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    Vivek Ramaswamy and Ro Khanna Debate in New Hampshire

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    The meeting between Vivek Ramaswamy, a presidential candidate, and Representative Ro Khanna of California, was largely a showcase for Mr. Ramaswamy to try to rescue a flagging campaign.Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican presidential candidate, and Ro Khanna, a Democratic member of the House, squared off on Wednesday in New Hampshire in what was billed as a civil discussion between two Indian Americans over the future of the United States.But over the course of an hour at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., Mr. Ramaswamy repeatedly slipped into his stump speech on the “black hole” in America’s collective heart and his belief that the nation was not, as he once thought, the declining Roman Empire, while Mr. Khanna tried to articulate his economic ideas and talk up the record of President Biden against his opponent’s blizzard of words.“It is, I think, regrettable to be carrying the water of Joe Biden when the fact is that everyday Americans know they’re suffering at the hands of policies that came from this administration,” Mr. Ramaswamy snapped back.The appearance of Mr. Khanna, a California Democrat, on a stage in New Hampshire — the second time this year for him — was a testament to the frustrations that he has said he feels about how Mr. Biden and other Democrats have ceded ground to Republicans on putting forth an economic vision. The meeting was initially to be a conversation on race and identity at the University of Chicago, but when Mr. Ramaswamy backed out, Mr. Khanna challenged him on social media — and chased him to the first Republican primary state.On Nov. 30, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, who has tried to extend the White House’s message to audiences he does not believe it’s reaching, will debate Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Fox News.In the end, the Saint Anselm meeting was largely a showcase for Mr. Ramaswamy to try to rescue a flagging campaign, which has slipped to fourth place in polling averages in the state, behind Mr. DeSantis, Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, and Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who has surged into second. All of them are well behind the front-runner, Donald J. Trump.Mr. Ramaswamy demonstrated that his dogged “America First” isolationism has not been jarred by the bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas. At one point, he declared, “I could care less about leading in the Middle East,” saying of Israel, “Let’s get out and let our true ally defend itself.”To that, Mr. Khanna asked: “Why do you have such an impoverished vision of America that the only thing America is going to have is a provincial sense of its own interest?”Mr. Ramaswamy also showed his propensity to not allow the facts to get in the way of his views. When Mr. Khanna boasted of the 13 million jobs that have been created under Mr. Biden, his opponent cautioned that the government was “the sector with by far the greatest growth in jobs.”While it is true that in recent months the government sector has shown signs of recovery, government employment, as of last month, remained below its prepandemic level by 9,000 jobs, while the private sector has now recovered all the jobs lost in the pandemic and then some.Mr. Khanna has been outspoken in challenging his party and his president to get more aggressive in sharing a vision for more inclusive economic growth. He tried again Wednesday, talking up government investment to rebuild manufacturing: “For the Republicans, and I see some of this in what you’ve adopted, they see any problem, and they say let’s cut taxes, let’s deregulate,” Mr. Khanna said. “How is that putting a steel plant up in Johnstown, Pennsylvania?”But he largely missed the opportunity to highlight Mr. Biden’s biggest legislative achievements in industrial policy, which got only glancing references: a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, a $280 billion measure to rekindle a domestic semiconductor industry and the Inflation Reduction Act, with its spending to combat climate change.Meantime, Mr. Ramaswamy’s well-worn talking points dismissing the threat of climate change, calling for eliminating three quarters of the federal government, and cutting education spending largely went unchallenged. More

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      Will Hurd Searches for a 2024 Republican Base

