Lamb, Conor J (1984- )

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    In Tuesday’s Primaries, Who Won, Who Lost and What Races Haven’t Been Called Yet

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    The marquee election on Tuesday evening, the Republican Senate primary in Pennsylvania, is going down to the wire, but consequential races were decided, setting up general election matchups for the fall.Here is a rundown of the winners and losers in some of the most important contests:The Mehmet Oz, Dave McCormick and Kathy Barnette race in Pennsylvania is too close to call, despite Trump’s endorsement.The high-spending Republican Senate race in Pennsylvania, between Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity television physician, and Dave McCormick, the wealthy leader of a hedge fund, is nail-bitingly close. Neither candidate conceded, and an official recount is likely.Both Dr. Oz and Mr. McCormick are rich, resided in other states for years, and spent millions attacking one another. Though former President Donald J. Trump endorsed Dr. Oz, the race was extremely tight, with thousands of mail-in ballots to be counted starting Wednesday.Another candidate, the author and 2020 election denier Kathy Barnette, surged to an unexpectedly strong third-place showing, in part by casting herself as the more authentic MAGA candidate. Ms. Barnette, who publicly espoused homophobic and anti-Muslim views for years, also benefited by a late advertising blitz from the influential anti-tax group Club for Growth.Doug Mastriano, an election denier, won the Republican primary election for governor in Pennsylvania.Doug Mastriano, a retired colonel and state senator who has propagated myriad false claims about the 2020 election and attended the protest leading up to the Capitol riot, won the Republican nomination for Pennsylvania governor.He defeated a crowded field of challengers and was endorsed just a few days ago by Mr. Trump. He will face Josh Shapiro, the attorney general of Pennsylvania who emerged unopposed from the Democratic primary for governor.Mr. Shapiro’s victory lap on Tuesday was cut short. He announced earlier that day that he had tested positive for the coronavirus with mild symptoms and was isolating.With Mr. Mastriano’s victory, Republicans will now try to win a battleground state with a central figure in trying to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.John Fetterman got a pacemaker hours before winning the Democratic Senate primary in Pennsylvania.John Fetterman, the lieutenant governor, had a stroke on Friday and a pacemaker put in on Tuesday, which kept him off the campaign trail in the waning days of the race.In November, he will try to help Democrats pick up a key Senate seat that is being vacated by Republican Patrick J. Toomey, a fiscal conservative who occasionally broke with his party.Gisele Barreto Fetterman speaking at the watch party for her husband, John Fetterman, after he won the Democratic Senate primary.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMr. Fetterman dominated the race, wearing a uniform of sweatshirts and shorts while tapping into voters’ frustration with Washington. In the primary, he defeated Representative Conor Lamb, a moderate some thought could appeal to white, blue-collar workers the party has been losing for years, and Malcolm Kenyatta, a young state legislator and rising star in the party who got married just over two months ago.Ted Budd, anointed by Trump, won North Carolina’s Republican Senate primary in a runaway victory.Representative Ted Budd, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump and the influential anti-tax group Club for Growth, won the Republican nomination for Senate. Mr. Budd, who skipped all four debates in the race, defeated nine other candidates, including Pat McCrory, a former governor, and former Representative Mark Walker.Cheri Beasley, a former chief justice of North Carolina’s Supreme Court and the first Black woman to have served in that role, will face Mr. Budd after cruising to victory in the Democratic primary for Senate. The outcome never appeared to be in doubt, with Democrats clearing the field of serious challengers for Ms. Beasley, who would become North Carolina’s first Black senator if elected.Republicans are done with Madison CawthornCrumbling under the weight of repeated scandals and blunders, Representative Madison Cawthorn was ousted on Tuesday by Republican primary voters in western North Carolina, a stinging rejection of the Trump-endorsed candidate.Mr. Cawthorn, 26, lost to Chuck Edwards, a state senator, in a crowded primary in the 11th District that resembled a recall effort for many Republicans, who grew fed up with Mr. Cawthorn’s antics.Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina shortly before conceding his race Tuesday night.Logan R. Cyrus for The New York TimesAt about 10:30 p.m., Mr. Cawthorn conceded the race to Mr. Edwards, who had gained the support of many prominent Republicans in North Carolina, including Senator Thom Tillis.Mr. Cawthorn, who entered Congress as a rising star in 2020, was besieged by scandal, from falsely suggesting that his Republican colleagues routinely throw cocaine-fueled orgies, to being detained at an airport after trying to take a loaded gun through security. Last month, after salacious images of him surfaced online showing him wearing women’s lingerie as part of a cruise ship game, he wrote on Twitter that “digging stuff up from my early 20s to smear me is pathetic.”A 26-year-old political novice won a House primary in North Carolina with Trump’s helpBo Hines, a 26-year-old political novice who enthralled Mr. Trump, drawing inevitable comparisons to another North Carolinian — Mr. Cawthorn — catapulted to a win in the Republican primary for a House seat outside Raleigh.Mr. Hines, a onetime football phenom who was an All-American at North Carolina State University before transferring to Yale, topped seven other candidates in the primary in the 13th District.His victory is perhaps the most audacious example of Mr. Trump’s influence over the Republican Party, with the former president endorsing Mr. Hines in March in the newly drawn tossup district. Mr. Hines was also backed by the Club for Growth, the influential anti-tax group.Mr. Hines will face Wiley Nickel, a two-term state senator and criminal defense lawyer who did advance work for President Barack Obama. He positioned himself as a progressive who can work with people on both sides of the aisle.Idaho’s Republican governor stamped out a Trump insurgent: the lieutenant governorGov. Brad Little of Idaho weathered a Republican primary challenge by Janice McGeachin, the lieutenant governor, who had been endorsed by Mr. Trump and made headlines for defying Mr. Little’s pandemic orders.Ms. McGeachin had sought to win over ultraconservatives in the deep-red state that Mr. Trump overwhelmingly carried in 2016 and 2020. She had played up how she had issued a mutinous but short-lived ban on coronavirus mask mandates when Mr. Little had briefly left the state.But Ms. McGeachin appeared to muster less than 30 percent of the vote in Idaho, which holds separate primaries for governor and lieutenant governor — the genesis of the strained pairing.An establishment Democrat thwarted a far-left rival running for the House in KentuckyIn an open-seat race in Kentucky’s only blue House district, Democrats favored an establishment candidate in Tuesday’s primary over a rival state lawmaker who ran on the far left and has been a vocal leader of the police accountability movement in Louisville.The party favorite, Morgan McGarvey, the Democratic leader in the State Senate, defeated Attica Scott, a state representative, in the Third District. The two had been vying to succeed to Representative John Yarmuth, who was first elected in 2006 and is retiring. The chairman of the House Budget Committee, Mr. Yarmuth is the lone Democrat from Kentucky in Congress. More

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      Is John Fetterman the Future of the Democratic Party?

