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      Democrats See Headwinds in Georgia, and Everywhere Else

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      Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams, viewed as strong candidates by their party, will be running against President Biden’s low ratings as well as their G.O.P. rivals.ATLANTA — Standing at the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church, the spiritual home of Martin Luther King Jr., the Rev. Raphael Warnock led a sermon on the last Sunday before Georgia’s Tuesday primaries that was about “getting to where you need to go” — and navigating the challenges ahead.“Rise up and transform every opposition, every obstacle, into an opportunity,” Mr. Warnock urged. He was not explicitly talking about his other job as a United States senator, or the fact that he is one of the most endangered Democrats in the country in 2022, or the headwinds confronting his party. But he might as well have been.“Don’t you dare sleep on Tuesday,” he said.For months, nearly all the political oxygen in Georgia and beyond has been sucked up by ferocious Republican primaries, intraparty feuds that have become proxy wars for Donald J. Trump’s power and fueled by his retribution agenda. But the ugliness of the G.O.P. infighting has at times obscured a political landscape that is increasingly tilted in the Republican direction in Georgia — and nationally.Democrats were excited for Stacey Abrams, the former state legislator and voting-rights activist, to jump into the 2022 governor’s race, promising a potential rematch of the 2018 contest she only narrowly lost. Mr. Warnock has emerged not only as a compelling speaker but also as one of his party’s strongest fund-raisers. Yet the growing fear for Democrats is that even the strongest candidates and recruits can outrun President Biden’s wheezing approval ratings by only so much, and are at risk of getting washed away in a developing red wave.“I think 2020 was a referendum on Trump,” said Ashley Fogle, a 44-year-old Democrat who lives in Atlanta and attended Ebenezer church on Sunday. “I just don’t know if there’s that same energy in 2022.”Already, a Republican-led remapping in Georgia has effectively erased one Democratic House seat and made another vulnerable, as the Republican advantage in the state delegation could balloon to 10-4, from the current 8-6 edge.The challenges facing Democrats are cyclical and structural.The Democratic majorities on Capitol Hill could scarcely be narrower. The party in power almost always loses in a president’s first midterm election — even absent the current overlapping national crises, some of which are beyond Mr. Biden’s control.Gasoline prices just hit their highest level ever nationwide over the weekend. The president’s approval rating plunged in an Associated Press poll to a new low of 39 percent. The stock market dropped for the seventh consecutive week. Violent crime rates have spiked. A baby formula shortage has alarmed parents. And inflation remains high.“The problem is not messaging — the problem is reality,” said Representative Ritchie Torres, Democrat of New York, citing inflation as the “greatest obstacle to retaining the majority.”The greatest hope for Democrats appears to be potential Republican acts of self-sabotage: the party nominating outside-the-mainstream candidates or failing to coalesce after divisive primaries.In Washington, much of the Biden agenda is frozen in a congressional morass. The party’s left wing and centrists are busily blaming each other for the state of affairs and clashing over what to do next, with student loan forgiveness emerging as one divisive flashpoint.Inside the White House, whose political operation has been a subject of quiet griping in some corners for months, a furious effort is afoot to reframe the 2022 elections as a choice between the two parties, rather than a referendum on Democratic rule. Anita Dunn, an aggressive operator and longtime Biden adviser, has rejoined the administration to sharpen its messaging.“The Democratic base is quite demoralized at this moment,” Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, one of the party’s leading progressive voices, put it bluntly.If Georgia was the scene of the highest highs for Democrats in the 2020 cycle — turning blue at the presidential level for the first time since 1992, flipping two Senate seats to cement control of the chamber and providing Democrats their only tightly contested House pickup in the nation — it is not clear whether the ideologically sprawling and multiracial Biden coalition that unified to oust Mr. Trump is replicable.Energized Black voters, moderate white suburbanites, Asian Americans and some Hispanic Americans all played a role in propelling Democratic victories in the state in 2020 and 2021, while some of the rural Republican base stayed home in the January Senate runoffs.This fall, Mr. Warnock is expected to face Herschel Walker, the Republican former football star with scant political experience. Mr. Warnock has already begun leveraging a $23 million war chest to tell voters that he feels their pain — and to make plain the limits of his power as a freshman senator.“People are hurting. People are tired,” Mr. Warnock said in his first television ad this year. More recently, he took a different approach, almost pleading with disaffected voters: “I’m not a magician.”Representative Carolyn Bourdeaux, left, will face a primary on Tuesday against Representative Lucy McBath.Jenni Girtman/EPA, via Shutterstock, pool photo by Greg NashRepresentative Carolyn Bourdeaux, whose Georgia district was redrawn after she captured what had been a Republican-held seat in 2020, is now facing a primary on Tuesday against Representative Lucy McBath outside Atlanta. Ms. Bourdeaux, a moderate, had a warning for her party.“They need to do more to communicate clearly with voters that they are a steady hand at the wheel of getting the economy back on track for people,” Ms. Bourdeaux said. But she, too, saw a chance to draw a sharp contrast with what she cast as ascendant far-right Republicans. “The other side, candidly, has lost its mind,” she said, pointing to efforts to restrict voting rights and abortion rights.In the Republican race for governor, Gov. Brian Kemp has been locked in a primary with former Senator David Perdue, who was recruited by Mr. Trump. The former president remains angry at the governor for certifying the 2020 election and, according to people close to him, unlikely to ever endorse Mr. Kemp.Ms. Abrams has emerged as a national star among Democrats. But privately Democratic strategists fear that her high-water mark might have come in 2018, when she lost in a Democratic wave year.Most polling shows a close race for governor and Senate, with a slight Republican advantage.As general-election matchups come into focus, Mr. Biden’s advisers argue that there is still time to crystallize a clear choice between the president and congressional Democrats, and the other side. Republicans have already elevated candidates like State Senator Doug Mastriano, a far-right 2020 election denier who is the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania. And as the Supreme Court appears poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, many Republicans have embraced stringent anti-abortion positions, views that are often out of step with the majority of Americans, polling shows.Democrats are seeking to cast Republican candidates as extremists more consumed with culture wars than finding solutions to the nation’s most pressing problems, and the president’s advisers and allies say Democrats will continue to push the message that they are doing everything possible to lower prices.But Ms. Bourdeaux, who is locked in a primary battle of her own, said that the kind of Democratic intraparty “infighting that you’re seeing right now” complicates the party’s messaging.President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were greeted by Senator Raphael Warnock as they visited Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta in January.Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Warnock told his congregation he met with Mr. Biden at the White House, putting up a photo on the screen of a selfie he took with a picture of Ebenezer Baptist Church that hung in the halls of the West Wing.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? 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      Perdue Had Trump. In Georgia, Kemp Had Everything Else.

