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      Gretchen Whitmer Rejected False Choices. All Democrats Should.

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      For years, the so-called Blue Wall states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — have been not just politically but also emotionally important for Democrats. With the party poised to enact a new primary lineup that includes Michigan in an early slot, the state has grown even more important for Democrats.In many ways, Michigan offers a microcosm of American politics. It includes a diverse population of over 10 million people and a mix of big, medium and smaller urban areas, along with diverse suburbs and rural areas.For Democrats, much of the debate about running in and winning big northern industrial states is that we have to choose a style of campaign. Either we talk to blue-collar voters about issues like economics and manufacturing, or we talk to suburban women about abortion. Either we use progressive issues to turn out our base, or we take moderate positions on issues to persuade people in the middle.There is a model for running an effective campaign in Michigan and states like it — and it involves rejecting many of these false choices.Gretchen Whitmer illustrated that model in Michigan this year. With her midterm victory, she has now had two decisive general-election wins in a critical Blue Wall state. Last month, she won by 10.6 points (a margin bested by only two Democratic presidential candidates in the last 50 years, Barack Obama in 2008 and Bill Clinton in 1996).She ran on economics and abortion, increased Democratic turnout and persuaded swing voters, all while connecting with the party’s largest base: Black voters. She embodied the way smart campaigns in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and around the country operated this cycle, and she gave a blueprint for Democrats in 2024.The first lesson of Ms. Whitmer’s campaign is that economic good news and development — especially building things — really make a difference. Democrats should run on American manufacturing: Whether it was a new semiconductor plant (to help ease the chip shortage facing the auto industry) or generational-level investments from G.M. in electric-vehicle battery plants (to make sure the critical supply chains for electric cars will be based in Michigan, not China, where many E.V. batteries are currently built), Ms. Whitmer fought to bring them to Michigan.In in multiple TV ads, she told voters, “I can’t solve the inflation problem, but we’re doing things — right now — to help.” She listed tangible benefits that she proposed or got done, like more affordable community college, insurance refunds and tax cuts for seniors. She passed four balanced, bipartisan budgets with no tax increases, and she let voters know about that.A lot of Democrats talked about economics across the country, but few did so as consistently and effectively as Ms. Whitmer. And it wasn’t just talk: When businesses opened, she was often there to celebrate them.This was paired with a pocketbook attack. Her opponent, Tudor Dixon, took millions of dollars from the wildly unpopular (in Michigan) billionaire Betsy DeVos and her family. For months her campaign highlighted Ms. Dixon’s connections to Ms. DeVos and how Ms. Dixon’s tax plan would benefit Ms. DeVos and hurt the middle class — working-class tax hikes, cuts to schools and the like. Ms. Whitmer also highlighted abortion rights as a vote-deciding issue for swing voters. Again, this was not just talk. Through a ballot initiative, Michigan voters faced the decision on whether to place abortion protections in the state Constitution. Voters approved changing the state Constitution with strong support (57 percent).Months before the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade and could have effectively banned abortion in Michigan (because of a dormant law from the 1930s), Ms. Whitmer sued and got courts to block enforcement of that law. No doubt the issue helped Michigan Democrats and progressives to catalyze turnout. Estimates from the U.S. Elections Project show overall turnout in 2022 was down about 6 percent from the 2018 midterm, but in Michigan, turnout was up nearly 5 percent.Ms. Whitmer also developed a deep connection with Black voters well before she picked as her running mate and governing partner the state’s first Black lieutenant governor, Garlin Gilchrist. After winning Black voters decisively with high turnout in 2018, she deepened that connection. The “Big Gretch” song (“We ain’t even about to stress/we got Big Gretch”) and memes that came out of Black Michigan spoke to a deep appreciation Black voters had for her decisiveness in the pandemic to keep people safe.This was on top of a lot of other work to help Black voters, things like bringing the first new auto plant to Detroit in 30 years and making sure Detroiters had a first crack at the plant’s jobs.This did not come at the expense of talking to white voters: She won Macomb County, ground zero for voters who cast ballots for Barack Obama, then switched to Donald Trump, by about 60 percent more in 2022 from 2018.What Ms. Whitmer has done in Michigan can be done by Democrats across the country. We can talk about economics and abortion, we can invest in turnout and persuasion, and we can strengthen our appeal to voters of color while winning over white voters.Brian Stryker (@BrianStryker) is a partner at Impact Research and a strategist for Gretchen Whitmer, Tim Ryan and Mandela Barnes, among others.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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      Warnock’s Victory Forges Democrats’ Path Through the New Battlegrounds

