Midterm Elections (2022)

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      As Cable News Focused on Queen, Democratic Political Donations Slipped

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      When the Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina introduced a bill this month to ban abortions nationwide after 15 weeks, Democratic fund-raisers expected it to dominate news outlets like MSNBC, bringing small-dollar donations for candidates.But they did not anticipate that cable news networks, overtaken by the death of Queen Elizabeth II on Sept. 8, would relegate politics to an afterthought for more than a week in favor of ancient rituals, Grenadier Guards and the monarch’s corgis.Suddenly, the traditional September influx of campaign cash slipped, which Democrats attributed in significant part to the round-the-clock coverage of the 10-day period of mourning for the queen that culminated in her funeral on Monday.Democrats said that they relied on grass-roots donations — those under $250 — to compete with spending by Republican-aligned super PACs on television ads, particularly in battleground states.Nat Binns, a principal for MissionWired, a digital fund-raising company that supports Democrats, said in an interview on Friday that he had never experienced such a vacuum of political news stories at this stage of the campaigns.Some Key Moments in Queen Elizabeth’s ReignCard 1 of 9Becoming queen. More

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      In a First, Biden Gets Involved in State Legislative Races

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      The president’s involvement is a sign that Democratic leaders are taking down-ballot contests more seriously than in past elections.President Biden became involved in state legislative races for the first time, with an email Friday asking Democrats to each donate the modest sum of $7 to his party’s campaign arm for statehouse elections.And, following his Sept. 1 speech lashing “MAGA Republicans,” Biden is framing the stakes as a battle for American democracy, coupled with a bread-and-butter message about inflation, an issue that has bedeviled his presidency and given Republicans hopes of a red wave in races all the way down the ballot.“State legislatures are the key to stopping Republican abortion bans, attacks on L.G.B.T.Q.+ rights, bills that undercut our democracy by making it harder for people to vote,” Biden wrote in the email, which was sent to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee’s mailing list. “Not just that, state legislatures are essential — I mean it, essential — to lowering prices for American families and building an economy that works for everyone.”Biden’s email, which the White House had been working on for weeks, comes as Republicans warn that they are being outspent in state legislative races. It’s a noteworthy shift in messaging for the traditionally chest-thumping G.O.P., and therefore revealing regardless of what the numbers actually tell us.As my colleague Nick Corasaniti reported on Friday, one outside group working on winning statehouses for Democrats, the States Project, plans to spend $60 million across just five states. That would be a humdrum sum for a hot Senate race, but it’s an astronomical amount in races where spending is often in the range of thousands of dollars, not even tens of thousands and far from millions.Nick’s reporting included a memo sent this week by the Republican State Leadership Committee, the D.L.C.C.’s counterpart on the right. It warns conservative donors that Democrats are vastly outspending them in key states.“While Democrats cry out for more resources,” it reads, “they are dominating the television spending at this point in the campaign.”That is only partially true.Citing publicly available advertising data, which The New York Times verified, the memo notes that in Michigan, Democrats have spent nearly six times as much as Republicans in state legislative races since the primaries. In Colorado, another hotly contested state, the R.S.L.C. memo notes, “Democrats have spent and booked nearly four times more than Republicans since the June 28 primary.”Michigan followed a nonpartisan redistricting process this year that threw out a heavily gerrymandered map that favored Republicans. A flood of spending has come to the state: Democrats have spent and booked more than $20 million in TV ads, while Republicans have spent and booked just under $3.7 million.Nick found, however, that “on the television airwaves, Republican candidates and outside groups have spent roughly $39 million, while Democrats have spent roughly $35 million,” citing data from AdImpact, a media-tracking company.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.In Pennsylvania and Arizona, Nick reported, “Republicans have spent nearly $1 million more than Democrats on ads since July.”Just one Democratic state senator, Mallory McMorrow, had already raised nearly $2 million as of Friday, according to her campaign.The presidential factorPresidents have typically focused on winning races for the Senate, the House and governorships. But over the last decade, as Democrats have worked to reverse the nationwide gains Republicans made after redistricting in 2010, many in the lower ranks of the party have been pushing Democratic leaders to pay more attention to the bottom of the ballot.Three factors have changed the game this year.The first is Donald Trump, who started getting involved in state legislative races as he embraced candidates who endorsed his conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. In addition, some candidates for secretary of state would be in charge of running elections even though they falsely claim that Trump won in 2020, On Politics wrote on Thursday.The second is abortion. Republicans have spent decades amassing power and support in state legislatures while national Democrats largely ignored state politics in favor of higher-profile contests. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June shined a spotlight on the gains Republicans had made at the state level as so-called trigger laws went into effect in many states, restricting abortion after the ruling.In Michigan, for instance, where Republicans control both houses of the State Legislature, Democrats are investing great hopes in a ballot measure that seeks to overturn a 1931 law that the Roe reversal triggered, although a judicial ruling has kept abortion legal in the state for now.And the third is the long tail of the 2010 redistricting, which Republicans used to redraw maps in their favor after midterm elections that President Obama famously described as a “shellacking.”President Biden remains fairly unpopular, despite making some gains over the last few months. His approval rating was 42.7 percent as of Friday, according to FiveThirtyEight’s average of public opinion polls.That said, Trump is even less popular, and Democrats have spent months researching ways to anchor Republican candidates to him even though he won’t be on the ballot this year.Abortion-rights advocates in the Michigan Legislature in June. Republicans are expected to hold the Legislature, but forecasting races is difficult with little polling.Matthew Dae Smith/Lansing State Journal, via APWhat the forecasts sayWhether this strategy will help Democrats keep the statehouses they picked up in 2018, and held in most cases in 2020, is another matter.According to forecasts by CNAnalysis, one of the few publicly available prognosticators that focuses on state legislative races, it’s looking like it will be a very Republican year across the country.As of Friday, CNAnalysis was predicting that Republicans would hang on to legislatures