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      As Republicans Campaign on Crime, Racism Is a New Battlefront

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      As Republicans seize on crime as one of their leading issues in the final weeks of the midterm elections, they have deployed a series of attack lines, terms and imagery that have injected race into contests across the country.In states as disparate as Wisconsin and New Mexico, ads have labeled a Black candidate as “different” and “dangerous” and darkened a white man’s hands as they portrayed him as a criminal.Nowhere have these tactics risen to overtake the debate in a major campaign, but a survey of competitive contests, particularly those involving Black candidates, shows they are so widespread as to have become an important weapon in the 2022 Republican arsenal.In Wisconsin, where Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who is Black, is the Democratic nominee for Senate, a National Republican Senatorial Committee ad targeting him ends by juxtaposing his face with those of three Democratic House members, all of them women of color, and the words “different” and “dangerous.”In a mailer sent to several state House districts in New Mexico, the state Republican Party darkened the hands of a barber shown giving a white child a haircut, next to the question, “Do you want a sex offender cutting your child’s hair?”And in North Carolina, an ad against Cheri Beasley, the Democratic candidate for Senate, who is Black, features the anguished brother of a white state trooper killed a quarter-century ago by a Black man whom Ms. Beasley, then a public defender, represented in court. The brother incredulously says that Ms. Beasley, pleading for the killer’s life, said “he was actually a good person.”Appeals to white fears and resentments are an old strategy in American elections, etched into the country’s political consciousness, with ads like George Bush’s ad using the Black convict Willie Horton against Michael Dukakis in 1988, and Jesse Helms’s 1990 commercial showing a white man’s hands to denounce his Black opponent’s support for “quotas.”If the intervening decades saw such tactics become harder to defend, the rise of Donald J. Trump shattered taboos, as he spoke of “rapist” immigrants and “shithole countries” in Africa and the Caribbean. But while Republicans quietly stood by advertising that Democrats called racist in 2018, this year, they have responded with defiance, saying they see nothing untoward in their imagery and nothing to apologize for.“This is stupid, but not surprising,” said Chris Hartline, a spokesman for the Republican Senatorial Committee, whose ads in North Carolina and Wisconsin have prompted accusations of racism. “We’re using their own words and their own records. If they don’t like it, they should invent a time machine, go back in time and not embrace dumb-ass ideas that voters are rejecting.”Amid pandemic-era crime increases, legitimate policy differences have emerged between the two parties over gun violence, easing access to bail and funding police budgets.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.Florida Governor’s Debate: Gov. Ron DeSantis and Charlie Crist, his Democratic challenger,  had a rowdy exchange on Oct. 24. Here are the main takeaways from their debate.Strategy Change: In the final stretch before the elections, some Democrats are pushing for a new message that acknowledges the economic uncertainty troubling the electorate.Last Dance?: As she races to raise money to hand on to her embattled House majority, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is in no mood to contemplate a Democratic defeat, much less her legacy.Secretary of State Races: Facing G.O.P. candidates who spread lies about the 2020 election, Democrats are outspending them 57-to-1 on TV ads for their secretary of state candidates. It still may not be enough.But some of the Republican arguments could scarcely be called serious policy critiques.This month, a Republican senator, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, said Democrats favored reparations “for the people that do the crime,” suggesting the movement to compensate the descendants of slavery was about paying criminals. And Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, made explicit reference to “replacement theory,” the racist notion that nonwhite, undocumented immigrants are “replacing” white Americans, saying, “Joe Biden’s five million illegal aliens are on the verge of replacing you.”Such language, as well as ads portraying chaos by depicting Black rioters and Hispanic immigrants illegally racing across the border, have prompted Democrats and their allies to accuse Republicans of resorting to racist fear tactics.“I think that white people should be speaking out. I think that Black people should be speaking out,” said Chris Larson, a Democratic state senator in Wisconsin who is white and has denounced Republican ads against Mr. Barnes. “I think that all people should be speaking out when there is vile racism at work.”When former President Donald J. Trump rallied for Representative Ted Budd in Wilmington, N.C., last month, he made a joke about “the N-word,” saying it meant “nuclear.”Jonathan Ernst/ReutersDemocrats themselves are dealing with intraparty racial strife in Los Angeles caused by a leaked recording in which Latino leaders are heard using racist terms and disparaging words toward their Black constituents.But it is Republicans’ nationwide focus on crime that is fueling many of the attacks that Democrats say cross a line into racism.The conservative group Club for Growth Action, backed by the billionaires Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, Diane Hendricks and Jeff Yass, pointed with pride to the crime ads it has run against Ms. Beasley. “Democrats across the country are getting called out for their soft-on-crime policies,” said the group’s president, former Representative David McIntosh. “Now that their poor decisions have caught up with them, they’re relying on the liberal media to call criticisms of their politically inconvenient record racist, and it won’t work.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.The 2022 midterms include the most diverse slate of Republican congressional candidates ever, competing against Democratic candidates who would add to the House’s representatives of color and improve on the Senate’s lack of diversity. But it is also the first cycle since Mr. Trump’s presidency, when he set a sharply different tone for his party on race.It was at a rally with Mr. Trump in Arizona this month that Mr. Tuberville and Ms. Greene made their incendiary comments. At another rally in Wilmington, N.C., late last month with a Senate Republican candidate, Representative Ted Budd, Mr. Trump told the audience that President Vladimir Putin of Russia had mentioned “the N-word. You know what the N-word is?” When the audience hooted, he corrected them, “No, no, no, it’s the nuclear word.”Representative Alma Adams, Democrat of North Carolina, who is Black, said, “Donald Trump is fueling this fire.”Still, a rise in violence recently has given openings to both parties.Cheri Beasley, a Democratic candidate for Senate in North Carolina, addressed supporters and patrons during a campaign stop in Charlotte last month.Logan R. Cyrus for The New York TimesIn North Florida, a flier distributed by a Democratic group depicts the face of a Black Republican, Corey Simon, who is challenging a white state senator, on what Republicans have called a shooting target and Democrats call a school easel, with bullets shown strewn underneath. The message was about gun control and school shootings, staples of Democratic campaigns, and identical mailers targeted two other Republican candidates, who are white and Latino.Republicans say their attacks are capturing voters’ anxieties, not feeding them. Defending Mr. Tuberville, a former football coach at Auburn University, Byron Donalds of Florida said crime had become a leading issue because of “soft-on-crime policies and progressive prosecutors in liberal cities.” Mr. Donalds, one of two Black Republicans in the House, added, “As a coach and mentor to countless Black men, Tommy Tuberville has done more to advance Black lives than most people, especially in the Democratic Party.”Ms. Greene and Mr. Tuberville did not respond to requests for comment.Then there is the Republican mailer in Wisconsin that clearly darkened the face of Mr. Barnes.