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      Forget about Florida and Ohio: Georgia and Arizona are poised to be the next kingmakers of presidential politics.Follow our latest updates on the Georgia Senate runoff.For decades, Florida and Ohio reigned supreme over presidential politics. The two states relished their role crowning presidents and spawning political clichés. Industrial Cleveland faced off against white-collar Cincinnati, the Midwestern snowbirds of the Villages against the Puerto Rican diaspora of the Orlando suburbs.But the Georgia runoff, the final note of the 2022 midterm elections, may have said goodbye to all that. The Marietta moms are in charge now.Senator Raphael Warnock’s win over Herschel Walker — his fifth victory in just over two years — proved that the Democratic surge in the Peach State two years ago was no Trump-era fluke, no one-off rebuke of an unpopular president. Georgia, with its storied civil rights history, booming Atlanta suburbs like Marietta and exploding ethnic diversity, is now officially contested ground, joining a narrow set of states that will select the next president.Mr. Warnock’s race was the final marker for a 2024 presidential road map that political strategists, officials and politicians in both parties say will run largely through six states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.The shrunken, shifted battlefield reflects a diversifying country remade by the polarizing politics of the Trump era. As white, working-class voters defected from Democrats, persuaded by Donald J. Trump’s populist cultural appeals and anti-elitist rhetoric, demographic changes opened up new presidential battlegrounds in the West and South.That is not good for Mr. Trump, who lost all six of those states to President Biden two years ago, as he begins to plot his third presidential bid. Other Republicans have found more success pulling together winning coalitions in states defined by their growth, new transplants, strong economies and a young and diverse population. But if the party wants to reclaim the White House in 2024, Republicans will have to improve their performance across the new terrain.“You’re going to have your soccer moms and Peloton dads. Those college-educated voters, specifically in the suburbs, are ones that Republicans have to learn how to win,” said Kristin Davison, a Republican strategist who worked on Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s win in Virginia, a once-red state that, until Mr. Youngkin’s victory, had turned a more suburban shade of blue. “It’s these growing, diverse communities combined with the college-educated voters.”“I secured my vote!” stickers at a polling place in Georgia.Nicole Buchanan for The New York TimesVoters at Morningside Presbyterian Church in Fulton County on Tuesday morning.Nicole Buchanan for The New York TimesIn most of the six states, midterm elections brought out deep shades of purple. In Arizona, Democrats won the governor’s mansion for the first time since 2006, but a race for attorney general remains too close to call. In Nevada, the party’s candidate won re-election to the Senate by less than one percentage point, while Republicans won the governor’s office. The reverse happened in Wisconsin.Mr. Warnock narrowly defeated Mr. Walker on Tuesday. But Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, handily toppled Stacey Abrams, a Democratic star, in his re-election bid last month.Only Pennsylvania and Michigan had clean Democratic sweeps in statewide offices.Republicans, meanwhile, swept Florida, with Gov. Ron DeSantis winning re-election in the state by easily the largest margin by a Republican candidate for governor in modern history. In Ohio, Representative Tim Ryan, widely considered to be one the Democratic Party’s strongest candidates, lost his bid for Senate by six percentage points.That new map isn’t entirely new, of course. Since 2008, Democrats have hoped that demographic changes and millions of dollars could help put the growing pockets of the South and West in play, allowing the party to stop chasing the votes of white, working-class voters across Ohio and Iowa.But the party has made inroads before, only to backslide later. When Barack Obama carried North Carolina in 2008, pundits and party officials heralded the arrival of the Democratic revival in the New South. President Obama lost the state four years later and Mr. Biden was defeated there by a little more than a percentage point.Democrats argue their victories in Georgia will be more resilient. Mr. Warnock’s coalition looked very similar to Mr. Biden’s — an alliance of voters of color, younger voters and college-educated suburbanites.For Republicans, the winning formula requires maintaining their sizable advantage among rural voters and working-class, white voters, without fully embracing the far-right stances and combative politics of Mr. Trump that could hurt their standing with more moderate swing voters. Mr. Kemp followed that path to an eight-percentage-point victory.But Mr. Walker was in no position to expand his voting base. He was recruited to run by Mr. Trump, despite allegations of domestic abuse, no political experience and few clear policy positions, and spent much of his campaign focused on his party’s most reliable voters.While votes were still being counted late Tuesday, Mr. Warnock appeared to improve on Mr. Biden’s margins in the suburban counties around Atlanta, including Gwinnett, Newton and Cobb County, home to Marietta.Herschel Walker and his team after a campaign stop in Dawsonville, Ga.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesGreeting supporters at a Dawsonville restaurant.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesDemocrats recognized the rising influence of the Sun Belt in a high-profile way last week, when the Democratic National Committee advanced a plan to replace Iowa, a former battleground state that has grown more Republican recently, with South Carolina and add Nevada, Georgia and Michigan to the early-state calendar.“The Sun Belt delivered the Senate Democratic majority,” said Senator Jacky Rosen, a Democrat from Nevada who will face her first re-election campaign in 2024. “The party needs to invest in us and that’s what they’ve done by changing the calendar.”Already, investment in these new battlegrounds has been eye-popping. In Georgia, $1.4 billion has been spent by both parties on three Senate races and the one contest for governor since the beginning of 2020, according to a New York Times analysis.The flood of political activity has surprised even some of those who have long predicted that their states would grow more competitive.“We all thought Arizona would probably be a battleground state at some point like a decade or so down the road,” said Mike Noble, the chief of research with the polling firm OH Predictive Insights, which is based in Phoenix. “It’s mind-blowing that it came so quickly to be quite honest.”Political operatives in Ohio and Florida insist that their states could remain competitive if Democrats would invest in organizers and ads. But for presidential campaigns, the goal isn’t to flip states but to identify the easiest route to 270 electoral votes.David Pepper, a former chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, acknowledged that the changed politics had created a national political dynamic that’s bad for Ohio but better for his party. “The fact that Ohio is less essential than it used to be is a good thing because it means there are other states that are now winnable that weren’t 10 years ago. Colorado and Virginia were Republican so you had to win Florida and Ohio,” he said, evoking the predecessor to the cable news interactive maps. “That’s why Tim Russert had them all over his white board.”Senator Raphael Warnock with the rapper Killer Mike at a campaign event on Monday.