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      Abortion Is Motivating Voters, but Republicans Would Rather Change the Subject

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      In Wisconsin, Tim Michels, a Republican running for governor, promised activists that he would never “flip-flop” on his support for an 1849 law that bans abortion except when a woman’s life is threatened. Less than three weeks later, he changed his stance.In the Phoenix suburbs, staffers whisked away Juan Ciscomani, a Republican House candidate, citing an urgent text, after he was asked by a voter whether he supported abortion bans.And in New Hampshire, Don Bolduc, the Republican running for governor, described abortion as a distraction from the “really important issues.”In races across the nation, Republican candidates are waffling on their abortion positions, denying past behavior or simply trying to avoid a topic that has long been a bedrock principle of American conservatism. Less than a month before the midterm elections on Nov. 8, the party lacks a unified policy on abortion, unable to broadly adopt a consistent response in the three and a half months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.Republican positioning on abortion drew renewed attention last week, when Herschel Walker, the party’s Senate nominee in Georgia, was accused by an ex-girlfriend of paying for one abortion and unsuccessfully urging her to get a second one. Mr. Walker takes a hard-line stance against the procedure, supporting abortion bans with no exceptions for rape, incest or to save the life of the mother.For decades, Republicans pushed to overturn federal abortion rights, viewing the issue as an easy rallying cry to identify with a culturally conservative base. Focusing on the country’s highest court allowed them to largely avoid getting into the weeds on thorny issues — life-threatening pregnancy complications, exceptions for child rape, diagnoses of rare and fatal conditions in fetuses. And given that few voters fully believed Roe would be overturned, they were rarely pressed on the specifics of their views.The court ruled in June that each state can formulate its own abortion policy, exactly what small-government conservatives had long wanted. But it had another consequence, plunging the party into months of politically toxic debates.“You hear some of these Republican state legislators, and it’s like, for the first time they are thinking about this and realize that this is a complicated issue with lots and lots of circumstances that are not black and white,” said Christine Matthews, a pollster who has worked for Republicans. “A lot of these male legislators are realizing, ‘Oh, this is really hard to legislate.’”To escape some of those difficult questions, many Republican candidates have been trying to avoid the debate altogether. For weeks, some Republicans have been erasing sections about abortion from their websites, changing their positions on state bans and trying to refocus the national conversation on inflation, crime and the country’s southern border.“I do believe it’s caught them slightly off guard with just how bad an issue this is for them,” said Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump Republican strategist who leads focus groups. “The party has opted for changing the conversation entirely because abortion is just bad terrain for them.”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.Some party leaders and strategists have urged candidates to adopt poll-tested positions popular with large swaths of independent voters: No restrictions on contraception, no bans before about 15 weeks and including exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother. But those policies conflict with the long-held goal of the party’s socially conservative wing that views abortion as akin to murder, and they also clash with some of the past language and positions of Republican candidates.That has left candidates, particularly those in purple states, caught between the more moderate views of independent voters and a conservative base that views the court’s ruling as the beginning of restrictions, not the end. Now, many of the party’s candidates in the most competitive contests are racing to recast their positions.Tim Michels, a Republican running for governor of Wisconsin, said he supported an 1849 law that bans abortion except when a woman’s life is threatened. Weeks later, he changed his stance.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times“I’m winning because people see a strong leader, a man of conviction, a man who doesn’t waffle, a man who doesn’t flip-flop,” Mr. Michels, the Republican nominee for governor in Wisconsin, told Republican activists and officials on Sept. 6 about the state ban. “I’m going to stick with what I know is right.”He reversed his position late last month, saying that, if elected, he would sign legislation to expand exceptions to include rape and incest.Many of the pivots have been even less artful. In Maine, a former governor, Paul LePage, is running to lead the state again and repeatedly stumbled over a question about whether he would sign more restrictive abortion laws if elected. “I don’t know what you mean by 15 weeks, 28 weeks. Because I don’t know,” Mr. LePage said after a protracted exchange on a debate stage last week.And in Arizona, a spokesman for Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for governor, had to clarify last week that Ms. Lake was not advocating changes to the state’s near-total abortion ban after she told a Phoenix talk-radio host that the procedure should be “rare and legal.”In an interview with CBS News on Sunday, Ms. Lake said she was trying to articulate how far the Democratic Party had moved from its Clinton-era talking points of “safe, legal and rare,” asserting that the procedure has become “anything but rare.” But she refused to say whether she would pursue restrictions on abortions sooner than 15 weeks into pregnancy, diverting the conversation to adoption and falsely casting her Democratic opponent as supportive of “abortion right up until birth.”Her remarks follow guidance circulated by party strategists who are urging their candidates to flip the script, labeling Democrats as the “extremists” on the issue. A memo from the Republican National Committee offering talking points for candidates encouraged a focus on rising prices and violent crime.Republican strategists and party officials argue that the potency of the issue is fading as economic concerns grow more intense.“To sustain that level of interest and enthusiasm in the current political climate for five months is very difficult, especially with more pressing personal pocketbook issues hurting voters,” said Robert Blizzard, a Republican pollster engaged in a number of midterm races.Mark Graul, a longtime Republican strategist based in Wisconsin, said that right after the Supreme Court decision, the abortion issue was “very much front and center.”But in the final weeks of the race, Mr. Graul said, voters are saying, “‘I care about that, but I care about how much it costs to fill up my car and buy groceries. And is my family going to be safe?’” He added: “I think they’re starting to care about that more.”While polls show that the majority of voters support a federal right to an abortion, Democrats are not favored to maintain control of Congress, given still-high inflation, concerns about crime and President Biden’s low approval ratings.Still, Democrats are trying to ensure that Republicans cannot escape so easily. After decades of treating the issue as a second-tier priority, the Democratic Party has made abortion rights a centerpiece of its fall campaign, spending nearly $213 million to blanket the airwaves with ads about it, according to AdImpact, an advertising-tracking firm.Celinda Lake, a veteran Democratic pollster and strategist, called the political debate over abortion rights “the best thing going for the Democrats.”