“If you can’t hear it when they pick up the bullhorn that used to be a dog whistle, you can see it with your own eyes,” said Mr. Larson, the Wisconsin state senator.The darkening of white hands in a stock photo of a barber on a Republican mailer in New Mexico prompted outrage there. The New Mexico Republican Party said that Democrats were trying to divert attention from their record on crime. A Republican leader in the state House of Representatives, Rod Montoya, told The Albuquerque Journal that the hands were darkened to make the fliers “gloomy.”Some liberal groups do seem intent on discerning racism in any message on crime. After Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, who is white, ran an ad opening with a clip of Representative Cori Bush of Missouri, who is Black, calling for defunding the police, Iowa Democrats called it racist because Ms. Reynolds’s Democratic challenger, Deidre DeJear, is also Black, and, as she has said, bears a resemblance to Ms. Bush.Progressive groups say their concern is merited.“Crime in America has always, at least in modern times, been racially charged,” said Christopher Scott, chief political officer at the liberal group Democracy for America. “The ads aren’t getting to policy points. They are images playing on their base’s fears.”But the policy differences between the two parties are real. Democrats have pushed for cashless bail, saying the current system that requires money to free a defendant before trial is unfair to poor people. Republicans say cash bail is meant to get criminals off the streets. Democrats have expressed solidarity with racial justice protesters and helped bail out some who were arrested after demonstrations over the murder of George Floyd turned destructive. Republicans have said those actions condoned and encouraged lawlessness.Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene made explicit reference to “replacement theory,” the racist notion that nonwhite, undocumented immigrants are “replacing” white Americans.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesSkin color is beside the point, said Jonathan Felts, a spokesman for Mr. Budd’s campaign in North Carolina, as he defended the blitz of crime advertising against Ms. Beasley. One ad toggles between images of white children — victims of brutal crimes — and the face of Ms. Beasley, her expression haughty or bemused.“The images used in the ad match up to the victims of the criminals she went easy on,” Mr. Felts said. “Are you suggesting the ad makers should make up fake victims, or are you suggesting she shouldn’t be held accountable for her judicial and legal record?”In fact, the judicial and legal records portrayed in at least one of the ads have been determined to be distorted, at best. The first version of the Republican Senatorial Committee’s ad, which portrayed child crime victims from different races, was pulled down by North Carolina television stations in June after they agreed that some of the assertions were false. In a later version, the committee made slight word changes to satisfy the channels but added a more overt racial contrast.“All communities are concerned about public safety,” said State Representative Brandon Lofton, a Democratic Black lawmaker whose South Charlotte district is largely white. “There is a way to talk about it that is truthful” and does not cross racial lines, he said.The campaigns themselves have steered clear of charging racism.Dory MacMillan, a spokeswoman for Ms. Beasley, said, “Our race remains a dead heat, despite Congressman Budd and his allies’ spending millions of dollars to distort Cheri’s record of public service.”In Wisconsin, a spokeswoman for Mr. Barnes, Maddy McDaniel, similarly declined to go further than to say that “the G.O.P.’s fear-mongering playbook failed them last cycle, and it will fail again.”Mr. Barnes, for his part, seemed to make playful use of his portrayal in one of the Republican attack ads as “different” during his first debate with Senator Ron Johnson, the two-term incumbent. He was, indeed, different, Mr. Barnes said, “We don’t have enough working-class people in the United States Senate.” More

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      In Midterm TV Ad Wars, Sticker Shock Costs Republicans

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      Football fans in Las Vegas tuning into the Raiders game on Oct. 2 had to sit through multiple political ads, including one from Nevada’s endangered Democratic senator and another from a Republican super PAC trying to defeat her.The ads were each 30 seconds — but the costs were wildly different.The Democratic senator, Catherine Cortez Masto, paid $21,000. The Republican super PAC paid $150,000.That $129,000 disparity for a single ad — an extra $4,300 per second — is one sizable example of how Republican super PACs are paying a steep premium to compete on the airwaves with Democratic candidates, a trend that is playing out nationwide with cascading financial consequences for the House and Senate battlefield. Hour after hour in state after state, Republicans are paying double, triple, quadruple and sometimes even 10 times more than Democrats for ads on the exact same programs.One reason is legal and beyond Republicans’ control. But the other is linked to the weak fund-raising of Republican candidates this year and the party’s heavy dependence on billionaire-funded super PACs.Political candidates are protected under a federal law that allows them to pay the lowest price available for broadcast ads. Super PACs have no such protections, and Republicans have been more reliant on super PACs this year because their candidates have had trouble fund-raising. So Democrats have been the ones chiefly benefiting from the mandated low pricing, and Republicans in many top races have been at the mercy of the exorbitant rates charged by television stations as the election nears.The issue may seem arcane. But strategists in both parties say it has become hugely consequential in midterm elections that will determine which party controls Congress.From Labor Day through early this week, Senate Republican super PACs and campaigns spent more than their opponents on the airwaves in key races in Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and New Hampshire, according to data from the media-tracking firm AdImpact. But when measured in rating points — a metric of how many people saw the ads — the Democratic ads were seen more times in each of those states, according to two Democratic officials tracking media purchases.In other words, Democrats got more for less.