Michigan

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow’s retirement sets up fierce 2024 Senate contest

      by

      Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow’s retirement sets up fierce 2024 Senate contestThe vacancy will make Michigan’s Senate seat one of the most competitive in the nation, as Republicans vie for more control Michigan senator Debbie Stabenow, a member of the Democratic leadership, announced on Thursday that she would not seek re-election in 2024, setting the stage for a fierce contest to claim an open seat in a critical midwestern battleground state.How Michigan Democrats took control for the first time in decadesRead moreStabenow, 72, is the first Senate Democrat to announce her retirement ahead of 2024, when the party will try to defend its razor-thin majority by fending off challenges to incumbents in several states that former president Donald Trump won.But Democrats delivered a strong performance in Michigan last year and expressed confidence that the seat would remain in the party’s control.“Inspired by a new generation of leaders, I have decided to pass the torch in the US Senate,” Stabenow said in a statement on Thursday. “I am announcing today that I will not seek re-election and will leave the US Senate at the end of my term on 3 January 2025.“Under the cloud of unprecedented threats to our democracy and our basic freedoms, a record-breaking number of people voted last year in Michigan. Young people showed up like never before. This was a very hopeful sign for our future,” she said.Stabenow’s decision not to seek a fifth term after serving two decades in the chamber immediately turned the race for Michigan’s open Senate seat into one of the most competitive in the nation. Republicans welcomed the development as a sign that Democrats’ hopes of maintaining their one-seat majority were already fading.“We are going to aggressively target this seat in 2024,” said Mike Berg, communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of Senate Republicans. “This could be the first of many Senate Democrats who decide to retire rather than lose.”Senate Democrats face a punishing electoral map next year. They are defending nearly a quarter of the seats in the Senate, many of them in competitive states as well as in red states like Ohio, Montana and West Virginia. By contrast, no Senate Republican faces re-election in a state Joe Biden won.But their prospects have improved in Michigan since Trump won the state in 2016. Biden won the state in 2020. And two years later, fury over efforts to ban abortion in Michigan in the wake of the supreme court decision overturning Roe v Wade propelled Democrats to victory up and down the ballot in the state.In a statement, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer praised Stabenow as the embodiment of the “true Michigan spirit” and thanked her for her years of service in Congress and her leadership within the caucus. “With Debbie’s help, and the strong Michigan Democratic party she helped build, Debbie and I are confident Democrats will retain the seat,” he said.Speculation began to swirl about who Democrats might nominate to replace Stabenow. Attention immediately turned to Democratic congresswoman Elissa Slotkin who clinched a decisive victory in November in one of the most competitive House races that cycle. Other possible contenders included congresswoman Haley Stevens, transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who recently moved to Michigan to be closer to his husband’s family.In a statement, Buttigieg called Stabenow a “force in the Senate” but said he was “not seeking any other job”.Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, who resoundingly won re-election in November, praised Stabenow as a “champion for Michigan” while indicating that she was not interested in running for the seat. “As governor of this great state for the next four years, I look forward to working with [Stabenow] through the end of her term and beyond in however she serves our state next,” Whitmer said in a statement, emphasizing her plans to serve a full four-year term.Other Michigan officials whose names have been raised include Lt governor Garlin Gilchrist, secretary of state Jocelyn Benson, attorney general Dana Nessel as well as state senator Mallory McMorrow, who drew interest after a forceful rejoinder to Republican accusations that Democrats want to “groom” children went viral.Stabenow first joined Congress in 1996 after serving in the Michigan state legislature. In 2000, she became the first woman to represent Michigan in the US Senate. Stabenow climbed through the ranks, becoming a member of Democratic leadership and chair of the agriculture committee. In 2018, she turned back a well-funded and closely-watched challenge from Republican John James, who is seen as a rising star on the right.House Republicans aim to rein in ethics body preparing to investigate their partyRead moreJames was elected to the House in November and is considered a potential contender for the Republican Senate nomination. Other possible Republican candidates are former congressman Peter Meijer, a relative moderate who lost his seat last year as well as Tudor Dixon, a Trump loyalist who was defeated by Whitmer in the race for governor.In her statement, Stabenow reflected on the progress Michigan women had made in politics since she first ran for office in 1974, at the age of 24.“This began years of breaking barriers, blazing trails and being the ‘first’ woman to reach historic milestones as an elected official,” she said, adding: “But I have always believed it’s not enough to be the ‘first’ unless there is a ‘second’ and a ‘third’…”TopicsUS politicsMichiganDemocratsUS CongressUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Michigan governor kidnap plot: man sentenced to over 19 years in prison