“It can’t be the only thing going for the Democrats,” she added. But many Republicans, she said, are “having a lot of difficulty” discussing the issue.The need to square decades of opposition to abortion rights with the new political environment has led to some complicated contortions for Republicans, some of whom have tried to cast themselves less as drivers of abortion bans and more as bystanders.Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, a Republican who faces a tough race for re-election, said he supported not only the 15-week federal ban but prohibiting abortion starting at conception. But Mr. Bacon also argues that such a policy would never pass the Senate because it would be unable to garner the 60 votes necessary to overcome a filibuster — essentially telling voters not to worry about his positions because they will be blocked by Democrats.Kari Lake stated that abortions should be “rare and legal” but said she was misunderstood.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times“Whether we have a pro-abortion majority in the House and Senate, or a pro-life majority in the Senate or House, you’re not going to get past a 60-vote threshold in the Senate,” he said, in an interview on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” “So the reality is, most of this is going to be done at the state level.”In his primary race, Joe Lombardo, the sheriff of the Las Vegas area who is running for Nevada governor, summarized his position on abortion with three words: “Joe is pro-life.”But a 747-word note published on his campaign website late last month reversed his stance on an abortion rule in Nevada. He said he would not repeal an executive order protecting women from being prosecuted for seeking an abortion in the state, which has emerged as a safe haven for the procedure as neighboring Utah, Arizona and Idaho have restricted access.An ad by a conservative group in Nevada echoes that argument, accusing Democrats of “scaring” voters about the state’s abortion laws and saying politicians cannot change the rules allowing the procedure until 24 weeks.The claims by Mr. Lombardo and the group ignore the power of executive orders to add new restrictions and the possibility that Congress could pass a national ban, superseding state law with a stricter federal standard.Not all Republicans have been so quick to finesse their stances.A campaign ad released last week by Jeff Crossman, the Democratic candidate for Ohio attorney general, takes aim at the Republican incumbent and his public questioning of the existence of a 10-year-old rape victim who left the state for an abortion. The child was blocked from obtaining an abortion in Ohio because she was three days past a six-week limit on abortions. The attorney general, Dave Yost, initially said the report was likely to be a “fabrication.”“Dave Yost, you disgust me,” a woman identified only as Geri of Northeast Ohio says to the camera in the ad. “When a 10-year-old was raped and impregnated, Yost went on national TV and called it a hoax? I am a grandmother, and I have a 10-year-old granddaughter.”Mr. Yost has resisted calls to apologize for doubting the victim. “I don’t understand what you think I need to apologize for,” he said in an interview with a local television program. “We didn’t even know the identity, and still don’t, of that poor victim.” More

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      In Trump Case, Texas Creates a Headache for Georgia Prosecutors

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      A Texas court is thwarting Georgia prosecutors’ attempts to compel testimony from Texas witnesses as part of a criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump.ATLANTA — Witnesses called to testify in a Georgia criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump and his allies have not always come willingly.A number of them have fought their subpoenas in their home-state courts, only to have local judges order them to cooperate. That was the case with Trump-aligned lawyers John Eastman in New Mexico, Jenna Ellis in Colorado and Rudolph W. Giuliani in New York; Mr. Giuliani was also told by an Atlanta judge that he could come “on a train, on a bus or Uber” after his lawyers said a health condition prevented him from flying.But the state of Texas is proving to be an outlier, creating serious headaches for Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, who is leading the investigation into efforts by Mr. Trump and others to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.Last month, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, thwarted Ms. Willis’s effort to force Jacki L. Pick, a Republican lawyer and pundit, to testify in Atlanta, saying that her subpoena had essentially expired. But in a pair of opinions, a majority of the judges on the all-Republican court went further, indicating that they believed the Georgia special grand jury conducting the inquiry may not have the legal standing to compel testimony from Texas witnesses.After the court’s ruling, two other pro-Trump Texans, Sidney Powell and Phil Waldron, did not show up for their scheduled court dates in Atlanta. And while there may be workarounds for Ms. Willis — experts say the Atlanta prosecutors could go to Texas to depose the witnesses — it looks to some Georgia observers like a pattern of Texas Republicans meddling with Georgia when it comes to the fate of Mr. Trump.Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, has subpoenaed prominent lawyers of Mr. Trump, including Rudolph Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman and Sidney Powell.Audra Melton for The New York Times“It does seem like there’s a substantial resistance from Texas and Texans to forcing people to cooperate in ways that we haven’t seen from any other jurisdiction,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta.Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, has also weighed in, filing an amicus brief late last month along with other Republican attorneys general that supported efforts by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina to avoid testifying in the Atlanta investigation. Mr. Paxton, in a statement accompanying his brief, assailed the investigation for what he said were its “repeated attempts to ignore” the Constitution.Mr. Paxton, who is running for re-election this year despite having been indicted and arrested on criminal securities-fraud charges, has sought to intervene in Georgia before. After the 2020 election, he sued Georgia and three other swing states that Mr. Trump lost, in a far-fetched attempt to get the Supreme Court to delay the certification of their presidential electors.By refusing to compel the three Texas residents to testify in Georgia, the court is breaking with a long tradition of cooperation between states in producing subpoenaed witnesses. All 50 states have versions of what is known as the Uniform Act, which was created in the 1930s to establish a framework for one state to compel testimony from a witness residing in another.Ms. Willis, in a statement, said, “We expect every state to abide by the Constitutional requirement to ensure that full faith and credit is given by them to the laws and proceedings of other states. That requirement includes abiding by the interstate compact to produce witnesses for other states’ judicial proceedings.”Ms. Willis is weighing potential conspiracy and racketeering charges, among others, and is examining the phone call that Mr. Trump made on Jan. 2, 2021, to Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, imploring him to “find” nearly 12,000 votes, or enough to reverse the outcome of the Georgia vote.On Friday, her office filed paperwork seeking to compel testimony from three more witnesses, The Associated Press reported: former House Speaker Newt Gingrich as well as Michael T. Flynn, a former national security adviser, and Eric Herschmann, a lawyer who worked in the Trump White House.Nearly 20 people, including Mr. Giuliani, have already been informed that they are targets of Ms. Willis’s investigation and could face criminal charges. Ms. Pick, a radio host and former lawyer for House Republicans whose husband, Doug Deason, is a prominent Republican donor and Dallas power broker, has also been told she is among the targets of the investigation, according to one of her lawyers, Geoffrey Harper.She played a central role in one of two December 2020 hearings before Georgia lawmakers that were organized by Mr. Giuliani, who advanced a number of falsehoods about the election. During a hearing before the Georgia Senate, Ms. Pick narrated a video feed that showed ballot counting taking place at a downtown Atlanta arena where voting was held.Jacki L. Pick played a central role in one of two December 2020 hearings before Georgia lawmakers that were organized by Mr. Giuliani.Rebecca Wright/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via APAt the hearing, Ms. Pick said the video “goes to” what she called “fraud or misrepresentation,” and the implication of her presentation was that something improper was taking place. She was immediately challenged by Democrats at the hearing. The office of Mr. Raffensperger, a Republican, has also long refuted the idea that anything nefarious took place in the counting of votes at the arena.Mr. Harper said his client had done nothing wrong.“She didn’t suggest there was fraud, she didn’t suggest something untoward had happened,” he said. “She simply said here is a video, here’s what it shows, we’d like to investigate further. Her testimony is the most innocuous thing you’ve ever seen.”Fulton County prosecutors are also seeking the testimony of Ms. Powell, who like Ms. Pick lives in the Dallas area. She is a lawyer and conspiracy theorist who played a high-profile role in efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power. In Georgia, she helped put together a team of Trump allies and consultants who gained access to a wide range of voter data and voting equipment in rural Coffee County; they are currently being investigated by Mr. Raffensperger’s office, as well as the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and Ms. Willis’s office.In an email, Ms. Powell said, “GA has no need to subpoena me. My involvement in GA issues has been significantly misrepresented by the press including your outlet.”She did not answer questions about her legal strategy with respect to Fulton County’s attempt to make her testify, or say whether she had been informed that she is a target of the investigation or merely a witness.Mr. Waldron, a former Army colonel with a background in information warfare, also advanced a number of conspiracy theories after the 2020 election, and he made a virtual appearance at one of the legislative hearings in Georgia. He could not be reached for comment. He lives outside of Austin, Texas, and the district attorney in the county where he lives said he was not aware of any legal challenge to Ms. Willis’s effort to compel Mr. Waldron’s testimony.Phil Waldron, a former Army colonel, made a virtual appearance at a legislative hearing in Georgia after the 2020 election.Aram Roston/ReutersThe body overseeing the Fulton County investigation is known under Georgia law as a special purpose grand jury. It can sit for longer periods than a regular grand jury and has the ability to subpoena targets of the investigation to provide testimony, though it lacks the power to indict. Once a special grand jury issues a report and recommendations, indictments can be sought from a regular grand jury.A majority of judges on the Texas court expressed the view that the Georgia grand jury was not a proper criminal grand jury because it lacks indictment authority, and thus likely lacks standing to compel the appearance of witnesses from Texas.“I am inclined to find such a body is not the kind of grand jury envisioned by the Uniform Act,” wrote Judge Kevin Yeary. “And if I may be wrong about that, I would place the burden to show otherwise on the requesting state.”His view was essentially backed by four other judges on the nine-member court.The question of whether the Fulton County special grand jury is civil or criminal in nature came up in late August, when lawyers for Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, unsuccessfully sought to quash a subpoena demanding that he testify. The governor’s lawyers argued that the special grand jury was civil, and that Mr. Kemp would not have to testify in a civil action under the doctrine of sovereign immunity.But in a written order on Aug. 29, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert C.I. McBurney rejected the idea that the special grand jury was civil, noting that none of the paperwork establishing the grand jury mentioned that it would be considering civil actions.“That a special purpose grand jury cannot issue an indictment does not diminish the criminal nature of its work or somehow transmogrify that criminal investigation into a civil one,” Judge McBurney wrote. “Police officers, too, lack the authority to indict anyone, but their investigations are plainly criminal.”Ronald Wright, a law professor at Wake Forest University who studies the work of criminal prosecutors, said that the Texas court’s decision, based on its interpretation of the special grand jury’s purpose, appeared unusual. “I haven’t heard anything about one state saying categorically, ‘No we read your statute, that doesn’t apply here, you can’t get this witness,’” he said.The nine members of Texas’ Court of Criminal Appeals are elected and are all Republicans. But they have not always been in sync with Gov. Greg Abbott and Mr. Paxton, both vociferous Trump supporters. Mr. Harper said his reading of Georgia law is that the special grand jury is a civil proceeding. He believes that witnesses living in other states can challenge efforts to compel their testimony, at least if it is in person.“Civil cases can get testimony from out-of-state witnesses, but they have to do it by deposition,” he said. “I believe that if pressed on the issue, it would be a unanimous ruling by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that a special grand jury in Georgia cannot subpoena live testimony from witnesses outside of Georgia.” More

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      Who won, who lost and what was too close to call on Tuesday.

