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    Who Will Replace Bob Menendez in the Senate?

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    Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey announced that he would resign in August. Gov. Philip D. Murphy will choose someone to serve the remainder of his term.Democrats have spent months engrossed by the slow-motion downfall of Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey. But no sooner had he announced his resignation on Tuesday than their focus jumped to another question: Who would serve out his Senate term?Party leaders had already been swapping names for weeks. Among them are a trio of prominent Black women; New Jersey’s first lady; and Representative Andy Kim, the Democratic nominee in November’s general election to replace Mr. Menendez on a more permanent basis.The decision will fall to Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a Democrat in his second term, and advisers said he was winnowing his own list.Here is what we know so far:Menendez will vacate his seat in AugustMr. Menendez, 70, has been under intense pressure to resign since a Manhattan jury convicted him last week on all counts in a sweeping bribery scheme involving Egyptian intelligence, bars of gold and a Qatari sheikh.On Tuesday, Mr. Menendez relented rather than face a possible vote to expel him from the Senate. He told Mr. Murphy in a letter that he would resign effective Aug. 20, giving the governor about a month to line up a replacement.Whoever Mr. Murphy selects will serve until Mr. Menendez’s current term, his third, expires on Jan. 3.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Andy Kim Wins New Jersey Democratic Primary for U.S. Senate

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      The victory makes Mr. Kim a favorite to replace Mr. Menendez’s father, Senator Robert Menendez, who is on trial, charged with corruption — a detail that became central to his son’s re-election race.Representative Andy Kim, a lawmaker who has turned New Jersey politics on its head since entering the race to unseat Senator Robert Menendez, won the Democratic nomination for Senate on Tuesday after a campaign marked by a watershed ballot-access ruling.The victory makes Mr. Kim, 41, a favorite to become New Jersey’s next senator. He would be the first Korean American to be elected to the U.S. Senate.“I’m humbled by the results,” Mr. Kim said at Terhune Orchards in Princeton, where his supporters had gathered to celebrate. “This has been a very challenging and difficult race, a very dramatic one at that, and one that frankly has changed New Jersey politics forever.”The results, announced by The Associated Press minutes after polls closed, capped a tumultuous campaign that began a day after Senator Menendez, a Democrat, was accused in September of being at the center of a sprawling international bribery scheme.The senator’s criminal case thrust his son, Representative Rob Menendez, 38, into a suddenly competitive race for re-election to a second term. But the younger Menendez managed to hold on, winning a Democratic primary over Ravi Bhalla, the mayor of Hoboken, N.J., by a decisive margin.“This is about showing that you’re resilient in the face of challenges,” an exuberant Mr. Menendez told supporters crowded into a beer hall in Jersey City, N.J.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Herb Conaway Wins House Primary in Andy Kim’s District

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      Herb Conaway, a member of the New Jersey General Assembly, won a five-way Democratic primary for a seat in the U.S. House representing communities in the central and southern part of the state.Mr. Conaway, 61, a physician with a law degree who was first elected in 1997, had won endorsements from the Democratic organizations in Burlington, Monmouth and Mercer Counties.Herb Conaway is a longtime member of the New Jersey General Assembly.He made health care issues a key part of his campaign.“I will continue to defend a woman’s right to choose and a patient’s right to consult with physicians to direct their health care,” said Mr. Conaway, who has been Assembly health committee chairman for 18 years.The District 3 seat became open last fall when the incumbent, Representative Andy Kim, announced plans to run for the Senate seat held by Robert Menendez.Mr. Kim unseated a two-term Republican, Tom MacArthur, in 2018. Since then, redistricting has made the district significantly more Democratic.Mr. Kim’s decision to seek higher office was the first of two major developments to shape the race. The second was a court decision forcing Democratic officials across the state to redesign their primary election ballots. In the past, those candidates endorsed by party leaders were given preferential placement on the ballot — placement known as “the county line.” That is no longer the case, and it threw election night expectations into doubt across the state.Mr. Conaway’s chief competitor was Carol Murphy, 61, a member of the General Assembly who took office in 2018 and in the past worked for lawmakers. Mr. Conaway and Ms. Murphy worked together in the Assembly and had similar voting records.The other Democrats in the race were Joe Cohn, a lawyer from Lumberton; Brian Schkeeper, a 44-year-old teacher from Medford; and Sarah Schoengood, 30, a seafood business owner who was a plaintiff in the ballot lawsuit.In the Republican race, Rajesh Mohan of Holmdel, a cardiologist, beat out three other candidates: Michael F. Faccone of Freehold; Shirley Maia-Cusick of Medford, an immigration consultant; and Gregory Sobocinski of Southampton, a financial adviser. More