in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, with Maine and Minnesota as tossups. Democrats, the firm expects, will retain Colorado and New Mexico.But such forecasts are inherently difficult in races where polling is scant, and much depends on which way undecided voters break in the fall.Will they side with Republicans and their complaints about the prices of gas and groceries, or will they hear out Democrats’ messages about abortion, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and democracy?That’s the $1 million question of this election — whether it’s in a high-profile Senate race in Pennsylvania or a humble statehouse contest in Arizona.The wider stakesNick’s article also mentions a once-obscure legal doctrine called the “independent state legislature theory.” Richard L. Hasen, a law professor, called it the “800-pound gorilla brooding in the background of election law cases working their way up from state courts” in June.The doctrine is an unorthodox interpretation of the Constitution. It holds that the framers of the Constitution intended for state legislatures to reign supreme over secretaries of state and even state constitutions. Most law professors view it as far out of the mainstream, but some conservative legal scholars, including at least two current Supreme Court justices, see it as legitimate.Quietly, lawyers linked to the Republican National Committee and to congressional leaders have been angling for the Supreme Court to rule on the doctrine. Conservative lawyers under the banner of a group called the Honest Elections Project invoked a version of the theory in Pennsylvania in 2020, citing it in a petition for writ of certiorari to the state Supreme Court.The lawyers, David B. Rivkin Jr. and Andrew M. Grossman of the Republican-linked firm Baker and Hostetler, argued that the secretary of the commonwealth at the time, Kathy Boockvar, had overstepped her constitutional boundaries by altering the date by which the state would accept late-arriving mail-in ballots.If the Supreme Court does embrace the doctrine, it could fundamentally alter how elections are conducted in the United States, from the rules governing the mechanics of voting to who makes the final decisions on what is and is not legal.In some cases, senior Democrats have privately warned candidates against filing lawsuits that could trigger the court’s conservative majority to take up the concept in the so-called shadow docket, in which the court does not hold a full oral argument session but issues a ruling with little explanation.That is not likely to happen before the midterms, court watchers say. Democratic legal experts also think they will have a better shot during one of the court’s regular sessions, during which they can present their counterarguments in full.In March, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, responding to a case in North Carolina, appeared to signal that the court was eager to rule on the independent state legislature theory in what my colleague Adam Liptak described as “an orderly fashion.”“The issue is almost certain to keep arising until the court definitively resolves it,” Kavanaugh wrote, adding that the court should grant a petition seeking review on the merits “in an appropriate case — either in this case from North Carolina or in a similar case from another state.”What to read about democracyBallot mules. Poll watch parties. Groomers. Cecilia Kang lays out the most dominant false narratives circulating about November’s midterm elections.A whistle-blower who worked for Twitter and testified before the Jan. 6 committee told The Washington Post that extremism and political disinformation on social media pose an “imminent threat not just to American democracy, but to the societal fabric of our planet.”A law in Georgia that lets people and groups submit an unlimited number of challenges to voters’ eligibility is causing headaches for election workers as they try to prepare for ballots to be cast in the state’s crucial races, according to The 19th.Voting rights groups and Democrats are bristling at the inclusion of Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, on the cover of Time magazine’s issue highlighting election defenders. They pointed out that Raffensperger is a defendant in 20 voter suppression lawsuits.A new report by Rachel Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace argues that “American democracy is at a dangerous inflection point” and lays out five strategies to address what she calls “a democratic setback potentially as serious as the ones already occurring in India and Hungary.”viewfinderShuran Huang for The New York TimesA tough questionOn Politics regularly features work by Times photographers. Here’s what Shuran Huang told us about taking the image above:Capturing nuanced moments is one of my favorite tasks when I am covering news events in Congress.Amid hours of grueling testimony, witnesses usually manage to keep up a steely disposition during hearings on Capitol Hill.But not always.Here, William Demchak, chief executive officer of PNC Financial Services, took a deep breath with his eyes closed after answering a tough question from a lawmaker.The light hit Demchak’s face in just the right way to highlight his frustration — and created a contrast to the smiling face on the painting behind him.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Ahead of Midterms, Trump Eyes Television Ads to Help GOP Candidates

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      Donald J. Trump, sitting on a huge campaign war chest, is eyeing a raft of television ads to help Republican candidates in the midterm elections, people familiar with the talks say.Former President Donald J. Trump is considering launching a raft of television ads to bolster Republicans in key races around the country, signaling a shift in political strategy as campaigns head into the final stretch of the midterm elections, according to people familiar with the deliberations.Mr. Trump’s team has looked most closely at airing ads in Georgia and Pennsylvania, but Republicans involved cautioned that no decisions had been made.Trump advisers have also debated whether television spots would be the most effective use of the former president’s political war chest, in part because the cost would be significantly greater than for candidates themselves with just six full weeks left in the midterm campaigns. While federal law keeps ad rates low for political candidates, those same protections are not afforded to political action committees.“An outside group coming in this late could pay three or four times as much at this point,” said Ken Goldstein, a University of San Francisco professor who studies political advertising. “There’s a definite advantage to reserving early.”While Mr. Trump has spent much of the past year being courted by Republicans seeking his endorsement and holding campaign rallies for a few of his favorites, he has been reluctant so far to share many of the spoils of his prodigious fund-raising.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.His political committee, Save America, has raised $124 million since last year and spent nearly 20 percent of it, much of that on staging rallies, travel, consultants and legal bills. Little has been spent directly on helping other candidates.But with Republican Senate campaigns and outside groups facing cash concerns, aides to several Republican contenders have said privately that Mr. Trump could help more by spending on their behalf than by traveling to their states to host his beloved mega-rallies.Some Republicans have urged Mr. Trump’s team to spend on digital media platforms instead of on television, arguing that his group’s dollars would go further by helping candidates recruit volunteers, raise money and build out an online presence to help spread campaign messages.During the past three weeks in Georgia and Pennsylvania, Republican candidates and outside groups have spent about $2 million more than their Democratic counterparts on television, according to AdImpact, an ad tracking firm. But for the final six weeks, Democrats have reserved nearly $14 million more than Republicans in television advertising in Georgia and $12 million more in Pennsylvania.