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      Ever since former President Donald J. Trump lost in the state of Georgia during the 2020 presidential election, he has sought revenge against the Republican incumbents there whom he blamed for not helping him overturn the results. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump lost in Georgia again, with his endorsed candidates losing in their Republican primaries for governor, secretary of state and attorney general.But those weren’t the only races that voters decided on Tuesday. Here is a rundown of the winners and losers in some of the most important contests in Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas and Texas:Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, won his primary despite Mr. Trump’s best efforts against him.The Georgia governor who stood up to Mr. Trump, Brian Kemp, easily defeated a Trump-backed challenger. Mr. Kemp will face Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee, whom he narrowly defeated four years ago.Chris Carr, Georgia’s attorney general, also defeated his Trump-backed challenger, John Gordon, to win the Republican nomination for that office. Mr. Gordon had embraced Mr. Trump’s election lie and made that a key part of his appeal to voters. Herschel Walker, the former football star and a Trump-backed candidate to represent Georgia in the Senate, defeated a crowded field of Republican rivals. In Georgia, one House Democrat beat another House Democrat in a primary orchestrated by Republicans. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene won the Republican primary for her House district in Georgia.In Texas, a scandal-scarred attorney general defeated a challenger named Bush. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a former White House press secretary under Mr. Trump and the daughter of former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, won the Republican nomination for governor of Arkansas.Representative Mo Brooks made it into an Alabama Senate runoff after Mr. Trump pulled back his endorsement.In Texas, a Democratic House runoff between Representative Henry Cuellar, a Democrat who opposes abortion rights, and his progressive challenger, Jessica Cisneros, an immigration attorney, was too close to call. (Results are being updated in real time here). More

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      These Trump-Endorsed Candidates Are on the Ballot Today

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      Candidates endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump have had mixed success so far in contested Republican primaries for the 2022 midterm elections.Most of Mr. Trump’s endorsed candidates are running unopposed or face little-known, poorly funded opponents. But many Republican candidates this year, whether endorsed by Mr. Trump or not, have embraced his style of politics, including false claims about the integrity of the 2020 elections.Here is a look at Mr. Trump’s endorsements in closely watched races today in Georgia, Arkansas and Texas.GeorgiaA campaign rally for former Senator David Perdue at the Wild Wing Café in Dunwoody, Ga., where he appeared on the John Fredericks Show, on Monday.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesDavid Perdue, the Trump-backed former senator, has trailed in public opinion polls and fund-raising in his effort to unseat Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican who angered the former president by refusing to help overturn the results of Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss in the state. Mr. Perdue has made lies about the 2020 election results a focal point of his campaign. Mr. Kemp has stood by the results, while supporting new restrictions on voting.Mr. Trump is also supporting Representative Jody Hice in his bid to unseat Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who also refused Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. Mr. Hice, a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, has made Mr. Trump’s baseless claims about the 2020 elections the center of his own campaign.Herschel Walker, the former professional football player whom Mr. Trump endorsed, has led a crowded field in the Republican primary for Senate, looking to challenge Senator Raphael Warnock, a well-funded Democrat, for the seat Mr. Warnock won in a high-profile special election in early 2021. Mr. Walker has been accused of domestic abuse and embraced skepticism about the 2020 election, but his celebrity and the Trump’s backing have buoyed him in public polling and fund-raising.In the crowded race for an open congressional seat just north of Atlanta, Mr. Trump endorsed Jake Evans, the son of Randy Evans, Mr. Trump’s former ambassador to Luxembourg. Mr. Evans has been attacked by his rivals for past remarks criticizing Mr. Trump. He has raised less money than Rich McCormick, a former Marine and a physician who narrowly lost a House race in 2020. Dr. McCormick has echoed Mr. Trump’s false claims about the 2020 elections and has refused to concede his own 2020 loss.ArkansasArkansas Republican gubernatorial candidate Sarah Huckabee Sanders, second from right, with her husband Bryan Sanders, right, greeting supporters in Harrison, Ark., on May 20.Terra Fondriest for The New York TimesMr. Trump endorsed two candidates who are heavily favored to win their primaries today. Sarah Sanders, Mr. Trump’s former press secretary and daughter of former Gov. Mike Huckabee, is facing Doc Washburn, a conservative talk radio host who was fired after not complying with the radio station’s vaccine mandate.In the race for attorney general, Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin, whom Mr. Trump endorsed, has raised and spent far more money than his rival, Leon Jones Jr., the state’s former labor secretary.TexasTexas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, in July 2021.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesAttorney General Ken Paxton has some problems. He has been indicted on criminal securities-fraud charges that are still pending. Several of his top aides claimed he abused his office by helping a wealthy donor. And he has faced abuse-of-power and bribery accusations. But he also has Mr. Trump’s endorsement and that could prove powerful enough to survive a re-election challenge from George P. Bush, the Texas land commissioner and nephew of former President George W. Bush who has clashed with Mr. Trump. More

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      Bush Dynasty, Its Influence Fading, Pins Hopes on One Last Stand in Texas

