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      Two Targets of Trump’s Ire Take Different Paths in South Carolina

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      CHARLESTON, S.C. — At a campaign event the weekend before South Carolina’s primary election, Tom Rice, a conservative congressman now on the wrong side of former President Donald J. Trump, offered a confession.“I made my next election a little bit harder than the ones in the past,” he said on Friday, imploring his supporters — a group he called “reasonable, rational folks” and “good, solid mainstream Republicans” — to support him at the polls on Tuesday.Two days before and some 100 miles south, Representative Nancy Mace, another Palmetto State Republican who drew the former president’s ire, recognized her position while knocking doors on a sweltering morning.“I accept everything. I take responsibility. I don’t back down,” she said, confident that voters in her Lowcountry district would be sympathetic. “They know that ‘hey, even if I disagree with her, at least she’s going to tell me where she is,’” she added.Ms. Mace and Mr. Rice are the former president’s two targets for revenge on Tuesday. After a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, they were among those who blamed the president for the attack. Ms. Mace, just days into her first term, said that Mr. Trump’s false rhetoric about the presidential election being “stolen” had stoked the riot and threatened her life. Mr. Rice, whose district borders Ms. Mace’s to the north, immediately condemned Mr. Trump and joined nine other Republicans (but not Ms. Mace) in later voting for his impeachment.Now, in the face of primary challenges backed by the former president, the two have taken starkly different approaches to political survival. Ms. Mace has taken the teeth out of her criticisms of Mr. Trump, seeking instead to discuss her conservative voting record and libertarian streak in policy discussions. Mr. Rice, instead, has dug in, defending his impeachment vote and further excoriating Mr. Trump in the process.Should they fend off their primary challengers on Tuesday, Ms. Mace and Mr. Rice will join a growing list of incumbents who have endured the wrath of the G.O.P.’s Trump wing without ending their political careers. Yet their conflicting strategies — a reflection of both their political instincts and the differing politics of their districts — will offer a look at just how far a candidate can go in their defiance of Mr. Trump.Representative Tom Rice at a campaign event in Conway, S.C., last week.Madeline Gray for The New York TimesIn the eyes of her supporters, Ms. Mace’s past comments are less concrete than a vote to impeach. She has aimed to improve her relationship with pro-Trump portions of the G.O.P., spending nearly every day of the past several weeks on the campaign trail to remind voters of her Republican bona fides, not her unfiltered criticism of Mr. Trump.“Everyone knows I was unhappy that day,” she said of Jan. 6. “The entire world knows. All my constituents know.” Her district, which stretches from the left-leaning corners of Charleston to Hilton Head’s conservative country clubs, has an electorate that includes far-right Republicans and liberal Democrats. Ms. Mace has marketed herself not only as a conservative candidate but also one who can defend the politically diverse district against a Democratic rival in November.“It is and always will be a swing district,” she said. “I’m a conservative, but I also understand I don’t represent only conservatives.”That is not a positive message for all in the Lowcountry, however.Ted Huffman, owner of Bluffton BBQ, a restaurant nestled in the heart of Bluffton’s touristy town center, said he was supporting Katie Arrington, the Trump-backed former state representative taking on Ms. Mace. What counted against Ms. Mace was not her feud with Mr. Trump but her relative absence in the restaurant’s part of the district, Mr. Huffman said.“Katie Arrington, she’s been here,” Mr. Huffman said, recalling the few times Ms. Arrington visited Bluffton BBQ. “I’ve never seen Nancy Mace.”During a Summerville event with Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, Ms. Mace gave a stump speech that ran down a list of right-wing talking points: high inflation driven by President Biden’s economic agenda, an influx of immigrants at the Southern border, support for military veterans. She did not mention Mr. Trump.Ms. Mace predicts a decisive primary win against Ms. Arrington, who has placed her Trump endorsement at the center of her campaign message. A victory in the face of that, Ms. Mace said, would prove “the weakness of any endorsement.”“Typically I don’t put too much weight into endorsements because they don’t matter,” she said. “It’s really the candidate. It’s the person people are voting for — that’s what matters.”Speaking from her front porch in Moncks Corner, S.C., Deidre Stechmeyer, a 42-year-old stay-at-home mother, said she was not closely following Ms. Mace’s race. But when asked about the congresswoman’s comments condemning the Jan. 6 riot, she shifted.