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      The fight over voting continues. Here’s the latest.

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      The conflict over sweeping new restrictions on voting, largely confined to statehouses and governors’ desks since 2020, is spilling over into the midterm elections.About two dozen states have tightened laws regulating matters like who is eligible to vote by mail, the placement of drop boxes for absentee ballots and identification requirements. Many of the politicians driving the clampdown can be found on the ballot themselves this year.Here are some of the latest developments.In Pennsylvania, the four leading Republican candidates for governor all said during a debate on Wednesday that they supported the repeal of no-excuse absentee voting in that state.In 2020, about 2.6 million people who were adapting to pandemic life voted by mail in Pennsylvania, more than a third of the total ballots cast. But Republicans, smarting over President Donald J. Trump’s election loss to Joseph R. Biden Jr. and promulgating baseless voter fraud claims, have since sought to curtail voting by mail. A state court in January struck down Pennsylvania’s landmark law expanding absentee voting, a ruling that is the subject of a pending appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court.Lou Barletta, one of the four on the debate stage and a former congressman, asserted that no-excuse absentee voting was conducive to fraud.“Listen, we know dead people have been voting in Pennsylvania all of our lives,” Mr. Barletta said. “Now they don’t even have to leave the cemetery to vote. They can mail in their ballots.”Several states had already conducted elections primarily through mail-in voting before the pandemic, with there being little meaningful evidence of fraud. They include Colorado and Utah, a state controlled by Republicans.Elsewhere in Pennsylvania, officials in Westmoreland County, which includes the suburbs east of Pittsburgh, voted this week to scale back the number of drop boxes used for absentee ballots to just one. The vote was 2-to-1, with Republicans on the Board of Commissioners saying that the reduction from several drop boxes would save money. The lone Democrat said that the change would make it more difficult for people to send in their ballots.In Arizona, two Trump-endorsed Republican candidates — Kari Lake in the governor’s race and Mark Finchem for secretary of state — sued election officials this month to try to stop the use of electronic voting machines in the midterm elections. Helping to underwrite the lawsuit, along with similar efforts in other states, is Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief executive.In Nevada, a push by Republicans to scale back universal mail-in voting while introducing a new voter ID requirement ran into a major setback on Monday when two different judges in Carson City invalidated those efforts.In Georgia, Brian Kemp, the Republican governor, signed a bill on Wednesday empowering the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to pursue criminal inquiries into election fraud, an authority solely held by the secretary of state in the past. More

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      Court Tosses Out Maps That Favored Democrats

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      Primaries for Congress and the State Senate are likely to be delayed after New York’s highest court ruled that new districts were unconstitutional.Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll look at a decision that many people who follow politics in New York did not expect: The state’s top court threw out the new map for congressional and State Senate districts. We’ll also look at opposition to the city’s plans for homeless shelters in Chinatown.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesNew York’s top court said Democrats had violated the State Constitution when they took it upon themselves to draw new congressional and State Senate districts, which were widely seen as likely to favor Democratic candidates. The judges ordered a court-appointed expert to prepare new maps.The ruling is expected to delay the June 28 primaries for congressional and State Senate districts until August, to allow time for new maps to be readied and for candidates to collect petitions to qualify for the ballot in the districts on those maps.But there could still be primaries in June for governor and the State Assembly because those districts were not at issue. The high court left it to a trial court judge and the state Board of Elections to figure out the details with “all due haste.”My colleague Nicholas Fandos writes that Democratic leaders had counted on the Court of Appeals, with all seven judges appointed by Democratic governors, to overturn earlier decisions about the congressional and State Senate maps from a Republican judge in Steuben County and a bipartisan appeals court in Rochester. The high court instead issued a more damning verdict that is not subject to appeal.National Democrats had looked to New York to pick up as many as three new seats in the fall and offset redistricting gains by Republicans across the country. Now, with the ruling likely to eliminate the prospect of Democratic gains in New York, Republicans’ chances of retaking control of the House of Representatives appear to have increased.With Chief Judge Janet DiFiore writing the majority opinion, the court concluded that the Democrats — who control the Assembly and State Senate and adopted the maps at issue in February — had ignored a constitutional amendment approved by voters in 2014 that banned partisan gerrymandering. The judges said the Democrats had designed districts “with impermissible partisan purpose.”Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said she was reviewing the decision. Michael Murphy, a spokesman for Democrats in the State Senate, said they still “believe in the constitutionality” of their maps and will repeat that to the court-appointed expert assigned to draw ones.Republicans and several nonpartisan public interest groups applauded the ruling. “The will of the people prevailed over the Corrupt Albany Machine in a tremendous victory for democracy, fair elections & the Constitution!” Representative Nicole Malliotakis, an endangered Republican, wrote on Twitter. Her Staten Island-based district was among several that the Democrats’ congressional map would have made significantly bluer by adding liberal voters from Park Slope in Brooklyn.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.WeatherEnjoy a sunny day in the high 50s with breezes that will continue into a mostly clear evening, when temps will drop to the 40s.alternate-side parkingIn effect until Monday (Eid al-Fitr).The latest New York newsMayor Eric Adams has appointed several well-respected government professionals with no known red flags. But he has also surrounded himself with friends and allies with histories that led to protests and even arrests.A former Police Department officer accused of assaulting a Washington police officer during the Capitol riot is on trial.A newly released, partially redacted 2017 letter confirmed the Yankees’ illicit use of electronic devices to decipher and share opposing teams’ signs.Chinatown fights the city’s shelter planAndrew Seng for The New York TimesThe Chinatown neighborhood in Manhattan is about to get two new homeless shelters, one of which is proposing to allow drug use. Residents are fighting the city’s plans. I asked my colleague Andy Newman, who covers homelessness and related issues, to explain.The fight over the new shelters has elevated the usual not-in-my-backyard objections. What’s fueling residents’ heightened urgency?Hardly any neighborhood in the city welcomes homeless shelters. But anti-Asian hate crimes increased by over 300 percent