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      Stacey Abrams Aims to Put Abortion at Center of Georgia Governor Race

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      ATLANTA — Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia, is racing to turn abortion rights supporters’ frustrations and fears into electoral gains for her party after a court ruling reinstated the state’s six-week ban on the procedure.Immediately after the ruling from a federal appeals court, which put into effect a 2019 law prohibiting most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, Ms. Abrams’s campaign released an advertisement on Thursday morning calling the law — and Gov. Brian Kemp’s support for it — “extreme” and hinting that the governor could move to ban exceptions for rape or incest.And in an impassioned news conference late Wednesday afternoon, Ms. Abrams, flanked by more than two dozen state Democratic leaders, underlined the stakes for women in Georgia, with a specific message for those still unsure whether they would cast their vote for her in November.“Georgia is part of a nation that faces economic vicissitudes — things go up, things go down,” she said. “But this law is permanent.”She added that she would ask the state’s scores of moderate Republican and independent voters, who may be disillusioned with Democratic leadership in Washington, to “balance whether your immediate concerns about money outweigh your concerns about your constitutional protected rights.”Read More on Abortion Issues in AmericaMedication Abortion on Campus: Some students want colleges to provide the abortion pill. But even in states that protect abortion rights, schools are proceeding with caution.In Ohio: The case of a 10-year-old rape victim who was forced to travel out of state to terminate her pregnancy has become the focus of a heated debate over what new abortion bans mean for the lives of the youngest patients and their bodies.Medical Exceptions: Of the 13 states with trigger abortion bans, all make exceptions for abortions to save the life of the mother. But what defines a medical emergency?Hurdles to Miscarriage Care: Since the reversal of Roe, some patients have had trouble obtaining miscarriage treatments, which are identical to those for abortions.Ms. Abrams’s comments represented something of a bet: that for Democrats, it is better to focus on subjects on which the party’s positions poll better, like abortion, than on economic issues, on which voters tend to favor Republicans. Polls have consistently shown that inflation and other economic issues are voters’ top concerns ahead of the November midterm elections.Ms. Abrams’s remarks also signaled a shift in her campaign message. While she has previously called for expanded abortion access in Georgia and criticized state Republicans, she is now making direct appeals to on-the-fence voters on the issue and portraying her opponent, Mr. Kemp, as the architect of one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws.Ms. Abrams has sought to make abortion access one of the clearest dividing issues between her and Mr. Kemp. Days after a draft ruling revealing the Supreme Court’s intention to overturn Roe v. Wade leaked, her campaign redirected its fund-raising efforts to organizations that provide abortion care.Several candidates on the state Democratic ticket have also pledged to use all levers of their power to oppose the law if elected, including the Democratic nominee for attorney general, Jen Jordan, who vowed not to prosecute abortion-related cases while in office.Mr. Kemp, who has generally led Ms. Abrams in limited polling of the race, has not widely discussed abortion. In the weeks after the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade, his campaign focused instead on Ms. Abrams’s support for efforts to overhaul policing, aiming to tie her to the movement to defund the police, which she does not support.When asked for comment on Ms. Abrams’s remarks on Wednesday, Mr. Kemp’s campaign pointed to an official statement from his office, in which he said the federal court ruling “affirms our promise to protect life at all stages.”Ms. Abrams’s campaign views the next few weeks as pivotal in its effort to tell more voters about Georgia’s newly reinstated abortion law and its implications.In a memo released Thursday, Lauren Groh-Wargo, Ms. Abrams’s campaign manager, shared internal polling showing that over half of voters in Georgia opposed additional abortion restrictions, along with more than 60 percent of independent voters.“While Abrams will protect women and abortion rights as the next governor, Kemp will continue his crusade against women — including victims of rape and incest and those whose health is at risk,” Ms. Groh-Wargo wrote. More

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      Pence Backs Trump Loyalists and Skeptics in House Elections