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      David Perdue challenged Gov. Brian Kemp because of Donald Trump’s fury over his 2020 loss. Thoroughly outflanked and failing to gain traction, he is now staring down defeat.In September 2021, former Senator David Perdue was hemming and hawing about running for governor of Georgia. Over dinner with an old friend on Sea Island, he pulled out his iPhone and showed the list of calls he’d gotten from Donald J. Trump, lobbying him to take the plunge.“He said Trump called him all the time,” said Martha Zoller, a former aide to Mr. Perdue who now hosts a talk radio show in Gainesville, Ga. “He showed me on his phone these multiple recent calls and said they were from the president.”Ms. Zoller and a legion of other former Perdue aides and advisers told the former senator that running was a bad idea. He listened to Mr. Trump instead.Now, Mr. Perdue is staring down an epic defeat at the hands of Gov. Brian Kemp, the Republican whom Mr. Trump has blamed for his 2020 loss more than any other person. The Perdue campaign is ending the race low on cash, with no ads on television and a candidate described even by his supporters as lackluster and distracted.“Perdue thought that Trump was a magic wand,” said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and a Trump ally, who was among Mr. Perdue’s highest-profile Georgia supporters. “In retrospect, it’s hard to understand David’s campaign, and it’s certainly not the campaign those of us who were for him expected.”Mr. Perdue’s impending downfall in Tuesday’s primary for governor looms as the biggest electoral setback for Mr. Trump since his own defeat in the 2020 election. There is perhaps no contest in which the former president has done more to try to influence the outcome. Mr. Trump recruited, promoted and cleared the field for his ally, while assailing Mr. Kemp, recording television ads and giving $2.64 million to groups helping Mr. Perdue — by far the most he has ever invested in another politician.Yet the race has exposed the limits of Mr. Trump’s sway, especially against entrenched Republican incumbents.Gov. Brian Kemp campaigning with former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey in Alpharetta, Ga., this past week. A recent poll showed him leading the Republican primary by more than 30 percentage points.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMr. Perdue’s failures were not just of his own making. He was outflanked by a savvy incumbent in Mr. Kemp who exploited the powers of his office to cut off Mr. Perdue from allies — including Mr. Perdue’s own cousin Sonny, a former governor and Trump agriculture secretary whom Mr. Kemp’s allies appointed chancellor of the University System of Georgia.Mr. Kemp also appeared to punish those who crossed him: One congressional seat was drawn to exclude the home of a candidate whose father, a Perdue supporter, had publicly criticized the governor.And he offered goodies to voters, including a gas-tax holiday that conveniently runs through the end of May, just past the primary.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.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.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.On Thursday, as Mr. Perdue campaigned outside the Semper Fi Bar and Grille in Woodstock, Ga., he was not conjuring up a path to victory but haggling over the scope of his widely expected defeat, after a Fox News survey showed him down 32 percentage points.“Hell no, I’m not down 30 points,” insisted Mr. Perdue, whose campaign did not respond to requests for comment for this article. “We may not win Tuesday,” he added, “but I guaran-damn-tee-you we are not down 30 points.”The key threshold on Tuesday is 50 percent: Mr. Kemp must win an outright majority in the five-candidate field to avoid a one-on-one runoff in June.The story of Mr. Perdue’s effort is less one of political collapse and more of a failure to launch. From the moment he announced his candidacy in December, Mr. Perdue never demonstrated the same commitment to winning that he displayed in his first Senate race in 2014.His case for ousting Mr. Kemp was always largely based on support from the former president. Mr. Perdue argued at his campaign introduction that the governor had so alienated the party’s Trump faithful that they would not rally around Mr. Kemp against Stacey Abrams, the presumptive Democratic nominee and a leading villain for Republicans.But Mr. Perdue, 72, a wealthy former chief executive of Dollar General, never came close to matching the $3.8 million of his own money he put into his 2014 Senate race. He invested just $500,000 in his bid for governor.That is less than he and his wife spent last year for a waterfront lot on a secluded peninsula on scenic St. Simons Island, a purchase made not long after his runoff defeat at the hands of a then-33-year-old Democrat that delivered Senate control to Democrats. A permit to build a nearly 12,000-square-foot mansion worth an estimated $5 million — on land including “over 625 feet of lake frontage,” according to the listing — was granted two weeks after he declared his candidacy, records show.Mr. Perdue’s home remains under construction on St. Simons Island in Georgia. Parker Stewart for The New York TimesMr. Trump has simultaneously invested heavily in Mr. Perdue, with his $2.64 million, and sought to avoid blame as the candidate has faltered, telling The New York Times in April that the news media’s focus “should be on the endorsements — not the David Perdue one” to measure his influence.Mr. Trump’s last rally in Georgia came in late March. He did not return, as Perdue allies had hoped, instead holding a conference call for supporters in early May.“I am with David all the way because Brian Kemp was the WORST governor in the Country on Election Integrity!” Mr. Trump insisted Friday on his Truth Social messaging platform.Mr. Perdue, like candidates for governor in Idaho and Nebraska this month, learned that a Trump endorsement alone does not assure the support of Trump voters or Trump donors.