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    Brian Kemp, the Georgia Republican Who Emerged Stronger From Walker’s Defeat

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    Gov. Brian P. Kemp of Georgia — once derided by some of his fellow Republicans — has emerged in the aftermath of Tuesday’s Senate runoff as a savvy political operator.ATLANTA — As Republicans smarting from Herschel Walker’s defeat in Georgia continue the process of assigning blame, one man seems to be conspicuously above reproach: Gov. Brian P. Kemp.The state’s Republican governor — once derided as an unhinged far-right disrupter following a series of wildly provocative 2018 campaign ads — has emerged in the aftermath of Tuesday’s Senate runoff as one of his party’s savvier political operators.On Nov. 8, Mr. Kemp won re-election by a resounding eight-point margin — a remarkable transformation for a politician who went from being booed by conservatives at his own events in the May primary to defeating a national Democratic star, Stacey Abrams. His ability to deftly walk a fine line of providing just enough support to Mr. Walker without being damaged by his defeat was proof of Mr. Kemp’s formidable political instincts, Republicans inside and outside the state said. He has survived and even thrived in the face of Donald J. Trump’s mercurial opposition. Mr. Kemp started out earning Mr. Trump’s endorsement, then became the former president’s political enemy, overcoming a primary challenge that Mr. Trump had orchestrated. Just before last month’s general election, Mr. Trump suddenly switched gears and encouraged his followers to support the Georgia governor.Mr. Kemp has helped create a template for Republicans, showing them how to use Mr. Trump’s attacks to strengthen an independent political brand and not sacrifice support from the former president’s loyal base. His navigation of the Republican Party’s crosscurrents, along with an election performance that saw him outperform Mr. Trump in crucial suburban swing districts, has raised his national profile and heightened speculation about his future ambitions and a potential run for president in 2024. “The ceiling is extremely high for Brian Kemp right now,” said Stephen Lawson, a Georgia-based Republican strategist who ran a pro-Walker super PAC. “Whether that for him is the U.S. Senate in four years, whether that’s potentially looking at ’24 stuff or whether that’s just being a really good governor and a voice for your party, he is going to have a huge platform moving forward.”Mr. Kemp, a former homebuilder from Athens, Ga., has built his two-decade political career on a mix of luck, skill and occasional provocations — in one 2018 TV ad, he pointed a shotgun at an actor playing a suitor to one of his daughters. He speaks with a slow, deep Southern drawl that he sometimes plays up for the cameras, and as an alumnus of the University of Georgia, he has positioned himself as the fan-in-chief of its football team, which Mr. Walker helped lead to a national championship in 1980.The governor’s Democratic critics say that Mr. Kemp’s allegiance to far-right orthodoxy has harmed the state. He signed a restrictive 2019 abortion law that effectively bans the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy and refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, a decision that has caused the state to forgo billions of dollars in federal health care money.Mr. Kemp, in Bremen, Ga., in November, said that his kind of outreach and willingness to campaign helped him win re-election.Audra Melton for The New York TimesYet even his critics acknowledge his knack for presenting himself as an aw-shucks Georgian and making his case in small rural communities, handshake to handshake. In the eight years that he served as secretary of state, he built relationships with many of the local shot-callers — coroners, tax assessors, sheriffs — in Georgia’s 159 counties. Those ties likely helped insulate him from Mr. Trump’s attacks after the 2020 election among local Republican officials. “His success now really is a result of all these touches over the years — that ‘How’s your mama? How’s your daddy?’ kind of thing,” State Senator Jen Jordan, a Democrat and vocal Kemp critic, said. Such a face-to-face style may work locally and statewide, Ms. Jordan said, but may not translate beyond that. “Is that something you can do at the national level, like running for president?” she added.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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      Will Asian American Voters Continue to Rally Behind Democrats?