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesThe Warnock campaign visited Georgia Tech on Monday.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesThe country wasn’t always so dependent on such a small group of deciders. In the 1980s, presidential candidates competed across an average of 29 states. That number fell to 19 during the 2000s, according to data compiled by FairVote, a nonpartisan advocacy group that works on election practices. In 2020, there were just eight states where the margin of victory for either Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump was under 5 percent.The shrinking map leaves one clear loser: The bulk of American voters. About 50 million Americans live in the six states poised to get most of the attention, giving about 15 percent of the country’s nearly 332 million people an outsize role in determining the next president.For nearly 11 million Georgians, the political attention showered on their state during the midterm elections won’t be gone for long. More

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      How Democrats’ New Primary Calendar Changes the Chessboard

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      President Biden’s push to abandon Iowa for younger, racially diverse states is likely to reward candidates who connect with the party’s most loyal voters.When a panel of Democratic Party insiders endorsed President Joseph R. Biden’s preferred lineup of early presidential nominating states on Friday, they didn’t just shatter the exalted status of Iowa and New Hampshire voters.They also formally aligned themselves with a demographic reckoning decades in the making, reflecting the growing clout of the racially diverse coalition that brought Mr. Biden to power — and implicitly rebuking two overwhelmingly white states that rejected him in 2020.According to the proposal recommended by Mr. Biden and adopted by the party’s Rules and Bylines Committee, South Carolina would now go first, holding its primary on Feb. 3, 2024. Three days later, Nevada and New Hampshire would follow. Georgians would vote next on Feb. 13, then Michiganders on Feb. 27.For political obsessives, the change — which must still be voted on by the whole committee — feels sweeping and swift.“For the .000001 percent of people who follow this stuff, this is equivalent to an earthquake,” said Julián Castro, the former secretary of housing and urban development who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. “For it to change this much in one cycle is both impressive and will be very impactful in the years to come.”Mr. Castro spent years arguing that Iowa should lose its spot at the front of his party’s presidential nominating calendar, even starting his primary campaign with an event in Puerto Rico — an intentional symbolic rejection of Iowa. He praised the new schedule, saying the broader diversity of states would offer opportunities to a wider range of candidates.Donna Brazile, former acting chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, said the changes would offer myriad benefits to the party, “from hearing the voices of people who tend not to matter to candidates until the end to lifting up those who also might need to be part of the process.”Mr. Biden’s recommendations were perhaps the most telling indicator that he planned to seek re-election, despite the prospect that he would be reaching well into his 80s by the end of a second term. His proposed reordering of the political map, noted Mike Murphy, a Republican consultant, happens to be “very Biden-friendly.”Representative Debbie Dingell of Michigan, right, has pushed for her state’s inclusion among the early states for years. Under Mr. Biden’s proposal, Michigan would hold the fifth primary in 2024.Doug Mills/The New York TimesRepresentative Debbie Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who has lobbied for her state’s inclusion in the early states since the 1990s, said that Mr. Biden’s choices also reflected a recognition that the party must resist the tug of its bicoastal centers of power.“You cannot win the White House without the heartland of America,” she said.The panel’s decision is not the last word on the calendar. Democrats will need to somehow persuade Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to set the date of his state’s primaries according to the wishes of the Democratic National Committee, rather than those of his own party.The Biden PresidencyHere’s where the president stands after the midterm elections.A Defining Issue: The shape of Russia’s war in Ukraine — and its effects on global markets —  in the months and years to come could determine President Biden’s political fate.Beating the Odds: Mr. Biden had the best midterms of any president in 20 years, but he still faces the sobering reality of a Republican-controlled House for the next two years.2024 Questions: Mr. Biden feels buoyant after the better-than-expected midterms, but as he turns 80, he confronts a decision on whether to run again that has some Democrats uncomfortable.Legislative Agenda: The Times analyzed every detail of Mr. Biden’s major legislative victories and his foiled ambitions. Here’s what we found.Disgruntled Iowa and New Hampshire might stick to their first-in-the-nation guns, even if the party strips them of delegates in retaliation for their defiance. Democrats running in 2024 — assuming there are any candidates besides, or instead of, Mr. Biden — would then have to decide whether the resulting “beauty contests” were worth the bragging rights alone.If Mr. Biden runs again, a decision he has indicated is coming early in the new year, the state that set him on a path to the nomination in 2024 will offer a formidable first hurdle to any would-be challenger.“He’s created a firewall against any insurgency,” said David Axelrod, one of the architects of former President Barack Obama’s political rise. “It doesn’t mean he will run. But it certainly suggests he intends to.”Those seeking to unseat the president would need to connect with South Carolina’s majority Black primary electorate, which is more conservative than either Iowa’s prairie progressives or New Hampshire’s northeastern Brahmins. In the state’s 2020 primary, more than 60 percent of Black voters chose Mr. Biden over his rivals, according to exit polls.Mr. Biden’s triumph in South Carolina exposed not only the regional appeal of liberal candidates like Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, but also the limits of two billionaire candidates who sought to buy a grass-roots following: Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer. And it underscored the struggles Pete Buttigieg, then running as the whiz-kid mayor of South Bend, Ind., had in reaching Black voters in particular.Steve Phillips, a Democrat and author of several books on racial politics, said the changes would reward candidates who develop a deep bond with Black communities, rather than train them to appeal to rural Iowans who might not support them in November.