Midterm Elections (2022)

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      Arkansas City Elected an 18-Year-Old Mayor to Turn Things Around

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      EARLE, Ark. — The shoe factory closed and the supermarket pulled out. So did neighbors whose old homes were now falling apart, overtaken by weeds and trees. Likewise, the best students at Earle High School often left for college and decided their hometown did not have enough to lure them back.Jaylen Smith, 18, could have left, too. Instead, when he graduated from high school last spring he resolved to stay put in Earle, a small city surrounded by farmland in the Arkansas Delta, where his family has lived for generations. More

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      Crime Concerns Drove Asian Americans Away From New York Democrats

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      Worries about public safety, especially attacks against Asian Americans, caused some in the once-reliably Democratic bloc to vote Republican last year.Asian Americans have typically formed a crucial and reliable voting bloc for Democrats in recent years, helping the party maintain its political dominance in liberal states like New York.But Republicans shattered that presumption in November when they came within striking distance of winning the governor’s race in New York for the first time in 15 years, buoyed in part by a surge of support among Asian American voters in southern Brooklyn and eastern Queens.Now, Democrats are trying to determine how they can stem — and, if possible, reverse — the growing tide of Asian American voters drifting away from the party amid a feeling that their concerns are being overlooked.Interviews with more than 20 voters of Asian descent, many of them Chinese Americans who had historically voted for Democrats but did not in 2022, found that many went with the Republican candidate for governor, Lee Zeldin, even if begrudgingly, largely because of concerns about crime.One lifelong Democrat from Queens, Karen Wang, 48, who is Chinese American, said she had never felt as unsafe as she did these days. “Being Asian, I felt I had a bigger target on my back,” she said.“My vote,” she added, “was purely a message to Democrats: Don’t take my vote for granted.”Besides crime, Asian American voters expressed concern over a proposal by former Mayor Bill de Blasio to change the admissions process for the city’s specialized high schools.Democratic leaders, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, have acknowledged their party’s failure to offer an effective message about public safety to counter Republicans’ tough-on-crime platform, which resonated not just with Asian Americans, but with a constellation of voters statewide.In Flushing, Queens, home to one of New York City’s most vibrant Chinatowns, homespun leaflets posted on walls in English and Chinese encouraged passers-by to “Vote for Republicans” before the November election, blaming Democrats for illegal immigration and a rise in crime.One flier portrayed Ms. Hochul as anti-police and sought to link her to the death of Christina Yuna Lee, who was fatally stabbed more than 40 times by a homeless man inside her apartment in Manhattan’s Chinatown last February.Over Zoom, a group of 13 Chinese American friends, most of them retired union workers, met regularly to discuss the election before casting their ballots. A mix of Republicans, Democrats and political independents, they all voted for Mr. Zeldin.Gov. Kathy Hochul and other leading New York Democrats have acknowledged their party’s failure to offer an effective message about public safety.Johnny Milano for The New York TimesAlthough Mr. Zeldin lost, his support among Asian American voters helped lift other Republican candidates to surprise victories in down-ballot legislative races.In one of the southern Brooklyn districts with a majority of Asian American voters, Peter J. Abbate Jr., a 36-year Democratic incumbent, lost to Lester Chang, the first Asian American Republican to enter the State Legislature.Mr. Chang’s entrance, however, was clouded by questions about his legal residency, prompting the ruling Assembly Democrats to consider trying to expel him. They ultimately decided not to seek his expulsion, with one lawmaker, Assemblyman Ron Kim, noting that such a move would have provoked a “strong backlash from the Asian community.”For Democrats, repairing ties with Asian American voters, who account for about 15 percent of New York City’s population and make up the state’s fastest-growing ethnic group, may be a difficult yet critical challenge given the significant role such voters are poised to play in future elections.State Senator John Liu, a Queens Democrat, said that Mr. Zeldin’s campaign message on the crime issue “simply resonated better,” and that Democrats had to improve the way they communicated with Asian Americans, particularly on education policy.“Democrats can begin by understanding the Asian American perspective more deeply,” said Mr. Liu, who was born in Taiwan. “The broader issue is that many of the social justice issues in this country are still viewed from a Black and white lens, and Asian Americans are simply undetected by that lens and therefore feel completely marginalized.”Republicans performed well in parts of New York City with the largest Asian American populations, drawing voters who said they were concerned primarily with public safety, especially amid a spate of high-profile hate crimes targeting Asian Americans.In Assembly District 49 in Brooklyn, for example, which includes portions of Sunset Park and Dyker Heights, and is majority Asian, Mr. Zeldin won 61 percent of the vote, even though it appears white voters turned out to vote in higher numbers. Mr. Zeldin won by similar margins in a nearby Assembly district that is heavily Chinese and includes Bensonhurst and Gravesend.In Queens, Mr. Zeldin managed to obtain 51 percent of the vote in Assembly District 40, which includes Flushing and is about 70 percent Asian: mostly Chinese and Korean immigrants.Support for Mr. Zeldin, who came within six percentage points of beating Ms. Hochul, was palpable across those neighborhoods before Election Day, with much of the pro-Republican enthusiasm appearing to grow organically. And posts in support of Mr. Zeldin spread broadly across WeChat, a Chinese social media and messaging app widely used by Chinese Americans.Interviews with Asian American voters revealed that their discontent with the Democratic Party was, in many cases, deep-rooted and based on frustrations built over years. Many of them described becoming disillusioned with a party that they said