“One of the challenges we face in taking back the House is the eye-popping differences between what Democrat incumbents and Republican challengers are raising — and what that affords them in terms of different advertising rates,” said Dan Conston, who heads the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with House Republican leadership that has raised $220 million and is one of the nation’s biggest television spenders.The price differences can be jarring.In Ohio, Representative Tim Ryan, the Democratic Senate candidate, paid $650 for a recent ad on the 6 a.m. newscast of the local Fox affiliate. The leading Republican super PAC paid $2,400.In Nevada, Ms. Cortez Masto paid $720 for an ad on CBS’s Sunday news show. Another Republican super PAC, the Club for Growth, paid $12,000.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Attacks by Doug Mastriano, the G.O.P. nominee, on the Jewish school where Josh Shapiro, the Democratic candidate, sends his children have set off an outcry about antisemitic signaling.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but some conservative Christians have learned to tolerate the behavior of those who advance their cause.And in Arizona, Senator Mark Kelly has been paying $2,000 per spot on the evening news on the ABC affiliate. A Republican super PAC is paying $5,000.An analysis by The New York Times of Federal Communications Commission records, along with interviews with media buyers in both parties, shows just how much the different prices that candidates and super PACs pay is influencing the 2022 midterm landscape.“What matters at the end of the day is what number of people see an ad, which isn’t measured in dollars,” said Tim Cameron, a Republican strategist and media buyer, referring to the rating-points metric.The partisan split between advertising purchased by candidates versus super PACs is vast.In Senate races, Democratic candidates have reserved or spent nearly $170 million more than Republican candidates in the general election on television, radio and digital ads, according to AdImpact.The price that super PACs pay is driven by supply and demand, and television stations charge Republicans and Democrats the same prices when they book at the same time. So Democrats have super PACs that pay higher rates, too. But the party is less reliant on them. Republicans have a nearly $95 million spending edge over Democrats among super PACs and other outside groups involved in Senate races, according to AdImpact. That money just doesn’t go nearly as far.Several candidates who were weak at raising funds won Republican nominations in key Senate races, including in New Hampshire, Arizona and Ohio, and that has hobbled the party.“We’re working hard to make up the gap where we can,” said Steven Law, the head of the leading Senate Republican super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund.But Democrats — buoyed by robust donations through ActBlue, the Democratic online donation-processing platform — are announcing eye-popping money hauls ahead of Saturday’s third-quarter filing deadline that are helping them press their advantage. Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia raised $26.3 million. In Pennsylvania, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Senate nominee, raised $22 million. Mr. Ryan raised $17.2 million. Ms. Cortez Masto raised $15 million.“It’s a simple fact that candidates pay lower rates than outside groups, which means Democrats’ ActBlue cash tsunami could wipe out an underfunded Republican,” Mr. Law said.Republicans are hardly cash-poor. The Senate Leadership Fund alone has reserved more than $170 million in ads since Labor Day and raised more than $1 million per day in the third quarter. But the ad rates are eroding that money’s buying power.In the top nine Senate battlegrounds that drew significant outside spending, Republicans spent about 6.66 percent more on ads than Democrats from Labor Day through earlier this week, according to one of the Democratic officials tracking the media buys. But the Democratic money had gone further when measured by rating points, outpacing Republican ad viewership by 8 percent.In Nevada, for instance, the super PAC that paid $150,000 for the single commercial on Oct. 2, Our American Century, has been funded chiefly by a $10 million contribution by Steve Wynn, the casino magnate. Yet for a comparable price of $161,205, Ms. Cortez Masto was able to air 79 ads that week on the same station: daily spots each on the local news, daytime soap operas, “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune” as well as in prime time — plus the Oct. 2 football ad, Federal Communications Commission records show.Las Vegas is perhaps the most congested market for political ads in the nation, with multiple contested House races, a swing Senate contest and a tight governor’s election, and some ballot measures. Both Democratic and Republican media-buying sources said the rates for super PACs had been up to 10 times that of candidates in some recent weeks.In a recent one-week period, Ms. Cortez Masto spent $197,225 on 152 spots on the local Fox station, an average price of $1,300 per 30 seconds. The Club for Growth Action, a Republican super PAC, spent $473,000 for only 52 spots — an average price of nearly $9,100 per 30 seconds.Republicans feel they have no choice but to pony up.“Republicans are facing a hard-money deficit, and it’s up to groups like Club for Growth Action to help make up the difference in these key races,” said David McIntosh, the president of the Club for Growth.Some strategists have privately pressed super PACs to invest more heavily in digital advertising, where candidate rates are not protected. Super PACs pay similar amounts and sometimes can even negotiate discounts because of their volume of ads. But old habits, and the continued influence of television on voters, means much of the funds are still going to broadcast.“Super PACs have one charter: to win races. And so they spend there because they have to,” said Evan Tracey, a Republican media buyer. “They’re not running a business in the sense that shareholders are going to be outraged that they have to spend more for the same asset. It’s a cost of doing business.”The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which has faced financial problems this year, cut millions of its reserved television “independent expenditures,” which are booked at the same rate as super PACs. Instead, in a creative and penny-pinching move, the committee rebooked some of that money in concert with Senate campaigns, splitting costs through a complex mechanism that limits what the ads can say — candidates can be mentioned during only half the airtime — but receives the better, candidate ad rates.Still, in Arizona, some of the canceled reservations from top Republican groups have further exacerbated the ad-rate disparity in the Senate race. That is because the party gave back early reservations only to have other super PACs step in — and pay even more.For instance, the Senate committee originally had reserved two ads for that Oct. 2 football game for $30,000 each and the Senate Leadership Fund had reserved another for $30,000. All three were canceled.Instead, a new Republican super PAC, the Sentinel Action Fund, booked two ads during the same game but had to pay $100,000 because rates had risen — forking over $10,000 more for one fewer ad.Data from one Republican media-buying firm showed that in Arizona, ads supporting Mr. Kelly, the Democrat, amounted to 84 percent of what viewers saw even though the pro-Kelly side accounted for only 74 percent of the dollars spent.The Sentinel Action Fund was paying $1,775 per rating point — a measurement of viewership — while Mr. Kelly’s campaign was spending around $300 per point, according to the Republican data. Blake Masters, Mr. Kelly’s Republican opponent, was receiving a price close to Mr. Kelly’s but could afford only a tiny fraction of the ad budget (around $411,000, compared with Mr. Kelly’s $3.3 million for a recent two-week period).