“We know all of these, battleground races, are going to be extremely tight,” said David Bergstein, communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “In the final months of the campaign, Democrats are going to make sure voters know everything they need to.”.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.One person familiar with the decision making said that Mr. Trump’s team understood that campaigns had varying needs, and that it was considering pouring money into television ads, digital advertising and get-out-the-vote operations.As a first concrete step, Mr. Trump has approved a new super PAC, run by some of his key aides that will be used to spend money on midterm candidates.Make America Great Again Inc., or MAGA Inc., has signed up Chris LaCivita, a veteran Republican operative with a long career in Senate campaigns, as its chief strategist. Its polling will be overseen by Tony Fabrizio, who worked on both of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaigns.Taylor Budowich, the former president’s communications director and a senior adviser on the 2020 re-election campaign, will be the group’s executive director. News of the group’s formation was first reported Friday by Politico.“President Trump is committed to saving America, and Make America Great Again Inc. will ensure that is achieved at the ballot box in November and beyond,” Mr. Budowich said in a statement.MAGA Inc. has also enlisted Meredith O’Rourke, a veteran Republican fund-raiser, to head the finance team and Sergio Gor, another longtime G.O.P. operative, as a senior adviser. The communications team will be staffed by Steven Cheung, a former White House aide, and Alex Pfeiffer, a former producer for the Fox News host Tucker Carlson. More

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      Election Deniers in Senate Races Shift to Appeal to Voters in Middle

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      As post-primary pivots go, Don Bolduc’s overnight transformation from “Stop the Steal” evangelist to ratify-the-results convert could land him in a political hall of fame. It was an about-face so sudden and jarring that it undermined the tell-it-like-it-is authenticity with which he’d earned the Republican nomination for Senate from New Hampshire.But Mr. Bolduc was hardly the only Republican candidate to edge away from his public insistence, despite a lack of evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald J. Trump, or that 2020 had undermined the integrity of American elections.Blake Masters in Arizona, Tiffany Smiley in Washington State and Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania have all made pivots — some artfully, some not — as the ardent, Trump-loyal voters who decided the Republican primaries shrink in the rearview mirror, and a more cautious, broader November electorate comes into view. These three Senate candidates haven’t quite renounced their questioning of the 2020 election — to right-wing audiences of podcasts, radio shows and Fox News, they still signal their skepticism — but they have shifted their appeals to the swing voters they need to win on Nov. 8.The real question now is: Can they get away with it?“I can tell you generally that candidates who do a 180-degree reversal in the middle of a campaign have to have a thought-out, strategic reason for doing so,” said Dave Carney, a New Hampshire Republican consultant who backed Mr. Bolduc’s primary opponent, Chuck Morse, but now supports Mr. Bolduc. “The pain has to be worth it,” he added.In some sense, the contortions are about having it both ways: signaling to undecided swing voters that a candidate is willing to move toward the middle, while winking at the right-wing base.After his primary victory in the Arizona Senate race, Mr. Masters, who was Mr. Trump’s pick to take on Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat, removed language from his campaign website that falsely claimed the 2020 election had been stolen. “If we had had a free and fair election, President Trump would be sitting in the Oval Office today,” the website had unambiguously proclaimed.Blake Masters removed language from his campaign website that falsely claimed the 2020 election had been stolen.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesOnce that erasure came to light, however, the Masters campaign let it be known that while the website may have changed, the candidate’s views had not. “I still believe the election was not free and not fair,” Mr. Masters told an Arizona radio station early this month. “I think if everybody followed the rules and the law as written, President Trump would be in the Oval Office.”Similarly, Dr. Oz has obscured his views more than changed them. After saying in April that “we cannot move on” from the 2020 election, Dr. Oz told reporters this month that he “would not have objected to” affirming President Biden’s election had he been in the Senate on Jan. 6, 2021.“By the time the delegates and those reports are sent to the U.S. Senate, our job was to approve it. That’s what I would have done,” he said.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.Later that day, however, on the Fox News Channel, Dr. Oz answered a viewer’s question about whether the election was stolen by saying, “There’s lots more information we have to gather in order to determine that, and I’d be very desirous of gathering some.”Ms. Smiley, the Republican Senate nominee in Washington, dropped “election integrity” from a remade website after her primary victory, and with it, the statement that “the 2020 elections raised serious questions about the integrity of our elections.”Still, in a recent appearance on CNN, Ms. Smiley used a coded “he is our president” answer repeatedly when she was asked if Mr. Biden had been legitimately elected — language other Republicans have used to obscure whether they believe the outcome of the 2020 voting was accurate, while still affirming that Mr. Biden is indeed the president.“The campaign’s position has not changed on this issue,” said a Smiley campaign spokeswoman, Elisa Carlson. “Tiffany has long said that it should be easy to vote and hard to cheat — a position that is still reflected on our website.”Tiffany Smiley dropped “election integrity” from a remade website after her primary victory.Ted S. Warren/Associated PressMr. Bolduc’s problem has been his complete lack of subtlety or coded messaging, said Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee who is now a city councilor in Dover.At a Republican debate just before the Sept. 13 primary, Mr. Bolduc, a retired brigadier general in the Army, declared unequivocally, “I signed a letter with 120 other generals and admirals saying that Trump won the election, and, damn it, I stand by my letter.” He added for good measure, “I’m not switching horses, baby. This is it.”.