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      John Fetterman’s resounding victory in the Democratic Pennsylvania Senate primary was not surprising, but it was uncharacteristic.Pennsylvania Democrats do not ordinarily veer too far from the center lane, and they are cautious about whom they send forward from their primary elections to take on Republicans in general elections. They’re not gamblers, and given the state’s perennially up-for-grabs status and its unforgiving electoral math, you could argue they shouldn’t be.But on Tuesday, Democrats made Mr. Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, their nominee to compete for the seat being vacated by the retiring Republican Pat Toomey. (They did it despite Mr. Fetterman’s recent health scare; last week he suffered a stroke, but he said that he was on his way to “a full recovery.”)Conor Lamb, 37, a Pittsburgh-area congressman, would have been a more conventional choice. His House voting record tracks to the center, and he has been compared to the state’s three-term Democratic senator, Bob Casey, a moderate and the son of a former Pennsylvania governor.Mr. Fetterman, 52, offers something different, a new model for Pennsylvania. It is built on quirky personal and political appeal rather than the caution of a traditional Democrat in the Keystone State. With over 80 percent of the votes counted, Mr. Fetterman was more than doubling the total of Mr. Lamb, whose campaign, despite winning many more endorsements from party leaders, never gained momentum.For Democrats, the stakes are high: The outcome may well determine the balance of the evenly divided U.S. Senate, future votes to confirm Supreme Court nominees and much else in our bitterly divided nation.Nearly every story about Mr. Fetterman points out his 6-foot-8 frame, shaved head, tattoos and preferred attire — work clothes from Carhartt, a brand long favored by construction workers and miners and more recently by hip-hop artists. He sometimes attends public events in baggy gym shorts.It is all part of a style that has won him passionate followers among progressive Democrats. Mr. Fetterman has been a frequent presence on MSNBC and is a skilled social media practitioner, with over 400,000 Twitter followers. (His dogs, Levi and Artie, have their own Twitter account and more than 25,000 followers.) It can sometimes seem that he skirts the line between being a traditional candidate and an internet influencer.“Fetterman doesn’t have supporters so much as full-on fans,” The Philadelphia Inquirer noted during the campaign. “Fans who write songs about him, buy his merch and know his life story.”Mr. Fetterman has served as lieutenant governor since 2019 and, before that, for four terms was the mayor of Braddock, a town east of Pittsburgh with just over 1,700 residents. He vows to conduct a “67-county campaign” — the whole of Pennsylvania.Rebecca Katz, his senior political adviser, told me that she believes the campaign’s mantra of “every county, every vote” is being received with too much skepticism and said that people “haven’t seen what kind of map he can run on in Pennsylvania.”But he still must solve the math of an evenly divided state: A Democrat hoping to win in Pennsylvania has to thread an electoral needle.Mr. Fetterman will face either the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz or the financier David McCormick.In the fall, Mr. Fetterman will need to pile up huge winning margins in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and win by healthy margins in their suburbs and the state’s few other pockets of blue in order to withstand the lopsided totals that Republicans win nearly everywhere else.In less populous counties, as recently as 2008, Barack Obama took 40 percent of the vote or more, but as polarization has increased, Democrats have struggled to get even 25 percent.State Democrats hoped that Joe Biden, a Pennsylvania native and senator from neighboring Delaware — and a white septuagenarian running in a state that is whiter and older than the national average — could reverse that trend. But he did only marginally better than Hillary Clinton four years earlier, cutting the margins by a couple of percentage points but hardly reversing the trend of Democrats being routed in the smaller counties.That Mr. Biden could not do better outside the cities and close-in suburbs has made many Democrats pessimistic about what’s possible in those areas. Mr. Fetterman’s background, his attention to the state’s rural communities and his manner — the work clothes, a straightforward speaking style — could make some difference. In the winning Fetterman model, he narrows the massive margins that have been run up by Republicans.His positions do not differ that much from more traditional Democrats’, but some of his central concerns do set him apart. A signature issue has been the legalization of marijuana — “legal weed,” as he calls it. He has flown a flag displaying cannabis leaves from the official lieutenant governor’s office, alongside a rainbow-colored L.G.B.T.Q. banner.The advocacy of legal marijuana may be the rare issue that draws support from unpredictable corners and crosses all kinds of lines — including urban and rural.The lieutenant governor in Pennsylvania has few defined duties, but as chairman of the Board of Pardons, Mr. Fetterman modernized an outdated system and granted clemency in cases where it was long overdue.Mr. Fetterman’s one glaring departure from progressive causes, and a nod to Pennsylvania realpolitik, is that he does not support a ban on fracking, the environmentally questionable hydraulic extraction of natural gas. Tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians have benefited financially from it by selling drilling rights on their land, working in the industry or both.Mr. Fetterman’s most worrisome vulnerability is his appeal to his party’s most dependable voting bloc: Black voters in Philadelphia and the state’s other urban centers, the places where any Democrat running statewide must mine the largest trove of votes. Only about 10 percent of the state’s voters are Black, but they are an essential component of the margins that the party runs up in the cities.Mr. Fetterman’s challenge stems in large part from a 2013 incident in Braddock, when he used his shotgun to stop a Black jogger and detained him until police arrived. Mr. Fetterman, who was mayor at the time, told police he had heard gunshots in the area and suspected the jogger. Police searched the man down and released him after they found no weapon.The incident has come up during the campaign, and Mr. Fetterman’s responses have been awkward, at best.“He has said he did not actually point the gun, but what difference does that make?” said Mark Kelly Tyler, the pastor of Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the nation’s oldest A.M.E. churches. “Even if he admitted that it was from his implicit bias and says that he has learned from it, that would actually be better. It would be accepted.”Mr. Tyler said that if Mr. Fetterman does not do a better job of explaining it, the incident will be “weaponized on Black talk radio and elsewhere” and used by his opponent in the fall to depress turnout.Mr. Fetterman won by huge margins all across Pennsylvania, with one notable exception: Philadelphia. There, it was a close race against a third Democratic primary candidate, Malcolm Kenyatta, a city resident and the first Black openly gay L.G.B.T.Q. member of the state legislature.With the primary complete, everything is reset. In a big state with six television markets, the candidates will likely combine to spend $200 million or more — much of it, undoubtedly, in an attempt to label each other as too extreme for middle-of-the-road Pennsylvania.Mr. Fetterman’s progressive politics and persona appeal to younger people. They lean to the left and are always potentially influential in any election. But they are also traditionally the least reliable voters, especially in nonpresidential years.In Pennsylvania and all other battleground states, it always comes down to the math. The state’s graying electorate does not always like new things or ideas.Mr. Fetterman is ultimately going to have to go where the votes are. And if he has a problem with Black voters, he will have to solve it.Michael Sokolove, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, is the author of “Drama High: The Incredible True Story of a Brilliant Teacher, a Struggling Town and the Magic of Theater,” which is set in his hometown, Levittown, Pa.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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      The Little Red Boxes Making a Mockery of Campaign Finance Laws

