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      Melissa Carone, an Election Denier Who Was Parodied by ‘S.N.L.,’ Is Disqualified

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      Melissa Carone was supposed to be a star witness for Rudolph W. Giuliani on his election denial tour, but she is perhaps better known as a caricature on “Saturday Night Live” — a mercurial purveyor of wild conspiracy theories about fraud and miscounted ballots whom Mr. Giuliani shushed in the middle of her testimony.Her next move was to run for the legislature in Michigan, joining a host of election deniers across the nation who have sought public office since former President Donald J. Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joseph R. Biden Jr.But her plans were short-circuited on Tuesday, when the Michigan Department of State disqualified Ms. Carone, 35, a former election contractor, as a Republican primary candidate for a State Senate seat outside of Detroit.The office said that Ms. Carone, along with 10 other legislative candidates, had made false statements on an affidavit that candidates were required to submit to election administrators. On one of the forms that was signed by Ms. Carone, she had attested that she did not have any unpaid fines for election law violations and that all of her public campaign filings were up-to-date. The county clerk where Ms. Carone was running for office said on Wednesday that had not been the case.It was the second time in recent months that Ms. Carone had been disqualified as a candidate: The Macomb County Clerk & Register of Deeds barred her in March from the Aug. 2 primary for state representative.When she signed the affidavit, Ms. Carone had owed at least $125 in late fees for missing the deadline twice for quarterly campaign filings in 2021, according to a letter from the clerk that was obtained by The New York Times. She had also failed to file an annual statement for 2022 for her campaign and an amendment to a quarterly report last October, the letter said.Ms. Carone, who was played by the “Saturday Night Live” cast member Cecily Strong in the show’s cold open in December 2020, blamed the situation on a former campaign manager whom she said in an interview on Wednesday did not file the paperwork.She accused Republican election officials and the party’s leaders of conspiring to keep her off the ballot.“This is how our elected officials keep good candidates from getting elected,” Ms. Carone said. “I’m going to fight it. Even if I don’t end up on the ballot, my voice will be heard. I’m not going anywhere. I will still be exposing these establishment sellout RINOs in the Michigan G.O.P.”Anthony G. Forlini, a Republican who is the Macomb County clerk, said on Wednesday that his office had been following the law and that the disqualification of Ms. Carone was not politically motivated.“From our standpoint, she was kicked off the ballot because she basically perjured herself,” Mr. Forlini said.Mr. Forlini said that it is a felony in Michigan to make a false statement on affidavits like those signed by candidates.“We’re just sticking to the letter of the law,” he said. “She likes the drama, and she’s been feeding on it.”Mr. Forlini said that he could not speak to the specifics of Ms. Carone’s recent disqualification by the Michigan Department of State, a separate agency headed by Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat who is secretary of state.A spokeswoman for that agency said on Wednesday that she could not further discuss the nature of the false statements that led to Ms. Carone’s disqualification, which was announced in conjunction with the other candidates who were barred on Tuesday.A receipt filed with the secretary of state’s office showed that Ms. Carone had paid $125 in late fees with a check on March 24, three days after she signed the affidavit attesting that she did not owe anything.Gustavo Portela, a spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party, rejected Ms. Carone’s assertions that there was a concerted effort to keep her off the primary ballot.“Terrible candidates seem to find it hard to take accountability for themselves so they pass the blame to others,” he said in an email on Wednesday.Ms. Carone claimed she was contracted by Dominion Voting Systems, an election technology company that has been the target of a baseless pro-Trump conspiracy theory about rigged voting machines. The company called her claims defamatory and sent her a cease and desist letter.During an election oversight hearing held by legislators in Michigan in December 2020, she testified that she had observed over 20 acts of fraud — not counting ballots found in rivers and under a rock — and that at least 30,000 ballots had been counted multiple times. A judge in Wayne County Circuit Court had already found Ms. Carone’s claims — made in an affidavit seeking to stop the certification of votes — were “not credible.”At times combative and glib, Ms. Carone’s performance was widely mocked, including by “Saturday Night Live.”“To be honest with you, I didn’t watch it for a really long time,” she said on Wednesday. “I think it’s funny. That kind of stuff doesn’t make me mad. I don’t care.” More

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      America’s Doug Mastriano Problem

