emphasize their accomplishments versus how much to sharpen their points of contrast with Republicans.The White House has positioned President Biden as fighting to lower costs for Americans, holding events outside of Washington with vulnerable incumbents such as Representative Cindy Axne of Iowa. On these trips to tout his legislative program, he has invited lawmakers into the conference room on Air Force One to hear their concerns and help him hone his speeches to better reflect local input.But the president has expressed frustration at times that his administration isn’t getting enough credit for taming the coronavirus pandemic, resuscitating the economy and passing funding for infrastructure.“We have done one hell of a job, but the fact is that because things have moved so rapidly, so profoundly, it’s hard for people,” to appreciate Biden said on Thursday at a fund-raising event for the Democratic National Committee in Portland, Oregon, before rattling off a list of favorable statistics about the economy.One challenge for a White House that was slow to recognize the public’s growing anger over rising consumer prices is how to balance such boasts while also empathizing with voters’ anxieties about their personal finances.Inflation, a top voter concern, is reflected in higher gas prices.Gabby Jones for The New York Times“The difference about heading into 2022 is that we have tangible projects that have been accomplished because Democrats were able to get that done,” said Martha McKenna, a Democratic consultant who previously worked for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.McKenna said it was important to convey a double-barreled contrast message: that while Democrats are trying to solve working families’ most pressing problems, Republicans are focusing on distractions — be it feuding over Trump’s false claims of a stolen election or attempting to ban school textbooks.Democrats have made gleeful use of an 11-point plan pushed by Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who chairs the Republicans’ Senate campaign arm. Scott’s plan, which has irritated many of his fellow Republican senators, calls for subjecting all Americans to income taxes and proposes tinkering with government entitlement programs, such as Social Security and Medicare.Around Tax Day, for instance, the Democratic National Committee purchased Google text ads pointing late-filing Americans toward an ungenerous interpretation of Scott’s plan, which Democrats insists represents the Republican Party’s true policy agenda.But more drastic measures might be needed if Democrats are going to turn the fall elections into a choice between the two parties rather than a referendum on Biden, others argue.Gibbs is urging his fellow Democrats to pick a few issues that are important to voters, such as lowering prices for prescription drugs or insulin, and launch a disciplined, party-wide effort to blame Republicans for standing in the way.“It’s got to be a more coordinated fight than a presidential tweet,” Gibbs said.There’s an analogy some Democrats are drawn to that speaks to their need to shift the race into a head-to-head contest.In the first season of the HBO show “Billions,” a fictional hedge fund chief named Bobby Axelrod is confronting the threat of federal prosecution over his illegal trading practices. He decides his best bet is to distract the government by leaking damaging information about an easier target: a rival financier.As they draw up the plan, Axelrod’s shadowy fixer, a man known only as Hall, tells him: “Remember, you don’t have to outswim the shark. You just have to outswim the guy you’re scuba diving with.”What to readKatie Glueck examines how Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida’s fight with Disney signals an escalation of the Republican Party’s brawl with the business community.At an administrative law hearing in Atlanta on Friday, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia spouted debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election but denied that her support for the Jan. 6 protests made her an “insurrectionist,” Jonathan Weisman and Neil Vigdor report.Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House’s top Republican, spent much of Friday containing the political fallout after The New York Times revealed his private criticism of Trump after Jan. 6, Annie Karni reports.ViewfinderSarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesA weather-beaten receiving lineOn Politics regularly features work by Times photographers. Here’s what Sarahbeth Maney told us about capturing the image above on Tuesday:On our way to New Hampshire, we had a bit of a bumpy ride. When we stepped outside, we were met with gusty winds so strong that I struggled to keep my balance.I shielded myself behind some print and TV reporters as we waited for President Biden to exit from Air Force One. I crouched low and noticed an interesting pattern in the way local officials stood in a line, all with a similar pose of locked hands.Everyone was ready to rush into a warm place, but the president appears unfazed by the weather.Thanks for reading. We’ll see you Monday.— Blake (Leah is on vacation)Is 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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      Sarah Morgenthau’s Tricky House Race in Rhode Island

