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      David McCormick Faces Scrutiny Over Teacher Pension Investments

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      David McCormick, a Republican Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, came under attack from his chief rival, Dr. Mehmet Oz, over the underperformance of investments for the state’s teachers.Before he entered Pennsylvania’s Senate race, David McCormick oversaw a giant hedge fund that invested billions of dollars for the retirement plans of the state’s teachers.But Mr. McCormick’s company, Bridgewater Associates, delivered such middling profits and charged such high fees that the Pennsylvania teachers’ retirement fund moved to sell off its Bridgewater holdings beginning two years ago.Overall, Bridgewater’s performance was a contributing factor in nearly a decade of poor returns for the retirement fund, trustees of the fund said in interviews.The impact is now being felt indirectly by thousands of teachers who have to pay more from their paychecks to fund their retirements, an extra $300 annually in some cases.Since jumping into the Republican primary in January, Mr. McCormick has offered his business career as a qualification for the open Senate seat in November, but he has made little mention of his connection to the state’s teacher pension fund, which has long been mired in controversy, nor to the more than $500 million in fees that Bridgewater was paid by the fund.But on Tuesday, Mr. McCormick’s chief Republican rival, the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, sought to use those high fees and Mr. McCormick’s decade on top of Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund, against him.“We’re stuck with a half-a-billion-dollar bill while he and his colleagues got half a billion in fees,” Dr. Oz said outside the Harrisburg headquarters of the pension fund, the Public School Employees Retirement System, known as PSERS. He addressed a small group of supporters with a large prop check made out for $500 million.“The fact that no one knows this story,” he added, is “shameful.”Until 2019, the retirement fund had nearly $5 billion invested with Bridgewater, among the most of any firm, and it was one of the hedge fund’s top clients.In response to Dr. Oz, the McCormick campaign said that Bridgewater had made plenty of money for the retirement fund and that Mr. McCormick, who served as president and later as chief executive of the hedge fund, was not directly involved in overseeing its relationship or investments with PSERS.The dispute is the latest round in a slugfest between Mr. McCormick and Dr. Oz, whose primary contest will help shape one of the most crucial races this year for control of the Senate. The two candidates and their outside supporters have already spent a state record $30 million in attack ads ahead of the May 17 primary. A Fox News poll this month of potential Republican voters showed Mr. McCormick on top of a five-person field, although many voters are undecided.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the 2022 election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.A West Point graduate and former Treasury Department official, Mr. McCormick was recruited by Bridgewater as president in 2009, rose to co-chief executive in 2017 and became sole chief executive in 2020 before leaving in January to run for Senate.The Pennsylvania teachers’ pension fund has been troubled for years. Besides hedge funds, it put its money into highly risky “alternative” investments including trailer park chains, pistachio farms and pay phone systems for prison inmates.In mid-2020, the fund’s annual profits over nine years, a decade when the stock market boomed, amounted to just 6.34 percent, missing a target set by Pennsylvania law.The shortfall prompted $80 million in higher paycheck deductions for about 100,000 teachers and other school employees, as well as higher property taxes for homeowners statewide, to pay for school districts’ makeup contributions to the pension fund, said Stacy Garrity, the state treasurer.Mr. McCormick’s campaign said that he had not directly been involved in overseeing Bridgewater Associates’ relationship with the Pennsylvania teachers’ retirement fund or overseeing the fund’s investments.Libby March for The New York TimesMr. McCormick, who declined to be interviewed, said through a campaign spokeswoman that PSERS’s poor performance was not the fault of its Bridgewater holdings — as Dr. Oz argued — and that those holdings had earned money for the pension fund. “Pennsylvania retirees made $3.9 billion in net profits and did not lose a penny over the life of the relationship under Bridgewater management,” the spokeswoman, Jess Szymanski, said.Still, some Bridgewater investments did miss internal benchmarks that the retirement fund had set, which contributed to the decision by the board of trustees to sell off its Bridgewater investments, along with those in other hedge funds.In the most recent quarterly reporting period, PSERS’s largest Bridgewater investment, the Pure Alpha II fund, underperformed a benchmark for comparable funds over the preceding three-, five- and 10-year periods. It exceeded the benchmark over a one-year period.More important than the individual Bridgewater investments, according to board members, was that Bridgewater’s investment philosophy came to dominate the retirement fund’s broad portfolio, currently valued at more than $72 billion.At a July 2020 meeting with senior retirement fund staff members, Joseph Torsella, the state treasurer at the time, criticized Bridgewater’s poor performance and its wide influence over the pension fund.Mr. Torsella, a Democrat, said in an interview, “I got the sense we were important at the highest level of Bridgewater, and I got the sense at PSERS that Bridgewater was the one true church.”Bridgewater, which manages about $140 billion, largely for institutional clients, is known as much for a culture in which employees bluntly air their differences as it is known for its investing record. It boasts of earning customers tens of billions of dollars over four decades.Its founder, Ray Dalio, is a multibillionaire who popularized an investing strategy known as “risk parity.” It promises to make money in both good and bad economic times by placing bets across different types of assets such as gold, Treasury bonds and sovereign wealth funds.During the 2008 financial crisis, when stocks went into a free-fall, Bridgewater’s Pure Alpha fund gained 9.5 percent. That was the start of an infatuation with Bridgewater by the professional staff at the Pennsylvania teachers’ fund, according to board members and their aides.Walloped by its declining stock holdings, the retirement fund embraced the risk parity model. It not only loaded up on Bridgewater’s own funds, it molded itself into a Bridgewater-like hedge fund.A report for the Pennsylvania legislature in 2018 found that PSERS’s portfolio allocation “reflects a risk parity model.”Mr. McCormick on the campaign trail in Edinboro, Pa. He topped a recent Fox News poll of Republican primary candidates, though many voters were undecided.Libby March for The New York TimesIt was a highly unusual, and risky, approach for a public fund that sends monthly checks to 250,000 former teachers, custodians and other school employees.