“The disparity between Democratic campaigns’ strong fund-raising and Republican campaigns’ weak fund-raising is forcing the G.O.P. super PACs to make difficult decisions even though there continues to be a deluge of outside money on their side,” said David Bergstein, the communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.In Ohio, the Senate Leadership Fund announced in August that it was making a $28 million television and radio reservation to prop up J.D. Vance, the best-selling author and first-time Republican candidate who emerged from the primary with a limited fund-raising apparatus.But despite outspending the Democratic candidate in dollars — the super PAC paid $3 million last week for ads, compared with Mr. Ryan’s nearly $1.5 million — Republicans were still at a disadvantage: Mr. Ryan’s campaign was sometimes getting more airtime, according to media buyers and F.C.C. records.The Republican super PAC was paying four or five times more than Mr. Ryan for ads on the same shows. And the sticker shock on big sports events is the most intense: On WJW, the Fox affiliate in Cleveland, last week’s Big Ten college football game cost Mr. Ryan $3,000 — and $30,000 for the Senate Leadership Fund. More

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      Watchdog Group Accuses Republicans of Breaking Campaign-Finance Law

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      A campaign watchdog group has filed a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission against the campaign arm of Senate Republicans, accusing the group of breaking federal law by using money that is supposed to be earmarked for legal expenses on campaign ads instead.The complaint was filed this week by the Campaign Legal Center after the unusual use of walled-off legal funds by the National Republican Senatorial Committee was first reported by The New York Times this month. End Citizens United, a group that advocates changes to campaign finance law, joined the complaint. In July, the Senate Republican campaign arm paid for $1 million in political advertising using money that, under campaign finance law, is meant to be for legal expenses. The spending, which appears to have been used for ads in the Senate races in Colorado and Washington State, is part of more than $3 million in media-related spending through the Republican committee’s legal fund, according to federal filings in 2021 and 2022.Senator Rick Scott of Florida oversaw an enormous wave of spending on digital ads at the National Republican Senatorial Committee.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesIn addition to the formal complaint by the watchdog group, the Senate Democratic campaign arm has asked the Federal Election Commission for a separate ruling on the legality of the practice, in an effort to spur the notoriously slow-moving agency into faster action.In its request to the F.E.C., the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee asked for legal guidance on whether money raised specifically into such a legal fund can be used to pay for television advertising — something the committee’s lawyer wrote is likely to be illegal.“It is beyond the imagination of the D.S.C.C. to understand why the N.R.S.C. believes that candidate attack ads are expenses incurred in connection with a legal proceeding,” Jacquelyn K. Lopez, a lawyer representing the Democratic committee, wrote to the F.E.C. in the request, which was filed Tuesday afternoon.Federal law stipulates that money raised for such an account, to which individual donors are allowed to give three times as much as they can to the main committee fund-raising vehicle, can be used only for “the preparation for and the conduct of election recounts and contests and other legal proceedings.”Chris Hartline, a spokesman for the Republican committee, declined to comment on the request. Previously, he has said the committee will “always find the most effective, efficient and creative way to get our message out and stretch every dollar, in accordance with the law.”The Senate Democratic group is seeking an advisory opinion from the F.E.C. rather than filing a complaint about the Republican practice, in hopes of receiving a response before the midterm elections in November. The commission, divided evenly between Democratic and Republican members, is a slow-moving body that rarely scolds a political committee or candidate in the closing weeks of a campaign.The F.E.C. would typically have 60 days to respond to such an advisory opinion request, but because the general election is happening in less than seven weeks, the Democratic lawyers requested a response “within 20 days.”David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Senate Democratic committee, said it had not filed a complaint against the Republican practice because it hoped to receive an answer as soon as possible. The Federal Election Commission can take years to resolve formal grievances.But by seeking an advisory opinion instead of filing a complaint, the Democrats also leave open the possibility that in the future, they could engage in the same practice of using legal money to subsidize television advertising. More

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      How a Record Cash Haul Vanished for Senate Republicans

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      The campaign arm of Senate Republicans had collected $181.5 million by the end of July — but spent 95 percent of it. A big investment in digital, and hyperaggressive tactics, have not paid off.It was early 2021, and Senator Rick Scott wanted to go big. The new chairman of the Senate Republican campaign arm had a mind to modernize the place. One of his first decisions was to overhaul how the group raised money online.Mr. Scott installed a new digital team, spearheaded by Trump veterans, and greenlit an enormous wave of spending on digital ads, not to promote candidates but to discover more small contributors. Soon, the committee was smashing fund-raising records. By the summer of 2021, Mr. Scott was boasting about “historic investments in digital fund-raising that are already paying dividends.”A year later, some of that braggadocio has vanished — along with most of the money.The National Republican Senatorial Committee has long been a critical part of the party apparatus, recruiting candidates, supporting them with political infrastructure, designing campaign strategy and buying television ads.By the end of July, the committee had collected a record $181.5 million — but had already spent more than 95 percent of what it had brought in. The Republican group entered August with just $23.2 million on hand, less than half of what the Senate Democratic committee had ahead of the final intense phase of the midterm elections.Now top Republicans are beginning to ask: Where did all the money go?The answer, chiefly, is that Mr. Scott’s enormous gamble on finding new online donors has been a costly financial flop in 2022, according to a New York Times analysis of federal records and interviews with people briefed on the committee’s finances. Today, the N.R.S.C. is raising less than before Mr. Scott’s digital splurge.Party leaders, including Senator Mitch McConnell, are fretting aloud that Republicans could squander their shot at retaking the Senate in 2022, with money one factor as some first-time candidates have struggled to gain traction. The N.R.S.C. was intended to be a party bulwark yet found itself recently canceling some TV ad reservations in key states.The story of how the Senate G.O.P. committee went from breaking financial records to breaking television reservations, told through interviews with more than two dozen Republican officials, actually begins with the rising revenues Mr. Scott bragged about last year.One fund-raising scheme by the N.R.S.C. involved text messages that asked provocative questions, including “Should Biden resign?” A request for cash that followed did not reveal where the money was going.