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      Facing a threat from his left flank, Representative Kurt Schrader of Oregon wanted to send an urgent message to allies ahead of his upcoming primary: It was time to go on the attack.The challenge: Campaign finance rules bar candidates from directly coordinating with the very outside groups that Mr. Schrader, a top moderate in Congress, needed to alert. So instead, he used a little red box.On April 29, Mr. Schrader issued a not-quite-private directive inside a red-bordered box on an obscure corner of his website, sketching out a three-pronged takedown of what he called his “toxic” challenger, Jamie McLeod-Skinner — helpfully including a link to a two-page, opposition-research document about her tenure as a city manager.The message was received.On May 3, a super PAC that has received all its money from a secret-money group with ties to the pharmaceutical industry began running television ads that did little more than copy, paste and reorder the precise three lines of attack Mr. Schrader had outlined.Kurt Schrader for CongressAn ad attacking Jamie McLeod-Skinner reflects language used on her opponent Kurt Schrader’s campaign website.Center ForwardFrom Oregon to Texas, North Carolina to Pennsylvania, Democratic candidates nationwide are using such red boxes to pioneer new frontiers in soliciting and directing money from friendly super PACs financed by multimillionaires, billionaires and special-interest groups.Campaign watchdogs complain that the practice further blurs the lines meant to keep big-money interests from influencing people running for office, effectively evading the strict donation limits imposed on federal candidates. And while the tactic is not new to 2022, it is becoming so widespread that a New York Times survey of candidate websites found at least 19 Democrats deploying some version of a red box in four of the states holding contested congressional primaries on Tuesday.The practice is both brazen and breathtakingly simple. To work around the prohibition on directly coordinating with super PACs, candidates are posting their instructions to them inside the red boxes on public pages that super PACs continuously monitor.The boxes highlight the aspects of candidates’ biographies that they want amplified and the skeletons in their opponents’ closets that they want exposed. Then, they add instructions that can be extremely detailed: Steering advertising spending to particular cities or counties, asking for different types of advertising and even slicing who should be targeted by age, gender and ethnicity.“Liberals, voters under 50 and women — across only San Antonio, Guadalupe and Atascosa counties,” reads the targeting guidance from Jessica Cisneros, a Democratic challenger in South Texas.Understand the Pennsylvania Primary ElectionThe crucial swing state will hold its primary on May 17, with key races for a U.S. Senate seat and the governorship.Hard-Liners Gain: Republican voters appear to be rallying behind far-right candidates in two pivotal races, worrying both parties about what that could mean in November.G.O.P. Senate Race: Kathy Barnette, a conservative commentator, is making a surprise late surge against big-spending rivals, Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick.Democratic Senate Race: Representative Conor Lamb had all the makings of a front-runner, but John Fetterman, the state’s shorts-wearing lieutenant governor, is resonating with voters.Abortion Battleground: Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states where abortion access hangs in the balance with midterm elections this year.Electability Concerns: Starting with Pennsylvania, the coming weeks will offer a window into the mood of Democratic voters who are deeply worried about a challenging midterm campaign environment.“Black voters ages 45+ in Durham and white women ages 45+ in Orange” was the recent directive from Valerie Foushee, a Democratic House candidate in North Carolina locked in a competitive primary for an open seat.Red-boxing spans the ideological spectrum of the Democratic Party, from Blue Dog Democrats like Mr. Schrader to progressives like his challenger and Ms. Cisneros, who has the backing of the Working Families Party and Justice Democrats as she tries to unseat Representative Henry Cuellar.It is not clear why Democratic candidates have so thoroughly embraced the red box tactic in primaries while Republicans have not. Republicans work hand in glove with their super PACs, too, but in different ways.In 2014, some Republican groups tried using anonymous Twitter accounts to share internal polling data through coded tweets. More recently, J.D. Vance outsourced some of his Ohio Senate campaign’s most basic operations. His allied super PAC, funded by $15 million from the Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel, posted troves of internal and polling data on an unpublicized Medium page that campaign officials used to guide decisions.The Vance super PAC was so central to the campaign that when Mr. Vance walked onstage at a rally with Donald J. Trump, the cameraman filming him from behind worked for the super PAC, not the Vance campaign.Adav Noti, the legal director of the watchdog group the Campaign Legal Center, said that red boxes were erasing the very barriers that were erected to make politicians feel less indebted to their biggest financial benefactors. Federal candidates can legally raise only $2,900 for a primary per donor; super PACs can receive donations of $1 million — or even more.“It’s a joke,” he said. “The coordination of super PACs and candidates is the primary mechanism for corruption of federal campaigns in 2022.”In Democratic primaries, the biggest money is often aligned with the more moderate wing of the party, and sometimes with very specific interest groups.In her race in North Carolina, Ms. Foushee, a state legislator, has been aided by more than $3 million in spending from two of the bigger new players in Democratic House races. One is a super PAC funded by an arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobbying group (a separate pro-Israel group has spent nearly $300,000 more). And the other is a super PAC financed chiefly by the 30-year-old crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried.Ms. Foushee is running against, among others, Nida Allam, a Durham County commissioner who promotes herself as the first Muslim woman elected in North Carolina, and who has been critical of U.S. military aid to Israel “being used to oppress the Palestinian people.”The super PAC that Mr. Bankman-Fried is bankrolling, Protect Our Future, has spent more than $11 million in another open Oregon House race — an astounding sum to lift a political newcomer, Carrick Flynn. At least one of the many ads run in the race echoes the language in Mr. Flynn’s red box.Red boxes are typically hidden in plain sight in “Media Center” or “Media Resources” sections of campaign websites that operatives know how to find, and often use thinly veiled terms to convey their instructions: Saying voters need to “hear” something is a request for radio ads, “see” means television, “read” means direct mail, and “see while on the go” usually means digital ads.Ms. Allam used “on the go” in an April 20 red box update to request online ads telling voters — “especially women, Democrats under 50 and progressives” — that she would “be an unapologetic progressive.”The Working Families Party used those exact words — along with other verbatim phrases — in a Facebook ad that began running on May 5. Facebook records show that 95 percent of the ad’s impressions were with women and people under 54.End runs around campaign limits are themselves nothing new: For years, candidates have posted flattering pictures and videos of themselves for super PACs to download and use. But the explosion of red boxes and their unabashed specificity is the latest example of how America’s system of financing political campaigns — and the restrictions put in place to curb the power of the wealthy in the wake of Watergate a half-century ago — is teetering toward collapse.“This page only exists because of our broken campaign finance system,” reads a web page that Lt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, a leading candidate in Tuesday’s Democratic Senate primary, posted this year to make suggestions to super PACs. (Like some others, he did not surround his instructions in a red box.)Mr. Fetterman was not above providing guidance: His site asked only for positive ads and included some biographical bullet points. Sure enough, a super PAC ran a positive ad employing some of those arguments — like the fact that he had refused to live in a state mansion to save taxpayers money.Conor Lamb for U.S. SenatePennsylvania ProgressMr. Fetterman’s leading rival, Representative Conor Lamb, used his own red box earlier this year to outline the attacks he hoped his supportive super PAC would broadcast against Mr. Fetterman. In short order, a television ad appeared warning Democrats that Mr. Fetterman had once been called a “Silver Spoon Socialist” and that “Republicans think they could crush” him. It also echoed verbatim the recommended talking points about Mr. Lamb’s background.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      How ‘Just a Dude’ in Shorts Became a Senate Front-Runner