“The real impact of Bridgewater on PSERS was not just that Bridgewater was one among a couple of hundred managers — they were the guru,” said Mr. Torsella, who was part of a bipartisan group of board members who began challenging the way the pension fund was run. “Too many of the investment team at PSERS became acolytes of Bridgewater. There was too much deference to their way of thinking.”Certainly, no one at Bridgewater was twisting the arms of PSERS’s staff to imitate the hedge fund’s strategy.Still, teams of retirement fund staff members trooped to Bridgewater’s wooded campus in Westport, Conn., or hosted Bridgewater consultants in Harrisburg for daylong seminars. In 2019, top pension fund executives flew to China for two Bridgewater events, including a weeklong “investor summit,” at a cost of $4,467 in travel.Over the decade following the financial crisis, as the stock market recovered and boomed, PSERS’s embrace of a risk parity model of investing had a disastrous impact on the pension fund’s bottom line. As of 2018, the retirement fund’s returns over a decade ranked 50th out of 52 public pension plans nationwide, according to the report for state lawmakers.Although Bridgewater’s funds were promoted as a way to weather a bear market in stocks, the arrival of the pandemic in 2020 proved that the complex financial straddles didn’t live up to the hype. Bridgewater’s Pure Alpha fund was underwater for the year, even as the S&P 500, the broad stock market index, gained more than 16 percent.The dissidents on the PSERS board, who favored a plain-vanilla portfolio of largely public stocks and bonds, succeeded in pushing the pension fund to sell off two of its Bridgewater funds, All Weather and Optimal, and to eventually liquidate all of its hedge fund investments.In July 2021, the pension fund was forced to increase paycheck deductions for 94,400 school employees hired since 2011.Samantha Kreda, who teaches special education to third to fifth graders at the Richard R. Wright School in Philadelphia, was one.Samantha Kreda in her classroom in Philadelphia.Hannah Yoon for The New York Times“The PSERS increase amounted to $30 every paycheck, but that’s a huge amount of money considering all the things teachers are expected to pay for,” she said. She buys books, snacks, birthday gifts and school supplies out of her pocket for students in her high-poverty school. Rather than cut back on those extras, she said, she has reconsidered “splurges” like dinner out with her boyfriend.Ms. Kreda, 27, who has a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, knows Ivy League peers who went into law or finance and now make “unfathomable” salaries. “I love my job; I don’t teach for the paycheck,” she said. Still, a $30 deduction from her biweekly pay gives her pause. “It definitely makes a difference,” she said.Maureen Farrell More

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      How a Murdoch Hopes to Save American Democracy

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      Kathryn Murdoch is trying to change how elections are run. It’s a work in progress.Over the last decade, as America’s two dominant political parties pulled farther apart, a group of centrist-minded donors was growing increasingly frustrated.A gridlocked Congress made bipartisan policy wins close to impossible. Campaign-finance reform? The Supreme Court effectively put a stake in it in 2010. Climate legislation? Time and again, it hit a phalanx of Republican opposition.“Basically, everything that we were looking at would run up against a nonfunctioning government,” said Kathryn Murdoch, who has become a leader of a network of donors seeking to change the way Americans choose their elected officials.Fix the election system, the thinking goes, and the government will begin to run more smoothly. But when Murdoch’s family foundation, Quadrivium, examined the democracy reform movement, they found it too anemic and fractured to be effective.“Everything was very subscale, it seemed very clear to me — smart people, good ideas, a lot of data backing all of it up, but subscale for the problem, and not a lot of collaboration or, frankly, enough funds,” Murdoch said in an interview.The daughter-in-law of Rupert Murdoch, the Australian media mogul, Kathryn Murdoch has often found herself at odds with the conservative politics of her family’s TV, print and radio empire. Murdoch, a registered independent who is American, spent years funding efforts to slow climate change, only to encounter political obstacles at nearly every turn. Her new focus is building a movement to reshape American democracy itself, and she has set a goal of mobilizing $100 million to do so over the 2020 and 2022 election cycles.This focus has meant pitching her fellow philanthropists on why they should donate to democracy groups rather than to their own causes.“There’s not necessarily a special-interest group that is helping to ensure the integrity of the system,” said Marc Merrill, a software entrepreneur and donor who works with Murdoch on political overhaul projects. “Well, that’s an opportunity.”Murdoch’s problem with primariesMurdoch quickly determined that the chief villain was the partisan primary.It was aiding extremist candidates like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia. It was forcing moderate Republican senators like Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska to cater to the right wing rather than to the center of the electorate. And it was souring voters on politics. Murdoch has the statistics at her fingertips: In 2020, just 10 percent of Americans effectively elected 83 percent of the House. Only 17 percent of general elections for House seats were competitive.