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe committee had squeezed donors with hyperaggressive new tactics. And all the money coming in obscured just how much the committee was spending advertising for donors. Then inflation sapped online giving for Republicans nationwide. And the money that had rolled in came at an ethical price.One fund-raising scheme used by the Senate committee, which has not previously been disclosed, involved sending an estimated millions of text messages that asked provocative questions — “Should Biden resign?” — followed by a request for cash: “Reply YES to donate.” Those who replied “YES” had their donation processed immediately, though the text did not reveal in advance where the money was going.Privately, some Republicans complained the tactic was exploitative. WinRed, the party’s main donation-processing platform, recently stepped in and took the unusual step of blocking the committee from engaging in the practice, according to four people familiar with the matter.The texts had been part of a concerted push that successfully juiced fund-raising, though it used methods that experts say will eventually exhaust even the most loyal givers.One internal N.R.S.C. budget document from earlier this year, obtained by The Times, shows that $23.3 million was poured into investments to find new donors between June 2021 and January 2022. In that time, the contributors the organization found gave $6.1 million — a more than $17 million deficit.Mr. Scott declined an interview request. His staff vigorously denied financial struggles, said some of the canceled television ads had been rebooked, and argued the digital spending would prove wise in time.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsAn Upset in Alaska: Mary Peltola, a Democrat, beat Sarah Palin in a special House election, adding to a series of recent wins for the party. Ms. Peltola will become the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress.Evidence Against a Red Wave: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it’s hard to see the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage. A strong Democratic showing in a New York special election is one of the latest examples.G.O.P.’s Dimming Hopes: Republicans are still favored in the fall House races, but former President Donald J. Trump and abortion are scrambling the picture in ways that distress party insiders.Digital Pivot: At least 10 G.O.P. candidates in competitive races have updated their websites to minimize their ties to Mr. Trump or to adjust their uncompromising stances on abortion.“We made the investment, we’re glad we did it, it will benefit the N.R.S.C. and the party as a whole for cycles to come,” said Chris Hartline, a spokesman for Mr. Scott and the committee.Yet as Republican chances to retake the Senate have slipped, a full-blown case of finger-pointing has erupted across Washington, with Mr. Scott a prime target. His handling of the committee’s finances has become conflated with other critiques, especially a flawed field of Republicans who have found themselves outspent on television.Mr. Scott’s please-all-sides decision to stay out of contested 2022 primaries has been second-guessed, including by Mr. McConnell. Mr. Scott’s detractors accuse him of transforming the N.R.S.C. into the “National Rick Scott Committee” — and a vehicle for his presidential ambitions.“The spending wouldn’t matter if the polling numbers looked better,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican lobbyist and N.R.S.C. donor. “To the extent the red wave is receding, people look for someone to blame.”The financial fortunes of the group alone will not sink Republican chances in November. A super PAC aligned with Mr. McConnell has more than $160 million in television reservations booked after Labor Day.Mr. Hartline dismissed those questioning the group’s digital spending as “disgruntled former staff and vendors.” He said the $28 million invested had tripled its file of email addresses and phone numbers and added 160,000 donors.“Our goal is to build the biggest G.O.P. digital file to help the party now and in the future,” he said. He declined to discuss the texting scheme.Mr. Hartline said the Senate Democratic arm has more money because it had not yet spent significantly on television. Mr. Scott, he said, had strategically spent early, with nearly $30 million on ads aiding Republicans through July.That sum, however, is actually less than the $37.4 million the G.O.P. committee reported in independent expenditures for candidates as of the same date two years ago.A huge online outlayFor months last year, the National Republican Senatorial Committee was far and away the nation’s biggest online political advertiser, outspending every other party committee combined and pouring money into platforms like Google at levels almost unseen except in the fevered final days of 2020.The sums were so breathtakingly large — peaking at more than $100,000 a day on Facebook and Google — that some concerned Democrats began to study the ads, fretting that somehow Republicans had unlocked a new sustainable way to raise money online.They had not.The Senate Republican bet had been this: By spending vast amounts early, the party could vacuum up contact information for millions of potential donors who could then give repeatedly over the coming months. 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      Senate G.O.P. Campaign Arm Slashes TV Ad Buys in Three States

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      The Republicans’ Senate campaign committee has slashed its television ad reservations in three critical battleground states for the fall, a likely sign of financial troubles headed into the peak of the 2022 midterm election season.The National Republican Senatorial Committee has cut more than $5 million in Pennsylvania, including its reservations in the Philadelphia media market, according to two media-tracking sources.Reservations in Wisconsin, in the Madison and Green Bay markets, have also been curtailed, by more than $2 million. And in Arizona, all reservations after Sept. 30 have been cut in Phoenix and Tucson, the state’s only two major media markets, amounting to roughly $2 million more.So far around $10 million had been canceled as of midday Monday, though more changes to the fall reservations were in progress. The states where ad reservations have been canceled are home to three of the nation’s most competitive Senate contests.In a statement, Chris Hartline, the communications director for the N.R.S.C., said, “Nothing has changed about our commitment to winning in all of our target states.”Mr. Hartline added that the committee had “been spending earlier than ever before to help our candidates get their message out and define the Democrats for