from 2020 to 2021, and a lot of those attacks were linked to homeless people — and a lot of people in Chinatown feel that their very right to live is under attack. One man whose children go to school in Chinatown said at a community board hearing: “We do so much for this country and the city, and our human rights, my son and daughter’s human rights, are being taken away.”You mentioned the community board, which has just voted to oppose one of the new shelters. Will that vote make a difference, or will it just add to the pressure on Mayor Eric Adams?The community board’s vote is not binding — the city does not need the community board’s support to open that shelter, on Grand Street. But the community board resolution against it, which was introduced in response to complaints from the community, is a measure of the degree of opposition. The optics are tricky for Adams. He has thrown his weight behind opening more shelters as part of his plan to convince people who live in the streets and subways to come indoors. He has also been a strong supporter of the “harm reduction” approach to the opioid crisis that this planned shelter embraces.But he is also under pressure to stop hate crimes against Asian New Yorkers, and many residents of Chinatown believe that this shelter would lead to more such crimes — even though the shelter’s supporters, and city homeless services officials, argue that the shelter will actually make the neighborhood safer by taking in people who are already homeless in the neighborhood and connecting them to mental health and substance abuse services.Jacky Wong, founder of Concerned Citizens of East Broadway, which opposes another Chinatown shelter, questions the city’s approach of opening shelters in areas with a lot of street homelessness. “People may come here just to buy drugs, and so they would be considered ‘from’ this neighborhood,” he told me. “Why not give them housing in a neighborhood where they have more positive connections?”How has Chinatown coped with what residents say was a surge in random violence and thefts that accompanied the pandemic?Every Chinese-speaking person we interviewed has either witnessed or been a victim of some kind of episode of violence, crime or disorder that they attributed to a homeless person. Senior citizens are taking self-defense courses. Doctors said they send their staff home early so that they don’t have to deal with the streets and subways after dark.The city says the new shelters are partly a response to the killing of a homeless Asian man in 2019. But plans to name one of the shelters for him have drawn opposition. Why?Many people in Chinatown feel that the city is exploiting the 2019 murder of Chuen Kwok, an 83-year-old man from Hong Kong who slept in the street in Chinatown, as a justification for forcing a shelter on a community that doesn’t want it. These planned shelters are intended for people who are street-homeless, and there is a widely held belief in Chinatown that street homelessness is primarily a problem of the non-Chinese population, notwithstanding Kwok.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Democrats Ask if They Should Hit Back Harder Against the G.O.P.

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      Many of the party’s voters are hungry for their candidates to go on offense against Republican cultural attacks, even if it puts them on less comfortable political terrain.If Democrats could bottle Mallory McMorrow, the Michigan state senator who gave a widely viewed speech condemning Republicans’ push to limit discussions about gender and sexuality in schools, they would do it.McMorrow’s big moment, which we wrote about on Monday, made her an instant political celebrity on the left. Her Twitter following has rocketed past 220,000. Democrats raising money for state legislative races have already found her to be a fund-raising powerhouse.McMorrow’s five minutes of fury was so effective, Democrats said, in part because it was so rare.It tapped into a frustration many Democrats feel about their party leaders’ hesitation to engage in these cultural firestorms, said Wendy Davis, a former Texas lawmaker whose filibuster of an abortion bill in 2013 made her a national political figure.‘What we’re fighting for’“There comes a point when you simply need to stand up and fight back,” Davis said.“The strategy of not meeting the right wing where they are can only take you so far,” she added. “I think people have been really hungry to see Democrats pushing back and pushing back strongly, like Mallory did.”Other Democrats are urging candidates to defend their beliefs more aggressively, rather than ignoring or deflecting Republicans’ cultural attacks by changing the subject to pocketbook issues.“Democrats are afraid to talk about why we’re fighting about what we’re fighting for,” said Tré Easton, a progressive strategist. “It was exactly the kind of values-focused rebuttal that I want every Democrat to sound like.”Finding the messageAnother lesson of McMorrow’s speech, said Rebecca Katz, a senior adviser to Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democratic Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, is that voters are searching for authenticity and passion rather than lock-step ideological agreement.“Voters want candidates who talk like actual people instead of slick, poll-tested performers,” Katz said. “They like candidates who are unfiltered, not calculated and scripted. And even if they don’t always agree with you, if a candidate is direct and honest, voters tend to respect that.”Fetterman, who is leading polls ahead of the May 17 primary, is a progressive aligned with the Bernie Sanders wing of the party. His main opponent is Representative Conor Lamb, a centrist from a suburban district outside Pittsburgh. Fetterman has worked to reassure Democratic Party leaders in and outside the state that he is not too far left to win a seat that is crucial to their hopes of retaining their Senate majority.But the fault lines within the party are about how to communicate with the public just as much as they are about traditional arguments between progressives and moderates.Party strategists in Washington, led by centrist lawmakers facing tough re-election bids, have settled on a heavily poll-tested midterm message that emphasizes the major legislation Democrats have passed in Congress: the $1.9 trillion economic relief package known as the American Rescue Plan and the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law.It’s an approach that leaves some Democrats wanting a little more Mallory McMorrow.“I agree that we should be making sure every single day to tell the American people what we’re doing to benefit them and their families,” Davis said, measuring her words carefully. “But we also need to fight fire with fire.”What to readNew York’s highest court ruled that Democratic leaders had violated the State Constitution when drawing new congressional and State Senate districts, ordering a court-appointed expert to draw replacements for this year’s critical midterm elections.Democratic lawmakers released a report alleging that in 2020, top Trump administration officials had awarded a $700 million pandemic relief loan to a struggling trucking company over the objections of Defense Department officials.The White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner is returning in person on Saturday after a two-year pandemic absence. It has some in Washington calculating the risks involved. President Biden will be there. Anthony Fauci is skipping it.pulseSeventy-three percent of college-educated women have an unfavorable opinion of Trump, while 59 percent have a very unfavorable view of him.Sergio Flores/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt’s the gender gap, stupidIt might be the most important rift in American politics: the gender gap between the two major