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      WASHINGTON — As Representative Darin LaHood, Republican of Illinois, prepared to campaign with Mike Pence, the former vice president, in his district last month, he braced for a backlash from his party’s right-wing base.Just days before, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol had re-created in chilling detail how Mr. Pence had resisted President Donald J. Trump’s orders to overturn his defeat in Congress — and how Mr. Trump’s demands had put the vice president’s life at risk.Mr. LaHood’s fears of MAGA protesters and hostility to Mr. Pence never materialized; the former vice president received a warm welcome from the crowd at a Lincoln Day dinner in Peoria and at a closed-door fund-raising lunch with the congressman in Chicago, according to people who attended. But the concerns about how Mr. Pence would be received highlighted the awkward dynamic that has taken hold as the former vice president quietly campaigns for Republican members of Congress ahead of the midterm elections.House Republicans helped Mr. Trump spread the election lies that brought Mr. Pence within 40 feet of a mob that stormed the Capitol clamoring for his execution, and the vast majority of them remain publicly loyal to Mr. Trump, still the biggest draw and the most coveted endorsement on the campaign trail.But privately, many of them hope their party might soon return to some version of its pre-2016 identity — when Mr. Pence was regarded on the right as a symbol of conservative strength, not cowardice — and want to preserve a relationship with him in that case.Mr. Pence, who served six terms as a congressman from Indiana, has been eager to campaign for congressional candidates, particularly in the Midwest. He is seeking to carve out a viable lane of his own for a potential presidential run in 2024, even if it means helping some lawmakers who continue to spout the election lies that imperiled him.Mr. Pence spoke at an event for Representative Darin LaHood, right, in Peoria, Ill., last month.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesOver the past year, Mr. Pence has appeared at campaign events for more than a dozen members of Congress, happily attending steak fries, picnics and fund-raisers that have at times brought in half a million dollars apiece for candidates.Overall, his aides said, he has helped to raise millions of dollars for House Republicans, many of whom still see him as a well-liked former colleague who often played the role of Trump administration emissary to Congress. On Wednesday, his alliance with congressional Republicans will be on display when he speaks on Capitol Hill as a guest of the Republican Study Committee, a conservative caucus.That followed an appearance Tuesday night at a “Young Guns” fund-raising dinner hosted by Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, at Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse in Washington. Mr. Pence’s appearance there was described by an attendee as akin to a homecoming for him. Mr. Trump was mentioned only in the context of discussing the “Trump-Pence accomplishments.”Key Themes From the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarCard 1 of 5The state of the midterms. More

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      Despite Repeated Fumbles, Georgia Republicans Say They’re Sticking With Walker

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      Republicans are standing behind Herschel Walker, the former football star, despite an array of revelations, missteps and questions about his qualifications for a Senate seat. ATLANTA — Georgia Republicans knew for months before Herschel Walker launched his Senate campaign that he would be a huge risk in one of the party’s most pivotal races. Just how much of a risk has become clear to many of them in recent weeks.Mr. Walker has blundered through an array of missteps and has endured negative media coverage, raising questions about his past and fitness for the office.He made exaggerated and untrue claims about his business background and his ties to law enforcement. After repeatedly criticizing absent fathers in Black households, he publicly acknowledged having fathered two sons and a daughter with whom he is not regularly in contact. And he initially failed, according to reporting by The Daily Beast, to share information about those three children with senior campaign aides.“Herschel Walker, the wannabe U.S. senator, is avoiding contact — with opponents, with the media, with good sense — like the way Georgia Bulldog fans sidestep wedding invites that fall on a gameday,” Adam Van Brimmer, opinion editor of the Savannah Morning News, wrote in a recent column. “Walker isn’t so much running for U.S. Senate as he is running from it.”Yet these developments have mattered little to Republican officials and strategists, several of whom said in interviews that their support for Mr. Walker has not wavered. They said he continues to have the backing of top Republican leaders in the state at a time when Democrats are bracing for bruising losses in the November midterms. Even those in the G.O.P. who are quietly wary of Mr. Walker’s tumultuous past and his lack of political experience say they are looking past all that and focusing instead on flipping a Democratic seat in the Senate.The Republican Party has stood by numerous elected officials and candidates plagued by scandals, often choosing to break with them only when their chances of winning a race are jeopardized. For Mr. Walker — who comes with hefty investments from top conservative groups, Donald J. Trump’s blessing and a base enamored by his football stardom at the University of Georgia in the 1980s — that break has yet to materialize. A display in honor of Herschel Walker at the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in Macon.