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      The party confronts a mood of frustration among the rising electoral force that helped vault it to power. The campaign in Georgia will test that bond.JOHNS CREEK, Ga. — At a brightly lit restaurant in suburban Atlanta, nestled in a tidy neighborhood of office buildings and private drives, State Senator Michelle Au brought up the mass shooting that lingers as a singular trauma in the local Asian American community.Addressing a predominantly Chinese American group of about 40 people, Dr. Au, a practicing anesthesiologist, delicately alluded to “the shootings that took place in metro Atlanta on March 16 of 2021” as she launched into a plea for new gun-control laws that Georgia Republicans oppose. She did not need to remind her audience of the details of the deadly attack carried out last year by a white gunman against several massage parlors in the Atlanta area, killing eight people including six women of Asian descent.“Republicans, while they talk a big game about public safety, they don’t seem to be as interested in actually proposing concrete solutions to deal with it,” Dr. Au told the crowd.The issue of gun safety is one of several that Democrats like Dr. Au are putting at the center of their argument to Asian American voters ahead of the November elections, as they work to win over the array of communities that make up America’s fastest-growing demographic group.Dr. Au’s district — a well-paved tangle of shopping centers and office complexes where law firms list their names in Korean and Indian grocers compete for space with bubble tea chains — is a case study in the social and political complexity of an electoral force rising in swing states: the diverse collection of communities jammed into the census label “Asian American.”The attack last year by a white gunman against several massage parlors in the Atlanta area killed eight people, including six women of Asian descent.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesIn 2020, Georgia voters turned out in force to eject Donald J. Trump from office and then elect two Democratic senators in a runoff that decided control of the Senate. It was a breakthrough in Asian American mobilization, with turnout surging nationally by about 40 percent over the 2016 election — the largest spike of any demographic group. It amounted to an emphatic repudiation of a president who trafficked in race baiting amid a wave of hate crimes against Asian Americans.Yet just two years later, Democratic candidates in states like Georgia are confronting a mood of frustration and fear among Asian American voters that threatens to weaken the political coalition that turned Georgia blue for the first time this century.The anxious mood, voters and local leaders say, comes from persistent alarm about public safety and a feeling of being overlooked by national political leaders despite growing electoral clout.They warn that too many Democrats are still treating Asian Americans as a constituency of secondary importance, while Republicans continue pushing an agenda that is broadly unfriendly to Asian American communities even as the G.O.P. makes sporadic overtures on issues like education and crime.The ongoing scourge of racist harassment and violence, stirred during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic and stoked by Mr. Trump’s rhetoric, has kept the electorate on edge and heightened concerns about lax gun laws and crime. At Dr. Au’s event in Johns Creek, one speaker brought up attacks against Asian Americans on the New York City subway as part of a national atmosphere of menace.Narender G. Reddy, Dr. Au’s opponent in her state legislative election this year, is an Indian American real estate agent and longtime Republican donor.Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesSeveral state elections in Georgia will represent a revealing test of Democrats’ bond with the Asian American electorate. The party has nominated a number of Asian Americans for important races, including Bee Nguyen, a Vietnamese American state legislator running for secretary of state against the Republican incumbent, Brad Raffensperger, and Nabilah Islam, a Bangladeshi American seeking a State Senate seat in the Atlanta suburbs.Republicans have put forward a handful of Asian American candidates, too: Dr. Au’s opponent in her state legislative election this year, Narender G. Reddy, is an Indian American real estate agent and longtime Republican donor who has pressed Gov. Brian Kemp and other Republicans to do more to woo South Asian voters. There are signs this year that Mr. Kemp is making a meaningful effort.Gun Violence and Gun Control in America2022 Mass Shootings: Gun violence is a persistent American problem. A partial list of mass shootings this year offers a glimpse at the scope.Ending a Stalemate: A bipartisan bill, the most significant gun measure to clear Congress in decades, was forged by an unlikely coalition of senators.California’s New Law: Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation that provides a minimum $10,000 award to residents who successfully sue makers of illegal guns. The measure is modeled after a Texas anti-abortion law.Armed and Ready to Teach: Lawmakers in Ohio have made it easier for teachers and other school employees to carry guns. The move is part of a wider strategy by Republicans and gun rights advocates, who say that allowing teachers, principals and superintendents to be trained and armed gives schools a fighting chance in case of attack.Democrats are counting on voters in communities like Johns Creek, an affluent enclave some 25 miles from downtown Atlanta, to help Stacey Abrams defeat Mr. Kemp and re-elect Senator Raphael Warnock. About a quarter of residents in the area identify as Asian American.In an interview, Dr. Au, 44, said Democrats needed to connect with Asian American voters on policy issues like gun safety and abortion rights rather than assuming Asian Americans would continue to vote Democratic chiefly out of distaste for Republicans. Economic frustrations over inflation and gas prices were part of the Asian American experience, too, she said.The community, Dr. Au said, wants “to have a voice and have power and be listened to.”