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      Running for office in a state where you haven’t lived is a delicate art.When Sarah Morgenthau entered the race for the open congressional seat in Rhode Island, she had to answer an age-old question in American politics: Are you really from here?She isn’t the only one.Mehmet Oz, a leading Republican candidate for Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat, grew up in Wilmington, Del., and has lived for many years in New Jersey. A mere two years before running, Oz invited People magazine for a photo shoot inside his 9,000-square-foot mansion overlooking the Manhattan skyline. He has since claimed his in-laws’ house in the Philadelphia suburbs as his residence, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.Other out-of-state candidates — like David McCormick, Oz’s chief Republican rival in Pennsylvania, as well as Herschel Walker in Georgia — have faced similar scrutiny this year.Morgenthau, a lawyer who left a top Commerce Department job to run for office as a Democrat, does have ties to Rhode Island. Although she grew up in Boston and New York, she notes in a video announcing her candidacy that she married her husband in the backyard of the Morgenthau family’s summer home in Saunderstown, a village north of Narragansett. “While work has pulled us elsewhere, Rhode Island is the place that has remained constant in all of our lives,” she says.On paper, Morgenthau is an impressive candidate.She has an impressive résumé: degrees from Barnard College and Columbia Law School, and stints at senior levels in the Peace Corps, the Department of Homeland Security and at Nardello & Company, a private security and investigations firm.And an impressive family: Her mother, Ruth, was a scholar of international politics and an adviser to President Jimmy Carter. In 1988, Ruth Morgenthau ran for office in Rhode Island as a Democrat, losing to Representative Claudine Schneider, a Republican.Sarah Morgenthau’s uncle was Robert Morgenthau, the famed longtime district attorney for Manhattan. Her grandfather Henry Morgenthau Jr. was President Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of the Treasury. Henry Morgenthau Sr., her great-grandfather, documented the Armenian genocide as the U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during World War I.That family connection led Sarah Morgenthau to push the Biden administration to recognize the Armenian genocide, an initiative that won her a laudatory write-up by Politico in April 2021.“She was national co-chair of Lawyers for Biden, a prolific fund-raiser and a volunteer on national security policy groups for the campaign,” Politico reported. “She served as a surrogate who was frequently quoted in national publications about the trajectory of the race or the temperature of donors.”None of it might matter if Morgenthau can’t answer that question — Are you really from here? — to the satisfaction of Rhode Island voters.A tight-knit political cultureMorgenthau has much to prove in the months before the Democratic primary election on Sept. 13.She’ll have to overcome the local favorite in the race, Seth Magaziner, who is the state’s general treasurer. He has already secured the backing of several major unions, and has so far outraised the rest of the field. More than 95 percent of Morgenthau’s campaign donations have come from out of state, The Boston Globe has noted, versus 27 percent of Magaziner’s.Rhode Island’s political culture is famously insular and suspicious of perceived outsiders — so much so that Brett Smiley, a candidate for mayor of Providence who has lived in Rhode Island for 16 years, began his campaign kickoff speech last month by nodding to the fact that he grew up in Chicago. “Like more and more people, I chose Providence,” Smiley said. “I have lived and worked elsewhere and know that what we have here is special.”It’s common in the state to see bumper stickers that say, “I Never Leave Rhode Island.” The fight song of the University of Rhode Island begins, “We’re Rhode Island born and we’re Rhode Island bred, and when we die we’ll be Rhode Island dead!”“People are very rooted in their communities,” said Rich Luchette, a longtime aide to Representative David Cicilline, who represents the state’s other congressional district. “There’s a resistance to change of any kind.”Little wonder, then, that Morgenthau has faced incessant questions about her Rhode Island credentials from the local news media.When The Providence Journal asked candidates in the race to answer a series of trivia questions about Rhode Island, Morgenthau gave an answer that was nearly identical to a Wikipedia entry — and the newspaper called her out for it.Then came a brutal encounter early this month with a local television anchor, Kim Kalunian, who asked if Morgenthau had ever lived in the state for an entire year or enrolled her children in school there.