“The Trump endorsement is very important, but it’s only an endorsement,” said former Representative Jack Kingston, who lost the 2014 Senate primary to Mr. Perdue and is a former Trump adviser. “It’s not an army of infrastructure and door-knockers the way it would be if you have the Sierra Club or the N.R.A. or the A.F.L.-C.I.O.”Mr. Perdue, second from left, with Senator Kelly Loeffler, left, President Donald J. Trump and Melania Trump shortly after the 2020 election. Mr. Perdue and Ms. Loeffler lost to Democrats in early 2021.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe juxtaposition between the Kemp and Perdue camps was particularly stark on Friday.Mr. Kemp was outside Savannah, announcing that Hyundai was investing $5.5 billion in an electric battery and vehicle manufacturing plant, one of the largest economic development projects in Georgia history. There was a champagne toast.Mr. Perdue was nearby holding an endorsement event with Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, who is making her own comeback attempt in a House race in Alaska.“I would rather be standing on the stage announcing 7,500 jobs than standing next to Sarah Palin,” said Mr. Kemp’s lieutenant governor, Geoff Duncan, a fierce Trump critic who opted not to run for re-election this year.Randy Evans, a Perdue supporter who served as ambassador to Luxembourg in the Trump administration, said the Kemp operation had been ruthless in using what he called the “bullying” powers of the governorship.Mr. Evans’s son, Jake, is running for Congress in the Atlanta suburbs. When Kemp-aligned Republican legislators drew new lines in redistricting, the younger Mr. Evans was suddenly drawn out of the district in which he had been planning to run.“They cut a sliver about the size of your little finger,” the elder Mr. Evans said. “Jake had to move, buy a new house.”Mr. Kemp, 58, leveraged the powers of incumbency in other crucial ways. He signed a measure to provide tax refunds of up to $500 for married couples, then announced on May 11, after early voting had begun, that those checks were in the mail. He appealed to rural Georgians by raising pay for teachers, and pleased conservatives by signing sweeping legislation to restrict voting access, expand gun rights and forbid school mask mandates.Mr. Kemp at a campaign stop in Canton, Ga., this past week. He has signed several conservative priorities into law over the past year.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMr. Perdue’s efforts could seem feeble in comparison. In March, he attacked Mr. Kemp for recruiting an electric truck maker to open a factory in rural Georgia — creating thousands of jobs — because George Soros, the prominent Democratic donor, had recently invested in the company.The Kemp-Perdue contest was steeped in the drama of personal betrayal.Mr. Kemp had spent weeks campaigning with Mr. Perdue before the senator’s defeat in the January 2021 Senate runoff election. By then, Mr. Kemp had infuriated Mr. Trump by defending the legitimacy of Georgia’s presidential results.Last spring, Mr. Kemp’s aides said, Mr. Perdue assured Mr. Kemp that he did not intend to run for governor. That June, Mr. Perdue introduced the governor at the Georgia Republican Party’s annual convention.In 2018, Mr. Perdue and Mr. Kemp appeared together during Mr. Kemp’s campaign for governor.Audra Melton for The New York TimesBut Mr. Kemp, cannily, had already begun the process of installing Sonny Perdue, a popular former governor, to run Georgia’s state universities — an appointment that effectively put him on the sidelines. (Sonny Perdue, through a spokesman, declined to comment.)Mr. Kemp also pre-emptively secured the loyalty and fund-raising might of Alec Poitevint, a South Georgia businessman who had served as campaign chairman for David Perdue’s Senate campaigns and Sonny Perdue’s campaigns for governor — one of many ways the Kemp operation boxed out Mr. Perdue financially.Mr. Poitevint said he was among a host of longtime David Perdue supporters who had urged him not to run.“I didn’t think it was serious,” Mr. Poitevint said. “I expressed the fact that I didn’t agree with it, that I thought that the governor had done a great job and deserved re-election.”Shunned by the state’s political establishment, Mr. Perdue tried framing himself as a political outsider — “I’ve been an outsider since I got into politics,” he said on Thursday — but that is a difficult case to make for a former senator boasting of his support from a former president.Even Mr. Trump’s $2.64 million infusion was swamped by the $5.2 million in television ads paid for by the Republican Governors Association to aid Mr. Kemp.For all of Mr. Trump’s attacks on Mr. Kemp, the governor never struck back. Mr. Kemp’s advisers believe that discipline helped provide permission for even the most devoted Trump supporters to stick with the governor.Mr. Perdue’s campaign, meanwhile, was laser-focused on falsehoods about 2020 — repeating Mr. Trump’s lie and blaming Mr. Kemp for President Biden’s election.Mr. Evans, the former ambassador who in early 2021 had tried to broker a peace deal between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kemp, campaigned for Mr. Perdue but said he saw little effort to define a distinctive platform.​​ “As far as having an existence that existed independent of Trump, I really didn’t see that materialize,” Mr. Evans said.Mr. Kemp’s lieutenant governor, Mr. Duncan, summarized the arc of the Perdue candidacy.“David Perdue made a bad bet six months ago when he jumped in the race and thought, ‘Because Donald Trump likes me, I’m going to win,’” Mr. Duncan said. “He bet wrong.”Maya King More

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

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

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      Hochul’s Lt. Governor Pick Says He Is Afro-Latino. Some Latinos Object.