“It’s not a safe thing to say that all voters of color, uniformly, will vote for Democrats because they have a more inclusive platform,” she said. “And I think it’s not safe to say that all Asian voters will vote for Democrats, because of that same reason.”Johns Creek, an affluent enclave some 25 miles from downtown Atlanta, could be a pivotal community for the Democratic Party in November. About a quarter of the residents in the area identify as ethnically Asian.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesAsian American voters have steadily shifted in the direction of Democrats since the turn of the century, as a younger and more liberal generation has come of age politically, while conservative-leaning older voters have turned away from the Republican Party’s increasingly hard-line views on race and national identity.Tracy Xu, a voter at Dr. Au’s event, said she planned to vote for Democrats in November because she was upset about gun crime and the rollback of abortion rights. The law enacted by Georgia Republicans to ban most abortions, Ms. Xu said, reminded her of the repressive reproductive policies in China, where she lived for the first half of her life.But Ms. Xu, 51, who works in the financial industry, said she still considered herself a political independent and did not see either party as having a dominant advantage with voters like her.“Just like the country’s split, our community is very split,” Ms. Xu said.Tracy Xu, a voter at Dr. Au’s event, said she planned to vote for Democrats this year because she was upset about gun crime and the rollback of abortion rights.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesA Fragile AllianceThe relationship between Democrats and the Asian American community was tested almost immediately after the 2020 election, in tense exchanges between Mr. Biden and Asian American lawmakers who questioned whether the incoming president understood the role their community had played in his victory.Asian American voters made up about 4 percent of the national electorate in 2020, with studies showing they voted for Mr. Biden over Mr. Trump by a margin of roughly two to one. That was enough to secure victory for Democrats in a narrowly split state like Georgia.Still, Republicans maintained support in more right-leaning parts of the community, particularly among older and more religious voters; in Southern California, Vietnamese American voters helped elect to Congress two Korean American Republican women who branded the Democratic Party as a vehicle for socialism.Mr. Biden struggled at the outset to forge a tighter bond with Asian American political leaders, clashing with lawmakers over the near-absence of Asian Americans from early appointments to his administration. Private frustrations exploded into a damaging public spectacle when Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, a Democrat of Thai ancestry, threatened a blockade of Mr. Biden’s nominees until the administration pledged to put more Asian Americans in important positions.Representative Judy Chu of California, the head of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, said lawmakers had been “severely disappointed” during the transition but that the president had given convincing assurances he recognized the influence of the Asian American vote.After the spa shooting, Mr. Biden traveled to Georgia to meet with Asian American leaders. He was joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, herself the daughter of an Indian American immigrant. Weeks later, Mr. Biden returned for a rally marking his 100th day in office.Asian businesses along Buford Highway in Doraville, Ga.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesIntroducing him on that April day was Long Tran, a cafe owner in Dunwoody who said he spoke backstage with Mr. Biden about the shooting and the impact of “anti-Chinese rhetoric.” The president, Mr. Tran said, stressed that he and Ms. Harris “haven’t forgotten that Asian hate is still rising in the country and it’s something that needs to be addressed.”Yet in the 2021 off-year elections, Republicans recovered some ground with Asian American voters in New York City and Virginia, offering a hard-edged message about crime and opposition to liberal education policies that would have reformed or abolished certain kinds of selective public-school programs that are popular with Asian families but that many Democrats regard as exclusionary of Black and Hispanic students.Asian American voters motivated by similar concerns helped upend local politics in San Francisco, ejecting members of a left-wing school board and a progressive district attorney in recall elections that showed powerful currents of discontent within the overwhelmingly Democratic city.This summer, focus groups conducted by national Democratic pollsters found Asian American voters expressing dismay that Democrats often prioritize other constituencies defined by race or sexual orientation above Asian Americans, according to two people briefed on the studies.Long Tran, a Democratic candidate for the state legislature in a district with a large community of Asian American voters, said many people he met were uneasy about left-wing ideas on police reform and concerned about support on the right for lax firearm laws.