Midterm Elections (2022)

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      The Massachusetts Race for Democrats’ Next Crusading Attorney General

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      Want to know where Democratic politics are headed? Watch Massachusetts.The state has always had a crusading streak — it was, after all, founded by religious dissidents. Massachusetts prides itself on leading the nation on progressive causes, be it overthrowing the British, outlawing slavery and Jim Crow, establishing universal health care or legalizing same-sex marriage. In an 1858 article in The Atlantic, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. only half-jokingly called the statehouse atop Boston’s Beacon Hill “the hub of the solar system.”The departing attorney general of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, gained a national following for suing Donald Trump’s administration in dozens of cases. At the Boston Women’s March the day after Trump’s inauguration in 2017, she famously stood in front of an enormous crowd and shouted what would become a signature line: “We’ll see you in court!”So the race to succeed Healey, who is running for governor, is very much worth following. At a time when many Democrats find themselves demoralized by the paralysis in Washington and by President Biden’s low approval ratings, its contours will tell us something about what voters on the left are most passionate about.It is also exposing a fault line within the Democratic Party over corporate money — between those who see it as inherently corrupting and reject it, and those who view it as a necessary evil.The leading candidate in the primary, by all indications, is Andrea Campbell, a former Boston City Council president who finished third in the city’s mayoral race last year. She faces Quentin Palfrey, a former assistant attorney general, voting rights lawyer and official in the Obama and Biden administrations who supports Medicare for all; and Shannon Liss-Riordan, a self-financing labor lawyer who has the backing of major unions.All three are running as different flavors of liberal, fitting what local Democrats say is the public’s appetite for someone willing to wield the power of the office aggressively to protect consumers and correct injustices.“What voters are looking for is people who are going to fight on their behalf,” said Mary Anne Marsh, a Democratic strategist in Boston who is not supporting any of the candidates.Understand the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarAfter key races in Georgia, Pennsylvania and other states, here’s what we’ve learned.Trump’s Invincibility in Doubt: With many of Donald J. Trump’s endorsed candidates failing to win, some Republicans see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024.G.O.P. Governors Emboldened: Many Republican governors are in strong political shape. And some are openly opposing Mr. Trump.Voter Fraud Claims Fade: Republicans have been accepting their primary victories with little concern about the voter fraud they once falsely claimed caused Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss.The Politics of Guns: Republicans have been far more likely than Democrats to use messaging about guns to galvanize their base in the midterms. Here’s why.A tradition of taking on big businessThe attorney general in Massachusetts has a storied muckraking tradition dating to Frank Bellotti, who transformed the office into a formidable platform for law in the public interest during the 1970s and ’80s.Scott Harshbarger sued major tobacco manufacturers, resulting in a huge settlement in the late 1990s; more recently, Healey has gone after pharmaceutical companies that made and marketed opioids, effectively shutting down Purdue Pharma.“It’s the people’s attorney,” said Marie St. Fleur, a former assistant attorney general in Massachusetts who is close to Campbell. “That’s who we are.”This weekend, the three candidates will face their first test when delegates to the Democratic Party’s state convention will vote to decide who receives the party’s endorsement. Any candidate who does not reach 15 percent support among delegates will not make the primary ballot.Palfrey and Liss-Riordan have attacked Campbell for refusing to disavow a super PAC, Better Boston, that spent $1.6 million in support of her mayoral run. Palfrey has said the donations could create “a conflict of interest” if Campbell becomes attorney general. Both have pushed Campbell to sign the People’s Pledge, an agreement to reject corporate donations that was popularized by Senator Elizabeth Warren. She has refused.“That’s probably because they realize that Campbell has the early lead,” said David Paleologos, the director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, who has seen private polling in the race that heavily favors Campbell.Better Boston has not spent any money so far in the attorney general’s race, though it has not shut down, either. Its donors include Reed Hastings, a chief executive of Netflix, who chipped in $250,000; Andrew Balson, a former managing director at Bain Capital, who likewise gave $250,000; and Jim Walton, an heir to the Walmart dynasty, who donated $45,000. Sonia Alleyne, a former bank executive listed as the chairwoman of the group, did not respond to emails.Critics of corporate money in politics say the super PAC’s looming presence in the race is unprecedented, and has the potential to be corrupting even if the group is not currently active.