Midterm Elections (2022)

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      VP Kamala Harris Asked to Lead on Voting Rights, and It's a Challenge

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      Her new role comes as the Senate enters a crucial month in the Democratic drive to enact the most extensive elections overhaul in a generation.WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris did not come to her role with a list of demands. She wanted to be a generalist, in large part to learn the political rhythms of a president she was still getting to know. In the first few months of her tenure, some of her portfolio assignments were just that: assignments.But on the matter of protecting voting rights, an issue critically important to President Biden’s legacy, Ms. Harris took a rare step. In a meeting with the president over a month ago, she told him that she wanted to take the lead on the issue.Mr. Biden agreed, two people familiar with the discussions said, and his advisers decided to time the announcement of Ms. Harris’s new role to a speech he delivered on Tuesday in Tulsa, Okla. In his remarks, the president declared the efforts of Republican-led statehouses around the country to make it harder to vote as an “assault on our democracy, ” and said Ms. Harris could help lead the charge against them.He also gave a blunt assessment of the task: “It’s going to take a hell of a lot of work.”Back in Washington, the president’s announcement has not clearly illuminated a path forward for Ms. Harris, whose involvement in the issue stands to become her most politically delicate engagement yet. Her new role comes as the Senate enters a crucial month in the Democratic drive to enact the farthest-reaching elections overhaul in a generation, including a landmark expansion of voting rights that is faltering in the Senate.Her office has not yet announced its plans, aside from calls Ms. Harris held with civil rights activists, including Derrick Johnson, the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and a few scheduled meetings with prominent voting rights groups. Her advisers say she will take a wide-ranging approach to the issue by giving speeches, convening stakeholders and using the vice-presidential bully pulpit to raise awareness of the importance of the vote.“The work of voting rights has implications for not just one year down the road or four years down the road but 50 years from now,” Symone D. Sanders, the vice president’s senior adviser and press secretary, said in an interview on Wednesday. “The president understands that and the vice president understands that, and that’s why we will implement a comprehensive strategy.”The voting rights bill faces a more urgent timeline. The vast majority of the party has agreed to make the bill the party’s top legislative priority, and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, vowed to put it up for a vote later this month so any changes could be put into effect before the 2022 elections.With just weeks to go, it remains far from clear if it can actually pass. Because Republicans have locked arms in opposition, the only path forward would require all 50 Democrats — plus Ms. Harris, who serves as the tiebreaking vote in an evenly divided Senate — to support not only the substance of the bill, but changing the filibuster rule requiring 60 votes to approve major legislation, allowing it to pass with a simple majority instead.A handful of Democratic senators have expressed unease about changing the filibuster, while Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have been more adamant in their opposition.Mr. Biden has already pledged to sign the bill, which the House passed with only Democratic votes this spring. Known as the For the People Act, the bill would overhaul the nation’s elections system by creating new national requirements for early and mail-in voting, rein in campaign donations and limit partisan gerrymandering. But with the bill all but stalled in the Senate, Mr. Biden has repeatedly expressed concern over its future in his discussions with Democrats.The announcement that Ms. Harris would be working to move the bill forward took many on Capitol Hill by surprise. Ms. Harris and Mr. Schumer spoke on Tuesday — and had plans to hold a follow-up conversation late Wednesday, a White House official said — but it did not appear Mr. Manchin or Ms. Sinema were given a heads up.In a statement, Mr. Schumer said he welcomed Ms. Harris’s help navigating into law an elections overhaul that was “essential to protecting the future of our democracy.”Proponents of the voting legislation took her involvement as a sign that their attempts to build pressure not just on lawmakers, but the White House, were being felt.Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, said he welcomed Ms. Harris’s help navigating into law an elections overhaul that was “essential to protecting the future of our democracy.”Erin Scott for The New York Times“It’s an interesting move given the long odds of anything getting passed and signed into law,” said James P. Manley, who served as a senior aide to former Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader before Mr. Schumer. “There’s not a lot of cards to play right now, so it shows me they are going to try to raise the public temperature of this thing.”Others pointed out that even though Mr. Biden has decades of experience moving legislation through the Senate, Ms. Harris, the first woman and woman of color to hold her role, comes to the issue with an equally valuable perspective as the country grapples with the ways American policies have marginalized and mistreated Black people.“I think that Vice President Harris herself personifies the need for voting rights to be extended,” the Rev. Al Sharpton, who attended the speech in Tulsa, said in an interview. “When she’s on the phone or walks into an office, we’re looking at the reason we need voting rights.”Michael Waldman, the president of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, said that the decision to elevate Ms. Harris as the face of the administration’s work on the issue was a pivotal moment for the Biden White House given the number of voter suppression efforts that were moving forward — 389 bills in 48 states and counting, according to a tracker maintained the Brennan Center.“It has been decades since a Democratic White House has made voting rights and democracy reform a central goal,” Mr. Waldman said, but he added, “the clock is ticking.”Ms. Harris’s impact on the hand-to-hand politics of the Senate is expected to be limited, but she often drew attention to voting rights during her four years as a senator. During her last year in the Senate, Ms. Harris introduced legislation that would expand election security measures, require each state to have early in-person voting periods and allow for an expansion of mail-in absentee ballots.In 2020, Ms. Harris was also a co-sponsor of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would restore a piece of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that relied on a formula to identify states with a history of discrimination and require that those jurisdictions clear any changes to their voting processes with the federal government. The protections were eliminated by the Supreme Court in 2013.Still, Ms. Harris, who spent a chunk of her time in the Senate running for president, was not known for building especially close relationships with colleagues, and Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema are no exceptions.Several Democratic aides who work closely with the senators scoffed on Wednesday at the idea that Ms. Harris, known as a staunch liberal, would be the one to persuade either moderate lawmaker to change the filibuster rule. Nor is Ms. Harris a likely candidate to broker the kind of compromise on the substance of the bill needed to persuade Mr. Manchin, the only Democrat who has not sponsored it, to back it.Ms. Harris’s attempts in February to nudge Mr. Manchin to back the White House’s proposed $1.9 trillion coronavirus rescue package are illustrative.Mr. Manchin was piqued when Ms. Harris appeared, without warning, on a television affiliate in West Virginia to promote the package before he backed it. Though a Democratic aide familiar with the matter, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly, said the episode was now “water under the bridge,” it prompted cleanup by top White House officials.Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema’s offices declined to comment about Ms. Harris’s new role.Senate Republicans, meanwhile, are doing their best to kill the bill and blunt any Democratic attempt to change the filibuster rule, which would leave their party powerless to stop the passage of sweeping liberal priorities well beyond voting rights.At an event in his home state on Wednesday, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, argued that Democrats were inflating the impact of new state voting laws in an attempt to justify an unwarranted and chaotic slew of top-down changes to the way states run elections.“What is going on is the Democrats are trying to convince the Senate that states are involved in trying to prevent people from voting in order to pass a total federal takeover in how we conduct elections,” he told reporters. He said “not a single member” of his party supported the bill.Aware of the daunting path ahead, allies of the White House said that shepherding the bill through Congress was only one piece of the effort. Ms. Harris could be useful in helping ratchet up pressure on private companies, working with civil rights organizations, and engaging local communities over the importance of registering to vote.“She understands the need to engage in what I’d like to call kind of an ‘all of the above approach,’” said Representative Steven Horsford, Democrat of Nevada. “We can’t take anything for granted when we’re talking about having people’s voice heard at the ballot box.” More