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      John Fetterman has used his shorts-and-hoodie image to connect with Pennsylvania voters in the Democratic Senate primary.YORK, Pa. — John Fetterman’s latest ad boasts that his campaign has become a movement. Days before Pennsylvania’s primary on Tuesday, Mr. Fetterman is the front-runner for the state’s Democratic Senate nomination. But he insists that he is simply “doing my thing.”“I’m just a dude that shows up and just talks about what I believe in, you know?” he said in an interview on Thursday in the deeply Republican county of York, standing across the street from The Holy Hound Taproom, a bar where he hosted a packed campaign event.Just a dude.Doing his thing.That thing includes believing that “voting is kinda critical to democracy.” And pledging to “get good Democratic stuff done.” And referring to a potential Republican opponent as a “weirdo.”Mr. Fetterman, the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, does not sound like any other leading politician in recent memory. And standing roughly 6-foot-8, with his uniform of basketball shorts and hoodies bearing occasional schmutz, he plainly does not look like one.But as Tuesday approaches in a contest to determine the general-election contenders in one of the most closely divided states in the country, Mr. Fetterman is in a far stronger position than many party officials in Pennsylvania and Washington had anticipated. And if he wins the Democratic nomination, his candidacy will offer a clear test of whether politicians with vivid personal brands can overcome crushing national headwinds at a moment of intense political polarization.Melinda Clark greeted motorists in Greensburg, Pa., where Mr. Fetterman was holding a campaign event.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesTo Mr. Fetterman’s many die-hard fans — who adore his family, can recite parts of his life story and sometimes credit Mr. Fetterman with renewing their interest in politics — his low-key, accessible style helps shape their perception of him as a relatable straight shooter.“He seems such a down-to-earth guy,” said Kimberly Millhimes, 42, who said the Fetterman campaign stop at the bar was the first political event she could recall attending as an adult. Her assessment was repeated frequently in nearly two dozen interviews with Pennsylvania voters this week — that he is “real,” and not just a rote politician.To his detractors and some skeptical voters, nominating Mr. Fetterman — a 2016 supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders who wore a sweatshirt to the White House Easter Egg Roll — could risk alienating voters in the more moderate suburbs who have increasingly embraced Democrats in the Trump era. He has also been dogged by a 2013 incident that could shape how Black voters across the state view him. When Mr. Fetterman was the mayor of Braddock, Pa., he brandished a shotgun to stop and detain an unarmed Black jogger, telling police he had heard gunshots. Some party strategists worry that the episode could become a liability in the general election in November.Public polling in Pennsylvania has been sparse and there is theoretically still time for the Democratic race to be upended. But so far, there has been little evidence that any issues about his past or his persona have dented enthusiasm for Mr. Fetterman among many Democratic primary voters.Understand the Pennsylvania Primary ElectionThe crucial swing state will hold its primary on May 17, with key races for a U.S. Senate seat and the governorship.Hard-Liners Gain: Republican voters appear to be rallying behind far-right candidates in two pivotal races, worrying both parties about what that could mean in November.G.O.P. Senate Race: Kathy Barnette, a conservative commentator, is making a surprise late surge against big-spending rivals, Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick.Democratic Senate Race: Representative Conor Lamb had all the makings of a front-runner. It hasn’t worked out that way.Abortion Battleground: Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states where abortion access hangs in the balance with midterm elections this year.Electability Concerns: Starting with Pennsylvania, the coming weeks will offer a window into the mood of Democratic voters who are deeply worried about a challenging midterm campaign environment.He ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 2016 but built a devoted following, and after defeating an incumbent to win his party’s nomination for lieutenant governor, he has been a visible statewide presence in office. He had attracted national attention as mayor of Braddock, a struggling former steel town he worked to help revitalize. But he drew new levels of notice as a cable-television fixture when Pennsylvania’s 2020 votes were being counted.His campaign has had an overwhelming fund-raising advantage, a head-start on television advertising and an early entry into the race. Representative Conor Lamb — the polished moderate from Western Pennsylvania who has emerged as his closest rival — entered the race later and amassed notable institutional support, but has struggled to break through statewide or to effectively define Mr. Fetterman in negative terms.On Thursday night, as he made the rounds at The Holy Hound, attendees clamored for selfies and offered him French fries or a beer — Mr. Fetterman, who often holds campaign events in breweries and bars, ruefully declined. “Hell yeah!” he replied to a young attendee who requested a photo. He thanked another supporter who had already voted for being “triple awesome.”“I feel like I could get a beer with Fetterman and we’d hit it off,” said Robert Keebler, 45, a union worker in suburban Pittsburgh.Mr. Fetterman is widely considered a progressive candidate who promotes issues like raising the minimum wage, legalizing marijuana and eliminating the filibuster, and fighting for voting rights, abortion rights and protections for L.G.B.T.Q. people.“Some folks, you know, will be like, ‘The Democrats! The culture wars! What are you going to do?’ I’m like, ‘Bring it on!’” Mr. Fetterman said in York. “If you get your jollies or you get your voters excited by bullying gay and trans kids, you know, it’s time for a new line of work.”But he is not embracing the left-wing mantle. When one attendee at a campaign event told him that he would be the “tallest Squad member” — the small group of left-wing members of Congress — he quickly responded that he “won’t be a Squad member, but I will be your next United States senator.”Mr. Fetterman dismissed scrutiny of his tendency to wear hoodies and shorts. “I just dress to be comfortable,” he said. Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesRepublicans, however, see opportunities to paint Mr. Fetterman as too left-wing for centrist suburbanites. Charlie Dent, a moderate Republican and former Pennsylvania congressman who voted for President Biden, said Mr. Fetterman’s “great challenge will be that he’s identified as a Bernie Sanders Democrat,” referring to the Vermont senator and democratic socialist.And questions of general-election viability have been a central point of contention in the primary.“Conor has spent this campaign uniting all types of Democrats in a way that can actually win in November,” Abby Nassif-Murphy, Mr. Lamb’s campaign manager, said in a statement. “John Fetterman has spent this campaign running away from his own far-left positions.”Mr. Fetterman dismissed such concerns about his ability to connect with moderate swing voters, saying his polling shows him ahead in the suburbs.“Say what you will about Bernie Sanders — at least he voted with Joe Biden,” Mr. Fetterman said, seeking to link his rival Mr. Lamb with Senator Joe Manchin III, the centrist Democrat from West Virginia who has opposed a range of Democratic priorities. Mr. Lamb’s campaign has rejected those comparisons, citing his own voting record.Asked whether he rejected the Sanders Democrat label, he replied, “Of course I reject it. We just talked for 10 minutes about how we’re just running as a basic Democrat.”His style is also a point of controversy. As she stood in a Whole Foods parking lot not far from Mr. Lamb’s suburban Pittsburgh hometown, Darlene Jicomelli said she liked Mr. Fetterman, but worried that his informal look could turn off some voters. She said she was undecided on whom to vote for.“I think Conor Lamb has a better chance to win against the Republican only because maybe Fetterman is too — I think sometimes he might come off as not a polished person,” Ms. Jicomelli said.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Conor Lamb Had All The Makings of a Front-Runner in Pennsylvania. So Why Is He Struggling?