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      The three major Democrats running to become New York’s second-in-command have Latino roots, but Antonio Delgado’s claim to the heritage is being challenged.In New York’s Democratic primary for lieutenant governor, one goal had unified two outsider candidates, Diana Reyna and Ana Maria Archila: vying to be the first Latino elected to statewide office.Achieving that objective has now gotten more complicated.This month, Gov. Kathy Hochul named Representative Antonio Delgado as her new lieutenant governor and running mate, replacing Brian Benjamin, who resigned in April after being indicted on federal bribery charges.In announcing the choice, Ms. Hochul heralded Mr. Delgado’s Afro-Latino ethnicity, and noted his membership in both the Black and Hispanic congressional caucuses.Prominent Latino Democrats, who lobbied Ms. Hochul on the decision and have long pushed for greater representation in state government, were quick to celebrate an appointment that, once it becomes official, will make Mr. Delgado the first Latino to hold statewide office in New York.But as the congratulatory statements began to circulate, so did questions about Mr. Delgado’s background, putting a spotlight on issues of ethnicity, self-identity and representation in advance of the June 28 primary.Asked about his Afro-Latino heritage at the news conference where he was introduced as Ms. Hochul’s choice for lieutenant governor, Mr. Delgado gave a winding answer. He said people had surmised that he was Afro-Latino because of his name, or perhaps because he briefly lived in Puerto Rico, where he played semipro basketball. He then seemed to suggest that his Latino heritage stemmed from his family’s ties to Cape Verde, a small island nation off the west coast of Africa that was once a Portuguese colony.The answer mystified some of his supporters, and created an opening for his opponents to scrutinize his claims of being Latino.Luis A. Miranda Jr., a founding partner of the MirRam Group, a political consulting firm, posted celebratory comments on Twitter about Mr. Delgado’s appointment when it was announced. But after hearing his remarks at the news conference, Mr. Miranda said he was “puzzled by his explanation on ethnicity.”Mr. Delgado, in an interview with The New York Times, described the complexity of how he views his ethnicity. He said his mother grew up at a time when she felt safe identifying only as Black or white, but eventually embraced the Mexican, Colombian and Venezuelan ancestry of her father, whom she did not know.“She became someone who identifies as a proud Black woman with Latino roots,” Mr. Delgado said in the interview. “And as I’ve tried to orient myself and my sense of identity through her, that is the entry point.”Asked how he identified himself, Mr. Delgado said: “I am a Black American man with Cape Verdean roots and Latino roots. When it pertains to my Latino roots, that comes from my mom’s side, whose own story around her identity is multifaceted and complex.”When Ms. Hochul picked Mr. Benjamin for the job, her choice was influenced by a desire to have her running mate be a person of color from the New York City area as a way to help broaden her appeal beyond her base as a white politician from western New York.Mr. Delgado offered many of the same qualities, giving the governor a running mate with name recognition and the potential to appeal to downstate Black and Latino voters as she seeks a full term this year.Ms. Archila, who has been endorsed by Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, the first Puerto Rican woman elected to the House, and Ms. Reyna said they understood why Ms. Hochul would want a Latino running mate. Latinos are the second-largest ethnic group in the state and make up 19 percent of the population. But the two women questioned Mr. Delgado’s rationale for describing himself as Latino and cast Ms. Hochul’s decision as a political ploy.“Gov. Hochul is being extremely opportunistic and simplistic,” said Ms. Archila, whose running mate is Jumaane Williams, New York City’s public advocate. “I think he should say more than, I have an ancestor who once was born in Colombia.”In selecting Mr. Delgado, Gov. Kathy Hochul, right, chose a running mate of color who may appeal to downstate voters who are not part of her natural base.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesMs. Reyna, whose running mate is Representative Thomas R. Suozzi, said at a recent campaign event that a “last name does not make you Latino.” The first statewide Latino official should be “authentic,” have “lived experience” and a record of helping Latino communities, she told Encuentro New York, a Latino advocacy group.“She tells us that her lieutenant governor is a member of the Latino community,” Ms. Reyna said of the governor. “This is not about identity politics. This is about being truthful.”Ms. Hochul and her campaign have said little about the questions surrounding Mr. Delgado’s ethnicity. They referred to him as Afro-Latino in the third line of a news release announcing his appointment; an email sent out the next day about a fund-raiser did not mention his ethnicity.“He identifies as Afro-Latino,” Jerrel Harvey, a spokesman for Ms. Hochul’s campaign, said.The focus on Mr. Delgado’s ethnicity adds a new wrinkle to the primary for lieutenant governor, which was upended after the resignation of Mr. Benjamin, the presumptive favorite. For weeks, it appeared that he would remain on the primary ballot despite the criminal charges, but state lawmakers ultimately passed a bill allowing him to remove himself.It was then that Ms. Hochul chose Mr. Delgado to succeed Mr. Benjamin.Camille Rivera, a Democratic political strategist who identifies as Afro-Latina, said Ms. Hochul had missed an opportunity to energize an important voting bloc that could help decide the general election. Among the issues Latino leaders say they want state government to address are affordable housing, child care and inequalities in health care.