their radical agenda. We’ve been creative in how we’re spending our money and will continue to make sure that every dollar spent by the N.R.S.C. is done in the most efficient and effective way possible.”After this article was published online, Mr. Hartline called it “false” on Twitter and said that “there is money being moved from the I.E. side” — independent expenditures that cannot be coordinated with campaigns — “back to the N.R.S.C. side of the wall.”He declined to say how much was being rebooked.In Wisconsin, some ads were being reserved in Milwaukee, for instance, though significantly less than what had been canceled in Madison and Green Bay, as of Monday afternoon.In Pennsylvania, the Senate Republican super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, recently announced it was adding $9.5 million to its fall reservation in the closely watched race between Mehmet Oz, the Republican, and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democrat. The super PAC moved up the beginning of its ad buy by three weeks, to Aug. 19, a decision that may have eased pressure on the party committee to keep its reservation.As online fund-raising has slowed for Republicans in recent months, affecting both candidates and party committees, the party is increasingly dependent on major super PACs in the battle for the Senate. Entering July, the Senate Republican super PAC had nearly $40 million more cash on hand than the Democratic Senate super PAC.The Senate party committee said it had already helped fund $17 million in “coordinated” and “hybrid” ads with Republican senators and Senate candidates in Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Florida and Wisconsin, according to the committee, and had spent $36 million on television overall.The N.R.S.C. entered July with $28.5 million in the bank and has millions of dollars reserved in other battleground states.A person familiar with the committee’s planning said some of the money saved by canceling reservations now would eventually be used to rebook advertising time in coordination with the Senate campaigns, which would help stretch the group’s dollars further because candidates are entitled to lower ad prices. Some of the new reservations were already being made on Monday. More

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      Despite Repeated Fumbles, Georgia Republicans Say They’re Sticking With Walker

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      Republicans are standing behind Herschel Walker, the former football star, despite an array of revelations, missteps and questions about his qualifications for a Senate seat. ATLANTA — Georgia Republicans knew for months before Herschel Walker launched his Senate campaign that he would be a huge risk in one of the party’s most pivotal races. Just how much of a risk has become clear to many of them in recent weeks.Mr. Walker has blundered through an array of missteps and has endured negative media coverage, raising questions about his past and fitness for the office.He made exaggerated and untrue claims about his business background and his ties to law enforcement. After repeatedly criticizing absent fathers in Black households, he publicly acknowledged having fathered two sons and a daughter with whom he is not regularly in contact. And he initially failed, according to reporting by The Daily Beast, to share information about those three children with senior campaign aides.“Herschel Walker, the wannabe U.S. senator, is avoiding contact — with opponents, with the media, with good sense — like the way Georgia Bulldog fans sidestep wedding invites that fall on a gameday,” Adam Van Brimmer, opinion editor of the Savannah Morning News, wrote in a recent column. “Walker isn’t so much running for U.S. Senate as he is running from it.”Yet these developments have mattered little to Republican officials and strategists, several of whom said in interviews that their support for Mr. Walker has not wavered. They said he continues to have the backing of top Republican leaders in the state at a time when Democrats are bracing for bruising losses in the November midterms. Even those in the G.O.P. who are quietly wary of Mr. Walker’s tumultuous past and his lack of political experience say they are looking past all that and focusing instead on flipping a Democratic seat in the Senate.The Republican Party has stood by numerous elected officials and candidates plagued by scandals, often choosing to break with them only when their chances of winning a race are jeopardized. For Mr. Walker — who comes with hefty investments from top conservative groups, Donald J. Trump’s blessing and a base enamored by his football stardom at the University of Georgia in the 1980s — that break has yet to materialize. A display in honor of Herschel Walker at the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in Macon.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“I think Georgia Democrats have gotten a lot more excited than the Republicans have gotten worried,” said Randy Evans, a former leader of the Republican National Committee in Georgia and an ambassador to Luxembourg under Mr. Trump. Some Republicans, however, said they believe Mr. Walker will continue to be weakened in the months leading up to the November election. Janelle King, an Atlanta-area Republican political consultant whose husband, Kelvin King, ran against Mr. Walker in the G.O.P. primary, said that Mr. King and other unsuccessful Senate candidates argued that the party had been too blinded by Mr. Walker’s football stardom to see that his past would be a liability. Now, she said, she wishes they had worked harder to highlight those concerns. In addition to a slow drip of negative press, Mr. Walker failed to attend any of the Republican Senate debates during the primary — something Ms. King said she regrets not making a bigger focal point of her husband’s campaign. “We should have demanded to see more from him,” she said. “Because at least we could have worked out some of these things. So now we’re in the general and everything is just coming out.”Others in the party who are concerned about Mr. Walker’s past fear it will hurt his standing with the slice of independent and moderate Republican voters who will ultimately decide the race. Some Republicans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about the campaign, said that Mr. Walker’s staff should have taken advantage of his lead during the primary to prepare for a much tougher general election by sharpening his public speaking skills for the debates against the Democratic incumbent, Senator Raphael Warnock. Mr. Warnock has already committed to attending three debates later this fall. Mr. Walker has also agreed to debate but has not named the debates he would attend. In the last week Mr. Walker’s campaign has limited his media exposure almost completely, barring reporters from attending at least two of his events, including one with the Buckhead Atlanta chapter of the Young Republicans and an Independence Day picnic that was billed as “open to everyone” with Representative Andrew Clyde. “Georgia voters will have a clear choice this fall between Reverend Warnock’s extensive record of fighting for all Georgians to lower costs for hardworking Georgia families and Herschel Walker’s pattern of lies, exaggerations, and completely bizarre claims, all of which show he is not ready to represent Georgians in the U.S. Senate,” Meredith Brasher, Mr. Warnock’s communications director, said in a statement.Recent polling shows a tight race between Mr. Walker and Mr. Warnock. A