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      If the Ohio Senate primary two weeks ago provided some clarity about the ideological divisions in the Republican Party, Tuesday’s primaries often seemed more like a showcase for the distinctive personalities that populate a Trumpified G.O.P.The Pennsylvania Senate race gave us an especially vivid mix: As of this writing, the Celebrity Doctor and the Hedge Fund Guy Pretending to Be a MAGA True Believer may be headed for a recount, after the Would-Be Media Personality With the Inspiring Back Story and the Unfortunate Twitter Feed faded back into the pack. In the governor’s race, Republican voters chose to nominate Doug Mastriano, a.k.a. the QAnon Dad. In North Carolina, they ended — for now — the political career of Representative Madison Cawthorn, the Obviously Suffering Grifter.On substance, as opposed to personality, though, the night’s stakes were relatively simple: Can Republicans prevent their party from becoming the party of constitutional crisis, with leaders tacitly committed to turning the next close presidential election into a legal-judicial-political train wreck?This is a distinctive version of a familiar political problem. Whenever a destabilizing populist rebellion is unleashed inside a democratic polity, there are generally two ways to bring back stability without some kind of crisis or rupture in the system.Sometimes the revolt can be quarantined within a minority coalition and defeated by a majority. This was the destiny, for instance, of William Jennings Bryan’s 1890s prairie-populist rebellion, which took over the Democratic Party but went down to multiple presidential defeats at the hands of the more establishmentarian Republicans. You can see a similar pattern, for now, in French politics, where the populism of Marine Le Pen keeps getting isolated and defeated by the widely disliked but grudgingly tolerated centrism of Emmanuel Macron.In the alternative path to stability, the party being reshaped by populism finds leaders who can absorb its energies, channel its grievances and claim its mantle — but also defeat or suppress its most extreme manifestations. This was arguably the path of New Deal liberalism in its relationship to Depression-era populism and radicalism: In the 1930s, Franklin Roosevelt was able to sustain support from voters who were also drawn to more demagogic characters, from Huey Long to Charles Coughlin. Two generations later, it was the path of Reaganite conservatism in its relationship to both George Wallace’s populism and the Goldwaterite New Right.The problem for America today is that neither stabilizing strategy is going particularly well. Part of the Never Trump movement has aspired to a Macron-style strategy, preaching establishment unity behind the Democratic Party. But the Democrats haven’t cooperated: They conspicuously failed to contain and defeat Trumpism in 2016, and there is no sign that the Biden-era variation on the party is equipped to hold on to the majority it won in 2020.Meanwhile, the Republican Party at the moment does have a provisional model for channeling but also restraining populism. Essentially it involves leaning into culture-war controversy and rhetorical pugilism to a degree that provokes constant liberal outrage and using that outrage to reassure populist voters that you’re on their side and they don’t need to throw you over for a conspiracy theorist or Jan. 6 marcher.This is the model, in different styles and contexts, of Glenn Youngkin and Ron DeSantis. In Tuesday’s primaries it worked for Idaho’s conservative incumbent governor, Brad Little, who easily defeated his own lieutenant governor’s much-further-right campaign. Next week the same approach seems likely to help Brian Kemp defeat David Perdue for the governor’s nomination in Georgia. And it offers the party’s only chance, most likely via a DeSantis candidacy, to defeat Donald Trump in 2024.Unfortunately this model works best when you have a trusted figure, a known quantity, delivering the “I’ll be your warrior, I’ll defeat the left” message. The Cawthorn race, in which the toxic congressman was unseated by a member of the North Carolina State Senate, shows that this figure doesn’t have to be an incumbent to succeed, especially if other statewide leaders provide unified support. But if you have neither unity nor a figure with statewide prominence or incumbency as your champion — no Kemp, no Little — then you can get results like Mastriano’s victory last night in Pennsylvania: a Republican nominee for governor who cannot be trusted to carry out his constitutional duties should the presidential election be close in 2024.So now the obligation returns to the Democrats. Mastriano certainly deserves to lose the general election, and probably he will. But throughout the whole Trumpian experience, the Democratic Party has consistently failed its own tests of responsibility: It has talked constantly about the threat to democracy while moving leftward to a degree that makes it difficult to impossible to hold the center, and it has repeatedly cheered on unfit Republican candidates on the theory that they will be easier to beat.This happened conspicuously with Trump himself, and more unforgivably it happened again with Mastriano: Pennsylvania Democrats sent out mailers boosting his candidacy and ran a big ad buy, more than twice Mastriano’s own TV spending, calling him “one of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters” — an “attack” line perfectly scripted to improve his primary support.Now they have him, as they had Trump in 2016. We’ll see if they can make the story end differently this time.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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      Primaries Show Limits, and Depths, of Trump’s Power Over G.O.P. Base

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      The tumultuous start to the Republican primary season, including a down-to-the-wire Senate race that divided conservatives in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, has shown how thoroughly Donald J. Trump has remade his party in his image — and the limits of his control over his creation.In each of the most contentious primary races this month — including two closely watched contests next week in Alabama and Georgia — nearly every candidate has run a campaign modeled on the former president’s. Their websites and advertisements are filled with his images. They promote his policies, and many repeat his false claims about election fraud in 2020.But Mr. Trump’s power over Republican voters has proved to be less commanding.Candidates endorsed by Mr. Trump lost governor’s races in Idaho and Nebraska, and a House race in North Carolina. In Senate contests in Ohio (where his pick won earlier this month) and Pennsylvania (which remained too close to call Wednesday morning), roughly 70 percent of Republicans voted against his endorsement. In contests next week, his chosen candidates for Georgia governor and Alabama senator are trailing in polls.Long known for being dialed into his voters, Mr. Trump increasingly appears to be chasing his supporters as much as marshaling them. Republican voters’ distrust of authority and appetite for hard-line politics — traits Mr. Trump once capitalized on — have worked against him. Some have come to see the president they elected to lead an insurgency as an establishment figure inside his own movement.Trumpism is ascendant in the Republican Party, with or without Mr. Trump, said Ken Spain, a Republican strategist and former National Republican Congressional Committee official.