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesStill, the Asian American Voter Survey, a large-scale poll conducted annually, found in July that Asian Americans leaned toward supporting Democratic congressional candidates by a margin of 54 percent to 27 percent. Those voters trusted Democrats more than Republicans on issues including guns, the environment and race — but split evenly on which party they preferred to handle the economy.Mr. Trump remained intensely unpopular with Asian American voters.EunSook Lee, the head of the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund, a progressive nonprofit, said Democrats still had a window to solidify their political relationship with the Asian American electorate.Of Asian American voters, she said, “They care about reproductive rights. They care about gun control. And on all those issues, the Republican Party isn’t budging.”Divide and ConquerIn a real estate office in Duluth, Ga., minutes away from Johns Creek, Mr. Reddy — Dr. Au’s Republican opponent — gave a blunt assessment of his party’s efforts to court Asian Americans: “Still not there.”Mr. Reddy’s office is all but wallpapered with photos of himself with Republican politicians like George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, an expression of his personal devotion to the G.O.P. But Mr. Reddy, 71, said most of his Indian American friends saw the Republican Party as “all white.”“That’s the only popular perception,” he said. “And there is truth to it, actually.”The party, he said, had been harmed by episodes like a rally at the end of the Georgia Senate runoffs when Senator David Perdue, a Republican incumbent, had mocked the pronunciation of Ms. Harris’s first name. National Democratic organizations, including the advocacy group Indian American Impact, mounted a fierce campaign targeting Asian American voters with information about Mr. Perdue’s insulting conduct.The G.O.P.’s business-friendly economic agenda could resonate in the community, Mr. Reddy argued, but Republicans were still seen as “anti-immigrant” and overly tied to Mr. Trump. A supporter of Mr. Trump for years, Mr. Reddy said it had grown difficult to justify his behavior.Republicans in Georgia have taken something of a divide-and-conquer approach to the Asian American vote. The governor appointed the first Asian American justice to Georgia’s Supreme Court and Republicans have recruited a few Asian American candidates to run in state legislative seats.At the same time, the Republican-dominated legislature has used gerrymandering to break up ethnically Asian communities and mute their influence at the polls. Dr. Au became a victim of that strategy last year when Republicans demolished her State Senate district, prompting her to run for a Democratic-leaning seat in the lower chamber instead.Mr. Tran, the businessman who introduced Mr. Biden last year in Atlanta, is now a Democratic candidate for the state legislature in a district with a large community of Asian American voters. Mr. Tran, 46, said he often found voters expressing unease about left-wing ideas on police reform.He said he had encountered pervasive concern about gun violence and Republican support for lax firearm laws. “Everyone is scared to death about guns,” Mr. Tran said. “I was eating dim sum and the waiters were saying, ‘We can’t stop looking at the door and wondering if the next person who comes in will have a gun.’” More

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      The Big Lie and the Midterms

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      Eric Krupke, Mooj Zadie, Nina Feldman and Paige Cowett and Marion Lozano and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherIn Pennsylvania, a candidate falsely claiming election fraud in 2020 prevailed in a crowded Republican primary for governor. But in Georgia, two incumbents — the governor and the secretary of state — beat back challenges from “stop the steal” opponents.Is re-litigating the 2020 election a vote winner for Republicans? Or is it increasingly becoming a losing issue?On today’s episodeReid J. Epstein, a politics reporter for The New York Times who covers campaigns and elections.Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia resoundingly won the Republican nomination against a candidate backed by former President Donald J. Trump.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesBackground readingTwo G.O.P. primaries in Georgia exposed the limit of Donald J. Trump’s hold on his party’s base.But Doug Mastriano’s win in Pennsylvania has provoked dissension and anxiety among Republican strategists, donors and lobbyists.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.Transcripts of each episode are available by the next workday. You can find them at the top of the page.Reid J. Epstein contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Kaitlin Roberts, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky and John Ketchum.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Sofia Milan, Desiree Ibekwe, Wendy Dorr, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli and Maddy Masiello. More

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      Four Takeaways From Tuesday’s Elections

