Midterm Elections (2022)

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      Will U.S. Democracy Survive the Threats?

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      More from our inbox:Women, ‘Stay Loud’A Childhood HomeGet a Living WillIllustration of the American flag.Illustration by Matt ChaseTo the Editor:Re “Democracy Challenged,” by David Leonhardt (front page, Sept. 18):Your excellent, and frightening, article suggests that our democracy is facing two simultaneous crises: Republicans who refuse to accept defeat in an election, and a growing disconnect between political power and public opinion. But there is a third, equally serious danger.While it is critical to get rid of dark money (reversing Citizens United) and gerrymandering, and to set term limits on the Supreme Court, an equally significant element of the current nightmare is coming from social media.Indeed, the degree to which social media has not only ginned up but actually created some or much of the current social-cultural-political zeitgeist is not well understood or acknowledged. For all the positives it provides, social media has become a cancer on society — one that has metastasized and continues to do so, often with the full knowledge (and even complicity) of social media companies.If we are going to begin arresting, and then (hopefully) reversing, the crisis described in the article, we need to address the social media issue as urgently as we need to address the overtly political ones. Addressing the latter without the former simply will not do the job.Ian AltermanNew YorkTo the Editor:Our democracy and our constitutional republic are not only challenged, but are on the verge of collapse. Should the Republicans capture the House and the Senate in the midterm elections, I believe that it will be a long time before we have another free and fair election in this country.The G.O.P. has stacked state houses with MAGA Republicans who, if given the chance, will do what Donald Trump wanted done in 2020: refuse to certify the will of the voters. In other areas we are rapidly losing our freedoms. We are in danger of losing the right to choose whether or not to bring a child into the world, the right to read or watch whatever we choose, and in many cases, the right to vote.The Republican Party has developed into a race-baiting, hateful group of people, inspired and directed by Mr. Trump, and Americans need to beware the consequences of electing more of their ilk at the local, state and federal level.Henry A. LowensteinNew YorkTo the Editor:“Democracy Challenged” is a chilling portrait of the bitter ideological civil war raging in America today. While not a conflict exacting physical wounds for the most part, it is for many of us emotionally exhausting, compounded by the realization that no obvious relief or solution is evident. It is almost impossible to watch cable news or read the daily papers without feeling despondent about the widening philosophical gulf separating the two parties.It is ironic that Democratic-leaning states contribute more to the federal government than they receive, in effect subsidizing Republican state policies that Democrats strongly oppose.I look forward to future articles in which I can hopefully discover a nugget of hope.Howard QuinnBronxTo the Editor:Thank you for all of your efforts to highlight the challenges to democracy and fair elections, but what I believe you are failing to do is sell democracy. You assume that democracy will sell itself. It won’t. There was a time when it would, but not today.Not only do you need to sell democracy — that is, emphasize its benefits — but you also need to highlight the cons of the alternative.We must sell democracy as if our lives depended on it. Because they do.Dan BuchanCheyenne, Wyo.To the Editor:While David Leonhardt is correct, of course, that the Republican Party’s increasing inclination to refuse to accept defeat in an election constitutes an existential threat to our democracy, so, too, does the likelihood that some of the large number of election deniers now running for statewide or local positions of electoral authority will prevail in November.Such a calamitous result would mean that if the outcome of a subsequent election is called into question by a defeated, victimized Democrat with legitimate cries of foul, it will be met with derision and scorn by the faux patriot MAGA crowd, and upheld by judges and justices whose allegiance to one man outweighs any sense of loyalty to the Constitution they might once have held sacrosanct.Edward PellSanta Monica, Calif.Women, ‘Stay Loud’ Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesTo the Editor:“Trolls in Russia Schemed to Divide Women’s March,” by Ellen Barry (front page, Sept. 19), is a thorough, well-researched piece about how Russian trolls deliberately created discord within the Women’s March and across the women’s rights movement more broadly.While the details may be shocking to many, it’s old news that women are in the sightlines. Whether the actors are foreign or domestic, we’ve long been the targets of disinformation, harassment and violence, against our bodies and our freedoms.We’ve had to create programs like Digital Divas and Digital Defenders to combat disinformation, because it is still happening and only going to get worse as we fight back. In addition to digital spaces, we’re leaning on proven analog tactics, including get-out-the-vote training, phone banking and postcard mailing.Thousands of women, including many who have never volunteered before, are active ahead of the critical midterm elections to get people registered to vote and educated on the issues. We saw in the abortion referendum in Kansas last month how our efforts can succeed.Silence us, they will not. Women more than ever need to stay loud in the battle for equality. Neither a Russian bot nor a domestic terrorist will silence us into submission.Emiliana GuerecaLos AngelesThe writer is the founder and president of Women’s March Foundation and Action.A Childhood Home Marine BuffardTo the Editor:Re “Your Childhood Home Is in Front of You. Do You Go In?,” by Mark Vanhoenacker (Opinion guest essay, Sept. 12):I enjoyed this article, which described the pull toward one’s childhood home. As a psychiatrist, I begin my journey with patients by asking about their earliest years.“Who lived with you during your childhood?”“Were there any disruptive moves or departures?”By exploring these distant memories, I begin to understand their path to my office, and how I can help them shape a healthier future.If looking back is a positive experience, I may encourage those struggling with insomnia to imagine a virtual tour of their earliest home, focusing on even the most minute details. “What do you see as you look around your bedroom?”As a busy working mom, I find that this technique has helped me return to sleep despite my anxious mind, a soothing recall of a childhood filled with safety and love.Jennifer ReidMoorestown, N.J.Get a Living Will Emiliano PonziTo the Editor:Re “The Space Between Brain Death and Organ Donation,” by Daniela J. Lamas (Sunday Opinion, Sept. 18):It behooves everyone to make their wishes clear regarding organ donation (like on a driver’s license). Just as important, if not more so, is that each of us make our wishes clear regarding life support and other artificial means: respirator, feeding tube, etc.Making our wishes known in a living will not only has cost-saving implications but also assures our dignity.Pankaj GuptaEdison, N.J.The writer is a geriatrician. More

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      Want to Understand the 2022 Midterms? Meet Joe and Marie.