“That’s something that I agree with her on,” she said, adding that she supported Ms. Mace’s decision to certify the Electoral College vote — a move that some in the G.O.P. have pointed to as a definitive betrayal of Mr. Trump. “There was just so much conflict and uncertainty. I feel like it should’ve been certified.”Mr. Rice’s impeachment vote, on the other hand, presents a more identifiable turnabout.It’s part of the reason Ms. Mace has a comfortable lead in her race, according to recent polls, while Mr. Rice faces far more primary challengers and is most likely headed to a runoff with a Trump-endorsed state representative, Russell Fry, after Tuesday.Mr. Fry’s campaign has centered Mr. Rice’s impeachment vote in its message, turning the vote into a referendum on Mr. Rice’s five terms in Congress.“It’s about more than Donald Trump. It’s about an incumbent congressman losing the trust of a very conservative district,” said Matt Moore, former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party and an adviser to Mr. Fry’s campaign.Still, Mr. Rice is betting on his hyper-conservative economic record and once-unapologetic support of the former president to win him a sixth term in one of South Carolina’s most pro-Trump congressional districts.A supporter of former President Donald Trump at a campaign event for Representative Nancy Mace on Sunday.Logan R. Cyrus for The New York TimesIn an interview, Mr. Rice noted the Republican Party’s shift toward pushing social issues over policy — something he said had been driven in part by the former president’s wing of the party, which helped redefine it.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Sarah Palin Leads Primary Race for Alaska’s Special Election

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      The top four candidates will advance to an August vote to finish the term of Representative Don Young, who died in March.Former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska leads the 48-candidate field in a special primary election for the state’s sole congressional seat, according to a preliminary count of ballots on Sunday.The top four candidates in the race will advance to the special election in August. Ms. Palin has nearly 30 percent of the vote tallied so far; Nick Begich, the scion of an Alaskan political dynasty, has 19.3 percent; Al Gross, a surgeon and commercial fisherman who ran for Senate two years ago, has nearly 12.5 percent; and Mary S. Peltola, a former state legislator, has about 7.5 percent.Ms. Palin and Mr. Begich are Republicans, Mr. Gross is not affiliated with a party, and Ms. Peltola is a Democrat.The special election was prompted by the death in March of Representative Don Young, a Republican who was first elected to the House in 1973. The election is to fill the remainder of Mr. Young’s current term.The special election will be held on Aug. 16, which is also the day of Alaska’s primary contest for the House seat’s 2023-2025 term. So, voters will see some candidates’ names twice on one ballot: once to decide the outcome of the special election and once to pick candidates for the fall’s general election for the full two-year term.For Ms. Palin, the race is a political comeback. As Senator John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential race, Ms. Palin lost to a Democratic ticket that included Joseph R. Biden Jr., and she resigned from the governor’s office, seeking to parlay her newfound profile into work as a well-paid political pundit. Ms. Palin had tapped into a similar anti-establishment, anti-news media vein of the Republican Party that later galvanized Donald J. Trump’s unexpected rise to the White House in 2016.The results announced on Sunday are preliminary and could change over the next few weeks, as more ballots are processed and counted.Alaska is a thinly populated state, with two U.S. senators but only one representative in the House. That small population is spread across an area that is larger than Texas, California and Montana combined, with about 82 percent of communities in the state inaccessible by roads.Counting ballots there can be challenging.Each voter in the state was mailed a ballot, starting on April 27, and the ballots were due back on Saturday. At least three more rounds of preliminary results will be announced by state officials before the results are certified in about two weeks.Alyce McFadden More

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      Rudy Giuliani Draws Fans to His Son Andrew’s Campaign Events

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      Andrew Giuliani’s bid to win the Republican primary for governor of New York has not drawn many donors, but it has drawn fans of Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor.HAUPPAUGE, N.Y. — On a blazing Saturday afternoon in eastern Long Island, after hours of sun-baked stump speeches by candidates of little renown, it was finally Giuliani time.As the strains of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” filled the air, the crowd of about 200 Republican voters swooned to the sounds of an extended harangue against government mandates, socialism and the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.Dozens of admirers crowded nearby, shooting video or hoping to get a selfie. After the speech was over, well-wishers lined up for a chance at an autograph and a red hat bearing the surname of the man who seemed to be the featured attraction: Rudolph W. Giuliani.Standing beside him was his son Andrew, the actual candidate in what is increasingly resembling a tandem campaign for governor of New York.With just over two weeks to go before the Republican primary on June 28, Andrew Giuliani’s unlikely campaign has remained visible and viable in no small part because of his famous last name and the continued