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“I think Georgia Democrats have gotten a lot more excited than the Republicans have gotten worried,” said Randy Evans, a former leader of the Republican National Committee in Georgia and an ambassador to Luxembourg under Mr. Trump. Some Republicans, however, said they believe Mr. Walker will continue to be weakened in the months leading up to the November election. Janelle King, an Atlanta-area Republican political consultant whose husband, Kelvin King, ran against Mr. Walker in the G.O.P. primary, said that Mr. King and other unsuccessful Senate candidates argued that the party had been too blinded by Mr. Walker’s football stardom to see that his past would be a liability. Now, she said, she wishes they had worked harder to highlight those concerns. In addition to a slow drip of negative press, Mr. Walker failed to attend any of the Republican Senate debates during the primary — something Ms. King said she regrets not making a bigger focal point of her husband’s campaign. “We should have demanded to see more from him,” she said. “Because at least we could have worked out some of these things. So now we’re in the general and everything is just coming out.”Others in the party who are concerned about Mr. Walker’s past fear it will hurt his standing with the slice of independent and moderate Republican voters who will ultimately decide the race. Some Republicans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about the campaign, said that Mr. Walker’s staff should have taken advantage of his lead during the primary to prepare for a much tougher general election by sharpening his public speaking skills for the debates against the Democratic incumbent, Senator Raphael Warnock. Mr. Warnock has already committed to attending three debates later this fall. Mr. Walker has also agreed to debate but has not named the debates he would attend. In the last week Mr. Walker’s campaign has limited his media exposure almost completely, barring reporters from attending at least two of his events, including one with the Buckhead Atlanta chapter of the Young Republicans and an Independence Day picnic that was billed as “open to everyone” with Representative Andrew Clyde. “Georgia voters will have a clear choice this fall between Reverend Warnock’s extensive record of fighting for all Georgians to lower costs for hardworking Georgia families and Herschel Walker’s pattern of lies, exaggerations, and completely bizarre claims, all of which show he is not ready to represent Georgians in the U.S. Senate,” Meredith Brasher, Mr. Warnock’s communications director, said in a statement.Recent polling shows a tight race between Mr. Walker and Mr. Warnock. A poll from the Democratic group Data for Progress shows Mr. Walker with a two-point lead over Mr. Warnock. In late June, a Quinnipiac poll found that Mr. Warnock had a ten-point lead over Mr. Walker — Mr. Walker’s campaign claimed the margin is much closer. Mallory Blount, a spokeswoman for Mr. Walker, said the recent string of headlines had little effect. “Attacks on our campaign aren’t new and I’m sure we will see more,” Ms. Blount said in a statement. “What else can Sen. Warnock talk about? Gas prices? Inflation? Crime? Accomplishments? Nope. The fact is Warnock cares more about Joe Biden than he does Georgia — he’s gone Washington and left Georgia behind.” Those who are confident about Mr. Walker’s prospects say that voters are either not paying close attention to the negative stories about him or not caring enough about them to let it change their vote. Last month, at a Juneteenth event hosted by Mr. Walker’s campaign and the Republican National Committee, voters characterized the negative coverage as little more than political distractions. “He is a man. He’s doing right by his family. He’s doing right by the community,” said Ronel Saintvil, a Republican who is Black and who lives in metro Atlanta. “To me, for somebody just to bad mouth him like this, I don’t believe it’s right. They’re not focusing on the issues at hand that affect the people in Georgia. And I think that’s what’s more important.” Others say Democrats’ own woes, both nationally and statewide, are buffering concerns about Mr. Walker.Marci McCarthy, chair of the DeKalb County Republican Party, cited recent stories of Mr. Warnock’s use of campaign funds for personal legal matters, saying voters “are really not looking for the rubbish about either candidate.”Mr. Walker’s campaign, for its part, has started to make a number of changes in preparation for the fall, including hiring a new communications director. Top Republican groups have also made big investments in the race. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Republican Senate campaign arm that has so far spent $8 million in Georgia this year, bought $1.4 million in pro-Walker television airtime last week, according to the advertising data tracking firm, AdImpact. And in the state, Mr. Walker benefits from support among the party’s most faithful. In Cherokee County, a Georgia Republican stronghold that supported Mr. Trump by nearly 40 points in 2020, G.O.P. leaders are planning to host an event in partnership with the campaign in the coming weeks, according to the county party chair, James Dvorak. Vernon Jones, the Democrat-turned-Trump-Republican who lost his congressional race in Georgia’s deep-red 10th district, has also entered the fray, saying on Friday that he will launch an independent expenditure committee supporting Mr. Walker’s and Gov. Brian Kemp’s campaigns. He plans to spend at least $500,000 in radio and digital advertisements aimed at Black male voters over the next four months. The continuing support shows Mr. Walker’s strength, his proponents say. “You’re going to have bumps in the road in the road, and it’s probably better to get those things out of the way as early as possible,” said Eric J. Tanenblatt, a Georgia Republican strategist who was chief of staff to a former governor, Sonny Perdue. “I think by the time voting starts in the fall, some of these bumps in the road will get worked out. I hope so, for Herschel’s sake.” More

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      There Has to Be a Tipping Point on Guns, Right?

