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      Fetterman’s Heart Issues Add Wild Card to Key Pennsylvania Senate Race

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      Part of John Fetterman’s appeal as the Democratic Senate nominee has stemmed from his brash sense of vitality. It’s not clear if his recent stroke and absence from the trail will affect that.Just three weeks ago, a varied cross-section of Pennsylvania Democrats put its hopes on the broad shoulders of John Fetterman, confident that the commonwealth’s burly lieutenant governor could vanquish anything or anyone that a fractured Republican Party could throw at him.But as the general election season begins, the 6-foot-8 Mr. Fetterman suddenly seems a good deal more vulnerable, equipped now with a pacemaker and a doctor’s note attesting that he can campaign and serve as Pennsylvania’s next senator, though the candidate himself admitted he “almost died.”And what seemed like a protracted, divisive fight in the G.O.P. over the party’s nominee to take on Mr. Fetterman ended suddenly on Friday when Dr. Mehmet Oz accepted the concession of David McCormick, his narrowly beaten opponent. A three-way slugfest between a celebrity, Dr. Oz, an out-of-state hedge fund manager, Mr. McCormick, and a far-right Fox News pundit, Kathy Barnette, slipped quickly away into memory.What was left for the fight over the Senate seat deemed most within reach for a Democratic takeover was a heart patient, Mr. Fetterman, battling a heart surgeon, Dr. Oz, and a distinct sense of unease, at least for now, among some Democrats.“It’s going to be a brutal campaign,” said G. Terry Madonna, a longtime pollster and political writer in Pennsylvania. “If I had to put it in a couple of words, it’s ‘no holds barred.’”Mr. Fetterman’s health struggles could be particularly resonant because so much of his appeal has stemmed from his image of vitality. Though he hails from his party’s left flank, he has garnered the affections of more moderate, working-class voters with his bald head, goateed face, Carhartt sweatshirts, baggy basketball shorts and tireless campaigning in every nook of the state.Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who has conducted focus groups with Pennsylvania voters, quoted Democrats saying, “You know, he’s the physical embodiment of Pennsylvania.”Now that common-man appeal must include the contrition of an ailing patient who ignored his doctor’s advice for years and an overt appeal to the sympathies of the voters.“Like so many others, and so many men in particular, I avoided going to the doctor, even though I knew I didn’t feel well,” Mr. Fetterman said in a statement on Friday that broke weeks of silence since he had left the campaign trail. “As a result, I almost died. I want to encourage others to not make the same mistake.”The statement read like a confession. He suffered a stroke last month, just days before Pennsylvania’s primary, and seemed to let his campaign systematically downplay his condition. All that ended on Friday when he admitted that he suffered from a heart condition called cardiomyopathy and had left other heart issues untreated for years.His physician, Ramesh R. Chandra, released a scolding note saying that when Mr. Fetterman was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation and a decreased heart pump in 2017, he was prescribed medicine, lifestyle changes and follow-up appointments, but that he “did not go to any doctor for five years and did not continue taking his medications.”Dr. Mehmet Oz spoke during his election night watch party in Newtown, Pa., last month.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesThe drama might enhance Mr. Fetterman’s appeal by further humanizing him, but that is not assured. Shawn W. Rosenberg, a professor of political and psychological science at the University of California, Irvine, who has been studying politics and political style since the late 1980s, said Mr. Fetterman’s imagery before the health scare had broken new ground. Where once clean-scrubbed youth sold well, Pennsylvanians have lapped up their lieutenant governor’s Everyman look.“Do we want a political leader who is a version of the guy next door or someone who stands above us in some respects?” Professor Rosenberg asked. “Most of the literature suggests we want the latter, and Fetterman is an interesting challenge to that.”He added: “That works to his advantage in Pennsylvania. Part of the Republican play since Trump is anti-elitism. Against Oz, he’s clearly not the elitist.”But his health struggles also might clash with his superman image as it bolsters his opponent, a heart surgeon who has spent his extensive television career touting medical interventions, many legitimate, some questionable.In a fight between a Paul Bunyan-like common man and a celebrity doctor, the doctor might emerge as the responsible candidate. And Dr. Oz will know how to sell it, said Samantha Majic, a political scientist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who studies style and celebrity in politics.“Celebrity in the modern sense is somebody who is known, highly produced, managed and in the media, but they are also commercialized, they are using their celebrity to sell,” Professor Majic said. She added: “As campaigns become more expensive, you’ve got to have celebrity capital to parlay into financial capital. You have to stand out.”Among Democrats and many independents in Pennsylvania, Mr. Fetterman is popular. A poll from Franklin & Marshall College just before the primary — and before his stroke — found that 67 percent of Democratic voters viewed him favorably, well above the 46 percent who felt warmly toward his primary opponent, Representative Conor Lamb.Berwood A. Yost, the director of the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall, said that given the Democratic nominee’s 52 years of age, his health problems “may make Fetterman even more relatable.”You get to your 50s as a working-class person, and you’ve got some scars to show for it, right?” he said. “It’s a further contrast between the two candidates. I mean, the contrast couldn’t be any more stark.”And a comeback from a health setback is not uncommon. Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent whose progressive politics are similar to Mr. Fetterman’s, suffered a heart attack in late 2019, with the presidential primary season looming, and hardly skipped a beat.But Mr. Fetterman will remain off the campaign trail for some time.“Doctors have told me I need to continue to rest, eat healthy, exercise and focus on my recovery, and that’s exactly what I’m doing,” he said in his statement. He added: “It’s frustrating — all the more so because this is my own fault — but bear with me, I need a little more time. I’m not quite back to 100 percent yet, but I’m getting closer every day.”Rebecca Katz, a strategist for Mr. Fetterman, strongly denied that the campaign had been keeping his condition hidden. Campaign officials announced he needed a pacemaker as soon as they learned it, and the campaign released Friday’s statement as soon as the doctor gave his permission, she said. Democratic officials had grown so worried that there was chatter about recruiting a new nominee, gossip that she pushed back on hard.“All we have is the truth, and that’s what we chose to share,” she said.If Mr. Fetterman is limping into the general election, so is Dr. Oz. Ms. Longwell said the Democrat’s overwhelming popularity with his base was the mirror opposite of the reaction to Dr. Oz, who elicits strong suspicion from some conservative Pennsylvania voters, despite the endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump. And the Fetterman campaign has already started attacking the Republican as a New Jersey interloper who is coming to Pennsylvania via Hollywood.Given the overall political environment, Mr. Yost said the race is a true tossup, but he too wondered how Dr. Oz’s lack of connection with his new state will work in the commonwealth.“There’s a sense of place here among long-term residents,” he said, “and Oz really isn’t from here. I wonder how that plays out.”In a video statement, Dr. Oz vowed to start afresh after a difficult primary fight.“I’m going to reach to every corner of this commonwealth,” he said. “I know we’ve got to heal. We’ve got to pull people together again. I want to make sure that happens again.” More

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      David McCormick Concedes to Dr. Oz in the G.O.P. Primary for Senate in Pennsylvania

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      David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, conceded the exceedingly close race for the Republican nomination for Senate in Pennsylvania on Friday to Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity television physician, with a statewide recount underway and no official race call.Dr. Oz had a lead of fewer than 1,000 votes, or .07 percent, before the county-by-county recount began last week. The unexpected early concession — five days before the recount’s full results were to be released — was a recognition that Mr. McCormick had gained only handfuls of votes so far and faced an insurmountable hurdle in making up his deficit. His decision sets up one of the most pivotal contests of the midterms, a November election between Dr. Oz and the Democratic nominee, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.“We spent the last 17 days making sure every Republican vote was counted,” Mr. McCormick said in an appearance in Harrisburg with supporters on Friday evening. “But it’s now clear to me that with the recount largely complete, that we have a nominee. And today I called Mehmet Oz to congratulate him on his victory.”The primary initially produced a photo finish in which both campaigns’ calling for all votes to be counted vividly contrasted with how Republican supporters of former President Donald J. Trump reacted to his loss in Pennsylvania in 2020, when he and his allies tried to block the counting of ballots beyond Election Day.Mr. Trump, who endorsed Dr. Oz, urged him the day after the election to follow his own conspiratorial script — he still maintains the presidential election was “stolen” — and declare victory before all the votes were in. Dr. Oz, the longtime host of “The Dr. Oz Show” on daytime television, mostly ignored the advice. But as the recount began on May 27, he declared himself the “presumptive” nominee. The recount was ordered by Leigh M. Chapman, the state’s acting secretary of the commonwealth, and was triggered automatically by Pennsylvania law because the gap between candidates was under 0.5 percent. Understand the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarAfter key races in Georgia, Pennsylvania and other states, here’s what we’ve learned.Trump’s Invincibility in Doubt: With many of Donald J. Trump’s endorsed candidates failing to win, some Republicans see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024.G.O.P. Governors Emboldened: Many Republican governors are in strong political shape. And some are openly opposing Mr. Trump.Voter Fraud Claims Fade: Republicans have been accepting their primary victories with little concern about the voter fraud they once falsely claimed caused Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss.The Politics of Guns: Republicans have been far more likely than Democrats to use messaging about guns to galvanize their base in the midterms. Here’s why.Armies of lawyers for the candidates challenged small batches of provisional ballots in front of county election boards, sought hand recounts in certain precincts and went to court, scrapping over every vote. Mr. McCormick, who led his opponent on mail ballots, sued to include 850 or so mail-in votes that were received on time but did not have voters’ handwritten dates on the envelopes. Although he received a favorable ruling from the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, it was clear that there just weren’t enough outstanding votes under any scenario for Mr. McCormick to prevail.Suspense around the race for weeks deflected attention from Mr. Fetterman, who suffered a stroke May 13, days before the election, leading to a hospital stay and the implantation of a pacemaker and defibrillator in