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      ARGYLE, Texas — His famous name shadows George P. Bush, the only member of the dynastic political clan now in public office, as he enters the final days of an uphill campaign to unseat Texas’ attorney general.To some Texans, the Bush family name is a badge of integrity, harking back to a bygone era of rectitude and respectful political debate. To others, it is the disqualifying mark of a Republican old guard that failed the party and betrayed its last president, Donald J. Trump.Mr. Bush would like to make the campaign about the two-term Republican incumbent, Ken Paxton, whose serious legal troubles — including an indictment on securities fraud charges and a continuing federal corruption investigation — prompted high-profile Republicans to take him on in the primary. Mr. Bush made it to a runoff with Mr. Paxton that takes place on Tuesday.A few years ago, Mr. Bush, whose mother is from Mexico and whose father was the governor of Florida, might have won the race handily, his aides believe, and then been held up as a prominent example of a new, more diverse generation of Republicans.But that was before the ground shifted and his family spoke out publicly against Mr. Trump, in an unsuccessful effort to derail his bid for the presidency.Mr. Bush broke with his father (Jeb), his uncle (George W.) and his grandfather (George H.W.) and aligned himself with Mr. Trump and his followers. The effort to distance himself from his relatives was captured in a campaign beer koozie that his campaign handed out last year, quoting Mr. Trump: “This is the Bush that got it right. I like him,” it says, beneath a line drawing of Mr. Trump shaking Mr. Bush’s hand.The effort did not pay off. Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Paxton, who had filed lawsuits seeking to overturn the 2020 election and had appeared with Mr. Trump at his rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, before members of the crowd stormed the Capitol.Mr. Bush, the Texas state land commissioner, bears a family name that evokes a pre-Trump style of Republican politics. Shelby Tauber for The New York TimesSome Texans say the political obituary has already been written for the Bush family, and see Mr. Bush, who is currently the state land commissioner, as its last flickering ember, with little of his forebears’ appeal.“Daddy Bush was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful,” Carolyn Lightfoot, a member of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, said of Mr. Bush’s grandfather. But the organization has criticized George P. Bush’s moves as land commissioner over his handling of the Alamo in San Antonio. Ms. Lightfoot said the Bush family and the party establishment were “trying to stuff him down our throats because of his Latino heritage.”For all that the family’s importance may have faded among Texas Republicans, Mr. Bush may still emerge victorious in the runoff. A poll this month had Mr. Paxton’s support at less than 50 percent, and Mr. Bush trailing him by only a few percentage points. Donors have pumped new money into Mr. Bush’s campaign in the final stretch, hoping to push him over the top.Mr. Bush has tried to refine and target his attacks on Mr. Paxton in recent weeks, after his campaign’s internal polling suggested that earlier efforts were hurting his own standing along with Mr. Paxton’s. And Mr. Bush has proudly invoked his family, both in a closing-message political ad and while speaking to audiences that might be unimpressed with the Bush name.“It’s all about ethics,” Mr. Bush told a gathering of Republican women this month in Argyle, a town in the rapidly growing, largely Republican suburbs of Fort Worth. “When people say the last thing we need is another Bush, my response is, this is precisely the time that we need a Bush.”As he barnstorms the state, Mr. Bush, 46, is invariably asked about his relatives, told about some fond memory of them, or challenged to reiterate his loyalty to Mr. Trump.After the event in Argyle, a man in a cowboy hat waited outside for Mr. Bush to emerge so he could confront the candidate.“Would you support for president the Republican nominee, even if it is Trump in 2024?” the man asked.“Yeah, no, I would support him again,” Mr. Bush replied as he walked to his car, wearing black cowboy boots emblazoned with a White House seal and a reference to his uncle’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. “But we’ll see who comes out.”At one campaign stop after another, Mr. Bush is asked about his family or his support for Donald J. Trump.Shelby Tauber for The New York TimesAt a Republican club event in Houston, held down the road from an apartment George W. Bush used to occupy in an area George H.W. Bush used to represent in Congress, George P. Bush delivered a speech attacking Democrats and Mr. Paxton. He promised to strengthen the state’s border with Mexico and to address Houston’s rising murder rate. He opened the floor to questions, but got a comment to start.“I enjoyed watching you talk, because to me, you have all the mannerisms of Governor Bush,” a man told him, to laughter in the room. “Your hands are just like ‘Saturday Night Live.’”Another attendee also made reference to his family. “I’ve heard people say that they’re not going to vote for you because they’re tired of the Bush dynasty,” said Doug Smith, a club member, echoing the views of some in the room. “How do you respond to those people?”“I’ll never run away from being a Bush; I love my family,” he said. Most of the crowd applauded.To live in Texas is to be exposed to the ubiquity of the Bushes, whose family name is borne by airports, roads and schools from Houston to Dallas to Midland. Both Bush presidents have their presidential libraries in the state. In Houston, there are even dog parks named for the canine companions of George P. Bush’s grandmother Barbara Bush, who died in 2018.Exposed to a national spotlight from a young age, Mr. Bush has been hearing about his bright political future for decades. “The Republican convention is doubling as a dress rehearsal for a man Republicans talk about as an up-and-coming heir to the Bush legacy,” The Baltimore Sun wrote of him in 2000, referring to him as a “hunk” who could put “the passion in compassionate conservatism.”Mr. Bush, left, was seen as an up-and-comer in Republican circles in 2000. His uncle George W. Bush was governor of Texas and a candidate for president, and his father, Jeb Bush, was governor of Florida. Ozier Muhammad/The New York TimesBut that is not the message Republicans want to hear now, Texas political consultants, donors and observers said.“Everything was lining up to give him the brass ring, but the party changed too much,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston. “The Republican base changed in such a fast way that many were left without a chair when the music stopped. Bush is a great example of that.”Jay Zeidman, a longtime friend of Mr. Bush’s, said he believed that those shifts masked a dissatisfaction with the direction the party had taken. “There’s a lack of political courage in this state right now because of Donald Trump,” he said. “I think Americans and Texans are thirsty for some reversion back to what politics used to be.”As he campaigns, Mr. Bush, who grew up in Florida, underscores his ties to Texas: Born in Houston, college at Rice University, a law career in the state. In an interview, Mr. Bush said he understood the legacy of his family as something Texan, as well as “quintessentially American and patriotic.”