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      VANCOUVER, Wash. — In March, five months before he became the Republican nominee in a Washington State congressional race, Joe Kent appeared on a webcast hosted by a Gen-Z white nationalist group called the American Populist Union. Kent, who would soon be endorsed by Donald Trump, was there to explain his disavowal of Nick Fuentes, a smirking 24-year-old far-right influencer whom The New York Times has described as “a prominent white supremacist.”On one side of the split screen was David Carlson, the American Populist Union’s baby-faced chief content officer. On the other was Kent, a movie-star-handsome former Green Beret in a plaid flannel shirt, with an American flag hanging behind him. What followed was a 45-minute conversation in which Kent attempted a dance that’s become common in today’s G.O.P.: remaining in the good graces of the far right while putting some distance between himself and its most abhorrent avatars.Joe Kent at a campaign event in Amboy, Wash. “Our agenda for the first two years is simple,” he said. “Impeachment, obstruction and oversight. The Biden agenda dies off in the crib.”Kent had spoken on the phone to Fuentes, a Holocaust denier and Vladimir Putin admirer who believes women shouldn’t be allowed to vote, earlier in his campaign to unseat Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler, one of the 10 Republicans who’d voted to impeach Trump. (They apparently discussed social media strategy.) Their association had become a problem in Kent’s primary, and eventually Kent tweeted that he didn’t want Fuentes’s endorsement because of “his focus on race/religion.” But this rejection infuriated some of Kent’s most reactionary supporters; Fuentes himself went after Kent in a three-and-a-half hour livestream. So Kent appeared on the American Populist Union’s webcast (the group has since changed its name to American Virtue) to explain himself.There, he spoke about how white people are discriminated against in America, called for an immigration moratorium, and said the United States is the only country that “recognizes that our rights are inherent and they come from God, not from government.” Carlson pressed him: Why, given Kent’s own religious and nationalist convictions, did he consider Fuentes “divisive”?“It’s more of a tactics thing,” Kent said. He noted that he has “moral qualms” about Fuentes’s giggling praise for Hitler, but said that where they really differ is on strategy. “Running out there and saying, ‘This movement is for white people and Christians only,’” said Kent, “that is not how you win elections at all.”The question of how you win an election in Washington’s Third Congressional District — a stretch along the southeastern border with Oregon that’s been reliably Republican, voting for Trump by four points in 2020 but still considered fairly moderate — is not just a political debate for right-wing YouTube. The race, pitting Kent, a burgeoning MAGA-world star, against Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a 34-year-old rural working-class Democrat who is emphasizing abortion rights, has national implications.Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in Camas. She is counting on anger over the overturning of Roe to help her win.It’s one that will show us whether Republicans overreached in nominating candidates who speak almost exclusively to their base, or whether politicians like Kent really are the party’s future. It will show us just how potent the backlash to the overturning of Roe v. Wade is. And it will show us what kind of House we’re going to have come 2023: one that is capable of legislating, or one that makes the Tea Party look tame.In other words, the race in Washington’s Third is an almost perfect microcosm of the broader political forces at work in the fall midterm elections.You’ve heard it before: Until recently, it seemed inevitable that a red wave would crash over America in November. The Democrats’ congressional majority is paper-thin, the party in power typically loses midterm seats, and Joe Biden’s poll numbers were abysmal. But lately the forecast has turned cloudier, and districts like Washington’s Third have become surprisingly competitive.Across the country, Republicans have nominated politically inexperienced MAGA fanatics who could lose otherwise winnable races — people like the Ohio House candidate J.R. Majewski, a QAnon promoter who performs pro-Trump rap songs and reportedly misrepresented his military service.Kent is one of the more polished of the MAGA candidates. His military service — 11 tours, mostly in Iraq — is very real, and he has an immensely sympathetic personal story. In 2019, his wife, a Navy cryptologic technician named Shannon Kent, was killed by an ISIS suicide bomber in northeastern Syria, leaving Joe as the single father to a baby and a toddler. This horrific loss, he’s said, helped propel him into politics. Kent holds what he calls the “administrative state” responsible for his wife’s death, arguing that unelected bureaucrats subverted Trump’s attempts to pull American troops out of Syria.“They were supposed to be out Christmas Eve of 2018,” he told me, accusing people close to Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who resigned over the Syria pullout, of slow-rolling the process. “I 100 percent blame the administrative state.”Kent’s anger is understandable, as is his deep disillusionment with the war on terror, which he now sees as a scheme, built on an edifice of lies, to enrich the military-industrial complex. America’s foreign wars, he said, were “a great way for the ruling class to extract wealth and give themselves more power.”It’s hard to entirely disagree with that. But Kent’s fury at the establishment has led him to what was, at least before Trump, the right-wing fringe. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with there being a white people special interest group,” he said on Carlson’s webcast.Kent said that the Jan. 6 insurrection “reeks of an intelligence operation” and he wants all the “political prisoners” arrested for invading the Capitol released. His campaign, The Associated Press’s Brian Slodysko reported, paid a member of the Proud Boys, one of the groups that led the Jan. 6 attack, $11,375 for “consulting” services. He’s appeared at several rallies with Joey Gibson, the founder of a Vancouver-based Christian Nationalist group called Patriot Prayer that has often worked in concert with the Proud Boys.When I asked Kent why he went on Carlson’s webcast, he claimed he didn’t really know who he was. “Honestly, it seemed like a venue where a lot of younger guys listened to, so why not try and get in front of that audience,” he said. He described the Proud Boys, who’ve engaged in especially violent brawls in Portland, Ore., as “a drinking group” that acted in self-defense against the lawlessness of antifa and Black Lives Matter.Despite his hard-right associations, the Republican edge in the midterms probably would have made Kent a shoo-in in his district before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. But the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has mobilized pro-choice voters nationwide.Last month Pat Ryan, a Democrat running on abortion rights, won a special election in a closely divided district in upstate New York. A week later, a Democrat, Mary Peltola, beat Sarah Palin in a special election for Alaska’s lone House seat. “Democrats are punching above their weight in special elections since Dobbs,” said an analysis in FiveThirtyEight. While the November elections can be different from special elections, the challenge for Democrats remains the same: Can they punch above their weight in Washington’s Third?If Kent is one likely face of the future Republican Party, Gluesenkamp Perez, an auto shop owner, offers an intriguing path forward for the Democrats, who need to become competitive in Republican-leaning districts without sacrificing their ideals. She’s counting on a Dobbs backlash, especially since Kent favors a nationwide abortion ban. “It doesn’t matter what a woman’s political party is,” she said of women she meets on the trail. “If they’re old enough to remember what illegal abortions looked like, they do not want to go back.”Gluesenkamp Perez has spoken about how, during the height of the pandemic, she had a miscarriage and needed medical attention. One of the few places that could see her right away was Planned Parenthood, but to get inside, she had to make her way through a wall of protesters. It brought home to her the outrageous presumption of those who’d dictate to women what they can do with their bodies.“Who is going to write a bill that can encompass all the complexity of giving birth and being pregnant?” she said. “That will not happen. There is no role for government in making these decisions.” The Pacific Northwest has a strong libertarian streak, and Gluesenkamp Perez said she meets people who were outraged by mask mandates and are now similarly angry about anti-abortion restrictions on bodily autonomy.Though fund-raising has recently picked up, Gluesenkamp Perez’s campaign is still running on a shoestring. It currently consists of four paid staff members, including a young political director living in a camper in Gluesenkamp Perez’s driveway. Kent, whose appearances on Tucker Carlson’s show and Steve Bannon’s podcast have contributed to his national profile, has a staff of eight.At the Gluesenkamp Pérez event in Camas. A recent survey by Public Policy Polling had Kent leading by three percentage points, 47 percent to 44 percent, within the poll’s margin of error. Nine percent were undecided. The Gluesenkamp Perez campaign’s internal polling shows her with a slight lead, and though internal polling should always be taken with a grain of salt, The Cook Political Report has changed the district’s rating from “Solid Republican” to “Lean Republican.”Because of the Trumpist candidates Republicans have nominated — people like Herschel Walker in Georgia, Blake Masters in Arizona and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania — some forecasts favor Democrats to maintain control of the Senate. The House, where gerrymandered districts give Republicans a strong advantage, is a different story.