his heart. Mr. Fetterman’s absence from the campaign trail ever since and his refusal until Friday to offer more than scant details of his condition raised questions about his ability to campaign in the general election. Mr. Fetterman, 52, revealed on Friday that he had “almost died” after ignoring for years a doctor’s warning that his heart’s pumping was diminished. His cardiologist made public a diagnosis of cardiomyopathy, which makes it harder for the heart’s muscles to pump. Ramesh R. Chandra, the cardiologist, said if Mr. Fetterman follows his instructions and takes his health seriously this time, “he should be able to campaign and serve in the U.S. Senate without a problem.”The November election holds high stakes for both parties: Pennsylvania is probably Democrats’ best chance to add a seat to their fragile 50-50 control of the Senate, in which Vice President Kamala Harris holds the tiebreaking vote. With Senator Patrick J. Toomey retiring, the seat is the only G.O.P.-held open Senate seat in a state that Joseph R. Biden Jr. won in 2020. For Republicans, retaining it would ease their path to a Senate majority in a year when the political climate is strongly in their favor.In a statement after Mr. McCormick’s concession, Dr. Oz said, “Now that our primary is over, we will make sure that this U.S. Senate seat does not fall into the hands of the radical left, led by John Fetterman.” Dr. Oz, 61, who won Mr. Trump’s endorsement in large part because of his television charisma, was never fully embraced by core Trump supporters, as evidenced by the closeness of the race. At a rally Mr. Trump held in Pennsylvania 11 days before Election Day, boos greeted the mention of Dr. Oz’s name. Mr. McCormick, a West Point graduate and the former chief executive of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, was more competitive than polls and many political experts had expected. In part that was because of Dr. Oz’s history of espousing liberal views, notably on abortion and transgender issues, which made him toxic to some conservatives. David McCormick conceded the race amid a statewide recount.Mark Makela/Getty ImagesHesitance to embrace Dr. Oz by the Trump-centric base allowed a late surge by a hard-right candidate, Kathy Barnette. On Election Day, when she finished third with about 25 percent of the vote, she appeared to have siphoned grass-roots Trump supporters from Dr. Oz. She did so after declaring “MAGA does not belong to President Trump,” and despite Mr. Trump’s dismissal that Ms. Barnette, who has a history of homophobic and anti-Muslim remarks, “will never be able to win the general election.”Dr. Oz and Mr. McCormick, both first-time candidates, worked hard to transform themselves from members of the East Coast elite, with middle-of-the-road politics, into credible champions of the MAGA movement. Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Pennsylvania Court Orders Undated Ballots to Be Counted, Siding With McCormick For Now

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      David McCormick, who was trailing Dr. Mehmet Oz by fewer than 1,000 votes, had sued to have ballots without handwritten dates on their return envelopes counted.Update: David McCormick conceded the exceedingly close race for the Republican nomination for Senate in Pennsylvania on Friday to Dr. Mehmet Oz. Read the news story.A Pennsylvania court ordered election officials on Thursday to count undated mail-in ballots for now in a nationally watched Republican Senate primary, granting a temporary injunction to David McCormick as he trailed Dr. Mehmet Oz amid a statewide recount.Fewer than 1,000 votes separate Mr. McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, from Dr. Oz, the celebrity physician backed by former President Donald J. Trump, in a race that could ultimately determine control of the divided Senate.The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania concluded that a May 23 lawsuit by Mr. McCormick had raised sufficient claims that a state law requiring voters to hand-write the date on return envelopes for mail-in ballots could lead to their disenfranchisement.Republicans have fought to enforce the rule, siding with Dr. Oz in the lawsuit.In the 42-page opinion, Renée Cohn Jubelirer, the court’s president judge, directed county election boards to report two sets of tallies to the acting secretary of the commonwealth, one that includes the undated ballots and one that does not. That way, when a final decision is made on whether to accept the ballots, the judge wrote, the vote count will be readily available.In the opinion, Judge Cohn Jubelirer said there was no question that the contested ballots had been returned by the May 17 deadline.“The court notes that no party has asserted, or even hinted, that the issue before the court involves allegations of fraud,” she wrote. “The parties have agreed that this election was free and fair.”A campaign spokeswoman for Mr. McCormick lauded the court order in a statement on Friday.“We are pleased the court agrees on ensuring valid Republican votes that were signed and returned on time, as shown by their time-stamp, are counted so the party can get behind a strong nominee in the fall,” the campaign spokeswoman, Jess Szymanski, said.Casey Contres, the campaign manager for Dr. Oz, declined to comment about the decision on Friday.Judge Cohn Jubelirer wrote that the court’s guidance should be uniform, noting that some counties had decided to accept the undated ballots and others had not.“Without court action, there exists the very real possibility that voters within this commonwealth will not be treated equally depending on the county in which they vote,” she wrote. “The court begins with the overarching principle that the Election Code should be liberally construed so as not to deprive electors of their right to elect a candidate of their choice.”The treatment of undated mail-in ballots is at the heart of another legal dispute in Pennsylvania. That one is before the U.S. Supreme Court, which on Tuesday paused the counting of those ballots in a judicial race in Lehigh County, Pa., a case that could reverberate in the G.O.P. Senate primary.Understand the Battle Over U.S. Voting RightsCard 1 of 6Why are voting rights an issue now? More