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      Harris Asked to Lead on Voting Rights, and It's a Challenge

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      Her new role comes as the Senate enters a crucial month in the Democratic drive to enact the most extensive elections overhaul in a generation.WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris did not come to her role with a list of demands. She wanted to be a generalist, in large part to learn the political rhythms of a president she was still getting to know. In the first few months of her tenure, some of her portfolio assignments were just that: assignments.But on the matter of protecting voting rights, an issue critically important to President Biden’s legacy, Mr. Harris took a rare step. In a meeting with the president over a month ago, she told him that she wanted to take the lead on the issue.Mr. Biden agreed, two people familiar with the discussions said, and his advisers decided to time the announcement of Ms. Harris’s new role to a speech he delivered on Tuesday in Tulsa, Okla. In his remarks, the president declared the efforts of Republican-led statehouses around the country to make it harder to vote as an “assault on our democracy, ” and said Ms. Harris could help lead the charge against them.He also gave a blunt assessment of the task: “It’s going to take a hell of a lot of work.”Back in Washington, the president’s announcement has not clearly illuminated a path forward for Ms. Harris, whose involvement in the issue stands to become her most politically delicate engagement yet. Her new role comes as the Senate enters a crucial month in the Democratic drive to enact the farthest-reaching elections overhaul in a generation, including a landmark expansion of voting rights that is faltering in the Senate.Her office has not yet announced its plans, aside from calls Ms. Harris held with civil rights activists, including Derrick Johnson, the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and a few scheduled meetings with prominent voting rights groups. Her advisers say she will take a wide-ranging approach to the issue by giving speeches, convening stakeholders and using the vice-presidential bully pulpit to raise awareness of the importance of the vote.“The work of voting rights has implications for not just one year down the road or four years down the road but 50 years from now,” Symone Sanders, the vice president’s senior adviser and press secretary, said in an interview on Wednesday. “The president understands that and the vice president understands that, and that’s why we will implement a comprehensive strategy.”The voting rights bill faces a more urgent timeline. The vast majority of the party has agreed to make the bill the party’s top legislative priority, and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, vowed to put it up for a vote later this month so any changes could be put into effect before the 2022 elections.With just weeks to go, it remains far from clear if it can actually pass. Because Republicans have locked arms in opposition, the only path forward would require all 50 Democrats — plus Ms. Harris, who serves as the tiebreaking vote in an evenly divided Senate — to support not only the substance of the bill, but changing the filibuster rule requiring 60 votes to approve major legislation, allowing it to pass with a simple majority instead.A handful of Democratic senators have expressed unease about changing the filibuster, while Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, have been more adamant in their opposition.Mr. Biden has already pledged to sign the bill, which the House passed with only Democratic votes this spring. Known as the For the People Act, the bill would overhaul the nation’s elections system by creating new national requirements for early and mail-in voting, rein in campaign donations and limit partisan gerrymandering. But with the bill all but stalled in the Senate, Mr. Biden has repeatedly expressed concern over its future in his discussions with Democrats.The announcement that Ms. Harris would be working to move the bill forward took many on Capitol Hill by surprise. Ms. Harris and Mr. Schumer spoke on Tuesday — and had plans to hold a follow-up conversation late Wednesday, a White House official said — but it did not appear Mr. Manchin or Ms. Sinema were given a heads up.In a statement, Mr. Schumer said he welcomed Ms. Harris’s help navigating into law an elections overhaul that was “essential to protecting the future of our democracy.”Proponents of the voting legislation took her involvement as a sign that their attempts to build pressure not just on lawmakers, but the White House, were being felt.Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, said he welcomed Ms. Harris’s help navigating into law an elections overhaul that was “essential to protecting the future of our democracy.”Erin Scott for The New York Times“It’s an interesting move given the long odds of anything getting passed and signed into law,” said James P. Manley, who served as a senior aide to former Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader before Mr. Schumer. “There’s not a lot of cards to play right now, so it shows me they are going to try to raise the public temperature of this thing.”Others pointed out that even though Mr. Biden has decades of experience moving legislation through the Senate, Ms. Harris, the first woman and woman of color to hold her role, comes to the issue with an equally valuable perspective as the country grapples with the ways American policies have marginalized and mistreated Black people.“I think that Vice President Harris herself personifies the need for voting rights to be extended,” the Rev. Al Sharpton, who attended the speech in Tulsa, said in an interview. “When she’s on the phone or walks into an office, we’re looking at the reason we need voting rights.”Michael Waldman, the president of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, said that the decision to elevate Ms. Harris as the face of the administration’s work on the issue was a pivotal moment for the Biden White House given the number of voter suppression efforts that were moving forward — 389 bills in 48 states and counting, according to a tracker maintained the Brennan Center.“It has been decades since a Democratic White House has made voting rights and democracy reform a central goal,” Mr. Waldman said, but he added, “the clock is ticking.”Ms. Harris’s impact on the hand-to-hand politics of the Senate is expected to be limited, but she often drew attention to voting rights during her four years as a senator. During her last year in the Senate, Ms. Harris introduced legislation that would expand election security measures, require each state to have early in-person voting periods and allow for an expansion of mail-in absentee ballots.In 2020, Ms. Harris was also a co-sponsor of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would restore a piece of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that relied on a formula to identify states with a history of discrimination and require that those jurisdictions clear any changes to their voting processes with the federal government. The protections were eliminated by the Supreme Court in 2013.Still, Ms. Harris, who spent a chunk of her time in the Senate running for president, was not known for building especially close relationships with colleagues, and Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema are no exceptions.Several Democratic aides who work closely with the senators scoffed on Wednesday at the idea that Ms. Harris, known as a staunch liberal, would be the one to persuade either moderate lawmaker to change the filibuster rule. Nor is Ms. Harris a likely candidate to broker the kind of compromise on the substance of the bill needed to persuade Mr. Manchin, the only Democrat who has not sponsored it, to back it.Ms. Harris’s attempts in February to nudge Mr. Manchin to back the White House’s proposed $1.9 trillion coronavirus rescue package is illustrative.Mr. Manchin was piqued when Ms. Harris appeared, without warning, on a television affiliate in West Virginia to promote the package before he backed it. Though a Democratic aide familiar with the matter, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly, said the episode was now “water under the bridge” it prompted cleanup by top White House officials.Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema’s offices declined to comment about Ms. Harris’s new role.Senate Republicans, meanwhile, are doing their best to kill the bill and blunt any Democratic attempt to change the filibuster rule, which would leave their party powerless to stop the passage of sweeping liberal priorities well beyond voting rights.At an event in his home state on Wednesday, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, argued that Democrats were inflating the impact of new state voting laws in an attempt to justify an unwarranted and chaotic slew of top-down changes to the way states run elections.“What is going on is the Democrats are trying to convince the Senate that states are involved in trying to prevent people from voting in order to pass a total federal takeover in how we conduct elections,” he told reporters. He said “not a single member” of his party supported the bill.Aware of the daunting path ahead, allies of the White House said that shepherding the bill through Congress was only one piece of the effort. Ms. Harris could be useful in helping ratchet up pressure on private companies, working with civil rights organizations, and engaging local communities over the importance of registering to vote.“She understands the need to engage in what I’d like to call kind of an ‘all of the above approach,’” said Representative Steven Horsford, Democrat of Nevada. “We can’t take anything for granted when we’re talking about having people’s voice heard at the ballot box.” More

