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      Trump v. DeSantis: Does the Florida Governor Really Have a Shot?

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      In early 2016, as Jeb Bush floundered, the Republican establishment began to throw its support behind a different politician from Florida who seemed as if he could defeat the upstart Donald Trump. Senator Marco Rubio was 44 and handsome, and had put together a somewhat impressive legislative record during his five years in office. National Review called Rubio a “Republican dream” and hedge fund managers were donating millions to his campaign. Trump led comfortably in the polls, but it was still early, as G.O.P. insiders reminded us, and they still hadn’t put their thumbs fully on the scale. We all know how the story ends: Rubio wasn’t able to mount any sort of credible challenge to Trump and withdrew after just a few months.Today, we are hearing about yet another Florida politician in his early 40s — Gov. Ron DeSantis — who, according to many of those same establishment figures, will collect a vast majority of support from donors. And he is already the subject of plenty of positive media coverage. The headlines about DeSantis are eerily similar to those about Rubio in 2016: “The Rise of Ron DeSantis,” “Why Never-Trumpers Should Bet on DeSantis Now” and “Looks Like Ron DeSantis Could Turn Into Trump’s Personal Nightmare.” If DeSantis runs for president, his job won’t be so much to win the presidency on his own merits, but rather to stop Donald Trump.How seriously should we take DeSantis’s chances?Trump holds sizable margins in pretty much every poll you can find, but some of the numbers are tightening. Last week, the polling firm Echelon Insights published a raft of data on the Florida governor. It found that Trump’s lead over DeSantis among G.O.P. voters, which, according to its own poll, was 62 percent to 22 percent of respondents in October, had shrunk to 57 percent to 32 percent as of late January. Perhaps the most compelling bit of information Echelon found was that while 54 percent of Republicans thought “Trump was a great president and should remain the leader of the Republican Party,” 22 percent said Trump “was a great president but it is time for the Republican Party to find a new leader” and 18 percent said Trump “was not a great president and the Republican Party would be better off without his influence.” Which means that 40 percent of G.O.P. voters are at least open to the possibility of someone new.So things, perhaps, aren’t quite as locked up as they might appear, Kristen Soltis Anderson, a co-founder of Echelon Insights, told me. When asked whether Trump should run again, many of the respondents to her poll showed “a shocking level of ambivalence” to that question, she said. These people were not never-Trumpers or center-of-right Republicans; they were people who had thought Trump had done a good job but also now believed that it might be time for a fresh voice.These polls, of course, measure sentiment at a fixed moment in time. Given that, it’s difficult to know exactly what to make of a seeming growing hesitancy among Republican voters about Trump, or, for that matter, what it says about DeSantis’s shot.What’s clearer is that Trump has some built-in advantages that are unlikely to change.When the election machine truly kicks in, Trump will no doubt garner a vast majority of the media attention once again. He obviously enjoys unrivaled name recognition. And Trump’s absence from office this term could give him an edge because he has not had to take the blame for what now feels like an endless pandemic. That burden has mostly been shouldered by Joe Biden and can explain, in large part, the president’s tanking approval numbers.Plus, a December University of Massachusetts Amherst poll found that only 21 percent of Republicans thought that Joe Biden won a legitimate victory in 2020, a number that hasn’t budged much over time. There’s also some evidence that shows that G.O.P. voters who think the election was illegitimate appear more likely to vote.When all these things are considered, DeSantis, then, should be seen more as a primary challenger to a popular incumbent. Nobody since the advent of the modern-day presidential primary has successfully unseated an incumbent for the nomination.There’s also a question of timing at play here. DeSantis’s recent rise to national prominence has come from his handling of the pandemic — he has become the loudest anti-lockdown voice in the national conversation and can point to his repeated refusal to shut down his state. This might be a popular stance in 2022, but it’s hard to imagine how it will play in two years. If Covid is shutting down schools and businesses in two years, we will most likely be looking at a vastly different country. If we have returned to some semblance of normalcy, it’s quite possible that nobody will really care how DeSantis handled the pandemic.Anderson believes that DeSantis’s success comes in large part from his willingness to fight, a trait that Trump, of course, also possesses. While she thinks that DeSantis has a chance, she also pointed to the former Wisconsin governor and presidential candidate Scott Walker as a cautionary tale. “Walker is an interesting example of someone who captured the conservative imagination because he was fighting with the teachers unions, and he was standing strong against those Democratic legislators,” Anderson said. “And yet, when push came to shove, that effort fizzled out. And so if you’re DeSantis, you want to avoid that path of being someone who gets a lot of attention and a lot of interest because, hey, you were fighting the right fights at the right time against the right people.” This approach works to a certain extent, Anderson said, but there are also times when things just don’t translate onto the national stage.DeSantis’s stances on Covid have garnered him a reasonable amount of national name recognition. Last month, a Reuters poll found that 80 percent of Republican voters had at least heard of him. If this were a normal Republican election run-up, DeSantis would probably be leading right now: An Echelon Insights poll from December that did not include Trump found that DeSantis comfortably led all other potential G.O.P. nominees. But Trump’s path to power is littered with the campaigns of other upstart Republican candidates who checked off all the right boxes and got along well with the establishment. Is it really reasonable to think DeSantis’s fate will be any different?Have feedback? Send a note to kang-newsletter@nytimes.com.Jay Caspian Kang (@jaycaspiankang), a writer for Opinion and The New York Times Magazine, is the author of “The Loneliest Americans.” More