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. I know we’ll talk about Joe Biden’s gun-control proposals, but I wanted to ask how Dan is feeling — about Covid and the Celtics.Gail Collins: Thanks for asking, Bret. I can now march around with a little badge saying “My husband’s testing negative!” He didn’t have a major Covid case, but it was a reminder of how any illness can really lay a family low. And what a disaster it must be for, say, single mothers or poor seniors. And how important it is to have good social services for those folks and …Bret: And a timely prescription of Paxlovid, I presume. Glad he’s better.Gail: OK, not gonna try to lure you into an activist-government argument today. Will move on instead to the championship-contender Boston Celtics and my theory that professional sports, while cheesy in many ways, are an extremely useful part of the culture, not only providing diversion but also uniting folks who would otherwise have absolutely nothing in common.Anybody you’re rooting for?Bret: The Celtics, of course. What’s your over-under on the series, now that it’s tied? Or your bet on Biden getting anything passed on gun legislation?Gail: Sports-wise, I don’t like the idea of betting on whether some team will score over X points or under. Just tell me who you think is going to win.Bret: The Men in Green. Not only does God root for them, he also used to play for them.Gail: However, when it comes to betting on the Senate, God help us, I guess you need to look for ways to celebrate minimal achievement. I can imagine them passing a bill to raise the age for buying an assault rifle to 21, but don’t expect me to throw a party.Bret: I’m hardly the first person to suggest that no one should be able to legally buy a gun in the United States who can’t legally buy a beer in the United States. I’d also argue that every would-be gun buyer should be required to purchase a gun safe while also passing a criminal-background check, a psychiatric evaluation, a three-day waiting period and an extensive gun-safety course. Perhaps a few of the conservatives who argue that school shootings are part of a mental-health crisis might be persuaded to sign on.Gail: Can I also say how it drives me crazy when lawmakers respond to these gun crises by ranting about police efficiency or school construction?Bret: Well, the performance of the police in Uvalde was shameful and I hope the episode lives on as an example to cops everywhere of how not to act when the lives of children and teachers are at risk.Gail: Of course you want well-trained security officers, but that’s not going to stop all these horrors. And kinda amazed by the idea of eliminating entrances to reduce the chance of a murderer sneaking into a school. Could pose a problem if you’re down to one door and the building catches fire.Bret: Which sort of brings us to the nub of the problem: Conservatives want policies that don’t work in practice and liberals want policies that don’t work in politics.Our news-side colleague Nate Cohn had an eye-opening analysis last week on the wide disparity between the way gun-control measures poll and how people actually vote on them. Turns out, gun control just isn’t as popular at the ballot box as many liberals contend. And every time there’s a gun massacre, gun sales go up, not down. Liberals need to reconsider the way they make their case. Your thoughts?Gail: Well, my first idea would be to … ask an extremely talented communicator with ties to the right. Take it, Bret!Bret: Hmmm. Can I start with what doesn’t work?When Beto O’Rourke says, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15s,” it just encourages people to buy them. When Jimmy Kimmel makes a moving plea for gun control, he is preaching to the converted, but he isn’t moving the needle. When hyper-progressives say “abolish the police,” they are tacitly encouraging people — especially in low-income communities — to purchase weapons as a logical means of self-defense. When coastal elites denigrate gun culture, they foster precisely the kinds of cultural resentments that lead people to “cling to guns,” to use Barack Obama’s famous phrase. When Biden pleads “do something,” he merely invites the question: do what, exactly?Gail: As someone who is in favor of getting rid of every assault weapon in the world, I have to protest. Let’s open a conversation about what kind of guns are good for hunting and target shooting and separate them from the ones that are ideal for mowing down students or shoppers or whoever turn out to be the next heartbreaking mass murder victims.The major barrier is the profit-making gun manufacturers and the culture they subsidize. But I understand I’m not exactly moving many AR-15 owners. Give me a better strategy.Bret: Imagine a TV ad from a moderate Democrat like Ohio’s Tim Ryan or Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger that goes something like this:“I believe in the Second Amendment. But not for this guy,” followed by a picture of the