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      Democrats Attack Both Oz and McCormick in Pennsylvania Senate Race Ads

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      The recount of Pennsylvania’s photo-finish Republican Senate primary will not be revealed until June 8, but Democrats aren’t waiting to try to stain both possible winners, Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick.The Democrats’ Senate campaign arm released prototypes of attack ads against both candidates on Thursday, leaning into the theme that Dr. Oz, the celebrity physician, and Mr. McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, are out-of-state carpetbaggers. The ads preview how the general election could unfold in one of the most critical midterm contests for Senate control.The 30-second spots portray Dr. Oz, who held a tiny lead going into the recount and has declared himself the “presumptive” nominee, as “pretending to be from Pennsylvania.’’ Mr. McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, is attacked for having “moved from Connecticut to buy a Senate seat.”The ad maker, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, is not paying for the spots to run on the airwaves or on digital screens; it offered them to the news media as previews of a paid campaign in the fall, and in the expectation that they would be shared on social media. Axios earlier reported on the ads.The committee has reserved an initial $3 million for ads in Pennsylvania’s Senate race, where the retirement of Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican, has created an open seat.The attacks — including that Dr. Oz is a Hollywood type who promoted dubious medical claims on television, and that Mr. McCormick is a friend of China’s who outsourced jobs at a Pittsburgh company — are likely already familiar to many Pennsylvania voters, who were barraged with the same material in the primary. Both of the super-wealthy candidates and their allies spent tens of millions of dollars in attack ads ahead of the May 17 primary.Dr. Oz led by fewer than 1,000 votes, or .07 percent, when the recount began on Friday. Armies of lawyers for both candidates continue to scrap for every vote before county election boards and in court.With the race in suspense for more than two weeks, the Democratic nominee, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, has been largely out of the spotlight, which may benefit him politically as he recuperates from a stroke suffered just before Election Day. He has made no public appearances since then and has none currently planned. His campaign repeated this week that he is on the path to a full recovery, yet questions about his health have swirled as his campaign declined requests from reporters to speak with Mr. Fetterman or his doctors about his condition. On Tuesday, he posted to Twitter a short speech thanking Democratic House members from Pennsylvania for their endorsements.A spokeswoman for Dr. Oz, Brittany Yanick, did not respond directly to the Democratic committee’s attack ad, but called the “Biden/Fetterman agenda” wrong for Pennsylvania. “John Fetterman’s radical agenda harms Pennsylvanians and makes our communities less safe,” she said.Mr. McCormick’s campaign responded similarly, focusing on the “agenda of Biden and John Fetterman” but arguing that Mr. McCormick is the candidate best positioned to defeat Mr. Fetterman this fall. More

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      They Insisted the 2020 Election Was Tainted. Their 2022 Primary Wins? Not So Much.

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      Republicans are accepting their primary victories with little concern about the voter fraud they once falsely claimed caused Donald J. Trump’s loss.This spring, when Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama was fighting to win over conservatives in his campaign for Senate, he ran a television ad that boasted, “On Jan. 6, I proudly stood with President Trump in the fight against voter fraud.”But when Mr. Brooks placed second in Alabama’s Republican primary last week, leaving him in a runoff, he said he was not concerned about fraud in his election.“If it’s a close race and you’re talking about a five- or 10-vote difference, well, then, it becomes a greater concern,” he said of his primary results. “But I’ve got more important fish to fry. And so, at some point, you have to hope that the election system is going to be honest.”Mr. Brooks was one of 147 Republican members of Congress who voted on Jan. 6, 2021, to object to the results of the 2020 presidential election. Hundreds more Republican state legislators across the country took similar action in their own capitals. President Biden’s victory, they said, was corrupted by either outright fraud or pandemic-related changes to voting.Now, many of those Republicans are accepting the results of their primaries without complaint. Already this year, 55 of the lawmakers who objected in 2020 have run in competitive primaries, contests conducted largely under the same rules and regulations as those in 2020. None have raised doubts about vote counts. No conspiracy theories about mail ballots have surfaced. And no one has called for a “forensic audit” or further investigations of the 2022 primary results.Republicans’ easy acceptance of a voting system they once slammed as broken exposes a fundamental contradiction in their complaints about the 2020 election. Claims about fraud and stolen elections are often situational — used in some races (against Democrats) but not others (against other Republicans), and to challenge some outcomes (losing) but not others (winning).Mr. Brooks placed second in last week’s Republican primary, but made it into the June 21 runoff.Charity Rachelle for The New York TimesThis phenomenon was on clear display in 2020, when scores of Republicans who repeated allegations about a “rigged” presidential race accepted their own victories based on the same ballots.But the lack of discussion about fraud in this year’s primaries highlights a particular strain of partisanship driving many of the myths about stolen elections.Mr. Brooks offered a simple answer to why he’s not worried about his race: There’s no fraud in Republican primaries, he said.After the Georgia Primary ElectionThe May 24 races were among the most consequential so far of the 2022 midterm cycle.Takeaways: G.O.P. voters rejected Donald Trump’s 2020 fixation, and Democrats backed a gun-control champion. Here’s what else we learned.Rebuking Trump: The ex-president picked losers up and down the ballot in Georgia, raising questions about the firmness of his grip on the G.O.P.G.O.P. Governor’s Race: Brian Kemp scored a landslide victory over David Perdue, delivering Mr. Trump his biggest setback of the 2022 primaries.2018 Rematch: Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor, will again face Mr. Kemp — but in a vastly different political climate.