“The so-called MAGA movement is a bottom-up movement,” Mr. Spain said, “not one to be dictated from the top down.”The primaries aren’t the first time conservative voters in Mr. Trump’s red-capped constituency have demonstrated their independence from the patriarch of the Make America Great Again movement.In August, at one of Mr. Trump’s largest post-presidential campaign rallies, the crowd booed after he urged them to get vaccinated against Covid-19. In January, some of the most influential voices in Mr. Trump’s orbit openly criticized his pick for a House seat in Middle Tennessee, Morgan Ortagus — who had served in the Trump administration for two years as State Department spokeswoman but was deemed insufficiently MAGA.These mini-rebellions have tended to flare up whenever Mr. Trump’s supporters view his directives or endorsements as not Trumpy enough.“There’s no obvious heir apparent when it comes to America First — it’s still him,” said Kellyanne Conway, Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign manager and White House counselor. “But people feel they can love him and intend to follow him into another presidential run — and not agree with all of his choices this year.”After the Pennsylvania and North Carolina PrimariesMay 17 was the biggest day so far in the 2022 midterm cycle. Here’s what we’ve learned.Trump’s Limits: The MAGA movement is dominating Republican primaries, but Donald J. Trump’s control over it may be slipping.‘Stop the Steal’ Endures: G.O.P. candidates who aggressively cast doubt on the 2020 election have fared best, while Democratic voters are pushing for change. Here are more takeaways.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.Still, Republican candidates remain desperate to win Mr. Trump’s endorsement. In Georgia’s Senate race, Mr. Trump’s support for Herschel Walker kept serious rivals away. In some contested races, his endorsement has proved to be hugely influential, as it was in North Carolina’s Senate primary on Tuesday, where Representative Ted Budd cruised to victory against a former governor and a former congressman.But the emergence of an autonomous wing of the MAGA movement — one that is more uncompromising than Mr. Trump — has allowed even candidates without Mr. Trump’s endorsement to claim the mantle.“MAGA does not belong to President Trump,” Kathy Barnette said during a Pennsylvania Senate primary debate in April.The late surge from Ms. Barnette, who portrayed herself as a higher-octane version of Mr. Trump, eroded support for Dr. Mehmet Oz, the longtime television personality whom Mr. Trump endorsed, from conservatives who questioned his political credentials. As a result, Mr. Oz was running neck-and-neck with David McCormick, the hedge fund executive who had withstood a flurry of criticism from Mr. Trump. Still, Mr. Oz held about one-third of the vote.Republican Senate candidate Kathy Barnette at her election watch party Tuesday night in Elizabethtown, Pa. Ms. Barnette portrayed herself as a higher-octane version of Mr. Trump.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesOutside Ms. Barnette’s election night party on Tuesday, Diante Johnson, a Republican activist and the founder and president of the Black Conservative Federation, said she was proud of how the conservative author and commentator fought against the party powers that be.“The knife came to her and she didn’t back up,” Ms. Johnson said. “Every Trump establishment individual that came after her, she stood there and fought.”Ms. Barnette’s rise stunned Mr. Trump, who never considered the possibility of endorsing her candidacy, advisers said.But his base’s increasing autonomy should surprise no one.As president, Mr. Trump governed in a constant state of concern about tending to his supporters. Even though he was elected in part as a deal-making political outsider — he had spent much of his adult life toggling between political parties — he rarely made a significant decision without considering how his base would react.Those instincts prevented him from reaching a significant deal with Congress over immigration policy and fueled battles with Democratic leaders that led to repeated government shutdowns. His fear of appearing weak to his base voters drove his decision to not wear a mask in public for months into the pandemic.While Mr. Trump has indicated he is inclined to run for president for a third time in 2024, some advisers said the volatile and intensely fought primaries have risked alienating some of his supporters.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      5 Primary Takeaways: Election Deniers Thrive Even as Trumpism Drifts