“You have no statewide Latino representation, right?” Ms. Rivera said. “Here was an opportunity to actually lift up Latinos in a real way.”There has been little scrutiny of Mr. Delgado’s Latino heritage. Several news articles over the years have identified him incorrectly as Puerto Rican. Some articles from 2018, when he defeated John J. Faso, the Republican incumbent, to claim the House seat representing the Hudson Valley and Catskills regions, referred to him as Black.Asked whether he had ever corrected the record about being Puerto Rican before the news conference where he was introduced as lieutenant governor, Mr. Delgado said in a statement that he was “raised as a blend of heritages,” including “Latino roots.”“That’s the background I grew up with and how I identify,” he said in the statement. “My mom’s maiden name is Gomez and she grew up identifying as having Latina roots.”Racism and colorism may also play a role in how Mr. Delgado’s description of being Afro-Latino is being received, said Representative Ritchie Torres of the Bronx, who identifies as Afro-Latino.“I find it curious that those of us with Black skin often have our Latino identity questioned,” said Mr. Torres, who supports Mr. Delgado. “As an Afro-Latino, I have been told repeatedly that I do not look Latino, whatever that means, and therefore, I must be less authentically Latino than those with lighter skin.”Zaire Z. Dinzey-Flores, an associate professor of Latino and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University, said she understood why some Latinos were upset about the appointment. Being Afro-Latino in the United States, she said, involves a complicated mix of race, language and culture.“Experience informs what you see, how you perceive things, how you bring in issues that might go unseen or unrecognized,” Professor Dinzey-Flores said. Choosing someone from an Afro-Latino background so that constituency is represented in government, she added, should be about “authentically” capturing that experience and not “checking a box.”Melissa Mark-Viverito, a former New York City Council speaker who was born and raised in Puerto Rico, concurred, saying that Mr. Delgado’s claim of Latino heritage “raises the question and the concern of people loosely taking on certain identities and not being completely honest.”“That concerns me because as someone who fully embraces the importance of representation, we have two qualified Latinas running and a chance to make history,” Ms. Mark-Viverito said, referring to Ms. Reyna and Ms. Archila. “Yet it feels like we are being duped. It’s all very messy.”Days after Ms. Hochul named him as Mr. Benjamin’s successor, Mr. Delgado gave a 15-minute speech at the Harlem headquarters of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. Mr. Sharpton said he was surprised that Mr. Delgado did not address the confusion about his Afro-Latino identity.“I think it’s something he can’t ignore,” Mr. Sharpton said in an interview after Mr. Delgado spoke that day.Instead, Mr. Delgado reminisced about growing up in a Black Baptist church and drew hearty amens and nods of approval from the mostly Black crowd. He talked about why he pursued a career as a rapper after graduating from Harvard Law School, an issue opponents tried to use against him when he first ran for Congress.“I know the power of the culture,” Mr. Delgado said. “I am the culture.” More

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      Judge Approves N.Y. House Map, Cementing Chaos for Democrats

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      The new district lines, approved late Friday night, will create pickup opportunities for Republicans and force Democratic incumbents to run against each other.A state court formally approved New York’s new congressional map late Friday, ratifying a slate of House districts drawn by a neutral expert that could pave the way for Democratic losses this fall and force some of the party’s most prominent incumbents to face off in primary matches.The map, approved just before a midnight deadline set by Justice Patrick F. McAllister of State Supreme Court in Steuben County, effectively unwinds an attempted Democratic gerrymander, creates a raft of new swing seats across the state, and scrambles some carefully laid lines that have long determined centers of power in New York City.Jonathan R. Cervas, the court-appointed mapmaker, made relatively minor changes to a draft proposal released earlier this week whose sweeping changes briefly united both Republicans and Democrats in exasperation and turned Democrats against each other.In Manhattan, the final map would still merge the seats of Representatives Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler, setting the two Democratic committee leaders, who have served alongside each other for 30 years, onto an increasingly inevitable collision course.Another awkward Democratic primary loomed up the Hudson in Westchester County, where two Black Democratic House members were drawn into a single district. But the worst outcome for Democrats appeared to be averted early Saturday morning when one of the incumbents, Representative Mondaire Jones, said he would forego re-election in his Westchester seat. He said he would run instead in a newly reconfigured 10th Congressional District in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, a race that has already drawn the candidacy of Bill de Blasio, the former New York City mayor, but which no other sitting House member is expected to enter.Republicans were already eying pickup opportunities in the suburbs of Long Island and in the 18th and 19th Districts in the Hudson Valley that could help them retake control of the House. Representative Mondaire Jones said he would run in a newly reconfigured 10th Congressional District.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesAnd in New York City’s only Republican-held district, Representative Nicole Malliotakis breathed a sigh of relief that Mr. Cervas had reversed one of the boldest moves by the Democratic leaders in the State Legislature, when they inserted liberal Park Slope, Brooklyn, into her Staten Island-based district.Some of the most notable changes between the initial and final district lines came in historically Black communities in Brooklyn, where Mr. Cervas reunited Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights into single districts. He had faced uproar from Black lawmakers and civil rights groups after his first proposal divided them into separate seats.