had overlooked their support and veered too far to the left. They listed Democratic priorities related to education, criminal justice and illegal immigration as favoring other minority groups over Asian Americans, and blamed Democratic policies for a rise in certain crimes and for supporting safe injection sites.Voters traced their sense of betrayal in part to a divisive 2018 proposal by Mayor de Blasio, a Democrat, to alter the admissions process for the city’s elite high schools, several of which are dominated by Asian American students, to increase enrollment among Black and Hispanic students.The plan would have effectively reduced the number of Asian American students offered spots at the elite schools, which made some Asian Americans feel that Democrats were targeting them.Mayor Eric Adams, Mr. de Blasio’s successor, moved away from his predecessor’s plan to diversify the city’s top schools, but the effort galvanized Asian Americans politically, prompting parents to become more engaged and laying the groundwork for Republicans to make inroads among aggrieved voters. Indeed, one vocal political club that emerged from the education debate, the Asian Wave Alliance, actively campaigned for Mr. Zeldin.“Why should I support Democrats who discriminate against me?” said Lailing Yu, 59, a mother from Hong Kong whose son graduated from a specialized high school in 2018. “We see Democrats are working for the interest of African Americans and Latino communities against Asian communities.”After years as a registered Democrat, Ms. Lu switched her party registration to Republican last year and voted for Mr. Zeldin. She ticked off a litany of recent instances of street violence — including one involving a stranger who spit at her while she was taking out her trash — that she said made her feel less safe now than when she arrived in the United States 50 years ago.“I think what upset me to see Asian Americans veer right is that they were swayed by fear and fear alone,” said Representative Grace Meng, a Queens Democrat of Taiwanese descent. “It’s important that we are working with the Asian American community, but also with our leaders up and down the ballot to make sure they’re listening and responsive to our concerns, which is not just substance, but outreach, especially during campaigns.”Sam Ni at his Sunset Park computer store. He said his shift to the Republican Party was prompted by a proposal to alter the admissions process for the city’s specialized high schools. Janice Chung for The New York TimesSam Ni, a father of two high school students, began shifting to the right after the debate over high school admissions. He described the city’s diversification effort as an attempt to “punish” Asian American students.Mr. Ni said fears over subway crime had disrupted his daily life and further estranged him from the Democratic Party. His wife, he said, recently began to drive the couple’s son to school from southern Brooklyn to Upper Manhattan, forcing her to spend hours in traffic instead of working at the computer store the family owns in Sunset Park.“If I told my son to go to the subway, we will worry about it,” said Mr. Ni, 45, who was a Democrat since immigrating to the United States from China in 2001 but who switched parties and voted for President Donald J. Trump in 2020.This year, Mr. Ni decided to play an active role in getting other Asian Americans to the polls: He helped organize an effort that raised about $12,000 to print get-out-the-vote banners, fliers and bags in English and Chinese.“If you don’t vote, don’t complain,” read the signs, a slogan that also spread on WeChat and other social media platforms. The message did not explicitly urge voters to back Mr. Zeldin, whom Mr. Ni voted for, but the materials were passed out primarily at rallies for Mr. Zeldin in the city’s Chinese neighborhoods.Mr. Ni helped organize an effort that raised money to print banners and other materials in Chinese and English encouraging people to vote. Janice Chung for The New York TimesThere were also larger forces at play.A week before the election, Asian American voters in New York City received mailings that appeared to be race-based. They accused the Biden administration and left-wing officials of embracing policies related to job qualifications and college admissions that “engaged in widespread racial discrimination against white and Asian Americans.”The mailings, part of a national Republican-aligned campaign targeting Asian American voters, were distributed by America First Legal, a group founded by Stephen Miller, a former top adviser to Mr. Trump who helped craft the president’s hard-line immigration policies.Democratic officials said they believed that many Asian Americans that voted Republican tended to be East Asian, particularly Chinese voters who may be more culturally conservative. Republicans may have also found success among first-generation immigrants who may not be as attuned to the history of racial inequity that has led Democrats to enact policies that Republicans have targeted, such as reforms to New York’s bail laws.Mr. Zeldin also made a point of meeting with, and raising money from, Asian American leaders and activists. The approach helped him win — and, in some cases, run up the vote — in many districts dominated by Asian American voters and enabled him to chip into Ms. Hochul’s overwhelming support in the rest of the city.Even so, some Asian American leaders noted that Mr. Zeldin’s near singular focus on crime — his campaign framed the election in existential terms: “Vote like your life depends on it, because it does” — allowed him to run up his numbers across many voting groups, including white and suburban voters, not just Asian Americans.Mr. Zeldin at a campaign rally shortly before Election Day. His near-singular focus on the issue of crime won over many Asian American voters. Dave Sanders for The New York TimesMany Democratic officials noted Ms. Hochul’s effort to rally Asian American voters in the campaign’s closing weeks, but characterized the push as too little, too late.After the election, the governor acknowledged that Democrats had fallen short in communicating their message about public safety to Asian American voters, saying that “more could have been done to make sure that people know that this was a high priority of ours.”“Obviously, that was not successful in certain communities who were hearing other voices and seeing other messaging and seeing other advertising with a contrary message about our priorities,” Ms. Hochul said in November after signing two bills aimed at curbing hate crimes. More

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      Can Ron DeSantis Avoid Meeting the Press?