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      Republicans Who Voted to Impeach Trump Out-Raised Primary Rivals

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      Despite their pariah status in their party, House Republicans who broke with the former president have raised more than their G.O.P. foes.WASHINGTON — All seven House Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald J. Trump and are seeking re-election have out-raised their primary opponents, many of whom have received Mr. Trump’s backing, according to campaign disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission this week.In Wyoming, Representative Liz Cheney, who was all but exiled by her party for bluntly condemning Mr. Trump’s false election claims and has emerged as one of the lead lawmakers on the special committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, raked in $2 million during the last quarter, entering 2022 with nearly $5 million in cash on hand. Her opponent, Harriet Hageman, who has drawn the vociferous support of Mr. Trump and his family, raised $443,000 last quarter and has about $380,000 cash on hand.Representative Fred Upton, a centrist who has held his seat in southwest Michigan for more than three decades, brought in $726,000 and has about $1.5 million cash on hand, well ahead of the challenger Mr. Trump has endorsed, Steve Carra, a state representative who raised $134,000 last quarter and has $200,000 cash on hand.Joe Kent, a Trump-backed Army Special Forces veteran prolific on social media and conservative talk shows, appeared to come closer to matching the fund-raising totals of his opponent, Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, but still trailed her in both quarterly hauls and cash on hand.The disclosures illustrate the foothold that establishment conservatives and well-funded political action committees still hold among the party’s donor class, despite Mr. Trump’s continuing grip on the Republican base. They also reflect how the former president’s endorsements, which he has dangled as threats over Republican lawmakers he deems insufficiently loyal to him, have yet to translate into significant donations for the candidates he backs.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.Trump vs. DeSantis: Tensions between the ex-president and Florida governor show the challenge confronting the G.O.P. in 2022.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.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.By contrast, Mr. Trump’s political operation is doing far better than his party in raking in money, having raised more than $51 million in the second half of 2021 and entering 2022 with more than double the cash on hand of the Republican National Committee.“The massive fund-raising hauls of some of these incumbents reflects a lot of people’s support for the positions they took,” said Alex Conant, a veteran Republican political strategist. “There’s only a handful of them, but they have a huge donor pool to draw from. And Trump has always struggled to translate his political capital to others.”Even with their hulking war chests, the Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump last year for his role in inciting the Capitol riot are expected to face grueling primary battles after inflaming the wrath of conservative voters. Some may still opt to retire, joining three of their colleagues who also voted to impeach Mr. Trump and already said they would not run for re-election in 2022.Mr. Upton said in a statement on Wednesday that he saw his fund-raising numbers as evidence of a “hunger for restoring civility and solving pressing problems” that was “resonating with people across America,” but added that he was still deliberating over whether he would run for re-election.Some of the financial disparities reflect straggling primary fields that have yet to be narrowed or candidates who only decided recently to enter their races. In South Carolina, for example, Mr. Trump endorsed a primary challenger to Representative Tom Rice on Tuesday, elevating Russell Fry, a state representative, over Graham Allen, a conservative media personality who had raised the most money in a crowded primary. Mr. Rice’s latest disclosure showed him with five times as much cash on hand as Mr. Allen.“Congressman Tom Rice of South Carolina, the coward who abandoned his constituents by caving to Nancy Pelosi and the radical left, and who actually voted against me on impeachment hoax #2, must be thrown out of office ASAP,” Mr. Trump wrote in his endorsement.Mr. Rice shot back with a retort of his own: “I’m glad he’s chosen someone. All the pleading to Mar-a-Lago was getting a little embarrassing. I’m all about Trump’s policy. But absolute pledge of loyalty, to a man that is willing to sack the Capitol to keep his hold on power, is more than I can stomach.”For Trump-backed candidates, more help from the boldfaced names of the party’s right flank is likely on the way. On Tuesday evening, a day after campaigns were required to file their latest Federal Election Commission disclosures, Mr. Kent held a fund-raiser with Mr. Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., at which couples that donated or raised $25,000 were invited to attend a private reception and take a picture with the former president.Mr. Kent has previously complained on Twitter that Ms. Herrera Beutler was “running on America Last PACs not grass roots donations,” referring to big-money political action committees that once dominated campaign fund-raising, rather than the small-dollar contributions that are a growing source of financing for Republican campaigns.But as Ms. Hageman’s fund-raising totals illustrate, Mr. Trump’s backing alone does not guarantee an immediate financial windfall. Mr. Trump has targeted Ms. Cheney as one of his most high-profile detractors in Congress, hammering away at her for months and vowing to depose her. Last month, his son, Donald Trump Jr., joined an elite fund-raiser for Ms. Hageman hosted by tech billionaire Peter Thiel at his Miami compound. The donations raised there were not reflected on the report her campaign submitted this week.Ms. Hageman has chalked up Ms. Cheney’s fund-raising prowess to support from Democrats and out-of-state Republicans. A spokesman for Ms. Hageman’s campaign said she had raised more than half of her funds from within Wyoming.Establishment Republicans have rallied to Ms. Cheney’s side. Former President George W. Bush gave her the maximum donation of $5,800, while Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, and former Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, have each helped raise money for her.Mr. Bush also gave to Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who voted to convict Mr. Trump at his impeachment trial and is also facing a Trump-backed primary challenger. Ms. Murkowski out-raised that challenger, Kelly Tshibaka, raising $1.2 million last quarter, while Ms. Tshibaka raised about $600,000.“If you’d seen 100 Republicans voting to impeach Trump, the donor pool would have been more diluted,” Mr. Conant said. “They’re in a unique position to raise a lot of money.”Rachel Shorey More

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      Hochul Outpaces Foes by Raising Record-High $21.6 Million for Campaign

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      The fund-raising haul positions Gov. Kathy Hochul, who leads her rivals in polls, as a prohibitive favorite to win her first full term as governor of New York in November.Five months after ascending to New York’s highest office, Gov. Kathy Hochul plans to submit filings on Tuesday that show her election campaign has already raised nearly $21.6 million, a record-smashing sum that positions her as the prohibitive favorite to win a full term as governor this fall, and likely the most dominant figure in New York State politics.The filings were expected to show that Ms. Hochul, a Democrat from Buffalo who is the first woman to lead the state, took in roughly $140,000 per day, on average, between her swearing-in last August and last week. She has more than $21 million in cash on hand, according to her campaign.Ms. Hochul’s fund-raising strength has already helped drive her most competitive foil, Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, from the race entirely, and likely played a role in the decision by Bill de Blasio, the former New York City mayor, to announce Tuesday morning that he would forgo a run for governor after months of flirting with it.But the source of some of her donations may also prove to be a liability for Ms. Hochul, complicating the image of a governor who took office in the shadow of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s sexual harassment scandal with a pledge to enact ethics reforms and bring about “a new era of transparency” in Albany.Behind the stunning sums are expected to be a cast of New York’s most well-financed special interest groups, in many cases the same multimillionaires, labor unions and business groups whose checks have bankrolled Democratic politicians, including Mr. Cuomo, for decades and pulled some of them into an ethical morass.Albany lobbying firms jockeyed to hold private fund-raisers for the governor within weeks of her taking office, and have steered clients with business before the state to do the same. Many of the state’s largest landlords have cut five-figure checks. So have builders reliant on massive state-funded infrastructure projects.As if to underscore the threat, the campaign finance reports were due the same day that Ms. Hochul plans to reveal her first budget as governor, a plan that is expected to swell to around $200 billion and include proposals sought by politically active hospitals, the state’s largest health care union, and even the trade group representing liquor stores.A poll of the race released by Siena College on Tuesday showed Ms. Hochul with a commanding lead ahead of June’s Democratic primary and relatively strong reviews from voters for her attempts to overhaul the governor’s office, jump-start New York’s lagging economic recovery, and manage a resurgent outbreak of the coronavirus.Forty-six percent of Democrats said that they would support Ms. Hochul in the primary, compared to 11 percent who said they would back Jumaane Williams, the city’s left-leaning public advocate, and just six percent who said they would support Representative Thomas Suozzi, a Long Island moderate. Twelve percent had said they would support Mr. de Blasio, a progressive with eight years’ worth of experience running the nation’s largest city, before he announced that he would not run.Mr. Williams had not yet disclosed his fund-raising figures as of Tuesday morning. But Mr. Suozzi, who is aggressively challenging Ms. Hochul from her right flank, plans to report on Tuesday that he raised more than $3 million since entering the race in November, and transferred another $2 million from his congressional campaign account, according to Kim Devlin, his senior adviser.Though he trails in the polls, the funds indicated that Mr. Suozzi would have the resources he needs to mount a primary challenge in the near term, and his campaign said it was prepared to announce a slew of new hires.And Republicans, benefiting from a national backlash against Democrats, believe they have a shot at winning a statewide race — something they have not done in New York since 2002.Representative Lee Zeldin, a Long Island Republican, appears to be his party’s current front-runner and was expected to announce a multimillion fund-raising haul on Tuesday. He is competing against Rob Astorino, a former Westchester County executive, and Andrew Giuliani, the son of Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor.The candidates, and any political groups supporting them financially, are required to file a detailed list of their contributions and expenditures with the state’s Board of Elections by the end of Tuesday. Several campaigns, like Ms. Hochul’s, previewed top-line numbers before submitting the paperwork, making it difficult to assess where their money was coming from or how it was being spent.A Guide to the New York Governor’s RaceCard 1 of 5A crowded field. More