“You want somebody who is going to inspire and understand Black voters to be your nominee,” he said.If Mr. Biden does not run, the new lineup is likely to scramble generations of electoral calculations.For decades, the Iowa caucuses were an early proving ground for upstart candidates, including starting Jimmy Carter and Mr. Obama on their roads to the White House. The state carried continued mystique as a kingmaker, even as it increasingly evolved to be older, whiter and more Republican than the Democratic Party. The chaotic counting of the state’s caucus voters in 2020, when final results took a week, marked its demise for many in the party.A number of party strategists argued the low costs of campaigning in South Carolina would allow underdogs to continue to surprise the country with a stronger-than-expected showing.“The state is not so expensive that you can’t go live there and get it done,” said Jeremy Bird, a Democratic strategist.Mr. Bird, who helped guide Mr. Obama to a nearly 30-point primary win in South Carolina in 2008, said the diversity of South Carolina would force candidates to spend more time in rural Black communities, historically Black colleges and universities and Southern cities, and less time in grange halls and the living rooms of caucus microinfluencers.Traditionally, skipping Iowa was viewed as a sign of weakness by pundits, donors and strategists. But the quick pace of the first three states, with Nevada and New Hampshire coming just three days after South Carolina, could reshape that calculation.“If it’s an open primary in the future, you could have lots of different strategies,” Mr. Bird said. “You could have someone that skips South Carolina altogether. You could have someone that skips Nevada. It will be fascinating to see.”The long-term impact of the changes is still very much to be determined. The party says it plans to revisit its lineup in four years, raising the prospect that the calendar itself has become less a function of tradition than political juice.For now, with Georgia’s fate uncertain and Iowa and New Hampshire in potential revolt, candidates will also have to learn how to run in a new entry to the early-state mix: Michigan, a state that has rarely been in serious contention in recent presidential primaries.Compared with pastoral, racially homogeneous Iowa, Michigan presents an emerging America in microcosm — an increasingly diverse state of 10 million people that boasts not just one of the country’s historical centers of Black culture, Detroit, but also one of the largest Arab American populations in the country, among other communities of color dotted in suburbs and smaller cities across the state, like Ann Arbor.Michigan, an increasingly diverse state with a mix of large and small cities, could scramble old ways of campaigning. Allison Farrand for The New York Times“It’s more like a jigsaw puzzle,” said Amy Chapman, a Democratic strategist in Michigan who ran Barack Obama’s campaign in the state in 2008.The state’s geographic diversity could allow candidates to essentially choose their own spending adventure, said Eric Hyers, who directed Mr. Biden’s campaign in Michigan in 2020.“It’s not like there’s just one media market and it’s wicked expensive,” Mr. Hyers said. Campaigning in Nevada means spending heavily in the costly Las Vegas market, and New Hampshire candidates must buy airtime in pricey Boston.Jeff Link, a Des Moines operative who served as a local guide for Bill Clinton and Mr. Obama, said that even Mr. Obama, who forever altered how presidential candidates raise money, might not have won the nomination in Mr. Biden’s proposed calendar. And yet, even as much of Iowa’s Democratic political world spent Friday wallowing in the loss of what many considered a birthright, Mr. Link predicted that as long as Republicans maintained Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status, Democrats would come to the state too, even if the state’s caucuses no longer officially mattered. That is, after all, where the media will be.“If you guys are in town covering the other side, candidates are going to show up because you can’t help yourself,” he said.Reid J. Epstein More

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      DNC Panel Supports Biden’s Plan to Make South Carolina First Primary in 2024

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      A key panel supported President Biden’s plan, which would remove Iowa as the first presidential nominating state. States with more diverse, working-class and in some cases more moderate constituencies are being elevated.WASHINGTON — Over objections from some Democratic state leaders, the Democratic National Committee on Friday moved one step closer to enacting President Biden’s vision for drastically overhauling the party’s 2024 presidential primary process, as a key committee voted to recommend sweeping changes to the calendar.At a daylong gathering of the D.N.C.’s Rules and Bylaws Committee in a Washington hotel ballroom, members voted to recommend supporting a 2024 Democratic presidential primary calendar that would begin in South Carolina on Feb. 3, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada on Feb. 6, Georgia on Feb. 13 and then Michigan on Feb. 27. That plan reflected a framework Mr. Biden delivered to the committee on Thursday that emphasized racial and geographic diversity. Representatives from Iowa and New Hampshire voted against the proposal, and officials emphasized that the move by the Rules Committee was one step in what might still be a prolonged and contentious process. The proposed early states have until Jan. 5 to confirm that they can hold a primary on their assigned date.The recommendation, which upends the traditional Democratic order of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, must be affirmed by the full D.N.C. at a meeting in early February, but Mr. Biden’s preferences carry enormous weight with the party committee. The proposed new order rewards some of the states that powered his political rise in 2020, elevating diverse, working-class and in some cases more moderate constituencies that were vital to Mr. Biden’s primary victory. At the same time, smaller states that have long emphasized retail politics — Iowa and New Hampshire — would be diminished. “Given the president’s strong interest in the design of the 