“For Democrats to retain a majority, they will have to pull the equivalent of an inside straight, holding virtually all their tossup districts in addition to flipping some tossup seats Republicans currently hold,” reported The Times.Democrats need to do a few things simultaneously. They need to turn out pro-choice women, shore up their edge with Latinos and stop hemorrhaging rural voters. Gluesenkamp Perez is unusually well positioned to try to do all three.Her father, a Mexican immigrant, was an evangelical preacher; she told me she learned public speaking in his Texas church. She and her husband live, with their 13-month-old son, off an unpaved road in a house they built themselves “nail by nail,” as she likes to say on the stump. Like Kent, she is good-looking, resembling a taller, lankier Winona Ryder, which shouldn’t matter but probably does.The auto shop owned by Gluesenkamp Perez and her husband.Gluesenkamp Perez and her son, Ciro.The shop Gluesenkamp Perez runs with her husband, Dean’s Car Care, employs eight people, and Gluesenkamp Perez speaks passionately about the struggles of both small-business owners and working parents. She often talks about putting infant noise-protecting headphones on her baby registry; because she couldn’t find a day care spot, her son spent a lot of time with her at the auto shop.“If you think you can spend 15K a year on day care, per kid, and save for retirement, and save up for a mortgage, you’re living in a really different economy than me and most of the people that I know,” she said at one rally.In high school, Gluesenkamp Perez told me, she was so obsessed with civics that she was active in both the Young Republicans and the Young Democrats. It was only when she was a freshman in college and her brother came out as gay that she decided the Republican Party wasn’t for her.Though she looks nothing like Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senate candidate, John Fetterman, something about her reminds me of him. Both are part of working-class communities, and use cultural fluency as much as political rhetoric to try to connect with voters who might feel alienated by the national Democratic Party.Gluesenkamp Perez doesn’t always mention her immigrant heritage when she’s campaigning, at least in front of white, English-speaking audiences. (Her district is about 11 percent Latino.) “I’d say a lot of moderates feel like it’s somehow identity politics,” she said. She leans harder on her rural credentials: “We get our water from a well. I get my internet from a radio tower. And that means a lot to people in rural communities,” she said.Gluesenkamp Perez ’s first political campaign was in 2016, when she ran for county commission in Skamania County, the heavily forested area along the Columbia River Gorge where she lives. The county is very conservative, and she lost, but she outperformed Hillary Clinton by almost seven points.“I really learned how to listen more deeply about what the actual concerns are,” she said. “Because there’s sort of a top level of Fox News talking points, and then if you keep listening, and you go a little deeper, you can start to hear, what are the ways that that’s manifesting for you — what’s really influencing your quality of life.”A packed house, and then some, at a Gluesenkamp Perez event in Vancouver.It was Kent who inspired her to jump into the congressional race. Gluesenkamp Perez recalled the run-up to the 2016 election, when she was surrounded by evidence of enthusiasm for Trump and worried that national Democrats were ignoring it. She saw similar signs, she said, with Kent. “It was basically Joe Kent wallpaper in Skamania County,” she said. People she would have expected to have Herrera Beutler signs just didn’t.“I was not in this race to take Jaime Herrera Beutler out,” she told me. “Did I love her? No, but I wasn’t going to upset my life to run against her. But Joe Kent is dangerous, and I really felt like the same brand of Democrat with a pedigree and a graduate degree was not the solution right now.”Last Saturday afternoon, I watched Gluesenkamp Perez speak at a brewery here in downtown Vancouver. She was introduced by Washington’s attorney general, Bob Ferguson, who boasted of winning 53 lawsuits against the Trump administration. Gluesenkamp Perez thanked him for his work, which she said “derailed Trump’s march towards fascism. And let’s be very clear. Joe Kent is picking up that same banner of fascism. Of white nationalism. Of the Proud Boys. And he has got to be stopped before it is too late!”Gluesenkamp Perez knows talking about fascism, like identity, can be inflammatory; witness the freakout in some quarters when Biden called the MAGA movement “semi-fascist.” But she also thinks that authoritarianism is something a good chunk of people in the district worry about. In an internal poll, her campaign asked voters which issues will determine their choice for Congress. “Protecting democracy,” came in first, closely followed by the cost of living. Abortion was third.After Gluesenkamp Perez, a man who doesn’t often speak at Democratic rallies took the mic. David Nierenberg, a hedge fund manager who calls Mitt Romney his “best friend,” was probably Jaime Herrera Beutler’s biggest fund-raiser in the district. Now he’s backing Gluesenkamp Perez.Nierenberg told me he’s been doing political fund-raising in the community since 1999. “I have never been involved with such a joyous and ecstatic and enthusiastic fund-raising effort as I’m seeing here,” he said. “And I think that is the combination of the huge differences between these two candidates, where Marie is likable, approachable, moderate, well spoken, and then we have a flame-throwing extremist on the other side.”But one of Kent’s key advantages is that he doesn’t have the affect of a flame-throwing extremist. He’s smooth and affable, without Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s coiled, wild-eyed intensity or Representative Matt Gaetz’s smarm. “He’s got a very clean-cut, square-jawed sort of marketing, and if you’re not really paying attention, you’re going to get distracted by the hair,” said Gluesenkamp Perez. He has a talent for saying outrageous things as if they were banal common sense.I met Kent last Sunday, at a Republican picnic held in a wooded grove in Skamania County, and then saw him speak again the next day at an outdoor town hall in a rural area called Amboy. He made it quite clear what he intends to do in Congress. “Our agenda for the first two years is simple,” he said at the town hall. “Impeachment, obstruction and oversight. The Biden agenda dies off in the crib.”After the Kent event in Amboy, where the candidate expressed his view on shutting down the government if need be. “I used to work in the federal government,” he said. “It can shut down. It’s really not a big deal.”Of course, any Republican majority will obstruct and investigate Biden, but the size and composition of a potential Republican caucus still matters. It will determine, among other things, just how many impeachments and government shutdowns we’re in for, and how often the House uses its power to protect Trump and reify MAGA conspiracy theories. The more candidates like Kent get elected, the less reason Republicans will have to make any concession to a reality that exists outside the Trumpist bubble.In his speeches, Kent promised to impeach Biden on Day One, and then Vice President Kamala Harris (“one of the lead fund-raisers for antifa and B.L.M. during the summer of 2020”), Attorney General Merrick Garland and the secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas. At the town hall, he emphasized his willingness to shut down the government: “I used to work in the federal government,” he said. “It can shut down. It’s really not a big deal.”In this environment, a Gluesenkamp Perez win wouldn’t just give Democrats an extra seat, or provide a shining example for how to run in purplish regions: It would be a cautionary tale warning Republicans that there’s a price for marching into the fever swamps.As for Kent, his attempt to distance himself from Fuentes shows that he’s capable of modulating his political strategy. Most of the time, it seems, he doesn’t think he has to. A Kent victory would signal to other Republicans that even outside of ultra-red districts, there’s no need to appeal to moderates, and little price to be paid for courting the hard right.On the stump, in addition to listing all of those people he would impeach, Kent promised to hold Anthony Fauci “accountable” for the “scam that is Covid.” I asked him what holding Fauci accountable means. “Criminal charges,” said Kent. But what charges, I asked? “Murder,” he replied, as it were the most obvious answer in the world.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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      What Issue Is Most On Your Mind for the Midterm Elections?