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Deepening Divides: As political mapmakers create lopsided new district lines, the already polarized parties are being pulled even farther apart.Responding to feedback from community groups, Mr. Cervas also revised the map to reunite Manhattan’s Chinatown with Sunset Park in Brooklyn, another heavily Asian American community, in the 10th Congressional District. In each case, he said the communities had been “inadvertently split” in his first proposal.Justice McAllister’s order approving the congressional and additional State Senate maps on Friday makes New York one of the final states in the nation to complete its decennial redistricting process. But both parties were already girding late Friday for the potential for civil rights or political groups to file new, long-shot lawsuits challenging the maps in state or federal court.Justice McAllister used the unusual five-page order to rebut criticisms leveled at Mr. Cervas and the court in recent days, as the maps were hastily drafted out of public view. He conceded that the rushed time frame was “less than ideal” but defended the final maps as “almost perfectly neutral” with 15 safe Democratic seats, three safe Republican seats and eight swing seats.“Unfortunately some people have encouraged the public to believe that now the court gets to create its own gerrymandered maps that favor Republicans,” wrote Justice McAllister, a Republican. “Such could not be further from the truth. The court is not politically biased.”The final map was a stark disappointment for Democrats, who control every lever of power in New York and had entered this year’s decennial redistricting cycle with every expectation of gaining seats that could help hold their House majority. They appeared to be successful in February, when the Legislature adopted a congressional map that would have made their candidates favorites in 22 of 26 districts, an improvement from the 19 Democrats currently hold.The new map reverses one of the boldest moves by Democratic leaders: inserting Park Slope, Brooklyn, into Representative Nicole Malliotakis’s Staten Island-based district.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesBut Republicans sued in state court, and Justice McAllister, a judge in the state’s rural Southern Tier, ruled that the maps violated a 2014 state constitutional amendment outlawing partisan gerrymandering and reforming the mapmaking process in New York. In late April, the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, upheld the decision and ordered a court-appointed special master to redraw the lines.Justice McAllister appointed Mr. Cervas, a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon with few ties to New York and scant experience drawing state lines, and delayed the congressional and State Senate elections until Aug. 23.On Friday, Mr. Cervas produced a 26-page report explaining the rationale of his map, in which he tried to balance the need to protect communities of shared interest, existing districts, and other constitutional requirements.Mr. Cervas eliminated one district overall, carving it out of central New York to shrink the state’s congressional delegation to 26. The change was required after New York failed to keep pace with national population growth in the 2020 census.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      In Georgia, a G.O.P. Primary Tests the Power of a Trump Vendetta

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      Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is fending off a challenger fueled by Donald J. Trump’s election lies. But do voters still care about 2020 as much as the former president does?ATLANTA — An anti-Trump Republican advocacy group recently organized a focus group of G.O.P voters in Georgia to get their take on perhaps the most competitive and consequential primary election in the state. They heard a lot of indecision.Most of the voters, convened by the group, the Republican Accountability Project, knew little about the race between Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, and his leading challenger, Representative Jody Hice. Mr. Raffensperger seemed to get the benefit of the doubt — until the voters were reminded of the back story.As the state official responsible for certifying the 2020 presidential election results, Mr. Raffensperger rejected President Donald J. Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat. Mr. Trump recruited Mr. Hice to seek revenge.“Go Jody, I guess?” said one voter.Three out of six others agreed.The exchange offered a glimpse into why the Republican primary race for the office that oversees elections remains a dogfight just days from Election Day, on May 24. Two years after Mr. Trump lost Georgia by the slimmest of margins and Democrats captured both of the state’s open Senate seats, wounds from the 2020 election have still not completely healed for some partisans.But marshaling that residual anger to unseat an incumbent is not an easy feat. Mr. Raffensperger has worked to win back Republicans by casting himself as a defender of “election integrity,” even as he has spent hours debunking a laundry list of false claims about the 2020 election. Some voters’ memories and passions have faded. Many never had strong opinions about their secretary of state.It all has made the race one of the purest tests yet of whether the 2020 election lie can be weaponized to win elections. While polls have shown that leagues of Republican voters in Georgia and elsewhere largely embraced the fiction that the 2020 election was “stolen” in its immediate aftermath, it is not clear those concerns alone, or Mr. Trump’s personal vendetta, are enough to drive voters’ choices.“I think 2020 was really a turning point in how closely people looked at things,” said Salleigh Grubbs, chairwoman of the Cobb County Republican Party. “Before, people might not have even realized that the secretary of state was in charge of running the elections for the state. But now they’re keenly aware of it.”Mr. Hice, whom Mr. Trump endorsed last year, is one of more than a dozen candidates running for secretary of state under the America First banner, alongside others in battleground states like Arizona, Michigan and Ohio. They share an unflinching loyalty to Mr. Trump and a belief that the 2020 election was marred. Some are calling for a law enforcement arm to more aggressively prosecute violators of election laws.Representative Jody Hice, who is running to be Georgia’s secretary of state, at an event of Atlanta Young Republicans on Thursday.