Tucson, Ariz., mass murderer Jared Lee Loughner, “or this guy” — a picture of Aurora, Colo., mass murderer James Holmes, “or this guy” — a picture of Newtown, Conn., mass murderer Adam Lanza.It would continue: “I also believe in the right to own firearms responsibly for hunting and self-defense. But not for this” — a picture of the scene outside the Uvalde school, “or this” — a picture of the scene from the Buffalo grocery store, “or this” — scenes from the Parkland massacre.And it could conclude: “Justice Robert Jackson once told us that the Bill of Rights cannot become a suicide pact. That includes the Second Amendment. We can protect your guns while keeping them out of the hands of crazy and dangerous people by using common-sense background checks, 21-years-of-age purchasing requirements, three-day waiting periods and mental-health exams. It’s not about denying your constitutional rights. It’s so your children come home from school alive.”What do you think?Gail: I’m sold. And I have a feeling we’ll be talking about this much, much more as this election year goes on.Bret: Let’s hope it’s not after the next school shooting. Though, considering what we saw over the weekend in Philadelphia or Chattanooga, it may not be long.Gail: Let’s take a rest and talk about politics in the old, non-profound sense. I was fascinated when Mike Pence made a very public endorsement of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp in the primary. Kemp was perhaps Donald Trump’s top target — he hates him for allowing the state’s presidential vote to go, accurately, to Joe Biden.Bret: At least Pence has better political acumen than Trump. Kemp won his primary over David Perdue by more than 50 points, which was a very satisfying humiliation of one of Trump’s favorite bootlickers.Gail: And our colleague Maggie Haberman recently posted a story from her upcoming book, about the vice president’s security being warned that Trump was going to turn on Pence before Pence went on to accurately record the results of the presidential election.Are we looking at Pence as a hero in a possible primary with his old boss in 2024?Bret: I don’t see how a man whose political theme song might as well have been the Meat Loaf classic, “I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)” can sell himself as any kind of hero, much less as a plausible Republican nominee. He’s too close to Trump not to be tainted by his presidency and too alienated from Trump not to be diminished by his wrath.Frankly, Trump’s only serious opponent for the nomination at this point is Ron DeSantis, who seems to be beating the former president in the straw polls, at least in some states. Between those two, who would you prefer as the G.O.P. candidate?Gail: Well DeSantis made a trademark move last week when he canceled funding for a Tampa Bay Rays training facility because the team issued an anti-mass-shooting tweet. (They dared to say: “This cannot be normal.”) He’s horrible, and his advantage is that he’s smarter than Trump. But he doesn’t have nearly as much of that raise-the-rafters-split-the-country creepy charisma.Bret: You have to admire the ideological flexibility of self-described conservatives who are for free speech, until they aren’t, and who think corporations have speech rights, until they don’t. Still, DeSantis is very effective.Sorry, go on.Gail: Not quite sure who scares me more. Especially in an era when people are being encouraged to doubt the whole electoral system. Did you see the story in Politico about Republican poll workers being prepared to contest the Election Day process rather than making it work properly?Bret: This is the mental infection Trump has unleashed on the republic. The notion that elections are a case of “heads I win, tails you lose.”Gail: Just looking forward, I’m imagining an election this fall where either the Republicans win everything or the whole process gets blocked from even taking place. Or both.OK, I’m being way too negative. Be a pal and cheer me up.Bret: Here’s what my crystal ball tells me: ​​Democrats get hammered in the midterms. Biden realizes he has to announce he isn’t running in 2024 so that a savior can appear. Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, beats Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina for the Democratic nomination, and then chooses the widely respected retired Adm. Jim Stavridis as her running mate.Meanwhile, Republicans split acrimoniously between DeSantis and Trump. A brokered convention produces a compromise ticket headed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia with Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina as his veep choice. On Election Day, Americans breathe a little easier knowing that none of the candidates is out to destroy the Constitution, and we’re back to politics as it was before Trump.Reality check: Naaaaaaaaaaaaaah.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      A Georgia Mystery: How Many Democrats Voted in the G.O.P. Primary?