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      In the weeks before Election Day, Times Opinion needs your help to understand what motivates each generation to vote.In a world on fire, our readers often describe a sense of displacement, and the fear that they and their children might not have the same lives their parents did. Every generation experienced the pandemic differently, from Zoom classrooms to apartments brimming with young children and isolated retirement communities, locked away from those they love. Combined with the upheaval of the last few months, those experiences, as different as they were, have left a deep and impermeable mark on our politics — radicalizing some generations, alienating others, and exposing our institutional rot to all.But even before the pandemic, the political differences between generations in America had never been greater, particularly when it came to racial discrimination, immigration policy and economic inequality.No group is a monolith, but to understand how the generational struggles at the heart of American politics might influence election outcomes in November, we want to hear directly from you, our readers. We’re particularly interested in hearing from younger voters.Pollsters often ask people to list the most important problems they face right now, and the Times Opinion politics team has narrowed that list to 19 options. We want you to choose the one that matters most to you and then tell us why: What’s at stake for you personally? What do you hope to change with your vote?We plan to publish a selection of responses shortly before the midterm elections. We won’t publish your comments or personal details without contacting you first.What’s at stake for you on Election Day?We’ve created a list of some of the biggest problems facing voters right now. Choose the one that matters most to you and tell us why.

      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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      Lost Hope of Lasting Democratic Majority

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      Revisiting an influential book and the notion that demographics are destiny.Barack Obama on the campaign trail in 2008, when a book titled “The Emerging Democratic Majority” seemed prophetic.Damon Winter/The New York TimesToday we wish a belated and maybe not-so-Happy 20th Birthday to “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” the book that famously argued Democrats would gain an enduring advantage in a multiracial, postindustrial America.There are countless explanations for the rise of Donald Trump and the growing dysfunction of American political life. This book does not necessarily rank at the top of that list. But when historians look back on this era, the book’s effect on American politics might be worth a mention.The thesis that Democrats were on the cusp of a lasting advantage in national politics helped shape the hopes, fears and, ultimately, the conduct of the two major parties — especially once the Obama presidency appeared to confirm the book’s prophecy.It transformed modest Democratic wins into harbingers of perpetual liberal rule. It fueled conservative anxiety about America’s growing racial diversity, even as it encouraged the Republican establishment to reach out to Hispanic voters and pursue immigration reform. The increasingly popular notion that “demographics are destiny” made it easier for the progressive base to argue against moderation and in favor of mobilizing a new coalition of young and nonwhite voters. All of this helped set the stage for the rise of Mr. Trump.This is a lot to attribute to a single book, especially since the book does not really resemble the Obama-era caricature advanced by its supporters. The book does not put forward what became a commonly held view that racial demographic shifts would allow Democrats to win through mobilization, a more leftist politics or without the support of white working-class voters.Instead, the book argued — not persuasively, as we’ll see — that Democrats could build a majority with a (still ill-defined) “centrist” politics of the Clinton-Gore variety, so long as they got “close to an even split” of white working-class voters.“We were clearly overly optimistic about that prospect, to say the least,” said John Judis, one of the authors of the book, of the prospect of such high levels of Democratic support.One easy way to see the divergence between reality and the expectations promoted by the book is to look at its projections for the Electoral College, compared with how the nation actually voted over the next 20 years: More

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      G.O.P. Senate Candidates Race to Close Fund-Raising Gap With Democrats