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.His nomination clinched, Mr. Bolduc on Sept. 15 left that horse in a ditch. “I’ve done a lot of research on this,” he said on Fox News after being shown a clip of his promise to stay the course on election denial, “and I’ve spent the past couple weeks talking to Granite Staters all over the state from every party, and I have come to the conclusion — and I want to be definitive on this — the election was not stolen.”When a flabbergasted Fox host, Dana Perino, pointed to Mr. Bolduc’s adamant statements before the primary, he shrugged: “You know, live and learn, right?”General-election turns to the center are nothing new, but few would say Mr. Bolduc, a political newcomer whose authenticity was his calling card, executed his smoothly.“Don spent the last three years hanging with primary voters, a third to a half who bought into the whole stolen-election thing, or at least thought something was fishy,” Mr. Cullen said. “When you spend that much time around people who feel that way, it’s easy to think everybody felt that way.”Then he won the primary and realized that it just wasn’t so, Mr. Cullen added.Mr. Bolduc’s post-primary switcheroo created a new problem: Even as he sought to court a general-election electorate, he now also needed to mend fences with his base. Supporters posted a Facebook message that they said Mr. Bolduc had sent them in which he explained his shift. Yes, he wrote with no evidence, election fraud in 2020 was rife — in mail-in ballots, voting machines and drop-box stuffing. But, he added: “Was Biden put into the presidency through a constitutional process … yes.”Mr. Bolduc’s Democratic opponent, Senator Maggie Hassan, has stuck largely to a campaign centered on abortion rights, and recently hit Mr. Bolduc on comments he made in August seemingly backing the privatization of Medicare. But she has used his flip-flop on election denial to say Mr. Bolduc “is trying to mislead Granite Staters and really hide his extreme record.”Dr. Mehmet Oz told reporters this month that he “would not have objected to” affirming President Biden’s election had he been in the Senate on Jan. 6, 2021.Hannah Beier for The New York TimesDr. Oz had an easier task, said G. Terry Madonna, a longtime Pennsylvania political analyst and pollster, now at Millersville University. Though Dr. Oz was endorsed by Mr. Trump and stood by the former president as he spouted lies about the 2020 election, Dr. Oz’s own statements on election fraud were vague. Now, he may be making headway with swing voters to close the gap with his Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.Moreover, Mr. Fetterman has so far shied away from attacking Dr. Oz on his affiliation with Mr. Trump, said Berwood A. Yost, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College, because Mr. Fetterman believes he can win over Trump voters in the state’s small towns and rural stretches. Attacks on the man they still love may not help Mr. Fetterman make that sale.“Trump attacks are not part of Fetterman’s campaign,” Mr. Yost said. “He’s trying to appeal to Trump supporters with ‘I look like you, I sound like you, and I’m running against Washington, too.’”That has allowed Dr. Oz to tack to the center to try to win over voters in the “collar counties” around Philadelphia. But Mr. Fetterman’s aides note that Dr. Oz has not locked up the core Republican vote the way the Trump-aligned State Senator Doug Mastriano has in the Pennsylvania governor’s race.What Dr. Oz is showing in appealing to moderate voters in the general election, they contend, is not so much a pivot as a forked tongue.“Oz is a total fraud who says one thing when he’s in the suburbs and one thing when he’s rallying with Trump and Mastriano,” said Emilia Winter Rowland, a Fetterman campaign spokeswoman. More

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      The Midterm Election’s Most Dominant Toxic Narratives

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      Ballot mules. Poll watch parties. Groomers.These topics are now among the most dominant divisive and misleading narratives online about November’s midterm elections, according to researchers and data analytics companies. On Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Truth Social and other social media sites, some of these narratives have surged in recent months, often accompanied by angry and threatening rhetoric.The effects of these inflammatory online discussions are being felt in the real world, election officials and voting rights groups said. Voters have flooded some local election offices with misinformed questions about supposedly rigged voting machines, while some people appear befuddled about what pens to use on ballots and whether mail-in ballots are still legal, they said.“Our voters are angry and confused,” Lisa Marra, elections director in Cochise County, Ariz., told a House committee last month. “They simply don’t know what to believe.”The most prevalent of these narratives fall into three main categories: continued falsehoods about rampant election fraud; threats of violence and citizen policing of elections; and divisive posts on health and social policies that have become central to political campaigns. Here’s what to know about them.Misinformation about the 2020 election, left, has fueled the “Stop the Steal” movement, center, and continues to be raised at campaign events for the midterms, right.From left, Amir Hamja for The New York Times, Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times, Ash Ponders for The New York Times Election FraudFalse claims of election fraud are commanding conversation online, with former President Donald J. Trump continuing to protest that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.Voter fraud is rare, but that falsehood about the 2020 election has become a central campaign issue for dozens of candidates around the country, causing misinformation and toxic content about the issue to spread widely online.“Stolen election” was mentioned 325,589 times on Twitter from June 19 to July 19, a number that has been fairly steady throughout the year and that was up nearly 900 percent from the same period in 2020, according to Zignal Labs, a media research firm.On the video-sharing site Rumble, videos with the term “stop the steal” or “stolen election” and other claims of election fraud have been among the most popular. In May, such posts attracted 2.5 million viewers, more than triple the total from a year earlier, according to Similarweb, a digital analytics firm.More recently, misinformation around the integrity of voting has metastasized. More conspiracy theories are circulating online about individuals submitting fraudulent ballots, about voting machines being rigged to favor Democrats and about election officials switching the kinds of pens that voters must use to mark ballots in order to confuse them.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.These conspiracy theories have in turn spawned new terms, such as “ballot trafficking” and “ballot mules,” which is used to describe people who are paid to cast fake ballots. The terms were popularized by the May release of the film “2000 Mules,” a discredited movie claiming widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. From June 19 to July 19, “ballot mules” was mentioned 17,592 times on Twitter; it was not used before the 2020 election, according to Zignal.In April, the conservative talk show host Charlie Kirk interviewed the stars of the film, including Catherine Engelbrecht of the nonprofit voting group True the Vote. Mr. Kirk’s interview has garnered more than two million views online.“A sense of grievance is already in place,” said Kyle Weiss, a senior analyst at Graphika, a research firm that studies misinformation and fake social media accounts. The 2020 election “primed the public on a set of core narratives, which are reconstituting and evolving in 2022.”.