      by

      Michigan governor kidnap plot: man sentenced to over 19 years in prisonBarry Croft Jr, the co-leader of the stunning plot to abduct the governor from her vacation home, is the final defendant in the case A Delaware trucker described as a co-leader of the conspiracy to kidnap Michigan’s governor has been sentenced to more than 19 years in prison.Leader of plot to kidnap Michigan governor sentenced to 16 yearsRead moreBarry Croft Jr was the fourth and final federal defendant to learn his fate, a day after ally Adam Fox was sentenced to 16 years in prison. The two men were convicted in August of conspiracy charges at a second trial in Grand Rapids.They were accused of running a stunning plot to abduct Governor Gretchen Whitmer from her vacation home just before the 2020 presidential election. The conspirators were furious over tough Covid-19 restrictions that Whitmer and officials in other states had put in place during the early months of the pandemic, as well as perceived threats to gun ownership.Whitmer was not physically harmed. The FBI was secretly embedded in the group and made 14 arrests.Fox, 39, and Croft, 47, were convicted of two counts of conspiracy at a second trial in August. Croft also was found guilty of possessing an unregistered explosive. A different jury in Grand Rapids, Michigan, could not reach a verdict on the pair at the first trial last spring but acquitted two other men.“The abduction of the governor was only meant to be the beginning of Croft’s reign of terror,” assistant US attorney NilsKessler said. “He called for riots, ‘torching’ government officials in their sleep and setting off a ‘domino’ effect of violence across the country.”A key piece of evidence: Croft, Fox and others traveled to see Whitmer’s vacation home in northern Michigan with undercover agents and informants inside the cabal.At one point, Croft told allies: “I don’t like seeing anybody get killed either. But you don’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, you know what I mean?”Croft’s attorney tried to soften his client’s role. In a court filing, Joshua Blanchard said the Bear, Delaware, man did not actually have authority over others and often frustrated them because he “just kept talking”.Croft was smoking 2 ounces (56g) of marijuana a week, Blanchard said.“Simply put, to the extent that the jury determined he was a participant, as they necessarily did, he was a participant to a lesser degree than others,” Blanchard insisted.How Michigan Democrats took control for the first time in decadesRead moreTwo men who pleaded guilty and testified against Fox and Croft received substantial breaks: Ty Garbin already is free after a 2.5-year prison term, while Kaleb Franks was given a four-year sentence.In state court, three men recently were given lengthy sentences for assisting Fox earlier in the summer of 2020. Five more are awaiting trial in Antrim county, where Whitmer’s vacation home is located.When the plot was extinguished, Whitmer blamed then-President Donald Trump, saying he had given “comfort to those who spread fear and hatred and division”. In August, 19 months after leaving office, Trump said the kidnapping plan was a “fake deal”.TopicsMichiganUS politicsUS crimenewsReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Democrats, Feeling New Strength, Plan to Go on Offense on Voting Rights

      by

      After retaining most of the governor’s offices they hold and capturing the legislatures in Michigan and Minnesota, Democrats are putting forward a long list of proposals to expand voting access.NEW ORLEANS — For the last two years, Democrats in battleground states have played defense against Republican efforts to curtail voting access and amplify doubts about the legitimacy of the nation’s elections.Now it is Democrats, who retained all but one of the governor’s offices they hold and won control of state legislatures in Michigan and Minnesota, who are ready to go on offense in 2023. They are putting forward a long list of proposals that include creating automatic voter registration systems, preregistering teenagers to vote before they turn 18, returning the franchise to felons released from prison and criminalizing election misinformation.Since 2020, Republicans inspired by former President Donald J. Trump’s election lies sought to make voting more difficult for anyone not casting a ballot in person on Election Day. But in the midterm elections, voters across the country rejected the most prominent Republican candidates who embraced false claims about American elections and promised to bend the rules to their party’s advantage.Democrats who won re-election or will soon take office have interpreted their victories as a mandate to make voting easier and more accessible.“I’ve asked them to think big,” Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota said of his directions to fellow Democrats on voting issues now that his party controls both chambers of the state’s Legislature. Republicans will maintain unified control next year over state governments in Texas, Ohio, Florida and Georgia. In Texas and Ohio, along with other places, Republicans are weighing additional restrictions on voting when they convene in the new year.Democratic governors in Arizona and Wisconsin will face Republican-run legislatures that are broadly hostile to expanding voting access, while Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor-elect of Pennsylvania, is likely to eventually preside over one chamber with a G.O.P. majority and one with a narrow Democratic majority.And in Washington, D.C., the Supreme Court is weighing a case that could give state legislatures vastly expanded power over election laws — a decision with enormous implications for the power of state lawmakers to draw congressional maps and set rules for federal elections.Democrats have widely interpreted that case — brought by Republicans in North Carolina — as dangerous to democracy because of the prospect of aggressive G.O.P. gerrymandering and the potential for state legislators to determine the outcome of elections. But it would also allow Democrats to write themselves into permanent power in states where they control the levers of elections.The Supreme Court’s deliberation comes as many Democrats are becoming increasingly vocal about pushing the party to be more aggressive in expanding voting access — especially after the Senate this year failed to advance a broad voting rights package.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Men sentenced to prison for supporting plot to kidnap Michigan governor

