Midterm Elections (2022)

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      National Democrats Make Last-Gasp Push to Keep N.Y. District Maps

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      Democrats are seeking to reinstate congressional district maps that were declared unconstitutional last week by New York’s highest court.With the balance of the House of Representatives at stake, national Democrats made an 11th-hour appeal to a federal court on Monday to intervene in New York’s heated redistricting dispute, hoping to reinstate House maps thrown out by the state’s highest court last week.In a 17-page complaint, they argued that there simply was not enough time to implement the order from the State Court of Appeals for new district lines and still comply with a longstanding federal court order meant to protect the rights of Americans casting ballots from overseas.The Democrats asked a panel of federal judges to exercise its authority to effectively block the state court from enforcing its decision, and instead require New York to hold this year’s elections in late June, as originally scheduled, on the map adopted by the Democrat-dominated Legislature.“The state has an obligation to timely redistrict,” the complaint said. “Since it has failed to do so, this court must act.”The unusual legal maneuver, funded by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on behalf of five New York voters, amounted to a last-gasp effort by party leaders to save a set of lines that could net their party as many as three new seats in the battle for control of the House.The State Court of Appeals tossed the maps last week, ruling that Democratic state leaders had violated a 2014 amendment to the State Constitution, including a ban on partisan gerrymandering. In a far-reaching decision, the judges ordered a court-appointed special master to draw the new lines instead and set the stage for the primary to be delayed until Aug. 23.While it is not unheard-of for federal courts to temporarily allow elections to proceed on flawed maps for pragmatic reasons, it was far from clear that Democrats’ arguments would prevail here.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Deepening Divides: As political mapmakers create lopsided new district lines, the already polarized parties are being pulled even farther apart.A federal judge could, for example, be persuaded that there was enough time to draft new maps to satisfy the state court this year under the revised primary calendar. Other states frequently hold late-summer primaries and are able to comply with overseas ballot requirements.Republicans said they were confident the state ruling would stand unimpeded.“It’s a Hail Mary and a sign of desperation,” said John Faso, a former congressman who helped bring the Republicans’ initial legal challenge. “An Aug. 23 primary fully complies with the requirements of the federal military voters act.”National Democratic leaders on Monday coupled the lawsuit with a public campaign to openly pressure the state courts to alter the process for drawing the new district lines, in case they do not prevail in court.Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the No. 5 House Democrat, criticized the judge overseeing the case for creating a process that makes it difficult for voters of color in his Brooklyn district to have any say in the final maps at all.The judge, Patrick F. McAllister, has ordered that anyone wishing to offer input to the special master must do so in person at a courthouse in Bath, N.Y., on Friday.Mr. Jeffries noted, in arguments that echoed parts of the lawsuit, that it was a five-hour drive from New York City and virtually inaccessible by public transportation — an arrangement he called “not acceptable.”“The court must immediately schedule additional hearings at locations accessible throughout our state, including in New York City, Albany and Buffalo, before ruling on legislative and congressional districts drawn by an unelected, out-of-town special master,” he wrote to the judge.The initial lawsuit, filed against New York State Democratic leaders, was financed and supervised by Republicans in Albany and Washington, and filed before Justice McAllister, a conservative Republican in Steuben County, N.Y.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      How Ohio’s Map Will Test J.D. Vance’s Political Allure

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      Behind the wild language, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author’s bid for a Senate seat follows a traditional Republican playbook.Theodore Roosevelt, a renowned political animal and polymath, once said, “I think there is only one thing in the world I can’t understand, and that is Ohio politics.”It is indeed a complicated place, shaped by its history as America’s first frontier state. Since the country’s founding, Ohio has been settled over the years by various ethnic groups searching for prosperity west of the Appalachian Mountains. Once a bellwether in American politics, Ohio is losing that status as its population grows older, whiter and more culturally conservative. But its patchwork of wildly different regions makes it a fascinating state to watch regardless.“Ohio is one of those places whose narrative is more often told from the outside rather than from within,” said David Giffels, the author of “Barnstorming Ohio,” a book on the state’s political and cultural geography.“We are the boring middle of American politics,” Giffels added. “And I do mean that in a loving way.”Ohio’s major population centers form a diagonal axis that slashes across the state from Cleveland in the northeast through Columbus down to Cincinnati in the southwest, along the I-71 corridor. There are as many as 12 media markets in the state, whose population of 11.8 million people sprawls across nearly 45,000 square miles.As a result, said Kyle Kondik, an election forecaster and author of a book about Ohio politics, “there’s not really a strong center to the vote in the state.”Ohio is holding primary elections on Tuesday that will give us the first major electoral test of Donald Trump’s influence on the Republican Party since he left office. By endorsing J.D. Vance in the state’s Republican Senate primary, Trump has single-handedly vaulted Mr. Vance, the venture capitalist and celebrity author, to the front of a crowded field.A forecast for low turnoutBut Vance’s victory in the primary is no sure thing. Although the candidates have spent nearly $70 million bludgeoning one another on television, voters don’t seem to be especially motivated by the chance to pick a replacement for Senator Rob Portman, who is retiring. Turnout in the race is expected to be low.“With Trump not on the ballot, I don’t think this race is top of mind for most voters,” said Thomas Sutton, the director of the Community Research Institute at Baldwin Wallace University, which conducts polls of Ohio voters.That could help Matt Dolan, a traditional Republican who is likely to draw support from party regulars and upper-income voters in the suburbs. Under this theory, casual voters who may be swayed by Trump’s late endorsement of Vance are less likely to show up.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The 2022 election season is underway. See the full primary calendar and a detailed state-by-state breakdown.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.Dolan allies suggest, too, that because the other candidates will divide the hard-core Trump vote among themselves, Dolan, a state senator whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians, has an opportunity to eke out a plurality of the vote by scooping up more casual Trump fans. They also speculate that Gov. Mike DeWine’s strength in the primary for governor could lift Dolan among rank-and-file Republicans.Mike Murphy, a former Republican consultant, said that because Dolan hadn’t been the subject of many attack ads, “he’s become the fresh face in the closing moments after the rest have a ton of damage, both self-inflicted and from paid media.”Trump held a rally last month in Delaware, Ohio, a city north of Columbus.