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      The Florida governor easily won re-election despite little engagement with mainstream news outlets, another sign of partisan division ahead of the 2024 presidential race.Assigned to cover the re-election campaign of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Miles Cohen, a young ABC News reporter, found himself stymied. The governor would not grant him an interview. Aides barred him from some campaign events and interrupted his conversations with supporters.When Mr. Cohen was finally able to ask a question about the governor’s handling of Hurricane Ian, Mr. DeSantis shouted him down — “Stop, stop, stop” — and scolded the media for “trying to cast aspersions.” The DeSantis campaign then taunted Mr. Cohen on Twitter, prompting a torrent of online vitriol.So on election night, Mr. Cohen decamped to a friendlier environment for the news media: Mar-a-Lago, where former President Donald J. Trump greeted reporters by name. “He came up to us, asked how the sandwiches were and took 20 questions,” Mr. Cohen recalled.Mr. Trump, who heckled the “fake news” in his speech that evening, elevated media-bashing into a high art for Republicans. But ahead of the next presidential race, potential candidates like Mr. DeSantis are taking a more radical approach: not just attacking nonpartisan news outlets, but ignoring them altogether.Although he courted right-wing podcasters and conservative Fox News hosts, Mr. DeSantis did not grant an extensive interview to a national nonpartisan news organization during his 2022 re-election bid — and he coasted to victory, with Rupert Murdoch’s media empire now promoting him as a 2024 contender.Assigned to cover the re-election campaign of Mr. DeSantis, Miles Cohen, a young ABC News reporter, found himself stymied.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesHis success is an ominous sign for the usual rules of engagement between politicians and the press as another nationwide election looms. Presidential candidates typically endure media scrutiny in exchange for the megaphone and influence of mainstream outlets. But in an intensely partisan, choose-your-own-news era, the traditional calculus may have shifted.“The old way of looking at it is: ‘I have to do every media hit that I possibly can, from as broad a political spectrum as I can, to reach as many people as possible,’” said Nick Iarossi, a longtime DeSantis supporter and a lobbyist in Tallahassee. “The new way of looking at it is: ‘I really don’t need to do that anymore. I can control how I want to message to voters through the mediums I choose.’”In 2022, Mr. DeSantis was not alone. Doug Mastriano, the Republican who ran for governor in Pennsylvania, engaged almost entirely with conservative media outlets. (Unlike Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Mastriano lost badly.) In Maryland and Wisconsin, reporters covering the Republican candidates for governor were often given no notice for some events, resorting to Eventbrite pages and social media to find a candidate’s whereabouts. On a national level, the Republican Party announced last year that it was boycotting the Commission on Presidential Debates, the nonpartisan group that has organized general election debates since 1988.“We fully expect candidates will be rewriting the traditional rules of access and how they interact with journalists,” said Rick Klein, who is preparing to cover the 2024 race as political director at ABC News.Gov. Ron DeSantis and His AdministrationReshaping Florida: Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has turned the swing state into a right-wing laboratory by leaning into cultural battles.2024 Speculation: Mr. DeSantis opened his second term as Florida’s governor with a speech that subtly signaled his long-rumored ambitions for the White House.Latino Evangelicals: The governor has courted Hispanic evangelical Christians assiduously as his national profile has risen. They could be a decisive constituency in a possible showdown with former President Donald J. Trump in 2024.A Democrat’s View: Jared Moskowitz worked closely with Mr. DeSantis as his emergency management czar. Now, he’s joining Congress positioning himself as a centrist.Could a presidential candidate realistically avoid the mainstream media entirely? “I don’t think it’s been done before,” Mr. Klein said. “But I think the last couple of years in politics has taught us there’s lots of rules that get broken.”Mr. DeSantis’s strategy would face its biggest test if he pursued a presidential bid, a decision he has so far demurred on.In Florida, Mr. DeSantis occasionally spoke with local TV affiliates and entertained shouted-out questions from the state’s press corps. But a national contest would require him to introduce himself to a broader audience, and while a primary race would focus on Republican voters, it is often independents and centrists who decide the fine margins of the Electoral College. Although partisan podcasts and niche news sites are increasingly popular, few outlets can match the reach of traditional broadcast and cable networks.“You can’t just talk to the friendly press and run TV ads and expect to win a nomination,” said Alex Conant, a partner at the consulting firm Firehouse Strategies who served as communications director to Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.