prominence of, and appearances by, his father, formerly the mayor of New York City and a personal lawyer of former President Donald J. Trump.The elder Mr. Giuliani, 78, has regularly campaigned with his son since he began running for office last year, often serving as both his warm-up act and sidekick at the Israel Day Parade and at Memorial Day marches and news conferences outside City Hall.His efforts have been welcomed by the younger Mr. Giuliani, 36, who is running a shoestring campaign, driving up and down the state in a collection of donated vans and trucks emblazoned with his face, in hopes of upsetting the party’s anointed nominee, Representative Lee M. Zeldin of Long Island.Regardless of who wins the nomination, making it to the governor’s mansion will be an uphill battle for Republicans, who haven’t won statewide office in two decades. Their likely Democratic opponent is Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has more than $18 million in her campaign coffers, in a state in which registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than two to one.“I feel honored that he would take his time to help us get over the finish line,” Andrew Giuliani said about his father, after posing for dozens of photographs alongside him. “I feel very, very blessed.”At their joint appearances, the elder Mr. Giuliani often attracts more attention than his son.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesPolitical families are, of course, not uncommon in New York, where the former governor, Andrew M. Cuomo, was a son of another former governor, Mario M. Cuomo. Families like the Addabbos, the Weprins and the Diazes have all spawned father-son pairs who became lawmakers.Nor is it really that surprising that Andrew Giuliani, who famously mugged for the camera during his father’s first inauguration in 1994, would lean on him for support: He is making his first run for public office and has a limited record to fall back on.His primary political experience is the four years he spent in the Trump White House, serving as a special assistant to the president and working in the Office of Public Liaison — hardly classic preparation for Albany.A Guide to New York’s 2022 Primary ElectionsAs prominent Democratic officials seek to defend their records, Republicans see opportunities to make inroads in general election races.Governor’s Race: Gov. Kathy Hochul, the incumbent, will face off against Jumaane Williams and Tom Suozzi in a Democratic primary on June 28.The Mapmaker: A postdoctoral fellow and former bartender redrew New York’s congressional map, reshaping several House districts and scrambling the future of the state’s political establishment.Maloney vs. Nadler: The new congressional lines have put the two stalwart Manhattan Democrats on a collision course in the Aug. 23 primary.Questionable Remarks: Carl P. Paladino, a Republican running for a House seat in Western New York, recently drew backlash for praising Adolf Hitler in an interview dating back to 2021.Mr. Zeldin, a four-term congressman, remains far better financed, with more than $3.1 million in campaign funds as of late last month; Mr. Giuliani had about a tenth of that, according to campaign disclosure statements.Two other candidates — Rob Astorino, the former Westchester County executive, and Harry Wilson, a corporate turnaround expert — also have more to spend than Mr. Giuliani.And although Mr. Giuliani has a direct connection to Mr. Trump, getting his endorsement is far from assured. Mr. Zeldin is an avid Trump supporter who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election in key swing states, an effort, ironically, that Rudolph Giuliani led.A 2008 presidential candidate who was once hailed as America’s Mayor, the elder Mr. Giuliani saw his law license suspended and his public persona tarnished, at least in some circles, as a result of his work for Mr. Trump. Those activities, in service of a false narrative of a stolen election, were given a fresh airing last week during a prime-time hearing by the House committee investigating the Capitol assault on Jan. 6, 2021.In a recent interview on Newsmax, the right-wing network where he has appeared as a political analyst, Andrew Giuliani said that while Mr. Trump was “kind of like an uncle to me,” he did not expect an endorsement, and that he thought the former president was “probably going to sit this one out.”That doesn’t mean the Giulianis aren’t trying: Both appeared at a recent fund-raiser hosted by Representative Elise Stefanik at Trump National Golf Club Westchester, where a round-table discussion and photo op with the former president cost $25,000 a head. Mr. Astorino was also there, mingling near the back; Mr. Zeldin had a prior commitment.In remarks at an outdoor reception, the former president lavished praise on the younger Mr. Giuliani, but the compliments had nothing to do with his political future.“He did talk about him, but it was all about golf,” said Gerard Kassar, the chairman of the New York Conservative Party, which has endorsed Mr. Zeldin. “I do not believe the president is getting involved in the race at all, as much as the Giuliani people want him to.”Andrew Giuliani spent four years in the Trump White House, working in the Office of Public Liaison and as a special assistant to the president.Jonathan Ernst/ReutersThere has been little definitive polling on the race, though Mr. Giuliani has taken to calling himself “the front-runner” as a result of a single online poll from May, something that the Zeldin campaign scoffs at, citing other polls that show Mr. Giuliani with higher unfavorable ratings than Mr. Zeldin. (Mr. Giuliani, however, has higher name recognition, with better favorable ratings than Mr. Zeldin.)Katie Vincentz, a spokeswoman for the Zeldin campaign, said that the congressman intended to “run up the score” on Primary Day to prove that he could beat Ms. Hochul.