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      New Jersey Ballot Ruling Applies Only to Democratic Race, Judge Says

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      A federal judge who tossed out the state’s unique ballot design said his ruling would affect only the Democratic primary.New Jersey moved a step closer last week toward overhauling its unique-in-the-nation election ballots, in a decision that could reshape party politics in the state for years to come.But not — at least not immediately — for both major parties.On Saturday, the federal judge who ordered the redesign, in response to a lawsuit filed in February by three Democratic candidates, said in a statement that only the Democratic primary, which includes the race to replace Senator Robert Menendez, would have to use the new ballot. The Republican ballot, he wrote, can stay the same, though he said his order did not prohibit Republican leaders from choosing to alter their party’s ballot.The clarification is the latest twist in a long legal battle in New Jersey to shift the balance of electoral power away from party-backed candidates and open the door for newcomers in both parties. But if the decision stands, Republicans, too, may soon be forced to change their ballot, though perhaps not in time for the June 4 primary, said Julia Sass Rubin, a professor of public policy at Rutgers University who was an expert witness in the lawsuit.“It’s just a hiccup,” Dr. Rubin said. “If this decision holds, it will completely upend New Jersey politics.”On Friday, the federal judge, Zahid N. Quraishi of U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, ruled in favor of changing the format of primary election ballots used in 19 of 21 counties in New Jersey, which have historically favored candidates put forward by party bosses.The so-called county-line ballot, in which local political leaders’ preferred candidates are grouped together in a prominent position, is an anomaly in the United States, with only New Jersey using the system, said Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a professor at Harvard Law School.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tammy Murphy Drops Out of Race for Menendez’s Senate Seat

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      Ms. Murphy, the first lady of New Jersey, had racked up early endorsements from Democratic Party leaders in the state, but she struggled to gain support among rank-and-file voters.Tammy Murphy, New Jersey’s first lady, has ended her run for a U.S. Senate seat now held by the state’s embattled senior senator, Robert Menendez, she announced on Sunday in a video posted to social media.Ms. Murphy said that she had concluded that continuing to compete in the Democratic primary against Representative Andy Kim, a third-term congressman from South Jersey, would mean waging a “very divisive and negative campaign.”She was unwilling to do that, she said, and instead decided to suspend her campaign and to “focus entirely on re-electing President Biden” and other Democrats.“With Donald Trump on the ballot and so much at stake for our nation, I will not in good conscience waste resources tearing down a fellow Democrat,” she said.An aide said that Ms. Murphy, the wife of Gov. Philip D. Murphy, held a meeting with county Democratic Party leaders at 2 p.m. on Sunday before making a final decision and notifying her campaign staff members.Candidates who plan to run in June’s primary are required to file petitions with at least 1,000 signatures by the end of the day on Monday. Ms. Murphy’s decision on the eve of that deadline means that her name will not appear on the primary ballot.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tammy Murphy Wins Crucial Support in Her Bid for U.S. Senate