“I have been paying property taxes in the Second District for 40 years,” Morgenthau replied, though she conceded that the answer to both questions was no.A clip of the exchange rocketed around Rhode Island’s tightly knit Democratic political class, which is nervously watching the race to succeed Representative Jim Langevin, who is retiring. While Langevin won re-election relatively easily in 2020, some Democrats fear that in a weak year for their party, a candidate lacking local ties could help hand the seat to Republicans.“Being out of state isn’t necessarily fatal,” said Joe Caiazzo, a Democratic consultant who ran Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the state in 2016. “I think the way it’s being handled is fatal, because it highlights the lack of local connectivity, which is so important in Rhode Island.”Morgenthau is well aware of the skepticism. In an interview, she emphasized her “extensive experience in Washington” and described herself as someone who “will go through a brick wall if I need to get things done.”She also spoke about a “commitment to public service that has been instilled in me since I was a young girl at the kitchen table,” a theme she has highlighted while campaigning.“When people meet me,” she said, “they’re going to see someone who’s a problem solver, who has Rhode Island’s back.”Hillary Clinton with Yankees players on the South Lawn of the White House shortly before declaring her candidacy for Senate in New York.Paul Hosefros/The New York TimesEmpire state of mindThere is a successful playbook for running as a carpetbagger — and it was drawn up by none other than Hillary Clinton.In 2000, Clinton took a gamble by running for Senate in New York despite never having held elective office, growing up in Illinois and living for many years in Arkansas while her husband was governor. She had some major advantages: universal name recognition as first lady, an overwhelmingly Democratic electorate and a lackluster opponent in Rick Lazio, the Republican candidate.But Clinton had never lived in New York, and she knew her lack of roots in the state would be a problem. Her solution, the brainchild of the pollster Mark Penn, was a “listening tour” of New York’s 62 counties during the summer of 1999, as she weighed an official run.On several occasions, with the help of local Democratic Party officials, Clinton even stayed overnight in the homes of complete strangers, where she was known to pitch in on household chores.The listening tour did not always go well. During a visit to an electronics plant outside Binghamton, protesters held signs that said “Hillary Go Home” and “Hillary: Go Back to Arkansas, You Carpetbagger.” Clinton, reportedly a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, was also pilloried for doffing a Yankees cap when the team came to the White House to celebrate its World Series win.Lazio tried hard to capitalize on the issue; an account of his campaign rollout in Time magazine said that he “flashed his New York pedigree almost as often as his teeth.”Clinton’s rejoinder was to emphasize her familiarity with subjects important to New Yorkers, and to outwork Lazio. “I may be new to the neighborhood,” she said during her announcement speech, “but I’m not new to your concerns.”She also hired a team of experienced New York operatives, led by Howard Wolfson and Bill de Blasio, to help her navigate Manhattan’s vicious tabloid press.But it was the upstate listening tour, much mocked at the time, that ultimately allowed her to shrug off the accusations of carpetbagging.“We purposely designed the events to be small groups, to listen to what people were worried about,” recalled Patti Solis Doyle, Clinton’s campaign manager. “She said very little and took a lot of notes.”The events were so devoid of drama that eventually, they lulled the press to sleep, Solis Doyle said.“By the end,” she said, “they were bored to tears.”What to readRepublican Party leaders privately condemned Donald Trump after Jan. 6 and vowed to drive him from politics, Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns reveal in an exclusive excerpt from their forthcoming book. But their opposition faded quickly.Florida stands poised to revoke Disney World’s longtime designation as a special tax district, as Republicans moved swiftly to punish the company for its opposition to a new education law that opponents call “Don’t Say Gay.”It’s Republicans, not Democrats, who are talking about the supposed failings of American democracy on the campaign trail, Reid Epstein and Jonathan Weisman write.David Fahrenthold and Keri Blakinger take a look inside Crime Stoppers of Houston, a traditionally nonprofit institution that has become a mouthpiece for conservative talking points on crime.— 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