“What I hear all the time is that there are people who want to work on legislation, but they can’t before their primary, because they are terrified — and particularly if there’s an extreme Trumpy candidate or something like that,” Murdoch said. “They’re terrified of being seen as bipartisan. And that’s absolutely the wrong thing for the American people.”Murdoch says she now sees a “clear path” to fixing what ails American democracy, even if it takes years. A big part of the solution, in her view, is getting rid of partisan primaries altogether.On that much, advocates agree — though they may differ on the remedy required.In addition to Murdoch, several other donors have bankrolled the idea of eliminating partisan primaries. John and Laura Arnold, a billionaire couple from Texas, are big financial backers. So is Mike Novogratz, a Wall Street financier. Katherine Gehl, the former chief executive of a food company and co-author of “The Politics Industry,” a political reform manifesto, is an influential proponent.“How can we take that weapon away from people using it for those self-interested, narrow purposes?” Laura Arnold asked in a podcast discussion on partisan primaries with Gehl, who is pushing her own alternative called “final-five voting.”The biggest factor energizing those in the movement to reform American democracy is former President Donald Trump, whose attacks on the integrity of the election system alarmed many donors.Travis Dove for The New York TimesThe Trump factorThe biggest factor energizing advocates is Donald Trump, whose attacks on the integrity of the American election system and endorsements of fringe candidates have alarmed many donors.“After Trump got elected, things started to shift toward structural issues of democracy,” said Lee Drutman, who studies election reform as a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. “And the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was a galvanizing moment.”A separate group, launched by Novogratz, has been enlisting philanthropists to each pledge 1 percent of their net worth toward “protecting democracy” and said it had already raised $87 million toward a goal of $250 million in pledges by 2024.Most proposed changes include some variation on ranked-choice voting, a system that allows voters to select their preferred candidates in order. New York City used the system in its Democratic primary for mayor last year, to great media fanfare — a breakout moment for what previously had been an obscure cause promoted by a small and scattered group of activists.Before then, ranked-choice proponents had notched a few quieter wins. In Maine, voters pushed through a ballot initiative in 2016 to become the first state to allow the system in elections for federal office. Alaska followed in 2020 with a similar ballot initiative, and 51 cities across the country have adopted ranked choice in some form or another.Proponents of ranked-choice voting argue it will make campaigns more civil, save money, lessen the polarization that is poisoning American politics and give voters more choices. And while the data is still out on many of those claims, surveys do show that voters tend to like it.One detractor has been Sherrie Swensen, the clerk of Salt Lake County, Utah, a state that has embraced ranked-choice voting in municipal elections. Swensen, whose position includes overseeing elections, said the system was “very complex to implement,” as it took weeks to figure out how to design new ballots.The democracy lobbyMurdoch is plowing resources and much of her energy into Unite America, a collection of groups that backs organizations, campaigns and candidates that support her reform goals. Unite America is meant to be a “cross-partisan” meeting ground for donors and activists, she said. “It’s a group of people,” Murdoch added with a chuckle, “with a wide variety of reasonable opinions.”Its executive director is Nick Troiano, a 32-year-old activist who ran for office as an independent in Pennsylvania at 24. Troiano has recruited a staff of hard-nosed political operatives from both parties, hoping to develop a cadre of seasoned campaigners who can steer investments and advise ballot initiatives in new states.“One thing that we’ve learned is we have to professionalize running these campaigns, and some of the best political talent that’s out there is sometimes locked up in the parties,” Troiano said.Murdoch and Merrill have also invested in Citizen Data, a nonpartisan outfit that provides voter information and analytical tools to groups that don’t have access to the two parties’ vast data resources.In the short term, Troiano expects what he calls “the primary problem” to get worse before it gets better. He noted that only a few dozen House seats are expected to be competitive this year, according to the Cook Political Report, even though redistricting has shaped up to be more balanced than many expected.“The important thing is to take on the winner-take-all mind-set in American politics,” said Rob Ritchie, the head of FairVote, a nonpartisan election reform group. Ritchie predicts that between five and 10 states will be using some version of ranked-choice voting for presidential primaries by 2024, along with dozens more cities.Unite America’s official goals are somewhat more modest: help at least four new states start nonpartisan primaries and ranked choice in federal elections by 2024, using the Alaska model. Along with Alaska, several other states have already been largely “liberated” from partisan primaries, in Troiano’s estimation: California, Louisiana, Nebraska and Washington.Over the long term, Murdoch says, she is starting to feel more optimistic about American politics.“When you’re outside of it, it’s very easy to be completely depressed and cynical and say, ‘It can never get fixed. There’s too much money involved. It’s all going to hell in a handbasket,’” Murdoch said. “But from the inside, if you join in and actually start doing it, you realize that we can get it done.”What to read The war in Ukraine has ushered in a new era of foreign policy, aligning the United States more closely with Europe and re-energizing its leadership role, Michael Crowley and Edward Wong report. Here is our live coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Biden are suggesting different midterm slogans, with some vulnerable House Democrats revolting against the name “build back better,” Jonathan Martin reports.American Bridge, the Democratic super PAC, accused Trump of violating campaign-finance law by spending political funds on a 2024 presidential bid without formally declaring himself a candidate, Shane Goldmacher reports.how they runGlenn Youngkin’s victory in the Virginia race for governor last year has been attributed to parents who were upset about the state’s coronavirus response. New data has suggested otherwise. Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesVirginia’s ‘silver surge’Did angry school parents really sway the Virginia governor’s race?A new analysis by the Democratic-aligned firm TargetSmart suggests that conventional wisdom is wrong.Drawing on newly available voting records, the firm found that turnout among voters aged 75 or older went up by 59 percent in 2021 compared with the 2017 election for governor.As for those angry parents, when TargetSmart looked at counties where schools closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, it found no comparable surge for Republicans.“In fact,” TargetSmart’s Tom Bonier writes, “the biggest swings towards Republicans occurred in southwestern Virginia, where schools were open for in-person instruction for most of the year.”None of this means Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s focus on “parents’ rights” and critical race theory in schools did not affect his defeat of former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate. But it does suggest that we should be skeptical of first impressions.Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.— 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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      Just How Liberal Is California? The Answer Matters to Democrats Everywhere.

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      LOS ANGELES — California is awash in money, with so many billions in surplus revenue that the state cannot enact programs fast enough. Democrats hold veto-proof majorities in the Legislature, and Gov. Gavin Newsom has a $25 million campaign war chest to fend off any token opposition in his re-election bid.Yet all is far from tranquil in this sea of blue. Deep fissures divide Democrats, whose control of state government effectively gives them unilateral power to enact programs. As elections approach, intraparty demands, denunciations and purity tests have exposed rifts between progressives and moderates that seem destined to become more vitriolic — and more consequential. We are about to find out just how liberal California is.The answer will shape policy as the most populous state wrestles with conflicts over seemingly intractable problems: too many homeless, too many drug overdoses, too many cars, too many guns, too much poverty. Although some dynamics are peculiar to California, the outcome will also have implications for the parallel debate swirling among national Democrats. Because if progressives here cannot translate their ideology into popular support that wins elections, it will not bode well for their efforts on a national scale.California has long been more centrist than its popular image. The “Mod Squad,” a caucus of moderate Democratic state lawmakers, has had outsize influence for more than a decade. As the Republican Party became increasingly marginal, business interests that had traditionally backed Republican candidates realized they could have more influence by supporting conservative Democrats. That paradigm accelerated with the shift to a system in which the top two finishers in a primary advance to the general election, regardless of party affiliation. Designed to promote more centrist candidates from both parties, it often results in face-offs between two Democrats.A contest emblematic of the California divide is unfolding in Los Angeles. From a crowded field of mayoral candidates, the two most likely to advance offer a stark contrast: Representative Karen Bass, a stalwart liberal embraced for both her politics and her background in community organizing, and the billionaire developer Rick Caruso, who has sounded the familiar refrain that it’s time for a businessman to clean up the failures of the political class. In a bow to the overwhelmingly Democratic electorate, Mr. Caruso, best known for his high-end shopping malls, recently changed his registration from no party preference to Democrat — even though the race is nonpartisan. For her part, Ms. Bass has called for freeing up more police officers for patrol (and hiring replacements for administrative duties) and equivocated on abolishing cash bail, positions that alarmed some of her natural allies.It is hard to know just how much the pandemic, on top of the Trump years, has scrambled the political calculus. We have traffic jams at the ports that rival those on the roads, restaurant tables where cars once parked, hotels that catered to tourists now sheltering the homeless. Anger over closed schools and mask mandates has triggered a record number of recalls (most notably the landslide that recalled three San Francisco school board members, on which progressives and moderates agreed). In the far northern county of Shasta, a group including members of a local militia won control of the board of supervisors by recalling a Republican ex-police chief who had not been sufficiently anti-mask or pro-gun. A prominent anti-Trump Republican consultant called the vote a “canary in a coal mine” for the direction of his state party.If mask and vaccine mandates have become the litmus test for the far right, the left has chosen as its defining issue a far more complex — but seemingly unattainable — goal: single-payer health care. When a bill (with an estimated price of more than $300 billion a year) made it to the Assembly floor, progressives threatened to deny party support to any Democrat who voted no. Far short of the necessary yes votes, the sponsor, Ash Kalra of San Jose, a progressive Democrat, pulled the bill rather than force a vote that could be used against his colleagues. He was pilloried as a traitor by activists.The Working Families Party, which has pushed for progressive priorities in the New York State Legislature, recently established a branch in California in hopes of having similar influence and endorsing and supporting progressive Democrats. The group’s state director, Jane