“I’m in a Republican primary, and noncitizens don’t normally vote in Republican primaries,” Mr. Brooks said. “In a Republican primary or a Democrat primary, the motivation to steal elections is less because the candidates’ philosophy-of-government differences are minor.”Noncitizens don’t vote in any federal elections in significant numbers, in Alabama or elsewhere, according to a 2020 report from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. Investigators from both parties have unearthed only minuscule numbers of any type of voter fraud. In recent years, the rare instances of broad fraud schemes that have become public have been engineered by Republicans, including an absentee ballot scheme in North Carolina that led the state’s Board of Elections to order a redo of a House race in 2018.Not all Republicans who spread false claims about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election considered their own races to be exempt. Some said that “fraud existed” in their own elections and that investigations were needed. Still, they accepted their victories.“We don’t know how much fraud exists or existed because we weren’t able to see,” Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania told a local CBS affiliate a week after the 2020 election. Mr. Perry focused on Philadelphia as a source for fraud in the presidential race and called for additional review. He also said he was “humbled” to take his seat in the House.In the Pennsylvania primaries last week, Mr. Perry ran for re-election unopposed. He did not respond to messages left on his cellphone, and his campaign did not return requests for comment.The Republican effort to sow skepticism about elections in racially diverse Democratic cities is a generations-long project, with roots as far back as Richard Nixon’s 1960 defeat against John F. Kennedy. By the time Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election, he and millions of his supporters were primed to believe false allegations about “ballot harvesting” and machines miscounting in America’s populous cities. Mr. Brooks said in an interview that, in Alabama, fraud occurred “in predominantly Democrat parts of the state.”Part of the reason Republican candidates are accepting primary results without talking about fraud is they don’t have Democrats to blame, said Trey Grayson, the former Republican secretary of state in Kentucky.“They’re thinking it’s a primary, it’s our side. We didn’t lose to somebody on the other side who is evil, who’s going to change policy more dramatically,” Mr. Grayson said in an interview. “There’s a tribal, ‘my side’s always right, your side is always wrong. We’re not stealing elections, your side is stealing elections.’”Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina accepted his defeat in the Republican primary on May 17.Logan R. Cyrus for The New York TimesEven candidates who lost this year, either in close elections or decisive defeats, have accepted the results. Representative Madison Cawthorn, who had still been promoting falsehoods about the 2020 election on social media a week before his primary election, conceded and called his rival, Chuck Edwards, the night of his loss.When asked if Mr. Cawthorn had any concerns about fraud in the election, a spokesman for his congressional office declined to comment.In Georgia, the statewide Republican primaries were high-profile contests between Trump-aligned election deniers and officials who blocked Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn the results. Representative Jody Hice spent much of his campaign railing about Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, and his mismanaging elections.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      ‘The G.O.P. Has Gone Even Farther to the Right Than I Expected’: Three Writers Talk About the Midterms

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      Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted an online conversation with Lis Smith, a Democratic communications strategist, and Matthew Continetti of the American Enterprise Institute about a month of primaries, how they have shaped the midterms and what Democrats and Republicans can hope for and expect.FRANK BRUNI: On Tuesday, at least 19 children and two teachers were killed in the latest mass school shooting in a country that has witnessed too many of them. In my heartfelt (and heartsick) opinion, that should change the political landscape. But, realistically, will it?LIS SMITH: It should, but I unfortunately don’t think it will move the needle a ton.MATTHEW CONTINETTI: I agree. Unfortunately, history suggests that the political landscape won’t change after the horror in Texas.There’s a long and terrible list of school shootings. Each incident has been met with public horror and with calls for gun controls. But little has happened to either reduce the number of guns in America or to shift power to advocates for firearm regulation.SMITH: After Sandy Hook, we did see a number of states — Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, New York — take strong action on gun control, and I still believe that we will most likely see gun-control legislation on the state versus the federal level.And this does raise