      by

      Men sentenced to prison for supporting plot to kidnap Michigan governorJoe Morrison, Pete Musico and Paul Bellar were members of paramilitary group that trained with leader of conspiracy A judge on Thursday handed down the longest prison terms so far in the plot to kidnap the Democratic governor of Michigan, sentencing three men who forged an early alliance with a leader of the scheme before the FBI broke it up in 2020.Joe Morrison, Pete Musico and Paul Bellar were not charged with direct roles in the conspiracy but were members of a paramilitary group that trained with Adam Fox, who separately faces a possible life sentence on 27 December.The trio were convicted in October of providing material support for a terrorist act, which carries a maximum term of 20 years, and two other crimes.Musico was sentenced to a minimum of 12 years in prison, followed by his son-in-law Morrison at 10 years and Bellar at seven. They will be eligible for parole after serving those terms.In a recorded video, the governor, Gretchen Whitmer, urged the judge to “impose a sentence that meets the gravity of the damage they have done to our democracy”.“A conspiracy to kidnap and kill a sitting governor of the state of Michigan is a threat to democracy itself,” said Whitmer, adding that she now scans crowds for threats and worries “about the fate of everyone near me”.The judge, Thomas Wilson, presided over the first batch of convictions in state court, following the high-profile conspiracy convictions of four others in federal court.Fox and Barry Croft Jr were described as captains of an incredible plan to snatch Whitmer from her vacation home, seeking to inspire a US civil war known as the “boogaloo”.Whitmer, recently elected to a second term, was never physically harmed. Undercover FBI agents and informants were inside Fox’s group for months and the scheme was broken up with 14 arrests in October 2020.A person convicted of more than one crime in Michigan typically gets prison sentences that run at the same time. But Wilson took the unusual step of ordering consecutive sentences for Musico and Morrison, making their minimum stays longer.In addition to being convicted of supporting terrorism, the three men were each convicted of a gun crime and of being a member in a gang.Musico, 45, Morrison, 28, and Bellar, 24, were members of the Wolverine Watchmen. The three held gun training with Fox in rural Jackson county and shared his disgust for Whitmer, police and public officials, especially after Covid-19 restrictions disrupted the economy and triggered armed Capitol protests and anti-government belligerence.But defense attorneys argued that the trio cut ties with Fox before the Whitmer plot came into focus by late summer 2020. Bellar had moved to South Carolina in July. The three men also didn’t travel with Fox to look for the governor’s second home or participate in a key training session inside a “shoot house” in Luther, Michigan.“Mr Bellar is clueless about any plot to kidnap the governor,” the attorney Andrew Kirkpatrick said in a court filing last week.A jury quickly returned guilty verdicts in October after nine days of testimony, mostly evidence offered by a pivotal FBI informant, Dan Chappel, and federal agents.Separately, in federal court in Grand Rapids, Fox and Croft face possible life sentences in two weeks’ time. Two men who pleaded guilty received substantial breaks: Ty Garbin is free after a two-and-a-half-year prison term while Kaleb Franks was given a four-year sentence.Brandon Caserta and Daniel Harris were acquitted by a jury.When the plot was foiled, Whitmer blamed then-president Donald Trump, saying he had given “comfort to those who spread fear and hatred and division”.In August, after 19 months out of office, Trump said the kidnapping plan was a “fake deal”.TopicsMichiganUS crimeUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Gary Peters on How Democrats Held and Expanded Their Senate Majority

