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      Inflation Remains Voters’ Top Concern. Can Republicans Keep Their Focus?

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      Democrats and Republicans are running parallel campaigns, with one party emphasizing abortion and democracy, the other inflation and the economy — and both talking past each other.Zach Nunn, an Iowa Republican challenging one of the House’s most vulnerable Democrats, had been talking for months about rising prices when a Texas congressman two weeks ago invited him to visit the Mexican border — to see the fentanyl confiscated, hear tales of dying migrants and witness overwhelmed border agents.Mr. Nunn took it all in, he said. Then, he went back to a district that stretches from Des Moines to the Missouri line to talk about inflation some more.“You know, from knocking on 10,000 doors, what people are interested in,” Mr. Nunn said. It would not matter, he said, if he were speaking in Clarinda, Iowa — a city of 5,300 — or West Des Moines, a city of 70,000. “People are all talking about what is going on with the economy,” he said.In the six-month primary season that came to a close on Tuesday, issues like abortion, crime, immigration, the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and Donald J. Trump have risen and fallen, but nothing has dislodged inflation and the economy from the top of voters’ minds. On Wednesday, polls out of Wisconsin and Georgia again found inflation to be the issue of greatest concern.A New York Times/Siena poll released on Friday had bright spots for Democrats, but 49 percent of respondents said that “economic issues such as jobs, taxes or the cost of living” were likely to determine their votes in November, compared with 31 percent who saw “societal issues such as abortion, guns or democracy” as decisive. And 52 percent of registered voters said they agreed with Republicans on the economy, versus 38 percent who said they agreed with Democrats.“People are all talking about what is going on with the economy,” said Zach Nunn, a Republican candidate for a House seat in Iowa.Bryon Houlgrave/The Des Moines Register, via Associated PressAnd Republican candidates aren’t letting go.“Inflation is now high enough to rob every working American of a month’s pay over the course of a year,” said Tom Barrett, a Michigan state senator challenging Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat, in a Republican-leaning district around Lansing.Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, released her first advertisement of the general election on Thursday — and it focused solely on inflation.“I’m Nancy Mace, and I have had it with crazy inflation,” she says to the camera as she counts up the cost of cooking an eggs-and-bacon breakfast. (Milk, $4 a gallon, a dozen eggs, nearly $4, and bacon, $8 a pack.)For all the losers in an inflationary economy, there are also winners: people with large mortgages or student loan burdens that shrink away in real terms; workers whose wages suddenly rise, sometimes enough to keep pace with prices; frugal seniors who enjoy Social Security cost-of-living increases tied to the inflation rate and higher interest rates on their savings accounts.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Echoing Trump: Six G.O.P. nominees for governor and the Senate in critical midterm states, all backed by former President Donald J. Trump, would not commit to accepting this year’s election results.Times/Siena Poll: Our second survey of the 2022 election cycle found Democrats remain unexpectedly competitive in the battle for Congress, while G.O.P. dreams of a major realignment among Latino voters have failed to materialize.Ohio Senate Race: The contest between Representative Tim Ryan, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance, appears tighter than many once expected.Pennsylvania Senate Race: In one of his most extensive interviews since having a stroke, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee, said he was fully capable of handling a campaign that could decide control of the Senate.Even so, inflation has had outsize potency as a political issue for at least a century — and since hyperinflation after World War I helped usher in authoritarianism across Europe, few issues have been quite so politically destabilizing.In the mid-1990s, Robert J. Shiller, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at Yale who was puzzled by the power of inflation as a disruptive force, surveyed people in the United States, Germany and Brazil to determine why inflation had always produced so much anger, wounded national pride and a feeling that an unwritten social contract between citizens and their government had been broken.Facing deep feelings of insecurity, anxiety and unfairness, “not a single respondent volunteered anywhere on the questionnaire that he or she benefited from inflation,” he marveled.Representative Nancy Mace released her first ad of the general election last week, focusing on the economy. “I’m Nancy Mace, and I have had it with crazy inflation,” she says in the ad.Allison Joyce/Getty ImagesFor Republicans seeking control of Congress, that history still could prove determinative, even as Democrats try to center their campaigns on abortion rights and democratic pluralism and Republican strategists test other themes, like crime, the border and Democratic “radicalism.”Representative Kim Schrier, a Democrat in the suburbs of Seattle who is locked in a tossup contest for re-election, has gone after her Republican opponent, Matt Larkin, on abortion, using her background as a physician to press a persona of earnest trustworthiness. Democratic campaign officials in Washington, D.C., have accused Mr. Larkin of questioning the election results of 2020 and refusing to acknowledge President Biden as legitimately elected.Mr. Larkin’s response? The price of eggs, “up 52 percent in Washington State,” he said Thursday, and milk, “way, way up in the Eighth District.