the stakes of the midterms. It will allow Democrats in marginal, suburban seats to use the issue against their Republican opponents, given that nearly every Republican in the House voted against H.R. 8, which would implement background checks and common-sense restrictions of the sort that have had broad public support.BRUNI: After that cheery start, let’s pull back and zoom out to a bigger picture. Have the primaries so far conformed to your expectations — or are there particular results or general patterns that surprise you and that challenge, or throw into doubt, your assumptions about what will happen in November?CONTINETTI: I’d say they are shaping up as one might expect. The president’s party rarely does well in midterms. The Biden Democrats appear to be no exception. What has surprised me is the depth of public disillusionment with President Biden, his party and the direction of the country. My guess is Democrats are surprised as well.SMITH: We have seen common-sense Democrats like Shontel Brown in Ohio, Valerie Foushee in North Carolina and Morgan McGarvey in Kentucky win against far-left Democrats, and that’s a good thing for the party and our chances in November.The G.O.P. has gone even farther right than I expected. Just look at Doug Mastriano, who won the Republican governor’s primary in Pennsylvania. He funded buses to shuttle people to the Capitol on Jan. 6 and helped efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state. He opposes abortion without exceptions. He makes Ron DeSantis look like Charlie Baker.BRUNI: Matt, do ultra-MAGA Republican candidates like him or for that matter Ted Budd in the North Carolina Senate race potentially undermine what might otherwise be a red-wave year? I’m thinking about a guest essay you wrote for The Times not long ago in which you raised the concern that Donald Trump and his minions would spoil things. Does that concern persist?CONTINETTI: Indeed, it does. Where Republicans got the idea that Trump is a political winner is a mystery to me. By the end of his presidency, Democrats were in full control of government. And he has been unpopular with the independents and suburban moderates necessary for any party to win a majority.I draw a distinction, though, between Mastriano and Budd. Mastriano is, as you say, ultra-MAGA. Even Trump was wary of him until the very end of the primary. Budd is a more typical fusion of conservative movement traits with Trump MAGA traits. If I had to guess, Budd is more likely to win than Mastriano.BRUNI: Lis, is Matt splitting hairs? I mean, in the House, Budd voted to overturn the 2020 election results. I worry that we’re cutting certain Republican conspiracists a break because they’re not as flagrant conspiracists as, say, Marjorie Taylor Greene or Madison Cawthorn.SMITH: It’s splitting hairs a bit. But he’s right — Mastriano proved so polarizing and so toxic that you had a former Trump adviser in Pennsylvania, David Urban, say that he was too extreme. He was too MAGA for the MAGA crowd. The G.O.P. has been more welcoming of Budd, but he also wanted to overturn 2020 and he also opposes abortion in every instance. North Carolina voters have a history of turning back candidates with extreme social views. That’s one of the reasons Roy Cooper won his first race for governor — the G.O.P. overreached on the bathrooms issue, the law that restricted restroom access for transgender people.BRUNI: What shall we call “too MAGA for MAGA”? Mega-MAGA? Meta-MAGA? Maxi-MAGA? Regardless, we keep asking, after every primary: What does this say about Trump’s level of sway? Is that question distracting us from bigger, more relevant ones?SMITH: Trump is a factor here, but Democrats really need to keep the focus on these candidates and their beliefs and make this an election between the Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate. As we saw in Virginia, Democrats can’t rely on painting their opponents as Trump 2.0 — they need to explicitly define and disqualify the opposition, and these mega-MAGA extremists give us plenty of material. The people who aren’t as out there as Mastriano give us plenty of material, too.BRUNI: Matt, I know you’re not here to help Democrats, but if you were advising them, what would you tell them to do to head off a possible or probable midterms drubbing?CONTINETTI: If I were a Democratic consultant, the first thing I would tell my clients would be to take shelter from the storm. There is no escaping Biden’s unpopularity. The best hope for Democratic incumbents is to somehow denationalize their campaigns. Even that probably won’t be enough to escape the gravitational pull of Biden’s declining job approval.BRUNI: Lis, the “plenty of material” you refer to must include abortion. Along those lines, do you see anything potentially happening in the months ahead that could change the trajectory of the midterms? For example, what if the Supreme Court in June in fact overturns Roe or further weakens gun regulations? What about hearings on the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol?SMITH: Roe is an example of something that could change the trajectory of the election. I usually think of the presidential election as when the broad electorate turns out and midterms as when pissed-off voters come out to vote. The Supreme Court taking away something that has been a fundamental right for 50 years will definitely piss people off and bring some of the Biden voters who might have otherwise voted Republican this year back into our corner. But voters have more reasons to be angry than just Roe.BRUNI: What are you thinking of? I’d like to hear it and then what Matt has to say about it.SMITH: We need to be screaming from the rooftops about what the Republicans in Congress are doing. They voted against the American Rescue Plan (then took credit for the checks that went to American households), mostly voted against infrastructure (then took credit for projects in their districts), mostly voted against capping the price of insulin, voted against stopping oil companies from price gouging, mostly voted against a bill that would include importing baby formula.Why? Because they want to