2024 primaries, and the dates for them, I think it’s clear that he’s running,” said James Roosevelt Jr., a co-chairman of the Rules and Bylaws Committee, who said he had spoken with Mr. Biden this week about the early-state order.Mr. Biden has said that he intends to run again but plans to discuss the race with his family. If he does not run, the schedule, if adopted, would help other candidates with strong support from the voters of color who make up the backbone of the Democratic Party.Black voters accounted for more than half of the Democrats who voted in the South Carolina primary in 2020, according to exit polling. And they make up a significant share of the primary electorates in Georgia and Michigan. Latino voters play an especially central role in Nevada.But the shift could also hurt candidates without the campaign cash to compete quickly in early states with expensive media markets — like Nevada, Georgia and even New Hampshire, where Boston television stations drive up rates. The fast pacing of the proposed calendar could force contenders with smaller bank accounts to choose to compete in just one or two of the first three states. Scott Brennan and other Iowa Democrats criticized the proposed changes and suggested that the state party would challenge them.Shuran Huang for The New York TimesJoanne Dowdell, a D.N.C. member from New Hampshire, opposed the proposal.Shuran Huang for The New York Times“One of the things that New Hampshire is known for is our retail politics, and candidates having the opportunity to engage the electorate face to face,” said Joanne Dowdell, a D.N.C. member from New Hampshire who opposed the proposal. “By having three states, one on top of the other, I think causes a little bit of conflict for candidates trying to vie for the attention, get name recognition and also raise money.”The Biden PresidencyHere’s where the president stands after the midterm elections.A Defining Issue: The shape of Russia’s war in Ukraine — and its effects on global markets —  in the months and years to come could determine President Biden’s political fate.Beating the Odds: Mr. Biden had the best midterms of any president in 20 years, but he still faces the sobering reality of a Republican-controlled House for the next two years.2024 Questions: Mr. Biden feels buoyant after the better-than-expected midterms, but as he turns 80, he confronts a decision on whether to run again that has some Democrats uncomfortable.Legislative Agenda: The Times analyzed every detail of Mr. Biden’s major legislative victories and his foiled ambitions. Here’s what we found.Jeff Link, a longtime Des Moines operative, said cutting Iowa’s caucuses out of the Democratic presidential nominating process would diminish the importance of organizing, which is central to the state’s political culture.That could prove detrimental to the party nationally, he said, by eliminating a critical proving ground for Democratic field operatives.“Rather than having a big field operation, they’re going to have a big social media operation,” Mr. Link said. “There’s going to be less people talking to other people in the campaign. One of the benefits of having a caucus early is that for three decades, we’ve trained campaign staff on how to organize person to person.”Other objections have been far louder, especially from the two states accustomed to being at the front of the line. New Hampshire has long held the nation’s first primary as a matter of state law, and state officials have said they intend to follow that law rather than any party decision. And the chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party noted in a statement that the country’s longtime leadoff caucus state has a law that “requires us to hold a caucus before the last Tuesday in February, and before any other contest.” The decision on timing would be up to the state central committee and elected officials, said Scott Brennan, a member of the Rules Committee from Iowa.More than political clout and bragging rights is at stake: Studies of the economic impact of past caucuses in Iowa and New Hampshire primaries have found that spending was in the hundreds of millions of dollars, much of that on TV ads, though the figures were a drop in the bucket of each state’s annual economic activity.The party has powerful tools with which to compel states to fall in line.D.N.C. rules agreed upon earlier this year stipulated notable consequences for any state that jumps ahead to operate outside the party’s agreed-upon early window, including cuts to the number of pledged delegates and alternates for the state in question. Significantly, candidates who campaign in such states would face repercussions as well. “If a candidate chose to campaign in a state that operated outside the window, they would lose the delegates from that state,” Mr. Roosevelt said. “They could have other penalties, because the chair is empowered to go beyond that.”Some officials have suggested they are willing to take those risks.The D.N.C.’s Rules and Bylaws Committee gathered in Washington on Friday.Shuran Huang for The New York Times“For decades we have said we will bear any sanctions,” said Raymond Buckley, the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party.Republican willingness, or lack thereof, to change dates may also be relevant in several states, including in Republican-controlled Georgia. A spokesman for Gov. Brian Kemp did not respond to a question on Friday afternoon about his reaction to the Democratic proposal. The primary date is set by Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, who declined to comment on the Democrats’ process on Friday. “Our focus is on the security and integrity of the election that’s currently underway, and we will be looking at the entire process for possible improvements once this one is successfully complete,” said Jordan Fuchs, the deputy secretary of state, as Georgia hosts a Senate runoff. But, she noted in a statement, “Our legal team has continuously stated that both parties’ primaries must be on the same day and must not cost anyone any delegates.”Republicans have already agreed to their own early-state lineup of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.The Rules and Bylaws committee’s vote came a day after Mr. Biden sent a letter to members laying out his criteria for the early-voting window. In it, he rejected caucuses — effectively dealing a mortal blow to the troubled Iowa caucuses, which struggled for days to deliver results in 2020.After Mr. Biden came in fourth place in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire, two states with high percentages of white voters, he showed new signs of political life in Nevada. And it was South Carolina’s primary, with large numbers of Black voters, that revived his candidacy and propelled him through Super Tuesday and to the nomination.