poll from the Democratic group Data for Progress shows Mr. Walker with a two-point lead over Mr. Warnock. In late June, a Quinnipiac poll found that Mr. Warnock had a ten-point lead over Mr. Walker — Mr. Walker’s campaign claimed the margin is much closer. Mallory Blount, a spokeswoman for Mr. Walker, said the recent string of headlines had little effect. “Attacks on our campaign aren’t new and I’m sure we will see more,” Ms. Blount said in a statement. “What else can Sen. Warnock talk about? Gas prices? Inflation? Crime? Accomplishments? Nope. The fact is Warnock cares more about Joe Biden than he does Georgia — he’s gone Washington and left Georgia behind.” Those who are confident about Mr. Walker’s prospects say that voters are either not paying close attention to the negative stories about him or not caring enough about them to let it change their vote. Last month, at a Juneteenth event hosted by Mr. Walker’s campaign and the Republican National Committee, voters characterized the negative coverage as little more than political distractions. “He is a man. He’s doing right by his family. He’s doing right by the community,” said Ronel Saintvil, a Republican who is Black and who lives in metro Atlanta. “To me, for somebody just to bad mouth him like this, I don’t believe it’s right. They’re not focusing on the issues at hand that affect the people in Georgia. And I think that’s what’s more important.” Others say Democrats’ own woes, both nationally and statewide, are buffering concerns about Mr. Walker.Marci McCarthy, chair of the DeKalb County Republican Party, cited recent stories of Mr. Warnock’s use of campaign funds for personal legal matters, saying voters “are really not looking for the rubbish about either candidate.”Mr. Walker’s campaign, for its part, has started to make a number of changes in preparation for the fall, including hiring a new communications director. Top Republican groups have also made big investments in the race. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Republican Senate campaign arm that has so far spent $8 million in Georgia this year, bought $1.4 million in pro-Walker television airtime last week, according to the advertising data tracking firm, AdImpact. And in the state, Mr. Walker benefits from support among the party’s most faithful. In Cherokee County, a Georgia Republican stronghold that supported Mr. Trump by nearly 40 points in 2020, G.O.P. leaders are planning to host an event in partnership with the campaign in the coming weeks, according to the county party chair, James Dvorak. Vernon Jones, the Democrat-turned-Trump-Republican who lost his congressional race in Georgia’s deep-red 10th district, has also entered the fray, saying on Friday that he will launch an independent expenditure committee supporting Mr. Walker’s and Gov. Brian Kemp’s campaigns. He plans to spend at least $500,000 in radio and digital advertisements aimed at Black male voters over the next four months. The continuing support shows Mr. Walker’s strength, his proponents say. “You’re going to have bumps in the road in the road, and it’s probably better to get those things out of the way as early as possible,” said Eric J. Tanenblatt, a Georgia Republican strategist who was chief of staff to a former governor, Sonny Perdue. “I think by the time voting starts in the fall, some of these bumps in the road will get worked out. I hope so, for Herschel’s sake.” More

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      North Carolina TV stations pull an attack ad against Cheri Beasley, a Democrat running for Senate.

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      Television stations in North Carolina made the unusual decision on Friday to take down an attack ad against Cheri Beasley, a Democratic Senate candidate, after complaints that the ad falsely accused Ms. Beasley of freeing a man convicted on charges of possessing lewd images of children when she served as chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court.The ad, made by the Republican Senate campaign arm, highlighted the case of “a child porn offender,” and it accused Ms. Beasley of having “voted to set him free.” A female narrator spoke ominously over images of a young girl and jail bars sliding open.On Friday, five TV stations in Raleigh and Charlotte said they would pull the ad or that they had “paused” it pending an examination of its claims, according to emails from the stations to Courtney Weisman, a lawyer working for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which were reviewed by The New York Times.On Thursday, two Charlotte stations took the ad off the air. A representative for the stations, WXAN and WSCO, explained in an email to Ms. Weisman that the ad’s claim about Ms. Beasley “is in error, as it appears the defendant was not set free” by the State Supreme Court decision.Chris Hartline, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which made the ad, defended the claims made against Ms. Beasley and said the Charlotte stations that acted on Thursday had not asked to see any documentation before making the decision.“Every word of the ad is true,” Mr. Hartline said in a statement. “This bizarre statement from a TV station that had yet to receive or even ask for our substantiation for the claim will be noted by our media buyers as they make future decisions about ad buys.”Dory MacMillan, a spokeswoman for Ms. Beasley, said, “Washington Republicans have been caught lying.”“Voters know Cheri worked with law enforcement to hold violent offenders accountable, and she will continue to keep our communities safe as North Carolina’s next U.S. Senator,” Ms. MacMillan said in a statement. Ms. Beasley is running against Representative Ted Budd, the Republican nominee, in a race for an open seat that is important in determining control of the Senate.The ad in question, titled “Failed Our Children,” ties Ms. Beasley to three cases involving child sex offenders. The attack against Ms. Beasley, who is Black, is reminiscent of attacks by Senate Republicans aimed at Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Senators, led by Josh Hawley of Kansas, accused her of being lenient in sentencing in child pornography cases. A review by PolitiFact concluded that Judge Jackson’s sentences were consistent with those of other judges.The case that led to removal of the North Carolina ad involved a man named James Howard Terrell Jr., who was convicted in 2016 of possessing lewd images of minors on a computer thumb drive.An appeals court ruled that a detective had conducted an illegal search of the thumb drive, in violation of Mr. Terrell’s Fourth Amendment rights, and it sent the case back down to the trial court.In 2019, the State Supreme Court, with Ms. Beasley in the majority, upheld that ruling. As of May 2020, Mr. Terrell was still in prison, according to court records, and it was on that basis that Ms. Weisman, the Democratic lawyer, demanded the ad be taken down. “To claim that her vote somehow resulted in a defendant being ‘set … free’ is false,” she wrote.A lawyer for the Republican campaign arm, in a letter to TV stations about the ad, argued that North Carolina court records for Mr. Terrell state that his convictions were “vacated” after the Supreme Court heard the case. The lawyer, Ryan G. Dollar, accused the Democratic lawyer of attempting to “gaslight” TV station managers. Court records indicate that Mr. Terrell is no longer incarcerated. More

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      Income Taxes for All? Rick Scott Has a Plan, and That’s a Problem.