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      Anti-Trump Republicans Diverge on 2022 Midterms

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      Disaffected conservatives broke with their party to oust a sitting president. Some still hope to have a say in the G.O.P.’s future.For those Republicans who dare to publicly oppose Donald J. Trump, politics can be a lonely place.Both Jeff Flake, the former Senator from Arizona, and Cindy McCain, the widow of Senator John McCain, landed ambassadorships in the Biden administration, but has anyone heard from the former senator from Tennessee, Bob Corker, lately? As for the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump last year, the former president has succeeded in pushing them out, or else frightened most of the rest into silence, with the fates of a few others — notably, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming — yet to be written.As for the broader network of disaffected Republican strategists and activists who worked to defeat Trump in 2020, the upcoming midterms are highlighting a conundrum: With Trump not on the ballot, what should they be doing in 2022?Some still hope to change the Republican Party from within, while others have determined that the entire institution has become a danger to American democracy. Many are increasingly frustrated, too, with the direction of the Democratic Party and the Biden administration, and have peppered their new allies with advice, both publicly and privately.The result is a Never Trump movement that finds itself splintered as the election season begins, with various groups pursuing their own strategies and no discernible central organizing hub.“I think there’s a fair amount of burnout, to be honest,” said Geoffrey Kabaservice, a historian of the Republican Party and vice president of political studies at the Niskanen Center, a libertarian think tank. Many disaffected Republicans, he added, are “retreating into their cocoons.”The G.O.P.’s congressional leaders, Representative Kevin McCarthy and Senator Mitch McConnell, have toggled between enabling and resisting Trump to various degrees — leading to competing assessments of whether they should be returned to power.Sarah Longwell, a prominent anti-Trump strategist, described her approach to 2022 as “a little from Column A and a little from Column B.” Her group, the Republican Accountability Project, is planning to raise and spend $40 million to bolster “pro-democracy” Republicans and target candidates who say the 2020 election was stolen.Others have decided to focus on supporting Democrats outright, making the argument that a Republican Party led by Trump must be defeated before it can be rebuilt.“People are taking the fight in different directions, and that’s OK,” said Mike Madrid, a co-founder of the defunct Lincoln Project, which supported Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. “Nobody in the Never Trump movement has any idea how this plays out.”The change agentsChristine Todd Whitman, a former governor of New Jersey, is one of the Never Trumpers who have decided to try boosting centrist Republicans — a vanishing breed in a party still dominated by Trump and his allies.Whitman is a co-chair of States United Democracy Center, a bipartisan effort to counter Trump’s attempts to subvert elections, and an adviser to the Renew America Movement, another anti-Trump group led by Miles Taylor, who wrote an anonymous Op-Ed essay in The New York Times while serving as a Department of Homeland Security official in the Trump administration.“​​I’m a Republican, and so I’m hoping that we’re going to be successful in primaries,” Whitman said in an interview, referring to her fellow centrists. Her hope, she added, was to help elect enough moderate Republicans to “give backbone to some of those who want to stand up and just are so afraid of party leadership.”The Senate, however, where Democrats have a stronger chance of preserving their majority, is a different story. There, she’s working to help Democrats “at least so they can push back against some of the worst, the most egregious things that are going to happen in the House,” she explained. In Arizona, for example, she plans to support Senator Mark Kelly, the Democratic incumbent.Asked if she wants Republicans to win congressional majorities, Whitman said, “If we’re going to see the dominance of the far right, no.”Frustration with DemocratsSeveral anti-Trump Republicans expressed exasperation with the left wing of the Democratic Party, which they believe misunderstands the political moment and too often embraces causes, such as defunding the police, that poll badly with swing voters.“I think there’s a lot of angst out there about the Democrats,” said Charlie Sykes, the founder and editor-at-large at The Bulwark, which has become a congregating ground for anti-Trump commentators and activists.In recent months, Sykes and like-minded conservatives have grown despondent over President Biden’s dismal poll numbers and other issues, such as New York City granting noncitizens the right to vote. They have urged Democrats to return to the middle-of-the-road approach that won them the White House in 2020.Describing his message to Democrats, Sykes said: “We are trying to give you tough love because the next two elections are not going to be decided in Burlington, Vt., or the faculty lounge at Oberlin,” the liberal arts college in Ohio. “The fate of democracy is not going to be decided by the MSNBC green room,” he added.Sykes and others fear Republicans and right-leaning independents who voted for Biden last fall will become similarly disillusioned, and usher Trump’s enablers in Congress back to power in November.