Kim, a former San Francisco supervisor who lost the 2018 mayoral race to the moderate London Breed and then helped Bernie Sanders win the California primary, argues that the state’s electorate is more liberal than its elected officials, who are beholden to the influence of large corporate donors. Still, in the 2020 general election — with a record-setting turnout — voters defeated almost all ballot initiatives that were priorities of the progressives, opting not to restore affirmative action, nor impose higher taxes on commercial and industrial properties, nor abolish cash bail, nor expand rent control.In the arena of criminal justice, where voters and lawmakers have consistently made progressive changes in recent years, the growing concern about crime (some justified by data and some not) will soon test the commitment to move away from draconian sentences and mass incarceration. The conservative Sacramento district attorney, Anne Marie Schubert, is running for state attorney general on the slogan “Stop the Chaos,” tying her opponent, the incumbent Rob Bonta, to what she calls “rogue prosecutors” like the progressive district attorneys in Los Angeles and San Francisco, who are targets of recall campaigns.In June, San Franciscans will decide whether to recall District Attorney Chesa Boudin, a referendum on his performance as well as a vote that moderates have framed as a cornerstone of the fight to “take back” their city from progressives. In a city decidedly less liberal than its reputation, Mayor Breed has referred to members of the board of supervisors as “a very, very extremely left group of people.”With near-record office turnover — a result of reapportionment, term limits, frustration and fatigue — the winners of the coming elections will collectively reshape the political landscape for many years. A quarter of the 120 state legislative districts will have new representatives next year, and among those departing are some of the most influential lawmakers.It would be nice to think that change will usher in a new generation of leaders, one that builds on the excitement and enthusiasm generated, especially among young people, by the 2020 Sanders campaign. It is hard not to root for young activists. They will live or die with the consequences of decisions being made today on air, water, housing, schools.In a recent poll, young adults who were asked the most pressing issue for the governor and Legislature to work on this year were twice as likely as those over 35 to cite jobs and the economy, and were far less concerned about crime. They were also more optimistic, with more than half saying California was headed in the right direction.The pandemic might yet prove to be the disruption needed to trigger big political shifts, comparable with those triggered in the arena of jobs and work. So far, it seems to have driven people further into their corners. The next generation will have to find a way to fill in that hollowed-out middle, just as they will have to bridge the ever-growing chasms in wealth, which in turn drive so much of the political divide.Miriam Pawel (@miriampawel) is the author of “The Browns of California: The Family Dynasty That Transformed a State and Shaped a Nation.”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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      Could Iowa and New Hampshire Lose First Spots in Primary Calendar?

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      After complaints about disenfranchisement and logistical snafus, the party is reconsidering Iowa and New Hampshire’s coveted spots in the presidential nominating process.For years, Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire have battled criticism from others in the party who argued that the two states are not racially diverse enough to kick off the Democratic nomination process.But after a disastrous 2020 cycle, in which Iowa officials struggled to tabulate votes and neither state proved predictive of President Biden’s eventual victory, Democratic leaders are exploring with new urgency whether to strip the two states of what has been a priceless political entitlement: their traditional perch at the start of the party’s presidential calendar.Several ideas are expected to be heard on Friday by the Democratic National Committee’s rules and bylaws committee, which governs the nominating process. One calls for an application process for states based on several criteria, including diversity. Another idea, raised at a meeting in January, would consolidate all four of the current early-voting states — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — into a single first voting day before Super Tuesday.The debate has taken on new urgency in response to a steady drumbeat of criticism by activists, elected officials and some members of the rules and bylaws committee. The concerns raised include fears that Iowa’s caucus system disenfranchises some voters and that neither Iowa nor New Hampshire is racially diverse enough to act as a stand-in for the Democratic voting base.In the last election cycle, logistical challenges including late-arriving votes and inaccurate data also highlighted the shortcomings of Iowa’s caucus process and muddied its ability to name a winner.“To me it’s not about one state, it’s not about punishing,” said Mo Elleithee, a former spokesman for the Democratic National Committee and for Hillary Clinton who serves on the rules and bylaws committee.“We have a chance to show our values in our process,” Mr. Elleithee said. “Diversity, inclusion, and, given the job of the D.N.C. is to elect Democrats, by putting our people in front of as many battleground states as possible.”Members of the rules and bylaws committee, several of whom did not respond to requests for comment, have been told to expect to work on the issue throughout the summer with the intention of setting a firm nomination calendar by the fall.