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      Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate contest, the biggest and most expensive race of a five-state primary night, is a photo finish between David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity surgeon. It appears headed to a statewide recount.The night delivered a split decision for former President Donald J. Trump, with his choice for Idaho governor falling well short, Dr. Oz in a virtual tie and his candidates for Senate in North Carolina and governor in Pennsylvania triumphant.On the Democratic side, voters pushed for change over consensus, nominating a left-leaning political brawler for Senate in Pennsylvania and nudging a leading moderate in the House closer to defeat in Oregon as votes were counted overnight.Here are a few key takeaways from Tuesday’s primaries, the biggest day so far of the 2022 midterm cycle:Republican voters mostly rewarded candidates who dispute the 2020 election results.The Republican candidates who did best on Tuesday were the ones who have most aggressively cast doubt on the 2020 election results and have campaigned on restricting voting further and overhauling how elections are run.Doug Mastriano, the far-right candidate who won the G.O.P. nomination for Pennsylvania governor in a landslide, attended the rally on Jan. 6, 2021, that led to the assault on the Capitol and has since called for decertifying the results of the 2020 election.Representative Ted Budd of North Carolina, who beat a former governor by over 30 percentage points in the state’s Republican primary for Senate, voted last year against certifying the 2020 election results — and, in the aftermath of that contest, texted Mark Meadows, then the White House chief of staff, to push the bogus claim that Dominion Voting Systems might have had a connection to the liberal billionaire George Soros.On Tuesday, Mr. Budd refused to say that President Biden was the legitimate 2020 victor.Representative Ted Budd easily won North Carolina’s Republican primary race for Senate.Allison Lee Isley/The Winston-Salem Journal, via Associated PressVoters in Pennsylvania’s Republican primary for Senate sent a more mixed message: Kathy Barnette, a far-right commentator who centered her campaign on Mr. Trump’s election falsehoods, trailed her narrowly divided rivals Mr. McCormick and Dr. Oz early Wednesday.But Ms. Barnette, with roughly 25 percent of the vote, performed far better than many political observers had expected just two weeks ago, when she began a last-minute surge on the back of strong debate performances.Mr. McCormick and Dr. Oz are hardly tethered close to reality on election matters. Both have refused to acknowledge Mr. Biden as the rightful winner in 2020, playing to their party’s base of Trump supporters.The success of the election deniers comes after a year and a half in which Mr. Trump has continued to fixate on his 2020 loss and, in some places, has called on Republican state legislators to try to decertify their states’ results — something that has no basis in law.The G.O.P. will feel bullish about the Pennsylvania Senate race. The governor’s contest is another story.Republicans avoided what many saw as a general-election catastrophe when Ms. Barnette, who had a long history of offensive comments and who federal records show had finished ninth in the fund-raising battle in Pennsylvania’s Senate race, slipped far behind Mr. McCormick and Dr. Oz.Both Mr. McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, and Dr. Oz, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump, have largely self-financed their campaigns and could continue to do so, though neither would have much trouble raising money in a general election.The eventual winner will face Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat who has long been a favorite of progressives but has recently tacked to the center as his primary victory became assured.David McCormick waited with supporters in Pittsburgh as votes were counted. Jeff Swensen/Getty ImagesWith nearly all of the vote counted, the margin between Mr. McCormick and Dr. Oz was well under one-half of one percent, the threshold to trigger automatic recounts for statewide races in Pennsylvania. Before that can happen, thousands of mailed-in votes are still to be counted from counties across the state.Whoever emerges from the Republican Senate primary will be on a ticket with, and will probably be asked to defend positions taken by, Mr. Mastriano. He has run a hard-right campaign and enters the general election as an underdog to Josh Shapiro, the state’s Democratic attorney general.Trump’s endorsement is still worth a lot. But Republican voters often have minds of their own.In Ohio this month, J.D. Vance received 32 percent of the vote. In Nebraska last week, Charles W. Herbster got 30 percent. And on Tuesday alone:Dr. Mehmet Oz was hovering around 31 percent of the vote in Pennsylvania.Bo Hines took 32 percent in a House primary in North Carolina.Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin of Idaho lost her primary for governor with about a quarter of the vote.All of these candidates were endorsed by Mr. Trump in competitive primaries. And the outcome of these races has established the value of his endorsement in 2022: About one-third of Republican primary voters will back the Trump candidate.In some races, like Mr. Vance’s for Senate and Mr. Hines’s, that’s enough to win and for the former president to claim credit. Elsewhere, as in Mr. Herbster’s bid for governor, the Trump-backed candidate fell short.To be sure, Mr. Trump has won far more races than he has lost, and he saved face on Tuesday night with his late endorsement of Mr. Mastriano as polls showed the Pennsylvania candidate with a strong lead.Mr. Trump’s early endorsement of Mr. Budd in North Carolina’s Senate race choked off support and fund-raising for Mr. Budd’s establishment-minded rivals, including former Gov. Pat McCrory.But in Nebraska, Mr. Herbster and Mr. Trump couldn’t compete with a local political machine and millions of dollars from Gov. Pete Ricketts. In Pennsylvania, some local Republicans never warmed to Dr. Oz despite the Trump endorsement.None of this bodes well for Mr. Trump’s Georgia picks, who are facing cash disadvantages and, unlike in the primary contests so far this year, entrenched incumbents. The Georgia primaries are next week.Conor Lamb said electability matters most. Voters agreed — and chose John Fetterman.When he burst onto the national political scene in 2018 by winning a special election to a House district Mr. Trump had carried by 18 points, Conor Lamb presented himself as the Democrat who could win over Republican voters in tough races.Mr. Lamb made electability his central pitch to Pennsylvania voters in this year’s Senate race. Democratic voters didn’t disagree — they just decided overwhelmingly that his opponent, Mr. Fetterman, was the better general-election choice in the race.Representative Conor Lamb with supporters on Tuesday in Pittsburgh. He had far more endorsements than Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, but less voter enthusiasm.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMr. Fetterman, who left the campaign trail on Friday after suffering a stroke and had a pacemaker installed on Tuesday, outclassed Mr. Lamb in every aspect of the campaign.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      John Fetterman: ‘Unfussy and Plain-Spoken’