“Democrats have been renting their loyalty,” Kabaservice, the Republican historian, said of Republican voters who supported Biden. “They don’t own them.”The inside playMike Duhaime, a Republican strategist who has been critical of Trump, argued that abandoning the G.O.P. is shortsighted. “By walking away from the party, you lose influence on what the party is going to look like,” he said.One point in favor of supporting fellow Republicans is to take advantage of the possibility that voters might sour on Trump, said David Weinman, executive director of An America United, an advocacy group founded by supporters of Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland.“Obviously, Trump still has a stranglehold on the party, but things can change quite quickly in politics, in ways you don’t always expect,” Weinman said.It’s too early to say what sort of Republican Party the G.O.P.’s expected takeover of the House might yield. A large class of new freshman Republicans, some speculated, might dilute the influence of pro-Trump members like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and strengthen more moderate lawmakers.Madrid, the Lincoln Project co-founder, described that view as delusional, however. He favors maintaining Democrats in power until the pro-Trump fervor in the G.O.P. subsides.Wait too long to exorcise Trumpism from the Republican Party, he said, and “it’s going to get harder to dig the tick out of the body.”What to readThe Supreme Court blocked President Biden’s vaccine mandate for large employers, though it allowed the administration to require health care workers at facilities receiving federal money to be vaccinated. Adam Liptak dissects the ruling.In a blow to Biden’s agenda, Senator Kyrsten Sinema said she opposed making an exception to the filibuster to pass federal voting rights legislation. “While I continue to support these bills, I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country,” the Arizona Democrat said.The panel investigating the events of Jan. 6 is weighing whether to compel Representative Kevin McCarthy, the top House Republican, to testify. “Congressional investigators have rarely confronted a situation that carries such hefty stakes for their institution,” Luke Broadwater and Charlie Savage write.The F.B.I. arrested Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, on charges of seditious conspiracy for his involvement in the Capitol riot. It’s the first time that prosecutors have invoked “sedition,” Alan Feuer and Adam Goldman note. Last January, Jennifer Schuessler wrote a helpful explainer on the term.Maggie Haberman reports that the Republican National Committee is preparing to break with the Commission on Presidential Debates.Harry S. Truman gave his first news conference as president in 1945.Bettmann, via Getty ImagesOne more thing …It’s been a tough week for President Biden — soaring inflation, setbacks on voting rights and vaccine mandates, lousy poll numbers, a deepening showdown with Russia.Harry S. Truman could relate.During one particularly difficult stretch of his presidency, in July 1946, Truman unloaded his frustrations in a letter to his mother and sister.“Had the most awful day I’ve ever had Tuesday,” he began. “Saw somebody every fifteen minutes on a different subject, held a Cabinet luncheon and spent two solid hours discussing Palestine and got nowhere. Today’s been almost as bad but not quite.”Several days later, he sent another lament to his wife, Bess, back in his native Missouri. “I still have a number of bills staring me in the face,” Truman began, before going into detail on some of his legislative headaches. “It sure is hell to be President.”Is 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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      Ron Johnson, G.O.P. Senator From Wisconsin, Will Seek Re-election

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      The renewed bid for office by Mr. Johnson, who has spread many false claims about the 2020 election and Covid, ensures that both parties will be highly invested in Wisconsin’s 2022 Senate race.WASHINGTON — Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin who over the last year has become the Senate’s leading purveyor of misinformation about elections and the coronavirus pandemic, announced Sunday that he would seek re-election to a third term.Mr. Johnson, 66, had pledged to step aside after two terms but opened the door to a third shortly before the 2020 presidential election. His entry into the race is certain to focus enormous attention on Wisconsin, a narrowly divided political battleground where Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, faces his own difficult re-election bid in a race that may determine control of the state’s election systems ahead of the 2024 presidential contest.“Today, I am announcing I will continue to fight for freedom in the public realm by running for re-election,” Mr. Johnson wrote in an essay published Sunday in The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Johnson’s decision follows an announcement Saturday from another Senate Republican weighing retirement, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, that he would seek a fourth term.The Wisconsin Senate contest is expected to be among the tightest in the country. Mr. Johnson is loathed by Democrats and has attracted a double-digit field of challengers vying to take him on in the general election. Local Democrats have been raising money for nearly a year to build a turnout machine for the 2022 midterm elections.When Mr. Johnson first entered politics in 2010 as a self-funding chief executive of a plastics company founded by his wife’s family, he defined himself as a citizen legislator in contrast with Senator Russ Feingold, a Democrat who had been in public office for 28 years. Mr. Johnson was carried into office by that year’s Tea Party wave, then beat Mr. Feingold again in 2016 as Donald J. Trump became the first Republican presidential nominee to win Wisconsin in 32 years.All along, Mr. Johnson