parties. And it’s growing larger.New public opinion research by the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank in Washington, explores just how far apart Democrats and Republicans now are on a bevy of issues, including their contrasting approaches to sex and sexuality and their spiritual practices.Driving the split, in large part, is the steady migration of college-educated women to the Democratic Party. In 1998, the study’s authors note, only 12 percent of Democrats were women with a college degree. That figure is now 28 percent — making them a dominant bloc in the party. For comparison, men without college degrees now make up 22 percent of the Republican Party, up from 17 percent in 1998.That gender gap is a quiet driver of political polarization, said Daniel Cox, the director and founder of A.E.I.’s Survey Center on American Life.He was struck by the stark differences of opinion between women with college degrees and men without them on two issues in particular: climate change and abortion.Sixty-five percent of college-educated women favor protecting the environment over faster economic growth, A.E.I. found, versus only 45 percent of men without college degrees. Seventy-two percent of college-educated women say abortion ought to be legal in most cases, while just 43 percent of men without a college education agree.The gender gap was growing well before Donald Trump, Cox said. But his election “supercharged” the political activism of millennial women in particular, he said.It was primarily college-educated women who rallied on the National Mall in 2017 to express their opposition to Trump, a Republican president swept into office by — as he put it — “the poorly educated.”College-educated women rallied to Joe Biden during the 2020 election, repelled by Trump’s brash and aggressive political style.Those feelings have only intensified. Seventy-three percent of college-educated women have an unfavorable opinion of Trump, A.E.I. found, while 59 percent have a very unfavorable view of him. By contrast, 48 percent of men without college degrees view Trump unfavorably.— BlakeIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Kay Ivey Races to the Right in Alabama Governor Race

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      The governor has a conservative track record, but in the face of a primary challenge, she is increasingly wading into divisive cultural issues.Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama was never a moderate Republican. But in 2018, when she ran for her first full term, she artfully dipped into conservative talking points in a mild manner.Four years later, as she runs for re-election, she’s again airing ads with music suitable for 1990s family sitcoms. The message, however, is far different.In one ad, Ivey claims that “the left teaches kids to hate America.” Later, she boasts that she ended “transgender sports” in Alabama schools. In another ad, she falsely accuses President Biden of “shipping illegal immigrants” into the country, warning that “we’re all going to have to learn Spanish.”Facing pressure from her right, Ivey has shed her image as a traditional salt-of-the-earth Alabama conservative — leading the charge on restrictive abortion laws and protecting Confederate monuments — and transformed into a Trump-era culture warrior.Her election-year shift demonstrates how even in the Deep South, Republicans whose loyalty to the party is unquestioned are tilting to the right and making red states even redder.“Politics is about doing what people like. Statesmanship is about doing what’s right,” said Mike Ball, a longtime Republican state representative who is retiring. “But before you get to be a statesman, you have to be a politician.”“I do think this campaign has moved her rhetoric too far — or a long way — to the right,” he added, though he still believes that Ivey is the best choice in the May 24 primary, which will head to a runoff if no one receives more than 50 percent of the vote.Ivey’s stepped-up ideological intensity goes beyond her ads. This year, she signed one of the most stringent laws in the country restricting transition care for transgender youths, threatening health care providers with time in prison. She also signed legislation limiting classroom discussions on gender and sexual orientation, similar to parts of the Florida law that critics call “Don’t Say Gay.”Ivey’s campaign says it is all a continuation of her record of conservatism, which has left her on solid footing for re-election. Asked about the change in her messaging from 2018 to 2022, her campaign said in a statement, “What’s changed is that Alabama is now stronger than ever.”A governor who ‘kicks so much liberal butt’Ivey’s entry to politics was gradual. Before running for office, she worked as a high school teacher, a bank officer and assistant director of the Alabama Development Office.Then, in 2003, Ivey became Alabama’s first Republican state treasurer since Reconstruction. In 2011, she won election as lieutenant governor. Six years later, she ascended to governor when the incumbent resigned amid a sex scandal.When she entered her 2018 race for re-election, Ivey faced several primary challengers. She ran ads that shored up her conservative bona fides while keeping an even tone.The Alabama N.A.A.C.P. criticized her campaign for an ad expressing support for preserving Confederate monuments. In it, Ivey argued that we “can’t change or erase our history,” but also said that “to get where we’re going means understanding where we’ve been.”Another primary ad showed two men at a shooting range, preparing to fire at their target. Then someone hits the target first. The camera turns to Ivey — a silver-haired woman in her 70s — with a gun in her hands.After that primary, her catalog of general election ads included titles like “My Dog Bear,” “Dreams Come True” and “A Former Teacher.”Now, as Ivey again fights in a primary, her first ads make clear that she’s anti-critical race theory, anti-abortion, anti-Biden and pro-Trump. Her campaign has also revamped the 2018 ad at the shooting range, with one of the men saying that Ivey “kicks so much liberal butt, I bet her leg’s tired.”A couple of weeks ago, things really took a turn.The ads keep the same peppy music, and Ivey still smiles as she narrates, but the language crosses into new territory. In the one accusing Biden of “shipping illegal immigrants,” she says, “My message to Biden: No way, Jose.”Representative Maxine Waters, a Democrat from California, told MSNBC the ad was “plain racist ignorance, in your face.”In another ad, Ivey falsely declares that the election was stolen from Donald Trump — a departure from previous ads, in which she said simply that she had worked to ensure Alabama’s elections were secure. “The left is probably offended,” she says. “So be it.”This year, Ivey signed a law restricting transition care for transgender youths, threatening health care providers with time in prison.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesPressure from the rightBut Ivey’s ads aren’t the most provocative of the Republican primary for governor. That distinction would probably go to Tim James, a businessman and son of a former governor, who said in an ad that “left-wing bigots” were teaching children things like that there are “50 genders.”Another candidate, Lynda Blanchard, a businesswoman and former diplomat, aired an ad criticizing Ivey for suggesting that unvaccinated people carried some blame for a prolonged pandemic.Ivey opened herself up to a primary challenge in part by extending a mask mandate in the spring of 2021, when many fellow G.O.P. governors were lifting them.After Biden was inaugurated, Ivey tweeted her congratulations to him and Kamala Harris. And she was one of just a few Republican governors who joined a November 2020 call about the pandemic with Biden when he was president-elect.Ivey’s campaign denies reports of a rift between her and Trump, who has not endorsed a candidate in the race. Asked about their relationship, an Ivey spokesman said: “Governor Ivey has a great relationship with President Trump and would welcome his support and endorsement. We’re going to win on May 24.” A spokesman for Trump did not respond to a request for comment.