“If you’re going to get elected president, you have to talk to people who have never watched Fox News,” said Mr. Conant, who believes the Republican Party’s underwhelming performance in the 2022 midterms was partly due to an overreliance on speaking only to its base.Representatives of Mr. DeSantis did not return a request for comment.Mr. Trump pioneered some of these aggressive tactics, barring journalists from a number of publications, including BuzzFeed News and The Washington Post, from attending some rallies in his 2016 campaign, and pulling out of a planned general-election debate in October 2020. His administration revoked a CNN reporter’s press pass and barred disfavored journalists from some public events; his former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, declared the media as “the opposition party.”Still, Mr. Trump remained an enthusiastic participant in the “boys on the bus” tradition of campaign reporting that dates back decades, where political journalists crisscross the country in proximity to the candidates they cover.These so-called embed reporters often became the experts on America’s future leaders, granting readers and viewers a front-row seat. Arguably, candidates benefited, too: Although they had to cope with a dedicated press corps, the scrutiny offered preparation for the slings and arrows of holding national office, not to mention free advertising to constituents.A White House staff member reached for the microphone of CNN’s Jim Acosta as he questioned President Donald J. Trump at a news conference in November 2018.Jonathan Ernst/ReutersMr. DeSantis, a Yale and Harvard graduate who often assails what he calls the “Acela media,” has spent years working to upend those assumptions.Florida reporters have complained about a lack of access to Mr. DeSantis since he was elected governor in 2018, a victory fueled in part by dozens of appearances on Fox News. His anti-media hostility intensified during the pandemic, when he faced criticism for reopening Florida early; in March 2020, a staff writer for The Miami Herald was barred from a news conference about the virus.In 2021, he held a lengthy news conference in April denying a claim by “60 Minutes” that he improperly rewarded a campaign donor; the “60 Minutes” segment received some pushback from press critics. The next month, the governor blocked every outlet except Fox News from attending a signing ceremony for a state law, prompting one local TV reporter to complain that Floridians “had their eyes and ears in that room cut off.”By the summer, many news outlets were prohibited from attending a gathering of Florida Republicans, while conservative writers and podcasters were granted access. “We in the state of Florida are not going to allow legacy media outlets to be involved in our primaries,” Mr. DeSantis told a cheering crowd. His communications director, Lindsey Curnutte, later mocked reporters in a Twitter post aimed at “fake news journalists,” asking, “How’s the view from outside security?”Mr. DeSantis has integrated this messaging into his campaign materials. In one recent ad, he donned aviator sunglasses and a flight uniform to pose as the “Top Gov,” intent on “dogfighting” the “corporate media.”A top DeSantis communications aide, Christina Pushaw, has articulated the governor’s view of the news media in harsh terms. “They hate you, they hate us, they hate everything that we stand for, and I believe they hate this country,” she said in a speech in September, referring to the media.Mr. DeSantis in a promotional video where he talks about “taking on the corporate media.”Ron DeSantisIn 2021, Ms. Pushaw’s Twitter account was suspended after she criticized a report by The Associated Press and urged her followers to “drag them.” Ms. Pushaw, then serving as the governor’s press secretary, wrote that she would put the A.P. reporter “on blast” if he did not modify the story; the reporter later received online threats.The A.P. complained about “a direct effort to activate an online mob to attack a journalist for doing his job.” Ms. Pushaw responded that “drag them” was a slang term and did not amount to inciting a violent threat.The incident prompted an outcry. “As someone who believes in the role of press in an open society, I found it unbelievable, not only what she was allowed to do, but encouraged to do,” said Barbara Petersen, a longtime First Amendment advocate who runs the Florida Center for Government Accountability. “I find it very disturbing, frankly, that this man, who is our governor, won’t talk to the people whose job it is to keep us informed.”In December, the news outlet Semafor reported on Mr. DeSantis’s preference for local right-wing news outlets. The governor’s team pushed back, comparing reporters to “Democrat activists,” and high-profile conservatives offered encouragement.“In an environment where corporate media are just straight up anti-G.O.P. propagandists — and extremely proud of it — why is Ron DeSantis the only person taking it seriously?” wrote Mollie Hemingway, editor of The Federalist.Whether Mr. DeSantis can keep up his approach to media remains unclear. Mr. Trump may have mastered Twitter, but it was his ubiquity on big outlets like CNN and MSNBC that solidified his electoral appeal.Even an anti-media message, it turns out, may need the media’s help.“Going back to 2016, Trump was at his most effective when he was anti-media but would nevertheless talk to anybody,” said Mr. Conant, the former Rubio aide. “He was getting his message out on CNN and MSNBC every day, even though part of his message was that the media is terrible.”Patricia Mazzei More