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      Hoping to break through a crowded presidential field in 2024, the former Texas congressman is pitching himself as a modern and moderate Republican with a bipartisan vision.It is the stuff of viral internet legend now. After snow disrupted their flights, Will Hurd, the former Republican congressman, and Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat from a neighboring district, climbed into a rented Chevy Impala and took a cross-country road trip from their home state of Texas to Washington.As they live streamed what they called “a bipartisan town hall” to millions of Americans on Facebook and Twitter, featuring hourslong policy debates on health care, singalongs to Willie Nelson and doughnut runs, the two captured the national attention as Americans watched them cultivate a friendship, even as they disagreed.More than six years later, on a sunny day this July, Mr. Hurd was on the road again, this time as a longer than long-shot presidential candidate, a moderate whose penchant for bipartisanship puts him at odds with the party’s current mood.Riding in a rented gray S.U.V. and cutting through the wooded highways of New Hampshire, he was seeking the spotlight once again, in a race for the Republican nomination that is being driven by some of the party’s loudest and most partisan voices.Mr. Hurd is already a long-shot candidate, and his penchant for reaching across the aisle is something of an outlier in a race led by former President Donald J. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.David Degner for The New York Times“Have I changed my opinion that more unites us than divides us? No,” Mr. Hurd said, recalling the lessons he took from his trip with Mr. O’Rourke. “People were craving something different — craving it.”Mr. Hurd, 45, wants to show voters that he brings something different to the race. A Black Republican who has represented a majority Latino district and wants to broaden his party’s appeal, he is not, as he puts it, about “banning books” or “harassing my friends in the L.G.B.T.Q. community.”It’s a hard sell in a primary that so far has been dominated by culture-war issues that are the focus of the front-runners as well as by the legal issues surrounding former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Hurd has the most difficult of paths ahead. He has been on the campaign trail for only a little more than a month and is lagging behind his opponents in staffing, name recognition and fund-raising. The latest quarterly filings showed he had just $245,000 in cash on hand.He may fall short of the qualifications for the first Republican primary debate on Aug. 23, which requires candidates to draw a minimum of 40,000 unique donors and at least 1 percent of voter support in three approved polls.Even if he were to meet those requirements, he still might not get on the debate stage: He has refused to fulfill the Republican National Committee’s most disputed stipulation, that candidates sign a pledge to support their party’s eventual nominee. Not having a seat at the debate table means losing the most important lever to gaining attention in the primary.At a pit stop outside Manchester, Mr. Hurd said he had no issue with championing another Republican. But he said he would not support Mr. Trump. “I’m not going to lie to get a microphone,” Mr. Hurd said, digging into a Philly cheesesteak and salty fries.Back on the road, Mr. Hurd did not downplay the challenges. In interviews, town halls and political events, he is often quick to refer to himself as a “dark horse” or “a start-up,” meticulously targeting the kind of voter that data suggests might be most open to his background and message. Those voters, he added, include a cross-section of people — Republicans, independents and moderates — who are tired of the toxicity in politics, reject Mr. Trump and want someone with a vision for the future of the Republican Party. Proving that group of people indeed exists as a coherent base of support will be the ultimate test of his candidacy.Mr. Hurd believes his voter base includes an eclectic mix of people who are looking for a new chapter in Republican politics.David Degner for The New York TimesMr. Hurd’s charisma and enthusiasm for wonky policy comes across in one-on-one conversations, but it remains to be seen how well his expertise will translate on the stump. At a 2024 presidential candidate speaker series at Dartmouth College, where he arrived that afternoon, an audience of more than 50 people seemed to gradually warm up to Mr. Hurd after a stiff start.“We are in a competition — the Chinese government is trying to surpass us as a global superpower,” Mr. Hurd said, warning that A.I. could lead to unemployment but could also help bridge inequality in education. “And I’m very specific. I say, the Chinese government. It’s not the Chinese people. It’s not the Chinese culture. It’s not Chinese Americans.”In the audience, Alice Werbel, 78, a retired nurse practitioner who drove in from Norwich, a bedroom community in Vermont, said she saw Mr. Hurd as “up and coming” and commended him for his courage in refusing to sign the debate pledge.Even those who admire Mr. Hurd’s politics are not necessarily set on giving him their support. One voter who saw Mr. Hurd speak at Dartmouth said she planned to vote for President Biden.David Degner for The New York TimesBut when Mr. Hurd’s remarks concluded, she did not seem convinced he had a road to the presidency. She said she planned to vote for President Biden in 2024.“Biden should appoint him technology czar or A.I. czar or cabinet secretary of technology,” she added.Afterward, at a dinner where Mr. Hurd spoke with a small group of students, Josh Paul, 21, a conservative and a government major, was not sure if the Texas Republican could pull off a win either, but he said he was going to help Mr. Hurd try. He had found Mr. Hurd’s rejection of Mr. Trump so refreshing that he sought out a campaign staffer to sign up as a volunteer.“I don’t understand how, if conservatism is all about fidelity to your oath and to the Constitution, how you can possibly sit silently by while this guy lies and lies and lies and incites an insurrection,” Mr. Paul said, referring to Mr. Trump and the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.For three terms, Mr. Hurd represented one of the most competitive congressional districts in the country — a wide, largely Hispanic area that stretches from El Paso at the western tip of Texas, all along the nation’s southwestern border, to San Antonio. The only Black Republican in the House when he announced his retirement in August 2019, Mr. Hurd said one of the reasons he was leaving Congress was to help diversify his party’s ranks.Mr. Hurd sometimes toes a difficult line in his party, embracing some core values, like opposing abortion, while taking more complicated stances on others.David Degner for The New York TimesMr. Hurd has been a fierce and consistent critic of Mr. Trump but has remained a steadfast Republican with conservative values. Before the students at Dartmouth, he said he would be willing to sign a 15-week ban on abortion, with exceptions for certain cases, such as rape or incest. Like his Republican rivals of color, he walks a thorny line between rejecting the existence of a system of racism in America while describing situations that appear to fit the definition.On the road trip through New Hampshire, he said that when his parents first arrived in San Antonio, they had to live in the only neighborhood where an interracial couple could buy a home. “There are still some communities that don’t have equal opportunity,” he said. But, “I don’t know if I’d call that systemic racism. I don’t call it that.”At a Friday town hall at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, Thalia Floras, 60, a district retail manager and undecided Democrat, said her one concern with Mr. Hurd was his support for a ban on abortion. Yet she appreciated that he seemed open to listening to opposing views and did not resort to using phrases like “woke mob” or “radical left.”Marie Mulroy, 75, a retired public health worker and an independent raised by a Republican mother and Democratic father, said she had donated to Mr. Hurd because he was compassionate, liked to work across the aisle and had “a better understanding of the world and where we are going in the future.”In every good political argument, she said, “you have to have the thesis, antithesis and synthesis. But, “we don’t get the synthesis anymore,” she said. “And this is where the voters are — the voters are sitting in the synthesis.” More