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      Tuesday was a booming repudiation of former President Donald J. Trump’s relentless preoccupation with the 2020 election. In Georgia, his voter-fraud-focused choices for governor and attorney general were roundly defeated, while his pick for secretary of state lost to a man who stood up to those false claims two years ago.But it would be a mistake to interpret these results as a wholesale rejection of Mr. Trump himself. His gravitational pull on Republican voters warped every one of Tuesday’s primaries, shaping candidates’ positions and priorities as they beat a path to Mar-a-Lago.It was a bittersweet evening for progressives, who remain in suspense about the fate of their challenger to a conservative Democratic incumbent in Texas. But in another House race in the Atlanta suburbs, the party’s left flank ousted one of the “unbreakable nine” Democrats who balked at President Biden’s social spending plans. Here are a few key takeaways from this week’s primaries, among the most consequential of the 2022 midterm cycle:Republican governors are standing up to Trump. And winning.David Perdue, a wealthy former senator recruited by Mr. Trump to challenge Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, told reporters in the race’s final days that despite his poor standing in polls, “I guaran-damn-tee you we’re not down 30 points.”Mr. Perdue was correct. He lost by about 50 percentage points.Mr. Kemp easily swatted away Mr. Perdue’s lackluster bid, shoring up local support and rallying fellow Republican governors to his side. By the campaign’s final weeks, Mr. Perdue had pulled back on television advertising — usually a telltale sign of a doomed candidacy.And even though Mr. Trump had transferred more than $2.5 million to Mr. Perdue from his political operation, it wasn’t enough. Mr. Perdue’s own allies were openly critical of his halfhearted efforts on the stump, as well his inability to move beyond false claims about the 2020 election.Republican governors were quick to cast Mr. Kemp’s resounding victory as a rejection of Mr. Trump. Minutes after Mr. Perdue conceded, Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and a sometime Trump ally, praised Georgia voters for refusing to be “willing participants in the DJT Vendetta Tour.”Mr. Perdue’s performance suggests that Mr. Trump’s endorsement can be “poison,” said Jon Gray, a Republican political consultant in Alabama, by giving candidates a false sense of complacency.David Perdue at a campaign event in Plainville, Ga., last week. By the race’s final weeks, he had pulled back on television advertising. Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s involvement can also skew an entire primary contest to the right, as it did in Alabama and Georgia. Mr. Kemp now faces a rematch in the general election against Stacey Abrams, an experienced and well-funded Democrat he defeated by fewer than 55,000 votes in 2018.So far, Mr. Trump’s record in primaries that are actually contested is more mixed than his overall win-loss score suggests.His favored Senate candidates won the Republican nomination in Georgia, North Carolina and Ohio, but struggled in Alabama and Pennsylvania.In governor’s races, he endorsed Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his first White House press secretary, who won by a commanding margin in Arkansas, where she is political royalty. Mr. Trump was occasionally critical of Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama, who nevertheless managed to avoid a runoff in her primary.But he also unsuccessfully opposed Republican incumbents in Georgia and Idaho, while his choice for governor of Nebraska, Charles Herbster, lost by nearly four percentage points this month to Jim Pillen, the favorite of the local establishment.“It’s silly to obsess over individual endorsements and what they mean,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican consultant who is working against many of Mr. Trump’s candidates across the country, “when the whole field has gone Trumpy.”‘Stop the Steal’ is often a political loser. But not always.Candidates who made Mr. Trump’s narrative of a stolen election the centerpiece of their campaigns fared badly. But those who embraced it only partially did just fine.In the Republican primary for Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger won an outright victory over Representative Jody Hice, whose wholesale embrace of Mr. Trump’s conspiracy-mongering about the 2020 election was not enough to force a runoff.The incumbent in the Republican primary for attorney general, Chris Carr, brushed off a feeble challenge from John Gordon, a lawyer who had represented Mr. Trump’s bogus election-fraud claims in court. Mr. Raffensperger may have had help from Democrats, thousands of whom reportedly crossed over to vote on the Republican side.“Not buckling under the pressure is what the people want,” Mr. Raffensperger said on Tuesday night at his election watch party.That said, few Republican candidates who have forthrightly denounced Mr. Trump’s lies about 2020 have survived elsewhere.In Ohio, the one Senate candidate who did so, Matt Dolan, finished in third place. In Pennsylvania, the Republican nominee for governor, Doug Mastriano, was deeply involved in Mr. Trump’s plot to overturn the state’s 2020 results, while the two leading Senate candidates, Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick, have equivocated about whether Mr. Biden was fairly elected.Representative Mo Brooks, an erratic, hard-right congressman who was once one of Mr. Trump’s staunchest supporters in Congress, gained notoriety for wearing body armor to the “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021.But Mr. Brooks came in second place in the Republican primary for Senate in Alabama to Katie Britt, who ran a campaign tightly focused on local issues and will now face Mr. Brooks in a runoff election next month. Even so, Ms. Britt told reporters she would have objected to the 2020 election results had she been in office at the time.Mr. Brooks attacked her anyway on Tuesday night. “Alabama, your choice is Katie Britt, who hid in her foxhole when a voter fraud fight was brought,” he said, or himself, “who led the fight against voter fraud in the U.S. Congress.”Pro-business Republicans can still win a big race. Maybe.Ms. Britt’s first-place finish in Alabama is a reminder that Mr. Trump’s endorsement is not all-powerful. But it’s also a testament to the enduring political clout of corporate America.