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe five states of OhioMost analysts of Ohio divide the state into five regions: Northeast, around Cleveland; Northwest, including Toledo and the prosperous farmlands around it; Central, the booming areas in and around Columbus; Southeast, the Appalachian part of the state; and Southwest, dominated by Cincinnati and its suburbs.The Northeast is Ohio’s Democratic stronghold, the most populous, most industrialized and most diverse part of the state. But it’s also home to tens of thousands of Republican voters, so the candidates have all campaigned and advertised heavily in the region.The Southwest, which includes Vance’s hometown, Middletown, is the traditional center of Republican politics in Ohio. More Southern in perspective, it is full of bedrock Republican voters: conventional in their cultural outlook, they tend to favor free enterprise and worry about issues like crime, drugs and immigration. Vance, who now lives in Cincinnati, is holding his election night party in the city.The Southeast has been a swing area in Ohio politics, though it is also the least diverse at nearly 95 percent white. Hobbled by job losses and buffeted by the forces of globalization and economic modernization, with a lower percentage of people with college degrees, Ohio’s Appalachian region is full of “people who are angry at the world,” said John C. Green, the emeritus director of the Bliss Institute at the University of Akron.As a result, Green said, the region has a “much higher tolerance for the rough and tumble of politics” — and could gravitate toward Josh Mandel, who has campaigned as much on attitude as he has on any particular conservative ideas. A super PAC backing Mandel has been running ads on rural radio stations in the area attacking Vance as “a fraud.”In the 2016 Republican presidential primary, the Ohio map divided sharply between John Kasich, who was the sitting governor at the time, and Trump, who would of course go on to win the Republican nomination and the presidency. Kasich won Ohio’s most populous counties on his way to carrying the state, while Trump cleaned up in the Appalachian communities along the Ohio River.Vance’s balancing actOne question on the minds of many Ohio watchers: How will college-educated Republicans respond to Vance?Will they flock to the Yale-educated, worldly investor lurking inside the angry MAGA warrior Vance has become? Or will they be repelled by how far right he has moved to court Trump’s base?Vance’s schedule and ad spending in the last few days of the race show a focus on suburban and small-town areas. Since Saturday, he has visited Circleville, a city south of Columbus; Cuyahoga Falls, a city north of Akron; Westlake, a suburb west of Cleveland; Dublin, a northwestern suburb of Columbus; and Mason, a northeastern suburb of Cincinnati.A super PAC supporting Vance, Protect American Values, has spent heavily on TV advertisements in Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, as well as Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown.“On the surface, it looks like the campaign is pursuing middle-of-the-road Republican voters,” Green said.It’s a deceptively conventional strategy that you would hardly expect from the protagonist of “Hillbilly Elegy” — a story of rural communities wracked by poverty, drug addiction and what he called “learned helplessness.” Back in 2016, Vance was urging Americans to seize their own destiny, as he did by transcending his troubled childhood.“We’re no longer a country that believes in human agency, and as a formerly poor person, I find it incredibly insulting,” he said in one interview.In this campaign, Vance has courted the support of far-right characters who traffic in conspiracy theories and invective like Steve Bannon and Representatives Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene. In recent days, he has accused President Biden of deliberately flooding Ohio with fentanyl, a preposterous charge without evidence.“In a way,” Giffels said, “he’s kind of selling the victimhood he railed against in the book.”What to readFrom Columbus, Ohio, our colleague Trip Gabriel reports on what’s next for Josh Mandel, a Republican whose Senate campaign has been defined by his support of Donald Trump, now that Trump has endorsed someone else.A second woman has publicly accused Charles Herbster, a Republican candidate for governor in Nebraska who has Trump’s backing, of groping her.Even as Biden enjoyed high approval ratings early in his presidency, his lead pollster warned that immigration and inflation could cost him support.With six months until the midterms, Democrats are deeply divided over how to connect with voters and brighten the party’s prospects, Katie Glueck reports.how they runSenator Joe Manchin, left, with Representative David McKinley last year in Morgantown, W.Va.Michael Swensen/Getty ImagesManchin wades into a G.O.P. primary in West VirginiaIt’s not often that you see a Democrat endorse a Republican candidate. But the usual political bets are off in West Virginia.Republicans hold all three of the state’s House seats. But after West Virginia lost a district in the once-a-decade reapportionment process, there’s room for only two of them in the next Congress. That has left two Republican congressmen, Alex Mooney and David McKinley, fighting for the new Second District.Over the weekend, Senator Joe Manchin, the nation’s most famous right-leaning Democrat, announced in an ad that he was supporting McKinley, a longtime West Virginia politician and engineer by trade who was first elected to Congress in 2010. The primary is May 10.The endorsement adds another layer to an incumbent-on-incumbent race that has already become a proxy war of sorts. Donald Trump endorsed Mooney, while his former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, endorsed McKinley. Manchin joins Gov. Jim Justice — a Republican who left the Democratic Party after Trump was elected — in endorsing McKinley. Mooney, notably, is seen as a potential Senate challenger to Manchin in 2024.Mooney has a similar résumé to McKinley’s, although across state lines. He spent a decade in Maryland’s Legislature before leading its state Republican Party, history that has provided McKinley with alliterative fodder in his attack ads against “Maryland Mooney.”Both men are campaigning on typical Republican talking points, like immigration and gun rights. But they’ve dedicated most of their television ads to attacking each other, trading accusations of working with Democrats and betraying Trump.Perhaps twisting the knife for his Democratic critics, Manchin praised McKinley in his ad for rejecting what was once the centerpiece of President Biden’s social policy agenda — an agenda, of course, that was doomed in part by Manchin’s opposition.“For Alex Mooney and his out-of-state supporters to suggest David McKinley supported Build Back Better is an outright lie,” Manchin says to the camera.At the same time, Manchin is supporting one of the few Republicans who supported the Biden administration’s signature legislative achievement. McKinley was one of just a dozen Republicans who voted for Biden’s infrastructure legislation last year.— Blake & LeahIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      What Democrats Don’t Understand About Rural America

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      NOBLEBORO, Maine — We say this with love to our fellow Democrats: Over the past decade, you willfully abandoned rural communities. As the party turned its focus to the cities and suburbs, its outreach became out of touch and impersonal. To rural voters, the message was clear: You don’t matter.Now, Republicans control dozens of state legislatures, and Democrats have only tenuous majorities in Congress at a time in history when we simply can’t afford to cede an inch. The party can’t wait to start correcting course. It may be too late to prevent a blowout in the fall, but the future of progressive politics — and indeed our democracy — demands that we revive our relationship with rural communities.As two young progressives raised in the country, we were dismayed as small towns like ours swung to the right. But we believed that Democrats could still win conservative rural districts if they took the time to drive down the long dirt roads where we grew up, have face-to-face conversations with moderate Republican and independent voters and speak a different language, one rooted in values rather than policy.It worked for us. As a 25-year-old climate activist with unabashedly progressive politics, Chloe was an unlikely choice to be competitive — let alone win — in a conservative district that falls mostly within the bounds of a rural Maine county that has the oldest population in the state. But in 2018, she won a State House seat there with almost 53 percent of the vote. Two years later, she ran for State Senate, challenging the highest-ranking Republican in state office, the Senate minority leader. And again, in one of the most rural districts in the state, voters chose the young, first-term Democrat who sponsored one of the first Green New Deal policies to pass a state legislature.To us, it was proof that the dogmas that have long governed American politics could and should be challenged. Over the past decade, many Democrats seem to have stopped trying to persuade people who disagreed with them, counting instead on demographic shifts they believed would carry them to victory — if only they could turn out their core supporters. The choice to prioritize turnout in Democratic strongholds over persuasion of moderate voters has cost the party election after election. But Democrats can run and win in communities that the party has written off — and they need not be Joe Manchin-like conservative Democrats to do so.This isn’t just a story about rural Maine. It’s about a nationwide pattern of neglect that goes back years. After the 2010 midterms, when the Democrats lost 63 House seats, Nancy Pelosi, then the House minority leader, disbanded the House Democratic Rural Working Group. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada later eliminated the Senate’s rural outreach group. By 2016, according to Politico’s Helena Bottemiller Evich, the Clinton campaign had only a single staff person doing rural outreach from its headquarters, in Brooklyn; the staffer had been assigned to the role just weeks before the election. And in 2018, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez, told MSNBC, “You can’t door-knock in rural America.”We saw this pattern for ourselves. In 2019, the Maine Senate Democratic Campaign Committee told us that it didn’t believe in talking to Republicans. (The group’s executive director did not respond to a request seeking comment by press time.)That blinkered strategy is holding the party back. When Democrats talk only to their own supporters, they see but a small fraction of the changes roiling this country. Since 2008, residents of small towns have fallen behind cities on many major economic benchmarks, and they watched helplessly as more and more power and wealth were consolidated in cities. We saw up close the loss, hopelessness and frustration that reality has instilled.The current Democratic strategy doesn’t just lead to bad policy but also to bad politics. Our democracy rewards the party that can win support over large geographic areas. Ceding rural America leaves a narrow path to victory even in the best circumstances. When the landscape is more difficult, Democrats set themselves up for catastrophic defeat. But we don’t have to cede these parts of the country. Democrats have to change the way they think about them and relate to the voters who live there.What much of the party establishment doesn’t understand is that rural life is rooted in shared values of independence, common sense, tradition, frugality, community and hard work. Democratic campaigns often seem to revolve around white papers and wonky policy. In our experience, politicians lose rural people when they regurgitate politically triangulated lines and talk about the vagaries of policy. Rural folks vote on what rings true and personal to them: Can this person be trusted? Is he authentic?While these defeats ought to prompt real soul-searching within the party, some political scientists and many mainstream Democrats have taken them as proof not that their own strategies must change, but rather that rural Republicans are too ignorant to vote in their own best interest. It’s a counterproductive, condescending story that serves only to drive the wedge between Democrats and rural communities deeper yet.Chloe has knocked on more than 20,000 doors over the last two cycles, listening to stories of loss and isolation. One man told her she was the first person to listen to him; most campaigns, he said, didn’t even bother to knock on his door — they judged him for what his house looked like. Another voter said she had been undecided between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump until Election Day but ultimately voted for Mr. Trump because, she said, at the Republican convention, he talked about regular American working people, and Ms. Clinton didn’t at her own convention.Something has to change. The Democrats need a profoundly different strategy if they are to restore their reputation as champions of working people, committed to improving their lives, undaunted by wealth and power. In our view, the only way for Democrats to regain traction in rural places is by running strong campaigns in districts that usually back Republicans. This change starts with having face-to-face conversations to rebuild trust and faith not only in Democrats but also in the democratic process. Even though it’s hard work with no guaranteed outcome, it is necessary — even if we don’t win.In our two campaigns, we turned down the party consultants and created our own canvassing universe — the targeted list of voters whom we talk to during the election season. In 2020, this universe was four times larger than what the state party recommended. It included thousands of Republicans and independents who had (literally) never been contacted by a Democratic campaign in their entire time voting.Our campaign signs? Hand-painted or made of scavenged wood pallets by volunteers, with images of loons, canoes and other hallmarks of the Maine countryside. Into the trash went consultant-created mailers. Instead, we designed and carried out our own direct mail program for half the price of what the party consultants wanted to charge while reaching 20 percent more voters.Volunteers wrote more than 5,000 personal postcards, handwritten and addressed to neighbors in their own community. And we defied traditional advice by refusing to say a negative word about our opponents, no matter how badly we wanted to fight back as the campaigns grew more heated.When we first embarked down this road, the path was rocky. Chloe came home from canvassing distraught one day and dictated a voice memo to herself: “I talked to a lot of people I’ve known my whole life, and they wouldn’t commit to vote for me.” They knew she was a good person; the only reason they refused to support her was that she was a Democrat.Another day she met a couple who thought people should be able to snowmobile and hunt and fish and ride ATVs on protected lands. Chloe told them she agreed; while she considers herself extremely progressive, there are some things she thinks the left is too rigid on. Then the conversation turned to immigration, and the couple told her that undocumented immigrants should be separated from their kids. “I literally have no idea what to say to that besides just not getting into it,” Chloe reflected. “But is that being disingenuous? Is that not fighting the fight?”We heard some rough stuff, and we didn’t tolerate hate. But through the simple act of listening, we discovered that we could almost always catch a glimpse of common ground if we focused on values, not party or even policy. If people said they were fed up with politics, we’d say: “Us, too! That’s why we’re here.” If they despised Democrats, we’d tell them how we had deep issues with the party as well, and we were trying to make it better. It was how we differentiated ourselves from the national party and forged a sense of collective purpose.Slowly but surely, we thought we might be able to turn things around. A young mom who opened her door said that she couldn’t afford to take her child to the emergency room. She had never voted for a Democrat, but she committed to vote for us. There was a man with a Trump bumper sticker on his truck who, after talking with Chloe, put a Chloe Maxmin bumper sticker on his tailgate, too. There was a preacher who had never put up a political sign in his life until our campaign.Perhaps the most memorable experience was in 2018 at the end of a winding driveway on a cold fall day. Several men were in the garage, working on their snowmobiles. Chloe stepped out to greet them. “Hi, I’m Chloe, and I’m running for state representative.” The owner immediately responded with a question: Did she support Medicaid expansion? Chloe answered honestly that she did. The man pointed an angry finger toward the road and told her to leave.Taken aback, Chloe asked: “Hold on a second. What just happened? I’m honestly just interested to hear your perspective, even if you don’t vote for me.”This gentleman went on to tell his story, how he grew up on that very property without any electricity or running water; how he had worked hard to build a life for himself and his family, which included paying for his own health care without any help from the government. This was his way of life and what he believed in. It was an honest conversation, and by the end, he said he would vote for Chloe.Gradually, our own volunteers learned from Chloe how to find common ground. Despite the many doors shut in their faces, they largely succeeded.“Talked with a 43-year-old guy who announced that he wasn’t voting, that he was so depressed at the quality of people in office,” an old-timer who was one of our volunteers recounted in an email. By the end of their conversation, he was going to vote just for Chloe. “The fact that an older person is optimistic and working to elect young people is a great thing,” the voter told him.Another volunteer once called these conversations “a connection with each other and with something bigger that each one of us craves.”When Covid hit in March 2020, we tried a new way of fostering these connections, pausing the campaign and pivoting all our resources to supporting seniors struggling with the isolation and upheaval of the pandemic. With some 200 volunteers, we made more than 13,500 calls to seniors in the district — regardless of their political affiliation — and offered them rides, pharmacy pickups, connections to food banks, and a buddy to call them every day or week to check in.A volunteer spoke with an elderly woman who depended on the library for large-print books, but the libraries were closed. We found a bookstore that delivered some. Another volunteer talked with a gentleman who had no internet and therefore no access to the news. She bought him a subscription to The New York Times.The Democratic campaign leadership was eager to replicate our success but also fundamentally unequipped to understand what we were doing. At the height of the pandemic, we told the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee about our approach. Almost immediately the committee’s staff was instructed to tell Democratic candidates to make similar calls, but only to seniors within their “persuasion universe” — people whose votes they thought they could win. Specifically, people over 60 who were likely Democratic voters. We read this in horror and immediately wrote back, imploring the leaders to not limit the scope of the calls. They brushed us off.It was far from the only time party leaders told us they knew better than we did. In the final stretch of the 2018 campaign, they insisted that as part of their turnout effort they would send their people to conservative households that had told us Chloe was the only Democrat they would support. We were terrified that volunteers reciting a generic script, pushing folks to vote for Democrats up and down the ticket, would alienate the