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Voters, he said in an interview, “are very, very concerned.”And, in a country where one party controls the House, the Senate and the White House — and in a state where Democrats control pretty much everything — “there’s also a sense that the Democrats in general are doing this,” Mr. Larkin added.That, too, is consistent with economic history: Citizens of countries suffering from inflation have routinely sought to assign blame — to the government, to greedy companies or to politicians. Inflationary periods often yield labor strife, as workers and unions press for wage increases to keep up with rising prices, point fingers at “price-gouging” companies and, more than anything, rage at those in power.Labor leaders marching against inflation at a demonstration in Buenos Aires in August.Juan Mabromata/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesRichard M. Nixon’s 1968 victory over Hubert Humphrey is popularly attributed to the Vietnam War and domestic unrest, but inflation was a “top three” issue, even though price increases were a relatively mild 4.27 percent, said Jason Furman, a Harvard economist with deep connections to the national Democratic Party.Gerald R. Ford’s defeat in 1976 is often ascribed to the hangover from Watergate, but his WIN (Whip Inflation Now) buttons became an object of ridicule in a year in which inflation was still pushing 6 percent. Four years later, Jimmy Carter’s dreams of a second term were vaporized by 13.5 percent inflation.And in 1982, as the Federal Reserve was engineering a recession to finally get control of price gains and Ronald Reagan was absorbing the blame, Democrats beat Republicans by nearly 12 percentage points in the midterm elections — and padded their House majority by 27 seats.“From bitter historical experience, we know how quickly inflation destroys confidence in the reliability of political institutions and ends up endangering democracy,” Helmut Kohl, the chancellor of Germany, said in 1995, harking back to the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic.In 2022, Republicans like State Senator Jen Kiggans, who is challenging Representative Elaine Luria in southeast Virginia, are using inflation not only to go after the party in power, but also to deflect Democratic charges of “radicalism” by portraying themselves as ordinary family folks, in touch with consumer reality.For voters, however, the signals from the actual economy are mixed. The official inflation report last Tuesday showed that prices in August rose 8.3 percent from a year earlier, only slightly better than July’s 8.5 percent. But because of rapidly falling gasoline prices, overall consumer costs from the month before rose a barely noticeable 0.1 percent. Prices at the pump, the most visible inflationary signal to consumers, are expected to continue their fall in the weeks leading up to the election. That could offer at least psychological relief to consumers — and Democrats — as other cost-of-living indicators like food and rent send stock traders and the Federal Reserve running for shelter.Gasoline prices are expected to continue falling in the weeks leading up to the November elections.Carlos Bernate for The New York Times“If you’re going to have 8 percent inflation over the year before up to the election, you’d like to have the last three months at zero, so the sequencing is about as good as it could be” for Democrats, Mr. Furman said.Mr. Barrett conceded that these fresh signals could blunt the political impact. “To some degree, they boiled the frog, then turned the temperature down a notch on the stove,” he said, “but it’s still raging hot.”And his Democratic opponent, Ms, Slotkin, has taken pains to address the issue, too, ticking off legislation and administrative actions that she said she supported to address inflation. They include suspending the federal gas tax, releasing oil from the strategic petroleum reserve, pressing companies on “price gouging” and granting Medicare the authority to negotiate drug prices.“Certainly if there was a silver bullet to fix it, it would have been fired,” she said, adding, “leaders need to do all they can — not just use it as a political issue.”Republicans say that, as children go back to school, higher prices on clothes, food and school supplies will come more into focus, and cold weather will bring the sticker shock of soaring heating bills. The disorienting power of price increases is all the more potent, experts say, because Americans have not weathered them in four decades.Democrats hope to turn voters’ minds elsewhere. On the lengthy “issues” web page of Mr. Nunn’s opponent, Representative Cindy Axne, the word inflation does not appear, though she does mention inflation in one campaign ad as being among a litany of travails hitting Iowans recently. In another ad, Ms. Axne acknowledges that “rising costs are hurting Iowa families everywhere.”Representative Cindy Axne mentioned inflation in one campaign ad, among a list of problems facing Iowans.Cheriss May for The New York TimesOn Friday, Emilia Sykes, the Democratic candidate for an open House seat in northeast Ohio, released a new ad saying she has “a plan to lower costs,” though she avoided the word inflation.Elsewhere, Democrats are focusing almost exclusively on abortion, democracy and the overall theme that Republicans who have undermined the integrity of elections and democratic institutions cannot be trusted with power.In that sense, the parties are entering the final sprint to Nov. 8 largely talking past each other.But the unique ability of inflation to anger voters and undermine authorities in power should not be underestimated, economists say. Wage increases, though stronger than they have been in years, have not kept pace with inflation this year, but in 2021, when voters’ anger showed up most clearly in polling, average family incomes “far exceeded” price gains, thanks in large part to temporary tax cuts and income supplements approved in successive pandemic-relief measures, said Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist.“Average actual real incomes went up, not down,” he said, “so it’s still a puzzle.”For Republicans, there is no mystery, only the challenge of staying on the issue as Democrats try to direct voters’ attention anywhere else.“This stuff is real,” Mr. Barrett said on Thursday. “The Democrats are whistling past the graveyard.” More

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      Winning When Trump Is Against You: A How-To Guide

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      Are you a Republican who broke with Donald Trump but hope to win your upcoming primary?Maybe you said that Joe Biden is the duly elected president, condemned Trump’s demagogy on Jan. 6 or merely suggested that he tone down his social media posts.This handy guide is for you.So far, Trump’s preferred candidates have won primaries for Senate seats in Georgia, Ohio, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. One of those candidates, J.D. Vance, overcame his past comments ripping Trump as “cultural heroin” by undergoing a wholesale reinvention of his political persona.Others, like Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of Georgia, have defied him and survived, without such a radical about-face.So what explains why some Trump critics succeed and others don’t? Here, based on a review of the results of this year’s primaries and conversations with roughly a dozen Republican strategists, are a few lessons:1. Do not vote to impeach him.This much is clear at the midway point of this year’s election calendar: The Republican base regards having voted to impeach Trump