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      Their fund-raising dwarfed by their Democratic rivals, Republican nominees including Blake Masters and Mehmet Oz have been in Washington gathering cash from lobbyists.WASHINGTON — Rushing to raise money and close yawning gaps with their Democratic rivals, every Senate Republican nominee in a competitive race is taking precious time from the campaign trail to come to Washington this week and next to gather money before Congress leaves for the fall.Fund-raising invitations obtained by The New York Times reveal days full of dinners, receptions and even some free meet-and-greets — schedule-fillers the candidates hope they can use to make a good impression and pick up a check on the spot.Two thousand miles from Phoenix, Blake Masters, the Republican challenging Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, made a campaign pitch on Wednesday evening alongside Senator Mitch McConnell in a conference room near the Capitol. Mr. Masters accused his Democratic rival of portraying himself as a moderate while voting like a liberal.“We don’t need as much money as Kelly, just enough to get the truth out,” Mr. Masters said, according to notes from a person who was in the room, which was filled with lobbyists who had paid $1,000 per political action committee to attend.As political fund-raising goes, Mr. Masters was making a modest ask, and he isn’t the only Republican to downgrade his financial goals. The Republican Senate hopefuls, many of them first-time candidates, have little choice but to race from lobby shop to steakhouse alongside the party leaders some of them castigated in their primaries but who now serve as lures for access-hungry lobbyists.The reasons are wide-ranging. Republican small-dollar fund-raising has dried up in the face of soaring inflation. Former President Donald J. Trump’s relentless appeals for his own committees have siphoned cash that would typically go to candidates or party committees. And the party’s novice Senate nominees lack the sort of wealthy donor networks that more experienced candidates have nurtured for years.“These are candidates that have never run for office before and never done the work necessary to develop relationships at the grass-roots or donor level in their own states or nationally,” said Jack Oliver, a longtime Republican fund-raiser. He then alluded to the way that many of them claimed their nominations: “If you can just go on Tucker or get Trump to endorse you, you don’t have to go meet with voters or donors.”For some major contributors, summer has just wrapped up, the temperature hasn’t much changed, and the election feels some time away. The advent of widespread early and mail voting, however, along with the need to reserve airtime on local television stations, means there’s little time left for the candidates to gather the cash they need.“To donors it’s early, to candidates it’s late,” as Lisa Spies, a Republican fund-raising consultant, put it.Of course, candidates of both parties have long jetted into the nation’s capital to raise money from the influence industry. And even as this year’s Republican class struggles for cash, the candidates have support from outside super PACs, most notably the one Mr. McConnell effectively controls, to ensure that they remain financially competitive. (Mr. McConnell’s group, the Senate Leadership Fund, accounted for 90 percent of the money spent on television this week in the Ohio Senate race, and an even greater percentage in North Carolina.)The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Inflation Concerns Persist: In the six-month primary season that has just ended, several issues have risen and fallen, but nothing has dislodged inflation and the economy from the top of voters’ minds.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate candidate in Georgia claimed his business donated 15 percent of its profits to charities. Three of the four groups named as recipients say they didn’t receive money.North Carolina Senate Race: Are Democrats about to get their hearts broken again? The contest between Cheri Beasley, a Democrat, and her G.O.P. opponent, Representative Ted Budd, seems close enough to raise their hopes.Echoing Trump: Six G.O.P. nominees for governor and the Senate in critical midterm states, all backed by former President Donald J. Trump, would not commit to accepting this year’s election results.Mr. McConnell has asked his fellow Republican senators to contribute 20 percent of the money from their leadership PACs this election, an increase over past campaigns, according to a Republican official familiar with the request.“This is why God invented super PACs,” said Scott Reed, a veteran Republican strategist.Yet the frenetic cash dash around Washington, shortly before early voting gets underway in many states, underscores the urgency Republicans are feeling to cut into Democrats’ fund-raising advantage. A major part of the motivation: Candidates receive substantially better television advertising rates than super PACs, so an individual campaign dollar goes further on the air.A spreadsheet of television advertising reservations shared by a top Republican strategist this week makes clear why many in the party are alarmed about their fund-raising deficit. Head-to-head, Democratic candidates have been sharply outspending their Republican rivals for weeks. In some states, like Arizona, New Hampshire and North Carolina, the G.O.P. nominees hadn’t aired even a single commercial in their own right through August and into September.Even in Georgia and Nevada, perhaps the two states where Republicans have the best chance to flip Democratic-held seats, the Democratic incumbents are overwhelming their G.O.P. challengers.From the week of Aug. 14 to the week of Nov. 6, Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia had over $30 million in television reservations, while his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker, had just over $7.8 million booked. In the same time period, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, Democrat of Nevada, had over $16 million in television reservations while her Republican opponent, Adam Laxalt, had just over $6 million reserved.Adam Laxalt, the Republican candidate for Senate in Nevada, shaking hands with former President Donald J. Trump in Las Vegas in July. From the week of Aug. 14 to the week of Nov. 6, Mr. Laxalt had only $6 million in television reservations.Roger Kisby for The New York TimesIn key Senate races, top Democrats are raising millions of dollars online every month. In August alone, Mr. Warnock received nearly $6.8 million from more than 200,000 contributions, and Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes of Wisconsin raised nearly $6.3 million from more than 120,000 donations.In Arizona, Mr. Kelly raised $5.7 million from more than 170,000 donations on ActBlue in August. That sum is more than Mr. Masters had raised in total from when he began his campaign in 2021 through mid-July 2022, the last date that data is available..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.The Democratic advantage has been mitigated by outside Republican spending, including some hybrid advertising between the G.O.P. candidates and the Senate Republican campaign arm.But the disparity in candidate fund-raising explains why so many Republican Senate hopefuls have swapped public appearances at home for private events on more financially fertile terrain. It is Washington this week and next. Last week it was Florida, where the National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman, Rick Scott, squired eight candidates around his state and Sea Island, Ga., a resort community where his committee hosted a weekend donor retreat for many of the same contenders.What’s striking about the candidates’ schedules is how much work they’re putting in for relatively little financial payoff at a moment when some of the top-raising Democrats have stockpiled tens of millions. Individuals are limited at giving $2,900 to candidates, and PACs can contribute only up to $5,000.This coming Tuesday, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, has Washington fund-raising receptions lined up at 10:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., each hosted by a different group of lobbyists.It will be Dr. Oz’s second trek to the Beltway in a week: This past Tuesday, he was at the Northern Virginia home of Matt and Mercedes Schlapp, Republican operatives and Trump enthusiasts, where $5,800 granted a couple admission to an event and a photo with the television doctor turned Senate candidate.Mr. Laxalt, too, put in long hours far from Nevada. After attending the events in Florida and Georgia last week, he spent Tuesday at a $2,900-per-person dinner in Virginia’s well-heeled hunt country. Mr. Laxalt then came back to Washington to attend a series of events on Wednesday with lobbyists and Republican senators, concluding with an “Evening Cigar With Adam Laxalt Hosted by Premium Cigar Association” that cost $250 per person or $500 per PAC to attend (no word on if the cigar was extra).“The math is really simple: You can’t get there at $2,900 a pop,” said Mr. Reed, the Republican strategist.That’s not stopping the hopefuls from trying, however.Mr. Masters, who’s facing a Grand Canyon-size fund-raising gap with Mr. Kelly, charged only $500 per person to attend the reception with Mr. McConnell on Wednesday.The next day, the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors hosted Mr. Masters for an afternoon gathering that was even more modestly priced.“This is a meet-and-greet, not a fund-raiser, so an opportunity for anyone who would like to meet the candidate to do so without having to make a financial commitment — though they would obviously welcome contributions!” Jade West, the wholesalers lobbyist, wrote in an email to potential attendees.J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for Senate in Ohio, had just $628,000 in the bank at the start of this month.Jeff Swensen/Getty ImagesOf all the Senate G.O.P. nominees, Mr. Masters may have criticized Mr. McConnell the most fiercely in the past. But that didn’t stop Mr. McConnell and his deputy, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, from hosting events for Mr. Masters and J.D. Vance, the party’s Senate nominee in Ohio and another candidate who took aim at the Senate leadership during the primary season.Mr. Vance had a paltry $628,000 in the bank at the start of this month.Mr. Oliver said that while it was probably too late to do now, Republicans should have lifted their Senate candidates’ fund-raising by creating a competition among the party’s would-be 2024 presidential candidates to see who could have raised the most for each of the top contenders.But, Mr. Oliver lamented, Mr. Trump and Fox News shape the G.O.P.’s wholesale politics today, all but determining primaries and therefore consuming the attention of candidates and their campaigns.“Relationship politics don’t exist anymore,” he said. “But that means it’s hard for J.D. Vance to go to Toledo and raise money because when you need a $500 check there, they don’t know you.”Shane Goldmacher More