“Defense, education, agriculture, manufacturing — South Carolina is a perfect laboratory,” said Representative James E. Clyburn, the South Carolina Democrat whose endorsement of Mr. Biden in 2020 played a vital role in the president’s victory in the state. “That’s why the people who do well in South Carolina end up doing pretty good in the general.”Mr. Clyburn said that he had urged Mr. Biden to keep South Carolina in the early-state window — “first, second, third or fourth, didn’t matter to me” — but that he had learned of the state’s possible elevation to the kickoff primary on Thursday from the president.Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the D.N.C., who is also from South Carolina, said he had found out at Thursday night’s state dinner.Mr. Biden has urged the Rules and Bylaws Committee to review the calendar every four years, and the committee embraced an amendment to get that process underway.“Nevada still has the strongest argument for being the first-in-the-nation primary,” Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, the state’s senators, said in a joint statement. “We will keep making our case for 2028.”Reid J. Epstein More

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      Why the Democrats’ biggest wins of the midterms weren’t in Washington DC

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      Why the Democrats’ biggest wins of the midterms weren’t in Washington DC Breaking Republican strangleholds over state capitols gives Democrats an advantage in the fight for voting, abortion and LGBTQ+ rightsWhile Democrats staved off a red wave in Washington during the midterm elections, the party’s most significant victories came far away from the US Capitol. They were in state legislatures across the country with consequences that will be felt for years to come.Over the last decade, Republicans have quietly amassed power in state capitols, investing in races for state legislatures that can be decided by just a few hundred votes. It’s an investment that has paid off wildly. Since state legislatures draw electoral districts in many places, Republicans have used that advantage to entrench their power, drawing district lines that further guaranteed their majorities. They have also used those majorities to pass measures that make it harder to vote, strip LGBTQ+ protections, loosen gun laws and restrict access to abortion.‘This movement was rejected’: Republican election deniers lose key state racesRead moreIn the midterms, however, Democrats flipped at least three state legislative chambers and held on to their majorities in several states where they were in jeopardy. The victories ended years of Democratic defeat and disappointment and caught even some Democrats off guard. It marked the first midterm election since at least 1934 in which the president’s party didn’t lose control of a single legislative chamber, according to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), which focuses on state legislative races.“We went into this cycle very clear-eyed. Knowing it was a presidential midterm and frankly expecting to lose seats,” said Jessica Post, president of the DLCC. “Republicans had everything in their favor. By all accounts, this election should have been a landslide for the Republicans. Instead, their so-called red wave looks more like a puddle.”In Michigan, Democrats took control of both chambers of the legislature for the first time in nearly 40 years. Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, was also re-elected to a second term, giving the party complete control of state government in one of America’s most politically competitive states.“I felt pretty confident we were gonna get one chamber and be looking at potentially picking up the chamber in two years. But it was surprising for me that we flipped both houses,” said Mallory McMorrow, a Democratic Michigan state senator who worked on flipping state legislative seats.Democrats also flipped control of the Minnesota senate, giving them complete control of state government there. In Pennsylvania, ballots are still being counted in two razor-thin state house races that will determine control of the state house.They also prevented Republicans from gaining supermajorities in the Wisconsin and North Carolina legislature, an extremely significant development that will prevent GOP-controlled bodies from overriding vetoes from Democratic governors there. Democrats held their majorities in state legislative chambers in Colorado, Maine, Oregon, Washington and New Mexico.Cartogram of state legislatures by party control“We felt those goals were certainly long shots. Many thought they were unattainable,” said Daniel Squadron, a former New York State senator who co-founded the States Project, which spent $60m towards electing Democrats in state legislative races. “In every chamber, we’ve either met or exceeded our electoral goals.”Those victories could play an important role in ensuring a free and fair election in two years. In 2020, Donald Trump tried to lean on GOP state legislative majorities in key battlegrounds like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona to try to overturn the results. The Democratic wins could also offer a critical safeguard against the US supreme court, which could soon endorse a fringe legal theory, backed by Republicans, that says state legislatures have virtually unchecked power to set rules over federal elections.Democrats and allies pointed to a combination of factors behind the wins.There were more competitive maps in place in Michigan and Pennsylvania this cycle, replacing districts Republicans drew a decade ago. Concerns about abortion access and competitive statewide races also drove voters to the polls. Strong candidate recruitment allowed Democrats to connect with voters. And deep investments allowed Democratic candidates to get out on the campaign trail early and launch an offense against Republican opponents.In 2020, Democrats failed to flip any of the chambers targeted to try to get a seat at the table in the redistricting process. In 2010, amid a juggernaut GOP effort, Democrats lost control of 20 chambers in a single night. In the 2014 midterms, 11 chambers flipped to Republican control.“Democrats can, in fact, win at the state legislative level. When we invest our dollars appropriately. When we utilize evidence-based tactics, and when we have candidates who can meet voters where they are, we proved that this year,” said Adam Pritzker, another co-founder of the States Project. “State legislative politics is not the minor leagues.”