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      The first lady of New Jersey won the endorsement of Democrats in Bergen County on Monday night, beating her closest primary rival, Representative Andy Kim.Tammy Murphy, the first lady of New Jersey, gained crucial support in her bid for the U.S. Senate on Monday night, winning the Democratic convention vote in Bergen County by a decisive margin.It was Ms. Murphy’s first victory at a convention decided by delegates using secret ballots, and it was considered a must-win matchup in her primary battle against Representative Andy Kim, a third-term South Jersey Democrat.The vote was 738 for Ms. Murphy, 419 for Mr. Kim.Over the past month, Mr. Kim, 41, won the first five county conventions in New Jersey that permitted delegates to select a nominee, including in Monmouth County, where Ms. Murphy and her husband, Gov. Philip D. Murphy, have lived for 25 years.With the support of Mr. Murphy, who has nearly two years left in his term, Ms. Murphy, 58, racked up early endorsements from a raft of influential Democratic officials even before hitting the campaign trail.But she has been battered by claims of nepotism and has struggled to gain support among rank-and-file Democrats as she makes her case that she should be their nominee to run for a coveted seat now held by Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat who has been charged with taking bribes. Mr. Menendez has not ruled out running for re-election, but he has been abandoned by most Democratic leaders and has almost no path to victory.Bergen County, in northern New Jersey, is the state’s most populous region. It has more Democrats than any county other than Essex, which includes Newark, the state’s largest city.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Would a Call From Tammy Help?’ Pressure Grows in Race to Oust Menendez

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      In a series of calls, a person in contact with the Senate campaign of Gov. Philip Murphy’s wife pressured a student Democratic group not to endorse her chief rival in the New Jersey race.The College Democrats of New Jersey were preparing to make an endorsement in one of the country’s most closely watched U.S. Senate primaries when calls began to come in from someone in touch with the campaign of Tammy Murphy, the presumptive front-runner and the wife of the state’s governor.The caller, a female college student who works as a youth coordinator for the Democratic State Committee, wanted to know what Ms. Murphy’s campaign could do to block the group from endorsing Ms. Murphy’s main rival, Representative Andy Kim.“Would a call from Tammy help?” the woman said she asked, while indicating she was relaying a message from the Murphy campaign.Then, in a series of calls over the next two hours, the pressure from the caller, Keely Magee, escalated to warnings — about funding and future job prospects for leaders of the College Democrats, according to several people involved in the discussions and a recording of one call.In an interview, Ms. Magee said the Murphy campaign had not asked her to pressure the group on its behalf. But she acknowledged being aware that members of Ms. Murphy’s campaign staff “wanted to do something to prevent the endorsement,” and said she was receiving text messages from a Murphy campaign consultant, Dave Parano.On the recorded call, Ms. Magee described Mr. Parano as a co-worker who had “talked directly” to the campaign manager and was “very, very close with the Murphys.” Mr. Parano did not respond to messages seeking comment.The effort to stop the endorsement failed. On Wednesday, both the College Democrats of America and the New Jersey chapter issued full-throated endorsements of Mr. Kim, a South Jersey Democrat running against Ms. Murphy for the chance to oust Senator Bob Menendez.The episode offered a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the high-stakes political battle playing out as New Jersey’s first lady, a first-time candidate, struggles to gain grass-roots traction in her bid to unseat Mr. Menendez, who faces federal bribery charges.With support from her husband, Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a second-term Democrat, Ms. Murphy has been endorsed by many of the state’s most powerful Democrats and has raised a record amount of contributions in her campaign’s first six weeks. Yet several polls suggest that she continues to trail Mr. Kim by a wide margin.Ms. Murphy and Representative Andy Kim are the front-runners in the race to unseat Senator Robert Menendez, who is facing criminal charges.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesAlex Altman, a spokeswoman for Ms. Murphy’s campaign, said Ms. Magee’s comments were “totally and completely inappropriate, and they in no way represent this campaign or what we stand for.”“They were made by a young person with no connection to our campaign, one who seemed eager to help, albeit in a misguided manner,” Ms. Altman added.Ms. Magee, a 21-year-old Rutgers University junior, has worked part time as a paid youth coordinator for the Democratic State Committee for several years.Ms. Magee said her main objective had been to persuade members of the College Democrats’ executive board to halt an online endorsement vote that was underway and remain neutral instead. She said she believed that statewide Democratic organizations should not pick sides before a primary and was worried that a group she was responsible for guiding might face repercussions for doing so.