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      John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, isn’t like most politicians in his party.Only 38 percent of American adults have a bachelor’s degree. Yet college graduates have come to dominate the Democratic Party’s leadership and message in recent years.The shift has helped the party to win over many suburban professionals — and also helps explain its struggles with working-class voters, including some voters of color. On many social issues, today’s Democratic Party is more liberal than most Americans without a bachelor’s degree. The party also tends to nominate candidates who seem more comfortable at, say, Whole Foods than Wal-Mart.All of which makes John Fetterman such an intriguing politician.Last night, Fetterman — Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor — comfortably won the state’s Democratic Senate primary, with 59 percent of the vote. Conor Lamb, a more traditional Democratic moderate, finished second.In the general election this fall, Fetterman will face either Mehmet Oz, a celebrity doctor endorsed by Donald Trump, or David McCormick, a former business executive. Their primary remains too close to call.The basic theory of Fetterman’s candidacy is that personality and authenticity matter at least as much as policy positions. On many issues, his stances are quite liberal. He has supported Bernie Sanders and taken progressive positions on Medicare, marijuana, criminal justice reform and L.G.B.T. rights. “If you get your jollies or you get your voters excited by bullying gay and trans kids, you know, it’s time for a new line of work,” Fetterman said at a recent campaign stop.He is also 6-foot-8, bearded and tattooed, and he doesn’t like to wear suits. “I think he is a visual representation of Pennsylvania,” one voter recently said.Fetterman is the former mayor of Braddock, a blue-collar town in western Pennsylvania where about 70 percent of residents are Black. He declined to move into the lieutenant governor’s mansion near Harrisburg and spends many nights at his home in Braddock. He talks about having been around guns for most of his life. And he does take some positions that clash with progressive orthodoxy, like his opposition to a fracking ban.Fetterman “does not sound like any other leading politician in recent memory,” my colleague Katie Glueck wrote from the campaign trail. Holly Otterbein of Politico called him “unfussy and plain-spoken” in contrast to “a party often seen as too elite.” One suburban voter in Pennsylvania — making the same point in a more skeptical way — told The Times, “I think sometimes he might come off as not a polished person.”To be clear, Fetterman may lose the general election. This year is shaping up as a difficult one for Democrats, and the Republican campaign will no doubt use his progressive positions to claim he is a leftist out of step with Pennsylvania’s voters. Republicans may also point out that Fetterman has a graduate degree from Harvard and that he pulled a gun on a jogger in Braddock during a disputed 2013 encounter.Still, I find Fetterman to be notable because Democrats have nominated so few candidates like him in recent years. The party is more likely to choose ideologically consistent candidates whose presentation resembles that of a law professor or think-tank employee. Fetterman, like many working-class voters, has a mix of political beliefs. On the campaign trail, he wears shorts and a hoodie.Describing his appeal to voters, Sarah Longwell, a Republican political strategist, said: “It’s not that he’s progressive that they like or don’t like. They like that he’s authentic.”Although the specifics are different, he shares some traits with Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, who comes off as “simultaneously progressive, moderate and conservative,” as the political scientist Christina Greer wrote in The Times. Adams won his election despite losing Manhattan, New York’s most highly educated, affluent borough.Fetterman also has some similarities with Senator Sherrod Brown, a populist Democrat who has managed to win in Ohio and who revels in “his less than glamorous image,” as Andrew J. Tobias of Cleveland.com has written.For years, most Democrats trying to figure out how to win over swing voters have taken a more technocratic approach than either Adams or Fetterman. Centrist Democrats have often urged the party to move to the center on almost every issue — even though most voters support a progressive economic agenda, such as higher taxes on the rich.Liberal Democrats have made the opposite mistake, confusing the progressive politics of college campuses and affluent suburbs with the actual politics of the country. Some liberals make the specific mistake of imagining that most Asian, Black and Latino voters are more liberal than they are. As a shorthand, the mistake is sometimes known as the Latinx problem (named for a term that most Latinos do not use).It remains unclear whether Fetterman represents a solution to the Democrats’ working-class problem. But the problem is real: It is a central reason that Democrats struggle