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      Republicans Oppose Jan.6 Panel With Elections in Mind

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      Republicans see an independent inquiry into the attack on the Capitol as a threat to their push to regain control of the Senate and the House.WASHINGTON — Leading congressional Republicans offer multiple justifications for why they oppose an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, but there is really one overriding reason: They fear it will hurt their party’s image and hinder their attempts to regain power in next year’s midterm elections.Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican, was unusually candid about his party’s predicament, which he said was “weighing on people’s minds” as they contemplated the prospect of an inquiry into the deadliest attack on the Capitol in two centuries.Republicans, he said, wondered “whether or not this can be, in the end, a fair process that fully examines the facts around Jan. 6 in an objective way, and doesn’t become a political weapon in the hands of the Democrats.”Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, as is his style, was much more circumspect. But in a closed-door luncheon this week, Mr. McConnell, the minority leader, warned fellow Republican senators that the proposed panel — the product of a deal between a top Democrat and a top Republican in the House — was not as bipartisan as it appeared. He said he believed that Democrats had partisan motives in moving to set up the commission and would try to extend the investigation into 2022 and the midterm election season, tarnishing Republicans and complicating Mr. McConnell’s drive to return as majority leader.A day later, Mr. McConnell joined Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader, in flat-out opposing the creation of the 10-member commission. Four months after the deadly assault that targeted them and their institution, the two minority leaders in Congress had united against a bipartisan inquiry that would provide a full accounting for the riot.Like Mr. McConnell, Mr. McCarthy is determined to put Republicans in the House majority next year and himself in the speakership, and he regards an investigation into what happened on Jan. 6 as an obstacle in his path.Given that the commission would be likely to delve into the details of Donald J. Trump’s role in stoking the riot with lies about a stolen election — and that of his party in spreading those false claims and seeking to invalidate President Biden’s victory — it stands to reason that any investigation could be damaging to Republicans. The testimony of Mr. McCarthy, who was in contact with Mr. Trump by phone on Jan. 6, would undoubtedly be sought.Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat, archly referred to potential Republican culpability during a House debate on Wednesday, saying the inquiry was needed to get to the bottom of what took place.“Why did that happen?” he asked. “How did it happen? How can we stop it from happening again? What are the resources that we need? And yes, who was responsible? Some, perhaps, are going to vote against this because that’s what they fear.”Capitol Police officers aiming their guns at a barricaded door as rioters tried to enter the House chamber on Jan. 6.Andrew Harnik/Associated PressThe political dynamic was a stark difference from the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, when lawmakers, despite months of disagreement and negotiation, finally came together around the idea of forming an outside inquiry. The independent commission they created has become the gold standard for such efforts, and was heralded for its work in unraveling the origins of the terrorist attacks and making recommendations to prevent a recurrence. Just three House members opposed the formation of that commission on the final vote in November 2002, and the proposal was approved on a voice vote in the Senate.But there was no hope for a similar consensus outcome in the House on Wednesday — and most likely none in the Senate in the future — at a time when many Republicans have been working to deflect any close examination of the riot, and some have tried to downplay or deny its crucial facts.Republican leaders have dug in against the commission even though one of their own members negotiated its details with Democrats, who acceded to their initial demands about its structure. The Jan. 6 proposal was modeled very closely on the Sept. 11 commission. But times have changed, and the Capitol riot has become just another partisan dividing line in a divided capital.Political risks were a very real consideration in 2002 as well. The Bush administration, and particularly Vice President Dick Cheney, quietly hindered the drive to set up the bipartisan commission even as the White House professed to be fully supportive of the effort. President George W. Bush and members of his administration knew that the disclosure of intelligence lapses leading up to Sept. 11 and other aspects of the investigation could be severely damaging, and they were in no rush to back an inquiry that could haunt the president’s re-election in 2004. But the pressure built to the point where Congress was finally able to proceed.Many of the objections being raised now were also aired during the debate surrounding the Sept. 11 commission. Mr. McConnell and others have said that congressional committee inquiries can get the job done while the Justice Department is deep into its own criminal investigations.“It’s not at all clear what new facts or additional investigation yet another commission could lay on top of the existing efforts by law enforcement and Congress,” Mr. McConnell said.But to Democrats and others supporting the commission, that is the point: A bipartisan inquiry could find facts and developments that other, more narrowly focused investigations might miss, and then be able to deliver a more comprehensive picture of what happened on Jan. 6. The Sept. 11 commission went to work after numerous congressional inquiries, including an in-depth, joint House and Senate Intelligence Committee investigation, and there was still plenty of room for the panel to expand on that and other work.Republicans have also raised concerns that the inquiry could complicate the criminal prosecution of those being charged in the assault — a common critique of congressional investigations that parallel criminal inquiries. And they objected that Democrats would appoint the chair of the panel and control the hiring of staff members, suggesting that even with Republicans able to appoint half of the commission members, Democrats would really be in control.“It will be up to the commission to decide how far they want to go,” said Representative John Katko, Republican of New York, who helped negotiate the bipartisan committee agreement.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesRepresentative John Katko of New York, the top Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, who negotiated the agreement with Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, sought to dispel those concerns and others, calling them unwarranted.“The commission creates the rules as a team,” Mr. Katko said. He also dismissed complaints from Republicans that the scope of the panel was too narrow given civil unrest around the nation, including by left-leaning activists, saying there was no reason the commission could not examine such episodes.“It will be up to the commission to decide how far they want to go,” he said.Such assurances are unlikely to move Mr. McConnell and Mr. McCarthy, who have other reasons for opposing the commission. They believe that Democrats have a vested interest in calling attention to the horrors of Jan. 6, and saw the efforts by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to maintain fencing around the Capitol and keep National Guard troops present as ways to remind Americans of the assault by pro-Trump forces. Given all of that, it is not clear whether the proposal can draw the 10 Republicans whose votes would be needed to advance the bill creating the inquiry past a filibuster in the Senate.But 35 Republicans in the House broke from the leadership and supported the commission. They said it was time for others in their party to do the same in the pursuit of truth.“We need the answers, not political rhetoric,” said Representative Fred Upton of Michigan, one of the 35. “That’s what this bipartisan commission can provide for all of us, for our country. Let the truth shine in.” More

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      Ahead of 2022, House Democrats Aim to Fix Their Polling Problem