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 security of ballot drop boxes, left; the search for documents at Mar-a-Lago, center; and the role of the F.B.I., right, are being widely discussed online in the context of the midterm elections. From left, Marco Garcia for The New York Times, Saul Martinez for The New York Times, Kenny Holston for The New York TimesCalls to ActionOnline conversations about the midterm elections have also been dominated by calls for voters to act against apparent election fraud. In response, some people have organized citizen policing of voting, with stakeouts of polling stations and demands for information about voter rolls in their counties. Civil rights groups widely criticize poll watching, which they say can intimidate voters, particularly immigrants and at sites in communities of color.From July 27 to Aug. 3, the second-most-shared tweet about the midterms was a photo of people staking out a ballot box, with the message that “residents are determined to safeguard the drop boxes,” according to Zignal. Among those who shared it was Dinesh D’Souza, the creator of “2000 Mules,” who has 2.4 million followers on Twitter.In July, Seth Keshel, a retired Army captain who has challenged the result of the 2020 presidential election, shared a message on Telegram calling for “all-night patriot tailgate parties for EVERY DROP BOX IN AMERICA.” The post was viewed more than 70,000 times.Anger toward the F.B.I. is also reflected in midterm-related conversations, with a rise in calls to shut down or defund the agency after last month’s raid of Mr. Trump’s Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago.“Abolish FBI” became a trending hashtag across social media, mentioned 122,915 times on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and news sites from July 1 to Aug. 30, up 1,990 percent from about 5,882 mentions in the two months before the 2020 election, according to Zignal.In a video posted on Twitter on Sept. 20, Representative Andrew Clyde, Republican of Georgia, implied that he and others would take action against the F.B.I. if Republicans won control of Congress in November.“You wait till we take the House back. You watch what happens to the F.B.I.,” he said in a video captured by a left-leaning online show, “The Undercurrent,” and shared more than 1,000 times on Twitter within a few hours. Mr. Clyde did not respond to a request for comment.Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, center, is among the politicians who have spread misinformation about gay and transgender people, a report said.From left: Todd Heisler/The New York Times, Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times, Todd Heisler/The New York TimesHot-Button IssuesSome online conversations about the midterms are not directly related to voting. Instead, the discussions are centered on highly partisan issues — such as transgender rights — that candidates are campaigning on and that are widely regarded as motivating voters, leading to a surge of falsehoods.A month after Florida passed legislation that prohibits classroom discussion or instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity, which the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed into law in March, the volume of tweets falsely linking gay and transgender individuals to pedophilia soared, for example.Language claiming that gay people and transgender people were “grooming” children for abuse increased 406 percent on Twitter in April, according to a study by the Human Rights Campaign and the Center for Countering Digital Hate.The narrative was spread most widely by 10 far-right figures, including midterm candidates such as Representatives Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, according to the report. Their tweets on “grooming” misinformation were viewed an estimated 48 million times, the report said.In May, Ms. Boebert tweeted: “A North Carolina preschool is using LGBT flag flashcards with a pregnant man to teach kids colors. We went from Reading Rainbow to Randy Rainbow in a few decades, but don’t dare say the Left is grooming our kids!” The tweet was shared nearly 2,000 times and liked nearly 10,000 times.Ms. Boebert and Ms. Taylor Greene did not respond to requests for comment.On Facebook and Instagram, 59 ads also promoted the narrative that the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community and allies were “grooming” children, the report found. Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, accepted up to $24,987 for the ads, which were served to users over 2.1 million times, according to the report.Meta said it had removed several of the ads mentioned in the report.“The repeated pushing of ‘groomer’ narratives has resulted in a wider anti-L.G.B.T. moral panic that has been influencing state and federal legislation and is likely to be a significant midterm issue,” said David Thiel, the chief technical officer at the Stanford Internet Observatory, which studies online extremism and disinformation. More

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      Democratic-Allied Group Pours $60 Million Into State Legislative Races

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      A Democratic-aligned group is investing nearly $60 million in state legislative races in five states, a significant sum in an often overlooked political arena where Democrats have struggled for decades.The group, the States Project, said it was focusing on flipping a single seat in the Arizona State Senate that could swing it to Democratic control, and on winning back both chambers of the Michigan and Pennsylvania legislatures. The group also aims to defend Democratic majorities in Maine and Nevada.The large infusion of cash from the States Project amounts to a recognition of the critical role that state legislatures play in American politics, orchestrating policy on abortion access, what can be taught in schools and other issues that animate voters. In every state except Minnesota, Virginia and Alaska, a single party controls both chambers.Next year, the Supreme Court could give the legislative bodies yet more power if it endorses a theory, often called independent state legislature doctrine, that would give state legislatures nearly unchecked authority over elections. Left-leaning groups like the States Project argue that state legislative contests this year in several key battlegrounds could have an outsize impact on future elections.“The alarm bells are ringing in our state legislatures,” said Adam Pritzker, a founder of the States Project and a Democratic donor. “With the rise of the Tea Party and the balance of power dramatically shifting toward the right, the rest of us have been asleep at the wheel for too long at the state level. And now, this threat is truly off the charts.”Daniel Squadron, left, and Adam Pritzker founded the States Project, a Democratic-aligned group focused on state legislatures.Jackie Molloy for The New York TimesThe $60 million investment represents all of the States Project’s spending for the 2022 election cycle. The group estimates that it has already contributed about half of the money to candidates and legislative caucuses.While Democrats have historically been outgunned by Republicans at the state legislative level, in part because of gerrymandered districts created after the Tea Party wave of 2010, they have ramped up their spending over the past few years and are coming closer to parity this year.On the television airwaves, Republican candidates and outside groups have spent roughly $39 million, while Democrats have spent roughly $35 million, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm. In Pennsylvania and Arizona, Republicans have spent nearly $1 million more than Democrats on ads since July.Nonetheless, the Republican State Leadership Committee has sounded the alarm about falling behind Democrats financially in state legislative races.