“My role is to close the wounds of the past,” Mr. Bush said. “What I focus on are areas that I can control, and not focus on the areas that I can’t control. Because that would be futile.”Mr. Bush has staked out hard-line positions that appeal to Republican primary voters on issues like the teaching of race and gender in schools. On immigration, he has urged Texas to formally invoke passages in the U.S. Constitution referring to “invasion,” a step toward the state seizing war powers and a move that Mr. Paxton and Gov. Greg Abbott have so far avoided making. He has said there was “fraud and irregularity” in the 2020 election, though he did not believe it changed the outcome.Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, faces Mr. Bush in a primary runoff on Tuesday.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesHe has challenged Mr. Paxton to debate him on issues, but the two have not shared a stage during the campaign. Mr. Bush contrasts his willingness to field questions from reporters and from a variety of audiences with Mr. Paxton’s practice of rarely holding news conferences or taking challenging questions.Mr. Paxton’s campaign declined a request for an interview.“Texas voters have made it clear that they are sick and tired of the Bush family dynasty and their RINO establishment donors playing kingmaker in Texas politics,” said Kimi Hubbard, a Paxton campaign spokeswoman, using an acronym meaning “Republican in name only.”Mr. Bush was careful in an interview with The New York Times not to question the shifts in the Republican Party that have made his run for office more difficult. He said the concerns of party voters were largely the same as when he first ran for land commissioner in the 2014 election: “Concerns on my family, concerns on crime, border security.”Have voters’ feelings about the Bush dynasty hurt him? “I wouldn’t say so,” he said. “I’ve won.”A significant number of Republicans polled in Texas say they would not support Mr. Bush because of his family background. But his lineage is not simply a liability.In this month’s poll by The Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler, people planning to vote in the primary runoff for attorney general were asked what they liked about their chosen candidate. One of the top factors Mr. Paxton’s supporters mentioned was that he was not a Bush. But about the same share of Mr. Bush’s backers said they were drawn to him specifically because he was a Bush.Mr. Bush has drawn financial support from his family’s network, including six-figure checks from some longtime Bush supporters and more than $100,000 directly from his uncle George W. Bush, campaign finance records show.Mr. Bush fielded questions at a Republican gathering in Flower Mound.Shelby Tauber for The New York TimesA week before the runoff, outside an early voting location in his grandfather’s old congressional district in Houston, Mr. Bush’s family name loomed large for Republican voters, both for and against.“We support George P.,” said Julie Treadwell, 50, who had just voted with her 18-year-old daughter. “We want to get back to that,” she said of his family and what they represented to her: “Conservative Republicans that are more even-keel and levelheaded.”Darla Ryden, 59, who overheard Ms. Treadwell’s remarks, waited until she had walked away to her car before describing her own views, which she said were just the opposite.“I was all for George Bush, daddy and son, but now I feel, with the Bushes, it’s more about power than it is about people,” Ms. Ryden said. She voted for Mr. Paxton in the runoff and supported him in the first round of the primary as well, she said, despite “his own struggles.”“The Bushes?” she added. “It’s done.” More

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      Republicans Push to Crackdown on Voter Fraud

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      Election fraud is exceedingly rare and often accidental. Still, G.O.P. lawmakers and prosecutors are promoting tough new enforcement efforts.The Florida Legislature last week created a law enforcement agency — informally called the election police — to tackle what Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republicans have declared an urgent problem: the roughly 0.000677 percent of voters suspected of committing voter fraud.In Georgia, Republicans in the House passed a law on Tuesday handing new powers to police personnel who investigate allegations of election-related crimes.And in Texas, the Republican attorney general already has created an “election integrity unit” charged solely with investigating illegal voting.Voter fraud is exceedingly rare — and often accidental. Still, ambitious Republicans across the country are making a show of cracking down on voter crime this election year. Legislators in several states have moved to reorganize and rebrand law enforcement agencies while stiffening penalties for voting-related crimes. Republican district attorneys and state attorneys general are promoting their aggressive prosecutions, in some cases making felony cases out of situations that in the past might have been classified as honest mistakes.It is a new phase of the Republican campaign to tighten voting laws that started after former President Donald J. Trump began making false claims of fraud following the 2020 election. The effort, which resulted in a wave of new state laws last year, has now shifted to courthouses, raising concern among voting rights activists that fear of prosecution could keep some voters from casting ballots.“As myths about widespread voter fraud become central to political campaigns and discourse, we’re seeing more of the high-profile attempts to make examples of individuals,” said Wendy Weiser, the vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center.It’s nearly impossible to assess whether the talk of getting tough on voter crime is resulting in an increase in prosecutions. There is no nationwide data on how many people were charged with voter fraud in 2020 or in previous elections, and state data is often incomplete. The state numbers that are available show there were very few examples of potential cases in 2020 and few prosecutions.Florida election officials made just 75 referrals to law enforcement agencies regarding potential fraud during the 2020 election, out of more than 11 million votes cast, according to data from the Florida secretary of state’s office. Of those investigations, only four cases have been prosecuted as voter fraud in the state from the 2020 election.In Texas, where Attorney General Ken Paxton announced his new “election integrity unit” in October to investigate election crimes, The Houston Chronicle reported that the six-prosecutor unit had spent $2.2 million and had closed three cases.And in Wisconsin, where a swath of Republicans, including one candidate for governor, are seeking to decertify the state’s 2020 presidential election results on the basis of false claims of fraud, a report released last week by the Wisconsin Election Commission said that the state had referred to local prosecutors 95 instances of felons’ voting in 2020 when they were not allowed to. From among those cases, district attorneys have filed charges against 16 people.