‘You can’t govern contrary to the will of the people’ Mike Ball, the retiring Alabama lawmaker, offered a deeper explanation of Ivey’s political calculus.While the governor is reacting in part to her primary challengers, he said, she is also responding to the Alabama Legislature, which Ball said was the true initiator of the recent legislation on health care for transgender youths.“She really had to sign it with the election coming up, because they would’ve killed her if she didn’t,” said Ball, who sat out the vote. Ball said that if Ivey won again, he believed she would govern with a more moderate agenda than her campaign messaging suggests, perhaps addressing prison reform and transparency in government.“I think she’s been around enough not to drink anybody’s Kool-Aid for long,” he said. “But she’s also been around enough to know what she’s got to do — that you have to build coalitions of support and you can’t govern contrary to the will of the people.”What to readKevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, feared after the Jan. 6 riot that several far-right members of Congress would incite violence against other lawmakers, identifying several by name as security risks in private conversations with party leaders, our colleagues Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin report.Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas chartered buses to send migrants to Washington in an effort to rattle President Biden. But, Eileen Sullivan and Edgar Sandoval report, Abbott’s actions have actually fit into Biden’s strategy to work with state and local governments to support migrants.The two front-runners in the Republican primary for Senate in Pennsylvania — Mehmet Oz and David McCormick — debated for the first time on Monday. Reid Epstein describes how the face-off played out.listening postKristina Karamo, a candidate for Michigan secretary of state, had a podcast on “theology, culture and politics.”Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesIn Michigan, a secretary of state candidate says yoga is a ‘satanic ritual’It turns out that Kristina Karamo has opinions about a lot more than how to administer elections.Karamo, who was endorsed on Saturday by the Republican Party of Michigan in her bid for secretary of state, espouses many of the usual conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. Given that she’s vying to oversee elections in the future, her views on the subject are receiving close scrutiny.But Karamo is also a prolific podcaster, the host of a now-defunct show on Christian “theology, culture and politics” called Solid Food. The shows tend to be delivered in a monologue, and those monologues have an unstructured, stream-of-consciousness quality to them.The commentary illustrates why some Michigan Republicans have warned that putting forward candidates like Karamo in a general election could be dangerous for the party, allowing Democrats to paint the G.O.P. as promoting fringe views. Karamo did not respond to a request for comment.Sex is a consistent topic of discussion on her podcast: Kicking off one show on Sept. 17, 2020, Karamo declares, “Satan orchestrated the sexual revolution to pull people away from God and to tie people into sexual brokenness.”She goes on to claim that Alfred Kinsey, the American biologist known for his pioneering research into human sexuality, “was totally into Satanism” — quickly amending that to say that Kinsey “never necessarily proclaimed allegiance to Lucifer, but he was inspired by Satanists for their revelry.”On another podcast episode a day later, Karamo describes the rapper Cardi B as a tool of “Lucifer.”She also describes yoga as a “satanic ritual.”“This is not just dance to dance,” Karamo says. “It is to summon a demon. Even yoga. The word ‘yoga’ really means ‘yoke to Brahman.’ So people are thinking they’re doing exercises. No, you’re doing actual — a satanic ritual and don’t even know it.”In another episode, on Nov. 24, 2020, after offering scattered thoughts on political blackmail and Jeffrey Epstein, Karamo embarks on a lengthy tangent about “sexual deviancy.”“There are people who are willing to be eternally separated from God for an orgasm,” Karamo says. “That is wild to me.”A professor at Wayne County Community College, Karamo most recently taught a class on career and professional development.Presented with Karamo’s comments, Jason Roe, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party, said simply: “Wow. Michigan is going to be nuts.”— Leah & BlakeIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Ohio Senate Race Pits Trump and Son Against Big G.O.P. Group

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      The Club for Growth has lined up behind Josh Mandel. Donald J. Trump and his eldest son, Donald Jr., are backing J.D. Vance. Tuesday’s outcome will be a crucial test of the former president’s sway.Not long after Donald J. Trump was elected president, the Club for Growth, a conservative anti-tax group that had opposed his 2016 campaign, reinvented itself as a reliable supporter, with the group’s president, David McIntosh, providing frequent counsel to Mr. Trump on important races nationwide.But this spring, as Mr. Trump faces critical tests of the power of his endorsements, an ugly fight over the Ohio Senate primary is threatening what had been a significant alliance with one of the most influential groups in the country.The dispute broke into plain view days ago when in support of Josh Mandel, the former Ohio state treasurer, for the Republican Senate race, the Club for Growth ran a television commercial showing the candidate Mr. Trump has endorsed, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance, repeatedly denouncing Mr. Trump in 2016.Mr. Trump’s response was brutish: He had an assistant send Mr. McIntosh a short text message telling him off in the most vulgar terms. The group, one of the few that actually spends heavily in primary races, responded by saying it would increase its spending on the ad.That escalation drew an angry response from Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son, who had spent months urging his father to support Mr. Vance and has invested his own energy and influence on Mr. Vance’s behalf.The standoff over the Ohio primary encapsulates some of the critical open questions within the Republican Party. Mr. Trump has held enormous sway despite being less visible since leaving office, but other power centers and G.O.P.-aligned groups over which he used to exert a stranglehold are asserting themselves more. And his ability to influence the thinking of Republican voters on behalf of other candidates is about to be tested at the ballot box.Until now, even after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol by Trump supporters seeking to keep him in office, many Republican candidates have fallen over themselves to court Mr. Trump’s endorsement. That’s proven especially true in Ohio, where the primary for the Senate has been dominated by candidates like Mr. Mandel and Mr. Vance, who have emulated Mr. Trump’s reactionary politics.