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      This time, party leaders hope, they won’t be stunned by Republican voters coming out of the woodwork.Democrats control both houses of Congress — but just barely.Cast your mind back to October 2020, and you might remember expecting things to turn out a bit different. Polls suggested that Democratic House candidates were on track to nearly match their historic margins in the 2018 midterms. But that didn’t happen.For the second presidential cycle in a row, Democrats were stunned by the number of voters who came out in support of Donald J. Trump and his Republican allies down the ballot.This week, the House Democrats’ campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, presented the results of an inquiry into the 2020 election, aimed at understanding what had gone askew for the party — and why, after the corrections that pollsters made in the wake of 2016, surveys were still missing the mark.The report came to two interrelated conclusions, Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, the campaign committee chairman, said in a phone interview today. One is that Trump voters are disproportionately likely to refuse to take a poll, a conclusion echoed in other post-mortem reports that have recently been released by private Democratic pollsters. The other is that Mr. Trump’s presence on the ballot appears to have driven up turnout among the Republican base.“In 2020, what we realized is that the polling error really equaled Trump turnout,” Mr. Maloney said. “So in polling, you’ve got this mistake in the assumption about what the electorate will look like.”Because support for Mr. Trump lines up with a relative unwillingness to be polled, survey researchers may think they’ve reached the right share of, say, rural-dwelling, white men without college degrees. But in fact what they’ve reached is often a Democratic-skewing segment of that demographic.In 2018, when polls were relatively accurate, this didn’t factor in as much, presumably because the most anti-institutional and anti-polling voters were also those who were likely to turn out only if Mr. Trump himself was on the ballot.In 2020, Mr. Trump’s popularity with a typically low-turnout base meant that an upsurge in turnout actually helped Republicans more than Democrats — a rare occurrence. “Because low-propensity voters turned out for Trump in much higher numbers than our low-propensity voters turned out for us, it ripples through the data and has a big effect,” Mr. Maloney said.He has been through this process before: In 2017, after Mr. Trump’s upset win over Hillary Clinton, the congressman, then in his third term, led an inquiry into what had gone wrong for the Democrats. That work helped put him in position for his current role as the head of the party’s House campaign arm.This time around, he put together a team including campaign consultants, academics and other Democratic members of Congress, and they assembled what he called “a first-of-its-kind national polling database,” drawing from over 600 polls of House races, as well as voter-file and other local-level data.Last year, because Democrats underestimated the extent to which Mr. Trump’s presence on the ballot would drive up Republican turnout, their strategists mistakenly thought that a number of seats that had flipped blue in the 2018 midterms would remain safe in 2020. Six Democrats who had won for the first time in 2018 lost their 2020 races by less than two percentage points.Mr. Maloney said he was only half-swayed by arguments that ascribed a lot of impact to Republican attacks on the “defund the police” movement and “democratic socialism.” He said that the messenger had been far more important than the message.“What you realize is that it is true that the lies and distortions about socialism and ‘defund’ carried a punch — no argument from me,” Mr. Maloney said.“But I think the power of those lies has been exaggerated when you understand that Trump,” he added, was responsible for turning out “a bunch of people who were going into the voting booth.”In next year’s midterms, he said that Republicans would be running a risk if they were counting on Trump-level engagement from base voters, given that his name wouldn’t be on the ballot.“It leads you to ask: Will this post-Trump toxicity of QAnon and conspiracy theories and Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene and the attack on the Capitol — will that message work without Trump’s turnout?” Mr. Maloney said. “The research suggests that they have taken too much comfort in the power of messages that were effective, yes, but that were enormously helped by Trump’s power to turn out voters.”Still, he cautioned against taking comfort in the results of the report, which at the end of the day serves as a reminder of just how out-of-reach an entire swath of the population remains — for mainstream pollsters and Democratic candidates alike.On the tactics front, the report concluded that in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, Democratic spending had been heavily tilted away from grass-roots campaigning and toward TV ads, which mostly ran late in the campaign and ended up doing little to tip things in the party’s favor.Going forward, Mr. Maloney said, he plans to keep the 600-poll database in use. The D.C.C.C. has already been using it in special elections this year to analyze messages for effectiveness.“We think there’s a lot to learn, we’re going to learn as we go, and you’re always building the ship as you’re sailing it,” he said. “In this case it’s important that we apply what we’ve learned to as many contexts as we can.”On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is 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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      Republicans' Overthrow of Cheney Creates New Problems for Party