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.“The truth is, we have been outspent in every recent election cycle, and we know full well that we will be again this year,” Dee Duncan, the president of the Republican committee, said in a memo to donors on Wednesday.Though the group has not released its third-quarter fund-raising numbers, it announced a record second-quarter haul of more than $53 million in July. But the Republican committee also supports candidates for secretary of state and lieutenant governor, in addition to state legislative contenders.Frustration has sometimes boiled over from outside groups like the States Project that want more out of the Democratic National Committee.The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the arm of the Democratic National Committee that focuses on state legislative races, announced in July that it had raised $6.75 million, a record for the group, but still below what the States Project has been able to raise. A spokeswoman for the Democratic committee said that the group planned to spend roughly $50 million this cycle, but that it had not announced its third-quarter fund-raising.Mr. Pritzker, the States Project co-founder, said that “the national party in D.C. has always overlooked and underfunded legislatures,” adding: “If you need an example, the D.N.C. hasn’t given the D.L.C.C. a single dollar to this cycle. And that needs to change.”“This is definitely not a mission-accomplished message,” Mr. Pritzker said of his group’s new investment. “We’re pretty late to the game.”Brooke Goren, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, said it had been “giving money directly to state parties and coordinated campaigns,” which “supports candidates up and down the ticket, including in every one of the D.L.C.C.’s targeted chambers.”Daniel Squadron, a former Democratic state senator from New York and another founder of the States Project, said that while some of the money would be spent on television and digital ads, the vast majority would be sent directly to candidates and Democratic legislative caucuses. They could then coordinate their spending based on their state’s campaign finance laws.“The top issue in state legislative races is a local issue in each district,” Mr. Squadron said. “So we started giving directly to the candidates and caucuses working in districts themselves. One thing that does is that gets them off the phones, out of the darkened rooms and into the districts to go meet their constituents.”Joanna E. McClinton, the Democratic leader in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, said the States Project had helped many of the party’s candidates in the state with training on messaging, and with an incentive program that unlocks more funding per candidate based on doors knocked.But the biggest accomplishment, Ms. McClinton said, was simply pulling even with Republicans who have controlled the state’s legislature for over a decade.“Because they have been in power for so long, they’re able to outpace us in so many ways, particularly around fund-raising,” she said.In Michigan, where Republicans control both chambers, the State Senate is considered a tossup for the first time in decades after an independent commission drew new legislative districts that reduced Republicans’ advantage. Since July, Democrats have spent more than $17 million on state legislative races in the state, far more than the roughly $3 million Republicans have spent, according to AdImpact.For the States Project, the central goal and biggest challenge is breaking through to voters on the issues of democracy and independent state legislature theory.“That state legislatures would be handed this power in presidential elections seems fantastical because it’s absurd,” Mr. Squadron said. “The fact that it may be what the Supreme Court says does strain credibility. It unfortunately happens to be true.” More

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      Democrats Pour Millions Into Key Secretary of State Races

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      Democrats are outspending Republicans in Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota and Nevada, where they see their opponents as threats to democracy.In a normal election year, races for secretary of state are sleepy affairs, and their campaigns struggle for media coverage amid the hurly-burly of more prominent Senate, governor and House contests.This year, however, is anything but normal.Democrats are pouring millions of dollars into races for secretary of state, buoyed by the nature of their Republican opponents and the stakes for American democracy.According to an analysis by my colleague Alyce McFadden, Democrats in Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota and Nevada have outraised their Republican opponents as of the most recent campaign finance reports. And overall, Democratic-aligned groups working on secretary of state races in those four states have outspent Republicans by nearly $18 million in this election cycle, according to the ad analytics firm AdImpact, with more spending on the way.The role of a secretary of state varies, but in those four states, as well as Arizona and Pennsylvania (where the governor appoints the secretary), they play a critical role in overseeing the mechanics of elections. During the height of the pandemic in 2020, for example, they often had to make judgment calls about how to ensure that voters had access to the polls when vaccines were not yet available, making elderly and immunocompromised Americans concerned about showing up in person.The ‘Stop the Steal’ slateMany of the Republicans running in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota and Nevada have earned national notoriety.Take Mark Finchem, a cowboy-hat-and-bolo-tie-wearing Arizona lawmaker running for secretary of state. He crushed his G.O.P. rivals in the primary by whipping up fears about a stolen election in 2020.In a recent interview with Time magazine, Finchem said it was a “fantasy” that President Biden won in 2020 — even though he was elected by more than seven million votes nationwide.“It strains credibility,” Finchem said. “Isn’t it interesting that I can’t find anyone who will admit that they voted for Joe Biden?”Or Jim Marchant, the G.O.P. nominee in Nevada. Marchant has been a leader of the “Stop the Steal” movement and has linked up with a slate of “America First” candidates in other states to raise money from national donors. As my colleague Alexandra Berzon has reported, those candidates, including Finchem, have been “injecting specious theories about voting machines, foreign hacking and voter fraud” into their campaigns.Others, such as Kristina Karamo in Michigan, have espoused fringe views on a variety of social issues. On her personal podcast, she called yoga a “satanic ritual” that was originally intended by its creators to “summon a demon.”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.The Republican exceptionDemocrats are frustrated with the accolades that Brad Raffensperger, the Republican incumbent in Georgia, has received from political commentators. His refusal to overturn the 2020 presidential election results despite heavy pressure from Donald Trump, they say, was merely the minimum requirement of the job.