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      Republican Governors Lose Their Dread of Trump

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      There are two Republican parties.That’s a vast oversimplification, of course. Republican pollsters have been known to sort G.O.P. voters into seven categories or more, ranging from committed Christians to pro-business types to squishy never-Trumpers.But when it comes to choosing sides in primaries, a split is widening. There’s the national party, led by Donald Trump in Florida and Kevin McCarthy, the top Republican in the House, with Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, toggling between foe and ally as the occasion warrants.And then there’s the G.O.P. that is rooted in state power, run by a core group of pragmatic, often less hard-line governors who represent states as different as libertarian-leaning Arizona and deep-blue Massachusetts.This week, the Republican Governors Association happened to be gathering in Nashville for its annual meeting. The guest of honor: Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, fresh off his 50-percentage-point drubbing of David Perdue, a former senator and businessman who had been dragooned into a primary by Trump. Kemp spoke at a dinner in Nashville on Wednesday night, thanking his donors and fellow governors for their support.It was a celebratory moment for a tight-knit, fraternal group that was often in close contact during the crises of the coronavirus pandemic and the chaotic end of Trump’s presidency. Trump has leaned particularly hard on two of the most influential governors of the bunch, Kemp and Doug Ducey of Arizona, to support his fictional stolen-election narrative.Many G.O.P. governors emerged from the Trump years in strong political shape, despite intense criticism. All 10 of the most popular governors in the country are Republicans, according to polling by Morning Consult. And sitting Republican governors have kept their hands mostly clean of Jan. 6, a toxic subject among corporate donors in particular.To an extraordinary degree, these G.O.P. governors have joined forces to fight off Trump’s handpicked challengers as well as those currying his favor — raising millions and intervening in primaries to support their colleagues like never before.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.A Modern-Day Party Boss: Hoarding cash, doling out favors and seeking to crush rivals, Mr. Trump is behaving like the head of a 19th-century political machine.Selling Trump: Mr. Trump has continued to trade on his political fame in pursuit of profit, while entrepreneurial conservatives are cashing in on MAGA merchandise.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.“The president was on this campaign of vengeance,” said Bill Palatucci, a Republican National Committee member from New Jersey who is close to former Gov. Chris Christie, describing the thinking of those gathered in Nashville this week.“But for lots of former and current Republican governors, it’s about doing the right thing for colleagues who have acquitted themselves well,” Palatucci added. Christie, a previous R.G.A. chairman who now helps run one of the group’s main fund-raising arms, remains actively involved in the organization.Those running for office, like Kemp, have studiously avoided tangling with Trump. But others have been remarkably open about standing up to the man in Mar-a-Lago, unlike most of their colleagues in Washington.Pete Ricketts, the governor of Nebraska and current co-chairman of the governors group along with Ducey, sided against Trump’s pick in his state’s Republican primary, Charles Herbster, and flew to Georgia to help Kemp.Larry Hogan, the governor of Maryland and an R.G.A. board member, has spoken of fighting “Trump cancel culture” and called for a “course correction” away from Trump; Christie seems to be quoted criticizing the former president daily, including in a recent article in The Washington Post detailing the governors’ plans to stop what he called Trump’s “vendetta tour.”A money machineOpposing Trump is costly, though.Governor’s races don’t tend to attract the same big money that Senate races do. Why not? Because more donors across the country care more about the next majority leader than, say, who runs Nebraska.But the cash Republican governors have raised to support one another is significant.They spent $4 million in Ohio to help Gov. Mike DeWine, $5 million to help Kemp in Georgia, $2 million to support Gov. Kay Ivey in Alabama and put more than $80,000 behind Gov. Brad Little in Idaho, who was fending off a bizarre challenge from his own lieutenant governor.To complicate matters further, there are states where Trump and the R.G.A. are on the same side. In Texas, Trump and the governors supported Gov. Greg Abbott. In South Carolina, both sides are backing Gov. Henry McMaster. And Trump is also supporting Mike Dunleavy, the governor of Alaska.Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona has said he “reserves the right” to endorse a candidate in the Republican primary, but has not done so yet.Ross D. Franklin/Associated PressAn open race in ArizonaIt gets trickier when there is no incumbent governor.The most interesting test is coming up in Arizona, where Trump has endorsed Kari Lake, a charismatic former television presenter who is an avid proponent of his baseless election-fraud claims. Lake is leading in polls of the primary, ahead of the favorite of the local Republican establishment and the business community, Karrin Taylor Robson, and Matt Salmon, a former member of the U.S. House who was the Republican nominee for governor in 2002, losing by a whisker to Janet Napolitano.Ducey, who is term-limited, has said that he “reserves the right” to endorse a candidate in the primary, and Robson, a developer who founded her own land-use strategy firm, would be the logical choice. In 2017, he appointed her to the Arizona Board of Regents, which governs the state’s public universities. Robson was in Nashville this week, according to a local ABC affiliate in Phoenix.The primary begins earlier than the Aug. 2 date on the calendar suggests. Arizonans vote heavily by mail, and early ballots go out to voters in July. That means the next few weeks are critical, and an endorsement could happen soon.Will Ducey come off the sidelines? His confidants aren’t saying. If he did so, it would be in his personal capacity. But because he is co-chairman of the R.G.A., his imprimatur would send a signal to donors and other insiders that Robson is the one to back.It would also set off another confrontation with Trump, who has blamed Ducey for failing to overturn Arizona’s election results in 2020.Back in the fall, when Ducey was contemplating a run for Senate, Trump blasted him as “the weak RINO Governor from Arizona” and said he would “never have my endorsement or the support of MAGA Nation!”He said much the same about Kemp — and lost.What to readFive Republican candidates for Michigan governor were disqualified from the ballot because of petitions that officials said contained thousands of forged signatures — sending the party’s effort to challenge Gov. Gretchen Whitmer into chaos.Why won’t Republican lawmakers budge on their resistance to even modest gun safety measures? Carl Hulse explores the answer.California, on the other hand, already has tough gun laws, but Democratic leaders are looking to clamp down further after the Texas school shooting.— BlakeIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. 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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      ‘The G.O.P. Has Gone Even Farther to the Right Than I Expected’: Three Writers Talk About the Midterms