“I’m not aware of a super PAC spending in an attorney general’s race in Massachusetts, ever,” said Jeff Clements, the president of American Promise, a nonprofit group that supports tightening campaign finance laws, and a former chief of the public law enforcement bureau in the Massachusetts attorney general’s office. “When that kind of raw power can be used to decide who can be the chief law enforcement officer of a state, that’s a big deal.”Campbell has raised nearly $1 million so far, significantly ahead of Palfrey and Liss-Riordan. She rejects what she says are “lies” spread about the financing of her campaign by her opponents, though she has declined to say whether she would disavow Better Boston’s support should it resume spending.“I’m not accountable to corporations or PACs,” she said in a recent television interview, emphasizing that 93 percent of her campaign donations had come from within Massachusetts. “I’m accountable to the people.”Andrea Campbell, right, campaigning last year for mayor of Boston, a race she lost.M. Scott Brauer for The New York TimesPersonality goes a long wayWith little to fear from Republicans in most general elections, Democrats in Massachusetts tend to race to the left in primaries for attorney general. But the candidates in this race have struggled to differentiate themselves on the issues.Where national Democrats have pivoted to loudly proclaiming their appreciation for America’s police officers, Campbell has gotten into public scrapes with police unions. And while Democrats in Congress have all but abandoned hope of banning military-style rifles like the one used in the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Palfrey is calling to banish gun manufacturers from the state altogether.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      A Georgia Mystery: How Many Democrats Voted in the G.O.P. Primary?

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      ATLANTA — One look at the results of Georgia’s primary election last week led many Republicans to believe it was the product of Democratic meddling. Former President Donald J. Trump’s recruited challengers lost in grand fashion in his most sought-after races: David Perdue was routed by Gov. Brian Kemp by more than 50 percentage points, while Representative Jody Hice fell to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger by nearly 20.Mr. Trump and his allies pointed to so-called Democratic crossover voters as the cause of their shellackings. In Georgia’s open primary system, Democrats and Republicans can vote in the other party’s primary if they wish, and more than 37,000 people cast early ballots in this year’s Republican primary election after voting in the Democratic primary in 2020.Some Democrats, for their part, staked a claim to these voters, arguing that they had crossed over to strategically support candidates who reject Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 election. Most of the crossover voters, the Democrats said, would return to the party in November.But a closer look at these voters paints a more complicated picture. Just 7 percent of those who voted early during last month’s Republican primary cast ballots for Democrats in that party’s 2020 primary election, according to the data firm L2. And 70 percent of this year’s crossover voters who cast early ballots in the G.O.P. primary had participated in both Democratic and Republican primaries over the last decade.These voters, data suggests, are less Republican traitors or stalwart Democrats aiming to stop Trump loyalists than they are highly sought-after — and unpredictable — swing voters.“I didn’t want any of the Trumpsters becoming a candidate,” said Frances Cooper, 43, who voted in Columbia County, two hours east of Atlanta.A self-described moderate, Ms. Cooper said that she had voted in both Democratic and Republican primaries in the past, and that she could often vote “either way.” This time, she said, Mr. Kemp had been “pretty good, and was the best of our options.” She was undecided about the November general election for governor, but “if anything leaning toward Kemp.”Understand the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarAfter key races in Georgia, Pennsylvania and other states, here’s what we’ve learned.Trump’s Invincibility in Doubt: With many of Donald J. Trump’s endorsed candidates failing to win, some Republicans see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024.G.O.P. Governors Emboldened: Many Republican governors are in strong political shape. And some are openly opposing Mr. Trump.Voter Fraud Claims Fade: Republicans have been accepting their primary victories with little concern about the voter fraud they once falsely claimed caused Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss.The Politics of Guns: Republicans have been far more likely than Democrats to use messaging about guns to galvanize their base in the midterms. Here’s why.Voters like Ms. Cooper base their choices in every election on multiple variables: their political leanings, how competitive one party’s primary might be or the overall environment in any given election year, among others. Some Democratic voters in deep-red counties opted for a