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.The Ohio contest has also divided Mr. Trump’s own circle, as rival candidates have hired various formal and informal advisers to the former president in hopes of influencing his eventual endorsement.Much like Mr. Vance, Mr. McIntosh and the Club for Growth opposed Mr. Trump in 2016, but the group then recast itself as closely aligned with him.By the time Mr. Trump left office, Mr. McIntosh was frequently speaking with him by phone and visiting him at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club in Florida, according to an aide to Mr. McIntosh. His frequent attempts to sway Mr. Trump’s thinking on politics reached the point that it rankled others in Mr. Trump’s circle, which is constantly in flux and populated by people seeking influence.In a brief interview after receiving the text message from Mr. Trump’s aide last week, Mr. McIntosh minimized the dispute over Ohio, noting that the former president and the Club for Growth had both endorsed Representative Ted Budd, a Republican in North Carolina running for the Senate, a race on which the group has spent heavily.“I very much view this as one race where we’re not aligned, we’re on opposite sides, which doesn’t happen very often,” Mr. McIntosh said of the clash over Ohio.Still, the Club for Growth also stuck with Representative Mo Brooks in Alabama’s Senate primary after Mr. Trump withdrew his own endorsement.The dispute over the group’s attack on Mr. Vance touched a nerve with both Mr. Trump and his eldest son.The former president has long taken special delight in bringing to heel Republicans who, having criticized him, are forced to acknowledge his supremacy in the party and bow and scrape for his approval. That was the case with Mr. McIntosh, and also with Mr. Vance, who courted the former president with the help of the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and the billionaire Peter Thiel, as well as that of Donald Trump Jr.All of which explains why the Club for Growth’s ad showing Mr. Vance expressing scorn for Mr. Trump in 2016 aggravated not only the former president, but also his son.The younger Mr. Trump, who is trying to flex his own political muscle within the Republican Party, treated the tiff between his father and Mr. McIntosh as an opening to attack the group and also to try to tear down Mr. Mandel.When he visited Ohio this week on Mr. Vance’s behalf, the younger Mr. Trump attacked Mr. Mandel by name for his support for a no-fly zone in Ukraine, and also criticized the Club for Growth, saying, “They spent $10 million in 2016 to fight Donald Trump,” and suggesting the group was “soft on China.”The Senate candidate J.D. Vance is ahead in private polling, according to strategists — a fact that Mr. Trump can point to even if another candidate ultimately wins, experts said.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe younger Mr. Trump also said he might oppose candidates newly endorsed by the Club for Growth unless it stops running the ads about Mr. Vance and removes Mr. McIntosh from the group’s board, according to an adviser who spoke anonymously.Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist and former top aide at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said that while Mr. Trump’s approach with his endorsements has been fairly random in recent months, the Vance endorsement is different because of the composition of the primary. “This is the first time Trump’s political might has been tested on a level playing field among broadly acceptable candidates,” Mr. Donovan said.In both Ohio and North Carolina, Mr. Donovan said, “the Trump nod may lift his picks from the middle of the pack to victory over established favorites with lengthy statewide resumes. That would be an objectively impressive display of power.”Mr. Trump’s backing has elevated Mr. Vance’s standing in the primary, according to a Fox News survey released on Tuesday evening. Mr. Vance received 23 percent of the primary vote, an increase of 12 percentage points from the last survey, overtaking Mr. Mandel, who received 18 percent. Some 25 percent of voters remain undecided, the poll found.Mr. Trump had been advised that he could have the most effect by giving his endorsement in mid-April, as early voting was set to begin in the state.There is always the chance that the Club for Growth emerges successful in the fight in Ohio. Mr. McIntosh said he believed that Mr. Mandel was the most conservative, pro-Trump candidate in the field.Still, Republican strategists said a late surge by Mr. Vance, even if he does not win, would give Mr. Trump renewed bragging rights.David Kochel, a Republican strategist who has advised past presidential nominees, said that Mr. Trump appears “to have breathed life into a campaign most people assumed was dead,” adding, “even if Vance loses, Trump will be able to argue that he turned his campaign around.” More

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      Sarah Morgenthau’s Tricky House Race in Rhode Island

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      Running for office in a state where you haven’t lived is a delicate art.When Sarah Morgenthau entered the race for the open congressional seat in Rhode Island, she had to answer an age-old question in American politics: Are you really from here?She isn’t the only one.Mehmet Oz, a leading Republican candidate for Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat, grew up in Wilmington, Del., and has lived for many years in New Jersey. A mere two years before running, Oz invited People magazine for a photo shoot inside his 9,000-square-foot mansion overlooking the Manhattan skyline. He has since claimed his in-laws’ house in the Philadelphia suburbs as his residence, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.Other out-of-state candidates — like David McCormick, Oz’s chief Republican rival in Pennsylvania, as well as Herschel Walker in Georgia — have faced similar scrutiny this year.Morgenthau, a lawyer who left a top Commerce Department job to run for office as a Democrat, does have ties to Rhode Island. Although she grew up in Boston and New York, she notes in a video announcing her candidacy that she married her husband in the backyard of the Morgenthau family’s summer home in Saunderstown, a village north of Narragansett. “While work has pulled us elsewhere, Rhode Island is the place that has remained constant in all of our lives,” she says.On paper, Morgenthau is an impressive candidate.She has an impressive résumé: degrees from Barnard College and Columbia Law School, and stints at senior levels in the Peace Corps, the Department of Homeland Security and at Nardello & Company, a private security and investigations firm.And an impressive family: Her mother, Ruth, was a scholar of international politics and an adviser to President Jimmy Carter. In 1988, Ruth Morgenthau ran for office in Rhode Island as a Democrat, losing to Representative Claudine Schneider, a Republican.Sarah Morgenthau’s uncle was Robert Morgenthau, the famed longtime district attorney for Manhattan. Her grandfather Henry Morgenthau Jr. was President Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of the Treasury. Henry Morgenthau Sr., her great-grandfather, documented the Armenian genocide as the U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during World War I.That family connection led Sarah Morgenthau to push the Biden administration to recognize the Armenian genocide, an initiative that won her a laudatory write-up by Politico in April 2021.