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      Representative Conor Lamb was supposed to be a Democratic rising star — a Marine veteran, former prosecutor and Pennsylvania moderate who had won in Trump territory and swing suburbs alike. Scores of Democratic officials endorsed him in his run for Senate, eager to pick up a Republican-held open seat and have him roll into Washington next year to bridge the partisan chasm.It hasn’t quite worked out that way.Mr. Lamb now heads into the state’s Democratic primary on Tuesday on a much less competitive footing than he or his supporters had hoped. He trails by double digits in polling behind John Fetterman, the shorts-wearing lieutenant governor whose outsider image has resonated with the Democratic base.Two distinct forces appear to have worked against Mr. Lamb: his campaign’s strategic missteps and his misfortune to be running at a time when Democrats, much like Republicans, are rejecting their party’s centrists.The seeming meltdown for Mr. Lamb — whose initial victories in Western Pennsylvania had been a model for President Biden’s 2020 race — reflects a frustration among Democrats nationally with politicians who promise bipartisan accord, including Mr. Biden, and who have yielded meager results in Washington. It comes as the left sees a rising Republican extremism on voting rights and abortion. Some Democrats appear more eager to elect fighters than candidates who might be tempted, like party moderates, to block their priorities.“I look at him as another Joe Manchin,” said Elen Snyder, a Democrat and member of Newtown Township’s board of supervisors in Bucks County, referring to Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, the Democrat who has stymied the White House on many issues. Her local Democratic committee interviewed Mr. Lamb but declined to endorse him.Mr. Lamb’s initial victories in Western Pennsylvania had been a model for President Biden’s 2020 race.Amr Alfiky for The New York TimesDemocratic strategists in Pennsylvania said the Lamb campaign’s missteps included running the race as if Mr. Lamb were the front-runner, failing to aggressively attack Mr. Fetterman and focusing almost exclusively on the message that Mr. Lamb was the most electable Democrat, when base voters appeared to want someone more partisan. And they said the campaign placed too much emphasis on winning endorsements from the Democratic establishment, when voters seemed to show that they did not really care.“He had rock star potential — their campaign flittered that away,” said Mike Mikus, a longtime Democratic operative in Pennsylvania and a Lamb supporter. “They ran a campaign that said, ‘Let’s stay above the fray. Everyone’s going to love it.’ But they were behind from the day he got in the race and ran the wrong campaign to close the gap.”Several strategists said the Lamb campaign, with its aversion to going negative and emphasis on endorsements from Democrats statewide, seemed modeled on elections from decades past. One operative invoked Michael Dukakis, the 1988 Democratic presidential nominee who projected reserve and lacked a killer instinct.Abby Nassif-Murphy, Mr. Lamb’s campaign manager, disputed such characterizations. She said Mr. Lamb entered the race as an underdog and grew support that was more substantial than “dubious polls” have suggested.Understand the Pennsylvania Primary ElectionThe crucial swing state will hold its primary on May 17, with key races for a U.S. Senate seat and the governorship.Hard-Liners Gain: Republican voters appear to be rallying behind far-right candidates in two pivotal races, worrying both parties about what that could mean in November.G.O.P. Senate Race: Kathy Barnette, a conservative commentator, is making a surprise late surge against big-spending rivals, Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick.Democratic Senate Race: Representative Conor Lamb had all the makings of a front-runner. It hasn’t worked out that way.Abortion Battleground: Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states where abortion access hangs in the balance with midterm elections this year.Electability Concerns: Starting with Pennsylvania, the coming weeks will offer a window into the mood of Democratic voters who are deeply worried about a challenging midterm campaign environment.“In nine months, he’s built a broad, diverse coalition of union workers, African Americans, women, men, progressives, moderates, religious leaders, teachers, firefighters, nurses, construction workers — people from all parts of Pennsylvania and all parts of the Democratic Party,” Ms. Nassif-Murphy said in a statement.Long a battleground represented by center-right or center-left statewide officials, Pennsylvania could host a matchup in the fall between far less consensus-minded candidates, especially since the leading Republicans have all professed loyalty to Donald Trump. Kathy Barnette, who has surged in the final days, has actively promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.Mr. Lamb, 37, a native of the Pittsburgh area, boasts of scores of endorsements, including from the mayors of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, officials in the all-important Philadelphia suburbs and members of the state legislature. He has the backing of the Black Clergy of Philadelphia and Vicinity, and of labor unions. Multiple Philadelphia officials endorsed him, even though a third candidate in the race, Malcolm Kenyatta, is from the city.Conor Lamb at an event earlier this month in Philadelphia hosted by the National Organization for Women, which endorsed him.Matt Rourke/Associated PressMr. Fetterman has made his lack of endorsements into a kind of badge of honor: He has long disdained glad-handing other elected officials and is an unpopular figure even in the statehouse, where he officially presides over the State Senate.Still, his progressive politics — he was an early backer of Bernie Sanders — and iconoclastic style have made him well-liked by the party base and created an online fund-raising juggernaut. Mr. Fetterman’s approval with Democrats in the state was 67 percent in a recent Franklin & Marshall College Poll, compared with 46 percent for Mr. Lamb.“Fetterman astutely ran a campaign focused on Democratic voters more than Democratic elites,” said J.J. Balaban, a Democratic strategist in the state.Mr. Fetterman has stayed ahead in the fund-raising race by soliciting small online donations.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMelinda Wedde, a 37-year-old yoga teacher who is a volunteer door-knocker for the Lamb campaign in the Pittsburgh suburbs, said it was too early to count him out. “He’s out there talking to voters every single day,” Ms. Wedde said. “I think a lot of people are still waiting to make decisions.”One advantage for Mr. Lamb in winning the endorsements from Democratic officials is that when he visited a town or city far from home, local officials often pulled in a crowd to hear him.“People can say ‘establishment officials’ all they want, but these people are the trusted people in their communities, who people elected, and they have to have some sort of favorability amongst the masses,’’ said State Representative Ryan Bizzarro, a Lamb supporter who escorted him on a trip to Erie County on Tuesday.Still, Mr. Lamb’s electability argument, the core of his pitch to party leaders, seems to have left many rank-and-file voters unmoved. And his central-casting image may be working against him.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      ‘You Don’t Know Squat!’ and Other Signs of Our High-Minded Politics

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      Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesHey, it’s spring, people — all kinds of fun things coming around the bend. Picnics! Postpandemic parties! Senatorial primaries!Hey, we’re still citizens, right? Come on. Get focused.Let’s take a look at a couple of the biggest upcoming political contests: races in Ohio and Pennsylvania. In Ohio there are approximately 10,000 people running for the Republican Senate nomination. Things can get pretty intense. One recent candidate forum featured Mike Gibbons, an investment banker, yelling “You don’t know squat!” at one of his adversaries, a former state treasurer, Josh Mandel, who retorted, “Two tours in Iraq!”Another major figure in the Ohio primary is Jane Timken, a former party official who is running as “the real Trump conservative.” A lot of Republicans are trying to hitch their wagon to that shifty star.What do you think “real Trump conservative” actually means? The conservative who’ll increase the national debt by more than a third? Or the conservative who got Vladimir Putin to toe the line by threatening to blow up churches in Moscow? That’s Rudy Giuliani’s latest Trump story, and I can’t summon the energy to wonder whether it actually happened.There’s a general Republican assumption that the key to winning a primary is getting Donald Trump’s endorsement, and yeah, that’s probably true. Unless he changes his mind and takes it back. Did you notice what happened at the end of that big, massively promoted fund-raising contest that promised the winner a trip to have dinner with him in New Orleans? The one where he claimed he’d already “booked you a ticket”?Nothing! According to The Washington Post, nobody actually got the prize. Now really, if you were one of the many donors who sent in a contribution hoping for that one-on-one, do