impose as much misery as possible on the American people so that voters blame Biden and vote Republican in November. It’s really cynical, dark stuff. And then when they win, they want to criminalize abortions and ensure that we never have free and fair elections again. That’s my rant.CONTINETTI: Voters will hear a lot of what Lis is saying before November, but the Democrats’ problem is that they are in power as inflation comes roaring back after a 40-year absence. I am open to the idea that the end of Roe v. Wade may induce pro-choice voters off the sidelines in some swing districts, but in the weeks since the leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion, the evidence of a pro-abortion-rights surge among voters is scattered at best. As the great Mark Shields likes to say, “When the economy is bad, the economy is the only issue.” Right now the economy is the issue, and it’s hurting the Democratic Party.BRUNI: As we were all typing, Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat who’s running for governor in Texas, where this latest horrible massacre occurred, interrupted a news conference being held by the incumbent Republican governor, Greg Abbott, to shout at Abbott that he was doing nothing to stop such bloodshed. In its urgency and passion, is that smart politics that could make a difference, Lis?SMITH: That’s a great example of going on the offensive, generating the emotion and pissed-off-ness that Democrats need to turn out our voters in the midterms. We often lose the gun debate because it’s about policy particulars. If Democrats can channel the outrage that a lot of Americans feel — particularly parents — toward the politicians who are just sitting behind tables and choosing inaction and make this about political courage, we can potentially flip the script. Sometimes these sorts of confrontations can come across as a little stunt-y, but in this case, it was executed well and made Governor Abbott and his lackeys look cowardly.CONTINETTI: O’Rourke is running 10 points behind Abbott, and I don’t think his outburst will help him close that gap. Many Democrats believe that pissed-off-ness is the key to winning elections, but I don’t know what evidence there is for that case. The key to winning elections is to appeal to independent voters and moderates in the suburbs.SMITH: Trump’s whole pitch is to play on grievances! And midterm elections are traditionally where voters air their grievances: They’re mad about inflation, mad about gas prices — in 2018, they were mad about Republicans’ trying to repeal Obamacare. This is a strategy that appeals to independent and moderate voters in the suburbs — they are often with Democrats on abortion, with us on guns.CONTINETTI: As you know, Trump did not win the popular vote in either 2016 or 2020. Pissed-off-ness gets you only so far. I agree that it helps when you are the out party in a national election and can blame the incumbent for poor economic and social conditions. Whether getting angry will work in Texas this year and for this candidate is another matter.BRUNI: Matt, why aren’t the Republicans who are losing to other Republicans in these primaries, as Lis put it earlier, “screaming from the rooftops” about election irregularities and rigged results the way they do when they lose to Democrats? Either a state holds trustworthy elections or it doesn’t, no?CONTINETTI: We’ve been reminded in recent weeks of what you might call Trumpian Exceptionalism. Whenever Trump loses, he says the result is fraudulent. He’s been urging his choice in the Pennsylvania Senate primary, Mehmet Oz, to declare victory in a race too close to call. Yet Oz has refrained, as have other Trump picks like the former senator David Perdue, who lost in a landslide in Georgia to the incumbent governor, Brian Kemp. Is there a Republican future in which candidates regularly ignore Trump? Some of us hope so. Though we’ve learned not to hope too much.BRUNI: Let’s end with a lighting round of short questions. At this point, just over five months out, what percentage chance would you say the Democrats have of holding the House? The Senate?CONTINETTI: Math, much less statistics, has never been my strong suit. Let’s just say that the Democrats have a very slim chance of holding the House and a slightly less-than-even chance of holding the Senate.SMITH: Emphasis on “at this point”: 51 percent chance Democrats hold the Senate, 15 percent House.BRUNI: In 2028 or 2032, will we be talking about Sarah Huckabee Sanders, possible Republican presidential nominee?!?!SMITH: Wow, I’ve never thought of that, but I can see it. At some point the Republicans will nominate a woman for president — let’s hope that you didn’t just conjure this one.CONTINETTI: I can see that, too — maybe that’s when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will make her presidential debut as well.BRUNI: Thoughts on Herschel Walker (potentially) in the Senate, in five words or less.SMITH: Death of an institution.CONTINETTI: Fun to watch.BRUNI: Lastly, in one sentence without too many conjunctions and clauses, give me a reason not to feel too despondent-verging-on-hopeless about our political present and immediate future?SMITH: We’ve gotten through worse.CONTINETTI: When you study history, you are reminded that America has been through a lot like this before — and worse — and has not only endured but prospered. We’ll get through this moment. It will just take time.Sorry, that’s three sentences — but important ones!Frank Bruni (@FrankBruni) is a professor of public policy at Duke, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk,” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter and can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Matthew Continetti (@continetti) is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism.” Lis Smith (@Lis_Smith), a Democratic communications strategist, was a senior adviser to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign and is the author of the forthcoming memoir “Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      in Elections

      Pennsylvania’s G.O.P. Senate primary is officially headed to a recount.