as the ultimate act of betrayal.The former president has already induced the retirements of four of the 10 House Republicans who supported his impeachment in 2021, while helping to oust another — Representative Tom Rice, who lost his coastal South Carolina seat on Tuesday by more than 25 percentage points.One impeacher, Representative David Valadao, is clinging to second place ahead of a Trump-friendly challenger in his district in California, where the top two vote winners of any party move forward to the general election.Four others — Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dan Newhouse of Washington, and Peter Meijer of Michigan — have yet to face the music.Only one of the seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump over Jan. 6 is running for re-election this year: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. In her case, a new voting system engineered by her allies could help her fend off a challenge from Kelly Tshibaka, a former federal government official who has the former president’s backing.2. Choose your location wisely.Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who did not vote to impeach Trump, made the former president’s enemies list for criticizing him on television after the events of Jan. 6, 2021. He called her a “grandstanding loser” and mocked her for filming a video praising him in front of Trump Tower in New York.But she never got fundamentally out of step with the South Carolina Lowcountry, a libertarian-leaning area with a history of electing iconoclastic lawmakers. Mace grew up in Goose Creek, just outside Charleston. That local familiarity gave her an intuitive feel for navigating issues like offshore drilling, which is unpopular in the coastal region.Understand the June 14 Primary ElectionsTakeaways: Republicans who embraced former President Donald J. Trump’s election lies did well in Nevada, while his allies had a mixed night in South Carolina. Here’s what else we learned.Winners and Losers: Here is a rundown of some of the most notable wins and losses.Election Deniers Prevail: Republicans who deny the 2020 election’s result are edging closer to wielding power over the next one.Nevada Races: Trump-inspired candidates captured key wins in the swing state, setting the stage for a number of tossup contests against embattled Democrats.Texas Special Election: Mayra Flores, a Republican, flipped a House seat in the Democratic stronghold of South Texas. Her win may only be temporary, however.“She did a much better job of staying aligned with her district,” said Mick Mulvaney, a former South Carolina congressman who was White House chief of staff during Trump’s first impeachment.Rice, by contrast, “almost took the attitude to dare people to throw him out,” Mulvaney said — standing emphatically by his impeachment vote despite representing a district that Trump won by more than 18 percentage points in 2020.The backbone of Rice’s district is fast-growing Horry County, a historically conservative region filled with “angry retirees,” according to Chip Felkel, a Republican strategist based in Greenville.But just down the coast in Mace’s more upscale district, Trump outperformed his approval ratings in 2020 — a sign, Felkel said, that there are “a lot of people who like Trump’s policies but don’t like Trump.”3. Speaking of which: Don’t break with the base on policy.Mace has been described as a moderate, but that’s a misnomer: She holds a 95 percent lifetime rating from the Club for Growth and a 94 percent score from Heritage Action, two groups that gauge lawmakers’ fealty to conservative principles. Rice scored 83 percent on both indexes — dangerous territory in the deep-red Pee Dee region of South Carolina.Although the Club for Growth stayed out of her race, Mace did benefit from $160,000 in spending from Americans for Prosperity, another conservative outside group funded by the Koch brothers. No national outside groups spent money on Rice’s behalf.Even minor heresies, like Mace’s support for legalizing marijuana, underscored her carefully cultivated image as an independent thinker and gave her a useful measure of distance from Trump.“Nancy polished the ring; she didn’t kiss the ring,” Felkel said.4. Run against a weak opponent.Russell Fry, the state representative who defeated Rice on Tuesday, was a known quantity in the state who happily played the part of a generic pro-Trump Republican.Katie Arrington, a former state lawmaker and Pentagon official who won Trump’s endorsement against Mace despite his private doubts about her candidacy, is another story.Voters certainly heard about the former president’s preference: At least 75 percent of voters in the district were aware that he had endorsed Arrington, according to the Mace campaign’s internal polling.Russell Fry’s election night event in Myrtle Beach, S.C. He happily played the part of a generic pro-Trump Republican against Representative Tom Rice, who voted in favor of impeachment.Jason Lee/The Sun News, via Associated PressBut Mace and her allies pummeled Arrington with ads accusing her of voting to raise gasoline taxes as a member of the state legislature, noting that her security clearance had been suspended while she was a defense official in the Trump administration and calling her “just as bad as Biden.”Mulvaney, who campaigned for Mace, noted an additional factor: that Arrington had lost the district to a Democrat in 2018.“Trump doesn’t like losers, and that’s what Katie was,” Mulvaney said.5. Get yourself a strong local surrogate.Although Arrington had Trump in her corner, Mace had the backing of Nikki Haley, a popular two-term former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador under Trump who now lives in the district.It proved enormously valuable. Like Mace, Haley has toed a careful line toward Trump, criticizing him on occasion but never fundamentally breaking with her former boss. She has an 82 percent approval rating among South Carolina Republicans, according to a poll conducted in May, just a few points below Trump.Haley raised more than $400,000 for Mace and appeared at two of her campaign rallies, in addition to recording get-out-the-vote videos and robocalls and sending texts. She also cut a television ad calling Mace “a fighter,” a “strong, pro-life mom” and a “tax-cutter” that ran for six weeks, airing 446 times in two ad markets. Mace’s campaign also mentioned Haley’s endorsement in its closing TV spot.Rice made the puzzling decision to invite Paul Ryan, the former House speaker, to stump for him in the closing weeks of the campaign. Ryan, who tangled often with Trump before quitting politics to join the board of Fox News and starting a small think tank, hails from Janesville, Wis. — more than 800 miles from Myrtle Beach.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterm races so important? More