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

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

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

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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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      Tom Kean’s Strategy in Run for Congress: Say Less

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      Ahead of next month’s primary, Tom Kean Jr., running in New Jersey’s most competitive House race, hopes to avoid alienating moderate swing voters while facing challengers from the right.Tom Kean Jr., a New Jersey Republican locked in the state’s most competitive congressional race, has refused to debate his primary opponents.He has avoided talking to most reporters.And he has dodged questions about whether he agrees with the Republican National Committee’s characterization of the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol as “legitimate political discourse.”Mr. Kean, the scion of a storied political family, has adopted what appears to be a core strategy as he tries to avoid alienating moderate swing voters while facing challengers from the right: to keep his mouth, basically, shut.“I’m calling it the vow of silence,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University.Julie Roginsky, a Democratic political consultant, said a key question will be whether Mr. Kean’s strategy — however cynical — works.“Did Tom Kean figure out a winning formula in these kinds of swing districts? Which is to say nothing?” she said.“Then use the media’s castigation of you for keeping your mouth shut as a dog whistle to the base?” she added.Whether the political calculation works or not, the results of next month’s primary are likely to be seen as a measure of former President Donald J. Trump’s grip on the G.O.P. in a state better known for a moderate brand of Republican politics once epitomized by leaders like Mr. Kean’s father, a popular two-term governor.Most of Mr. Kean’s six primary opponents have tried to dent his credentials as a conservative as they compete for the attention of voters loyal to Mr. Trump.One opponent, State Assemblyman Erik Peterson, a leader among Republican lawmakers who staged a public challenge to a State House Covid-19 vaccine mandate, said Mr. Kean had “never been a conservative until this race.” Another, Phil Rizzo, a former evangelical Christian pastor who has promoted Mr. Trump’s claims of voter fraud and said he remained unconvinced of President Biden’s victory, has highlighted what he calls Mr. Kean’s “liberal voting record.”A former state assemblyman and senator, Mr. Kean, 53, has the institutional support of county and state leaders and a prime spot on ballots. The large field of candidates is expected to splinter the conservative vote, benefiting Mr. Kean, who has raised nine times as much campaign cash as his next closest opponent, Mr. Rizzo.If Mr. Kean wins the primary on June 7, he is likely to again face the incumbent, Tom Malinowski, a second-term Democrat who narrowly beat Mr. Kean in 2020.The primary may also offer hints about whether Republicans in vital swing districts will remain as energized as they appeared to be last year.Largely affluent and suburban, the Seventh Congressional District is filled with the type of well-educated swing voters who helped Democrats across the country flip control of the House in 2018 and who are seen as crucial to November’s midterm elections.Registered Democrats in New Jersey outnumber Republicans by more than one million voters. Yet Republican turnout surged in November, and Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a Democrat, won a second term by a far narrower margin than expected. The Democratic Party retained control of the Legislature but lost seven seats, including one held by the powerful Senate president, Stephen M. Sweeney.Gov. Philip D. Murphy is the first Democrat to win re-election in New Jersey since 1977. But he won by a far smaller margin than expected. Michelle Gustafson for The New York Times“The question is going to be whether or not Republican enthusiasm continues to be at an elevated rate,” Professor Rasmussen said.Mr. Kean’s campaign said he was not available for an interview and said it did not provide his public schedules, while noting that he planned to attend several parades and events over Memorial Day weekend.Last weekend, at a large block party that drew candidates for state and federal races, Mr. Rizzo was filmed asking Mr. Kean, “We going to debate or not?” Mr. Kean did not respond, and Mr. Rizzo, 45, posted the video on Twitter.At the same time, Mr. Kean has actively played to the more conservative wing of the G.O.P., a fact the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has tried to exploit in regular email blasts.Mr. Kean stood with Kevin McCarthy, the polarizing Republican minority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, to announce his candidacy. He traveled to the Mexican border to highlight his opposition to Mr. Biden’s immigration policy, even though it is not an issue that separates him from his primary opponents.Last year, on Jan. 6, Mr. Kean and a liberal former Democratic senator, Loretta Weinberg, issued a joint statement urging Capitol protesters to “go home immediately or face the full force of the law.”