so much outside the country’s large metro areas. And if Democrats hope to solve it, they will probably have a better chance if more of their candidates feel familiar to working-class voters.Politics isn’t only about policy positions. People also vote based on instinct and comfort.For more: In Times Opinion, Michael Sokolove asks whether Fetterman is the future of the Democratic Party.The latest resultsIn the primaries for Pennsylvania governor, Doug Mastriano — a far-right state senator endorsed by Trump — won the Republican nomination, while Josh Shapiro, the state attorney general, won the Democratic race. Mastriano’s victory caused The Cook Political Report to say that the general election was no longer a toss-up and Shapiro was favored to win.In North Carolina, Madison Cawthorn lost the Republican primary for his House seat. Cawthorn was endorsed by Trump, but had feuded with others in his party after a series of scandals.Representative Ted Budd, also backed by Trump, won North Carolina’s Republican Senate primary. He will face the Democrat Cheri Beasley.Brad Little, Idaho’s Republican governor, beat back a primary challenge by Janice McGeachin, the Trump-endorsed lieutenant governor.THE LATEST NEWSWar in UkraineBuses with surrendered Ukrainian troops under Russian escort yesterday.Alexander Ermochenko/ReutersHundreds of Ukrainian soldiers who defended the steel mill in Mariupol are in Russian custody.Negotiators on both sides say peace talks have collapsed.On a Russian talk show, a retired colonel stunned his colleagues by saying that the invasion wasn’t going well.The VirusPublic schools in the U.S. have lost at least 1.2 million students since 2020, with some switching to home-schooling and others dropping out.The F.D.A. authorized Pfizer’s booster for children 5 to 11.Hospitalizations are rising in New York City, nearing the threshold to reinstate an indoor mask mandate.The White House will send Americans eight more at-home tests, through covidtests.gov.PoliticsA memorial outside the Tops supermarket in Buffalo.Doug Mills/The New York TimesPresident Biden visited the site in Buffalo where a gunman killed 10 people. “White supremacy is a poison,” he said.A Pentagon investigation found no wrongdoing in a 2019 airstrike in Syria that killed dozens of people, including women and children.The Justice Department requested transcripts from the Jan. 6 committee, potentially as evidence in future cases.In a hearing on U.F.O.s, Pentagon officials revealed video of an unidentified craft flying past a fighter jet.The Justice Department sued the casino mogul Steve Wynn, saying he lobbied Trump on China’s behalf.Other Big StoriesThe suspect in the Buffalo massacre invited a small group of people to review his plan on the chat app Discord. None of them alerted law enforcement.The shortage of baby formula has hospitalized two children who can’t absorb nutrients properly.Gun manufacturing has nearly tripled in the U.S. since 2000, fueled by sales of handguns.Johnny Depp’s lawyer challenged Amber Heard’s account of abuse, asking her why she had not presented medical records to back up her story.OpinionsIbrahim RayintakathWe want to call heat waves, wildfires and other deadly weather events “extreme,” but climate change has made them increasingly common, David Wallace-Wells writes.The baby formula shortage is more proof that new mothers, venerated in theory, are unsupported in practice, Elizabeth Spiers says.MORNING READSLife hacks: How to become an early bird.Hype man: A trash-talking crypto bro caused a $40 billion crash.Stanley tumbler: The sisterhood of social media’s favorite water bottle.A Times classic: How to talk to someone who’s sick.Advice from Wirecutter: Freeze your food — without freezer burn.Lives Lived: Urvashi Vaid, a lawyer and activist, was a leading figure in the fight for L.G.B.T.Q. equality for more than four decades. She died at 63.ARTS AND IDEAS The music supervisor Randall Poster.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesA boxed set for birdsRandall Poster had never appreciated the songbirds of the Bronx, where he has lived for most of his life, until the quiet the pandemic brought in 2020. After speaking with an environmentalist friend, Poster — a music supervisor for filmmakers — was inspired. What if he harnessed his industry connections into a fund-raiser for bird conservation?This week, Poster will release the first volume of “For the Birds,” a star-studded, 242-track collection of original songs and readings based on birdsong. It benefits the National Audubon Society.“For the Birds” features electronic trance, fiddle tunes and field recordings. Alice Coltrane and Yoko Ono make appearances, and a song from Elvis Costello shares space with a Jonathan Franzen reading.“Of all the things we need to work harder to protect, birds, like music, speak to everyone,” said Anthony Albrecht, an Australian cellist who has led similar conservation efforts. “They’re such a visible — and audible — indicator of what we stand to lose.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookDavid Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.Use up seasonal produce by adding tangy rhubarb to sheet-pan chicken.What to WatchManuel Garcia-Rulfo plays the lead in Netflix’s “The Lincoln Lawyer.” It’s a tricky job when your first language isn’t English.What to ReadNell Zink’s “Avalon” is about a girl who has a menacing stepfamily and a great ambition.Late NightThe hosts celebrated Sweden and Finland’s NATO applications.Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was backfill. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Blue hue (four letters).If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — DavidP.S. The Times covered the first same-sex marriages in Massachusetts on the front page 18 years ago today.Here’s today’s front page.“The Daily” is about a Ukrainian soldier. On “The Argument,” a debate about inflation.Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      Is John Fetterman the Future of the Democratic Party?