      by

      The Republican primary for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania will go to a recount, with Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician backed by former President Donald J. Trump, clinging to a narrow advantage over David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, in one of the nation’s most intensely watched midterm contests.Dr. Oz was leading Mr. McCormick by 902 votes as of Wednesday, according to Leigh M. Chapman, the state’s acting secretary of the commonwealth, who said that all 67 of Pennsylvania’s counties had reported unofficial tallies to the state.The recount could lead to a series of lawsuits and challenges in the marquee primary, one that could ultimately determine control of the closely divided Senate. That legal wrangling has already begun: On Monday, Mr. McCormick filed a lawsuit demanding that undated mail-in ballots should be counted.A victory for Mr. McCormick — a West Point graduate and the former chief executive of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund — would be a significant rebuke to Mr. Trump, who supported Dr. Oz and campaigned for him in Pennsylvania. The seat will be open after Senator Patrick J. Toomey, a Republican, steps down this year.Pennsylvania presents perhaps the best chance for Democrats to add a seat to their fragile 50-50 control of the Senate, in which Vice President Kamala Harris holds the tiebreaking vote. The seat is the only one open in a state that President Biden won in 2020. For Republicans, holding the seat would ease their path to the majority in a year when the political winds are at their back.Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician, leads the Senate race against David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, by 902 votes. Pennsylvania law calls for an automatic recount if the margin in a statewide race is 0.5 percent or less of the total vote.Alexandra Wimley/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, via Associated PressAt a news conference in Harrisburg, Pa., the state capital, Ms. Chapman said that the recount would be conducted transparently and would allow for observers from the campaigns.Counties can begin the recount on Friday and must start no later than June 1, she said. They must complete the process by June 7 and report their results to the state by June 8. Pennsylvania law calls for an automatic recount if the margin in a statewide race is 0.5 percent or less of the total vote.State elections officials acknowledged that the recount could be a slog, one that they said could cost taxpayers in Pennsylvania more than $1 million.“I know Pennsylvanians and indeed people throughout the country have been following this race attentively and are eagerly awaiting the results,” said Ms. Chapman, who was appointed to her post last December by Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat.The lawsuit from Mr. McCormick asks the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania to allow county election officials to accept mail-in ballots from voters who turned them in by the May 17 deadline but did not write the date on the outer return envelopes.That step is required by a state law, which Republicans have fought to preserve.“Because all ballots are time-stamped by the County Boards of Elections on receipt, a voter’s handwritten date is meaningless,” said Chuck Cooper, Mr. McCormick’s chief legal counsel, in a statement on Monday.But G.O.P. leaders objected to the counting of these ballots. The Pennsylvania Republican Party and Republican National Committee were expected to intervene in the case.Ms. Chapman, who was named as a defendant in Mr. McCormick’s lawsuit, along with dozens of county election boards, said that the office’s guidance to counties was to segregate the ballots at issue and tabulate them separately, pending the outcome of litigation.“It’s our position that undated ballots and incorrectly, wrongly dated ballots should count,” Ms. Chapman said, calling the handwritten dates immaterial.Jonathan M. Marks, the deputy secretary of the commonwealth who oversees elections and commissions, said at the news conference that about 10,000 mail-in, absentee and provisional ballots statewide were still being adjudicated. A breakdown of whether those ballots were cast by Republicans or Democrats was not available because they were still being tabulated by the counties.Mr. McCormick said on Twitter on Tuesday night that he looked forward to a swift resolution so that Republicans could unite against Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic primary winner.“We are proud our campaign received nearly 418,000 votes, won 37 of 67 counties, and contributed to a historic turnout with a razor-thin difference between myself and Mehmet Oz,” Mr. McCormick said.Dr. Oz’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.“I thank everyone for their patience as we count every vote,” said Ms. Chapman, a lawyer who previously led a nonprofit that promoted mail-in voting, a flashpoint in recent elections in the state.The Republican primary, which included five major candidates, was dominated by the nearly $40 million in television ads spent by the two front-runners and their allies, much of it on attacks bludgeoning opponents.Both Dr. Oz and Mr. McCormick tried to transform themselves from members of the East Coast elite with middle-of-the-road politics into staunch Trump supporters.Their bitter feud opened a lane, late in the race, for Kathy Barnette, a hard-right conservative who stood out in debates, primarily for her attacks on Dr. Oz over his late-to-the-party opposition to abortion. Ms. Barnette appeared to siphon votes away from Dr. Oz, who did not have a monopoly on Trump supporters.Trip Gabriel More