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      At No Labels Event, a Few Disagreements on Policy Seep In

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      Senator Joe Manchin III and former Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. stressed that they were not a third-party presidential ticket — yet. And on issues like climate and guns, they debated their views.As the ostensibly bipartisan interest group No Labels discovered on Monday, consensus campaigning and governance is all well and good until it comes time for the details.At an event at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., the group had something of a soft launch of its potential third-party bid for the presidency when Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, and Jon Huntsman Jr., the former Republican governor of Utah, formally released No Labels’ policy manifesto for political compromise.The two men took pains to say they were not the bipartisan presidential ticket of a No Labels candidacy, and that no such ticket would be formed if the Republican and Democratic nominees for 2024 would just embrace their moderation — “that won’t happen if they’re not threatened,” Mr. Manchin said threateningly.On the lofty matter of cooperation and compromise, both men were all in, as were their introducers, Joseph I. Lieberman, a former Democratic senator turned independent, Benjamin Chavis, a civil rights leader and Democrat, and Pat McCrory, a former Republican governor of North Carolina.“The common-sense majority has no voice in this country,” Mr. Huntsman said. “They just watch the three-ring circus play out.”But the dream unity ticket seemed anything but unified when it came down to the nuts and bolts.One questioner from the audience raised her concerns about worsening climate change, the extreme weather that was drenching New England and Mr. Manchin’s securing of a new natural gas pipeline in his home state.To that, Mr. Manchin fell back on his personal preference, promoted in No Labels’ manifesto, for an “all of the above” energy policy that embraced renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, as well as continued production of climate-warming fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.Mr. Huntsman jumped in to propose putting “a price on carbon,” something usually done through fossil fuel emissions taxes, to curb oil, gas and coal use, proposals that Mr. Manchin, hailing from a coal and gas state, roundly rejected.Asked about gun control, the two could not even seem to agree on the relatively modest proposals in the No Labels plan: universal background checks on firearms purchases and raising the buying age for military-style semiautomatic weapons to 21 from 18.Mr. Manchin, who co-wrote a universal background check bill in 2012 only to see it die in the Senate, said “there’s a balance to be had” in curbing gun purchases. Mr. Huntsman fell back on his party’s decade-long dodge on stricter gun regulation — mental health care.They even seemed to disagree on Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Republican from Georgia. Mr. Huntsman bristled at being asked about her statement that the United States should withdraw from NATO, saying serious policymakers are too often asked questions about “the flamethrowers.” Mr. Manchin said he would not speak ill of any sitting member of Congress.“All 535 people elected to Congress want to do good,” he said.One thing both men agreed on: No Labels need not divulge the big donors that are fueling the current drive toward a possible third-party bid for the White House. Democratic opponents of the effort have accused the group of hiding a donor list that leans heavily Republican, proof, opponents say, that the drive is all about electing former President Donald J. Trump to a second term.No Labels has denied that but declined to reveal its current donors.“I don’t think it’s right or good. I think there should be transparency and accountability,” Mr. Huntsman said of the group’s decision. “But that’s not the way you play the game.”He added, “The system sucks.” More