“It’s good when Republicans are not openly treasonous,” Jena Griswold, the secretary of state of Colorado, said in an interview.But she accused Raffensperger of supporting what she characterized as the “worst voter-suppression package in the country” — the Republican-led law Georgia passed in 2021 overhauling voter access.The Democratic nominee in Georgia is Bee Nguyen, a state lawmaker and policy adviser at New American Leaders, a nonprofit that encourages immigrants and refugees to run for office. Nguyen, who took the seat Stacey Abrams vacated during her first run for governor in 2017, is Vietnamese American and the first Democratic woman of Asian descent to hold a state office in Georgia.Outside groups focused on bolstering Republicans who stood up to Trump in 2020 spent heavily on Raffensperger’s behalf in his primary against Representative Jody Hice, another Stop-the-Stealer. With the help of several million dollars in last-minute donations, along with the full backing of Brian Kemp, Georgia’s popular governor, Raffensperger defeated Hice by nearly 20 percentage points, avoiding a runoff.A New York Times analysis of that law, Senate Bill 202, found that the state’s Republican Legislature and governor “have made a breathtaking assertion of partisan power in elections, making absentee voting harder and creating restrictions and complications in the wake of narrow losses to Democrats.”The law alone could change turnout in Georgia, which reached record levels during two Senate elections in January 2021. Democrats say Republicans changed the law to suppress votes from people of color; in a speech in Atlanta on Jan. 11, 2022, President Biden called it “Jim Crow 2.0.”Privately, Democrats worry, too, about complacency within their own ranks — particularly among centrists who may like the fact that Raffensperger bucked Trump’s will in 2020 but are less animated by the new voting law. Republicans have defended it as a common-sense effort to pull back what they characterized as emergency measures to accommodate voters during the pandemic. But they have struggled to explain why some measures, such as a restriction on handing out water to voters waiting in long lines, are necessary.Griswold, a lawyer who worked on voter access for Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign, also leads the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State. She has used her national platform to reposition the organization as a bulwark of democracy against Trump and his Stop the Steal movement.Voters in Lost Mountain, Ga., during the primary in May. Democrats are furious about the state’s new voting rules.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesA complicated picture for DemocratsDeciding how to calibrate their message to voters about the security and fairness of the upcoming midterms has been tricky for Democrats.That is especially true in Georgia, where newly registered voters of color powered Biden’s victory as well as those of Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. Democrats are wary of inadvertently signaling that the new voting rules could mean that those communities’ votes will be wasted this year.Kim Rogers, the executive director of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, stressed in an interview that despite Republicans’ attacks on the integrity of American elections, “our system works.”She noted that American elections are subject to “bipartisan checks and balances at every level,” with Democrats and Republicans alike enlisted to certify disputed votes and official results — while arguing that preserving these checks and balances is exactly what’s on the ballot this year.As for the new laws in states like Georgia, she said, “voters of color have faced these suppression tactics for generations” and expressed confidence that voters would overcome those barriers just as they did in 2020.But that system is under severe strain. Republican county officials in New Mexico, upstate New York and rural Pennsylvania have said they will refuse to certify votes from digital machines, and election officials across the country have faced death threats.Many Democrats were highly critical of the Biden administration’s strategy for pushing an overhaul of voting rights through Congress. It failed in January while facing unified Republican opposition and skepticism from centrist Democrats, led by Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia.Vice President Kamala Harris, the administration’s point person for voting rights, has faced repeated questions about what she has done to find workarounds in lieu of federal legislation, beyond making the occasional speech.Democrats pushed to appropriate federal funds to protect election workers in legislation to overhaul the Electoral Count Act, but Republicans have resisted. On Wednesday, the House passed its version of an overhaul bill, but the Senate will need to pass its own, different version, as my colleague Carl Hulse reported.His article contained a quote from Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who is the leading Republican author on the Senate side but has provoked concerns among Democratic colleagues, including Tim Kaine, with whom I spoke in March. They say that she is merely maneuvering to run out the clock at the bidding of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader.“We can work together to try to bridge the considerable differences,” Collins told Hulse. “But it would have been better if we had been consulted prior to the House sponsors’ deciding to drop their bill.”What to readThere is scant evidence that the charitable giving of Herschel Walker, the Republican Senate candidate in Georgia, matches the promises his company made. David A. Fahrenthold and Shane Goldmacher contacted the charities to ask.J.R. Majewski, a Republican House candidate in northern Ohio, has promoted himself as a combat veteran who served in Afghanistan. But Neil Vigdor looked at the U.S. Air Force records, and there is no sign that the candidate was deployed there.Maggie Astor has been tracking the ratings that the National Rifle Association gives to political candidates since 2008. She has found that the Democratic break from the group is complete: For the first time in at least 25 years, not a single Democrat running for Congress received an A.A rash of retirements has complicated Democrats’ efforts to hold the House, Catie Edmondson writes. Instead of battle-tested incumbents, first-time candidates are defending the districts.The American public’s views of Donald Trump have remained stable across different measures in recent months even as he faces multiple investigations, Ruth Igielnik writes.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      House Passes Police Funding Bills, as Democrats Remain Divided

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      WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday passed bipartisan legislation to increase funding for local police departments, after Democrats overcame bitter divisions in their ranks over a package aimed at blunting Republican efforts to portray them as soft on crime ahead of midterm elections.A broad bipartisan majority voted, 360 to 64, in favor of the centerpiece of the four-bill package, called the Invest to Protect Act, which would give $60,000,000 a year for five years to local police departments. The funds could be used for purchasing body cameras and conducting de-escalation training, as well as other activities.But a backlash by progressives, who balked at sending money to police departments without stronger accountability measures to address excessive use of force or other misconduct, nearly tanked the bills before they could be considered.The fate of the legislation is unclear, particularly given its bumpy road to House passage on Thursday. The Senate last month passed a different version of the Invest to Protect Act, and aides said leaders in that chamber had yet to discuss a path to get it to President Biden’s desk.Democrats who are in difficult re-election races in conservative-leaning districts had clamored for action on the measures for months, in part to answer a central line of attack Republicans have used against them during the midterm campaign season: that their party is soft on crime and bent on defunding the police.