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      Republicans Can’t Decide Whether to Woo or Condemn Young Voters

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      As Democrats keep winning millennials and Gen Z, Republicans are still debating how to get them back.For months before the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats fretted that younger voters might fall into old habits and stay home. The analysis is still a little hazy, but as more data comes in, it looks as if enough young people showed up in many key states to play a decisive role.And now, some Republicans are warning that their party’s poor standing with millennial and Gen-Z voters could become an existential threat. But there’s no consensus about how much, if at all, Republicans’ message needs to change.“We’re going to lose a heck of a lot of elections if we wait until these people become Republicans,” said John Brabender, a G.O.P. consultant who has been sounding the alarm about the party’s deficit with younger voters.By 2024, those two generations combined could make up as much as 40 percent of the voting public, according to some estimates. So far, millennials — some of whom are entering their 40s — are betraying little sign of growing more conservative as they age. If those trends hold, it could make for some daunting electoral math for the right.“This is a multigenerational problem for Republicans,” said John Della Volpe, the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, who studies the youth vote.Republicans are failing to engage younger voters early enough and on the right platforms, Brabender argued — and when they do, they’re not addressing the issues on their minds. “We need to be much more effective about presenting an alternative side,” he said. “Right now we are just silent.”In private, Republicans can be scathing about the party’s looming demographic challenges; one bluntly said the G.O.P. was relying on a base of older white voters who are dying off, while failing to replace them from among the more racially and ethnically diverse generations coming up behind them. But while some counsel that the party needs to adapt its message accordingly, others argue that it’s more a matter of delivering the same message in new ways.“Republicans have to understand that the issues of that next generation of voters are different,” Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire told me last month.“There are young Republicans out there who really care about the environment,” he added. “It doesn’t mean they want the Green New Deal, but they want to know that leaders are taking good, sensible, responsible, economically smart ways to address transitioning off fossil fuels or clean water and clean air.”Karoline Leavitt, a 20-something former Trump administration aide who lost her bid for a House seat in New Hampshire last year, wrote in a recent Fox News op-ed article that “the most colossal challenge facing the G.O.P. is the inability to resonate with the most influential voting bloc in our electorate — my generation, Generation Z.”Karoline Leavitt, a former Trump administration aide who lost her bid for a House seat in New Hampshire, said that her party was not resonating effectively with her age group, Generation Z.John Tully for The New York TimesBut in a reflection of the same ambivalence that leads Republican politicians like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas to mock the use of gender pronouns, Leavitt also argued that members of Generation Z had been “indoctrinated to be faithless, anti-American, self-proclaimed socialists who care about changing their gender more than paying their bills.”Millennials and Gen-Z voters came of age during tumultuous times — the Great Recession and the rise of movements like Occupy Wall Street, then the Trump presidency and the coronavirus pandemic — and share a skepticism of capitalism and a belief in the value of government to solve problems, Della Volpe noted.And on social issues, younger voters are much more in tune with Democrats. They value racial and ethnic diversity and L.G.B.T.Q. rights at higher rates than older voters. Among those aged 18 to 29, three-quarters say that abortion should be legal in most cases. Younger voters may not love the Democratic Party, but they like the Republican Party even less.“You’re not going to be able to engage them on policy specifics unless you meet them on their values,” Della Volpe said. “Young people aren’t even going to consider voting for you if deny that climate change exists.”A ‘shortsighted’ focusThe Republican Party has sporadically tried to address this problem, Brabender said, but has made “no effort to do anything about it on an organized basis.”Which is not to say that nobody has tried. The Republican National Committee’s post-2012 autopsy concluded that the party was seen as “old and detached from pop culture” and urged Republicans to “fundamentally change the tone we use to talk about issues and the way we are communicating with voters.” Then the party nominated Donald Trump, who did the opposite.When Representative Elise Stefanik of New York entered Congress in 2015 at just 30 years old, she convened experts to brief Republicans on the views of millennial voters. In 2017, a task force she helped lead produced a report, “Millennials and the G.O.P.: Rebuilding Trust With an Untapped Electorate,” that made modest recommendations for addressing the cost of college education, but sidestepped more thorny cultural issues.In the years since, as Stefanik has climbed the ranks of Republican leadership, she has rebranded herself from a forward-thinking change agent in the party to a devoted acolyte of Trump, whose approval ratings among younger voters are abysmal.There are upstart groups on the far right like Turning Point USA, which has positioned itself as the youth wing of the Trump coalition. Representative Dan Crenshaw, a 38-year-old Republican from Texas, has begun holding annual youth summit meetings, which tend to draw a more moderate crowd. And there are venerable organizations like the Young America’s Foundation, whose roots date to the days of William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of National Review.The foundation is now led by Scott Walker, the former governor of Wisconsin, who has oriented the group toward a longer-term approach of waging a battle of ideas from college campuses all the way down to middle schools.“The immediate reaction from the consultant class is going to be, ‘We need slicker digital ads or new youth coalitions,’” Walker said.“I think that’s really shortsighted,” he added, arguing that “years and years of liberal indoctrination” in the education system had led to a monoculture that silenced conservative ideas. “These are young people who have heard nothing but the left’s point of view.”A crowd at an event in Tampa, Fla., hosted by Turning Point USA, which has positioned itself as the youth wing of the Trump coalition.Todd Anderson for The New York TimesWhat the numbers showThere’s a robust debate among analysts about the depth of Republicans’ problems, as my colleagues have reported. Pew Research has found that while Biden won voters under 30 by a 24-point margin in 2020, that was actually a retreat from 2016 and 2018.Last year, according to one set of exit polls — Edison Research’s data, as analyzed by researchers at Tufts University — voters under 30 overwhelmingly chose Democrats. In Senate races, Democrats captured 76 percent of the under-30 vote in Arizona, 70 percent in Pennsylvania and 64 percent in Nevada. Nationwide, voters under 30 preferred Democrats in House races by 28 percentage points.Republicans find comfort in Associated Press/VoteCast data, where the nationwide gap was far smaller among voters aged 18 to 29: 53 percent for Democrats versus 41 percent for Republicans. In a postelection analysis, The A.P. concluded that young people’s enthusiasm for Democrats “may be waning,” noting that younger voters tend to be much less tethered to party identities than older generations.Young people are notoriously difficult to survey. Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, a researcher at Tufts, said her team used the Edison data because it tracked census numbers more closely and dated further back in time, though she acknowledged that it was an “imperfect” barometer.What about turnout? According to an analysis of voter-file data from TargetSmart, a Democratic data firm, voters under 30 made up a larger percentage of the electorate in 2022 than they did in 2014 across seven battleground states. In Michigan, for instance, their share grew from just 6.9 percent in 2014 to 12.2 percent in 2022. In Nevada, it grew from 5.9 percent in 2014 to 13.2 percent last year. And while those numbers represent a slight retreat from 2018, that was a huge year for turnout, fueled on the Democratic side by a nationwide backlash to Trump’s presidency.Tom Bonier, the chief executive of TargetSmart, also pointed to signs that registration among young people had surged at two distinct points in 2022: after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and after President Biden passed an executive order wiping out some student debt.Before the election, the Harvard Youth Poll found that 59 percent of young Americans believed that their rights were under attack — reflecting their reaction to the abortion decision and their worries about election deniers linked to Trump.Overall, Bonier said, “The lesson we learned writ large in the election is that the stain of Trump on the party had an impact even without him even on the ballot.”What to read tonightKevin McCarthy has gained steam in his bid to become speaker and is trying to muster enough support before 10 p.m. Eastern, when the House will resume voting. Follow live updates.South Carolina’s First Congressional District is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and its boundaries must be redrawn for elections to be held, a panel of federal judges ruled. Michael Wines explains.The Biden administration proposed to tighten limits on fine particulate matter, a deadly air pollutant also known as soot that is responsible for thousands of premature deaths every year, Coral Davenport reports.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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      After Election Problems in Houston, Republicans Seek to Overturn Results