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      ATLANTA — One look at the results of Georgia’s primary election last week led many Republicans to believe it was the product of Democratic meddling. Former President Donald J. Trump’s recruited challengers lost in grand fashion in his most sought-after races: David Perdue was routed by Gov. Brian Kemp by more than 50 percentage points, while Representative Jody Hice fell to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger by nearly 20.Mr. Trump and his allies pointed to so-called Democratic crossover voters as the cause of their shellackings. In Georgia’s open primary system, Democrats and Republicans can vote in the other party’s primary if they wish, and more than 37,000 people cast early ballots in this year’s Republican primary election after voting in the Democratic primary in 2020.Some Democrats, for their part, staked a claim to these voters, arguing that they had crossed over to strategically support candidates who reject Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 election. Most of the crossover voters, the Democrats said, would return to the party in November.But a closer look at these voters paints a more complicated picture. Just 7 percent of those who voted early during last month’s Republican primary cast ballots for Democrats in that party’s 2020 primary election, according to the data firm L2. And 70 percent of this year’s crossover voters who cast early ballots in the G.O.P. primary had participated in both Democratic and Republican primaries over the last decade.These voters, data suggests, are less Republican traitors or stalwart Democrats aiming to stop Trump loyalists than they are highly sought-after — and unpredictable — swing voters.“I didn’t want any of the Trumpsters becoming a candidate,” said Frances Cooper, 43, who voted in Columbia County, two hours east of Atlanta.A self-described moderate, Ms. Cooper said that she had voted in both Democratic and Republican primaries in the past, and that she could often vote “either way.” This time, she said, Mr. Kemp had been “pretty good, and was the best of our options.” She was undecided about the November general election for governor, but “if anything leaning toward Kemp.”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.Voters like Ms. Cooper base their choices in every election on multiple variables: their political leanings, how competitive one party’s primary might be or the overall environment in any given election year, among others. Some Democratic voters in deep-red counties opted for a Republican ballot because they believed it would be a more effective vote. Others, frustrated with leadership in Washington, voted according to their misgivings.Many unknowns still remain. The current data on crossover voters includes only those who cast ballots during Georgia’s three-week early voting period, when the most politically engaged people tend to vote. In addition to traditional swing voters or disaffected Democrats, a portion of those who crossed over were indeed probably Democratic voters switching strategically to the Republican primary to spite the former president.Yet the crossover voters who cast early ballots in last month’s Republican primary are not demographically representative of Georgia’s multiracial Democratic base, which also includes a growing number of young voters. Fifty-five percent of these early crossover voters were above the age of 65, and 85 percent were white, according to voter registration data. Less than 3 percent were between the ages of 18 and 29.It is unclear whether a majority of these voters will return to support Democrats this November, as some in the party expect, or whether they will vote again for Republicans in large numbers.“I think there’s a real danger on the part of Democrats in Georgia to just assume that they aren’t going to lose some of those voters from 2020,” said Erik Iverson, a Republican pollster who works with Georgia campaigns.Crossing the runoff thresholdNo race has attracted more debate about crossover voting than the Republican primary for secretary of state, in which Mr. Raffensperger, the incumbent, who had rejected attempts to subvert the 2020 election, defeated Mr. Hice, a Trump-endorsed challenger.Though Mr. Raffensperger won by almost 20 points, he escaped being forced into a runoff election by finishing with 52.3 percent of the vote, or 2.3 percent above the majority threshold that would have prompted a runoff.Operatives on both sides of the aisle have speculated that crossover voting was a chief reason that Mr. Raffensperger avoided a runoff. But drawing such a conclusion ignores the many reasons for crossover voting in Georgia, and probably overestimates the number of true Democrats voting for Mr. Raffensperger.“That would be an awful lot of crossover voting,” said Scott H. Ainsworth, a professor of political science at the University of Georgia, adding that Mr. Raffensperger’s nearly 30,000-vote margin to avoid a runoff had most likely been spurred by more than just meandering former Democratic primary voters.Still, that hasn’t dissuaded some from pointing to crossover voters as a root cause of Mr. Raffensperger’s success.Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger at a campaign event in Atlanta. In 2020, he refused to help President Donald J. Trump overturn Georgia’s presidential election results.Audra Melton for The New York TimesRepresentative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a Republican who founded the group Country First, which supports pro-democracy G.O.P. candidates, cited the Georgia secretary of state’s victory as proof of his organization’s effectiveness.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      The Good News in Georgia That’s Bad News for Trump