“She was national co-chair of Lawyers for Biden, a prolific fund-raiser and a volunteer on national security policy groups for the campaign,” Politico reported. “She served as a surrogate who was frequently quoted in national publications about the trajectory of the race or the temperature of donors.”None of it might matter if Morgenthau can’t answer that question — Are you really from here? — to the satisfaction of Rhode Island voters.A tight-knit political cultureMorgenthau has much to prove in the months before the Democratic primary election on Sept. 13.She’ll have to overcome the local favorite in the race, Seth Magaziner, who is the state’s general treasurer. He has already secured the backing of several major unions, and has so far outraised the rest of the field. More than 95 percent of Morgenthau’s campaign donations have come from out of state, The Boston Globe has noted, versus 27 percent of Magaziner’s.Rhode Island’s political culture is famously insular and suspicious of perceived outsiders — so much so that Brett Smiley, a candidate for mayor of Providence who has lived in Rhode Island for 16 years, began his campaign kickoff speech last month by nodding to the fact that he grew up in Chicago. “Like more and more people, I chose Providence,” Smiley said. “I have lived and worked elsewhere and know that what we have here is special.”It’s common in the state to see bumper stickers that say, “I Never Leave Rhode Island.” The fight song of the University of Rhode Island begins, “We’re Rhode Island born and we’re Rhode Island bred, and when we die we’ll be Rhode Island dead!”“People are very rooted in their communities,” said Rich Luchette, a longtime aide to Representative David Cicilline, who represents the state’s other congressional district. “There’s a resistance to change of any kind.”Little wonder, then, that Morgenthau has faced incessant questions about her Rhode Island credentials from the local news media.When The Providence Journal asked candidates in the race to answer a series of trivia questions about Rhode Island, Morgenthau gave an answer that was nearly identical to a Wikipedia entry — and the newspaper called her out for it.Then came a brutal encounter early this month with a local television anchor, Kim Kalunian, who asked if Morgenthau had ever lived in the state for an entire year or enrolled her children in school there.“I have been paying property taxes in the Second District for 40 years,” Morgenthau replied, though she conceded that the answer to both questions was no.A clip of the exchange rocketed around Rhode Island’s tightly knit Democratic political class, which is nervously watching the race to succeed Representative Jim Langevin, who is retiring. While Langevin won re-election relatively easily in 2020, some Democrats fear that in a weak year for their party, a candidate lacking local ties could help hand the seat to Republicans.“Being out of state isn’t necessarily fatal,” said Joe Caiazzo, a Democratic consultant who ran Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the state in 2016. “I think the way it’s being handled is fatal, because it highlights the lack of local connectivity, which is so important in Rhode Island.”Morgenthau is well aware of the skepticism. In an interview, she emphasized her “extensive experience in Washington” and described herself as someone who “will go through a brick wall if I need to get things done.”She also spoke about a “commitment to public service that has been instilled in me since I was a young girl at the kitchen table,” a theme she has highlighted while campaigning.“When people meet me,” she said, “they’re going to see someone who’s a problem solver, who has Rhode Island’s back.”Hillary Clinton with Yankees players on the South Lawn of the White House shortly before declaring her candidacy for Senate in New York.Paul Hosefros/The New York TimesEmpire state of mindThere is a successful playbook for running as a carpetbagger — and it was drawn up by none other than Hillary Clinton.In 2000, Clinton took a gamble by running for Senate in New York despite never having held elective office, growing up in Illinois and living for many years in Arkansas while her husband was governor. She had some major advantages: universal name recognition as first lady, an overwhelmingly Democratic electorate and a lackluster opponent in Rick Lazio, the Republican candidate.But Clinton had never lived in New York, and she knew her lack of roots in the state would be a problem. Her solution, the brainchild of the pollster Mark Penn, was a “listening tour” of New York’s 62 counties during the summer of 1999, as she weighed an official run.On several occasions, with the help of local Democratic Party officials, Clinton even stayed overnight in the homes of complete strangers, where she was known to pitch in on household chores.The listening tour did not always go well. During a visit to an electronics plant outside Binghamton, protesters held signs that said “Hillary Go Home” and “Hillary: Go Back to Arkansas, You Carpetbagger.” Clinton, reportedly a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, was also pilloried for doffing a Yankees cap when the team came to the White House to celebrate its World Series win.Lazio tried hard to capitalize on the issue; an account of his campaign rollout in Time magazine said that he “flashed his New York pedigree almost as often as his teeth.”Clinton’s rejoinder was to emphasize her familiarity with subjects important to New Yorkers, and to outwork Lazio. “I may be new to the neighborhood,” she said during her announcement speech, “but I’m not new to your concerns.”She also hired a team of experienced New York operatives, led by Howard Wolfson and Bill de Blasio, to help her navigate Manhattan’s vicious tabloid press.But it was the upstate listening tour, much mocked at the time, that ultimately allowed her to shrug off the accusations of carpetbagging.“We purposely designed the events to be small groups, to listen to what people were worried about,” recalled Patti Solis Doyle, Clinton’s campaign manager. “She said very little and took a lot of notes.”The events were so devoid of drama that eventually, they lulled the press to sleep, Solis Doyle said.“By the end,” she said, “they were bored to tears.”What to readRepublican Party leaders privately condemned Donald Trump after Jan. 6 and vowed to drive him from politics, Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns reveal in an exclusive excerpt from their forthcoming book. But their opposition faded quickly.Florida stands poised to revoke Disney World’s longtime designation as a special tax district, as Republicans moved swiftly to punish the company for its opposition to a new education law that opponents call “Don’t Say Gay.”It’s Republicans, not Democrats, who are talking about the supposed failings of American democracy on the campaign trail, Reid Epstein and Jonathan Weisman write.David Fahrenthold and Keri Blakinger take a look inside Crime Stoppers of Houston, a traditionally nonprofit institution that has become a mouthpiece for conservative talking points on crime.— BlakeIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      David McCormick’s Financial Disclosures in Senate Race Reveal His Wealth

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      The Republican Senate candidate’s financial disclosure statement depicts a wealthy man comfortable walking the halls of power.We can say this much with confidence about David McCormick: The man is rich.In ads and campaign appearances, McCormick, who is running in the Republican primary for a Pennsylvania Senate seat, emphasizes his roots in Bloomsburg, a small town along the state’s Susquehanna River.But his personal financial disclosure statement, which is required of all candidates for federal office, paints the picture of a consummate New York and Washington insider.Last year alone, McCormick pulled in more than $22 million in salary from Bridgewater Associates, the Connecticut hedge fund where he was chief executive until stepping down in January. He sold options in Bechtel, a politically connected global construction firm where he was a board member, for an additional $2.2 million. For serving on the board of In-Q-Tel, a nonprofit venture capital firm close to the U.S. intelligence community, he earned $70,000 more. (McCormick is also a member of the Defense Policy Board, and maintains a security clearance.)And that’s just income. Because federal disclosure forms require candidates to list assets only within broad ranges, it’s not possible to calculate McCormick’s