pledged to serve no more than 12 years in the Senate, but he began to privately reconsider after the 2018 elections, when Democrats took back control of the House of Representatives and won narrow victories in Wisconsin’s statewide elections. He wrote Sunday that when he made reiterated his two-term pledge during his 2016 race he didn’t anticipate “the Democrats’ complete takeover of government and the disastrous policies they have already inflicted on America and the world.” Suddenly the leader of Wisconsin Republicans and the lone G.O.P. official elected to statewide office, Mr. Johnson wavered on his pledge as he became the subject of an intense lobbying campaign from Republicans in both Wisconsin and Washington. They argued that if he did not run again, the party would jeopardize a seat that could tilt the balance of the Senate in 2023.Mr. Johnson wrote that he was seeking a new term because “I believe America is in peril,” adding: “Much as I’d like to ease into a quiet retirement, I don’t feel I should.”This year, Mr. Johnson has been at the forefront of the two strongest strains of misinformation coursing through the Republican Party — false claims about election administration and public health.In the days after the 2020 election, he challenged Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. During a Senate hearing in February, he read into the record a report that falsely suggested the Trump-inspired Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol had been instigated by “fake Trump supporters.” In November, he began urging Wisconsin’s Republican state legislators to seize control of federal elections in the state, arguing that they could do so without the governor’s approval, despite decades-old rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court and the Wisconsin Supreme Court that say otherwise.Aside from Mr. Trump, there is perhaps no major Republican official who has made more false claims about the coronavirus and its vaccines than Mr. Johnson. He has said he will not get vaccinated, and has promoted discredited Covid-19 treatments and declined to encourage others to seek out the vaccines. In December, he falsely claimed that gargling with mouthwash could help stop transmission of the virus, an assertion that drew a rebuke from the manufacturer of Listerine.The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 6The global surge. More

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      Kathy Hochul's Speech Is a Road Map to the Campaign That Lies Ahead

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul sought to exude decisiveness in crisis, previewing her efforts to run as the steady-hand candidate as she seeks her first full term.As Gov. Kathy Hochul delivered her most consequential speech since becoming chief executive of New York, she did not discuss the contested Democratic primary she is navigating to retain her seat, nor did she mention the likelihood of an expensive general election against a well-funded Republican.But in tone and substance, her address on Wednesday and accompanying 237 pages of policy proposals offered a road map to how she is approaching both dynamics.In her State of the State remarks, her first as governor, Ms. Hochul often emphasized core Democratic priorities, from combating climate change to expanding access to affordable child care. But she also moved to blunt more conservative messaging on matters of public safety, the economy and the culture wars that have raged around how to handle the coronavirus pandemic.“During this winter surge, our laser focus is on keeping kids in school, businesses open and New Yorkers’ lives as normal as possible,” she said, even as some Republicans seek to paint the Democratic Party as the party of lockdowns.Ms. Hochul assumed the governorship last August, taking over after former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo resigned in disgrace, and she is running for her first full term as governor this year at yet another moment of staggering challenges for the state.As coronavirus cases spike, parents grapple with uncertainty around schools,and the Omicron variant upends the fragile economic recovery, Ms. Hochul acknowledged the pain and exhaustion gripping many New Yorkers. But she also emphasized a record of accomplishment, in particular around vaccination rates, and sought to exude competence and decisiveness in crisis, offering a preview of her efforts to run as the steady-hand, above-the-fray candidate.A number of Democrats are seeking to challenge that image.Representative Thomas Suozzi of Long Island, a former Nassau County executive who has positioned himself to Ms. Hochul’s right on some issues and in tone, is sharply questioning her executive experience. He sometimes refers to the state’s first female executive as the “interim governor” — a move that could backfire with some voters — and he is working to cut into her base in the suburbs.“New York needs a common-sense governor who has executive experience to manage Covid, take on crime, reduce taxes and help troubled schools,” Mr. Suozzi said in a statement after her speech.Jumaane D. Williams, the New York City public advocate who lost the 2018 lieutenant governor’s race to Ms. Hochul by 6.6 percentage points, is running as a self-declared “activist elected official” with close ties to New York’s left-wing political movement, which can play an important role in energizing parts of the primary electorate. He said on Wednesday that some of her proposals were not sufficiently “bold” to meet the challenges of the moment — a view echoed by leaders of a number of left-wing organizations.