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? 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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      Trump Vowed Vengeance, but Georgia Voters Rejected His Meddling

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      Donald J. Trump barreled into Georgia vowing to marshal voters against his enemies and punish Republicans who crossed him in 2020. Instead, Georgia voters punished him for meddling in their state.Mr. Trump picked losers up and down the ballot, most strikingly missing the mark on a third governor’s race in three weeks. The dismal record, particularly for chief executives, illustrates the shortcomings of Mr. Trump’s revenge tour.Since leaving the White House, and the structure it provided, the former president has erratically deployed his political power, often making choices on a whim or with little clear path to execution. That approach has repeatedly left him empty-handed and raised new doubts about the viselike grip he has held on the Republican Party.In Georgia, Mr. Trump tried to wipe out a triumvirate of Republican statewide officeholders who refused to help overturn the 2020 presidential results: Gov. Brian Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Attorney General Chris Carr. But the three men all coasted to victory — and handed Mr. Trump a stinging rebuke in a state that has become one of the nation’s most important presidential battlegrounds.Henry Barbour, a Republican National Committee member from Mississippi, said Mr. Trump’s endorsements this year had been “driven by who he dislikes and whoever’s running against them.”“Sometimes that may work out, but I think as we see in Georgia, it’s very unlikely to,” Mr. Barbour said.Mr. Trump’s poor showing in state capitals — his endorsed candidates for governor have now lost as many races as they’ve won this year — can be partly blamed on the degree of difficulty of his undertaking. Successful campaigns for governor often must be precisely tailored to address nuanced regional and local issues. House and Senate bids — where Mr. Trump’s endorsement record as yet is nearly unblemished — can more easily harness national political winds.Unseating incumbent governors in a primary, as Mr. Trump tried to do in Georgia and Idaho, is even more challenging. According to the Eagleton Center on the American Governor at Rutgers University, governors defeat primary challengers about 95 percent of the time. Two incumbent governors haven’t lost primaries in the same year since 1994.But Mr. Trump has shown the unlikely to be practically impossible when decisions about endorsements for high-profile public offices are based on falsehoods, vengeance and personal pride. His refusal to take a more cautious approach and protect his political capital ahead of a likely 2024 presidential campaign has resulted in unforced errors that could unspool for months.Gov. Brian Kemp in Atlanta on Tuesday night after winning the Republican primary.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesIn Georgia, for example, Republicans have worried about the unnecessary political damage Mr. Trump has inflicted on Mr. Kemp, who will face a rematch in November with Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee who lost their 2018 contest by 54,700 votes, or less than one-half of one percentage point. Political control of the governor’s office carries significant influence over election laws and regulations heading into the 2024 voting.“I don’t believe Kemp can do it,” Mr. Trump said during a tele-rally on Monday about the governor’s chances of defeating Ms. Abrams. “He’s got too many people in the Republican Party that will refuse to vote. They’re just not going to go out.”Mr. Trump’s loss in Georgia also meant a major victory for the Republican Governors Association, which has circled the wagons around incumbents and resisted the former president’s attacks on their members.The group spent $5 million on Mr. Kemp’s race and dispatched a cavalry of current and former governors to campaign for him, including two potential challengers to Mr. Trump in 2024: Chris Christie of New Jersey and former Vice President Mike Pence, who, like Mr. Kemp, refused to help Mr. Trump overturn the 2020 election.Whether the Georgia results will provide a toehold for a challenge to Mr. Trump’s supremacy in the party remained unclear, but signs that he has lost some political altitude have been unmistakable throughout the 2022 primary season.Mindful that potential 2024 presidential rivals are watching for openings against him, Mr. Trump has been toying for months with announcing his candidacy ahead of the midterm elections this year, according to people who have spoken with him.Earlier talk of similar moves went nowhere, including a “Draft Trump” movement floated by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina shortly after Mr. Trump left office and an idea to announce an