“Around the country, this is going to send a very clear signal that Democrats support law enforcement,” said Representative Josh Gottheimer, Democrat of New Jersey and the sponsor of the Invest to Protect Act.Still, its path to passage exposed lingering divisions among Democrats on the issue of policing at a moment when the political map is looking more favorable for them than it did just a few months ago. After progressives threatened for weeks to block the legislation from reaching the House floor, Democratic leaders believed they had finally reached a deal to move forward.But the agreement appeared to fray before their eyes just as the House turned to the bill on Thursday morning, prompting a two-hour delay as a small group of liberal lawmakers said they would not supply their votes after all.“It’s a matter of unchecked, unmonitored money,” said Representative Cori Bush, Democrat of Missouri, who opposed the legislation. “This is money for training? Well, we have not seen this training. After all the protests, after George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, 2021 saw the most police murders since police murders have been recorded.”The mini-rebellion in the House, where Democrats have a slim margin of control, prompted a scramble by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her lieutenants, who quickly went to work trying to swing the would-be defectors.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.Ultimately, Democrats were able to convince Representative Ayanna S. Pressley, Democrat of Massachusetts, to vote “present” in order to secure the votes need to bring up the legislation — allowing it to move ahead without registering her support for it. That allowed a procedural measure to pave the way for the legislation to squeak through on a vote of 216 to 215.Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota and a progressive who pressed for changes in the bill, said the process was so fraught, it felt as if “we were in labor, taking the last push.”She added, “I think it should be looked at as a victory for Democrats to be able to push this in the finish line.”Mr. Gottheimer dismissed the drama as “inside baseball” that the public would ignore. But it was the latest chapter in a long-running feud among Democrats about how to talk about and address law enforcement issues.Although 153 Republicans supported the centerpiece Invest to Protect Act — nine Democrats broke ranks to oppose it — most Republicans opposed the other three bills. One of those would create a grant program for states and local governments to train and dispatch mental health professionals, rather than law enforcement officers, to respond to emergencies involving those with behavioral health needs. Just three Republicans joined 220 Democrats in support of that bill.The package of bills also would provide federal grants for communities that practice violence intervention and prevention. It would offer assistance to law enforcement specifically addressing gun crimes and supporting shooting victims.Democrats had originally hoped to vote on the police funding bills over the summer and were planning to pair them with legislation to ban assault weapons that passed in July, before lawmakers left Washington for their August recess. But when disagreements emerged about accountability measures in the police bills, Ms. Pelosi chose to move ahead with just the assault weapons ban and revisit the law enforcement legislation in the fall..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.Over the past few weeks, frustration had been building among moderates as the legislation languished without a vote, especially with midterm elections approaching.In intensive talks this week between Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington and chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Ms. Omar and Mr. Gottheimer, the liberal members pushed for changes. The bill had originally targeted police departments with 200 officers or fewer. Ms. Jayapal and Ms. Omar pressed for the money to be available only to departments with 125 or fewer officers.The two lawmakers also insisted on more accountability measures, such as allowing the funding to be used to collect data on the use of force and de-escalation training. Many local governments cite resource constraints in being able to report those statistics, and only 27 percent of police departments currently submit that kind of data to the F.B.I.Miami-Dade police officers participate in an active shooter drill at a high school. Republicans accuse Democrats of being soft on crime and bent on defunding the police.Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich/EPA, via ShutterstockProgressives also insisted on removing from the package legislation that would expand police departments, co-sponsored by Representative Abigail Spanberger, Democrat of Virginia, who has been a chief proponent of action on law enforcement funding measures.Although the changes were made, they failed to placate some civil rights groups, who said they remained opposed to the legislation. Suggestions earlier this year to address qualified immunity, which provides legal protections for officers accused of violating others’ constitutional rights, for instance, were rejected.“Congress should advance an affirmative agenda for safety that makes evidence-based, preventative investments in people and communities,” said Thea Sebastian, the director of policy at Civil Rights Corps, a nonprofit organization focused on injustice in the legal system. “The current package, in our view, does not represent this agenda.”Democrats have long been aware that the issue of crime remains a political vulnerability for members representing moderate districts.The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee shared guidance in March with members and candidates about how to respond to Republican attacks that they are soft on crime.“All Democratic candidates in competitive elections must proactively develop plans to counter this attack,” the memo, shared by a D.C.C.C. official, said. “Republicans will seek to tie every Democrat to ‘defund’ regardless of that Democrat’s record or biography. They are doing this because, sadly, these attacks can work even when they’re obviously false.”The group noted, “Multiple responses were tested, and the most effective one included both a clear statement opposing defunding the police, as well as a statement laying out what Democrats do support when it comes to crime and policing.”On Thursday, Republicans in the House accused Democrats of simply bringing the bills to the floor as a political exercise.“It is not to solve a problem,” said Representative Michelle Fischbach, Republican of Minnesota. “It is so my Democratic colleagues can look like they are solving problems.” She called it a “last-ditch effort for them” that was “coming just in time to see the results from election polling.”Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, summed up the Republican opposition in remarks on the floor.“It’s an election-year ploy for Democrats to try to look like they care about funding law enforcement,” he said.Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat of Texas, responded with anger.“If you could ever be fed up, I am fed up,” she said. Addressing her Republican colleagues, she said, “Where were you on Jan. 6, when law enforcement were bleeding out on the steps of the United States Capitol?” More