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      As the party ties itself ever tighter to Trumpism, some Republicans worry about the implications for 2022 and far beyond. “I don’t think it’s a healthy moment for the party,” said one congressman.WASHINGTON — As she arrived at the Capitol on Wednesday morning to meet her fate, the soon-to-be deposed No. 3 Republican in the House hinted that she was already eyeing her next role.“The party is going to come back stronger, and I’m going to lead the effort to do it,” Representative Liz Cheney said as she stepped into an elevator and down to her demise.Less than an hour later, accompanied by the acclaimed photographer David Hume Kennerly, a family friend, Ms. Cheney returned to her office for an interview with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie. A sit-down with Bret Baier of Fox News was to follow.The message was unmistakable: Her colleagues may have stripped Ms. Cheney of her post as chair of the House Republican Conference, but they have effectively handed her a new platform and a new role as the leader of the small band of anti-Trump Republicans.Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Republican minority leader, was trying to address a short-term challenge, and in a narrow sense he was successful. He will no longer have to contend with a member of his leadership team who, much to the consternation of him and his colleagues, continues to condemn former President Donald J. Trump’s attempt to overturn the election.By excommunicating Ms. Cheney from her position, however, Republican lawmakers have created a host of new problems for their party.They have underscored the grip that the increasingly unpopular Mr. Trump retains on their ranks; demoralized Republicans and independents who want to move on from his tenure; and, perhaps most significantly, emboldened a household-name conservative to take her case against Trumpism far beyond a Capitol conference room.House Republicans knew what they had done as soon as they emerged from their meeting.“That’s what it looks like when somebody is running for president,” Representative Mike Rogers of Alabama muttered to colleagues as they quickly walked past Ms. Cheney during her remarks in front of the cameras.Other long-serving members, though, were more sobered by the divisions Mr. Trump is still sowing among Republicans and by the megaphone they had just handed Ms. Cheney.“I don’t think it’s a healthy moment for the party,” said Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, himself a former member of Republican leadership. “I do think it enhanced Liz’s stature and position in a way that furthers her message but to the disadvantage of the broader party.”Later Wednesday, Mr. McCarthy complicated matters, and confounded Republicans, by walking out of his first White House meeting with President Biden and pronouncing, “I don’t think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election” — a statement starkly at odds with remarks made by numerous G.O.P. House lawmakers.The best Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma could say about the day was that “the election isn’t today” and “if something like this has to happen, you’d rather have it in an off-year.”These are strange times for Republicans.The traditional indicators suggest they have good reason to be optimistic about the midterm elections next year.The party that doesn’t control the White House usually picks up seats in a president’s first midterm elections, redistricting appears to favor Republicans, and a number of House Democrats are voting with their feet by retiring or running for statewide office.And in both chambers, the bar is low: Republicans need only six seats to win the House and a single seat to take back the Senate.The split screen can be agonizing for party stalwarts.“We’ll win the House, but I worry no good lessons are being learned about Jan. 6 and Trump’s ongoing effort to delegitimize the November elections,” said David Kochel, a veteran G.O.P. strategist.Representative Kevin McCarthy, left, the Republican leader, met with President Biden and other congressional leaders at the White House on Wednesday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesLast week, when the question of whether House Republicans should oust Ms. Cheney was crescendoing, Mr. McHenry and a leading redistricting strategist held a private Zoom call for donors and delivered some much-coveted good news.Unveiling an online map with each state’s expected changes in partisan composition, Mr. McHenry and the strategist, Adam Kincaid, predicted that Republicans could reclaim the House majority in 2022 on their gains from the reapportionment process alone.“The difficulty is to get members to see the long-term advantages we have rather than the short-term struggles and nastiness,” Mr. McHenry said.Most of his colleagues concluded that as long as Ms. Cheney was highlighting Mr. Trump’s conspiracy-mongering, and their own timidity, it would prove difficult to fully capitalize on those long-term advantages.Yet it’s Mr. Trump who, well past Mr. Biden’s first-100-day mark, continues to present Republicans with their most vexing problem. At issue: how to accommodate a former president who’s beloved by their core voters, more detested than ever among the broader electorate and consumed with his defeat and campaign of retribution.“Trump is the one who keeps raising it,” said Representative Fred Upton of Michigan, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump in January.An NBC News poll last month found that Mr. Trump’s favorability rating was down to 32 percent among all voters and 14 percent among independents. Democrats can barely contain their delight over the disarray across the aisle.“Right now should be easiest time for the party out of power to unify in opposition,” Representative Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania said.As Ms. Cheney discovered, Republican leaders will continue to bow to Mr. Trump as long as they’re worried that their rank-and-file voters will punish them for disloyalty.This could prove ominous for Republicans in the most competitive districts and states: They may not be able to survive a primary without him, but they may prove unelectable if they’re linked too closely to him.“There’s not a lot of good options,” said Brendan Buck, a former House Republican leadership aide.Democrats offered a preview of what’s to come, particularly in more blue-leaning terrain, this week in Virginia. Republicans nominated Glenn Youngkin, a former private equity executive who has promoted “election integrity” measures and refused to say Mr. Biden had won the 2020 election fairly, as their standard-bearer for governor. In his statement responding to Mr. Youngkin’s nomination, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the likely Democratic nominee, mentioned Mr. Trump’s name three times in the first three sentences.Given Democrats’ slim control of the House and the newly drawn seats they will have to defend, the long shadow of Trumpism still may not be enough for the party to hold the House in 2022, as even the most hardened Democratic partisans acknowledge. “They have a strong likelihood of taking the House,” Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist, said of Republicans.Yet Mr. Begala argued that the vise Mr. Trump has Republicans in — by which most of them must align with him to win a primary — could brighten Democrats’ chances in the Senate. “Republicans did not cling to Hooverism,” he said. “This is a huge mistake.”In two of the races for the most competitive Democratic-held Senate seats, Arizona and Georgia, as well as a contest for the seat Republicans may have the most difficulty holding, Pennsylvania, Republicans are worried about Mr. Trump’s potential to rally support behind a candidate who can’t win the general election.The fear for some in the party is that 2022 echoes 2010, when Republicans took back the House but fell short in the Senate because they had elevated candidates who could not prevail in November.For many Republicans, though, what’s more alarming about the Cheney-Trump feud are the implications for the party’s long-term health.Whether Ms. Cheney seeks to fight back electorally — perhaps in a symbolic long-shot White House bid in 2024 — she’s plainly comfortable with political martyrdom.In fact, after largely voting with Mr. Trump over the last four years and trying to stay out of his line of fire, she seems to welcome his hatred and the opportunity it offers to change, or at least shame, the party.“If you want leaders who will enable and spread his destructive lies, I’m not your person; you have plenty of others to choose from,” she told her colleagues during the caucus meeting, according to a Republican in the room. “But I promise you this: After today, I will be leading the fight to restore our party and our nation to conservative principles, to defeating socialism, to defending our republic, to making the G.O.P. worthy again of being the party of Lincoln.”Mr. Trump’s most prominent defenders were not exactly worried.“She can run against the president, anyone can try to run against the president, but there’s no way he’s losing,” Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio said after the meeting. “He’s going to win the Republican primary and he’s going to be president if he decides to run.”That’s exactly what worries some longtime Republicans, including a few in the House leadership — that Ms. Cheney’s new mission will only prod Mr. Trump to run again in 2024 to prove his hold on the party.For now, however, most rank-and-file congressional Republicans are planning to do what they’ve done since Mr. Trump emerged as a candidate nearly six years ago — very little.“His policy legacy is popular, but his personality obviously continues to be controversial,” said Representative Andy Barr of Kentucky, urging his party to focus on policy over persona before betraying a touch of self-awareness: “I’m not saying it’s easy.” More

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      Republicans Attack Democrats as Liberal Extremists to Regain Power