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      5 Takeaways From Tuesday’s Key Primary Races

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      From Las Vegas to Lewiston, Maine, the contours of critical midterm contests came into focus on Tuesday as Americans voted in major federal and state races across five states.In Nevada, which will be home to marquee House, Senate and governor’s races this fall, Republicans elevated several candidates who have embraced former President Donald J. Trump’s lies about a stolen election — even as candidates he endorsed had a mixed night in South Carolina, where he had sought to exact vengeance on two House incumbents.In Maine, a familiar set of characters moved into highly competitive general election races for governor and for a House seat that may be one of the most hard-fought in the nation. But in Texas, Republicans flipped a Rio Grande Valley seat — albeit only through the end of the year — as the party works to make inroads with Hispanic voters.Here are a few takeaways from Tuesday’s primaries:Election deniers prevail in Nevada.Republican candidates who have embraced Mr. Trump’s lies about election fraud were nominated for several positions of significant power in one of the most competitive political battlegrounds in the nation.They include Jim Marchant, an organizer of a network of 2020 election deniers. Mr. Marchant, who prevailed in Nevada’s Republican primary for secretary of state, is also a failed congressional candidate who declared himself a “victim of election fraud” after being defeated in 2020, and has said his “No. 1 priority will be to overhaul the fraudulent election system in Nevada.”Mr. Marchant was among an alternate slate of pro-Trump electors who sought to overturn President Biden’s victory in Nevada in 2020, and he has said he would have refused to certify the election had he been secretary of state at the time.Adam Laxalt, Nevada’s former attorney general who won his party’s Senate nomination on Tuesday with Mr. Trump’s backing, was one of the leaders of the Trump campaign’s effort to overturn the results in Nevada.Adam Laxalt during a campaign stop in Moapa Valley, Nev., on Saturday.Joe Buglewicz for The New York TimesAnd in the Republican primary to challenge Representative Steven Horsford, a Democrat, the two top finishers with 40 percent of the vote counted, according to The Associated Press, were Annie Black, a state lawmaker who said she was outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and Sam Peters, who has suggested he would not have voted to certify the 2020 election results and questioned the legitimacy of Mr. Biden’s victory.Their victories come as a bipartisan House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol has showcased testimony from Mr. Trump’s onetime top advisers discussing Mr. Trump’s claims.Understand the June 14 Primary ElectionsTakeaways: Republicans who embraced former President Donald J. Trump’s election lies did well in Nevada, while his allies had a mixed night in South Carolina. Here’s what else we learned.Winners and Losers: Here is a rundown of some of the most notable wins and losses.Election Deniers Prevail: Republicans who deny the 2020 election’s result are edging closer to wielding power over the next one.Nevada Races: Trump-inspired candidates captured key wins in the swing state, setting the stage for a number of tossup contests against embattled Democrats.Texas Special Election: Mayra Flores, a Republican, flipped a House seat in the Democratic stronghold of South Texas. Her win may only be temporary, however.“He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff,” William P. Barr, the former attorney general, told the panel.Critical Nevada races come into focus.Nevada cemented its status as a focal point of the political universe on Tuesday, as several marquee general election contests took shape that will have significant implications for the balance of power in Washington.Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, will face off against Mr. Laxalt, who comes from a prominent political family. His positions on issues like election integrity may run afoul of some voters in a state that hasn’t supported a Republican for president since 2004.Supporters of Joe Lombardo at his election watch party in Las Vegas Tuesday night.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesBut Ms. Cortez Masto may be the Senate’s most vulnerable Democratic incumbent. And there are signs that Nevada, which currently has among the highest gas prices in the nation, may be notably difficult terrain for Democrats this year, as they grapple with a brutally challenging political environment shaped by issues including soaring inflation and President Biden’s weak approval rating.Those dynamics will also influence the governor’s race, as Gov. Steve Sisolak prepares for a challenge from Joe Lombardo, the Clark County sheriff. And all three of the state’s incumbent Democratic House members are running in highly competitive seats.South Carolina shows the power, and some limits, of a Trump endorsement.After the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, two House members from South Carolina broke with most of their fellow Republicans to lash Mr. Trump as complicit in the assault. On Tuesday, only one of them prevailed over a Trump-backed primary challenger.Representative Nancy Mace, who’d said she held Mr. Trump “accountable for the events that transpired, for the attack on our Capitol,” defeated her challenger, Katie Arrington, a former state lawmaker. But Representative Tom Rice, who stunned many observers with his vote to impeach Mr. Trump, lost to State Representative Russell Fry as he campaigned in a more conservative district.Russell Fry with supporters in Myrtle Beach, S.C., Tuesday night after winning the Republican primary over Representative Tom Rice.Jason Lee/The Sun News, via Associated PressA Trump endorsement is not always dispositive, as other primary election results this year have demonstrated. But the former president’s continued sway over the Republican base is undeniable. And openly challenging him remains politically dangerous for Republican candidates, as several who voted to impeach him have experienced.Despite her initial sharp criticism of Mr. Trump, Ms. Mace — who did not vote to impeach — went on to make overtures to Trump loyalists, including by issuing an appeal from outside Trump Tower as part of her broader campaign pitch.Mr. Rice, by contrast, appeared to grow sharper in his condemnations of the former president in the final stretch of the race.“It’s not about my voting record. It’s not about my support of Trump. It’s not about my ideology. It’s not because this other guy’s any good,” Mr. Rice said. “There’s only one reason why he’s doing this. And it’s just for revenge.”Making that argument proved fruitless for Mr. Rice. On Tuesday, he became the first Republican who voted for impeachment to be defeated in a primary.Republicans win in the Rio Grande Valley and call it a bellwether.Republicans are seeking to make inroads with Hispanic voters this year after doing far better than expected in parts of South Texas in 2020 — and they immediately moved to cast a special election victory in the Rio Grande Valley on Tuesday as a bellwether for the region.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterm races so important? More