“Lee Zeldin is going to win this race, because New Yorkers need him to win this race, and save our state,” she said.Mr. Giuliani and his supporters have cast his run as an outsider’s campaign, arguing that his lack of experience in New York politics and policy is actually a positive.His platform leans heavily on tackling crime, promising a $5 billion fund for police forces around the state while also pledging to cut the state budget. He is not averse to Trumpian nicknames, dubbing Ms. Hochul “Crime Wave Kathy.”His father has employed some of the same imagery on the campaign trail as Mr. Trump, calling Albany “a swamp” that’s “got to be cleaned up,” echoing the former president’s own rhetoric about Washington in his 2016 campaign.Curtis Sliwa, last year’s Republican nominee for New York City mayor, has been stumping for the campaign as well. He supported the elder Mr. Giuliani’s first unsuccessful run for mayor back in 1989, “when Andrew was just a little tot,” he said.Nowadays, he said, he backs Andrew because of his focus on crime, something that Republicans feel is a winning issue this election cycle, particularly in New York, where opposition to bail reform has been a potent issue for conservatives.“It is the talk of everybody that I deal with,” said Mr. Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, the citizen patrol group. “And it’s not just in the five boroughs; it’s throughout the state. They want to know what the next governor is going to do about the high crime rates.”Mr. Giuliani declined a request for an interview, but at various events on Long Island and in Albany and outside Rochester, he was friendly and open to brief questions from a New York Times reporter. (The elder Mr. Giuliani did not return requests for comment.)But he also told Newsmax last week that he felt “legacy outlets” had a liberal bias and claimed that he had chided the Times reporter about it. (For the record, he had not.)“I told him that, ‘You remind me more of Pravda than you do a free press right now because you are so tilted on one side,’” Mr. Giuliani said. “I don’t mind tough questions, but just make sure they’re fair on both sides of the aisle.”As for how he might manage a state of 20 million people with no executive experience, his father suggested that he had learned — as many children do — by observation.“He watched me do it,” the elder Mr. Giuliani said during his remarks on Long Island, talking about how to lower crime rates, adding, “He knows how to do it.”Still, some New York Republicans say that the younger Mr. Giuliani is overreaching by starting his political career running for the state’s highest office.“If his name was Andrew Smith, obviously he wouldn’t be running for governor,” said John J. Faso, a former Hudson Valley congressman and the 2006 Republican nominee for governor, who called Mr. Giuliani’s candidacy a “sideshow.”Mr. Giuliani, at a recent event in Manhattan with Curtis Sliwa, left, has highlighted divisive culture-war topics on the campaign trail.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesMr. Giuliani has impressed some with his natural political skills: He’s comfortable and affable on television and in front of crowds, with a wide smile and a more easygoing demeanor than his sometimes temperamental father.But his campaign rhetoric is cast in the Trump mold, emphasizing divisive culture-war topics, railing against critical race theory and a “war on cops,” and professing disdain for phrases like “gender dysphoria.”“I’m not a biologist,” Mr. Giuliani said during a campaign stop in Conesus, N.Y., south of Rochester. “But I do know the difference between a man and a woman.”Married with a young daughter, Mr. Giuliani is an avid golfer who once sued after being left off the Duke University golf team.He says that he has had little time to hit the links since the campaign started, telling a prospective voter, Keith Hilpl, that he’d played infrequently in the last year, though he had caught a round with Mr. Trump.Mr. Hilpl had driven about 80 miles to see Mr. Giuliani at the event in Conesus after hearing him on Steve Bannon’s podcast and visiting his campaign website.“I always liked his father,” said Mr. Hilpl, a software programmer. “And I wanted to see if he was made of the same stuff.”Sure enough, he seemed impressed, leaving the event with a campaign hat and a lawn sign.Mr. Giuliani has seemed at ease in public, more affable and easygoing than his father.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesBack at the event in Hauppauge, a Suffolk County hamlet that sits on the edge of Mr. Zeldin’s district, many in attendance expressed unequivocal adoration for the elder Mr. Giuliani.“He saved New York,” said Penny Cialone, 60, adding, “And I think Andrew could do exactly what his dad did.”The younger Mr. Giuliani happily joked with his father, briefly jumping up as he began to speak.“We have a tradition of me interrupting his speeches,” he said. “I haven’t matured at all.”At the same time, the candidate also seemed aware of his father’s star power, even as the former mayor handed him the microphone.Taking it, Andrew Giuliani said he was thankful his father wasn’t running for governor.“Because I’d be in a whole lot of trouble,” he said, “if he could.”Nicholas Fandos More