net worth with any precision. But this much is clear: If McCormick were to win the Senate seat, which is being vacated by the retiring Pat Toomey, he would rank among the wealthiest members of Congress.The same would be true of his top rival, Mehmet Oz.Winning against Oz, Carla Sands and Jeff Bartos in next month’s primary won’t be an easy task. Oz, the celebrity doctor, last week won Donald Trump’s endorsement, despite McCormick’s assiduous efforts to court the former president. An average of public polls shows McCormick clinging to a lead of around 4 percentage points, though it’s worth noting that polls of statewide races are famously unreliable.Breaking down McCormick’s wealthMcCormick is married to Dina Powell McCormick, a former Trump administration official who now works for Goldman Sachs. The couple listed assets worth between $116 million and $290 million, and possibly more.They own a Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania, which once belonged to his parents; a ranch investment property in Colorado; and rental properties in several other cities. McCormick often mentions the farm, which he bought 10 years ago, in his campaign ads and appearances. He has expanded it to grow soy and other crops, the campaign says, but with a value listed at $1 million to $5 million, it represents just a fraction of his wealth.The couple has tens of millions distributed across various funds — notably, they have at least $50 million worth of stock in Bridgewater, his former employer. McCormick has faced questions about the firm’s investments in China, as well as about its handling of teacher pensions in Pennsylvania.McCormick is also an investor in ArcelorMittal, a multinational steel company that competes with the Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel — via a revocable trust, a type of trust that can be amended during life and that is often used to manage assets and avoid probate at death.The couple also owns corporate bonds in Delta Air Lines, Ford, General Electric, General Motors, Hilton, Oracle and UPS. For good measure, they own a few million dollars’ worth of U.S. Treasuries.David McCormick and his wife, Dina Powell McCormick, at the White House for a state dinner in 2018.Lawrence Jackson for The New York TimesRarefied companyThe McCormicks’ liabilities similarly showcase their extraordinary wealth and connections.They listed between $20 million and $93.5 million in liabilities, including for two mortgages and a line of credit of up to $25 million. Their other liabilities are for various “capital commitments,” meaning potential private equity investments, including as much as half a million dollars to Revolution’s “Rise of the Rest” seed fund.The fund, run by the AOL founder Steve Case, invests in start-up companies outside of the usual Silicon Valley and East Coast haunts. Among the fund’s investors are Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder; Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia; Eric Schmidt, the former Google chief executive; James Murdoch, the son of the Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch; Tory Burch, the fashion designer; and David Rubenstein, a founder of the Carlyle Group.One interesting coincidence here: J.D. Vance, who was once a managing partner at Revolution, is now a candidate for Senate in neighboring Ohio. Vance’s rags-to-riches personal story, as detailed in his book “Hillbilly Elegy,” was integral to the fund’s sales pitch.Although Vance is nearly 20 years younger, the two men have led remarkably parallel lives. Like McCormick, Vance served in the U.S. military and went on to earn an Ivy League education before starting a career in finance. Both reinvented themselves as MAGA warriors as they decided to run for Senate seats in the Midwest.But Vance scored Trump’s endorsement, while McCormick did not.In Pennsylvania, McCormick has fought bitterly with Oz, trading accusations over which man has closer ties to China, who is a more committed conservative and who is the more authentic representative of the state. Each has plowed millions of his own money into the Senate contest — with McCormick having donated nearly $7 million to his campaign, and Oz contributing more than $11 million to his effort.McCormick has benefited from his Wall Street ties. More than 60 executives at Goldman Sachs have contributed the maximum allowable amount to his campaign, according to a Bloomberg analysis.A super PAC supporting McCormick, Honor Pennsylvania, has raised $15.3 million. Nearly a third of that money has come from Ken Griffin, a billionaire hedge fund manager who backs Republican candidates. Another of the super PAC’s donors is Harry Sloan, a former MGM executive who backed Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid in 2016.Intriguingly, Arjun Gupta, the founder and “chief believer” of TeleSoft Partners, also chipped in $100,000. He usually donates to Democrats. McCormick’s disclosure statement indicates that he is a limited partner in a TeleSoft investment fund. Until McCormick decided to run for office, both men were trustees of the Aspen Institute, a think tank that aims to “solve the greatest challenges of our time.”Alyce McFadden contributed research.What to read One day after a federal judge struck down federal mask mandates on airplanes, buses and trains, President Biden said that Americans should decide for themselves if they want to wear masks on public transportation, Katie Roger reports.Jonathan Weisman examines a phenomenon that frustrates Democratic Party leaders: their base’s penchant for throwing millions of dollars at candidates with no hope of winning.The federal Education Department is retroactively crediting millions of borrowers with additional payments toward loan forgiveness, Stacy Cowley reports. Student debt has become a major political cause on the left, with pressure increasing on President Biden to relieve borrowers through executive action.how they runJim Pillen, left, and Charles Herbster are among Republicans vying to replace Gov. Pete Ricketts, who is term-limited, in Nebraska.Grant Schulte/Associated Press; Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post, via Getty ImagesAfter assault accusations, an ad with … pig jokesTwo new television ads in Nebraska signal how sexual assault accusations against the Republican front-runner for governor will play out in the final weeks of the campaign.Neither the ad by the front-runner, Charles Herbster, nor the one from his top Republican rival, Jim Pillen, mentions the accusations. Not directly, at least.Herbster, who was accused of groping several women including a Republican state senator, has denied the allegations in a radio interview and on Twitter.“Just like the establishment attacked President Trump, now they’re lying about me,” said Herbster in the ad he released, which quickly moved on to other issues. Herbster, a farmer and wealthy businessman, has Trump’s backing in his bid to replace Gov. Pete Ricketts, who is term-limited.The ad from Pillen, who is also a farmer and wealthy businessman, features his young grandchildren asking him political questions. He responds with short, pig-inspired answers. Do you want to cut property taxes? “Whole hog.” Do politicians spend too much? “Like pigs at a trough.” Ban homework? “When pigs fly.” The scene seems intended to convey that Pillen is not only a conservative, but a guy you can trust around your family.As Jonathan Weisman reported, Republican candidates in several states are facing allegations of sexual assault and domestic violence — yet few of their primary rivals, even in competitive races, want to talk about it.On Tuesday, Trump announced he would hold a rally in Nebraska at the end of April. A guest speaker: Herbster.— Blake & LeahIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Trump Endorses J.D. Vance in Republican Primary for Senate in Ohio