you feel:A. Disappointed but understanding that Trump has a lot to do, what with the lawsuits and criminal conspiracy accusations and all.B. Hopeful there’ll be another contest that’ll start off with eight or 10 drinks with a Trump campaign adviser.C. Totally alienated and planning to vote only for a Republican Senate primary candidate who never mentions Trump by name.OK, I know you understand there are no such candidates. But let’s go back to those Senate primaries. The early voting states are mainly Republican, so there’s not a heck of a lot of drama on the Democratic side. Except, maybe, for Pennsylvania.The two best-known contenders there are Representative Conor Lamb and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman. Lamb won a big upset victory in a 2018 congressional election during which his opponent sneered that Lamb was “someone who’s young and idealistic, who still hopes he can change the world.” Which, at the time, I felt might go down as the most depressing political attack in modern history.Fetterman is 6-foot-8, shaves his head, sports a goatee and has a well-documented habit of showing up for public events wearing baggy shorts; he once wore them at a visit to a bridge collapse — a wardrobe choice that was notable both because he was there to meet President Biden and because it was freezing.On the Republican side, Dr. Mehmet Oz, who became famous as a health guru on Oprah Winfrey’s show, is running against about a trillion other hopefuls. The most prominent is David McCormick, who would probably like you to think of him as a former under secretary of the Treasury, rather than a former hedge fund C.E.O. who still needs to answer some questions about the Pennsylvania teachers’ retirement fund.Oz, who’s been photographed kissing his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, got a rather muted comment from Winfrey, who responded to news of his candidacy by saying, staunchly, “One of the greatest things about our democracy is that every citizen can decide to run for public office.” He may not have Oprah, but he has been endorsed by none other than Sean Hannity.Ohio is going to have to pick somebody to succeed Senator Rob Portman, a Republican who ranked fairly high on the bipartisanship meter, at least by our current pathetic standards. The major Republican candidates are all desperately courting a Trump endorsement, so it’s likely that in the future we’re going to see less hands-across-the-table from Ohio and more stop-the-steal.On the plus side, it’s been lively. During that recent debate, Gibbons rather grudgingly acknowledged that women were “probably” oppressed by being denied the right to vote but added that “there were not a lot of women that were in combat in World War I and World War II.”Mandel’s campaign issues page starts right off with “Fighting for President Trump’s America First agenda.” Gibbons calls himself “Trump tough.” And Timken, the candidate who was endorsed by Portman, is now billing herself as “the real Trump conservative.”If you’re a Democrat, there are two ways to view these Republican Senate primaries. One is to hope the nominee is somebody so nuts, he or she will have less of a chance of winning in the fall. The other is to figure that if there’s very likely going to be a Republican majority next year, we’d be better off with as many reasonable Republicans as possible.Reasonable Republicans who feel obliged to treat Donald Trump like the Second Coming. What can I tell you? We live in America, not Shangri-La.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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      The Upcoming Elections That Could Shake Both Parties

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      Election Day 2022 is still many months off, but already the primary season is shaping up to be a lulu. So much at stake. So many electrifying candidates — albeit some less evidently qualified than others. (Dr. Oz? Seriously?) And scads to be learned about the unsettling state of American democracy.High-profile races in two crucial swing states promise to be especially enlightening, offering a handy guide to the existential issues roiling the parties. The contrast could hardly be starker.In Pennsylvania, the Democratic fight for a Senate seat features an array of contenders slugging it out over a slew of knotty questions involving policy and ideology, progressivism, populism, centrism and how — or even if — to woo blue-collar whites in deep-purple places.In Georgia, the Republican battle for governor has been reduced to the singular, defining question looming over the whole party: Does the G.O.P. still have room for leaders who aren’t Trump-addled invertebrates?The outcomes of these contests will shake the parties well beyond the states in play.It’s tough to overstate the importance of the Pennsylvania Senate race. With Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican, retiring, the state is considered the Democrats’ best hope for picking up a seat and retaining their whip-thin majority. But there is much debate over what kind of candidate has the best shot at victory.The current front-runner is the lieutenant governor, John Fetterman. The former mayor of a busted steel town on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, Mr. Fetterman has been on the national political scene for a while as a champion of Rust Belt populism. His profile shot way up in the wake of last year’s elections, with his frequent media appearances smacking down Donald Trump’s election-fraud lies.When the lieutenant governor talks, it’s hard not to listen. Standing 6-foot-8, he is bald, hulking, goateed and tattooed. He wears work shirts and cargo shorts and radiates an anti-establishment, anti-elitist vibe that his supporters say helps him connect with the rural and blue-collar types who have abandoned the Democrats in recent years. He presents more as a guy you’d see storming the Capitol with his biker pals than a candidate espousing progressive policies like Medicare for all and criminal justice reform.He’s known as a bit of a loner, and not all of his positions play well with progressives. (For instance, he opposes an immediate ban on fracking.) But he was a Bernie backer in 2016, and he is not above poking at his party’s more conservative members. He vows that, if elected, he will not be “a Joe Manchin- or Kyrsten Sinema-type” centrist obstructing President Biden’s agenda.Such criticisms are seen as indirect slaps at Mr. Fetterman’s closest opponent in the race, Representative Conor Lamb. A Marine Corps veteran and former federal prosecutor, Mr. Lamb shocked and thrilled his party by winning a special election in 2018 in a conservative western district that went for Mr. Trump by nearly 20 points in 2016.Mr. Lamb is an unabashed moderate, and his politics and personal style are decidedly more buttoned-down than Mr. Fetterman’s — more high school principal than pro wrestler. He has expressed frustration with his party’s left flank for “advocating policies that are unworkable and extremely unpopular,” such as defunding the police. He speaks kindly of Mr. Manchin, with whom he did a fund-raiser this year. He contends that Mr. Fetterman leans too far left, and he characterizes himself as “a normal Democrat” who can appeal to working-class voters and suburban moderates alike.There are other, lesser-known Democrats in the mix, too. A state lawmaker, Malcolm Kenyatta, hails from North Philly. Young, Black, progressive and gay, with a working-poor background, he has pitched himself as the candidate to energize the party’s base voters, especially those who tend to sit out nonpresidential elections.Commissioner Val Arkoosh of Montgomery County is based in Philadelphia’s upscale, voter-rich suburbs. She leans liberal on policy and has been endorsed by Emily’s List. An obstetric anesthesiologist, she hopes to position herself as a sensible alternative to Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician who jumped into the Republican primary contest about two weeks ago. She is also betting that the growing threat to abortion rights will help her rally suburban women, whom she sees as a natural base.Wherever this race ultimately leads, there will be lessons for other Democrats looking to compete in tough battleground areas.The Georgia primary for governor could prove even more clarifying about the state of the G.O.P. — though not in a good way. The Republican incumbent, Brian Kemp, is running for re-election. But he is high on Mr. Trump’s drop-dead list for refusing to help overturn the results of last November’s election.Desperate to see Mr. Kemp unseated, Mr. Trump lobbied former Senator David Perdue, who also lost his re-election bid last cycle, to challenge the governor. Last week, Mr. Perdue entered the race. Mr. Trump promptly endorsed him, slagging Mr. Kemp as “a very weak governor” who “can’t win because the MAGA base — which is enormous — will never vote for him.”This contest is not about Mr. Kemp’s politics or governing chops. Both he and Mr. Perdue are staunch conservatives and fierce partisans. And Mr. Perdue is not some hard-charging outsider looking to overthrow the establishment or push the party to the right or redefine conservatism in some fresh way. In his announcement video, Mr. Perdue blamed Mr. Kemp for dividing Republicans and costing them Georgia’s two Senate seats. “This isn’t personal. It’s simple,” said Mr. Perdue. “He has failed all of us and cannot win in November.”Mr. Perdue is correct that this is simple. But it is also deeply personal — for Mr. Trump. This matchup is about the former president having reduced the G.O.P. to an extension of his own ego, redefining party loyalty as blind fealty to him and his election-fraud lies. Whatever his personal aims, Mr. Perdue is just another tool in Mr. Trump’s vendetta against Republicans he sees as insufficiently servile. The race is expected to be bloody, expensive and highly divisive — all the things parties aim to avoid in a primary.The G.O.P. is already hemorrhaging Trump-skeptical, independent-minded officials at all levels. Just this month, Charlie Baker, the popular Republican governor of deep-blue Massachusetts, announced that he would not run for re-election. If Georgia Republicans take the bait and throw Mr. Kemp over for Mr. Trump’s preferred lickspittle, it will send a clear message to the party’s dwindling pockets of principle and rationality: Get out. Now. While you still have a soul.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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      Elect Democrats in 2022, Write Miles Taylor and Christine Todd Whitman