“The underlying level of actual criminality, I don’t think that’s changed at all,” said Lorraine Minnite, a Rutgers University political science professor who has collected years of data on election fraud in America. “In an election of 130 million or 140 million people, it’s close to zero. The truth is not a priority; what is a priority is the political use of this issue.”The political incentives to draw attention to the enforcement of voting laws are clear. A Monmouth University poll in January found that 62 percent of Republicans and just 19 percent of Democrats believed voter fraud was a major problem.That may mean the odds of being charged with voter fraud can be linked to the political affiliation of the local prosecutor.In Fond du Lac County, Wis., District Attorney Eric Toney was in office for nine years without prosecuting a voter fraud case. But after he started his campaign for attorney general in 2021, Mr. Toney, a Republican, received a letter from a Wisconsin man who had acquired copies of millions of ballots in an attempt to conduct his own review of the 2020 election. The letter cited five Fond du Lac County voters whose registrations listed their home addresses at a UPS Store, a violation of a state law that requires voters to register where they live.Mr. Toney charged all five with felony voter fraud.A report the Wisconsin Election Commission released last week said that the state had referred to local prosecutors 95 instances of felons’ voting in 2020 when they were not allowed to.Scott Olson/Getty Images“We get tips from community members of people breaking the law through the year, and we take them seriously, especially if it’s an election law violation,” Mr. Toney said in an interview. “Law enforcement takes it seriously. I take it seriously as a district attorney.”One of the voters charged, Jamie Wells, told investigators that the UPS Store was her “home base.” She said she lived in a mobile home and split time between a nearby campground and Louisiana. Ms. Wells did not respond to phone or email messages. If convicted, she stands to serve up to three and a half years in prison — though she would most likely receive a much shorter sentence.In La Crosse County, Wis., District Attorney Tim Gruenke, a Democrat, received a similar referral: 23 people registered to vote with addresses from a local UPS Store, and 16 of them voted in 2020. But Mr. Gruenke said he had concluded that there was no attempt at fraud. Instead of felony charges, the local clerk sent the voters a letter giving them 30 days to change their registrations to an address where they lived.“It didn’t seem to me there was any attempt to defraud,” Mr. Gruenke said. “It would be a felony charge, and I thought that would be too heavy for what amounted to a typo or clerical error.”Mr. Toney linked his decision to his views about the 2020 election in Wisconsin, which the Democratic candidate, Joseph R. Biden Jr., won by more than 20,682 votes out of 3.3 million cast.While he had never challenged Mr. Biden’s win, he said he believed that “there is no dispute that Wisconsin election laws weren’t followed and fraud occurred.”“I support identifying any fraud or election laws not followed to ensure it never happens again, because elections are the cornerstone of our democracy,” Mr. Toney said.(Ms. Wells, one of the voters Mr. Toney has charged, also said she believed something was amiss in the 2020 election. “They took it away from Trump,” she told investigators.)Mr. DeSantis in Florida is perhaps the best-known politician who is promoting efforts to bolster criminal enforcement of voting-related laws. The governor, who is up for re-election in November, made the new police agency a top legislative priority. .The unit, called the Office of Election Crimes and Security, takes on work already done by the secretary of state’s office, but reports directly to the governor.The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6Numerous inquiries. More

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      Indicted. Under F.B.I. Investigation. And Still Popular With Texas Republicans.

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      Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, earned the most votes in Tuesday’s G.O.P. primary. His embrace of Trumpism has helped him weather a series of allegations.SAN ANTONIO — The race for Texas attorney general is asking Republicans to determine how many indictments and allegations of corruption are too many. The answer may be there is no limit — so long as the candidate has an endorsement from former President Donald J. Trump.Ken Paxton, the Trump-backed attorney general, was indicted and arrested on criminal securities-fraud charges that are still pending. He has faced calls for his resignation after several of his top aides claimed he abused his office by helping a wealthy donor. And he has been serving as the state’s top lawyer while under threat of a possible new indictment, as the F.B.I. investigates the abuse-of-office and bribery accusations.“The voters of Texas will tolerate a great deal,” said State Senator Kel Seliger, a moderate Republican who is a former mayor of Amarillo. “They think if somebody is ideologically in sync with them, that’s what matters. I would have thought in Texas that moral example is more important, but apparently it’s not.”In the pre-Trump era, indictments and investigations by federal law enforcement could have been fatal to a Republican campaign. But Mr. Trump has instilled a deep mistrust in government institutions like the F.B.I. Mr. Paxton took the unusual step of authorizing an investigation of an F.B.I. investigation — he appointed a special prosecutor to look into the federal probe of the wealthy donor, an Austin real estate investor named Nate Paul whose home and offices were raided by federal agents.The litany of allegations against Mr. Trump has allowed acolytes like Mr. Paxton to claim that they, too, are victims of a government conspiracy.“That’s the Biden F.B.I., the Biden D.O.J.,” Mr. Paxton said in a recent interview with a Fox News reporter. “They were under investigation by my office. I don’t know what they are going to do. All I can tell you is that we were doing the right thing. We are going to continue to do the right thing. I don’t control what the Biden White House does.”Since the 2020 election, Mr. Paxton has made himself among the nation’s foremost Trump defenders, filing an audacious lawsuit with the Supreme Court seeking to delay certification of the results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He spoke at the Jan. 6 rally in Washington that preceded the attack on the United States Capitol, won an endorsement from Mr. Trump and earned praise from him at the former president’s rally outside Houston. And he has overlooked the fact that, although he has claimed otherwise, the federal abuse-of-power investigation began under Mr. Trump’s F.B.I., not Biden’s.In the Republican primary on Tuesday in Texas, Mr. Paxton won 43 percent of the vote, a soft showing for an incumbent but one indicative of the three well-funded challengers who saw him as politically vulnerable. Since Texas requires primary candidates to win a majority of the vote to advance to the general election, Mr. Paxton faces a May 24 runoff against the scion of the most famous family in modern Texas politics: George P. Bush, the state’s land commissioner who is the nephew of one president and the grandson of another.The Paxton-Bush runoff crystallized immediately as a contest between an incumbent with ethical and legal issues and a challenger who cannot escape the establishment brand of his family name. In Texas Republican circles, some operatives cast the race as prison stripes versus pinstripes.Mr. Paxton has withstood his legal woes by delivering on the issues that drive Texas conservatives. He’s used his office as the state’s chief culture-war litigator — defending the new Texas abortion law, suing the Biden administration to force the federal government to continue building the border wall and joining a right-wing push to criminalize medical care for transgender youth. Days before the primary, he issued an opinion stating that certain medical treatments for transgender children could be considered child abuse, treatments that doctors describe as gender-affirming care.