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      As Democrats prepare to run on an ambitious economic agenda, Republicans are working to caricature them as liberal extremists out of touch with voters’ values.WASHINGTON — Minutes after a group of congressional Democrats unveiled a bill recently to add seats to the Supreme Court, the Iowa Republican Party slammed Representative Cindy Axne, a Democrat and potential Senate candidate, over the issue.“Will Axne Pack the Court?” was the headline on a statement the party rushed out, saying the move to expand the court “puts our democracy at risk.”The attack vividly illustrated the emerging Republican strategy for an intensive drive to try to take back the House and the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections. Republicans are mostly steering clear of Democrats’ economic initiatives that have proved popular, such as an infrastructure package and a stimulus law that coupled pandemic relief with major expansions of safety-net programs, and are focusing instead on polarizing issues that stoke conservative outrage.In doing so, they are seizing on measures like the court-expansion bill and calls to defund the police — which many Democrats oppose — as well as efforts to provide legal status to undocumented immigrants and grant statehood to the District of Columbia to caricature the party as extreme and out of touch with mainstream America.Republicans are also hammering at issues of race and sexual orientation, seeking to use Democrats’ push to confront systemic racism and safeguard transgender rights as attack lines.The approach comes as President Biden and Democrats, eager to capitalize on their unified control of Congress and the White House, have become increasingly bold about speaking about such issues and promoting a wide array of party priorities that languished during years of Republican rule. It has given Republicans ample fodder for attacks that have proved potent in the past.“They are putting the ball on the tee, handing me the club and putting the wind at my back,” said Jeff Kaufmann, the chairman of the Iowa Republican Party.Democrats argue that Republicans are focusing on side issues and twisting their positions because the G.O.P. has nothing else to campaign on, as Democrats line up accomplishments to show to voters, including the pandemic aid bill that passed without a single Republican vote.“That was very popular, and I can understand why Republicans don’t want to talk about it,” said Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, the new chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “But we’re going to keep reminding folks who was there when they needed them.”The contrast is likely to define the 2022 races. Democrats will sell the ambitious agenda they are pursuing with Mr. Biden, take credit for what they hope will continue to be a surging economy and portray Republicans as an increasingly extreme party pushing Donald J. Trump’s lies about a stolen election. Republicans, who have embraced the false claims of election fraud and plan to use them to energize their conservative base, will complain of “radical” Democratic overreach and try to amplify culture-war issues they think will propel more voters into their party’s arms.A release from the National Republican Senatorial Committee highlighted what it called the “three pillars” of the Democratic agenda: “The Green New Deal, court packing and defund the police,” even though the first two are far from the front-burner issues for Mr. Biden and Democratic leaders and the third is a nonstarter with the bulk of the party’s rank and file.President Biden and Democrats have promoted a wide array of party priorities that languished during years of Republican rule.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesLast week Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, sought to thrust a new issue into the mix, leading Republicans in protest of a proposed Biden administration rule promoting education programs that address systemic racism and the nation’s legacy of slavery. He has taken particular aim at the 1619 Project, a journalism initiative by The New York Times that identifies the year when slaves were first brought to America as a key moment in history.“There are a lot of exotic notions about what are the most important points in American history,” Mr. McConnell said on Monday during an appearance in Louisville. “I simply disagree with the notion that The New York Times laid out there that year 1619 was one of those years.”Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the Republicans’ Senate campaign arm, has been explicit about his strategy.“Now what I talk about every day is do we want open borders? No. Do we want to shut down our schools? No. Do we want men playing in women’s sports? No,” Mr. Scott said during a recent radio interview with the conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt.“Do we want to shut down the Keystone pipeline? No. Do we want voter ID? Yes,” he continued. “And the Democrats are on the opposite side of all those issues, and I’m going to make sure every American knows about it.”Democrats who have fallen victim to the Republican cultural assault concede that it can take a toll and that their party needs to be ready.“It was all these different attacks that were spread all over mainstream media, Spanish-language media, Facebook, WhatsApp,” said Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a former Democratic House member from South Florida who was defeated last year after Republicans portrayed her as a socialist who was anti-police. “A lot of it was misinformation, false attacks.”She said Democrats must begin taking steps now to combat Republican misdirection, warning that their legislative victories might not be enough to appeal to voters.“We can have a great policy record,” she said, “but we need to be present in our communities right now, reaching out to all of our constituencies to tell them we are working for them, that their health and their jobs are our priorities.”On the Supreme Court issue, progressive groups began pushing the idea of an expansion after Mr. Trump was able to appoint three justices, including one to a vacancy that Republicans blocked Barack Obama from filling in the last year of his presidency and another who was fast-tracked right before last year’s election.Hoping to neutralize the issue, some Senate Democrats who will be on the ballot next year have made it clear that they would oppose expanding the court, and the bill seems to be going nowhere at the moment. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would not bring any court bill to the floor until at least after a commission named by Mr. Biden to study the matter issued its report, which is due in six months. The president has been cool to the expansion idea as well.The office of Ms. Axne, the only Democrat in Congress from Iowa, did not respond to requests for reaction to the Republican attacks on her over the court plan. In an interview with MSNBC, Ms. Axne said that she, like Ms. Pelosi, would await the findings of the commission.But Republicans are not waiting to try to score political points. They say more moderate Republican voters and independents who broke with the party during the Trump years have been alienated by the call to enlarge the court and other initiatives being pushed by progressives.One key for Republicans next year will be winning back suburban voters while running campaigns that also energize the significant segment of their supporters who are fiercely loyal to Mr. Trump and want the party to represent his values. That may be a difficult balance to achieve, as evidenced this week when Republican leaders moved to strip Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming of the party’s No. 3 leadership post for calling out the former president’s false election claims.Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said it would matter less what Republicans said about Democrats than what his party was able to accomplish.“The one thing that will win people over, no matter what they do, is whether we can deliver,” he said. “They are doing what appeals to their base, but the voters in the middle, including a good chunk of Republican voters, actually care about getting things done.”Instead of focusing on Democrats’ economic initiatives that have proved popular, Republicans are seizing on measures like a bill to expand the Supreme Court.Al Drago for The New York TimesMr. Peters said Democrats would be better positioned to rebut attacks such as those that falsely portray them as pressing to defund the police after voters had experienced two years of the party holding power.“President Biden and the caucus have been very clear that we are not about defunding the police, we are about making sure police have the resources they need to do their jobs,” he said. “Ultimately, it is about how it is impacting people’s lives.”Mr. Kaufmann, the Republican leader in Iowa, begged to differ. He said he believed the hot-button issues Republicans were homing in on would drive voters more than “the nuance of tax policy and who gets credit for the vaccine.” He is eager to get started.“Some of this stuff is really controversial,” he said. “These are all very bold and clearly delineated issues. I can use this to expand the base and get crossover voters.” More

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      In Turning on Liz Cheney, G.O.P. Bows to Trump’s Election Lies