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      McCarthy Pitches a G.O.P. Agenda With Broad Appeal

      by

      MONONGAHELA, Pa. — Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the hard-right Georgia Republican who has sympathized with the rioters jailed for their roles in the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, smiled widely from her seat at center stage on Friday as her party laid out what its agenda would be if it succeeded in winning control of the House in November.Just a few seats down sat Representative John Katko, the centrist from central New York, who voted to impeach former President Donald J. Trump over the Jan. 6 attack and is retiring from Congress.In front was Representative Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican and minority leader who aspires to be speaker and has labored to manage the factions of his party. At a manufacturing plant here, he introduced the “Commitment to America,” an innocuous-sounding set of principles he said would guide a G.O.P. majority, and which appeared aimed at uniting members as disparate as Ms. Greene and Mr. Katko: fighting inflation, securing the border and hiring more police.“They have no plan to fix all the problems they created,” Mr. McCarthy said of Democrats. “So you know what? We’ve created a ‘Commitment to America.’”He was speaking to an audience that included 30 of his House Republican colleagues as well as factory workers and local residents in a politically pivotal state that is home to a competitive race for governor as well as critical House and Senate contests.The agenda was light on details and avoided certain topics that polls show are not favorable to Republicans’ chances of electoral success: the abortion bans that most in the party have embraced, defunding the F.B.I., the Jan. 6 attack or Mr. Trump and his ongoing legal troubles.Instead, Mr. McCarthy focused on proposals that most in the party proudly support, and that are unlikely to alienate the suburban and independent voters they need to win a majority.He drew cheers from the crowd when he said the first order of business in a new Republican Congress would be a bill to eliminate the jobs of 87,000 I.R.S. agents. That is the number of employees the Treasury Department has estimated the agency could hire with an infusion of money Congress recently provided to crack down on tax cheats.But if the agenda soft-pedaled Republicans’ less-popular proposals, it did not omit them entirely. It contained a reference to the party’s commitment to enacting strict abortion restrictions, pledging to “protect the lives of unborn children and their mothers.” It alluded to the G.O.P.’s continuing embrace of Mr. Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, promising that a Republican majority would “increase accountability in the election process through voter ID.” And it hinted that Republicans would look to change the Affordable Care Act and roll back legislation allowing Medicare to negotiate the cost of prescription drugs, saying that the party wanted to “personalize care” and “lower prices through transparency, choice, and competition.”Perhaps more than policy, the event was about politics, aimed at uniting an often fractious party behind Mr. McCarthy, who many observers now believe is likely to win only a slim majority should Republicans prevail in the midterm elections. In creating the agenda, Mr. McCarthy consulted with Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House who swept into office on the back of his “Contract with America.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Inflation Concerns Persist: In the six-month primary season that has just ended, several issues have risen and fallen, but nothing has dislodged inflation and the economy from the top of voters’ minds.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate candidate in Georgia claimed his business donated 15 percent of its profits to charities. Three of the four groups named as recipients say they didn’t receive money.North Carolina Senate Race: Are Democrats about to get their hearts broken again? The contest between Cheri Beasley, a Democrat, and her G.O.P. opponent, Representative Ted Budd, seems close enough to raise their hopes.Echoing Trump: Six G.O.P. nominees for governor and the Senate in critical midterm states, all backed by former President Donald J. Trump, would not commit to accepting this year’s election results.Mr. McCarthy took input from various factions of the party in creating the document, and on Friday, it seemed he had placated most of them — at least for now.Mr. Katko and Ms. Greene both said they felt it was important to attend the public rollout to show party unity.“The right rank in our conference doesn’t show up for things like this, but I don’t believe in sitting it out or being mad about something,” said Ms. Greene. Mr. McCarthy has vowed to reinstate her to congressional committees from which she was banned by the Democratic-led House because of her extreme statements. “I want to have a seat at the table.”Her prominent seat on the stage on Friday was a notable embrace by Mr. McCarthy of a politician who has promoted conspiracy theories and worked to undermine the 2020 election results, but draws large numbers of donors and holds influence on the party’s right flank..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.As Ms. Greene spoke to reporters, fans lined up to have their photos taken with her. She left herself considerable wiggle room when asked whether she would back Mr. McCarthy for speaker.“He’s the only person running for speaker, and I like the ‘Commitment to America,’” Ms. Greene said.Democrats seized on her seat of honor as evidence that Mr. McCarthy’s agenda was built to mask the party’s extremism.“The true details of Republicans’ agenda are too frightening for most American voters,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland and the majority leader, who traveled to a United Steelworkers headquarters in nearby Pittsburgh to counter the Republican pep rally.“Leader McCarthy, of course, is in Pennsylvania today because he wants voters to forget,” Mr. Hoyer said. “He also wants Americans to ignore that a majority of House Republicans voted to overturn the 2020 election — even after violent insurrectionists attacked the U.S. Capitol building.”The Republican event was the culmination of an agenda rollout this week that was at times a bit of a mess. Embargoed materials were accidentally posted online ahead of time, prompting mockery from Democrats before lawmakers were ready to announce it. One document included a quote credited to Abraham Lincoln that is likely apocryphal, according to congressional researchers, one of whom noted that while internet sources have widely attributed it to the 16th president, it appears to have originated in an advertisement by the financial firm Shearson Lehman Brothers from the 1980s.“Commitment,” the quote reads, “is what transforms a promise into reality.”A gauzy video filled with pictures presented as idyllic American images appeared to include stock photographs from Russia and Ukraine, according to an analysis by HuffPost.Mr. McCarthy, Republican of California, aspires to be speaker of the House. As minority leader, he has labored to manage the factions of his party. Barry Reeger/Associated PressBut in western Pennsylvania on Friday, Republican lawmakers hammered home themes they believe will resonate with voters, even as recent polling has indicated that a “red wave” that had once been expected to sweep the party into office in large numbers has begun to weaken.The Republicans said they would conduct aggressive investigations into President Biden’s administration.Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the party’s No. 2 leader, said Republicans would haul in Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, for questioning so often that he would need “a reserved parking spot” on Capitol Hill.“We would like to know how many people have come across our border illegally,” Mr. Scalise said. “Where have they gone? How many have gone to Pennsylvania?”Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, who is likely to become chairman of the Judiciary Committee should Republicans retake the House, said he would investigate the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.“They want us to believe no, no, no, it went from a bat to a pangolin to Joe Rogan and then we all got it,” Mr. Jordan said, as the crowd laughed. “I’m just a country boy from Ohio, but I kind of think it probably came from the lab.”Scientists released a pair of extensive studies in February that point to a large food and live animal market in Wuhan, China, as the origin of the coronavirus pandemic.Although Mr. Trump’s name was mentioned only once during the presentation, some in the audience said they wanted the party to continue his approach.“I’m one of the millions in this country that may not have a MAGA hat, but I have a MAGA heart,” said the Rev. James Nelson of New Birth Ministries of Duquesne, Pa., speaking from the audience with a microphone. The Republicans applauded loudly. More