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      John Fetterman’s resounding victory in the Democratic Pennsylvania Senate primary was not surprising, but it was uncharacteristic.Pennsylvania Democrats do not ordinarily veer too far from the center lane, and they are cautious about whom they send forward from their primary elections to take on Republicans in general elections. They’re not gamblers, and given the state’s perennially up-for-grabs status and its unforgiving electoral math, you could argue they shouldn’t be.But on Tuesday, Democrats made Mr. Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, their nominee to compete for the seat being vacated by the retiring Republican Pat Toomey. (They did it despite Mr. Fetterman’s recent health scare; last week he suffered a stroke, but he said that he was on his way to “a full recovery.”)Conor Lamb, 37, a Pittsburgh-area congressman, would have been a more conventional choice. His House voting record tracks to the center, and he has been compared to the state’s three-term Democratic senator, Bob Casey, a moderate and the son of a former Pennsylvania governor.Mr. Fetterman, 52, offers something different, a new model for Pennsylvania. It is built on quirky personal and political appeal rather than the caution of a traditional Democrat in the Keystone State. With over 80 percent of the votes counted, Mr. Fetterman was more than doubling the total of Mr. Lamb, whose campaign, despite winning many more endorsements from party leaders, never gained momentum.For Democrats, the stakes are high: The outcome may well determine the balance of the evenly divided U.S. Senate, future votes to confirm Supreme Court nominees and much else in our bitterly divided nation.Nearly every story about Mr. Fetterman points out his 6-foot-8 frame, shaved head, tattoos and preferred attire — work clothes from Carhartt, a brand long favored by construction workers and miners and more recently by hip-hop artists. He sometimes attends public events in baggy gym shorts.It is all part of a style that has won him passionate followers among progressive Democrats. Mr. Fetterman has been a frequent presence on MSNBC and is a skilled social media practitioner, with over 400,000 Twitter followers. (His dogs, Levi and Artie, have their own Twitter account and more than 25,000 followers.) It can sometimes seem that he skirts the line between being a traditional candidate and an internet influencer.“Fetterman doesn’t have supporters so much as full-on fans,” The Philadelphia Inquirer noted during the campaign. “Fans who write songs about him, buy his merch and know his life story.”Mr. Fetterman has served as lieutenant governor since 2019 and, before that, for four terms was the mayor of Braddock, a town east of Pittsburgh with just over 1,700 residents. He vows to conduct a “67-county campaign” — the whole of Pennsylvania.Rebecca Katz, his senior political adviser, told me that she believes the campaign’s mantra of “every county, every vote” is being received with too much skepticism and said that people “haven’t seen what kind of map he can run on in Pennsylvania.”But he still must solve the math of an evenly divided state: A Democrat hoping to win in Pennsylvania has to thread an electoral needle.Mr. Fetterman will face either the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz or the financier David McCormick.In the fall, Mr. Fetterman will need to pile up huge winning margins in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and win by healthy margins in their suburbs and the state’s few other pockets of blue in order to withstand the lopsided totals that Republicans win nearly everywhere else.In less populous counties, as recently as 2008, Barack Obama took 40 percent of the vote or more, but as polarization has increased, Democrats have struggled to get even 25 percent.State Democrats hoped that Joe Biden, a Pennsylvania native and senator from neighboring Delaware — and a white septuagenarian running in a state that is whiter and older than the national average — could reverse that trend. But he did only marginally better than Hillary Clinton four years earlier, cutting the margins by a couple of percentage points but hardly reversing the trend of Democrats being routed in the smaller counties.That Mr. Biden could not do better outside the cities and close-in suburbs has made many Democrats pessimistic about what’s possible in those areas. Mr. Fetterman’s background, his attention to the state’s rural communities and his manner — the work clothes, a straightforward speaking style — could make some difference. In the winning Fetterman model, he narrows the massive margins that have been run up by Republicans.His positions do not differ that much from more traditional Democrats’, but some of his central concerns do set him apart. A signature issue has been the legalization of marijuana — “legal weed,” as he calls it. He has flown a flag displaying cannabis leaves from the official lieutenant governor’s office, alongside a rainbow-colored L.G.B.T.Q. banner.The advocacy of legal marijuana may be the rare issue that draws support from unpredictable corners and crosses all kinds of lines — including urban and rural.The lieutenant governor in Pennsylvania has few defined duties, but as chairman of the Board of Pardons, Mr. Fetterman modernized an outdated system and granted clemency in cases where it was long overdue.Mr. Fetterman’s one glaring departure from progressive causes, and a nod to Pennsylvania realpolitik, is that he does not support a ban on fracking, the environmentally questionable hydraulic extraction of natural gas. Tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians have benefited financially from it by selling drilling rights on their land, working in the industry or both.Mr. Fetterman’s most worrisome vulnerability is his appeal to his party’s most dependable voting bloc: Black voters in Philadelphia and the state’s other urban centers, the places where any Democrat running statewide must mine the largest trove of votes. Only about 10 percent of the state’s voters are Black, but they are an essential component of the margins that the party runs up in the cities.Mr. Fetterman’s challenge stems in large part from a 2013 incident in Braddock, when he used his shotgun to stop a Black jogger and detained him until police arrived. Mr. Fetterman, who was mayor at the time, told police he had heard gunshots in the area and suspected the jogger. Police searched the man down and released him after they found no weapon.The incident has come up during the campaign, and Mr. Fetterman’s responses have been awkward, at best.“He has said he did not actually point the gun, but what difference does that make?” said Mark Kelly Tyler, the pastor of Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the nation’s oldest A.M.E. churches. “Even if he admitted that it was from his implicit bias and says that he has learned from it, that would actually be better. It would be accepted.”Mr. Tyler said that if Mr. Fetterman does not do a better job of explaining it, the incident will be “weaponized on Black talk radio and elsewhere” and used by his opponent in the fall to depress turnout.Mr. Fetterman won by huge margins all across Pennsylvania, with one notable exception: Philadelphia. There, it was a close race against a third Democratic primary candidate, Malcolm Kenyatta, a city resident and the first Black openly gay L.G.B.T.Q. member of the state legislature.With the primary complete, everything is reset. In a big state with six television markets, the candidates will likely combine to spend $200 million or more — much of it, undoubtedly, in an attempt to label each other as too extreme for middle-of-the-road Pennsylvania.Mr. Fetterman’s progressive politics and persona appeal to younger people. They lean to the left and are always potentially influential in any election. But they are also traditionally the least reliable voters, especially in nonpresidential years.In Pennsylvania and all other battleground states, it always comes down to the math. The state’s graying electorate does not always like new things or ideas.Mr. Fetterman is ultimately going to have to go where the votes are. And if he has a problem with Black voters, he will have to solve it.Michael Sokolove, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, is the author of “Drama High: The Incredible True Story of a Brilliant Teacher, a Struggling Town and the Magic of Theater,” which is set in his hometown, Levittown, Pa.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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      John Fetterman: The left-leaning Pennsylvania politician in gym clothes.