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      A growing number of contests to elections in Texas’ Harris County are a broad attempt to cast doubt on an Election Day that officials concede had problems.HOUSTON — Jon Rosenthal has seen some close races, but his re-election to the Texas State House in November, in a Houston district redrawn to be a virtual lock for Democrats, was not one of them. Mr. Rosenthal won by 15 points.So it came as a surprise when his Republican challenger in the race contested the results, petitioning the State Legislature to order a new election.Another surprise came late Thursday when the Republican candidate for the top executive position in Harris County, which includes Houston, announced that she, too, would contest her much narrower loss, by about 18,000 votes, to the progressive Democrat who is the county’s incumbent chief executive, Lina Hidalgo. By Friday, more than a dozen losing Republican candidates had filed suits to contest the results of their races.Election Day in Harris County, Texas’ largest county, saw a range of problems at polling places, including some that opened late and others that ran out of paper for printing voted ballots. A court ordered the polls to stay open an extra hour to compensate; then the Texas Supreme Court stepped in and halted the extra voting.Republicans, who have been watching closely for election issues in races around the country, seized on the difficulties in Harris County, which is becoming a Democratic stronghold. Candidates called into question the reliability of the results in a bitter and expensive campaign that failed to dislodge Ms. Hidalgo and a slate of Democratic judges.“It is inexcusable that after two months, the public is no further along in knowing if, and to what extent, votes were suppressed,” said Alexandra del Moral Mealer in explaining her decision to contest her loss to Ms. Hidalgo, adding that her challenge was “fundamentally about protecting the right to vote in free and fair elections.”Candidates called into question the reliability of the results in a bitter campaign that ended with Republicans failing to oust Lina Hidalgo and a slate of Democratic judges. Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesElection contests are not uncommon in Texas, often involving down-ballot races in small counties where the margins are often notably slim. But the challenges in Harris County appeared to be uniquely broad in their attempt to cast doubt on much of the voting process in an election that involved 1.1 million votes. They followed calls from state leaders, including Gov. Greg Abbott, for an investigation into the county’s handling of the election. The local district attorney opened an inquiry in November.The election contests in Harris County have at times resembled the one mounted in Arizona by the Republican candidate for governor, Kari Lake, who has sought to overturn her loss by claiming that election officials in one major county deliberately disenfranchised her voters. A judge dismissed her claims last month for lack of evidence.But the latest contests in Texas have little precedent, said the Harris County attorney, Christian Menefee, a Democrat. “To my knowledge, this is the first election contest filed in Harris County that is wholly focused on these kinds of process failures,” Mr. Menefee said in an interview.The sprawling Texas county has shifted more decisively in the direction of Democrats in the last few election cycles, following in the direction of other major Texas population centers.For a variety of reasons, it has struggled to conduct elections smoothly, drawing repeated scrutiny from Republican lawmakers in the State Capitol. The county’s size has been a challenge, covering an area nearly the size of Delaware with 2.5 million registered voters and more than 700 polling places. It has struggled with newly mandated voting systems and has not had steady leadership at its elections office, with three different administrators since 2020.An audit of the 2020 election, conducted by the secretary of state, highlighted a range of issues, including instances where Harris County did not handle its electronic records properly, though there was no evidence of widespread fraud.Several steps that the county took during the coronavirus pandemic to make it easier to vote in Houston — such as limited 24-hour voting and drive-through polling places — also drew criticism from Republicans, who argued that the changes had made the election less secure. The Republican-dominated State Legislature, in its last session, took steps to curtail many of the measures.Voters waited in line at Damascus Missionary Baptist Church on Election Day in Houston in November.Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesOn Election Day in November, the county experienced problems at a number of polling places, including several that were significantly delayed in opening and others that reported running out of paper ballots.A judge ordered polling places in the county to remain open for an extra hour after the Texas Organizing Project, a nonprofit, filed suit over the issues, claiming that voters were being prevented from casting ballots. The Texas Supreme Court stepped in and stayed the ruling in response to a challenge from the Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton. The court eventually allowed about 2,000 provisional ballots that were cast during the extra voting time to be added to the official count.The county elections administrator, Clifford Tatum, has defended the election process and said the issues that came up reflected small problems in an otherwise well-run election. “Overall, Election Day was a success,” a postelection report from Mr. Tatum’s office concluded.But the report, released last week, also found that the county’s voting system was in “an immediate need of upgrades or replacements” to correct software issues, simplify voting day setup and create a system for the elections administrator to know in the moment whether problems reported at polling places had been resolved.The Harris County Republican Party has focused on a broad range of issues that arose on Election Day, including not only sites that ran out of paper ballots but also others where poll workers incorrectly fed paper ballots into the voting machines.In its report, the election administrator’s office said that officials at 68 voting centers reported running out of the initial allotment of paper on Election Day, and that only 61 of them said they had received deliveries of more paper.But it remained unclear how many voters were turned away because of the paper shortages, in part because, according to the report, some of the election judges “declined to speak after reportedly being advised not to do so by the Harris County Republican Party.”A spokeswoman for the county Republican Party, Genevieve Carter, denied any such instructions. “We encouraged them to provide their firsthand account of any issues that occurred,” she said. “Our goal is to get to the bottom of what went wrong during this election.”The party’s lawyers and leaders have not claimed that they can prove their candidates should have won. Instead, they have argued that the scope of the problems on Election Day were so great — including, they claimed, allowing some voters to cast ballots who were no longer eligible to do so in the county — that the true results in the election cannot be known; they are demanding that new elections be held. (More than two-thirds of the ballots were cast either during early voting or by mail, not on Election Day.)“We have a systematic cancer that has invaded our election process,” said the chair of the county Republican Party, Cindy Siegel.Democrats have not raised public challenges, but have privately complained that the repeated issues in the election process in Houston were not being adequately addressed, giving Republicans fuel for their efforts to pass new restrictive laws and, now, election contests.Jon Rosenthal said he believed the challenge to his election was frivolous, and that allowing it to go forward in the State House could cause future headaches for lawmakers. Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesOnly the candidates themselves can initiate the contests, and so far at least 14 have done so, including Ms. Mealer, a first-time candidate who received millions in campaign contributions from top Houston-area donors; Mr. Rosenthal’s challenger, Michael May; a candidate for county district clerk; and nine Republican judicial candidates.One of the earliest challenges came from a judicial candidate, Erin Lunceford, who lost by 2,743 votes, and filed suit late last year. Ms. Lunceford’s suit includes 19 separate claims of issues with the way votes were handled or counted during the November election and asks the court to void the judicial election and “declare that the true outcome of the election cannot be ascertained.” Ms. Lunceford is represented by Andy Taylor, an election lawyer for the county Republican Party.Ryan MacLeod, a lawyer for the Democrat who won the race, Tamika Craft, described the suit in court papers as a “stunt to make headlines” after an election was lost, and said that “no allegations are supported by facts” and that no evidence had been provided.In the latest challenge on Thursday to the outcome of the race for Harris County judge — effectively the county’s chief executive — Ms. Mealer’s lawyers focused primarily on the paper ballot issues, arguing that they had been concentrated in high-turnout Republican areas and that county officials had “suppressed the voting rights” of residents in those places.Ms. Hidalgo’s office referred questions to the county attorney, Mr. Menefee, who described the challenges as “frivolous attempts to overturn the votes of more than a million residents.”Unlike the other challenges, Mr. May’s contest to his loss against Mr. Rosenthal does not go before a judge, because it involved a State House race. Instead, under Texas law, it will be considered by state legislators, who reconvene this month. The House could decide that the challenge is frivolous and reject it quickly, or choose to investigate the allegations by gathering testimony and evidence before deciding whether the result should be voided and a new election held.Mr. May, in his petition, cited the paper ballot issues and argued that eligible voters were turned away and unable to cast ballots. He has not provided evidence and did not respond to a request for comment.Mr. Rosenthal said he believed the challenge was frivolous and that allowing it to go forward could cause future headaches for lawmakers.“If there is life given to this, and there is no consequence for bringing something this frivolous, you’re setting up for election challenges across the state,” he said. “You could have dozens of challenges per cycle.” More