‘We’re at risk’: the little-known races that could expand Republican powerRead moreRepublicans were massively outspent in state legislative races, Dee Duncan, the president of the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), wrote in a memo to donors last week. Four outside left-leaning groups alone spent $125m on the races, dwarfing the $30m the RSLC invested. Duncan noted that the groups, including the DLCC, the States Project and Forward Majority, spent more in three states – Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania – than the RSLC spent across the country.“This influx in funding drove significant spending disparities in each state that were hard to overcome,” he wrote. “In every state where we lost a chamber or have potential to lose a chamber (Pennsylvania), Republicans did not win a single statewide election.”Christina Polizzi, a DLCC spokesperson, disputed that the RSLC was outspent. “The RSLC has absolutely no credibility on this. They have a long history of selective memory and flat out lying about their spending numbers,” she said in a statement. “Although they have nothing to show for it, the reality is they outraised and outspent the DLCC this cycle while still being only a fraction of the overall GOP spending in the states. They can’t blame their losses on the money – they lost because Republicans have bad policies and flawed candidates that the American people didn’t support.”Republicans did earn a few key wins in state races. In North Carolina, they flipped partisan control of the state supreme court. And in Ohio, they won a seat being vacated by a retiring GOP member who had been a swing vote. Those majorities could allow Republicans in those states to pass more aggressively gerrymandered maps, as well as anti-abortion laws.Beyond local politicsIn Michigan, Kristen McDonald Rivet won one of the key state senate races that helped Democrats flip control of the chamber. From the moment she launched her campaign until just a few days before the election, she said, there were pundits who said she couldn’t win the seat, which borders the Saginaw Bay. Joe Biden narrowly carried the district by three points in 2020; McDonald Rivet wound up winning by six points.When she spoke with voters, McDonald Rivet would mention democracy and voting rights “all of these things that Democrats hold dear”, she said in an interview. But she also recognized the sense of economic unease in her district; families used to be able to work in a plant, raise their families and live “the Michigan dream to go to Disney World in the winter”. She and her husband have raised their six children in the district and her husband’s family has lived there for five generations.“It’s not about local politics. It was about people’s day-to-day. Local is not quite the right word,” she said. “I started a lot of my stump speeches with ‘you know politics doesn’t have to be this way.’ And it resonated, probably because I actually believe it.”Her campaign was also boosted by a strong party infrastructure, millions spent on media, and a massive grassroots effort. Her campaign knocked on 72,000 doors and had 7,500 individual donations, including hundreds of people in her district who had set up recurring donations, some for as little as $3.Democracy, poisoned: America’s elections are being attacked at every levelRead moreShe was aided by Michigan Democrats like McMorrow, a state senator who gained national attention after a viral speech earlier this year and raised more than $2m to her Pac to help Democrats running for state legislative seats. In 2018, when she was a first-time candidate, McMorrow remembered being brushed off by donors who were more interested in statewide and federal races. That money, now, she said, allowed Democrats to hire paid field organizers and start campaigning earlier than Republican counterparts.“I think people really get it. And I think we were able to really make the case to people to say in a year when the Dobbs decision came down, really highlighted how important state legislatures are in a very tangible way. Because this is an issue that’s coming back to the states,” she said.Brian Munroe, a Democrat, knocked on 10,000 doors on his way to flipping a state house seat in Bucks county, Pennsylvania, a competitive area outside Philadelphia. “I heard from a lot of people, Republican, Democrat, independent, pro-Trump, not pro-Trump,” he said, recalling many conversations about abortion. “Everybody was tired of the divisiveness. I’m even talking about people with the Let’s Go Brandon flag out front.”Munroe initially was met with some skepticism from big donors, but won them over by pointing out that the district had been redrawn to include a township where he served on the board of supervisors. “Taking a risk can pay off. Not taking a risk will never pay off,” he added. “If all you do is focus on keeping the seats that you have and you’re not in the majority, then you’re always going to be relegated in the minority. That changed to a degree this cycle.”In Wisconsin, Lori Palmeri, the mayor of Oshkosh, won a competitive race for the state assembly that blocked Republicans from gaining a supermajority in the legislature that would have allowed them to override any vetoes from Tony Evers, a Democrat who was elected to a second term.“One of the things I heard the most at the doors was folks were fed up with the political polarization,” she said. “They wanted to see their legislators showing up and doing that work … The message is really from the voters. They really are not going to tolerate one-party rule.”Inspiring long shotsDemocrats and allies hope that the success they saw in 2022 will lead more Democrats to take state legislative races seriously.“My great hope is that our party will really start to understand that everything that affects people’s daily lives, including voting rights and the certification of US presidential elections, happens in states with Democratic trifecta control,” said Post of the DLCC.In the 48 hours after election day, more than 500 people expressed interest in running for office, said Amanda Litman, the executive director of Run for Something, which focuses on recruiting people to run for office.“Inspiring wins in long shot races inspire more people to take on long-shot races. It’s especially true when the candidates in those are young people, women, people of color. It compounds on itself,” she said.TopicsUS politicsThe fight for democracyUS midterm elections 2022DemocratsMichiganMinnesotaPennsylvaniafeaturesReuse this content More

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      How Michigan Democrats took control for the first time in decades