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      PITTSBURGH — John Fetterman, the liberal lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania who won his state’s Democratic nomination for Senate on Tuesday, seemed to be cruising into what is shaping up as one of the most closely watched general elections in the country this fall. Then a stroke upended his plans.Mr. Fetterman, the 6-foot-8, hoodie-wearing former mayor of Braddock, Pa., was not a favorite of the party establishment, but he electrified some progressive voters and a broader slice of the Democratic electorate that embraced his blunt-spoken, accessible style and welcomed his pledges to fight aggressively for party priorities in Washington.“I’m just doing my thing,” he said in an interview last week. “I’m just a dude that shows up and just talks about what I believe in, you know?”After canceling campaign events on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Mr. Fetterman, 52, announced that he had had a stroke, was recovering and had not suffered any cognitive damage.He was still in the hospital on Tuesday, when his campaign announced that he would undergo “a standard procedure to implant a pacemaker with a defibrillator,” adding, “It should be a short procedure that will help protect his heart and address the underlying cause of his stroke.”It was unclear when he would be able to resume campaigning.The health scare carried ramifications far beyond Pennsylvania. Democrats hold a majority in the Senate only by virtue of Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote. The party’s vulnerability had already been highlighted when Senator Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico suffered a stroke in January.It also seemed jarring given Mr. Fetterman’s vigorous public image; he often was dressed as if he’d just left the gym.“He may not look like a Senate candidate for New York or California, but he’s just fine for Pennsylvania,” said Ed Rendell, a Democratic former governor of the state. “He’s a very believable candidate for the working class.”Mr. Fetterman, who holds a degree from the Harvard Kennedy School, served for 13 years as the mayor of Braddock, where he attracted attention for his efforts to revitalize a struggling steel town — and scrutiny over a 2013 episode in which he brandished a shotgun to stop an unarmed Black jogger, telling the police he had heard gunshots.He ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2016 but gained an enthusiastic following, and went on to defeat an incumbent to win his party’s nomination for lieutenant governor in 2018. In that role, he maintained an active presence around the state, building name recognition that played an important role in his primary victory.“He spent a lot of time in communities throughout the state,” said Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, who did not take sides in the primary. “That’s something he’s been able to build on.”Mr. Fetterman also made a name for himself in national progressive circles, receiving the endorsement of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in 2018 after he backed Mr. Sanders’s 2016 presidential primary bid. And he gained fresh prominence with a broader range of voters as a cable-television fixture when Pennsylvania’s 2020 votes were being counted.Several months later, he entered the Senate primary, the first major Democratic candidate to jump into the race, and cemented an overwhelming fund-raising advantage over his nearest rivals.Mr. Fetterman campaigned on issues like raising the minimum wage, promoting criminal justice reform and supporting voting rights, abortion rights and protections for L.G.B.T.Q. people.But he attracted just as much attention for his style, and some saw him as skilled at connecting with blue-collar voters. He favored basketball shorts and sweatshirts over button-downs and khakis and spent significant time campaigning in rural, working-class counties that had overwhelmingly voted for former President Donald J. Trump, hoping to improve Democratic margins in those areas.Mr. Fetterman has repeatedly described himself as a progressive in the past, but in the Senate race he did not seek the left-wing mantle. He rejected a suggestion last week that he would join the “Squad,” a group of left-wing members of Congress, should he win.Republicans and some Democrats, however, believe that he may be vulnerable to criticism that he is too far to the left for one of the most closely divided states in the nation, and especially for its more centrist suburbs, which have been vital to recent Democratic gains in the state.“It’s good that Fetterman is going to these areas where Democrats have done poorly in these Republican counties, but I think his bigger challenge is going to be these suburban communities,” said former Representative Charlie Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican who said he had voted for President Biden.Mr. Dent warned that Mr. Fetterman is seen by some as a “Bernie Sanders Democrat.”The lieutenant governor lives in Braddock with his three children and his wife, Gisele Barreto Fetterman, the second lady of Pennsylvania, who has embraced the acronym “SLOP” and who, like Mr. Fetterman, has an active social media presence.She insisted that he get checked out after feeling unwell on Friday, the Fettermans said.His campaign said Monday that Mr. Fetterman had been “again evaluated by the neurologist who once again reiterated that John will make a full recovery.” More