“It wasn’t coming from a place of threatening at all,” she said.But students on the other end of the calls said they had felt threatened, so much so that they recorded the final call to have proof of the exchange if they were penalized later. The students then gave Mr. Kim’s campaign access to the recording, which was also shared with The New York Times.“I felt a mix of shock and fear,” said Nate Howard, 20, a Princeton University junior who is vice president of the New Jersey chapter of the College Democrats and participated in the call with Ms. Magee that was recorded. “Shock because: Why are these people threatening us? Are we really that important?”According to the recording, Ms. Magee warned the students that an early endorsement of Mr. Kim could harm their future job prospects, deprive their organization of as much as $2,000 in funding and hurt their odds of being selected as delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.“If Tammy Murphy does somehow win being senator, I’d be careful about ever getting a job in that office or anything like that,” Ms. Magee said. “At least for the first few years of her term until her staff turns over.”Mr. Kim won the endorsement of the College Democrats.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesMr. Howard said Ms. Murphy called him on Friday to apologize. Ms. Magee said Mr. Parano, a political field consultant who also does work for the state committee, had also apologized to her for involving her in the process in the first place.Ms. Murphy’s campaign said that all of the students involved in this “unfortunate situation” should be afforded the “grace, allowance and forgiveness that we all deserve at that age.”In the 2020 election, 67 percent of New Jersey voters between the ages of 18 and 29 cast ballots, the highest rate in the country.A spokeswoman for the Kim campaign said it was excited to receive the college groups’ endorsements, but had no comment about the recording.Mr. Howard said the experience had underscored what he believes is wrong with politics.“For things to get better,” Mr. Howard said, “I believe that it will require courageous people to tell the truth about the inappropriate and frankly gross behaviors of the status quo.” More

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      Tammy Murphy Is Running for NJ Senate, in Hopes of Replacing Menendez

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      Ms. Murphy is likely to face at least three Democratic primary challengers — and possibly Senator Bob Menendez, who is accused of accepting bribes.Tammy Murphy, the wife of Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey, announced on Wednesday that she was running as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate seat now held by the state’s embattled senior senator, Robert Menendez, who has been charged with accepting bribes.Ms. Murphy, 58, is a first-time candidate for public office who describes herself on tax forms as a homemaker. During her husband’s six years as governor, she has been an active first lady who has worked to improve the state’s high rates of maternal and infant mortality and to expand instruction about climate change in public schools.Before she and Mr. Murphy married, 30 years ago, Ms. Murphy worked as a financial analyst, and she has since volunteered on nonprofit and philanthropic boards.Ms. Murphy has been preparing for more than a month to run for the Senate, and she announced her candidacy on Wednesday with the release of a nearly four-minute video.“We owe it to our kids to do better,” she says, speaking directly to the camera and presenting herself primarily as a mother of four who, when given the chance, used her platform as first lady to advocate for improved pregnancy outcomes.“Right now, Washington is filled with too many people more interested in getting rich or getting on camera,” she says as a photo of Mr. Menendez flashes in the background, “than getting things done for you.”Ms. Murphy already has at least two Democratic primary opponents: Representative Andy Kim, who has represented South Jersey in Congress since 2019, and Larry Hamm, a political activist and second-time Senate candidate who leads the People’s Organization for Progress. Patricia Campos-Medina, a left-leaning labor leader who runs the Worker Institute at Cornell University, said on Tuesday that she was also preparing to enter the race.Mr. Menendez has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of bribery and plotting to be an agent of Egypt, and he has said that he will not resign from the Senate.He has not ruled out seeking re-election, but if he does compete for the Democratic nomination, he will face several practical challenges.A federal judge has scheduled his trial to start a month before the June primary, and he has been abandoned by nearly every leading Democrat in the state, including Mr. Murphy, leaving him an extremely difficult path to victory.Mr. Menendez said Ms. Murphy’s entry into the race proved that the governor, who was among the first officials to call for his resignation, had a “personal, vested interest” in doing so.