“We are not close to making a decision,” said Donna Brazile, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee who also serves on the rules and bylaws committee. On Friday, she said, “we start the conversation.”In 2020, Joseph R. Biden Jr. became the first Democrat since Bill Clinton in 1992 to win the party’s presidential nomination without winning either the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primaries.David Degner for The New York TimesIn January, during a virtual meeting of the same body, Mr. Elleithee and others made the case for overhauling the nominating calendar and were met with relatively little pushback — which some members took as a sign that even the delegations from Iowa and New Hampshire recognized that some change may be inevitable.State officials in Iowa and New Hampshire have fiercely resisted previous proposals to downgrade their primacy in the party’s nominating calendar, publicly and privately whipping allies to their side, but they have not yet begun to do so, according to committee members. Still, they said that any change to the system would be expected to demonstrate the party’s acknowledgment of the importance of smaller states and rural voters.Scott Brennan, an Iowan who sits on the rules and bylaws committee, did not respond to a request for comment but argued after the January meeting that Iowa’s small-state status has allowed barrier-breaking politicians to thrive.“Barack Obama was able to come to Iowa, the little-known senator from Illinois, and ultimately become the nominee,” Mr. Brennan said then.Mr. Brennan also referenced Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., who is now the secretary of transportation. When Iowa’s caucuses were eventually tabulated in 2020, Mr. Buttigieg became the first openly gay candidate to win a presidential primary or caucus, with a narrow victory over Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.“Folks like that have chances to really shine,” Mr. Brennan said. “If Iowa is not first in the process, I think that goes away.”Ms. Brazile, who in 2000 became the first Black woman to direct a major presidential campaign, said the party benefited when states like Nevada and South Carolina were added to the early nominating schedule to improve the representation of Black and Latino voters.Supporters in South Carolina waited to meet President Biden before the state’s Democratic primary in February 2020.Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times“It’s very important that our primary calendar reflect those values,” Ms. Brazile said at the rules and bylaws committee meeting in January. “We need to thank South Carolina and Nevada for giving us quality nominees over the years. That diversity has uplifted the party and also the values we hold as American citizens.”Previous efforts to change the nomination calendar to minimize the importance of Iowa and New Hampshire have hit political roadblocks. Ambitious elected officials, often eyeing the next presidential cycle, have sought to avoid upsetting state officials in Iowa and New Hampshire, who have historically guarded their first-in-the-nation status with extreme urgency. Presidents have often felt indebted to voters in those states, quelling criticisms before they reach the highest levels of the party.But Mr. Biden owes no such obligation. In 2020, he became the first Democrat since Bill Clinton in 1992 to win the party’s presidential nomination without winning either in Iowa or New Hampshire. On the night of the New Hampshire primary — where Mr. Biden finished fifth — he fled to South Carolina and argued against the importance of Iowa and New Hampshire, highlighting the dearth of Black voters in those states as a reason the results should be downplayed.“Tonight, I’ve just heard from the first two states, not all the nation,” Mr. Biden said at the time. “Up till now, we haven’t heard from the most committed constituency in the Democratic Party — the African American community.”He went on to win the South Carolina primary in a landslide. More

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      In South Carolina, Nikki Haley Finds Some Distance from Trump

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      Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, used a well-timed endorsement of Representative Nancy Mace to get on the opposite side of the former president.WASHINGTON — Rumors were swirling in South Carolina early this February that Donald J. Trump would try to tear down a Republican congresswoman who had incurred his wrath.Then Nikki Haley, his former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina’s former governor, made her move.On Feb. 7, Ms. Haley endorsed the congresswoman, Representative Nancy Mace, jumping ahead of Mr. Trump, who backed Ms. Mace’s rival two days later. The timing of Ms. Haley’s move was widely viewed as deliberate — allowing her to exert her influence in the race without directly challenging Mr. Trump’s judgment.“Nikki’s very smart — it’d never occur to me that she doesn’t know exactly what she’s doing,” said South Carolina’s treasurer, Curtis Loftis. “If the political winds change for President Trump, she’s prepared to be there, and this is part of that.”Mr. Trump will be in Florence, S.C., on Saturday to rally his faithful behind Ms. Mace’s primary challenger, Katie Arrington, and another pro-Trump Republican, Russell Fry, who is challenging Representative Tom Rice, one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach the former president for inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Mr. Fry and Ms. Arrington will share the stage, along with several conservative luminaries, including Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina and Drew McKissick, the state’s Republican Party chairman. Ms. Haley will not be there.To Republicans in the state, Ms. Haley is playing a shrewd and careful game by seeming to distance herself from Mr. Trump and yet continuing to embrace him at the same time.Just after the attack on the Capitol last year, Ms. Haley pronounced herself “disgusted” with her former boss, but since then, she has been trying to get back in his good graces. She has been appearing on television to say that the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, would have never invaded Ukraine if Mr. Trump were still president. She has endorsed and raised funds for many pro-Trump candidates, while staying out of some of the races where he has endorsed challengers.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.But in the case of Ms. Mace, backing her early on was a way for Ms. Haley to get on the right side of Republican politics in her home state, in case Mr. Trump’s endorsements falter — and he falters with them. In South Carolina, where the former governor remains popular, the state’s early primary has often been decisive to presidential nominations; Ms. Haley and other Republicans in Mr. Trump’s shadow are positioning for possible presidential bids in 2024.