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      Tom Rice, G.O.P. Congressman Who Voted to Impeach Trump, Stands by His Vote

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      CONWAY, S.C. — Tom Rice, the South Carolina congressman who was one of 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach President Donald J. Trump after the Jan. 6 attacks, has a catchall term to describe the former president’s crusade against him: Trump’s Very Presidential Traveling Revenge Circus.Mr. Trump has made unseating Mr. Rice, a five-term congressman, one of his top priorities in the state’s primary elections on Tuesday. He threw his support in the Republican primary for Mr. Rice’s seat behind State Representative Russell Fry, calling into a rally for Mr. Fry this week and describing Mr. Rice as a “back-stabbing RINO,” the acronym for Republican in name only, a conservative slur.“He lifted up his hand and that was the end of his political career — or we hope it was,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Rice’s vote to impeach him.In a 35-minute interview on Friday alongside his wife, Wrenzie, after a barbecue luncheon campaign event, Mr. Rice sounded every bit like a man in the fight for his political life. His campaign is not counting on an outright win against Mr. Fry but is instead bracing for a tough runoff with him.But while some, after crossing Mr. Trump, have tried to salvage their political careers by walking back their comments or retiring from Congress, Mr. Rice has doubled down.Read More on the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsThe Meaning of the Hearings: While the public sessions aren’t going to unite the country, they could significantly affect public opinion.An Unsettling Narrative: During the first hearing, the House panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Donald Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Trump’s Depiction: Former president Donald J. Trump was portrayed as a would-be autocrat willing to shred the Constitution to hang onto power. Liz Cheney: The vice chairwoman of the House committee has been unrepentant in continuing to blame Mr. Trump for stoking the attack on Jan. 6, 2021.“To me, his gross failure — his inexcusable failure — was when it started,” Mr. Rice said of the Jan. 6 riot. “He watched it happen. He reveled in it. And he took no action to stop it. I think he had a duty to try to stop it, and he failed in that duty.”Mr. Rice, a pro-business conservative and self-proclaimed Chamber of Commerce Republican, helped craft Mr. Trump’s sweeping new tax code in 2017. Five years after those reforms and 17 months after the Jan. 6 attacks, he argued that the former president had overstayed his welcome in the G.O.P.“He’s the past,” Mr. Rice said of Mr. Trump. “I hope he doesn’t run again. And I think if he does run again, he hurts the Republican Party. We desperately need somebody who’s going to bring people together. And he is not that guy.”Mr. Rice said the Jan. 6 prime-time hearing on Thursday night, which featured footage of the Capitol riots and incriminating testimony from close Trump associates, “puts an exclamation point on what we did,” referring to the 10 House Republicans who backed impeachment.In the days after the riot at the Capitol, Mr. Rice said, he considered voting to impeach Mr. Trump, and spent that Saturday and Sunday in his home congressional district reading the dozens of stories he had asked his staff to send him about the president’s whereabouts on Jan. 6. As he learned of the president’s refusal to stop the attack, he became incensed. When it came time for his vote, he said he had “zero question in my mind” about whether Mr. Trump should be held accountable.“I did it then,” he said. “And I will do it tomorrow. And I’ll do it the next day or the day after that. I have a duty to uphold the Constitution. And that is what I did.”Mr. Rice did not vote to certify the election, however, saying he had become concerned about ballot discrepancies in Pennsylvania that were outlined in a letter to House Republican leadership.During a House Republican meeting one month after the Capitol riots, he defended Liz Cheney for her vote to impeach and criticized Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, for his continued embrace of the former president, according to audio from the exchange.“Kevin went to Mar-a-Lago this weekend, shook his hand, took a picture and set up Trumpmajority.com. Personally, I find that offensive,” Mr. Rice said at the time.In the months following the vote, Mr. Rice has been made a pariah among those in Mr. Trump’s circle, as has his wife. “I don’t feel like I fit in with that group anymore,” Ms. Rice said on Friday, referring to the Republican base.Mr. Trump’s efforts to sway Republican primary voters and disparage Mr. Rice have left the congressman both frustrated and puzzled. He has come to view them as a political stunt.“Bring on the circus,” he said of Mr. Trump’s involvement in the primary. “You know, some people are afraid of clowns. I’m not afraid of clowns.”Jonathan Martin More

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      The Insurrection Didn’t End on Jan. 6. The Hearings Need to Prove That.