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      After Donald Trump’s defeat, there was a measure of hope among Republicans who opposed him that control of the G.O.P. would be up for grabs, and that conservative pragmatists could take back the party. But it’s become obvious that political extremists maintain a viselike grip on the national G.O.P., the state parties and the process for fielding and championing House and Senate candidates in next year’s elections.Rational Republicans are losing the G.O.P. civil war. And the only near-term way to battle pro-Trump extremists is for all of us to team up on key races and overarching political goals with our longtime political opponents: the Democratic Party.Earlier this year we joined more than 150 conservatives — including former governors, senators, congressmen, cabinet secretaries, and party leaders — in calling for the Republican Party to divorce itself from Trumpism or else lose our support, perhaps by forming a new political party. Rather than return to founding ideals, G.O.P. leaders in the House and in many states have now turned belief in conspiracy theories and lies about stolen elections into a litmus test for membership and running for office.Breaking away from the G.O.P. and starting a new center-right party may prove in time to be the last resort if Trump-backed candidates continue to win Republican primaries. We and our allies have debated the option of starting a new party for months and will continue to explore its viability in the long run. Unfortunately, history is littered with examples of failed attempts at breaking the two-party system, and in most states today the laws do not lend themselves easily to the creation and success of third parties.So for now, the best hope for the rational remnants of the G.O.P. is for us to form an alliance with Democrats to defend American institutions, defeat far-right candidates, and elect honorable representatives next year — including a strong contingent of moderate Democrats.It’s a strategy that has worked. Mr. Trump lost re-election in large part because Republicans nationwide defected, with 7 percent who voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 flipping to support Joe Biden, a margin big enough to have made some difference in key swing states.Even still, we don’t take this position lightly. Many of us have spent years battling the left over government’s role in society, and we will continue to have disagreements on fundamental issues like infrastructure spending, taxes and national security. Similarly, some Democrats will be wary of any pact with the political right.But we agree on something more foundational — democracy. We cannot tolerate the continued hijacking of a major U.S. political party by those who seek to tear down our Republic’s guardrails or who are willing to put one man’s interests ahead of the country. We cannot tolerate the leaders of the G.O.P. — in 2022 or in the presidential election in 2024 — refusing to accept the results of elections or undermining the certification of those results should they lose.To that end, concerned conservatives must join forces with Democrats on the most essential near-term imperative: blocking Republican leaders from regaining control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Some of us have worked in the past with the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, but as long as he embraces Mr. Trump’s lies, he cannot be trusted to lead the chamber, especially in the run-up to the next presidential election.And while many of us support and respect the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, it is far from clear that he can keep Mr. Trump’s allies at bay, which is why the Senate may be safer remaining as a divided body rather than under Republican control.For these reasons, we will endorse and support bipartisan-oriented moderate Democrats in difficult races, like Representative Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, where they will undoubtedly be challenged by Trump-backed candidates. And we will defend a small nucleus of courageous Republicans, such as Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Peter Meijer and others who are unafraid to speak the truth.Pool photo by Chip SomodevillaIn addition to these leaders, this week we are coming together around a political idea — the Renew America Movement — and will release a slate of nearly two dozen Democratic, independent and Republican candidates we will support in 2022.These “renewers” must be protected and elected if we want to restore a common-sense coalition in Washington. But merely holding the line will be insufficient. To defeat the extremist insurgency in our political system and pressure the Republican Party to reform, voters and candidates must be willing to form nontraditional alliances.For disaffected Republicans, this means an openness to backing centrist Democrats. It will be difficult for lifelong G.O.P. members to do this — akin to rooting for the other team out of fear that your own is ruining the sport entirely — but democracy is not a game, which is why when push comes to shove, patriotic conservatives should put country over party.One of those races is in Pennsylvania, where a bevy of pro-Trump candidates are vying to replace the outgoing Republican senator, Pat Toomey. The only prominent moderate in the G.O.P. primary, Craig Snyder, recently bowed out, and if no one takes his place, it will increase the urgency for Republican voters to stand behind a Democrat, such as centrist Representative Conor Lamb, who is running for the seat.For Democrats, this similarly means being open to conceding that there are certain races where progressives simply cannot win and acknowledging that it makes more sense to throw their lot in with a center-right candidate who can take out a more radical conservative.Utah is a prime example, where the best hope of defeating Senator Mike Lee, a Republican who defended Mr. Trump’s refusal to concede the election, is not a Democrat but an independent and former Republican, Evan McMullin, a member of our group, who announced last week that he was entering the race.We need more candidates like him prepared to challenge politicians who have sought to subvert our Constitution from the comfort of their “safe seats” in Congress, and we are encouraged to note that additional independent-minded leaders are considering entering the fray in places like Texas, Arizona, and North Carolina, targeting seats that Trumpist Republicans think are secure.More broadly, this experiment in “coalition campaigning” — uniting concerned conservatives and patriotic progressives — could remake American politics and serve as an antidote to hyper-partisanship and federal gridlock.To work, it will require trust-building between both camps, especially while fighting side-by-side in the toughest races around the country by learning to collaborate on voter outreach, sharing sensitive polling data, and synchronizing campaign messaging.A compact between the center-right and the left may seem like an unnatural fit, but in the battle for the soul of America’s political system, we cannot retreat to our ideological corners.A great deal depends on our willingness to consider new paths of political reform. From the halls of Congress to our own communities, the fate of our Republic might well rest on forming alliances with those we least expected.Miles Taylor (@MilesTaylorUSA) served at the Department of Homeland Security from 2017 to 2019, including as chief of staff, and was the anonymous author of a 2018 guest essay for The Times criticizing President Donald Trump’s leadership. Christine Todd Whitman (@GovCTW) was the Republican governor of New Jersey from 1994 to 2001 and served as E.P.A. administrator under President George W. Bush.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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      Conor Lamb Enters 2022 Pennsylvania Senate Race