“They believe they have to answer to nobody,” Mr. Menendez said about the Murphys in a written statement. “But I am confident that the people of New Jersey will push back against this blatant maneuver at disenfranchisement.”Ms. Murphy, in Wednesday’s video, called her role as New Jersey’s first lady the “honor of my life.” But she has also earned a reputation as an aggressive campaign fund-raiser and now has seven months to introduce herself to voters as a candidate in her own right.She is running as a Democrat for one of the most coveted political prizes in the country, yet she is a relative newcomer to the party. Voting records show she regularly voted in Republican primaries until 2014, three years before her husband was elected governor of a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly one million voters.Ms. Murphy continued to vote in Republican primaries even while Mr. Murphy served as finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee and as the ambassador to Germany, appointed by former President Barack Obama.She declined an interview request, and her aides have refused to discuss her reasons for changing parties as a 49-year-old.But Mr. Kim said Ms. Murphy’s voting history raised valid questions, particularly in a Democratic primary.“I think she needs to explain that,” Mr. Kim, 41, said Monday in an interview.Mr. Menendez also took a swipe at the first lady’s changed party affiliation.“While Tammy Murphy was a card-carrying Republican for years,” he said, “I was working to elect Democrats up and down the ballot.”Mr. Kim, a national security adviser during the Obama administration, entered the Senate race a day after Mr. Menendez and his wife, Nadine Menendez, were accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for the senator’s efforts to steer aid and weapons to Egypt and help allies avoid criminal prosecution.Mr. Kim also released a campaign video this week, in which he is shown talking to a group of disenchanted voters.“I believe that the opposite of democracy is apathy,” Mr. Kim, the father of 6- and 8-year-old boys, said to explain his motivation for running.“I look at all the craziness in the world,” he said, adding, “I don’t want my kids to grow up in a broken America.”Mr. Kim, who gained national prominence after being photographed clearing debris from the floor of the Capitol after the Jan. 6 attack, raised nearly $1 million in a single week after announcing his candidacy, and he said he was continuing to raise money at a brisk clip.To win, he will most likely need to capture the imaginations of voters without significant help from New Jersey’s Democratic Party leaders, who hold sway over the so-called county line — ballot placement that is often considered tantamount to victory.New Jersey has a unique election system that enables Democratic and Republican county leaders to anoint favored candidates in each race on a primary ballot and bracket them together in a vertical or horizontal column.Studies have shown that being chosen increases a candidate’s likelihood of victory by as much as 38 percentage points.“It’s a rigged game,” said Julia Sass Rubin, an associate dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University who has researched the influence of the county line in federal and legislative races. New Jersey’s Working Families Alliance and several former candidates have filed a federal lawsuit that they hope will lead a court to overturn the practice. “The election is almost over before it starts,” Brett Pugach, a lawyer who brought the federal suit, said about the ballot system, which he believes is unconstitutional.But in the meantime, the governor and Ms. Murphy have been busily courting Democratic leaders in the state’s heavily populated counties nearest New York City and Philadelphia, according to three people familiar with the conversations who did not want to be identified saying anything that could be considered critical of the governor.Several of those chairmen work as lobbyists with significant business before the state or hold lucrative state jobs, limiting the likelihood that they might openly oppose a governor with two years left in his term — and control over the next two multibillion-dollar state budgets.Ms. Campos-Medina, who emigrated from El Salvador as a 14-year-old, said it was these “back-room deals among political elites” that had pushed her to run.“The line disenfranchises women and, in particular, women of color and doesn’t encourage voter participation,” Ms. Campos-Medina, 50, said.After Ms. Murphy’s announcement, a coalition of 26 left-leaning organizations in New Jersey signed a letter criticizing the first lady’s candidacy.