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      Nancy Mace Holds Off a Trump-Endorsed Challenger in South Carolina

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      CHARLESTON, S.C. — Representative Nancy Mace, a Republican who clashed with former President Donald J. Trump after the Jan. 6 attack, fended off a primary challenge on Tuesday from Katie Arrington, a former state representative who had Mr. Trump’s backing. The race was called by The Associated Press.Ms. Mace played up her background as a onetime Waffle House waitress and the first woman to graduate from the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina. Billing herself as a “new voice” for the Republican Party, Ms. Mace, 44, championed a range of issues in Congress, including veterans’ rights and marijuana legalization. Her Lowcountry district, which stretches along South Carolina’s southeastern coast from Charleston to just beyond Hilton Head Island, favors Republicans.Ms. Mace drew Mr. Trump’s ire a few days into her first term after she condemned his role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. His false claims about the election being stolen, she said in interviews, contributed to the riots and “wiped out” the Trump administration’s accomplishments.Mr. Trump subsequently labeled Ms. Mace a “RINO,” a pejorative acronym meaning Republican in name only, and endorsed Ms. Arrington.In an effort to re-enter his good graces, Ms. Mace traveled to New York in February to film a video in front of Trump Tower that promoted her loyalty to the former president.But Mr. Trump did not heed her entreaties. He headlined a rally weeks later for Ms. Arrington and State Representative Russell Fry, who is challenging another South Carolina representative, Tom Rice. Mr. Rice was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump after the Capitol riot.Mr. Trump heavily criticized Ms. Mace and Mr. Rice throughout the primary campaign. Last week, he hosted a tele-rally for his two favored candidates, underlining Ms. Mace and Mr. Rice’s perceived disloyalties.Even so, Ms. Mace raised more money than Ms. Arrington by a 2-to-1 margin and outspent her by more than $300,000 on the airwaves, according to the political spending tracker AdImpact. She courted the district’s most influential political and business leaders and, in the race’s final days, campaigned alongside a number of high-profile figures on the right, including a former Trump White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, and former Gov. Nikki Haley. Ms. Mace will face the Democratic nominee, Annie Andrews, in November. More

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      Two Targets of Trump’s Ire Take Different Paths in South Carolina

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      CHARLESTON, S.C. — At a campaign event the weekend before South Carolina’s primary election, Tom Rice, a conservative congressman now on the wrong side of former President Donald J. Trump, offered a confession.“I made my next election a little bit harder than the ones in the past,” he said on Friday, imploring his supporters — a group he called “reasonable, rational folks” and “good, solid mainstream Republicans” — to support him at the polls on Tuesday.Two days before and some 100 miles south, Representative Nancy Mace, another Palmetto State Republican who drew the former president’s ire, recognized her position while knocking doors on a sweltering morning.“I accept everything. I take responsibility. I don’t back down,” she said, confident that voters in her Lowcountry district would be sympathetic. “They know that ‘hey, even if I disagree with her, at least she’s going to tell me where she is,’” she added.Ms. Mace and Mr. Rice are the former president’s two targets for revenge on Tuesday. After a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, they were among those who blamed the president for the attack. Ms. Mace, just days into her first term, said that Mr. Trump’s false rhetoric about the presidential election being “stolen” had stoked the riot and threatened her life. Mr. Rice, whose district borders Ms. Mace’s to the north, immediately condemned Mr. Trump and joined nine other Republicans (but not Ms. Mace) in later voting for his impeachment.Now, in the face of primary challenges backed by the former president, the two have taken starkly different approaches to political survival. Ms. Mace has taken the teeth out of her criticisms of Mr. Trump, seeking instead to discuss her conservative voting record and libertarian streak in policy discussions. Mr. Rice, instead, has dug in, defending his impeachment vote and further excoriating Mr. Trump in the process.Should they fend off their primary challengers on Tuesday, Ms. Mace and Mr. Rice will join a growing list of incumbents who have endured the wrath of the G.O.P.’s Trump wing without ending their political careers. Yet their conflicting strategies — a reflection of both their political instincts and the differing politics of their districts — will offer a look at just how far a candidate can go in their defiance of Mr. Trump.Representative Tom Rice at a campaign event in Conway, S.C., last week.Madeline Gray for The New York TimesIn the eyes of her supporters, Ms. Mace’s past comments are less concrete than a vote to impeach. She has aimed to improve her relationship with pro-Trump portions of the G.O.P., spending nearly every day of the past several weeks on the campaign trail to remind voters of her Republican bona fides, not her unfiltered criticism of Mr. Trump.“Everyone knows I was unhappy that day,” she said of Jan. 6. “The entire world knows. All my constituents know.” Her district, which stretches from the left-leaning corners of Charleston to Hilton Head’s conservative country clubs, has an electorate that includes far-right Republicans and liberal Democrats. Ms. Mace has marketed herself not only as a conservative candidate but also one who can defend the politically diverse district against a Democratic rival in November.