“Discussion of these issues is important, acknowledged and appreciated,” Mr. Williams said in a statement. “But that discussion must be accompanied by the political courage to envision and enact transformational change for New York City and across the state.”Former Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City has also taken steps toward a run.Attorney General Letitia James had been Ms. Hochul’s most formidable opponent, but she dropped her bid for governor last month, and on Wednesday she stood next to the governor, applauding. Ms. James’s exit cleared the way for Ms. Hochul to rapidly lock down more institutional support from unions and elected officials, and she is expected to post a formidable fund-raising haul later this month.Ms. Hochul, who has referred to herself as a “Biden Democrat,” on Wednesday sounded by turns like a centrist who welcomes big business and an old-school politician keenly focused on the needs of working-class New Yorkers.For example, she called for efforts to bolster the salaries of health care workers “so those doing God’s work here on Earth are no longer paid a minimum wage.”Ms. Hochul, who wore an all-white outfit to honor the women’s suffrage movement at her inauguration, did so again on Wednesday.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesBut at another point, she pledged that New York would be “the most business-friendly and worker-friendly state in the nation.”Ms. Hochul laid out a number of measures to bolster the social safety net, and she also endorsed some left-leaning criminal justice proposals, including a “jails-to-jobs” program and other efforts to help formerly incarcerated people access employment and housing.She also pledged to pursue a five-year plan to offer 100,000 affordable homes, though some housing advocates thought she should have offered far more comprehensive protections since the state’s eviction moratorium is poised to expire. And she laid out a bevy of climate, infrastructure and transportation-related initiatives.If many aspects of the speech played into concerns of rank-and-file Democratic voters and union officials, Ms. Hochul also repeatedly made overtures to a broader ideological and geographical swath of voters who will power the general election. (“I think I have a personal experience with just about every pothole in New York as well, especially on the Long Island Expressway,” she said, referring to an important political battleground.).A Guide to the New York Governor’s RaceCard 1 of 6A crowded field. More

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      Why Eric Adams and Kathy Hochul Might Actually Get Along

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      Mayor Eric Adams has a base that Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to reach. And she controls the money he needs to jump-start his agenda. It will be a shift for New Yorkers used to seeing their governor and mayor at odds.The first public sign that things would be different between Eric Adams, the new mayor of New York City, and Gov. Kathy Hochul came on election night, when she appeared onstage to celebrate his victory.“We’re going to need her,” Mr. Adams said, as Ms. Hochul inched toward the microphone.They have since appeared together a handful of times, vowing to work as a team instead of fighting over every little thing, as their Democratic predecessors, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, had done for nearly eight years.“In the past, there has been this tension, a polite way of saying fighting, between the governor of New York and the mayor of the City of New York,” Ms. Hochul said at a recent holiday fund-raiser for the Democratic Party of Brooklyn, which Mr. Adams also attended. “The era of fighting between those two bodies, those two people, is over.”In theory, the governor and the mayor of the nation’s largest city should have each other’s interests at heart; one can rarely prosper without the other. Yet that has not always been the case in New York, where conflicting political parties and personalities have often caused rifts.Mr. de Blasio feuded constantly with Mr. Cuomo over matters great and small: how to pay for the city’s expansive prekindergarten initiative, subway funding, the response to the pandemic and the homeless crisis. They even fought over whether to euthanize a deer.Ms. Hochul and Mr. Adams, both Democrats, seem intent on trying again, and both have compelling reasons to do so.Mr. Adams takes office as the city faces a resurgence of the coronavirus and a raft of issues that may rely on the state’s assistance. Ms. Hochul needs support from Black, Latino and moderate voters in New York City, the same base that Mr. Adams cultivated to become mayor, as she faces a moderate opponent and two likely challengers to her left in a June primary.“Every mayor, no matter who they are, is eventually confronted with the fact that New York City is a creature of the state,” said State Senator Diane Savino, a moderate Democrat who represents Staten Island and who endorsed Mr. Adams. “New York City is a significant part of the Democratic Party vote, and I’m sure the governor would like to have his support.”Governor Hochul has pledged to have a better relationship with Eric Adams than her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, had with Bill de Blasio, left.Stephanie Keith for The New York TimesMs. Hochul and Mr. Adams and their staffs often speak ahead of major announcements on issues related to Covid policy. They have also been in touch about Ms. Hochul’s State of the State address this Wednesday and the policy proposals under development. And they’ve known one another for years and share more moderate views than some of their party’s left-leaning elected officials.They have both, for example, reached out to business leaders to seek their guidance on the city’s economic recovery from the pandemic.“Frankly, neither Governor Cuomo or Mayor de Blasio had a working relationship with leaders of the business community,” said Kathryn Wylde, the president of the Partnership for New York City. “This is a dramatic and most welcome reversal.”There is politicking happening behind the scenes between the two camps. With Ms. Hochul facing a contested primary, Mr. Adams is keenly aware of his political leverage: In November, Mr. Adams, who did not endorse anyone in the Democratic primaries for New York City comptroller and public advocate, said he planned to make an endorsement in the Democratic primary for governor.Among the items on Mr. Adams’s agenda are gaining long-term mayoral control of schools and a $1 billion expansion of the earned-income tax credit to help moderate and low-income families. Mr. Adams has a plan to provide universal child care and also wants federal funds to be released to the city more quickly.Ms. Hochul has also said she will work with the mayor on revisiting the state’s bail laws, with Mr. Adams suggesting that recent increases in crime are linked to changes in bail law that ended cash bail for many low-level offenses.