“South Carolina is a hugely influential political state,” said Matt Moore, a Republican campaign consultant and former party chairman in the state. “The stakes are high, and the foundations are being set for the next decade. You want to have folks on your team.”In her first speech in Congress, Representative Nancy Mace said the House needed to “hold the president accountable” for the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, but she voted against Mr. Trump’s impeachment.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMs. Haley declined to be interviewed. But her aides said her endorsement of Ms. Mace had nothing to do with rumors of a pending endorsement for Ms. Arrington from Mr. Trump.“Ambassador Haley’s endorsement of Congresswoman Mace was based entirely on her record as a tough-as-nails conservative on national security, the border, law enforcement and opposing mandates on our kids,” Chaney Denton, a Haley spokeswoman, said.Ms. Haley is not shying away now. She headlined a fund-raiser Friday afternoon for Ms. Mace at The Harbour Club in Charleston, S.C., that raised around $300,000 as Mr. Trump’s forces gathered upstate.“Jumping in the middle of this and holding a fund-raiser when President Trump is coming down here? That isn’t keeping your powder dry. That’s loading up your gun,” said Katon Dawson, a former Republican Party chairman in South Carolina.Mr. Trump has endorsed only eight Republican challengers to sitting House Republicans, and two of them are in South Carolina. Ms. Mace, a freshman who made her name as the first female cadet to graduate from The Citadel, a military college in Charleston, is unlike most of Mr. Trump’s incumbent targets.In her first speech in Congress in January 2021, Ms. Mace said the House needed to “hold the president accountable” for the Capitol attack, but she voted against his impeachment. She also opposed the creation of a bipartisan commission to investigate the attack, another vote that Mr. Trump has used to determine his endorsements.But Ms. Mace has been steadfast in saying that Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election. When he endorsed Ms. Arrington, Mr. Trump declared Ms. Mace “an absolutely terrible candidate” whose “remarks and attitude have been devastating for her community, and not at all representative of the Republican Party to which she has been very disloyal.”Representative Katie Arrington beat then-Representative Mark Sanford in the 2018 Republican primary, after she ran with Mr. Trump’s endorsement.Kathryn Ziesig/The Post And Courier, via Associated PressRussell Fry, a state representative, is challenging U.S. Representative Tom Rice, one of the few Republicans who voted to impeach Donald J. Trump. Mr. Trump is backing Mr. Fry in the primary.Jeffrey Collins/Associated PressMs. Mace then appeared in front of Trump Tower in Manhattan to praise the former president’s record and policies, saying, “If you want to lose this seat once again in a midterm election cycle to Democrats, then my opponent is more than qualified to do just that.”Mr. Trump will not be assuaged. On Friday, he said in a statement he “will be honoring Katie Arrington, who is running against the absolutely horrendous Nancy Mace,” predicting “big crowds at the Florence Regional Airport.”Ms. Mace, though, might have a point. In 2018, Ms. Arrington beat then-Representative Mark Sanford in the Republican primary after he emerged as one of the few anti-Trump Republicans in Congress. But Ms. Arrington then lost to a Democrat, Joe Cunningham. In 2020, Mr. Cunningham then lost to Ms. Mace.Further complicating matters, Ms. Arrington, the chief information security officer for acquisition and sustainment at the Department of Defense, was placed on leave last June over a suspected leak of classified information from the National Security Agency, a situation that has not gone unnoticed by Ms. Mace’s campaign.Republican officials in South Carolina said Ms. Arrington may have tipped Ms. Haley off about jumping into the primary race. Ms. Arrington was among a small group of South Carolina Republicans who visited Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago the weekend of Feb. 5. When she heard he was going to endorse Mr. Fry, she began letting Republicans know widely that she, too, would be entering a race, with Mr. Trump’s endorsement.Ms. Haley endorsed Ms. Mace on Feb. 7. Ms. Arrington announced her primary challenge on Feb. 8. Mr. Trump endorsed Ms. Arrington on Feb. 9.Ms. Haley is no Trump foe. Most of her endorsements have gone to Trump-favored candidates. She endorsed on Thursday the re-election of Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, and cut a fund-raising video with Herschel Walker, the former football star recruited by Mr. Trump to run for the Senate in Georgia.She pointedly has not endorsed Mr. Rice for re-election. Mr. Dawson, the former state party chairman, said Ms. Haley’s campaigning for Mr. Rice in 2012 made all the difference in his victory over the former lieutenant governor, André Bauer, in the Republican primary. But Mr. Rice’s district on the North Carolina border is far more Trump country than Ms. Mace’s affluent, highly educated district that touches Charleston and hugs the Lowcountry coast.Ms. Arrington is still talking confidently.“The Lowcountry wants a pro-Trump America First conservative to represent them,” her spokesman, Chris D’Anna, said. “Nancy knows that, indicated by her tucking her tail between her legs as she flew to New York City to shoot an apology video in front of Trump Tower.”Austin McCubbin, Ms. Mace’s campaign manager, responded, “Our opponent has proven two things — she’s the only Republican to lose this district in 40 years, and she will say just about anything.”Mr. Sanford, the former congressman whom Ms. Arrington defeated in 2018, said Ms. Haley had nothing to lose. Once Ms. Haley expressed her anger over Jan. 6, she would never get back in his good graces, he said, speaking from experience.“There’s really no way forward for her,” Mr. Sanford said of Ms. Haley. “Trump is a guy who holds decided grudges and doesn’t let them go. She doesn’t want to do anything to alienate his base, but where she can find things that appeal to that mass of Republicans that don’t feel they have a home, she’ll grab it.” More

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      The Young Progressive Lawyer at the Center of a Marquee Texas Runoff