exploratory committee as recently as March.But Mr. Trump has spoken to aides recently about declaring his candidacy this summer as a way to box out other candidates. Other advisers said he viewed an announcement as a way to link himself to the success that Republicans expect in the midterm elections this November.Herschel Walker with former President Donald J. Trump at a March rally in Commerce, Ga.Audra Melton for The New York TimesMr. Trump had a smattering of success on Tuesday night, notably with his former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who is almost certain to become the next governor of Arkansas after winning the Republican primary. And Herschel Walker, the former football star whom Mr. Trump urged to run for Senate, easily won his Georgia primary. Still, they were exceptions, and faced weak opposition.In a statement, Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, ignored the string of defeats Tuesday night, calling it “another huge night of victories for his endorsed candidates.”In an interview last week, Mr. Trump defended his endorsement record, saying he had backed candidates he believed in, not just those he expected to win. He pointed to J.D. Vance’s win in the Ohio Senate primary, Mr. Trump’s biggest victory of the primary season so far.There, Mr. Trump acted after polling late in the race suggested his endorsement could make the difference for Mr. Vance, who was behind in the polls at the time — and his announcement propelled Mr. Vance to a decisive victory.But that deliberate decision-making was a departure from the more scattershot approach seen in Mr. Trump’s endorsements for governor.In Nebraska, where Mr. Trump’s endorsed candidate, the agriculture executive Charles Herbster, was defeated on May 10, Mr. Trump has privately faulted the Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, complaining that she pushed him to back Mr. Herbster, and going so far as to suggest to some people that Ms. Pirro and Mr. Herbster had dated.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? 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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      in Elections

      Georgia, a New Battleground State, Is Once Again the Center of Attention

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      It’s the crucible of American politics.Georgia’s got everything: disputed elections, rapid demographic change, celebrity Democrats, a restrictive new voting law, an open criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s meddling in the 2020 election, a deep rural-urban divide and unending drama between the Trump wing of the Republican Party and the local G.O.P. establishment.It’s a longtime Republican stronghold that has become a battleground state. Trump won Georgia by more than 200,000 votes in 2016, then lost it by fewer than 12,000 votes four years later. Georgia was where President Biden made his doomed final push to pass voting rights legislation in the Senate. It was where Democrats picked up two crucial Senate seats on Jan. 5, 2021, giving them the barest control of both chambers of Congress.But those gains are fragile, and Republicans are confident they can win the governor’s race and regain one of the Senate seats. It’s largely for the usual reasons: high prices for the two Gs — gas and groceries — as well as Biden’s low job approval ratings. Either way, millions of campaign dollars will flow into Georgia between now and November.Before all that, though, we’ll have to get through Tuesday’s primaries. Here is what else is going on:Trump vs. PenceOn Monday, Trump and Mike Pence, his former vice president, held dueling events for their respective candidates in the Republican primary for governor: David Perdue, a former senator and Dollar General executive who entered the race at Trump’s insistence, and Brian Kemp, the incumbent.Pence attended a rally for Kemp at the Cobb County airport in suburban Atlanta, while Trump appeared remotely for Perdue, who took a racist swipe at Stacey Abrams, the presumptive Democratic nominee, during a news conference at a wings-and-beer restaurant north of the city. As Jonathan Martin writes, Pence and Trump are circling each other warily in advance of a possible clash in the presidential primary in 2024, so their standoff in Georgia has national implications.It’s not looking good for Trump’s leading candidate in the state, for the reasons our colleagues Reid Epstein and Shane Goldmacher reported this weekend. Polls show Kemp ahead by an average of 25 percentage points, leading Perdue to try to reset expectations last week. “We may not win Tuesday,” he said, “but I guaran-damn-tee you we are not down 30 points.”Along with Representative Jody Hice, who is hoping to unseat Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Perdue is running a campaign that is almost single-mindedly focused on Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.Understand the Georgia Primary ElectionThe May 24 primary will feature several Trump-backed candidates in closely watched races.A New Battleground: Republicans have fought bitter primaries in Georgia. But just two years after Democrats flipped the state, it’s trending back to the G.O.P.G.O.P. Governor’s Race: David Perdue’s impending loss to Brian Kemp looms as the biggest electoral setback for Donald Trump since his own 2020 defeat.Trump vs. Pence: With the ex-president backing Mr. Perdue and his former vice president supporting Mr. Kemp, the G.O.P. governor’s race has national implications for 2024.Fighting Headwinds: Democrats in Georgia — and beyond  — are worried that even the strongest candidates can’t outrun President Biden’s low approval ratings.Perdue and Hice are speaking to a “small and shrinking crowd in Georgia,” said Chris Clark, the president and chief executive of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, which is backing Kemp and Raffensperger.