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      How Michigan Democrats took control for the first time in decadesRepublicans were expected to maintain their iron grip on state legislature – but Democrats took control of the vital swing state’s senate and house Early on the morning after the midterm elections, a stunning new development that few Michigan political observers imagined possible took shape: Democrats, for the first time in nearly 40 years, took control of the vital swing state’s senate and house.They achieved it in a year Republicans were expected to maintain their iron grip on the state legislature, but when the dust settled, Democrats held a 56-54 majority in the house and 20-18 advantage in the senate. It came in addition to Dems sweeping the statewide offices at the top of the ballot, retaining control of the state supreme court and winning a majority of US House seats.New generation of candidates stakes claim to Democratic party’s futureRead more“Michigan Republicans were decimated in an election when history tells us it never should have happened,” the right-leaning state political commentator Bill Ballenger wrote of the results. “The [Michigan] GOP lost everything of value.”The bellwether swing state in America’s industrial upper midwest is a political prize that has voted for the presidential winner in the last four national elections, but despite its bipartisan tendencies, gerrymandered legislative districts drawn by Republicans for decades have virtually ensured Democrats rarely have a chance to govern at the state level here.In the midterms’ wake, the confluence of forces that came together to propel the Democratic victory are becoming clear. Like elsewhere in the nation where Democrats performed well, the Michigan party benefited from facing many weak, extreme Republican candidates and a base motivated by the US supreme court overturning Roe v Wade.But state Democrats also charted their own destiny in some ways, observers note. They spent more on state legislative races than in past years, ran popular statewide candidates at the top of the ballot, and passed a string of citizen-led progressive ballot initiatives over the last three cycles that paid off in 2022.That started with the 2018 passage of initiatives for an independent redistricting commission and expansion of voting rights. The commission’s new lines went into effect this year, giving Democrats a much fairer shot at control. Meanwhile, the Democratic floor leader, Yousef Rabhi, who did not run for re-election but campaigned statewide for his party, spent most of election day at a university campus where hundreds of young people signed up to vote last minute. Their votes would not have been possible before the 2018 voting rights expansion.In 2022, an initiative to codify abortion rights in the state and a further expansion of voting rights again energized the liberal base and boosted turnout, and this time they voted on races run in fairer districts.“It was incredible to see,” Rabhi said. “But it was a multi-election process that never would have been possible prior to passing those laws in 2018.”State pollster Ed Sarpolous of Target Insyght laid today’s fairer legislative lines over the results from the past 20 years and found that with those districts in place Democrats would have won control of the legislature in 2006 and 2008.Pre-election polling by the Epic-MRA pollster Bernie Porn also highlighted how this year’s abortion rights initiative benefited Dems. Asked what single issue was motivating them to vote, 43% of respondents said abortion, which topped inflation by about 14 points.“Abortion, abortion, abortion,” Porn said. “This proposal drove women and younger voters to the polls … and if Democrats in other states have a mechanism to put an abortion ballot proposal on the ballot in 2024, then they should consider that.”The initiative, which passed by a 57-43 margin, also helped energize other key Michigan constituencies, like independents and Catholics, the latter of which have traditionally voted blue and are split on abortion, Sarpolous said.“Democrats do well when there are issues that all voters care about and this was viewed not as an abortion issue, but a women’s rights issue,” he added.Democrats in the legislature further benefited from what pollsters called the “coattails” effect. At the top of the ballot, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, the secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, and attorney general, Dana Nessel, won their respective races by between eight and 15 points, which helped power Democratic candidates down ballot. Meanwhile, competitive races in US House seats had a similar effect, observers say.They were helped by what Ballanger told the Guardian were “historically weak” Republican candidates for statewide office – each was a Trump-backed election denier who was viewed as an extremist. Whitmer and national Democrats far outspent Republican gubernatorial nominee Tudor Dixon and national Republicans, who may have given up on Dixon before the campaign ever got started.An analysis by Sarpolous found 27,000 Republicans voted for Whitmer, while about 216,000 Republican-leaning independents stayed home.“That was a killer,” Ballenger said. “That just affected races down the ballot.”Rabhi echoed that, and said he heard anecdotally from voters around the state while campaigning that the election denialism in particular was a turn-off: “They are batshit crazy at this point and that’s what I heard from Republicans, Democrats and independents alike.”He and other Democrats touted the strength of their legislative candidates who, along with Whitmer, focused on abortion and local issues that affected people in their districts. Republicans, by contrast, spent a large amount of resources on re-litigating the 2020 election, supporting gun rights or tying candidates to Joe Biden and inflation, a tactic that some say failed as Biden’s approval rating ticked up in the second half of the year.“Democratic candidates were actually trying to listen to the concerns of voters rather than throw red meat at them with some of these issues that Tudor Dixon and other Republicans pursued,” said Rodericka Applewhite, Michigan Democrats’ senior communications adviser.If they are to repeat in 2024, Democrats need to pursue the legislation they have been proposing in recent years that Republicans have killed, Rabhi said. That could mean repealing right-to-work, killing the GOP’s unpopular Line 5 gas pipeline being built through the Great Lakes, new oversight of unpopular utilities like DTE Energy, codifying equal rights for LGBTQ+ residents and more.“Now that we have the majority we have to deliver on promises and be the bold progressives that we should be,” Rabhi said.TopicsMichiganUS midterm elections 2022US politicsDemocratsfeaturesReuse this content More