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      This is a column about good news, written in the shadow of the worst news imaginable.Like many people, the mass shooting of children in Uvalde, Texas, is basically the only thing I’ve read about for days. But as I’ve marinated in the horror — and, increasingly, in rage at the police response — I’ve also been aware of the way our media experience works today, how we are constantly cycled from one crisis to another, each one seemingly existential and yet seemingly forgotten when the wheel turns, the headlines change.Climate change, systemic racism, toxic masculinity, online disinformation, gun violence, police violence, the next Trump coup, the latest Covid variant, the death of democracy, climate change again. This is the liberal crisis list; the conservative list is different. But for everyone there are relatively few opportunities to take a breath and acknowledge when anything actually gets better.So my next column will be about the darkness in Texas and the possible policy response. In this one I want to acknowledge that in a different zone of existential agitation, things just meaningfully improved.In Georgia, the state at the center of the 45th president’s attempt to defy the public will and stay in office, there were two Republican primary races that doubled as referendums on the Trumpian demand that G.O.P. officials follow him into a constitutional crisis — and in both of them his candidate lost badly.The higher-profile race was the battle for the gubernatorial nomination between Brian Kemp and David Perdue, which Kemp won in an extraordinary rout. But the more important one was the Republican primary for secretary of state, in which Brad Raffensperger, the special target of Trump’s strong-arm tactics and then his public ire, defeated Jody Hice, Trump’s candidate — and did so without a runoff. Probably some crossover Democratic votes helped push him over 50 percent, but most of his voters were Republicans who listened to his challenger’s constant talk of voter fraud and decided to stick with the guy who stood up to Trump.Brian KempNicole Craine for The New York TimesBrad RaffenspergerAudra Melton for The New York TimesThe Kemp victory was expected; the easy Raffensperger win less so, and certainly it wasn’t expected at this time last year. Back then, if you pointed out that all the Republicans in positions that really mattered in the aftermath of the 2020 election, across multiple states and multiple offices, did their jobs and declined to go along with Trump, the usual response was maybe it happened once but wouldn’t happen again, because Trump’s enmity was a guaranteed career-ender.Now that narrative, happily, has been exploded. Any Republican in a key swing-state office come 2024 can look at Kemp and Raffensperger and know that they have a future in G.O.P. politics if, in the event of a contested election, they simply do their job.Moreover, the primary balloting in Georgia saw record early-voting turnout and no evidence of meaningful impediments to voting, which exploded a different crisis narrative that took hold on the left — and in corporate America and the Biden White House — when the state passed new voting regulations last year. According to that narrative, in trying to address the paranoia of their own constituents, Republicans were essentially rolling back voting rights, even recreating Jim Crow — “on steroids,” to quote our president.There was little good evidence for this narrative at the time, and even less evidence in the turnout rate for the Georgia primary, where early voting numbers were higher even than in 2020. “Jim Crow on steroids” should be stricken from the crisis cycle; it does not exist.On the other hand the Trumpian peril, the risk of election subversion and constitutional crisis, does still exist. Doug Mastriano’s recent primary victory in Pennsylvania proves as much, and there may be other swing-state nominees who, like Mastriano, can’t be trusted to imitate Kemp and Raffensperger in the clutch.But the results in Georgia prove that the faction that elevates figures like Mastriano does not have a simple veto in the party. It shows the effectiveness of what you might call a “stay and govern” strategy of dealing with Trump’s hold on the G.O.P., one with wide application as the party moves toward 2024.And it indicates the limits of the all-or-nothing thinking that a crisis mentality imposes. I can easily imagine an alternative timeline where Raffensperger resigned his office rather than standing for re-election, inked a deal with MSNBC, turned his subsequent book into a mega-bestseller in the style of so many Trump-administration exposés and adopted Biden-administration talking points to denounce Georgia election laws. That timeline would have unquestionably been better for the Raffensperger family’s bank account, and it would have prompted many liberals to hail him as a profile in Republican courage.But for everyone else — Georgians, the G.O.P., the country — that timeline would have been worse. Whereas because he stayed in the party, ran again and won, even in a dark week for America one region of our common life looks a little better, and one of our crises should feel a little bit less dire.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

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      in Elections

      Trump’s Primary Losses Puncture His Invincibility

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      With many of Donald J. Trump’s endorsed candidates falling to defeat in recent primaries, some Republicans see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024.Donald J. Trump had cast this year’s primaries as a moment to measure his power, endorsing candidates by the dozen as he sought to maintain an imprint on his party unlike any other past president.But after the first phase of the primary season concluded on Tuesday, a month in which a quarter of America’s states cast their ballots, the verdict has been clear: Mr. Trump’s aura of untouchability in Republican politics has been punctured.In more than five years — from when he became president in January 2017 until May 2022 — Mr. Trump had only ever seen voters reject a half-dozen of his choices in Republican primaries. But by the end of this month, that figure had more than doubled, with his biggest defeat coming on Tuesday when Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia thrashed a Trump-backed challenger by more than 50 percentage points. Three other Trump recruits challenging Kemp allies also went down to defeat.The mounting losses have emboldened Mr. Trump’s rivals inside the party to an extent not seen since early 2016 and increased the chances that, should he run again in 2024, he would face serious competition.