      by

      The Michigan Democrat who led the party’s campaign effort credits candidate quality, abortion rights and the battleground map.WASHINGTON — Senator Gary Peters knows tough campaigns.A Michigan Democrat, he beat an eight-term Republican incumbent in 2008 to win a House seat and then survived the Tea Party wave in 2010 in a district the Republican governor carried by 26 points. Republicans targeted him for extinction in 2012 in a redistricting effort that placed his residence on the dividing line between three districts. He won again, after weathering a primary against a fellow Democratic incumbent.Then in 2014, Mr. Peters won Michigan’s open Senate seat in a year when Republicans picked up nine seats in the chamber, making him the only newly elected Democrat and the party’s incoming class of one. And in his 2020 re-election bid, he held off the Republican Party’s top recruit and $40 million in outside spending to win again, outperforming President Biden.This year, as the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Mr. Peters did not have a race of his own, but he applied some of the political lessons learned through his experience in difficult contests to forge a winning strategy for his party in multiple challenging campaigns featuring Democrats.“We had an incredibly sophisticated ground campaign that helped us, that allowed us to win even though the other side had spent millions of dollars against me,” Mr. Peters said of his own races. “I saw the power of a ground campaign in making sure your voters are voting.”He exceeded expectations in the midterm elections, helping Democrats add to their majority in a cycle that would typically favor Republicans, bolstering their 50-50 majority to a more functional 51-49.“Gary Peters did an amazing, amazing job as head of the D.S.C.C.,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and majority leader, who will benefit significantly from the extra Senate seat won in the election.Despite his electoral track record and chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Mr. Peters, 64, is not a particularly prominent figure in the Senate. But that status may change given the party’s showing in November.The New York Times interviewed Mr. Peters about his strategy and takeaways from the midterm election. It has been condensed and lightly edited.What was your secret?The secret is usually always hard work. We put in a lot of hard work. We were very disciplined. But I would say the No. 1 factor for us holding and expanding the majority was the quality of our candidates, especially vis-à-vis the quality of the opposition. Clearly, our candidates were superior. They had records to run on, records of accomplishment. They were aligned with the issues that people cared about, and the Republicans were out of touch, often very extreme. And when you compare the two candidates, it was clear for folks who should be their senator.Mr. Peters addressed a crowd at a rally for Democrats in Grand Rapids, Mich., last month.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesSo when Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Republicans had a “candidate quality” problem, you agreed with him?The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Two Groups Quietly Spent $32 Million Rallying Voters Behind Voting Rights

      by

      The money largely went to state and local organizations that often focused on turning out young voters and people of color, including with messages about threats to freedom and democracy.Two organizations quietly spent $32 million in last month’s midterm elections on organizing meant to combat election denialism and promote voting access, according to a progressive strategist behind the effort.The Pro-Democracy Center and the Pro-Democracy Campaign put that money into 126 organizations across 16 states, with a particular focus on Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan, as well as toward a range of national organizations, some of them left-leaning. The effort also connected donors with key organizations, resulting in an additional $16 million investment, said David Donnelly, the initiative’s lead strategist. The Pro-Democracy Center and the Pro-Democracy Campaign did not directly spend on specific candidates or buy advertising, he said. The initiative did, however, engage around retention of Supreme Court justices in Arizona, he said.Mr. Donnelly said the groups invested in organizations that focused in particular on turning out young voters and people of color, two key parts of the Democratic coalition, and often recommended messages about threats to freedom and democracy.“If you roll back the clock to the beginning of this year, there was a lot of ink and pixels spilled about the possibility of democratic collapse, and all that didn’t happen,” Mr. Donnelly said. A number of Republicans who made names for themselves as election deniers lost high-profile races. “It’s not the full story, but you can’t understand why without lifting up some of the groups that were doing organizing and mobilizing in communities of color and among young people.”Mr. Donnelly would not name the donors behind the groups, which as nonprofits are not required to disclose their contributors. Politico first reported on the efforts from Pro-Democracy Center and Pro-Democracy Campaign on Monday.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Gretchen Whitmer Rejected False Choices. All Democrats Should.

      by

      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

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Warnock’s Victory Forges Democrats’ Path Through the New Battlegrounds

      by

      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