disaffected Republican voters whom we had worked so hard to persuade to vote for Chloe.We begged the party officials to reconsider. They refused. It wasn’t until the afternoon of Election Day that they backed down, telling us they were unable to mobilize enough volunteers to send down the back roads to the district. That experience only reinforced our belief that candidates should be able to control the resources that the party puts into districts, so that they can iterate and improve on the one-size-fits-all strategies that the Democrats tend to employ.After both successful campaigns, we asked ourselves: Is our strategy something that can be replicated? We scaled up our approach in 2020 to solidify some of our tactics, such as focusing on canvassing voters whom the party had given up on, eschewing consultants and leaning into values-driven messaging. But, at the same time, we knew that the back roads of Maine were unique; the roads of Georgia, Wisconsin, Washington or Utah might require their own strategy. A state or local campaign is an easier ship to turn than a U.S. Senate campaign and better situated to buck consultants and bring a different politics to folks’ doorsteps. We certainly don’t have all the answers; all we can hope is that our example will help persuade candidates to try, to recommit themselves to rural places, to listen, to learn and to evolve.As Democrats, we feel every day the profound urgency of our times, the existential necessity of racial justice, the impending doom of the climate crisis, the imperative to reform our criminal justice system, and so much more. At the same time, as a party we’ve made some big mistakes as we walk down the road to a better world. Abandoning rural voters could be one of the costliest.But it’s not too late to make amends, to rebuild our relationship with the quiet roads of rural America. We have to hit the ground running, today, this cycle, and recommit ourselves to the kind of politics that reaches every corner of our country.Chloe Maxmin (@chloemaxmin) is a state senator in Maine. Canyon Woodward (@CanyonWoodward) was her campaign manager in 2018 and 2020. Their book, “Dirt Road Revival,” comes out on May 10.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Democrats’ Mystery: How to Brighten a Presidency and a National Mood

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      LAKEWOOD, Ohio — At a Whole Foods in one moderate Cleveland suburb, shoppers recently worried about war, inflation, a “scary” political climate — and a Democratic Party some saw as slow to address the nation’s burning problems.At a house party for a left-wing congressional candidate across town, attendees fretted over the high cost of living and exorbitant student loan debt as they weighed their choices in Ohio’s primary elections on Tuesday.And at a campaign event for Representative Shontel Brown here in Lakewood, a liberal city near Cleveland, not everyone seemed impressed by President Biden.“He’s OK,” allowed Yolanda Pace-Owens, 46, who works in security. She said that she had voted for Mr. Biden and still admired him, but that she was alarmed by a pandemic-era rise in violent crime. “We just got to do better,” she said.Nearly six months before the midterm elections, Mr. Biden and the Democrats face staggering challenges and signs of dampened enthusiasm among nearly every constituency that powered their 2020 presidential and 2018 midterm victories, according to polls and more than two dozen interviews with voters, elected officials and party strategists across the country.Yet Democrats are still struggling with how to even discuss the nation’s greatest challenges — much less reach a consensus on how to right the ship.The party’s problems run deep, as Mr. Biden’s lead pollster has privately warned the White House for months. Independent voters backed Mr. Biden in 2020, but his approval rating with independents now hovers in the 30s. He has underperformed with voters of color in some surveys. Warning signs have emerged among suburban voters. And Mr. Biden’s approval rating has deteriorated with young people even though he won them overwhelmingly in 2020.Yolanda Pace-Owens said that she admired Mr. Biden but that “we just got to do better.” Dustin Franz for The New York TimesIn a midterm environment heavily shaped by the president’s approval rating, all of those numbers are gravely worrying for Democratic candidates, who are left with tough questions about how to engage unsettled voters and reinvigorate their base.How much time should they spend trying to show voters they grasp the pain of inflation, compared with efforts to remind them of low unemployment? Should they pursue ambitious policies that show Democrats are fighters, or is it enough to hope for more modest victories while emphasizing all that the party has passed already?A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The 2022 election season is underway. See the full primary calendar and a detailed state-by-state breakdown.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.And even when candidates try to tell that story, is anyone listening?“Voters hear us, but I don’t know that we have convinced voters as to how these things will affect them on a personal level,” Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the third-ranking House Democrat, said in a recent interview. “We’re not connecting with the voters on the level that they can connect with.”As Mr. Biden confronts the lingering pandemic, war in Ukraine and historical headwinds — the president’s party typically loses seats in midterm elections — he has acknowledged his party’s messaging challenges, worrying recently that amid crises, “we haven’t sold the American people what we’ve actually done.”The president, a consummate retail politician who some Democrats had hoped would be more visible, is now pursuing a more robust travel schedule to sell his party’s agenda and accomplishments, and he is highlighting some contrasts with Republicans.Consumers across the country are seeing a rise in the price of everyday items, like $8.29 for a gallon of milk at a Whole Foods grocery store in Rocky River, Ohio.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesHao Pham of Cleveland filling his S.U.V. with gas, the price of which has increased.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesAllies and some voters note that polling is partially driven by anger over extraordinary events, including the war’s impact on gas prices, that the White House could not fully control. But Mr. Biden’s advisers say that the president is working to demonstrate that Democrats understand voters’ struggles and are moving to fix them, as the party’s lawmakers make a fresh push for a range of legislative priorities, especially concerning prices. On Thursday, Mr. Biden also said that he was considering wiping out some student loan debt.A new Washington Post-ABC poll also showed some positive signs for Mr. Biden and the Democrats, though Republicans retained significant advantages on issues including inflation, the economy and crime.“While President Biden and Democrats work to lower costs and continue the historic economic recovery made possible by the American Rescue Plan, Republicans have done everything they can to try to stand in the way,” Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement.Yet months of national polls show that Americans have a vastly different perception of the party in power. Even in overwhelmingly liberal Los Angeles, private Democratic polling in April found Mr. Biden’s favorability rating at only 58 percent, according to a person with direct knowledge of the data.Democratic tensions over messaging have been on display in Ohio, where candidates in this week’s primaries reflect the full spectrum of competing views.Ms. Brown, who faces a contested primary in a safely Democratic seat and was endorsed by Mr. Biden, is running hard on the bipartisan infrastructure law.She echoed other House Democrats in promoting the message that “Democrats have been delivering.”But Biden advisers have privately indicated that pitch tests poorly as a party slogan. And at another Ohio event in late April, Nina Turner, a former state senator who is challenging Ms. Brown from the left in a rematch, suggested that Democrats had not delivered nearly enough.She urged, among other priorities, universal cancellation of student debt — or, at a minimum, canceling $10,000 in federal student debt per borrower (Ms. Brown also supports some student debt forgiveness measures). Mr. Biden, who endorsed the $10,000 goal in 2020, has postponed payments, and significant student debt has been erased during his tenure, but some have called on him to do much more. He may take further action, and there is still time to make more progress on the Democratic agenda.But for now, many on the left are disappointed that Democrats, despite controlling Washington, have run aground in the divided Senate on priorities like the climate and voting rights.“People can forgive you, even if you can’t get something done,” Ms. Turner said. “What they don’t like is when you’re not fighting. And we need to see more of a fighting spirit among the Democratic Party.”Nina Turner, a progressive House candidate in Ohio, held a gathering with supporters to talk about issues they prioritized.