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      House Republicans were lobbying to replace Representative Liz Cheney, who has vocally called out Donald J. Trump’s lies, with Representative Elise Stefanik, who has embraced them.WASHINGTON — Top Republicans moved swiftly on Wednesday to purge Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming from their leadership ranks for vocally rejecting Donald J. Trump’s election lies, laying the groundwork to install a replacement who has embraced his false claims of voting fraud.The move to push out Ms. Cheney as the No. 3 House Republican in favor of Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, a Trump loyalist who voted to overturn President Biden’s victory in key states, reflected how thoroughly the party’s orthodoxy has come to be defined by fealty to the former president and a tolerance for misinformation, rather than policy principles.“The Republican Party is at a turning point, and Republicans must decide whether we are going to choose truth and fidelity to the Constitution,” Ms. Cheney wrote in a searing opinion piece published in the Washington Post on Wednesday evening. She framed her fate as a referendum on the party’s future and warned that Republicans must “steer away from the dangerous and anti-democratic Trump cult of personality.”Ms. Cheney, 54, is a conservative who rarely defected from Mr. Trump’s policy positions in Congress, but she has refused to absolve him or the party of their roles in fomenting the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol with groundless claims of fraud in the 2020 election. Ms. Stefanik, 36, is more moderate and has more often parted ways with Republicans over her years in Congress, but she has emerged recently as one of Mr. Trump’s most vociferous defenders, willing to indulge and even amplify those claims.After days of quiet discussions about ousting Ms. Cheney, the effort erupted into open Republican warfare on Wednesday morning. Party leaders and Mr. Trump himself publicly boosted Ms. Stefanik, both women issued defiant statements about their intentions and dueling factions in the party competed to frame an episode with broad implications for the 2022 midterm elections and beyond.By day’s end, even President Biden had weighed in on what he called a “mini-rebellion” in the Republican ranks, arguing that the party was plagued by an inability to define itself.The turmoil illustrated how heavily Mr. Trump still looms over the Republican Party, where a pilgrimage to pay homage to the former president at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., has become a required stop for elected leaders and efforts to restrict voting — in the name of his claims of a stolen election — are proliferating around the country.What was clear on Wednesday was that House Republicans were headed for a confrontation, as soon as next week, that now appears likely to result in Ms. Cheney’s firing from her leadership post. Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican, became the highest-ranking figure to call for her removal, endorsing Ms. Stefanik as Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, lobbied behind the scenes on the New Yorker’s behalf.“House Republicans need to be solely focused on taking back the House in 2022 and fighting against Speaker Pelosi and President Biden’s radical socialist agenda,” said Lauren Fine, a spokeswoman for Mr. Scalise. “Elise Stefanik is strongly committed to doing that, which is why Whip Scalise has pledged to support her for conference chair.”Support from Mr. McCarthy, in particular, had helped save Ms. Cheney from a similar challenge in February after her vote to impeach Mr. Trump. But the top leader, like rank-and-file Republicans, had grown increasingly frustrated in recent weeks as Ms. Cheney continued to call out Mr. Trump in media interviews and took shots at her own party for tolerating his falsehoods, including during a party retreat in Orlando last week.By Wednesday, as it became clear that Mr. McCarthy had turned on her, Ms. Cheney was hitting back at him personally, noting that while the leader had initially condemned Mr. Trump for failing to call off his supporters during the Jan. 6 riot, “he has since changed his story.”Mr. Trump, who had been furious at Mr. McCarthy and others for backing Ms. Cheney earlier this year, sought to drive a nail in her political coffin on Wednesday. In a statement, he derided her as a “warmongering fool” and endorsed Ms. Stefanik, whom he called “a far superior choice.”“We want leaders who believe in the Make America Great Again movement, and prioritize the values of America First,” he wrote. “Elise is a tough and smart communicator!”Ms. Stefanik, a fourth-term congresswoman representing New York’s Adirondack region, had initially been wary of appearing as if she was pushing Ms. Cheney out for personal gain. But mere minutes after receiving Mr. Trump’s support, she abandoned any hint of reticence and took her campaign to replace Ms. Cheney public. “We are unified and focused on FIRING PELOSI & WINNING in 2022!” she wrote on Twitter.Seeing votes stacking up against Ms. Cheney, her supporters said she would not fight the drive to dethrone her; unlike in February, she has not tried to rally her allies on or off Capitol Hill. But they said she also did not intend to go quietly.Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, perhaps Ms. Cheney’s most outspoken supporter, demanded on Twitter that every lawmaker “go on the record as to how they will vote on @RepLizCheney in operation #coverupJan6 and concerned donors should take notes.”Ms. Cheney herself sought to appeal to like-minded Republicans in her opinion piece, warning that they risked driving the party toward irrelevance for short-term gain.“While embracing or ignoring Trump’s statements might seem attractive to some for fund-raising and political purposes, that approach will do profound long-term damage to our party and our country,” Ms. Cheney wrote. “Trump has never expressed remorse or regret for the attack of Jan. 6 and now suggests that our elections, and our legal and constitutional system, cannot be trusted to do the will of the people. This is immensely harmful.”Yet she found few other Republicans willing to defend her publicly, even among those who forcefully condemned Mr. Trump after Jan. 6 and sought to wrestle control of the party away from him.Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader who vocally stood behind Ms. Cheney in the past and had previously made clear he wanted to purge Mr. Trump from the party, declined to address her predicament on Wednesday.“One hundred percent of my focus is on stopping this administration,” he said, repeating the sentence almost word for word in response to follow-up questions about the move to oust Ms. Cheney.Weighing in on Wednesday from the White House, Mr. Biden, who has sought out Republican support to pass a series of sprawling infrastructure plans, expressed regret about what he characterized as a party at risk of imploding.“We badly need a Republican Party,” Mr. Biden said. “We need a two-party system. It’s not healthy to have a one-party system.”In rallying around Ms. Stefanik, Republicans were turning to a figure who has embodied elements of the party’s transformation since she arrived in the House in 2015, as the youngest woman ever elected to Congress at the time. A Harvard graduate and former aide to President George W. Bush and Speaker Paul D. Ryan, the 2012 vice-presidential nominee, Ms. Stefanik has shifted easily from the old Republican establishment to a new one forming around Mr. Trump.Representative Liz Cheney has refused to absolve Mr. Trump or the Republican Party of their roles in fomenting the assault on the Capitol.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesWhile she began as one of the more moderate members of the Republican Conference — her voting record is far less conservative than Ms. Cheney’s, according to the conservative Heritage Foundation — Ms. Stefanik became one of Mr. Trump’s most strident loyalists. That role has buoyed her rapid ascension and brought in millions of dollars in campaign donations.In a lengthy, error-riddled statement published on Jan. 6 explaining why she would vote to invalidate the election, Ms. Stefanik repeated a number of Mr. Trump’s baseless claims of widespread improprieties, including incorrectly claiming that “more than 140,000 votes came from underage, deceased and otherwise unauthorized voters” in one county in Georgia alone.Her metamorphosis mirrored that of her upstate New York district, where voters had supported a string of Democratic presidential candidates — including Barack Obama twice — before throwing their backing to Mr. Trump in 2016.Yet Ms. Stefanik has also been at the forefront of her party’s efforts to improve its standing and representation among women at a time when Mr. Trump’s caustic style threatened to alienate them and further narrow Republicans’ appeal. Her political action committee supported several of the current freshman class’s rising stars, all of them women who almost single-handedly secured the party’s impressive gains against Democrats in last year’s elections.“I know I am here in Congress because Republican women like Elise Stefanik paved the way,” said Representative Young Kim, Republican of California. “She saw the importance of helping women candidates to make it out of the primary if Republicans were serious about electing more women and growing the G.O.P. base.”Her allies argue that Ms. Stefanik’s ascendancy will bolster the party as Republicans seek to win back the House and the Senate in the midterm elections, describing her as a disciplined messenger with easy mastery over policy.“They are going to find a very smart, charming and confident younger member of Congress,” said Michael Steel, a Republican strategist who worked with Ms. Stefanik as an aide to Mr. Ryan in 2012. “And I think that is a good thing for the Republican Party right now.”In a glowing blurb for Time magazine’s “100 Next” list in 2019, Mr. Ryan, who has also backed Ms. Cheney, hailed Ms. Stefanik as the future of the Republican Party.“Like any good architect, Elise sees around the corner,” Mr. Ryan wrote. “She is thinking about the big picture when the crowd is scrambling to capitalize on the controversy of the day.” More

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      Why Democratic Departures From the House Have Republicans Salivating