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesPolls show large numbers of undecided voters in the race, with Mr. Hice and Mr. Raffensperger neck and neck, each with about one-third of the vote. Both campaigns are braced for a runoff.Mr. Trump’s attempt at payback for 2020 in Georgia is floundering in the state’s other marquee primary on Tuesday. Former Senator David Perdue, his pick to challenge Gov. Brian Kemp after the governor refused to overturn the election results, is trailing Mr. Kemp in polls and fund-raising. Mr. Trump has hardly weighed in publicly on Mr. Perdue’s prospects since hosting a “tele-rally” for the former senator in April. His former vice president, Mike Pence, is set to visit the state to campaign for Mr. Kemp on the eve of the primary election.Mr. Kemp has been adept at using his office to win over skeptical Republicans, passing a slew of conservative policies on elections, law enforcement and education. For voters still enthralled with false claims of fraud, Mr. Kemp can point to the Election Integrity Act of 2021, which limits provisions like ballot drop boxes and mobile voting centers.“When voters see that kind of activity around the concern they have, it just becomes difficult to drive an argument that people who are in office are being inattentive to the issue,” said Brad Alexander, an Atlanta-based political consultant and Raffensperger supporter, who was among several who argued that the potency of the “stolen” election debate has started to wane.In January, 43 percent of Georgia Republican voters said they were confident that the November elections would be fair and accurate, according to a University of Georgia poll. By April, that number had increased to nearly 60 percent. And a record number of voters have already participated in the state’s primary elections, topping more than 700,000 voters on the final day of early voting.Mr. Hice, a four-term congressman, was one of the 147 House Republicans who voted against certifying the election results for President Joe Biden. He later took part in a White House meeting alongside Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene to try to determine how the election results could be flipped in Mr. Trump’s favor. He has claimed, falsely, that Mr. Trump would have won in Georgia if the election had been “fair.”At a meeting with the Atlanta Young Republicans on Thursday, Mr. Hice made unsupported claims about “ballot harvesting,” said he no longer wanted to use Dominion Voting machines and slammed Mr. Raffensperger for sending out unsolicited absentee ballots ahead of the last election. The voice of the people had been “violated” in 2020, he said.County officials in Georgia identified 64 cases of potential fraud out of the state’s roughly 5 million votes in the 2020 election, according to an Associated Press survey of all but 11 of the state’s 159 counties.Fulton County election workers in Atlanta counting ballots after the 2020 election.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesBut Mr. Hice has tried to make his case about more than just 2020 — raising the prospect of fraud in the future.“The issue is not who wins an election, but the issue is absolutely, Was it a fair election?” he said. “If the election itself is compromised or violated, then all the effort out there really doesn’t matter anymore. And that’s what we’ve got to defend. That’s what we’ve got to protect at all costs.”Most of the young Republicans in the room said they wanted to hear what Mr. Hice would do differently from Mr. Raffensperger in elections should he be elected.“Even if you’re not a dogmatic, election-was-stolen person, there are a lot of people with reasonable doubt, and that reasonable suspicion is fair,” said Chris Campbell, 39, a national accounts manager at SmartFeeds. “Raffensperger didn’t address those concerns well, and people don’t have confidence in him. But I do have confidence in Hice and trust that he would run the office with integrity.”The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 8Numerous inquiries. More

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      Summer Lee, a Progressive Democrat, Wins House Primary in Pennsylvania

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      PITTSBURGH — State Representative Summer Lee, a progressive Democrat who could become the first Black woman to represent Pennsylvania in Congress, won an expensive and fiercely fought primary battle on Friday after three days of vote-counting, defeating a more centrist contender who was the favorite of the party establishment.After a string of primary losses for the national left-wing movement in 2021 and a mixed record in the first months of 2022, Ms. Lee’s narrow victory, called by The Associated Press, amounts to a significant win for that slice of the party, amid a vigorous battle over the direction of the Democratic Party that will be playing out in races around the country over the coming weeks. Ms. Lee, 34, who overcame heavy outside spending against her, had the endorsements of leading progressive figures including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and local figures including Mayor Ed Gainey of Pittsburgh and some labor groups. Mr. Sanders held a rally with Ms. Lee last week. Ms. Lee defeated her chief rival, Steve Irwin, a lawyer and former head of the Pennsylvania Securities Commission who had amassed substantial support from the party establishment. Mr. Irwin gained the endorsement of Representative Mike Doyle, whose retirement opened the seat.In a statement before the race was called, Mr. Irwin called Ms. Lee a “passionate, dynamic voice and strong leader for our region.”Even before the race was called, left-leaning leaders and organizations in the party were declaring victory while more moderate party strategists seemed demoralized by the result, even as more centrist candidates won other races this week.