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesOn the other end of the party’s ideological spectrum is Representative Tim Ryan, a moderate Ohio Democrat running for Senate in a state that has veered rightward. He is casting himself as a fighter for the working class and highlighting measures like the infrastructure law, while seeking some cultural and political distance from many others in his party.In an interview, Mr. Ryan cheered a ruling to eliminate mask mandates on airlines and public transportation, which is now being challenged. “Masks suck,” he said. “I think we’re all tired of it.”Asked which national Democratic surrogates he would welcome, he cited Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Senator Jon Tester of Montana and Senator Gary Peters of Michigan — but asked specifically about Mr. Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Ryan said: “This is my race. I’m going to be the face of this.” (Biden advisers noted that the president has recently appeared with Democrats in competitive races.)And as of Friday, Mr. Ryan was one of seven Democratic candidates who have run ads this year that mentioned inflation, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact. By contrast, dozens of Republican candidates and allied groups have done the same. In polls, Americans have cited inflation as a top issue.“Burying your head in the sand,” Mr. Ryan said, “is not the way to approach it.” Asked about the biggest challenges facing his party, he replied, “A response to the inflation piece is a big hurdle.”He also cited “a national brand that is not seen as connected to the working-class people, whether they’re white or Black or brown.”Representative Tim Ryan, center right, and Michael S. Regan, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, met in April at a home in Youngstown, Ohio, where lead pipes are set to be replaced thanks to new federal funding.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesLou McMahon, a registered Democrat who said he did not vote in the last two presidential elections because he did not like his choices, sounded open to Mr. Ryan in an interview at Ms. Brown’s event. But asked to assess Democrats in Washington generally, he replied, “Promise, but not delivered,” citing both stalled legislative ambitions and Mr. Biden’s pledge to help heal partisan divisions.“The targets and the aspirations were maybe beyond the reach,” said Mr. McMahon, 58, an environmental lawyer. “The reuniting that was so much of the promise hasn’t played out in reality quite that way.”Celinda Lake, a veteran Democratic strategist and a pollster on Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign, said that “there’s nobody in America more deeply disappointed in how divided America is than Joe Biden.”“He does communicate it, but I think it helps a lot when he’s on the road,” she said.Republicans face their own midterm difficulties. Many candidates have adopted former President Donald J. Trump’s relentless focus on the false notion of a stolen 2020 election, a stance that swing voters may dismiss as extreme. In some primaries, the party runs the risk of nominating seriously flawed general-election candidates.Democratic officials hope their prospects will brighten as primary contests are settled and candidates draw sharper direct contrasts with their opponents — and they are already trying to define that choice.On one side, they say, are bomb-throwing Republicans who are caught up in cultural battles, fealty to Trumpism and a controversial tax and social safety net proposal. On the other, Democrats argue, is a party that passed major infrastructure and pandemic relief measures, and spearheaded the confirmation of the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. Mr. Biden has also moved to combat gun violence, confronting Republican efforts to portray Democrats as weak on crime.Many Democratic candidates are also raising vast sums of money, a sign of voter engagement.“Our members have a great record of results, and the other side is offering nothing except anger and fear,” said Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, the chair of the House Democratic campaign arm. “My message is: We’re getting good things done. We’re part of the solution. Give us a little more time.”Time indeed remains, and Democrats could reverse their fortunes in an unpredictable environment — but it is also possible that in the fall, the outlook will be largely unchanged.“The problem with midterm elections is, they’re not really a choice,” said David Axelrod, who served as a senior adviser to former President Barack Obama. “They tend to be a referendum on the party that controls the White House.” More

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      The Ohio Primary and the Return of the Republican Civil War

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      Why has the Ohio Republican Senate primary, which reaches its conclusion Tuesday, been so interesting (if not always edifying) to watch? In part, because it’s the first time the divides of the party’s 2016 primary campaign have risen fully to the surface again.Six years ago, under the pressure of Donald Trump’s insurgency, the G.O.P. split into three factions. First was the party establishment, trying to sustain a business-friendly and internationalist agenda and an institutionalist approach to governance. This was the faction of Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, much the party’s Washington D.C. leadership — but fewer of its media organs and activists.Those groups mostly supported the more movement-driven, True Conservative faction — the faction of Ted Cruz, the Tea Party, the House Freedom Caucus, talk radio. This faction was more libertarian and combative, and richer in grassroots support — but not as rich as it thought.That’s because Trump himself forged a third faction, pulling together a mixture of populists and paleoconservatives, disaffected voters who didn’t share True Conservatism’s litmus tests and pugilists who just wanted someone to fight liberal cultural dominance, with no agenda beyond the fight itself.When Trump, astonishingly, won the presidency, you might have expected these factions to feud openly throughout his chaotic administration. But that’s not exactly what happened. Part of the establishment faction — mostly strategists and pundits — broke from the party entirely. The larger part, the Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan and Nikki Haley camp, essentially ran policy in the early Trump era — passing tax reform, running the national security bureaucracy, bemoaning Trump’s tweets while setting much of his agenda.The movement faction, Tea Partyers and TrueCons, was given personnel appointments, the chance to write irrelevant budget proposals, and eventually a degree of personal power, through figures like Mick Mulvaney and Mark Meadows. (Trump clearly just liked the Freedom Caucus guys, whatever their ideological differences.) The populists, meanwhile, won some victories on immigration policy and trade, while complaining about the “deep state” on almost every other front.But because both the TrueCons and the populists delighted in Trump’s pugilism — even unto his election-overturning efforts in 2020 — it could be hard to see where one faction ended and the next began. And this pattern often held in Trump-era Republican primary battles, in which candidates with TrueCon or establishment backgrounds recast themselves as Trumpists by endorsing his grievances and paranoias.But in the Ohio Senate primary, finally, you can see the divisions clearly once again. First you have a candidate, Matt Dolan, who is fully in the establishment lane, explicitly refusing to court Trumpian favor and trying to use the Russian invasion of Ukraine to peel Republicans away from the America First banner.You have a candidate in the TrueCon lane, the adaptable Josh Mandel, who tried to hug Trump personally but who draws his support from the old powers of movement conservatism — from the Club for Growth to talk radio’s Mark Levin to the political consultancy that runs Ted Cruz’s campaigns.And you have J.D. Vance, who is very clear about trying to be a populist in full — taking the Trump-in-2016 line on trade and immigration and foreign policy, allying himself with thinkers and funders who want a full break with the pre-Trump G.O.P.Given this division, it’s significant that Trump decided to endorse Vance, and that his most politically active scion, Donald Jr., is enthusiastic for the “Hillbilly Elegy” author. It’s also significant that Trump’s endorsement hasn’t prevented the Club for Growth from continuing to throw money against Vance, prompting blowback from Trump himself. For the first time since 2016, there’s a clear line not just between Trump and the establishment but between Trumpian populism and movement conservatism.That line will blur again once the primary is settled. But the battle for Ohio suggests things to look for in 2022 and beyond. First, expect a Trump revival to be more like his 2016 insurgent-populist campaign than his incumbent run in 2020. Second, expect populism writ large to gain some strength and substance but still remain bound to Trump’s obsessions (and appetite for constitutional crisis).Third, expect many of the movement and TrueCon figures who made their peace with Trump six years ago to be all-in for Ron DeSantis should he seem remotely viable. Fourth, expect the remains of the establishment to divide over whether to rally around a candidate of anti-Trump principle — from Liz Cheney to certain incarnations of Mike Pence — or to make their peace with a harder-edged figure like DeSantis.Finally, expect a potential second Trump presidency to resemble the scramble for his endorsement in Ohio: the establishment left out in the cold, no Reince Priebus running the White House or McConnell setting its agenda, but just constant policy battles between movement conservatives and populists, each claiming to embody the true and only Trumpism and hoping that the boss agrees.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