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      This Threat to Democracy Is Hiding in Plain Sight

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      Illustration by Rebecca Chew/The New York Times; photograph by Stephen Maturen, via Getty ImagesIn the weeks after the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump and his allies were unable to get far in their attempts to prove widespread voter fraud. There were two reasons for that.First, there wasn’t any, as numerous investigations by journalists, expert reports and court rulings showed. But second, Republican election officials in multiple states repeatedly said that their counts and recounts were accurate, and they defended the integrity of the election. For all the pressure that the Trump camp brought to bear, well-trained, civic-minded election workers carried out their duty to maintain the machinery of American voting.Many top Republican Party officials and lawmakers have spent the last two years striking back, and drawn the most attention for their efforts to pass “voter integrity” laws that aim to make voting more onerous under the guise of preventing fraud. From January 2021 to May of this year, just under three dozen restrictive laws had been passed in nearly 20 states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.These are pernicious laws, and they undermine Americans’ hard-won rights to vote. But just as important is the matter of who counts the votes, and who decides which votes count and which do not.This is where Mr. Trump’s allies have focused much of their scheming since his re-election defeat. Their mission is to take over America’s election infrastructure, or at least key parts of it, from the ground up by filling key positions of influence with Trump sympathizers. Rather than threatening election officials, they will be the election officials — the poll workers and county commissioners and secretaries of state responsible for overseeing the casting, counting and certifying of votes.Imagine a legal Jan. 6. It’s bureaucratic, boring, invisible — and it might actually succeed.These efforts require attention and mobilization from Americans across the political spectrum. America’s system of voting is complex and decentralized, with most of the oversight done at the state and local level by thousands of elected and appointed officials, along with poll workers. While it is outdated and inconvenient in many places, this system has worked relatively well for roughly 200 years.But Mr. Trump’s attempts to subvert the election also revealed the system’s vulnerabilities, and his allies are now intently focused on exploiting those pressure points to bend the infrastructure of voting to their advantage. Their drive to take over election machinery county by county, state by state, is a reminder that democracy is fragile. The threats to it are not only violent ruptures like the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol but also quieter efforts to corrupt it.A key element of this strategy is dismantling the bulwarks that stopped the assault on democracy in 2020. In Georgia, the top state election official, Brad Raffensperger, its secretary of state, refused Mr. Trump’s request to help steal the election by agreeing to “find” 11,780 additional votes. In Michigan, the Board of State Canvassers certified Joe Biden’s victory despite Mr. Trump’s aggressive meddling. A host of other state and local officials, many of them Republicans, pushed back on similarly antidemocratic machinations.Mr. Trump and his allies have set about removing and replacing these public servants, through elections and appointments, with more like-minded officials. In some cases, the effort has failed. (In Georgia’s Republican primary this year, Mr. Trump backed a losing candidate in a vendetta against Mr. Raffensperger.) But in other states, Republicans have embraced election deniers as candidates, including for secretary of state.In Nevada, the Republican secretary of state nominee, Jim Marchant, maintains that the 2020 presidential race was rigged and that he would not have certified Mr. Biden’s win in Nevada. He blames voting fraud for his own failed House run that year and has said that Nevada voters haven’t truly elected their leaders in years because the system is so rigged.Mr. Marchant is a part of the America First Secretary of State Coalition, whose candidates are campaigning for measures that would make it more difficult for Americans to vote, such as by limiting voting to a single day and aggressively purging voter rolls. They have the financial backing of pro-Trump election deniers including Mike Lindell, the founder of MyPillow, and Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.com.The Republicans’ pick in Michigan, Kristina Karamo, is also an America First candidate. She gained political notice with her unsubstantiated claims to have witnessed election fraud as a poll watcher in Detroit in 2020. She has also promoted the baseless conspiracy theories that Dominion voting machines flipped votes in Mr. Biden’s favor and that Jan. 6 was a false flag operation conducted by “antifa posing as Trump supporters.”The most outrageous G.O.P. choice may be Arizona’s Mark Finchem. Mr. Finchem has in the past identified as a member of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia group, and he spoke at a QAnon convention last year. He was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, although he denies being within about 500 yards of the building. As a member of the Arizona House of Representatives, he introduced a resolution this year to decertify the 2020 election in multiple counties, and was a sponsor of a bill to empower the Republican-led Legislature to overturn election results.Mr. Finchem wants to ban early voting and put limits on mail-in voting. In April, he filed a federal lawsuit, backed by Mr. Lindell, to block the use of electronic vote-counting machines in Arizona in the midterms. (It was dismissed.)Installing election deniers as top election officials is just one element of this plan. Much less visible, but just as important, is the so-called precinct strategy, in which Trump allies are recruiting supporters to flood the system by signing up to work in low-level election positions such as poll workers. A prominent promoter of the precinct strategy was Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser. Last year, Mr. Bannon rallied the listeners of his “War Room” podcast to sign up as precinct committee members. “We’re going to take this back village by village … precinct by precinct,” he proclaimed in May 2021.The call was answered. An investigation by ProPublica in the summer of 2021 found a surge in Republicans signing up to be precinct officers or equivalent lowest-level officials in key counties. Of the 65 counties contacted, 41 reported a collective increase of at least 8,500 new sign-ups following Mr. Bannon’s call to arms. (ProPublica found no such spike on the Democratic side.)The precinct strategy has been endorsed by Mr. Trump — who declared it a way to “take back our great country from the ground up” — and adopted by segments of the Republican Party.Mr. Bannon is appealing to his supporters’ sense of civic duty by asking them to be more involved in their local election process. But unsettling details of what this effort entails emerged this summer after Politico acquired videos of Republican operatives discussing strategy with activists.New election recruits would attend training workshops on how to challenge voters at polling places, explained Matthew Seifried, the Republican National Committee’s election integrity director for Michigan, in one of the recordings. These poll workers would have access to a hotline and a website staffed by “an army” of Republican-friendly lawyers prepared to help with challenges. “We’re going to have more lawyers than we’ve ever recruited, because let’s be honest, that’s where it’s going to be fought, right?” Mr. Seifried said at a meeting last October.As testimony during the Jan. 6 committee hearings revealed, the legal challenges presented by Trump allies to the 2020 election quickly collapsed in part because they lacked even the most basic documentation. But carried out as designed, the precinct strategy means that even if, ultimately, there are no instances of fraud and most of the challenges to individual voters fall apart, they could still bog down the voting by causing delays and introducing unnecessary friction and confusion, giving cover to a state election official or state legislature to say that an election is tainted and therefore invalid.In some parts of the country, this is already happening. This summer, an all-Republican county commission in rural New Mexico refused to certify the primary election results because of unsubstantiated suspicions of fraud. New Mexico’s secretary of state, a Democrat, intervened and asked the state Supreme Court to order the commission to certify the results. Two commissioners relented, but the third, Couy Griffin, refused. He admitted that his suspicion of fraud was not founded on any evidence: “It’s only based on my gut feeling and my own intuition, and that’s all I need.”(Mr. Griffin, who attended the Jan. 6 melee at the Capitol, was later ruled to be ineligible to hold office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars from public office anyone who has sworn an oath to the Constitution and later engages in insurrection.)After the May primary election in Pennsylvania, three Republican-controlled counties refused to count several hundred mail-in ballots on which voters had failed to write a date on the envelope. The administration of Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, filed suit, and last month, a judge ruled that the ballots had to be included in the results, finally clearing the way for the primaries to be certified. (State officials learned of a fourth county that had done something similar.)Litigation is an important tool in tackling this threat. But it will not save the day. The problem is too big, says Marc Elias, a Democratic voting rights lawyer. “For every one place you try to solve this in court, there are five additional places where it is happening,” he said.The real threat to America’s electoral system is not posed by ineligible voters trying to cast ballots. It is coming from inside the system.All those who value democracy have a role to play in strengthening and supporting the electoral system that powers it, whatever their party. This involves, first, taking the threat posed by election deniers seriously and talking to friends and neighbors about it. It means paying attention to local elections — not just national ones — and supporting candidates who reject conspiracy theories and unfounded claims of fraud. It means getting involved in elections as canvassers or poll watchers or precinct officers. (Mr. Bannon has the right idea about civic participation; he just employs toxic lies as motivation.)And it means voting, in every race on the ballot and in every election. To this end, employers have a role to play as well, by giving workers time off to vote and encouraging them to do so.The task of safeguarding democracy does not end with one election. Mr. Trump and others looking to pervert the electoral process are full of intensity and are playing a long game. Only an equally strong and committed countervailing force will meet that challenge.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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      Democrats Condemn Tudor Dixon for Mocking Whitmer Kidnapping Plot