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      Jessica Cisneros had the backing of national progressive leaders, a cramped campaign headquarters and the help of her father. She’s now taking on Representative Henry Cuellar in a runoff in May.LAREDO, Texas — Just a few years ago, Jessica Cisneros was an intern in Henry Cuellar’s congressional office. Now, the representative’s former intern has forced the nine-term incumbent into a runoff, providing progressives with an opening to oust a powerful moderate Democrat and upend South Texas politics.The runoff election on May 24 — the same day Ms. Cisneros turns 29 — will be a rematch more than two years in the making. In 2020, she came within 2,700 votes of beating Mr. Cuellar in the Democratic primary. Her father and volunteers drove through the district after she lost, picking up her campaign signs. They held onto many of those signs knowing there might be a sequel. So some of her signs from 2020 are out on the streets again in Laredo in 2022, with the old election date painted over.“We knew from the very beginning this was going to be a very tough election,” Ms. Cisneros said Wednesday morning, speaking to a crush of reporters who squeezed into her one-room campaign headquarters, a Laredo storefront tucked between a snack stand and Mexican bakery. “We deserve a lot more than what we’re being offered. And I’m really glad that over half of the voters agree that it’s time for new leadership.”Volunteers at the Cisneros campaign headquarters in Laredo.Jason Garza for The New York TimesMs. Cisneros’s success in forcing Mr. Cuellar into a runoff was one of the most striking results of Tuesday’s primary election in Texas, the first of the 2022 midterm season. In Texas primaries, any candidate who finishes below 50 percent faces the No. 2 vote-getter in a runoff. As of Wednesday evening, Mr. Cuellar had won 48.4 percent of the vote, Ms. Cisneros had 46.9 percent and another liberal candidate, Tannya Benavides, had 4.7 percent.Though she has frequently been compared to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York — the two campaigned together in San Antonio last month — Ms. Cisneros is no firebrand. While she pushes for many of the same progressive policies as Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, including the Green New Deal and a $15 federal minimum wage, Ms. Cisneros has campaigned heavily on what she describes as more bread-and-butter issues in this border district — jobs and health care.The results from Tuesday showed the ideological and geographic split among South Texas Democrats.The congressional district stretches from the edge of San Antonio to Laredo and to rural counties along the southern border. Ms. Cisneros performed best in the northern reaches of the district that are farthest from the border, beating Mr. Cuellar in Bexar County, which includes San Antonio. But she lost to him in Webb County, which includes Laredo, and in the more rural areas closer to the border, including Zapata and Starr Counties. The newly redrawn district lines included more of liberal San Antonio and appeared to help Cisneros.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsPrimaries Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the midterm election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.The politics of South Texas do not fit easily into national norms. Senator Bernie Sanders won several parts of the district in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. But at the same time, Donald J. Trump dramatically improved his performance with voters in the larger South Texas region in the 2020 general election. That shift has alarmed many Democrats, who warn that Latino voters along the border are increasingly skewing to the right.Ms. Cisneros has dismissed those views, arguing that the area is seen as conservative largely because Mr. Cuellar helps perpetuate the idea. Mr. Cuellar, in turn, has criticized Ms. Cisneros’ endorsements from political leaders outside Texas, including Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.“South Texas is its own district,” Ms. Cisneros said in an interview in 2019 with The Laredo Morning Times. “We are placed in a very unique spot in terms of politics and also geographically, being right here on the border. But fundamentally I think the big issues are being able to address things like poverty — the rampant poverty that we have here on the border — health care access and the jobs issue.”Jessica Cisneros campaigning with her father, Jose Luis Cisneros.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesLike Mr. Cuellar, Ms. Cisneros is the child of immigrants from Mexico.Her parents moved to the United States before she was born, after their older daughter needed serious medical care. Her father worked in agriculture and later opened a small trucking company. After growing up in Laredo and graduating as the valedictorian from Early College High School, Ms. Cisneros moved to Austin to attend the University of Texas and went on to law school there, focusing on immigration law.During the campaign, Ms. Cisneros has frequently referred to her work as an immigration lawyer, citing her efforts helping asylum seekers who were stuck at the border under the Trump administration’s Remain in Mexico policy.She has frequently relied on immigration to contrast herself with Mr. Cuellar, who has been an outspoken critic of President Biden on the issue. Mr. Cuellar has said the president has been too lax on border security and has not done enough to listen to the views of Border Patrol agents. Ms. Cisneros has said she supports overhauling decades-old laws that make up the immigration and deportation system.But for all the divisive issues that have helped define her campaign nationally, many voters who supported her were simply focused on a change in leadership, particularly as Mr. Cuellar faces an F.B.I. investigation.On Tuesday night, Ms. Cisneros and her supporters gathered outdoors behind a Laredo strip mall, cheering each time the vote tally showed her edging out Mr. Cuellar. That lead had eroded by the time she took the stage just after 11 p.m., but the mood hardly dampened. It was unclear at that hour whether she had earned enough votes to force a runoff.Standing in front of her parents, sister and niece, Ms. Cisneros assured the crowd, in both English and Spanish, that she was confident she would win. “Tonight, tomorrow or in May,” she said. More