“Nobody asks about it at events,” Clark added, referring to the 2020 election. “They’re asking about jobs and inflation.”Alexis Hill, a canvasser with the New Georgia Project, went door to door in Fairburn, Ga., to encourage people to register to vote.Alyssa Pointer/ReutersDemocrats look ahead to a difficult autumnThe Rev. Raphael Warnock, the preacher turned senator, and Stacey Abrams, the former state lawmaker and voting rights champion, ran unopposed in their primaries for Senate and governor this year. That doesn’t mean they’ll have an easy time of it in the fall, with a base that leading Democrats are describing openly as “quite demoralized.”Abrams is one of those Democrats, like Beto O’Rourke in Texas or Amy McGrath in Kentucky, whose national stardom and appeal among activists sometimes outstrip their local support. Polls show her behind Kemp by about five points in head-to-head matchups.“When you lift someone up that high, people love to see you fall,” said Martha Zoller, a former aide to Perdue who now hosts a talk radio show in Gainesville, Ga.Abrams’s campaign released a memo on Sunday outlining what it described as her strengths heading into November. It makes three basic points:Democratic turnout is holding up. The Abrams team says that “Democrats are on track to break records” in Tuesday’s primary, a fact that has Republicans arguing that Georgia’s new voting law has not suppressed voting.As Nick Corasaniti and Maya King reported on Monday morning, however, “It is too soon to draw any sweeping conclusions, because the true impact of the voting law cannot be drawn from topline early voting data alone.” We’ll know more after tomorrow.So-called crossover voters will go for Democrats in November. Abrams aides say they have identified “nearly 35,000 voters who we expect to vote for the Democratic ticket in November but who cast Republican ballots for the primary,” a group they are calling “crossover voters.” Of the 855,000 Georgia voters who had cast their ballots as of Friday, when early voting closed, the Abrams campaign estimates that more than half — 52.9 percent — were Republicans, while only 46.5 percent were Democrats. (Georgia does not register voters by political party.)The Abrams team spins this as “a remarkably close margin,” given all the attention the news media has paid to Georgia’s big G.O.P. primaries, which are more competitive than the major Democratic ones. But it also could be an ominous sign for Democrats that Republican voters are more energized heading into the fall.Georgia is growing more diverse, and that will help Democrats. The speed of voter registration has slowed in Georgia, which was once a model for the ability of grass-roots organizing to overcome entrenched obstacles to voting. That slowdown could hurt Democrats in the fall, although the Abrams campaign says it has identified about 42,000 Georgians who have already voted in this year’s primary but did not vote in the 2018 general election. Her team also says it has found more than 100,000 Black voters who skipped the 2018 primary but have already voted this year, as well as 40,000 additional white voters and an unspecified number of new Asian American and Latino voters. Abrams lost her first race for governor against Kemp by just under 55,000 votes, so those new voters could be significant.It’s not a safe assumption that voters of color will choose Democrats at the same rates they have in the past, however. Biden has lost support among Black and Latino Americans since taking office. As of April, the president’s approval rating was just 67 percent among Black adults, down 20 percentage points since the start of his term. Not only is turnout a question mark, but it’s also by no means clear that Democrats will be able to hang on to all of those voters if inflation continues to bite into their pocketbooks in November.What to readPresident Biden pledged to defend Taiwan against attack, moving a step beyond longstanding U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity.” Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Peter Baker report from Tokyo and Seoul.Representative Mo Brooks, a hard-right Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama, seems to be making an unlikely comeback after his low poll numbers prompted Donald Trump to take back his endorsement, Trip Gabriel reports.In Texas, the closely watched House race between Representative Henry Cuellar and his progressive challenger, Jessica Cisneros, encapsulates the tensions within the Democratic Party on immigration, Jazmine Ulloa and Jennifer Medina report.how they run George P. Bush talking to members of Texas Strong Republican Women before an event for the attorney general’s race.Shelby Tauber for The New York TimesPaxton’s legal troubles haven’t amounted to political onesKen Paxton, the Texas attorney general, has faced his share of legal concerns in recent years, something that George P. Bush, his rival in the primary this year and the state’s land commissioner, has seized upon as he seeks to oust him from office.But, if history is any indicator, Bush has his work cut out for him.In March, Paxton topped the primary field with 43 percent of the votes, short of the 50 percent required to win the nomination outright. Bush placed second with 23 percent, and their runoff election is on Tuesday.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More