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      Democrats sense their best chance to expand their slim hold on the Senate. Republican contenders are outdoing one another courting the “Super-MAGA-Trumpy” right wing.PITTSBURGH — Representative Conor Lamb thinks he knows what it takes for Democrats to win statewide in Pennsylvania.He looks to President Biden, whose narrow victory in the state — called four days after Election Day — put him over the top and in the White House.“People will use the word moderate,’’ Mr. Lamb said at his home in Pittsburgh’s South Hills on Thursday. “We’re a swing state. I don’t think we’re too far ideologically one way or the other.’’On Friday, at a union hall on Pittsburgh’s Hot Metal Street, Mr. Lamb announced his long-expected entry into Pennsylvania’s 2022 Senate race, vowing to “fight for every single vote across our state on every single square inch of ground,” and presenting himself as just middle-of-the-road enough to get elected statewide. The question is whether he is liberal enough to win the Democratic primary.A Marine veteran and former prosecutor, Mr. Lamb, 37, is likely the last major candidate to enter what are expected to be competitive, knockdown primary battles in both parties for the seat now held by Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican who is retiring.It is the only open seat now in Republican hands in a state that Mr. Biden carried, and Democrats see it as their best opportunity to expand their hairbreadth control of the Senate, where the 50-50 partisan split leaves Vice President Kamala Harris to cast deciding votes. A single additional seat would mean a simple Democratic majority in the Senate, and at least a sliver of insulation for the White House from the whims of individual senators who now hold enormous sway, like the moderates Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.Mr. Lamb rose to prominence in 2018 when he won a special House election in a district that Mr. Trump had carried by double digits. He won twice more in a redrawn but still politically mixed district, staking out independent positions that included voting against Representative Nancy Pelosi for House Speaker. But while he bills himself as the strongest potential Democratic nominee precisely because of what he calls his Bidenesque, centrist approach, aspects of his record, including on guns and marijuana, are out of step with many primary voters.“Progressives are the most active in the party, and that makes it tough for Lamb,’’ said Brendan McPhillips, who ran Mr. Biden’s 2020 Pennsylvania campaign and is not working for a Senate candidate.Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, center, hopes to appeal to some working-class white voters who drifted over to support Mr. Trump.Jacqueline Dormer/Republican-Herald, via Associated PressThe early favorite of progressives and presumed front-runner for the Democratic nomination is Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, something of a folk hero to the national left, with some 400,000 Twitter followers who relish his posts in favor of “legal weed” and his frequent swipes at Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema for not “voting like Democrats.” As the 14-year mayor of Braddock, a poor community outside Pittsburgh, Mr. Fetterman tattooed the dates of local homicides on his arm. As lieutenant governor, he has fought to pardon longtime nonviolent inmates.Known for a casual working wardrobe of untucked tradesmen’s shirts and jeans, or even shorts, and for his imposing presence — he is 6-foot-8 with a shaved head — Mr. Fetterman, 51, hopes to appeal to some working-class white voters who drifted over to support Mr. Trump. He has lapped the field in fund-raising, pulling in $6.5 million this year.Still, Mr. Fetterman’s challenge is the flip side of Mr. Lamb’s: He could win the May primary but be seen as too liberal for Pennsylvania’s general-election voters. “He’s the candidate I think many Republicans would love to face,’’ said Jessica Taylor, an analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.A potential liability in the primary also looms for Mr. Fetterman in a 2013 incident, when he was mayor of Braddock. After hearing what he took to be gunshots, Mr. Fetterman stopped a Black jogger and held him at gunpoint until police arrived. The man turned out to be unarmed and was released. Mr. Fetterman addressed the episode in February, explaining he had made “split-second decisions” when he believed a nearby school might be in danger.Still, with police and vigilante violence against Black men a highly charged issue for Democratic voters, some party officials and strategists expressed fears that, if nominated, Mr. Fetterman could depress Black turnout. An outside group that supports the election of Black candidates has already run a radio ad in Philadelphia attacking Mr. Fetterman over the incident.“It’s most certainly an issue,” said Christopher Borick, a political scientist and pollster at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa. “It hasn’t gone away and it keeps resurfacing. It raises red flags.”In a statement, Mr. Fetterman’s campaign noted that he had been “overwhelmingly re-elected” four months after the incident in Braddock, “a town that is 80 percent Black,” because voters there “know John, and they know this had nothing to do with race.” It added that he had gone on to “run and win statewide, and he is the only candidate running for this Senate seat who has done so.”Malcolm Kenyatta would be the first Black and first openly gay nominee if he wins the primary.Jose F. Moreno/The Philadelphia Inquirer, via Associated PressIf Democratic voters balk at Mr. Fetterman and Mr. Lamb, a path could open for alternative candidates, including Val Arkoosh, a county official in the electorally key Philadelphia suburbs and the only woman in the race, and Malcolm Kenyatta, a telegenic young state lawmaker from North Philadelphia.Mr. Kenyatta, who would be the state’s first Black and first openly gay Senate nominee if he won, has traveled extensively seeking local endorsements but lags behind his rivals in fund-raising.Ms. Arkoosh, a physician and the chair of the Board of Commissioners in Montgomery County, the state’s third largest county, has the endorsement of Emily’s List, which backs Democratic women who support abortion rights. Together, Mr. Fetterman, Mr. Lamb and Ms. Arkoosh significantly out-raised their Republican counterparts in the quarter ending in June.While Democrats see a model in Mr. Biden’s 81,000-vote victory in the state last year, which swept up suburban swing voters appalled by Mr. Trump, Republicans are currently playing almost exclusively to the Make America Great Again base, retelling the fable of a stolen 2020 election.There is a proven path to statewide victories for Republicans in Pennsylvania, one taken by two G.O.P. candidates last year who were elected treasurer and auditor general. They did so by running ahead of Mr. Trump in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, where many college-educated voters had traditionally supported Republicans but were repelled by the bullying, divisive former president.Val Arkoosh, a county official in the Philadelphia suburbs, is the only woman in the Democratic primary.Gene J. Puskar/Associated PressMr. Toomey, the retiring Republican senator, warned recently, “Candidates will have to run on ideas and principles, not on allegiance to a man.’’But few of the Republicans vying to succeed him seem to have listened.Sean Parnell, a former Army Ranger who lost a House race last year to Mr. Lamb, sued to throw out all 2.6 million Pennsylvania mail-in votes, a case the U.S. Supreme Court rejected, and has said he supports an Arizona-style audit of Pennsylvania’s 2020 ballots. Donald Trump Jr. has endorsed his Senate bid. And Jeff Bartos, a real estate developer and major party donor from the Philadelphia area who was expected to appeal to suburban voters, has similarly courted the Trump base, calling for a “full forensic audit” of Pennsylvania’s election, though multiple courts threw out suits claiming fraud or official misconduct.Neither Mr. Parnell nor Mr. Bartos raised as much money in the recent quarter as a dark-horse candidate, Kathy Barnette, a former financial executive who lost a congressional race in Philadelphia’s Main Line last year. Ms. Barnette has pushed claims of voter fraud on the far-right cable outlets Newsmax and OAN. A longtime Republican consultant in the state, Christopher Nicholas, said there were three lanes available to G.O.P. candidates: “Super-MAGA-Trumpy, Trump-adjacent, and not-so-much-Trump.”Lately, he said, almost everyone has elbowed into the “Super-MAGA-Trumpy” lane.“As a Republican, you have to watch how far to the right you go to win the primary, that it doesn’t do irreparable harm to them in the general election,’’ Mr. Nicholas said.Mr. Lamb faces a similar challenge as a moderate in the Democratic primary.He is sure to be hit hard over some past positions, including his opposition to an assault weapons ban in 2019 and his vote the previous year to extend permanently the Trump administration’s individual tax cuts.More recently, Mr. Lamb has stayed more in step with his party: In April, he endorsed Mr. Biden’s call to ban future assault weapons sales; in May, he endorsed ending the filibuster.Mr. Lamb said in an interview that the assault on the Capitol had been a turning point for him, particularly in how Republican leaders had come around to embrace Mr. Trump’s false charge that the 2020 vote had been rigged.He alluded to that again in his announcement speech on Friday: “If they will take such a big lie and place it at the center of the party,” he said of G.O.P. leaders, “you cannot expect them to tell the truth about anything else.” More