“It is and always will be a swing district,” she said. “I’m a conservative, but I also understand I don’t represent only conservatives.”That is not a positive message for all in the Lowcountry, however.Ted Huffman, owner of Bluffton BBQ, a restaurant nestled in the heart of Bluffton’s touristy town center, said he was supporting Katie Arrington, the Trump-backed former state representative taking on Ms. Mace. What counted against Ms. Mace was not her feud with Mr. Trump but her relative absence in the restaurant’s part of the district, Mr. Huffman said.“Katie Arrington, she’s been here,” Mr. Huffman said, recalling the few times Ms. Arrington visited Bluffton BBQ. “I’ve never seen Nancy Mace.”During a Summerville event with Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, Ms. Mace gave a stump speech that ran down a list of right-wing talking points: high inflation driven by President Biden’s economic agenda, an influx of immigrants at the Southern border, support for military veterans. She did not mention Mr. Trump.Ms. Mace predicts a decisive primary win against Ms. Arrington, who has placed her Trump endorsement at the center of her campaign message. A victory in the face of that, Ms. Mace said, would prove “the weakness of any endorsement.”“Typically I don’t put too much weight into endorsements because they don’t matter,” she said. “It’s really the candidate. It’s the person people are voting for — that’s what matters.”Speaking from her front porch in Moncks Corner, S.C., Deidre Stechmeyer, a 42-year-old stay-at-home mother, said she was not closely following Ms. Mace’s race. But when asked about the congresswoman’s comments condemning the Jan. 6 riot, she shifted.“That’s something that I agree with her on,” she said, adding that she supported Ms. Mace’s decision to certify the Electoral College vote — a move that some in the G.O.P. have pointed to as a definitive betrayal of Mr. Trump. “There was just so much conflict and uncertainty. I feel like it should’ve been certified.”Mr. Rice’s impeachment vote, on the other hand, presents a more identifiable turnabout.It’s part of the reason Ms. Mace has a comfortable lead in her race, according to recent polls, while Mr. Rice faces far more primary challengers and is most likely headed to a runoff with a Trump-endorsed state representative, Russell Fry, after Tuesday.Mr. Fry’s campaign has centered Mr. Rice’s impeachment vote in its message, turning the vote into a referendum on Mr. Rice’s five terms in Congress.“It’s about more than Donald Trump. It’s about an incumbent congressman losing the trust of a very conservative district,” said Matt Moore, former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party and an adviser to Mr. Fry’s campaign.Still, Mr. Rice is betting on his hyper-conservative economic record and once-unapologetic support of the former president to win him a sixth term in one of South Carolina’s most pro-Trump congressional districts.A supporter of former President Donald Trump at a campaign event for Representative Nancy Mace on Sunday.Logan R. Cyrus for The New York TimesIn an interview, Mr. Rice noted the Republican Party’s shift toward pushing social issues over policy — something he said had been driven in part by the former president’s wing of the party, which helped redefine it.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      In South Carolina, Nikki Haley Finds Some Distance from Trump

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      Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, used a well-timed endorsement of Representative Nancy Mace to get on the opposite side of the former president.WASHINGTON — Rumors were swirling in South Carolina early this February that Donald J. Trump would try to tear down a Republican congresswoman who had incurred his wrath.Then Nikki Haley, his former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina’s former governor, made her move.On Feb. 7, Ms. Haley endorsed the congresswoman, Representative Nancy Mace, jumping ahead of Mr. Trump, who backed Ms. Mace’s rival two days later. The timing of Ms. Haley’s move was widely viewed as deliberate — allowing her to exert her influence in the race without directly challenging Mr. Trump’s judgment.“Nikki’s very smart — it’d never occur to me that she doesn’t know exactly what she’s doing,” said South Carolina’s treasurer, Curtis Loftis. “If the political winds change for President Trump, she’s prepared to be there, and this is part of that.”Mr. Trump will be in Florence, S.C., on Saturday to rally his faithful behind Ms. Mace’s primary challenger, Katie Arrington, and another pro-Trump Republican, Russell Fry, who is challenging Representative Tom Rice, one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach the former president for inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Mr. Fry and Ms. Arrington will share the stage, along with several conservative luminaries, including Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina and Drew McKissick, the state’s Republican Party chairman. Ms. Haley will not be there.To Republicans in the state, Ms. Haley is playing a shrewd and careful game by seeming to distance herself from Mr. Trump and yet continuing to embrace him at the same time.Just after the attack on the Capitol last year, Ms. Haley pronounced herself “disgusted” with her former boss, but since then, she has been trying to get back in his good graces. She has been appearing on television to say that the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, would have never invaded Ukraine if Mr. Trump were still president. She has endorsed and raised funds for many pro-Trump candidates, while staying out of some of the races where he has endorsed challengers.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.But in the case of Ms. Mace, backing her early on was a way for Ms. Haley to get on the right side of Republican politics in her home state, in case Mr. Trump’s endorsements falter — and he falters with them. In South Carolina, where the former governor remains popular, the state’s early primary has often been decisive to presidential nominations; Ms. Haley and other Republicans in Mr. Trump’s shadow are positioning for possible presidential bids in 2024.“South Carolina is a hugely influential political state,” said Matt Moore, a Republican campaign consultant and former party chairman in the state. “The stakes are high, and the foundations are being set for the next decade. You want to have folks on your team.”In her first speech in Congress, Representative Nancy Mace said the House needed to “hold the president accountable” for the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, but she voted against Mr. Trump’s impeachment.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMs. Haley declined to be interviewed. But her aides said her endorsement of Ms. Mace had nothing to do with rumors of a pending endorsement for Ms. Arrington from Mr. Trump.