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      Why Republican Insurgents Are Struggling to Topple G.O.P. Governors

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      Jim Renacci, an acolyte of Donald J. Trump who is trying to capitalize on outsider energy to oust the Republican governor of Ohio, has found himself outspent, way down in the polls and lamenting his lack of an endorsement from the former president.He has even given up on raising cash.“Why waste time trying to raise money when you’re running against an incumbent?” Mr. Renacci said in an interview. “I would rather spend time getting my message out. I just don’t have a finance team.”Mr. Renacci’s plight ahead of Ohio’s primary election on Tuesday illustrates the challenges in front of Republican candidates who are trying to seize on the party’s divisions to unseat G.O.P. governors. Some have been endorsed by Mr. Trump as part of his quest to dominate Republican primaries, while others, like Mr. Renacci, have not received the coveted nod but are hoping to take advantage of Trump supporters’ anti-establishment fervor.But in every case, these candidates have failed to gain traction.Trump-inspired and Trump-endorsed candidates for governor have put up spirited opposition in May primaries across five states, but they are facing strong headwinds. In addition to Ohio, where Gov. Mike DeWine holds a polling lead of nearly 20 percentage points over Mr. Renacci, Republican governors in Alabama, Georgia and Idaho are so far holding off Trump-wing candidates. In Nebraska, a candidate backed by Mr. Trump is locked in a three-way contest for an open seat with the governor’s choice and a relative moderate.In all of the races, governors from the traditional Republican establishment are showing their strength. Their resilience stems, in some cases, from voters’ desire for more moderation in their state executives than in their members of Congress. But it is also clear evidence of the enduring power of incumbency, even in a party at war with its establishment.Incumbent governors have a plethora of advantages that don’t apply to members of Congress. They often control the infrastructure of their state party, they can drive the local news media and they can campaign on specific policy achievements.And it is difficult to knock them off: Only three Republican governors have been denied renomination this century, in Kansas in 2018, Nevada in 2010 and Alaska in 2006. Scandals or political upheaval were major factors in each upset.“As an incumbent governor, you have to work really hard to lose your party’s nomination,” said Phil Cox, a former executive director of the Republican Governors Association who advises a number of governors. “Even if you’re an unpopular governor with the broader electorate, it should be relatively easy to build and maintain a strong base of support among your own party.”The Republican Governors Association is backing its incumbents, spending more than $3 million in Ohio to help Mr. DeWine, who angered the conservative base with his aggressive Covid mitigation policies, and more than $5 million in Georgia to help Gov. Brian Kemp, whom Mr. Trump blames for not helping him overturn the 2020 election.Polling shows Mr. DeWine with a lead of nearly 20 percentage points over Mr. Renacci in Ohio. Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesIn some states, Republican governors have moved to the right to fend off challengers.Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas did so successfully in March, and Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama has followed his model ahead of her primary next month, falsely claiming in television ads that the 2020 election was stolen and warning that unchecked immigration will force Americans to speak Spanish. Ms. Ivey holds a big lead over her challengers on the right, but Alabama law requires a majority of the primary vote to avoid a runoff.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The 2022 election season is underway. See the full primary calendar and a detailed state-by-state breakdown.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.For Mr. Trump, who regularly boasts of his approval rating among Republican voters and his endorsement record in primaries, the prospect of losing primaries — especially in Georgia, where he has for more than a year attacked Mr. Kemp — would be an embarrassing setback.Polls show Mr. Kemp comfortably ahead of Mr. Trump’s choice, former Senator David Perdue, who has bet his campaign on 2020 election grievances.In Idaho, Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, who has been endorsed by Mr. Trump in her bid for governor, trails well behind Gov. Brad Little. And in Nebraska, Mr. Trump endorsed Charles W. Herbster, a wealthy agribusiness executive who was accused this month by a state senator of groping her at a political event.Advisers to Mr. Trump predict that he will simply dismiss any losses and instead highlight the races his candidates have won, as has generally been his practice. For instance, he withdrew his endorsement of Representative Mo Brooks in Alabama’s Senate race when it became clear Mr. Brooks’s campaign was sputtering.“Remember, you know, my record is unblemished,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with The New York Times on Thursday. “The real story should be on the endorsements — not the David Perdue one — and, by the way, no race is over.”Mr. Trump is far from undefeated in primaries. Last year in a special election in Texas, he backed Susan Wright, whose husband, Ron Wright, represented a Dallas-area district before dying of Covid, when she lost a Republican primary to Jake Ellzey. He was also on the losing end of a North Carolina primary in 2020 won by Representative Madison Cawthorn and an Alabama Senate primary in 2017 in which Roy S. Moore defeated Senator Luther Strange.In governor’s primaries, Trump-backed insurgents have struggled against incumbents for various reasons. The races in which he has appeared able to lift candidates tend to be primaries for open Senate seats, most notably J.D. Vance’s bid in Ohio.In Idaho, Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin trails well behind Gov. Brad Little in the Republican primary for governor, despite her Trump endorsement.Darin Oswald/Idaho Statesman, via Associated PressIn Idaho, Ms. McGeachin attracted attention from the Republican base last year when, while Mr. Little was traveling out of state, she issued executive orders banning mask mandates (which did not exist on a statewide level) and prohibiting companies from requiring vaccinations, and also tried to deploy the Idaho National Guard to the Mexican border. Mr. Little reversed those moves upon his return.“She is brave and not afraid to stand up for the issues that matter most to the people of Idaho,” Mr. Trump said when he endorsed Ms. McGeachin in November.There is virtually no public polling of the race, but C.L. Otter, a former Idaho governor known as Butch, said private polling showed Mr. Little, whom Mr. Otter has endorsed, holding a two-to-one lead over Ms. McGeachin.Ms. McGeachin has raised just $646,000, according to campaign finance data from the Idaho secretary of state’s office. Mr. Little has raised nearly three times as much — $1.94 million. Her aides did not immediately respond to an interview request.“I kind of shy away from people who spend more time looking for the headlines than they do doing the right thing,” Mr. Otter said, cautioning, “A sincere renegade always has an opportunity in a Republican primary.”In Nebraska, Mr. Herbster, who served as an agriculture adviser to Mr. Trump’s campaigns, has denied the groping allegations and has filed a lawsuit against the state senator. She subsequently countersued him. Mr. Trump is expected to hold a rally on Sunday night in Nebraska with Mr. Herbster, who this week began airing television ads comparing himself to Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett M. Kavanaugh.In Nebraska, Mr. Trump endorsed Charles W. Herbster, a wealthy agribusiness executive, but he is locked in a tight race against two other Republicans.Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty ImagesMr. Herbster, like Mr. Renacci, is self-funding his campaign but has struggled to translate Mr. Trump’s endorsement into a polling advantage over Jim Pillen, a University of Nebraska regent who is backed by Gov. Pete Ricketts, and Brett Lindstrom, a state senator who has consolidated support from the moderate wing of the party and even some Democrats — nearly 2,000 of whom have changed their party affiliation in advance of the May 10 primary. Mr. Herbster’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.Sam Fischer, a longtime Republican operative in the state who once worked for Mr. Herbster, said that the western part of the state was “way Trumpier, but right now in Lincoln and Omaha, Herbster is behind.”And in Ohio, Mr. Renacci, a businessman who has owned car dealerships and nursing homes, has been outspent nearly three to one by Mr. DeWine on television ads, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm. A third candidate, Joe Blystone, who owns a farming business, has spent nothing on television but is running nearly even with Mr. Renacci in public polling, well behind Mr. DeWine, who declined to be interviewed.Mr. Renacci, a former small-town mayor who entered Congress in the 2010 Tea Party wave, has never been a voracious fund-raiser. He cycled through a series of campaign managers and finance aides in 2018, when Mr. Trump persuaded him to drop a run for governor and instead challenge Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat.In that race, Mr. Renacci often used an app called Slydial, which bypasses direct phone calls by sending messages straight to people’s voice mail boxes, to send dozens of solicitations at once to prospective donors, according to two people who worked for his campaign who insisted on anonymity for fear of career repercussions. It was an unusual tactic to reach potential contributors who often prefer a personal touch before opening their wallets.Mr. Renacci lost to Mr. Brown by 6.8 percentage points after the Democrat more than doubled his rival’s campaign spending.At a rally for Mr. Trump last weekend in Ohio, Mr. Blystone’s supporters often quoted from the candidate’s campaign ads, praising his commitment to God, guns and family.“He’s not a politician, he is a farmer, and as small as our town is, he has been at the bars just visiting people,” said Tiffany Dingus, 39, an attendee.Mr. Renacci said his major problem in the race was the presence of Mr. Blystone, whom he said Mr. Trump had cited in a conversation last month as his reason for not endorsing Mr. Renacci.“This race would be over for Mike DeWine if there were only two people in the race,” Mr. Renacci said. “The president did say, he didn’t know the guy’s name, but he just said, ‘There’s a third guy in there that’s taking votes away from you.’”Nick Corasaniti More

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      Drug Sentencing Bill Is in Limbo as Midterm Politics Paralyze Congress

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      A broadly supported bipartisan measure to eliminate a racial disparity in drug sentencing faces a difficult road as Republicans seek to weaponize the issue of crime against Democrats.WASHINGTON — The Equal Act would appear to be a slam dunk even in a badly divided Congress.The legislation, which aims to end a longstanding racial disparity in federal prison sentences for drug possession, passed the House overwhelmingly last year, with more than 360 votes. It has been enthusiastically embraced on the left and right and by law enforcement as a long-overdue fix for a biased policy. It has filibuster-proof bipartisan support in the Senate and the endorsement of President Biden and the Justice Department.Yet with control of Congress at stake and Republicans weaponizing a law-and-order message against Democrats in their midterm election campaigns, the fate of the measure is in doubt. Democrats worry that bringing it up would allow Republicans to demand a series of votes that could make them look soft on crime and lax on immigration — risks they are reluctant to take months before they face voters.Even the measure’s Republican backers concede that bringing it to the floor could lead to an array of difficult votes.“I assume the topic opens itself pretty wide,” said Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, who became the 11th member of his party to sign on to the Equal Act this month, giving its supporters more than the 60 votes needed to overcome procedural obstacles.The drug legislation is not the only bipartisan bill caught in a midterm political squeeze. A multibillion-dollar Covid relief package has been languishing for weeks, as Republicans insist that consideration of the measure must include a vote on retaining pandemic-era immigration restrictions that the Biden administration wants to lift.Democrats are increasingly at odds with the administration over its plan to wind down the public-health rule, known as Title 42. A vote would underscore that division and potentially open some of them to a politically difficult vote.Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, became the 11th member of his party to sign on to the legislation this month.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesThe uncertainty surrounding the bipartisan bills is a clear sign that if legislating on Capitol Hill is not already done for the year, that moment is fast approaching.Given the calendar, virtually any legislation that reaches the floor is bound to attract trouble. Even consensus measures are at risk unless enough supporters in both parties agree to band together to reject politically difficult votes that could lend themselves to 30-second attack ads — the kind of deal that grows more difficult to reach each passing day.There are exceptions. A request by Mr. Biden this week to send an additional $33 billion in aid to Ukraine to bolster the war effort is expected to draw broad bipartisan support and little dispute. Democrats are still hopeful they may be able to salvage pieces of a hulking social safety net and climate package under special rules that allow them to move forward without Republican support. But that, too, could require a series of votes orchestrated by the G.O.P. to make Democrats squirm.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The 2022 election season is underway. See the full primary calendar and a detailed state-by-state breakdown.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.“What’s hurting bipartisanship is that even when there’s enough Republican support to pass a bill, the hard-right militants sabotage it to score political points, and gridlock prevails,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader. “But there’s always hope that cooler heads prevail, and occasionally they do.”Backers of the Equal Act and other criminal justice legislation said they hoped that was true for them. They insist that they can still get their bill passed this year, and that opposition will backfire politically.“This is a real opportunity for bipartisan achievement to eliminate one of the worst vestiges of injustice from American drug policy,” said Holly Harris, the president and executive director of the Justice Action Network and a leading proponent of criminal justice changes. “Those who seek to thwart this opportunity for 15 minutes of fame, five minutes of fame — I don’t think that’s going to be rewarded by voters.”The measure has bipartisan support in the Senate and the endorsement of President Biden and the Justice Department.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesIn a letter to Senate leaders this week, Ms. Harris’s group and about 50 law enforcement, progressive and conservative organizations urged them to quickly take up the legislation, saying that “we cannot miss this moment to right this decades-long wrong.”The legislation would eliminate the current 18-to-1 disparity in sentencing for crack cocaine versus powder. The policy that can be traced to the “war on drugs” mind-set of the 1980s, which treated those trafficking in crack cocaine more harshly. It resulted in a disproportionate number of Black Americans facing longer sentences for drug offenses than white Americans, who were usually arrested with the powder version.As a senator, Mr. Biden was one of the champions of the policy; it has since become widely discredited, and he has disavowed it.The United States Sentencing Commission has said that passage of the legislation could reduce the sentences of more than 7,600 federal prisoners. The average 14-year sentence would be cut by about six years, it estimated.Though Mr. Schumer endorsed the legislation in April, he has not laid out a timeline for bringing it to the floor. Democrats say he is giving backers of the bill a chance to build additional support and find a way to advance the measure without causing a floor fight that could take weeks — time that Democrats do not have if they want to continue to win approval of new judges and take care of other business before the end of the year.“Getting the opportunity is the challenge,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and one of the original sponsors of the legislation. “We just don’t move many free-standing bills which involve some controversy.”Its supporters say that they recognize the difficulties but believe that it is the single piece of criminal justice legislation with a chance of reaching the president’s desk in the current political environment.“Of all the criminal justice bills, this is the one that is set up for success right now,” said Inimai Chettiar, the federal director for the Justice Action Network. “It is not going to be easy on the floor, but I think it is doable.”The problem is that the push comes as top Republicans have made clear that they intend to try to capitalize on public concern about increasing crime in the battle for Senate and House control in November.The approach was crystallized in their attacks on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings last month, as they accused her of leniency in sentencing. Given the rise in crime and drug overdoses, some Republicans say they are also having second thoughts about the landmark First Step Act, a sweeping bipartisan law passed in 2018 that freed thousands from prison after their sentences were reduced in a bid to ease mass incarceration.Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and minority leader, this week reprised his criticism of Judge Jackson and attacked Mr. Biden for having issued his first round of pardons and commutations, including for those convicted of drug crimes.“They never miss an opportunity to send the wrong signal,” he said of Democrats.Senator Tom Cotton, the Arkansas Republican who led the opposition to the First Step Act, said he was in no mood to let the Equal Act sail through. He has said that if the disparity is to be erased, penalties for powder cocaine should be increased.Demonstrators at a criminal justice reform rally in Washington in 2018.Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images“My opposition to the Equal Act will be as strong as my opposition to the First Step Act,” Mr. Cotton said.The legislation encountered another complication on Thursday, when Senators Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Mike Lee of Utah, two top Republican supporters of the previous criminal justice overhaul, introduced a competing bill that would reduce — but not eliminate — the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. They said that research showed that crack traffickers were more likely to return to crime and carry deadly weapons.“Our legislation will significantly reduce this disparity while ensuring those more likely to reoffend face appropriate penalties,” said Mr. Grassley, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee.Sponsors of the Equal Act say they intend to push forward and remain optimistic that they can overcome the difficulties.“We’ve got an amazing bill, and we’ve got 11 Republicans and people want to get this done,” said Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey and the lead sponsor of the legislation. “My hope is that we are going to have a shot to get this done right now.”Ms. Harris said that Democrats must recognize Republicans will attack them as soft on crime regardless of whether they act on the measure.“They are fearing something that is already happening,” she said. “Why not dig in, stay true to your principles, and do what is right for the American people? Maybe, just maybe, the politics will shake out.” More

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      How N.Y. Democrats Lost a Critical Redistricting Battle

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      When an independent redistricting commission failed to reach consensus, Democratic leaders decided to make their own maps and risk a lawsuit.It was 2020, more than a year before New York began its once-in-a-decade redistricting process, when Carl Heastie, the Assembly speaker, foresaw a problem.New York voters had empowered a bipartisan commission to guide the task of drafting new legislative maps for the House and local state districts. But Mr. Heastie worried that constitutional language behind the new process would give incentive to Republicans to undermine the commission, according to two Democrats familiar with the discussions.If the commission failed to complete its work, Republicans could try to push the mapmaking process directly to the courts, rather than the Democrat-dominated Legislature.With a handful of crucial House and State Senate seats hanging in the balance, that outcome could have been disastrous for Democrats. They drafted a constitutional amendment to head off Republicans, but voters soundly rejected it last November. Lawmakers then tried another workaround, passing a bill authorizing the Legislature to act if the commission failed to complete its work.Mr. Heastie’s fears came to pass in January, when Republican commissioners refused to approve a final recommendation to the Legislature.But rather than defer to the courts, Democratic leaders decided to make a bet: They disregarded the commission’s work, unilaterally approved maps that positioned their party to pick up key House seats, and hoped that their legal change would withstand scrutiny.Carl Heastie, the Assembly speaker, had warned colleagues that a new redistricting commission might intentionally deadlock.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesOn Wednesday, the Democrats’ maneuver imploded.In a sharply worded decision, the New York State Court of Appeals said that the Legislature’s actions violated the State Constitution, accusing Democratic leaders of placing partisan interests above the will of the voters who, in 2014, created the commission and outlawed partisan gerrymandering.A majority of the seven-judge panel — all appointed by Democrats — explicitly found fault with Mr. Heastie’s attempted procedural fix, ruled that the congressional maps had been “drawn with impermissible partisan purpose,” and empowered a court-appointed special master to redraft the congressional and State Senate lines.The ruling threw New York politics into chaos and scrambled the national fight for control of the House of Representatives this fall.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Deepening Divides: As political mapmakers create lopsided new district lines, the already polarized parties are being pulled even farther apart.“Any Democrat in New York today who you get on the phone and tells you anything other than this was an unmitigated disaster, is just not telling you the truth,” said Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who helps lead the Republicans’ national redistricting effort.Democrats had been counting on the new maps in New York to provide as many as three new House seats, offsetting expected Republican gains through redistricting in other states.The final outcome of the 2022 battlefield may still depend on whether Florida courts strike down Republicans’ new map there as a gerrymander. But for now, Republicans appear poised to best the Democrats nationally for the second consecutive redistricting cycle, making it increasingly difficult for Democrats to hold onto their slim House majority.The situation in New York was even more tenuous. Not only will it take a court-appointed special master weeks to draw new lines — significantly scrambling contests that have already been going on for months — but election lawyers said on Thursday that they were not certain how the state could even comply with the order and other election-related requirements.For instance, while it at first appeared that primaries for statewide offices like governor and lieutenant governor had not been affected by the ruling, those contests may be called into question, after all. To qualify for the ballot, the State Board of Elections requires candidates for statewide office to collect petitions from voters in multiple congressional districts. No one could immediately say whether those petitions, filed weeks ago, were now invalid.“Boy, that could really upend the elections much more than I originally thought,” said Jerry H. Goldfeder, a Democratic elections lawyer who wrote a leading textbook on New York election law, as he puzzled through the ruling Thursday morning.Mr. Goldfeder and other Democrats strenuously disagreed with the Court of Appeals’ decision, the first time in half a century that the judges have struck down a map approved by lawmakers. They called it judicial overreach and heaped blame back on Republicans, who they say intentionally sabotaged the commission’s work in hopes of achieving the outcome they ultimately won in court.“It would have been impossible for us to actually meet the threshold laid out by the Court of Appeals because the Republicans refused to come to a meeting to vote,” said David Imamura, the Democratic appointee who chaired the redistricting commission.He called the current system “unworkable” and warned that the Court of Appeals decision, while attempting to vindicate the will of the voters, would actually ensure that one party or the other always has a political incentive to deprive the Legislature of the ability to draw lines.Jack Martins, Mr. Imamura’s Republican counterpart, did not return requests for comment.In reality, both parties entered this year’s redistricting cycle knowing that the commission was legally untested and had serious flaws that made it different from those that have worked in other states.Created out of a compromise between former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Republicans who controlled the Senate at the time, the panel consisted of even numbers of Democratic and Republican appointees. It lacked clear incentives to compromise, and its work could always be overruled by the Legislature if lawmakers rejected two consecutive proposals by the body.But voters, sick of years of political mapmaking in New York, enthusiastically enshrined it in the State Constitution alongside language outlawing partisan gerrymandering.For a time, the commission appeared to be working. That changed late last year, when the members began to draft final congressional, State Senate and Assembly maps. Rather than sending the Legislature one set of maps to consider in January, the commission sent competing partisan maps.When those maps were rejected, the commission simply collapsed without submitting a second proposal required by the State Constitution, eventually laying the groundwork for the Republicans to sue.Democratic lawmakers insist that after the commission failed, they proceeded in good faith, acting on what courts in New York have long recognized as the authority of the representative branch of government to draw maps.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More