Republican ballot because they believed it would be a more effective vote. Others, frustrated with leadership in Washington, voted according to their misgivings.Many unknowns still remain. The current data on crossover voters includes only those who cast ballots during Georgia’s three-week early voting period, when the most politically engaged people tend to vote. In addition to traditional swing voters or disaffected Democrats, a portion of those who crossed over were indeed probably Democratic voters switching strategically to the Republican primary to spite the former president.Yet the crossover voters who cast early ballots in last month’s Republican primary are not demographically representative of Georgia’s multiracial Democratic base, which also includes a growing number of young voters. Fifty-five percent of these early crossover voters were above the age of 65, and 85 percent were white, according to voter registration data. Less than 3 percent were between the ages of 18 and 29.It is unclear whether a majority of these voters will return to support Democrats this November, as some in the party expect, or whether they will vote again for Republicans in large numbers.“I think there’s a real danger on the part of Democrats in Georgia to just assume that they aren’t going to lose some of those voters from 2020,” said Erik Iverson, a Republican pollster who works with Georgia campaigns.Crossing the runoff thresholdNo race has attracted more debate about crossover voting than the Republican primary for secretary of state, in which Mr. Raffensperger, the incumbent, who had rejected attempts to subvert the 2020 election, defeated Mr. Hice, a Trump-endorsed challenger.Though Mr. Raffensperger won by almost 20 points, he escaped being forced into a runoff election by finishing with 52.3 percent of the vote, or 2.3 percent above the majority threshold that would have prompted a runoff.Operatives on both sides of the aisle have speculated that crossover voting was a chief reason that Mr. Raffensperger avoided a runoff. But drawing such a conclusion ignores the many reasons for crossover voting in Georgia, and probably overestimates the number of true Democrats voting for Mr. Raffensperger.“That would be an awful lot of crossover voting,” said Scott H. Ainsworth, a professor of political science at the University of Georgia, adding that Mr. Raffensperger’s nearly 30,000-vote margin to avoid a runoff had most likely been spurred by more than just meandering former Democratic primary voters.Still, that hasn’t dissuaded some from pointing to crossover voters as a root cause of Mr. Raffensperger’s success.Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger at a campaign event in Atlanta. In 2020, he refused to help President Donald J. Trump overturn Georgia’s presidential election results.Audra Melton for The New York TimesRepresentative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a Republican who founded the group Country First, which supports pro-democracy G.O.P. candidates, cited the Georgia secretary of state’s victory as proof of his organization’s effectiveness.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Young Kim and Republicans Aim to Fend Off Rival to Her Right in California House Race

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      After Representative Young Kim, a Republican, flipped an Orange County House seat in 2020, she was hailed as one of the new faces of the Republican Party: a 58-year-old Korean American politician who was able to win a seat even as Joe Biden carried the district at the top of the ticket.After redistricting, the seat was drawn even more in her favor in 2022. Instead of having a Democratic tilt, analysts say, it now favors Republicans — and seemingly Kim.And yet an expensive rescue mission on Kim’s behalf has been not so quietly underway in recent weeks ahead of California’s June 7 primary, which was supposed to have been a cakewalk for the incumbent Republican.Why?Because those favorable redrawn district lines, with nearly 80 percent of voters in the district new to Kim, mean that lots of voters know little about her — and a Trump-style Republican is running to her right. The result has been about $1 million in Republican television ads during what was supposed to be a sleepy primary.Now, California has an unusual primary system. There aren’t separate ballots for the Republican and Democratic primaries. Instead, every candidate runs on a single ballot, with their titles and party affiliations detailed.All voters choose their candidate from the list. The two candidates who receive the most votes progress to the general election. And there’s no guarantee that both major parties will have a candidate in the general election.For many candidates — even incumbents like Kim — there is a real risk in getting lost in a list of names.Notably, she isn’t just promoting herself. She is also attacking her Republican opponent, Greg Raths, a retired combat fighter pilot for the Marines who drives for Uber and recently issued an apology for comments that had been criticized as antisemitic.Kim’s operation spliced Raths’ image together with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Biden in one television ad that her campaign has paid more than $570,000 to air — a huge sum for a single ad in a House primary.Even more notable: The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC that is aligned with Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, and is devoted to making him speaker, has also jumped in, with even more ads attacking Raths.Understand the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarAfter key races in Georgia, Pennsylvania and other states, here’s what we’ve learned.Trump’s Invincibility in Doubt: With many of Donald J. Trump’s endorsed candidates failing to win, some Republicans see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024.G.O.P. Governors Emboldened: Many Republican governors are in strong political shape. And some are openly opposing Mr. Trump.Voter Fraud Claims Fade: Republicans have been accepting their primary victories with little concern about the voter fraud they once falsely claimed caused Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss.The Politics of Guns: Republicans have been far more likely than Democrats to use messaging about guns to galvanize their base in the midterms. Here’s why.The total anti-Raths spending is now around $1 million, according to AdImpact, the ad-tracking service — a sign of the importance of the race, for which there has been scant public polling.“Following redistricting, Young Kim has a largely new district and it’s important voters know that she’s the only credible conservative in the race,” said Calvin Moore, a spokesman for the Congressional Leadership Fund. “It’s a must-win race for November, and we’re going to do all we can to make sure a standout leader like Kim prevails.”Orange County: A blue-red battlegroundAfter years as a Republican stronghold, Orange County had already been shifting to the left before Donald Trump accelerated the change. In 2016, Kim lost her Orange County seat in the State Assembly to a Democrat.In that campaign, she faced attacks comparing her to Trump, including an Auto-Tuned music video titled “Young Kim Is Like Donald Trump.” In 2018, she ran for Congress and fell short. That year, Democrats flipped all seven House seats in Orange County.After the 2018 blue wave, however, Republicans recovered some of that lost ground. Kim and Michelle Steel, two of the first three Korean American women in Congress, were the only Republicans to flip Orange County seats in 2020.“It says a lot about how the times have changed,” Kim, whose campaign declined to make her available for an interview, told The New York Times after she won her 2020 race. “Our Republican Party has been very aggressive in recruiting quality candidates who happen to be women.”Democrats have made defeating both Kim and Steel top priorities in 2022, despite a national environment that favors Republicans.Enter Greg Raths.Unlike Kim, he hasn’t been a successful federal candidate. A member of the Mission Viejo City Council who has also served as mayor, he has lost three congressional elections since 2014.Greg Raths, a retired fighter pilot, in front of a “Top Gun: Maverick” movie poster. A member of the Mission Viejo City Council who once served as mayor, he also drives for Uber.Greg Raths for CongressRaths has called himself the “only conservative in this race,” and he recently tweeted a photo of himself, wearing a leather jacket and aviator sunglasses, standing in front of Tom Cruise on a “Top Gun: Maverick” poster.This campaign, Raths said in an interview, feels different — or, at least, it did until the huge spending against him began a few weeks ago.Raths hasn’t had the resources to air ads in the expensive Los Angeles media market, but he said he had knocked on so many doors that he had probably lost 30 pounds. He also drives for Uber at night — in a Lexus hybrid because, he says, he is an “environmentalist” — and estimates that he has reached 2,000 voters alone by driving them around.“How many candidates do you know who make money while they’re campaigning?” he asked.On the stump, he reminds voters that Kim voted to censure Trump and to remove Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from congressional committees. Raths said he flew to an event at Mar-a-Lago in February to try to win over Trump’s support, but wasn’t successful.Not just any RepublicanThe potential concern for national Republicans is that if Kim doesn’t make it past the primary, the seat could be in danger.Raths isn’t concerned. He believes that any Republican who wins the primary will be strongly favored to win the general election over Asif Mahmood, the only Democrat on the ballot, and his $1.3 million war chest. When asked if he’d need to win over Biden voters in the general election, Raths pointed to his “worldly experience,” including working with the federal government as a colonel in the Marines, and his service on the Mission Viejo City Council, where he is a self-described “fiscal hawk.”But there is another factor at play with the involvement of the McCarthy-linked Congressional Leadership Fund.The super PAC wants more Republicans, of course. But it also wants more Republicans who will help the party — and McCarthy — govern effectively if the G.O.P. takes back the House. The goal is for Republicans to end up with a majority big enough to overpower some of the furthest-right members of the party, which will be crucial if McCarthy and a Republican-controlled House actually want to get anything done.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More