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      The “Plan to Rescue America” is dividing the party and cheering Democrats, and its author, Senate Republicans’ top campaign official, won’t stop talking about it.WASHINGTON — Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the somewhat embattled head of the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, said one utterly indisputable thing on Thursday when he stood before a packed auditorium of supporters at the conservative Heritage Foundation: His plan for a G.O.P. majority would make everyone angry at him, Republicans included.It was an odd admission for the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. His leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has repeatedly told Mr. Scott to pipe down about his “11-Point Plan to Rescue America,” with its call to impose income taxes on more than half of Americans who pay none now, and to sunset all legislation after five years, presumably including Social Security and Medicare.It has divided his party, put Mr. Scott’s own candidates in awkward positions, and is already featured prominently in Democratic advertising. But after Thursday, it is clear the Republicans have not figured out how to address their Rick Scott problem.“Washington’s full of a bunch of do-nothing people who believe that no conservative idea can ever happen, nothing will change for the better as long as they’re in charge, and that’s why we’re going to get rid of them,” the senator said, ambiguous about who exactly “they” were. “So Republicans are going to complain about the plan. They’ll do it with anonymous quotes, some not so anonymous. They’ll argue that Democrats will use it against us in the election. I hope they do.”The senator insisted on the Heritage Foundation stage that his plan would raise taxes on no one, only to concede to reporters after the talk that it would — or that it wouldn’t, he couldn’t decide.“The people that are paying taxes right now — I’m not going to raise their rates; I’ve never done it,” he said, before adding: “I’m focused on the people that can go to work, and decided to be on a government program and not participate in this. I believe whether it’s just a dollar, we all are in this together.”But most adults who pay no income tax do work, and the plan makes no distinctions. “All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax,” it states.Last year, 57 percent of U.S. households paid no income tax, but that was by design. Successive Republican tax cuts, including President Donald J. Trump’s tax cut of 2017, which greatly expanded the standard deduction, took tens of millions of workers off the income tax rolls, though virtually all of them pay Social Security, Medicare and sales taxes.And for all of Mr. Scott’s evasions, the criticism is not coming just from the “militant left” that he denounced. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated that ensuring all households pay at least $100 in income taxes would leave families making about $54,000 or less with more than 80 percent of the tax increase. Those making less than about $100,000 would shoulder 97 percent of the cost.His leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, right, has repeatedly told Mr. Scott to pipe down about his plan.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times“Let me tell you what would not be a part of our agenda,” Mr. McConnell told reporters in early March. “We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people, and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years.”For Democrats, Mr. Scott is a gift. The 2022 campaign is shaping up as a conventional midterm, focused on the economy under Democratic control. That means inflation, gas prices and candidate ties to an unpopular president.“If you’re in power and you’re presiding over inflation, sorry, it’s tough to be you,” Representative Patrick McHenry, Republican of North Carolina, told The Ripon Society, a conservative research group, this week.Mr. Scott’s plan has allowed Democrats to talk about the alternative: what Republicans would do with power. Mr. Scott’s plan is chock-full of language about making children say the Pledge of Allegiance, prohibiting the government from asking citizens their race, ethnicity or skin color, and declaring that “men are men, women are women and unborn babies are babies.”But its economic section has been the focus. Beyond taxing everyone, under the plan, all federal laws would sunset in five years. “If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again,” the plan says. Taken literally, that would leave the fate of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to the whims of a Congress that rarely passes anything so expansive.Democrats are gleefully calling attention to it, even going so far as to promote the Republican senator’s speaking engagement on Thursday.“The chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee has put it on record in a document,” said David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, “and we are taking his word for it.”Mr. Scott’s ideas threaten to bring Republicans back to an economic argument they waged — and lost — before Mr. Trump won over wide swaths of white working-class voters with his pledges to leave entitlements alone and cut their taxes.In 2012, the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, committed a disastrous gaffe when he was caught on tape describing 47 percent of Americans as wealth takers, not wealth makers. In 2001, Jim DeMint, a House member from South Carolina at the time, who like Mr. Romney went on to the Senate, asserted that if more than half of Americans paid no taxes, they would vote to expand government largess for themselves and make others pay for it.“How can a free nation survive when a majority of its citizens, now dependent on government services, no longer have the incentive to restrain the growth of government?” he asked during a Heritage Foundation lecture, calling for all Americans to pay some income taxes.The vision of affluent Republicans counseling struggling workers to pay more taxes while they pay less was central to Mr. Trump’s critique of the party in the 2016 campaign.And Mr. Scott is an unlikely bearer of his revanchist message. He’s the richest man in Congress, worth around $260 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In 2002, the sprawling hospital chain he ran agreed to pay more than $880 million to settle the Justice Department’s longest-running inquiry into health care fraud, including $250 million returned to Medicare to resolve charges contested by the government.Fellow Republicans are not rushing to embrace Mr. Scott’s plan.“I think it’s good that elected officials put out what they’re for, and so I support his effort to do it,” said Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, among the most endangered Republicans up for re-election in November. “That’s what he’s for.”But for Republican candidates, the issue is getting awkward. In Arizona, Jim Lamon, a Republican seeking to challenge the Democratic incumbent, Senator Mark Kelly, first called the plan “pretty good stuff” only to have his campaign retreat from that embrace.Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said of the plan, “It’s good that people offer ideas.” His Democratic challenger, Representative Val B. Demings, nevertheless ran an ad on social media accusing him of embracing it.At a Republican Senate debate in Ohio on Monday, the current front-runner, Mike Gibbons, called the plan “a great first draft in trying to set some things we all believe in,” adding, “The people that don’t believe them probably shouldn’t be Republicans.”J.D. Vance, a candidate aligned with Mr. Trump’s working-class appeal, fired back: “Why would we increase taxes on the middle class, especially when Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook pay a lower tax rate than any middle-class American in this room or in this country? It’s ridiculous.”Even as he denied his plan would do that, Mr. Scott on Thursday was bold in the criticism of his fellow Republicans, who are relying on him to help them win elections this fall. Timidity is “the kind of old thinking that got us exactly where we are today, where we don’t control the House, the White House or the Senate,” he said, adding: “It’s time to have a plan. It’s time to execute on a plan.” More