“I think a non-Trump with an organized campaign would have a chance,” said Jack Kingston, a former Georgia congressman who advised the first Trump presidential campaign.Mr. Trump remains broadly popular among Republicans and has a political war chest well north of $100 million. But there has been a less visible sign of slippage: Mr. Trump’s vaunted digital fund-raising machine has begun to slow. An analysis by The New York Times shows that his average daily online contributions have declined every month for the last seven months that federal data is available.Mr. Trump has gone from raising an average of $324,633 per day in September 2021 on WinRed, the Republican donation-processing portal, to $202,185 in March 2022 — even as he has ramped up his political activities and profile.Those close to Mr. Trump — and even Republicans who aren’t — caution against misreading the significance of primary losses in which he himself was not on the ballot. Mr. Kemp, for instance, took pains ​​not to say a cross word about the former president to avoid alienating his loyal base.“To be the man, you have to beat the man,” said Jim Hobart, a Republican pollster with Public Opinion Strategies. “And until Trump either bows out of electoral politics, or is beaten by a Republican at the ballot box, his strength remains.”Rivals, including his own former vice president, Mike Pence, are gearing up for potential presidential runs, as he and others visit key early states like Iowa and ramp up their own fund-raising operations. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has amassed a $100 million re-election war chest and is the talk of many donors, activists and voters interested in the future of Trumpism without Trump.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida speaking to the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla., in February.Scott McIntyre for The New York Times“Donald Trump had four good years,” said Cole Muzio, president of the Frontline Policy Council, a conservative Christian group based in Georgia, who voted twice for Mr. Trump but is now looking for someone more “forward-looking.”“DeSantis is great about seeing where the left is going and playing on the field that they’re going to be on, rather than reacting to what happened a couple of years ago,” Mr. Muzio said, echoing the frustration that Mr. Trump continues to obsess about denying his 2020 election loss.After the Georgia Primary ElectionThe May 24 races were among the most consequential so far of the 2022 midterm cycle.Takeaways: G.O.P. voters rejected Donald Trump’s 2020 fixation, and Democrats backed a gun-control champion. Here’s what else we learned.Rebuking Trump: The ex-president picked losers up and down the ballot in Georgia, raising questions about the firmness of his grip on the G.O.P.G.O.P. Governor’s Race: Brian Kemp scored a landslide victory over David Perdue, delivering Mr. Trump his biggest setback of the 2022 primaries.2018 Rematch: Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor, will again face Mr. Kemp — but in a vastly different political climate.Mr. Muzio, whose organization is hosting former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as its fall gala headliner, spoke as he waited to hear Mr. Pence this week in Kennesaw, Ga., at a rally for Mr. Kemp — all names he included in the party’s “deep bench” of 2024 alternatives.Mr. Trump still remains the most coveted endorsement in his party, and he has boosted some big winners. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Arkansas virtually cleared the field for governor with his support, and Representative Ted Budd in North Carolina defeated a past governor to win his party’s Senate nomination.Yet the difficult primary season has added to Mr. Trump’s personal anxieties about his standing, after he has sought to fashion himself as something of an old-school party boss in his post-presidency. He has told advisers he wants to declare his candidacy or possibly launch an exploratory committee this summer.Most of Mr. Trump’s advisers believe he should wait until after the midterm elections to announce a candidacy. Yet the sense among Republicans that Mr. Trump has lost political altitude is taking hold, including among some of those close to him.Taylor Budowich, a Trump spokesman, said the “undeniable reality” is that Republicans rely on Mr. Trump to “fuel Republican victories in 2022 and beyond.”“President Trump’s political operation continues to dominate American politics, raising more money and driving more victories than any other political organization — bar none,” Mr. Budowich said.Some Republican strategists have fixated on the fact that so many of Mr. Trump’s endorsees have landed about one-third of the vote — big winners (J.D. Vance in Ohio), losers (Jody Hice in Georgia, Janice McGeachin in Idaho and Charles Herbster in Nebraska) and those headed for a recount (Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania).One-third of the party is at once an unmatched base of unbending loyalists — and yet a cohort far from a majority.Notably, Mr. Trump’s share of what is raised overall among all Republicans online has also declined. Mr. Trump’s main fund-raising committee accounted for 19.7 percent of what was raised by Republican campaigns and committees on WinRed in the last four months of 2021, but just 14.1 percent of what was raised during the first three months of 2022. Some of that decrease is the result of other candidates on the ballot raising more this year.Still, only 10 times since July 2021 has Mr. Trump’s committee accounted for less than 10 percent of the money raised on WinRed during a single day — and nine of those instances came in March 2022, the last month data was available.The vocal opposition is no longer just confined to anti-Trump forces inside the party but is also evident in the pro-Trump mainstream. When a triumphant Mr. Kemp, whom Mr. Trump had targeted because he refused to go along with his efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election, arrived in Nashville on Thursday to speak before a gathering of the Republican Governors Association, he received a standing ovation.Former Vice President Mike Pence, left, joined Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia during a Kemp campaign stop in Kennesaw, Ga.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“There is this temptation to engage in wish-casting in which, ‘This is the moment in which Trump is slipping!’” said Charlie Sykes, a conservative anti-Trump commentator. “On the other hand, what happened in Georgia was significant. He drew a bright red line — and voters just stampeded across it.”Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More