“We are offended that the corruption from Senator Menendez, who is under indictment and who has still refused to resign, is going to be replaced with nepotism,” the coalition, Fair Vote Alliance, wrote.Whoever wins the Democratic primary will square off next November against a Republican hoping to break the Democrats’ four-decade Senate winning streak. There are at least two Republicans interested in vying for the nomination: Christine Serrano Glassner, the mayor of Mendham Borough, and Shirley Maia-Cusick, a member of the Federated Republican Women of Hunterdon County.If one of the women is successful, she would make history as the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from New Jersey.Ms. Murphy would also be the first spouse of a sitting governor to be elected to the Senate in the United States. And she would also be likely to become the fifth member of New Jersey’s congressional delegation with relatives who have held prominent political positions, joining Representatives Tom Kean Jr., Rob Menendez Jr., Donald Norcross and Donald M. Payne Jr., all of whom are Democrats.Ross K. Baker, a Rutgers University professor who has studied Congress for 50 years, said New Jersey’s county-line system contributed to what he called “political dynasties.”“It’s fundamentally undemocratic,” Professor Baker said. “Politics shouldn’t be a family business.” More

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      Dads in Government Create the Congressional Dads Caucus

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      Male politicians who are parents of young children wearing their fatherhood on their sleeves and their babies on their chests.Several members of Congress, mostly men, held a news conference outside the Capitol last week — a typical sight in Washington. But these men were not just any men: They were dads — men who serve in the U.S. House of Representatives while also raising children. (If “father” is a catchall, “dad” seems to connote a father of young children, too busy even to expend an extra syllable.) The dads were announcing the Congressional Dads Caucus, a group of 20 Democrats aiming to push policies like paid family and medical leave and an expanded child tax credit. Spearheaded by Representative Jimmy Gomez, Democrat of California, who gained attention last month when he voted against Kevin McCarthy for Speaker of the House with his son Hodge, then 4 months, strapped to his chest, the caucus also hopes to speak for a demographic that, in the halls of power, is well represented yet historically has not cast itself as an identity bloc.But times are changing. Fathers in heterosexual partnerships in the United States increasingly wish to split child rearing equitably. (Or, at least, to talk about splitting it: The data shows women still do significantly more. And there is evidence that fathers do more than they used to, but less than they say they do.) Some men, being men, have even managed to turn the dirty work of parenting into an implicit competition: Witness the peacocking dad — catch him in his natural habitat, his own Instagram grid — with a kid on his shoulders and a Boogie Wipes packet in his rear pocket, claiming the duty of caretaking but also its glory.This trend, perhaps most visible in the upscale and progressive milieu that dominates blue states, has flowed into politics. Democrats have pushed to make family leave available to all genders. Pete Buttigieg, a rising star, took several weeks’ parental leave in 2021 from his job as U.S. Secretary of Transportation. Politicians wear their fatherhood on their sleeves and their babies on their chests.“Family leave and affordable child care until very recently were considered women’s issues — ‘the moms are mad about this,’” said Kathryn Jezer-Morton, a parenting columnist for The Cut who wrote her doctoral dissertation on mom influencers. “It’s becoming a family issue, a dad issue. It feels significant.”But a curious lag has opened between societal hopes for dads and baseline expectations. Dads who assume their proper share of parenting and homemaking, according to this emerging worldview, should not accrue psychic bonus points anymore. However, they still do. In 2023, a father feeding his child in the park or touring a prospective school is admired and complimented to a degree a mother is not.“When the dads do or say something, they get the kind of attention I wish we would,” said Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, the only woman who is a member of the Dads Caucus — and a mother of two boys, 17 and 11.Spearheaded by Mr. Gomez, the Congressional Dads Caucus is a group of 20 Democrats aiming to push policies like paid family and medical leave and an expanded child tax credit.Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post, via Getty ImagesMs. Tlaib credited Mr. Gomez for pointing out this double standard at last week’s news conference. “He acknowledged that people were like, ‘Wow, this is so great,’” Ms. Tlaib said. “And it’s like, ‘What are you talking about? A lot of us moms have done this.’”For dads, the present state of affairs can be pretty sweet. Who doesn’t want to do 40 percent of the work for 80 percent of the credit? (Especially when it’s good politics.) But being a good ally may mean flaunting fatherhood and exploiting the ease with which fathers can draw attention to parents’ issues while not making it all about them, as men have occasionally been known to do.Because the attention is part of the point. “We know dads exist, but they can bring a spotlight to this issue,” said Gayle Kaufman, a professor of sociology at Davidson College and the author of “Superdads: How Fathers Balance Work and Family in the 21st Century.” “Just being realistic, when men think it’s important, it’s likely to get more attention.”One caucus member, Andy Kim of New Jersey, said that part of the caucus’s project was to shift the automatic association of family concerns away from being “mom” problems. He recalled someone asking his wife if she wished to be a stay-at-home mother, when it was in fact he who used comp time and then left his job at the State Department in order to care for their first of two sons, who are now 7 and 5. “She said, ‘You should talk to my husband,’” he said. The Dads Caucus’s inciting incident illustrated how novel it felt to see a dad dadding hard in Washington. Like many Congressional mothers and fathers, Mr. Gomez brought his family to Washington for his swearing-in ceremony, which typically would have followed a pro forma vote for the House Speaker. But this year, the body required an extraordinary 15 ballots over five days to select Mr. McCarthy. Families stayed in town; babies fussed.During an early voting round, Mr. Gomez and his wife, Mary Hodge (for whom Hodge Gomez is named — Ms. Hodge rejected a hyphenated last name, Mr. Gomez said), decided in the Democratic cloakroom to strap Hodge into a chest carrier to calm him. Which is how the 48-year-old congressman came to stride the House floor and cast his vote, as he put it then, “on behalf of my son, Hodge, and all the working families,” while Hodge politely squirmed and received a coochie-coo tickle from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ms. Hodge, who is the deputy mayor of city services in Los Angeles, returned to the West Coast before the voting marathon was complete. Hodge stayed with Mr. Gomez, who tweeted myriad baby shots. Mr. Gomez said in an interview that a mother in the identical situation likely would not have received such glowing coverage, like a “CBS Weekend News” feature with the caption “Congressman Pulls Double Duty.”“The praise I was getting for doing what any mother would do was out of proportion,” he said, adding, “if a woman did that, people would question her commitment to her job.”Mr. Gomez said the caucus had been formed with only Democrats in order to get it off the ground, given the disagreements between Democrats and Republicans over many economic family policies (to say nothing of related ones like abortion).Patrick T. Brown, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center who studies family economics, said some Republicans — he cited Senators Mitt Romney and J.D. Vance, among others — might co-sign some Democratic economic proposals for families. “There’s a growing recognition that not all the pressures facing families are cultural in nature,” Mr. Brown said. “It’s not all Hollywood elites making family life harder, it’s the pressures of the modern economy. If you’re concerned about people getting married later or not having kids, you need to orient policy in a more pro-family direction.”The caucus has already called for expanding child care access and universal family medical leave. But its most immediate achievement may be its members’ open reckoning with how prevailing conversations about care-taking shortchange everyone. Mothers are often ignored for what they do and made to feel guilt‌y for what they don’t. Fathers are frustrated by the limited public imagination for what they can do and evince a palpable, wistful anxiety of influence when speaking about motherhood. (“We talk about our kids like any moms do,” said Dan Goldman, a Caucus member and father of five who was elected to Congress from the Brooklyn district that includes the dad stronghold Park Slope.)Last year, before founding the Dads Caucus, Mr. Gomez went so far as to join the Congressional Mamas Caucus. “I had always advocated for all these issues,” he said.Because yes, of course, the Mamas Caucus — founded by Ms. Tlaib to push for many of the same policies the Dads Caucus backs — predates the Dads Caucus by several months.No matter: Ms. Tlaib was equanimous.“If it took Jimmy Gomez starting a Dads Caucus to get The New York Times to call me to talk about the Mamas Caucus,” she said, “then I’m all in.” More