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      Tudor Dixon, the Republican nominee for governor of Michigan, mocked a kidnapping plot against her Democratic opponent, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, at two campaign events on Friday.The 2020 plot against Ms. Whitmer rattled Michigan and was seen as a sign of the rising threat of political violence and right-wing domestic terrorism. Two men were convicted in a plan to kidnap the governor at her vacation home and instigate a national rebellion. Prosecutors said that the men went on “reconnaissance missions” to the home, amassed high-powered guns and discussed blowing up a bridge to keep the police from responding. Two other men were acquitted.“The sad thing is Gretchen will tie your hands, put a gun to your head and ask if you are ready to talk. For someone so worried about getting kidnapped, Gretchen Whitmer sure is good at taking business hostage and holding it for ransom,” she said at an event in Troy, Mich., provoking laughter and applause in the room.The remarks drew swift condemnation from Ms. Whitmer’s campaign and from Democratic groups. At another campaign event later in the day in Muskegon, Ms. Dixon doubled down. She joked that Ms. Whitmer had looked unsure of what was going on as she held President Biden’s hand during his recent visit to an auto show in the state.“The look on her face was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is happening. I’d rather be kidnapped by the F.B.I.,’” she said at the rally, as some in the audience laughed, clapped and whistled. Then, looking to reporters in the back, she contended that her earlier comments about holding businesses for ransom had not been a joke.Tudor Dixon took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Coalition in Dallas last month. She is running against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Democrat.Emil Lippe for The New York Times“If you were afraid of that, you should know what it is to have your life ripped away from you,” Ms. Dixon said.Ms. Dixon, who is trailing Ms. Whitmer in the polls before the election on Nov. 8, had been campaigning on Friday with Donald Trump Jr. and Kellyanne Conway, the former Trump White House adviser. Former President Donald J. Trump is expected to appear with Ms. Dixon at a rally on Oct. 1 in Macomb County.In a statement, Sam Newton, deputy communications director for the Democratic Governors Association, called Ms. Dixon’s comments “dangerous, an insult to law enforcement who keep us safe and utterly disqualifying for the role of Michigan governor.”Maeve Coyle, a spokeswoman for Ms. Whitmer’s campaign, said Ms. Dixon’s remarks made her “absolutely unfit to lead in Michigan” and were “no laughing matter.”“Governor Whitmer has faced serious threats to her safety and her life, and she is grateful to the law enforcement and prosecutors for their tireless work,” Ms. Coyle said in a statement. More