“Ambassador Haley’s endorsement of Congresswoman Mace was based entirely on her record as a tough-as-nails conservative on national security, the border, law enforcement and opposing mandates on our kids,” Chaney Denton, a Haley spokeswoman, said.Ms. Haley is not shying away now. She headlined a fund-raiser Friday afternoon for Ms. Mace at The Harbour Club in Charleston, S.C., that raised around $300,000 as Mr. Trump’s forces gathered upstate.“Jumping in the middle of this and holding a fund-raiser when President Trump is coming down here? That isn’t keeping your powder dry. That’s loading up your gun,” said Katon Dawson, a former Republican Party chairman in South Carolina.Mr. Trump has endorsed only eight Republican challengers to sitting House Republicans, and two of them are in South Carolina. Ms. Mace, a freshman who made her name as the first female cadet to graduate from The Citadel, a military college in Charleston, is unlike most of Mr. Trump’s incumbent targets.In her first speech in Congress in January 2021, Ms. Mace said the House needed to “hold the president accountable” for the Capitol attack, but she voted against his impeachment. She also opposed the creation of a bipartisan commission to investigate the attack, another vote that Mr. Trump has used to determine his endorsements.But Ms. Mace has been steadfast in saying that Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election. When he endorsed Ms. Arrington, Mr. Trump declared Ms. Mace “an absolutely terrible candidate” whose “remarks and attitude have been devastating for her community, and not at all representative of the Republican Party to which she has been very disloyal.”Representative Katie Arrington beat then-Representative Mark Sanford in the 2018 Republican primary, after she ran with Mr. Trump’s endorsement.Kathryn Ziesig/The Post And Courier, via Associated PressRussell Fry, a state representative, is challenging U.S. Representative Tom Rice, one of the few Republicans who voted to impeach Donald J. Trump. Mr. Trump is backing Mr. Fry in the primary.Jeffrey Collins/Associated PressMs. Mace then appeared in front of Trump Tower in Manhattan to praise the former president’s record and policies, saying, “If you want to lose this seat once again in a midterm election cycle to Democrats, then my opponent is more than qualified to do just that.”Mr. Trump will not be assuaged. On Friday, he said in a statement he “will be honoring Katie Arrington, who is running against the absolutely horrendous Nancy Mace,” predicting “big crowds at the Florence Regional Airport.”Ms. Mace, though, might have a point. In 2018, Ms. Arrington beat then-Representative Mark Sanford in the Republican primary after he emerged as one of the few anti-Trump Republicans in Congress. But Ms. Arrington then lost to a Democrat, Joe Cunningham. In 2020, Mr. Cunningham then lost to Ms. Mace.Further complicating matters, Ms. Arrington, the chief information security officer for acquisition and sustainment at the Department of Defense, was placed on leave last June over a suspected leak of classified information from the National Security Agency, a situation that has not gone unnoticed by Ms. Mace’s campaign.Republican officials in South Carolina said Ms. Arrington may have tipped Ms. Haley off about jumping into the primary race. Ms. Arrington was among a small group of South Carolina Republicans who visited Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago the weekend of Feb. 5. When she heard he was going to endorse Mr. Fry, she began letting Republicans know widely that she, too, would be entering a race, with Mr. Trump’s endorsement.Ms. Haley endorsed Ms. Mace on Feb. 7. Ms. Arrington announced her primary challenge on Feb. 8. Mr. Trump endorsed Ms. Arrington on Feb. 9.Ms. Haley is no Trump foe. Most of her endorsements have gone to Trump-favored candidates. She endorsed on Thursday the re-election of Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, and cut a fund-raising video with Herschel Walker, the former football star recruited by Mr. Trump to run for the Senate in Georgia.She pointedly has not endorsed Mr. Rice for re-election. Mr. Dawson, the former state party chairman, said Ms. Haley’s campaigning for Mr. Rice in 2012 made all the difference in his victory over the former lieutenant governor, André Bauer, in the Republican primary. But Mr. Rice’s district on the North Carolina border is far more Trump country than Ms. Mace’s affluent, highly educated district that touches Charleston and hugs the Lowcountry coast.Ms. Arrington is still talking confidently.“The Lowcountry wants a pro-Trump America First conservative to represent them,” her spokesman, Chris D’Anna, said. “Nancy knows that, indicated by her tucking her tail between her legs as she flew to New York City to shoot an apology video in front of Trump Tower.”Austin McCubbin, Ms. Mace’s campaign manager, responded, “Our opponent has proven two things — she’s the only Republican to lose this district in 40 years, and she will say just about anything.”Mr. Sanford, the former congressman whom Ms. Arrington defeated in 2018, said Ms. Haley had nothing to lose. Once Ms. Haley expressed her anger over Jan. 6, she would never get back in his good graces, he said, speaking from experience.“There’s really no way forward for her,” Mr. Sanford said of Ms. Haley. “Trump is a guy who holds decided grudges and doesn’t let them go. She doesn’t want to do anything to alienate his base, but where she can find things that appeal to that mass of Republicans that don’t feel they have a home, she’ll grab it.” More

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      Republican Recriminations Point to a Rocky Path to a House Majority

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      Simmering tensions between the far-right flank and more traditional conservatives burst into the open on Tuesday, while Republican leaders stayed silent.WASHINGTON — Hostilities between the Republican far right and its typically muted center burst into the open on Tuesday, highlighting deep divisions that could bedevil the party’s leaders if they capture a narrow majority in the House next year.Initially prompted by the anti-Muslim comments of Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, the Republican-on-Republican war of words on Tuesday was remarkably bitter and an indication of a brewing power struggle between an ascendant faction that styles itself after President Donald J. Trump and a quieter one that is pushing back.First, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia called her freshman colleague Nancy Mace of South Carolina “trash” for condemning Ms. Boebert’s remarks in a television interview.Ms. Mace then used a series of emojis — a bat, a pile of excrement and a crazy clown — to describe Ms. Greene, then kept up a steady stream of social media attacks, calling her a liar, a grifter and a nut.Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, came to Ms. Mace’s defense, calling Ms. Greene “unserious circus barker McSpacelaser” — a reference to a social media post that she once circulated suggesting that wildfires in the West had been started by lasers owned by the Rothschilds, a Jewish banking family.Mr. Kinzinger added that Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader and would-be speaker who has done nothing to discipline rank-and-file members of his conference for bigoted and violent statements, “continues his silent streak that would make a monk blush.”Then Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, an ally of Ms. Greene’s, took to Twitter to amplify an attack by the right-wing provocateur Jack Posobiec denouncing Ms. Mace as a “scam artist” for promoting coronavirus vaccinations on CNN.The carnival-like behavior would amount to little more than a sideshow if it did not have real implications for midterm campaigns and, possibly, a fractured Republican majority in 2023. Party leaders again chose to remain mum as their backbenchers brawled, and Democrats took full advantage of the spectacle.“The atmosphere is what it has been and what has been created by the Republican Party over the last 50 years, where they have continued to move down the path of divisiveness, of acrimony, of threats and accusations, which have demeaned the politics of America,” Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader, told reporters.He again called on Republican leaders to discipline their members, referring to the episode that touched off the hostilities: public comments by Ms. Boebert in which she suggested that Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota and a Muslim who wears a hijab, could be a suicide bomber and called her a member of the “jihad squad.”The House’s three Muslim lawmakers — Ms. Omar and Representatives Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and André Carson of Indiana, all Democrats — suggested that their party was looking at options to sanction Ms. Boebert.“Muslims in this country are proud Americans, hard-working members of our community,” Mr. Carson said. “And we are not anyone’s scapegoat.”These should be heady days for House Republicans. Off-year elections this month showed real disenchantment with Democratic control of the House, Senate and White House. Redistricting in Republican-controlled state legislatures has given the party a running start to win the four or five seats it needs to control the House, and polling suggests that a narrow plurality of Americans would rather have Republicans in control of Congress. Given the party’s structural advantages on redistricting, access to polls and enthusiasm, that suggests a much broader victory would be at hand if the voting were today.Michael Steel, a former spokesman for Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the former Republican speaker, said the party’s leaders should be working behind the scenes to calm dissent and keep members focused on building a platform and an argument for control.“The top priority right now should be for everyone in the canoe to have their rifles pointing outward, not at each other,” Mr. Steel said. “And the focus should be on addition, not subtraction. That means keeping all the frogs in the wheelbarrow, even if some of those frogs are pretty ugly.”Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, used a series of unflattering emojis in social media attacks on Ms. Greene.Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesInstead, Republicans are stepping on their own message. On Tuesday, CNN unearthed another video of Ms. Boebert from September, when she said she turned to Ms. Omar and referred to the “jihad squad,” again insinuating that she could be a suicide bomber.Ms. Omar has said that no such confrontation occurred. During a call initiated by Ms. Boebert on Monday — ostensibly to offer contrition — the situation only devolved further, as Ms. Boebert refused to apologize and instead demanded that Ms. Omar publicly ask forgiveness for “anti-American” comments.Democrats were not the only ones who condemned Ms. Boebert’s behavior. Ms. Mace, a highly regarded newcomer and the first woman to graduate from the Citadel military college, appeared on CNN to say, “I have time after time condemned my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for racist tropes and remarks that I find disgusting, and this is no different than any others.”Ms. Greene, who like Ms. Boebert is a favorite of Mr. Trump’s, criticized Ms. Mace on social media and on Stephen K. Bannon’s broadcast, “War Room,” and condemned Republican leaders.“They’re always all over us whenever we say or do anything, but it’s the Nancy Maces that should be called out,” Ms. Greene told Mr. Bannon. She added that she, not Ms. Mace, represented the Republican base, a comment seconded by others on the far right, including Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona.Representative Peter Meijer, Republican of Michigan, defended Ms. Mace.“Nancy is a serious legislator who rolls up her sleeves and looks for solutions where they can be found, such as federal cannabis decriminalization, but also digs in and fights when progressives put politics above policy,” Mr. Meijer said. “I can’t think of a single credible thing those attacking her have even tried to accomplish.”Republican leaders were left pointing fingers at their Democratic counterparts, who they said had also taken no action against members who had crossed lines, whether through anti-Israel comments or exhortations to protesters that they said encouraged violence.If the Republicans claim a narrow majority in the midterms, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California would need virtually all of his conference’s votes to claim the speakership.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMr. Hoyer did say that Mr. McCarthy reached out to him to say Ms. Boebert wanted to apologize to Ms. Omar, an overture that Mr. Hoyer said would not end well. He was proved correct.Mr. McCarthy finds himself in a delicate position. He does not know how large a majority his party might win in November, especially since much of the redistricting has focused on shoring up incumbent advantages than creating more competitive races. A sweeping Republican win would allow him to write off the votes of his party’s fringe.But if the Republicans claim a narrow majority, Mr. McCarthy would need virtually all of the conference’s votes to claim the speakership, a prize he has sought for nearly a decade. The far right brought down Mr. Boehner in 2015, and Republican divisions over the prospects of Mr. McCarthy’s speakership sunk his last run for the post weeks later.A handful of members, including Ms. Greene, have been cool to the idea of granting him the gavel should his party claim the majority.Emily Cochrane More