“What we are witnessing in Washington,” the statement read, “is not how our democracy is supposed to function.”But he remained silent earlier this year as other prominent New Jersey Republicans like former Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and Leonard Lance — who in 2018 lost to Mr. Malinowski — signed a letter calling the Republican National Committee’s stance on the Jan. 6 events “an affront to the rule of law, peaceful self-government and the constitutional order.”The state’s largest news outlet, The Star-Ledger, criticized his decision not to take a position in an editorial that ran under a headline that described Mr. Kean as a “cowering candidate.”The Seventh Congressional District takes in New York City commuter towns like Westfield, where Mr. Kean lives, reaches north into one of the most conservative sections of the state and west into well-heeled communities dotted with genteel estates.With a winning mix of college-educated voters and, in 2018, widespread anti-Trump fervor, it was one of four New Jersey congressional districts that flipped to Democratic control during the last midterm cycle.But Mr. Trump is no longer in the White House and Mr. Biden’s popularity is waning. 401(k) retirement plans have stopped their meteoric ascent. And gas prices are ticking toward $5 a gallon as affordability becomes the watchword among politicians.In 2020, in his third run for Congress, Mr. Kean came within 5,329 votes of toppling Mr. Malinowski.Then, late last year, Mr. Kean’s odds of winning got better: The district’s boundaries were redrawn to include more Republican-dominant towns in a process designed to reflect statewide demographic shifts in the 2020 census. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report has since assigned the race a “leans Republican” rating.The Seventh Congressional District now includes Hunterdon and Warren Counties and parts of Morris, Somerset, Sussex and Union Counties.Morris County offers a vivid example of the type of political shift that contributed to Mr. Biden’s victory. It is roughly 70 percent white, more than half of its residents have four-year college degrees and the median income is $117,000.Republicans outnumber Democrats there by 21,000, but that advantage has narrowed since 2016, when the G.O.P. had a 39,000 voter edge, according to New Jersey’s Department of State.In 2016, Mr. Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 9 percentage points among voters in the portion of Morris County then included in the Seventh Congressional District, according to the Daily Kos. Four years later, Mr. Trump lost to Mr. Biden there by less than 1 percentage point.Ms. Roginsky said November’s elections will offer a window into whether the swing voters who cast ballots against Mr. Trump remain in the Democratic fold when the polarizing former president is not on the ballot or in the White House.“Whether that realignment is permanent — or whether that was just a reaction to Donald Trump’s presidency,” she said. “That to me is the biggest question mark of this election.”One unknown factor is abortion, and how a possible decision by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the legal precedent that has for nearly 50 years given women a right to terminate pregnancies, might energize female voters. Another is an investigation by the House Committee on Ethics into allegations that Mr. Malinowski failed to properly disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock trades. Mr. Malinowski has blamed “carelessness on my part” for the lack of disclosure and said he regretted and took full responsibility for it.Assembly members Erik Peterson, right, and Brian Bergen, refused to comply with a State House rule requiring Covid-19 vaccination or a negative test.Mike Catalini/Associated PressMr. Rizzo and Mr. Peterson, who has been endorsed by New Jersey Right to Life, both said they do not believe abortion had factored heavily into the primary race against Mr. Kean, who voted against a bill that codified abortion rights in New Jersey.Mr. Rizzo, a real estate developer, does not live within the district where he is running, but said he and his family were in “a process of moving” there. He came in second in last year’s Republican primary for governor, and said the attraction voters have to people like him and Mr. Trump — whom he said he did not vote for in 2016 — was uncomplicated.“We have two parties in New Jersey: the political class and everybody else,” Mr. Rizzo said. “And nobody’s representing the everybody else.” 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