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      The Life and Lies of George Santos

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      Eric Krupke, Carlos Prieto and Marion Lozano, Elisheba Ittoop and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicGeorge Santos, the Republican representative-elect from New York, ran for office and won his seat in part on an inspiring personal story.But when Times reporters started looking into his background, they made some astonishing revelations: Almost all of Mr. Santos’s story was fake.On today’s episodeMichael Gold, a reporter covering New York transit and politics for The New York Times. Grace Ashford, a reporter covering New York politics for The Times. Mr. Santos in the House of Representatives this month. He has asked voters to forgive him.Jonathan Ernst/ReutersBackground readingMr. Santos said that he was the “embodiment of the American dream.” But his résumé was largely fiction.On the first day of the 118th Congress, the Santos saga arrived on Capitol Hill.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Michael Gold More

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      Josh Shapiro to Nominate Al Schmidt as Pennsylvania’s Elections Chief

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      Josh Shapiro, who will take office as governor this month, says he will nominate Al Schmidt, a longtime Republican official from Philadelphia, to be secretary of the commonwealth.Pennsylvania’s incoming Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, will nominate a Philadelphia Republican who resisted Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results to serve as the state’s chief election official, Mr. Shapiro said Thursday.For Mr. Shapiro, who will be sworn into office on Jan. 17, his choice for secretary of the commonwealth represents both an olive branch to moderate Republicans and a public affirmation of belief in the state’s election systems. Al Schmidt, Mr. Shapiro’s pick for the job, is a former Philadelphia city commissioner and longtime political figure.“Al Schmidt has a proven track record of defending our democracy, protecting voting rights and standing up to extremism — even in the face of grave threats,” Mr. Shapiro said in a statement released by his office. “I know he is ready to continue the hard work of preserving and strengthening our democracy.”For a decade, Mr. Schmidt, 51, held the Republican-designated seat on Philadelphia’s three-member city commission, which oversees municipal elections. He also served as executive director of the Philadelphia G.O.P. and as a senior adviser to the Republican Party of Pennsylvania.Still, Mr. Schmidt was relatively unknown outside Philadelphia until Mr. Trump, after the 2020 election, applied public pressure on him to stop counting absentee ballots. In 2021, Mr. Schmidt testified to the Senate that Mr. Trump’s comments had led to death threats that he said were intended to “intimidate and coerce us into not counting every valid vote.”“After the president tweeted about me, my wife and I received threats that named our children, included my home address and images of my home, and threated to put their ‘heads on spikes,’” Mr. Schmidt said. “What was once a fairly obscure administrative job is now one where lunatics are threatening to murder your children.”Last summer, Mr. Schmidt appeared before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and revealed written threats received by members of his family from Mr. Trump’s supporters, including one that read “Heads on spikes. Treasonous Schmidts.”Mr. Schmidt said in the statement released by Mr. Shapiro’s office that he would work to ensure that elections “remain free and fair here in Pennsylvania, and that we do more to ensure every eligible voter can make their voice heard.”Mr. Schmidt, whose nomination will need to be confirmed by the Republican-controlled State Senate, is the first cabinet appointment announced by Mr. Shapiro since November, when he defeated Doug Mastriano, a Republican and prominent election denier. Mr. Mastriano, a retired Army colonel, chartered buses to Washington for the Jan. 6, 2021, rally that led to the attack on the Capitol; he campaigned on a platform of restricting ballot access in Pennsylvania.In an interview last month, Mr. Shapiro said he hoped that Republicans in the Pennsylvania legislature would agree to change the state’s law that forbids the processing of absentee ballots and early votes before Election Day. The ballot procedures, which can drag out the counting, helped fuel the Trump-inspired threats against Mr. Schmidt.He also described the role for which he eventually nominated Mr. Schmidt.“I’m going to appoint a pro-democracy secretary of state,” he said in the interview. “We will respect the will of the people, certify the winners, whether we agree with the pick or not. That’s going to be my charge to my secretary of state.” More

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      John Fetterman Got a New Suit for His Senate Swearing-In

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      The Pennsylvania lawmaker joins the Washington establishment. Sort of.John Fetterman has a new suit. On Jan. 3, the junior senator from Pennsylvania, whose penchant for Carhartt sweatshirts, Dickies and baggy shorts was as much a part of his political brand as any stump speech, was sworn in as part of the 118th Congress wearing a relatively tailored, previously unseen light gray two-button number. This is a big deal, in part because during his time as lieutenant governor, Mr. Fetterman had made a point of stating that he had only one dark suit. On a day notable for the chaos around the election of Speaker of the House, that suit, as well as the light blue striped tie and polished black lace-ups Mr. Fetterman also wore, may have been the biggest political fashion statement of the incoming class. It was more symbolic even than Nancy Pelosi’s bright pink passing-of-the-baton outfit, or the smattering of suffragist white worn by some women in the House, or even J.D. Vance’s Trumpian uniform of navy suit, white shirt and glowing red tie. And it confirms Mr. Fetterman as one of the more unexpected image makers in Washington. It’s not that he dresses particularly well, though the new suit was a step up. It’s that he dresses with purpose.Indeed, Mr. Fetterman’s new suit was as notable as any of the fashion statements made by various members of Congress since clothes began to play a bigger role in electoral communications. To wit: January 2019, when a large group of women of the newly elected 116th Congress wore white to their swearing-in in honor of their suffragist predecessors (and as a counterstrike to the image-making focus of the Trump administration).Or, for that matter, almost every State of the Union and major public event since then — most recently in December, when a number of lawmakers wore yellow and blue to Volodymyr Zelensky’s congressional speech. If there’s a photo op involved, there’s generally a fashion decision aforethought.The silent communication that comes via clothing has become a standard part of the political toolbox. It’s wielded with increasing dexterity by, for example, elected officials like Kyrsten Sinema, who used her kooky wardrobe of sleeveless tops, colored wigs and the occasional denim vest to telegraph her independence from political norms long before she officially became an independent. Also Jim Jordan, who symbolized his willingness to fight during committee hearings by abandoning his jackets and rolling up his shirt sleeves. The Washington wardrobe is so standardized that any deviation from the norm stands out, especially on TV.Unless, of course, your default position is deviation from the norm — in which case a return to business as usual becomes the surprise. As Mr. Fetterman well knows.Before heading off to the Capitol for his swearing-in, he tweeted, “For those of you asking, yes, there will be a Fetterman in shorts today, but it’s not me.” (It was one of his sons, gamely continuing the family campaign to free the knee.) Rather than deny the idea that he thinks about what he wears, or having his staff deny it for him, Mr. Fetterman long ago turned his wardrobe into an asset: the subject of self-deprecating funny asides, social media jokes and pretty potent public appeal.He has blogged that he can’t roll up his sleeves because he only wears short sleeves. He has tweeted that his outfits are “Western PA business casual” and celebrated his new “Formal Hoodie.” (His wife, Gisele, has made fun of him for it; political couples — they’re just like us.) He was never exactly a working man — he was a mayor with a master’s degree from Harvard — but he dressed like one, and it helped humanize him, get him recognized and make a name for himself that resonated beyond the borders of Pennsylvania and into the realm of late-night TV even before he won his election. Arguably it helped win the election.And it meant that when he showed up on Capitol Hill in November for his orientation in a dark suit and blue tie, he got the sort of excited attention not normally bestowed on a senator-elect making a drive-by visit to his new workplace. Rather he resembled some sort of semi-celebrity, even as his willingness to play by Senate dress code rules and fit into the institution can’t have escaped his new colleagues.Nor, probably, could the sleight of hand that managed to make wearing a conservative suit look like a radical move. And they can expect more where this came from: According to his office, the new suit is one of three Mr. Fetterman has purchased, along with six — count ’em — ties. More