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the 2022 election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.Mr. Paxton did not take long to attack Mr. Bush as a symbol of the moderate conservative politics that Mr. Trump has all but excised from the Republican Party.“What has happened with performance by the Bushes over the last decade, it’s been disappointing,” Mr. Paxton said Wednesday during an interview on a conservative talk radio show in Lubbock. “I think a lot of Republicans have had enough of it. The Bushes have had their chance. It’s time for the dynasty to end.”George P. Bush spoke at a candidate forum in Midland last month. Mr. Paxton did not attend the event.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesThat a top elected official in Texas could make such a stunning anti-Bush remark and face no political consequences illustrates just how loyal Texas Republicans have become to Mr. Trump and Trumpism.In Mr. Bush, Mr. Paxton has a near-perfect foil for a runoff election that is likely to have half or less the turnout from Tuesday’s primary. Mr. Bush has been an enthusiastic supporter of Mr. Trump, but his father, Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida and a 2016 presidential candidate, and his uncle, former President George W. Bush, have been harsh critics.At a debate last month, the younger Mr. Bush said President Biden was the rightful winner of the 2020 election and called Mr. Paxton’s lawsuit to block the election results “frivolous” — statements Mr. Paxton’s campaign is using to attack Mr. Bush as insufficiently conservative.Mr. Bush said in radio interviews in recent days that he has contacted Mr. Trump’s advisers to suggest that he switch his endorsement from Mr. Paxton. A Trump aide said that was extremely unlikely. And Mr. Paxton said he spoke with Mr. Trump himself and extracted a pledge that the former president would continue to support him through the runoff.Still, Mr. Bush, whose father was savaged as “low energy” by Mr. Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, is not conceding Mr. Trump’s support. Last summer he distributed red koozies with a silhouette of himself shaking hands with Mr. Trump and a quote from the former president: “This is the only Bush that likes me! This is the Bush that got it right.”Mr. Bush signaled he will lean into Mr. Paxton’s ethical and legal issues, which have long been talked about in Texas political circles. In 2014, after Mr. Paxton was first elected attorney general but had not yet taken office, he was accused of taking a $1,000 pen that belonged to another lawyer. (He later returned it and said the episode was a simple mistake.) The State Bar of Texas is also investigating whether Mr. Paxton committed professional misconduct by challenging the 2020 presidential election results.In his own radio interview in Lubbock, Mr. Bush said the F.B.I. investigation and the securities-fraud case “are a matter of public record and should be discussed.” Mr. Bush’s campaign spokeswoman did not return repeated messages this week. Mr. Paxton declined to be interviewed.Mr. Paxton has denied wrongdoing in the securities case and has rejected claims that he accepted bribes in office. Last August, his office produced a 374-page report that cleared him of any wrongdoing and said there was “no evidence” he had accepted a bribe. “A.G. Paxton committed no crime,” the report issued by his office stated.There have been signals that Mr. Paxton’s litany of controversies has tested the limits of Texas Republicans’ patience with him. Representative Chip Roy, a conservative who used to work for Mr. Paxton, called for his resignation in 2020. Along with Mr. Bush, Mr. Paxton’s primary challengers included Representative Louie Gohmert, who gave up a safe East Texas congressional seat to run against him, and Eva Guzman, who resigned from the Texas Supreme Court to challenge him in the primary.During his campaign, Mr. Gohmert predicted Mr. Paxton would face a new federal indictment after winning the Republican nomination and lose the general election to a Democrat. If Mr. Paxton indeed wins the nomination but is defeated in November, it would be a devastating first for Republicans: No Democrat has won any statewide office in Texas since 1994.In the Democratic primary for attorney general, Rochelle Garza, a South Texas civil rights lawyer, garnered the most votes and is headed for a runoff. Her Democratic opponent remained unclear. The third-place vote-getter, Lee Merritt, a civil rights lawyer, said in a statement he was not ready to concede to the second-place candidate, Joe Jaworski, a former mayor of Galveston, because military and other ballots were still being counted. Ms. Garza said she was confident the attorney general’s office could be flipped from red to blue. In 2018, Mr. Paxton won re-election by narrowly defeating his opponent, Justin Nelson, by 3.56 percentage points.Mr. Paxton has brushed off any suggestion of a Democratic victory in the fall. “In this country, allegations don’t convict you,” he said in the Lubbock radio interview.Mr. Paxton’s aides said Texas Republicans don’t care about the allegations and controversies surrounding his office. They claimed credit for attacking Mr. Gohmert and Ms. Guzman in order to allow Mr. Bush to advance to the runoff. After the Paxton campaign attacked Ms. Guzman in television advertisements in the closing days before the primary, she dropped from winning 21 percent of the vote during the early-voting period to just 14 percent of the vote on Tuesday.“These ads clearly cost Eva a spot in the runoff,” Dick Weekley, the senior chairman of the mainstream Republican group Texans for Lawsuit Reform, which endorsed Ms. Guzman, wrote in an email to supporters after the primary.Both Mr. Paxton and Mr. Bush are certain to continue to pitch themselves as the true steward for Trump supporters among Texas Republicans.“It’s easy for me to say that I wouldn’t grovel for the Trump endorsement,” said Jerry Patterson, Mr. Bush’s predecessor as land commissioner and a Republican who is anti-Trump but is backing Mr. Paxton. “It’s just damn distasteful for George P. At some point you just have to have some pride in your own integrity.”Yet Mr. Patterson said he has no problem with Mr. Paxton doing Mr. Trump’s bidding about the 2020 election and constantly stressing his Trump bona fides.“For Paxton that came naturally,” Mr. Patterson said. “It’s not contrived.”Kirsten Noyes More