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      The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol begins its hearings tonight for the American public, hoping to shine a spotlight on the discoveries from its months of painstaking inquiry. How should we measure success?As veterans of congressional and other official misconduct investigations, we will be watching for whether the committee persuades the American people that the insurrection didn’t end on Jan. 6, 2021, but continues, in places all across the country; motivates Americans to fight back in the midterm elections; and, if warranted, encourages prosecutors to bring charges against those who may have committed crimes, up to and including former President Donald Trump.The future of our democracy may well depend on the achievement of these objectives.First, the committee must use the televised hearings to emphasize to viewers that Jan. 6 was but one battle in a wider war against American democracy. Yes, there are gaping holes that remain to be filled in on the events of the day itself, like Mr. Trump’s 187-minute refusal to intervene while the mob was violently attacking the Capitol and the 457-minute gap in White House phone records. But the hearings must widen the scope to a larger narrative that begins in the run-up to the insurrection and continues in its long aftermath.The through-line of that narrative runs roughly from Mr. Trump’s declaration in August 2020 that the election could be “the greatest fraud in history” to his attacks through misinformation and spurious lawsuits on a fair election and his exhortation to his supporters to march to the Capitol on Jan. 6 and continues in the scores of “Big Lie”-driven bills and midterm candidates roiling American politics from coast to coast.The committee enjoys an advantage for its presentation: the absence of Republicans like Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz, who have too often brought a circus atmosphere to House hearings. Mr. Jordan was barred from serving by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, when the committee was being formed, and House Republican leadership subsequently boycotted broader representation. Fortunately, two Republicans are serving — Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. A bipartisan, unified committee will ensure that the drama will come from the story itself rather than the shenanigans of some committee members.The hearings must also inspire action. In this setting, that would normally mean triggering legislative reforms. After Watergate, Congress passed new laws as safeguards against systemic abuse. But with today’s politics, new bills are unlikely to see broad support. The committee must navigate around that logjam — and explain that the Big Lie is still going strong and motivate Americans to defeat it at the ballot box.Just last week, in Pennsylvania, Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Trump-endorsed election skeptic, became the Republican Senate nominee. If he becomes the deciding vote in a closely divided Senate, that will not bode well for reform legislation to prevent election sabotage — and for honest certification of future presidential electors.In Pennsylvania, Dr. Oz will actually be the less intense “Stop the Steal” Republican candidate. Doug Mastriano, who was a leader in efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state (and was subpoenaed by the committee), won the Republican primary for governor. Across the country, Mr. Trump has endorsed over 180 Republican candidates, most of whom have supported his false stolen-election claims. This year, they have, in effect, set up a counternarrative to the committee’s work.To elucidate the threat to democracy, the committee doesn’t need to wade into overt electioneering. It simply needs to maintain a relentless focus on the continuing threat of the Big Lie.The committee can do that without sacrificing bipartisanship and by maintaining objectivity because no party has a monopoly on pro-democracy candidates, as proved by the officials of both parties who came together to defend democracy in 2020. In other nations where democracy has been threatened, leaders of widely varying ideologies have set aside partisanship and joined forces against illiberalism. The bipartisan committee and other Democrats and Republicans must make clear the larger stakes represented by Mr. Trump’s election-denying allies.Finally, the hearings should compile and make accessible as much evidence as it can to aid federal and state prosecutors who might bring charges against possible wrongdoers. Ultimately, it’s up to those prosecutors — most prominently at the Justice Department and in Fulton County, Ga. — to act on the evidence. But the committee can motivate and support them. Hearings that develop a coherent, grounded and galvanizing narrative necessary for a successful prosecution will help prosecutors, as well as the media and the public, to understand any possible crimes.If the evidence warrants it, the committee should not shy away from transmitting criminal referrals. Alternatively, it could share a Watergate-style “road map” that could serve as a guide to the evidence without drawing legal conclusions. Congress has amassed a mountain of information over the course of its investigation — which includes taking over 1,000 depositions — and prosecutors should benefit from that.The ultimate success of the committee rests on whether it uses the hearings to build a partnership with American voters to see the truth of what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, and what is still happening.Norman Eisen served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump impeachment. E. Danya Perry is a former federal prosecutor and a New York State corruption investigator.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More