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      The move amounts to a major bet on Mr. Vance’s ability to prevail over a crowded field, and on the former president’s power to alter the course of key congressional races.Former President Donald J. Trump on Friday endorsed the author and venture capitalist J.D. Vance in the Republican primary election for Senate in Ohio, aiming to give the candidate a needed boost in a crowded race that will test Mr. Trump’s potency as a kingmaker in key congressional contests.Calling Mr. Vance “our best chance for victory in what could be a very tough race,” Mr. Trump said in a statement that the candidate was “strong on the Border, tough on Crime, understands how to use Taxes and Tariffs to hold China accountable, will fight to break up Big Tech, and has been a warrior on the Rigged and Stolen Presidential Election.”The move amounted to a major bet on Mr. Vance and on Mr. Trump’s influence over Republican primary voters in conservative-leaning Ohio, where several high-profile candidates are facing off in a contentious and at times nasty campaign to replace Senator Rob Portman, a Republican who is retiring.With the May 3 primary less than three weeks away, limited polling has shown Mr. Vance struggling to break through against rivals including Josh Mandel, a former Ohio state treasurer; Jane Timken, a former chairwoman of the Ohio Republican Party; and Mike Gibbons, a financier. No one has emerged as a clear front-runner.The highly coveted endorsement came after weeks in which the race’s top candidates veered increasingly to the right in pursuit of Mr. Trump’s support, with tension and anticipation rising ahead of a planned visit to the state by the former president on April 23. In recent days, as news reports trickled out that Mr. Vance was likely to win Mr. Trump’s backing, supporters of other candidates engaged in last-ditch efforts to prevent the endorsement.More than three dozen Republican county and state committee leaders urged the former president in a letter not to endorse Mr. Vance, questioning his Republican credentials and noting that he had repeatedly denounced Mr. Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.Mr. Trump’s move carries significant risks, with candidates he has backed in other key races around the country sometimes struggling to emerge as favorites for the Republican nomination.Veasey Conway for The New York TimesBut Mr. Trump had all but decided days earlier to support Mr. Vance, according to four Republicans familiar with his thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.Mr. Trump called Mr. Vance to alert him to the endorsement before it became public. In his statement on Friday, Mr. Trump said, “J.D. Vance may have said some not so great things about me in the past, but he gets it now, and I have seen that in spades.”According to one of the Republicans familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking, he was swayed by several factors, including video clips of a Republican primary debate in which two of the candidates, Mr. Mandel and Mr. Gibbons, nearly came to blows. The incident ended any chance that Mr. Trump, who credits the 2016 presidential debates for his victory that year, might have endorsed either of them, the Republican said. Mr. Trump was also impressed by Mr. Vance’s performance in the last debate.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.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.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.Mr. Trump has also told allies that he believes the leading Democratic candidate, Representative Tim Ryan, will be a difficult opponent in the general election and that he thinks Mr. Vance can beat him. Mr. Trump has been increasingly looking toward a prospective 2024 presidential campaign of his own, and he is said to see Mr. Vance as a reliable ally in the Senate on issues he cares about, like trade and immigration.And a last-minute effort to stop Mr. Trump’s endorsement that included releasing an internal Mandel campaign poll appears to have backfired. The survey suggested that Mr. Trump’s endorsement would give Mr. Vance only a five-percentage-point bump in support, which Mr. Trump took as an affront, the Republican familiar with the former president’s thinking said.Mr. Trump was lobbied heavily by supporters of Mr. Vance, including the billionaire Peter Thiel, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and his own son, Donald Trump Jr.Still, the move carries significant risks for Mr. Trump, whose endorsements in other marquee races across the country have not yet proven decisive. In Georgia, his attempt to fuel David Perdue’s Republican primary challenge to Gov. Brian Kemp has largely been seen as underwhelming.In one of his biggest gambles, Mr. Trump recently gave his backing in the Republican Senate primary in Pennsylvania to the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, despite a concerted effort by supporters of the other leading candidate, David McCormick, to persuade Mr. Trump to stay neutral. Mr. McCormick and Mr. Mandel use the same consulting firm, run by the strategist Jeff Roe.Few races across the country have captured Mr. Trump’s effect in Republican primaries in the way that Ohio’s Republican Senate campaign has, with candidates seeking to model themselves after the former president. Most of the contenders have railed against undocumented immigrants, and only one has recognized President Biden as the nation’s legitimate leader.Ahead of the endorsement, many Republican county party leaders expressed frustration that Mr. Trump might select Mr. Vance, the author of the best-selling 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.” They noted that he had spent much of his life in San Francisco and had been critical of Mr. Trump even as they worked to elect him.“He is the guy who worked against Trump and spoke against Trump and told everybody he didn’t vote for Trump,” said David Johnson, the chairman of the Columbiana County Republican Party, who has endorsed Ms. Timken. Mr. Johnson helped circulate the letter from Republican leaders in Ohio, which stated that Mr. Vance was not a registered Republican and provided Mr. Trump with a list of negative comments that Mr. Vance had made against him, including calling him “another opioid” in 2016.“While we were working hard in Ohio to support you and Make America Great Again, J.D. Vance was actively working against your candidacy,” the letter says. “He referred to your supporters as ‘racists.’”Asked for comment, including about the accusation that Mr. Vance is not a registered Republican, Taylor Van Kirk, a spokeswoman for the Vance campaign, said: “When he has voted in primaries, J.D. has always voted in Republican ones. He has a long public history of supporting Republican candidates, including Donald Trump in 2020.”The campaign also pointed to polling that showed Mr. Vance in second place behind Mr. Mandel, as well as a tweet from one Republican Party county chairman denying that he had signed the letter, and another tweet from the anti-abortion group Ohio Right to Life PAC that expressed support for a Trump endorsement of Mr. Vance.In the tweet, the group’s chairman, Marshal Pitchford, said that the former president would be making “a fantastic choice” in backing Mr. Vance, adding that he was 100 percent “pro-life without exceptions” and would continue Mr. Trump’s “pro-life victories” in the Senate.In stump speeches, Mr. Vance has been quick to address the criticism that he has not always been a Trump loyalist, often saying that the best policy is honesty.“I didn’t like Trump six years ago,” he told supporters this week at a brewery in Hilliard. “I did not think he was going to be a good president. I was very happy to be proven wrong.”He added, “I was very proud to support the president over the past several years.” More