“Against an obscene amount of dark money, Summer Lee pulled off a stunning victory,” read a fund-raising appeal from Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s team. Her “victory demonstrates the strength of the growing, organized progressive and democratic socialist movement,” the message said.Among the outside groups that intervened in the race was a super PAC aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which paid for a barrage of advertising attacking Ms. Lee.She also defeated candidates including Jerry Dickinson, an associate professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh.Ms. Lee, who won a 2018 State House primary with the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America, is a supporter of sweeping policies including Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, and she has spoken forcefully about the need to defend abortion rights and combat racial injustice.The 12th District in the Pittsburgh area is considered safely Democratic in the general election. More

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      Bernie Sanders Prepares for ‘War’ With AIPAC and Its Super PAC

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      Senator Bernie Sanders, the progressive former presidential candidate who rose to prominence in part by denouncing the influence of wealthy interests in politics, has a new target in his sights: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its affiliated super PAC, which is spending heavily in Democratic primaries for the first time this year.After Mr. Sanders traveled last week to Pittsburgh to campaign for Summer Lee, a liberal state legislator whose House campaign was opposed by millions of dollars in such spending, he is now headed to Texas. There, he is aiming to lift up another progressive congressional candidate, Jessica Cisneros, whose left-wing challenge of a moderate incumbent has been met with significant spending from the pro-Israel super PAC.“This is a war,” Mr. Sanders said in an interview, “for the future of the Democratic Party.”AIPAC has long been a bipartisan organization, and its entry this year into direct political spending has included giving to both Democrats and Republicans. That has earned the ire of Mr. Sanders and other progressives because the group’s super PAC also ran ads attacking Ms. Lee as an insufficiently loyal Democrat.“Why would an organization go around criticizing someone like Summer Lee for not being a strong enough Democrat when they themselves have endorsed extreme right-wing Republicans?” Mr. Sanders said. “In my view, their goal is to create a two-party system, Democrats and Republicans, in which both parties are responsive to the needs of corporate America and the billionaire class.”Mr. Sanders specifically called out the committee for donating to congressional Republicans who refused to certify the 2020 election, while its super PAC, the United Democracy Project, has framed itself as a pro-democracy group.“That just exposes the hypocrisy,” Mr. Sanders said.Marshall Wittmann, a spokesman for AIPAC, said in response to Mr. Sanders, who is Jewish, that the group “will not be intimidated in our efforts to elect pro-Israel candidates — including scores of pro-Israel progressives.”“It is very revealing that some who don’t take issue with super PAC support for anti-Israel candidates get indignant when pro-Israel activists use the same tools,” Mr. Wittmann said.After the Pennsylvania and North Carolina PrimariesMay 17 was the biggest day so far in the 2022 midterm cycle.The Stakes: G.O.P. voters are showing a willingness to nominate candidates who parrot Donald J. Trump’s 2020 lies, making clear that this year’s races may affect the fate of free and fair elections in the country.Trump’s Limits: The MAGA movement is dominating Republican primaries, but Mr. Trump’s control over it may be slipping.Trump Endorsements: Most of the candidates backed by the former president have prevailed. However, there are some noteworthy losses.Up Next: Closely watched races in Georgia and Alabama on May 24 will offer a clearer picture of Mr. Trump’s influence.More Takeaways: ​​Democratic voters are pushing for change over consensus, nominating a left-leaning political brawler for Senate in Pennsylvania. Here’s what else we’ve learned.The three candidates that Mr. Sanders has been most personally invested in backing so far have also had all super PAC support, though two were heavily outspent.Despite more than $3 million in opposition spending from pro-Israel groups, Ms. Lee is narrowly ahead in her primary against Steve Irwin, a lawyer; The Associated Press has not yet called the race.In North Carolina, Nida Allam, the Sanders-backed candidate, lost to Valerie Foushee, a state legislator, in an open congressional race. Ms. Foushee’s campaign was supported by nearly $3.5 million in spending from two pro-Israel groups and a super PAC linked to a cryptocurrency billionaire. Super PAC spending for Ms. Allam was $370,000.Maya Handa, Ms. Allam’s campaign manager, said Mr. Sanders’s megaphone — he did robocalls, sent a fund-raising email to his giant list and held a virtual event — brought invaluable attention to the outside money flooding in the race.The message broke through to some voters. In Hillsborough, Elese Stutts, 44, a bookseller, had been planning to vote for Ms. Foushee. However, on Election Day, Ms. Stutts said, she was turned off after learning about the origin of the super PAC money that had helped Ms. Foushee’s campaign.Ms. Foushee ultimately won the Democratic primary for a district that includes several major universities, including Duke and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and where Mr. Sanders registered 83 percent favorability among Democratic primary voters in the Allam campaign’s polling.Mr. Sanders has sparred with pro-Israel groups over the years, including during his 2020 presidential run, when a group called the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC spent money to attack him when he emerged as a front-runner early in the primary season.And when one of Mr. Sanders’s national co-chairs, Nina Turner, ran for Congress in a special election in 2021 and again in 2022, that group and the AIPAC-aligned super PAC both spent heavily to defeat her.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More