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      A growing number of Democrats in battleground districts are either retiring or leaving to seek higher office, imperiling the party’s control of the House and President Biden’s expansive agenda. WASHINGTON — With 18 months left before the midterms, a spate of Democratic departures from the House is threatening to erode the party’s slim majority in the House and imperil President Biden’s far-reaching policy agenda.In the past two months, five House Democrats from competitive districts have announced they won’t seek re-election next year. They include Representative Charlie Crist of Florida, who on Tuesday launched a campaign for governor, and Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio, who will run for the Senate seat being vacated by Rob Portman. Three other Democrats will leave vacant seats in districts likely to see significant change once they are redrawn using the data from the 2020 Census, and several more are weighing bids for higher office.An early trickle of retirements from House members in competitive districts is often the first sign of a coming political wave. In the 2018 cycle, 48 House Republicans didn’t seek re-election — and 14 of those vacancies were won by Democrats. Now Republicans are salivating over the prospect of reversing that dynamic and erasing the Democrats six-seat advantage.“The two biggest headaches of any cycle are redistricting and retirements and when you have both in one cycle it’s a migraine,” said former Representative Steve Israel of New York, who led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2012 and 2014.Democrats face other vexing challenges as well: Republican legislators control redistricting in key states where they can draw boundaries in their favor. Reapportionment alone — with red states picking up additional seats — could provide Republicans the seats they need to control the House. And historic political trends almost always work against the president’s party in midterm elections.The prospect of losing the House majority adds a greater level of urgency for the Biden Administration and congressional Democrats eager to push through expansive policy proposals. It also raises questions about the staying power of Democrats, after an election in which they barely ousted an unpopular president while suffering a surprising number of downballot losses in races they expected to win. The results appeared to blunt the momentum the party generated in 2018 when it picked up 41 seats in the House. Democrats’ failure to qualify for the runoff in a Dallas-area special House election Saturday only added to the party’s anxiety. While Republicans were always heavy favorites to retain the seat, which became vacant when Representative Ron Wright died from the coronavirus, not placing a candidate among the top two finishers is likely to hurt recruiting efforts, Democratic officials said.This could be just the beginning of the Democratic departures: The high season for congressional retirements typically comes in early fall after members spend the August recess taking the political temperature of their districts. Further complicating the picture for Democrats is the Census Bureau’s months-long delay in completing the reapportionment process and delivering to states the final demographic and block-level population data. That has left the House committees in a state of suspended animation, unable in many instances to recruit candidates and devise electoral strategy. While each day brings announcements of new 2022 candidates, many are not being specific about which district they’re running in and dozens more are waiting until the fall, when they see the new boundaries, to decide whether they will formalize their campaigns.“It’s like going to war on a battlefield but you don’t know where you’re fighting, when you’re fighting or who you’re fighting,” Mr. Israel said.Representative Charlie Crist, Democrat of Florida, announced on Tuesday that he would run for governor.Chris O’Meara/Associated PressThe largest concentration of competitive and vacant House seats may be in Central Florida. In addition to Mr. Crist, who represents St. Petersburg, two other Democratic representatives, Stephanie Murphy of Winter Park and Val Demings of Orlando, are weighing runs for statewide office. All three now hold seats in districts President Biden carried handily last November, but with Republicans in control of Florida’s redistricting process, the state’s congressional map is likely to soon be much better for Republicans than it is now.Each of them would be exceedingly expensive for a new candidate to run in because of the high cost of media in Florida, further stretching the party’s resources in what is expected to be a difficult election cycle.“You have to assume that because Republicans get to control reapportionment, that it’s not going to get any easier,” said Adam Goodman, a Florida-based Republican media strategist, who predicted the G.O.P. would take two of the three seats now held by Mr. Crist, Ms. Demings and Ms. Murphy. “The Crist seat — it took a Charlie Crist type of person to hold that seat in ’20. The Democrats won’t have that person this time.” Nikki Fried, Florida’s agriculture commissioner who is weighing her own run for governor, echoed that assessment as she tweaked Mr. Crist at her own news conference that competed for attention with his campaign launch. “It’s a time when we need his voice and his vote up in Washington, D.C.,” Ms. Fried said. “His seat is one that only probably Charlie Crist can hold on to, so really would like to have encouraged him to stay in Congress.”Democratic strategists said it is hardly unusual for members of Congress to seek a promotion to statewide office. “A lot of us lived through 2009 and 2010 and we’re not seeing that level of rush to the exits that we did then,” said Ian Russell, a former D.C.C.C. official. “It’s not surprising that members of Congress look to run statewide, that has been happening since the founding of the republic and doesn’t indicate a bigger thing.” Representative Tim Ryan, Democrat of Ohio, will run for an open Senate seat next year.Sarah Silbiger/ReutersRepublicans, optimistic about being on offense for the first time since 2014, cited potential pickup opportunities in western Pennsylvania, where Representative Conor Lamb is weighing a run for the state’s open Senate contest; New Hampshire, where Representative Chris Pappas may run for governor rather than seek re-election to a district likely to become more Republican; and Iowa, where Representative Cindy Axne told the Storm Lake Times last month that her first two options for 2022 are running for Senate or governor. “House Democrats are sprinting to the exits because they know their chances of retaining the majority grow dimmer by the day,” said Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. Representative Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona, who last year entered an alcohol rehabilitation program after falling on the Washington Metro, also chose not to seek re-election. Representative Cheri Bustos, whose district covering a swath of Central and Northwest Illinois swung to Donald J. Trump, announced her retirement last week. Last year Ms. Bustos led the House Democrats’ campaign arm through a disappointing cycle, when the party lost 13 seats after they expected to flip Republican-held districts. Along with Florida, Republicans are expected to draw themselves more favorable congressional districts in Georgia, where Democrats hold two competitive districts in Atlanta’s northern suburbs, and Texas, which will add two new seats for the 2022 elections. Mr. Ryan’s Democratic district in northeast Ohio is likely to disappear when Ohio Republicans draw a map with one fewer House seat, and Representative Filemon Vela of Texas, whose Rio Grande Valley district became eight percentage points more Republican from 2016 to 2020, chose retirement rather than compete in what was likely to be his first competitive re-election bid. “This is where Democratic underperformance in 2020 really begins to hinder Democrats downballot,” said Ken Spain, a veteran of the House Republicans’ campaign arm. “Republicans fared well at the state level last cycle and now they’re going to reap the benefits of many of those red states drawing a disproportionate number of the seats.” Because Republicans hold majorities in more state legislatures, and Democrats and voters in key states such as California, Colorado and Virginia have delegated mapmaking authority to nonpartisan commissions, the redistricting process alone could shift up to five or six seats to Republicans, potentially enough to seize the majority if they don’t flip any other Democratic-held seats. Democrats are expected to press their advantages where they can, particularly in Illinois and New York, states that lost one House district each in last week’s reapportionment. New York’s new map is certain to take a seat from Republicans in Upstate New York, and one Republican-held seat in Central Illinois may be redrawn to be Democratic while another is eliminated. For the moment there are more House Republicans, six, not seeking re-election, than the five House Democrats retiring or running for aiming for a promotion to statewide office. But of the Republicans, only Representatives Lee Zeldin and Tom Reed of New York represent districts that are plausibly competitive in 2022. With Democrats holding supermajority control of the New York State Legislature, Mr. Zeldin, who is running for governor, and Mr. Reed, who retired while apologizing for a past allegation of groping, could both see their districts drawn to become far more competitive for Democrats. Reid J. Epstein reported from Washington and Patricia Mazzei reported from Miami. More