“Hochul has great strength in a general election but needs to solidify her position in New York City to win a Democratic primary. That gives her an incentive to want to be helpful to the new mayor,” said Bruce Gyory, a Democratic strategist. “The new mayor has tremendous incentive to do very well in that first budget because the perception will have an impact on the finances of the city. They have an enlightened self-interest to work well together.”But there is also risk associated with Ms. Hochul’s and Mr. Adams’s potential alliance. State Senator Michael Gianaris, a sponsor of some bail reform measures, said efforts to change the bail law would “set the stage for a less than amicable relationship right out of the box” with the State Legislature. Mr. Adams “also needs the Legislature,” Mr. Gianaris said.Mr. Adams would have had more leverage had Letitia James not dropped out of the race for governor. Ms. James, who decided to run for re-election as the state attorney general, was Ms. Hochul’s strongest opponent, according to early polling.Getting Mr. Adams’s backing would have helped Ms. Hochul with working-class, Black and Latino voters outside of Manhattan who might otherwise have supported Ms. James.Even with Ms. James out of the race, Mr. Adams still has some leverage. Jumaane Williams, the public advocate of New York City who is running to the left of Ms. Hochul, also has a strong political base in Brooklyn, as does Mr. de Blasio, who is considering running for governor. When Mr. Williams ran against Ms. Hochul in the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor in 2018, he received almost 167,000 votes in Brooklyn, about 71,000 more than Ms. Hochul.“Tish James being out of the race takes some pressure off Hochul but doesn’t completely change the dynamic,” Mr. Gyory said. “If anything, Hochul now wants to get a larger share of the Black vote.”Jumaane Williams, the public advocate of New York City who is running for governor, has a strong base in Brooklyn, as does Mr. Adams.Anna Watts for The New York TimesMr. Williams and Mr. Adams have a cordial relationship, according to several sources familiar with both men. Though Mr. Adams, a former police officer, is considered more of a law-and-order candidate, and Mr. Williams is to the left on police reform, both are interested in holistic approaches to addressing gun violence.Mr. Williams and Mr. Adams spoke about setting up a meeting with progressives concerned about Mr. Adams’s stance on policing in the fall. In November, Mr. Williams asked Mr. Adams for his endorsement in the governor’s race.A Guide to the New York Governor’s RaceCard 1 of 6A crowded field. More

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      John Thune, a Likely Successor to Mitch McConnell, Weighs Retirement

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      Mr. Thune, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, is considering giving up his South Dakota seat because of both family concerns and Donald Trump’s enduring hold on the G.O.P.WASHINGTON — Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the second-ranking Senate Republican and a potential future leader, is seriously considering retiring after next year, a prospect that has set off an intensifying private campaign from other Republicans urging him to seek re-election.Mr. Thune is only 60, but a combination of family concerns and former President Donald J. Trump’s enduring grip on the Republican Party have prompted the senator, who is in his third term, to tell associates and reporters in his home state that 2022 could be his last year in Congress.His departure would be a blow to South Dakota, which has enjoyed outsize influence in Washington, and could upend Senate Republicans’ line of succession. Mr. Thune has been open about his ambition to lead his party’s caucus after Senator Mitch McConnell makes way, and quiet but unmistakable jockeying is already underway between him and Senators John Cornyn of Texas and John Barrasso of Wyoming.“John is the logical successor should Mitch decide to not run again for leader,” Senator Susan Collins of Maine said of Mr. Thune, while noting that Mr. McConnell’s hold on their caucus remained “very secure.”That Mr. Thune would even entertain retirement with the chance to ascend to Senate Republican leader illustrates both the strain of today’s Congress and the shadow Mr. Trump casts over the party. The senator’s departure would represent yet another exit, perhaps the most revealing one yet, by a mainstream Senate Republican who has grown frustrated with the capital’s political environment and the former president’s loyalty demands. The exodus began in 2018 with Senators Jeff Flake and Bob Corker retiring rather than facing primaries, and has accelerated this year.Part of Mr. Thune’s hesitation owes to Mr. Trump and the potential for the former president — who lashed out at Mr. Thune early this year when the senator rejected his attempts to overturn the election — to intervene in South Dakota’s Senate primary race. But the larger factor may be the longer-range prospect of taking over the Senate Republican caucus with Mr. Trump still in the wings or as the party’s standard-bearer in 2024.Mr. Thune has said he will decide his intentions over the holidays. Yet a number of his friends and colleagues have become convinced that he is serious about leaving public life.Among those alarmed is Mr. McConnell himself, who one adviser said had “leaned in” on pushing Mr. Thune to run again.“I certainly hope that he will run for re-election, and that’s certainly what I and others have been encouraging him to do all year long,” Mr. McConnell said in an interview.He is hardly alone.A range of Senate Republicans — from moderates and Trump targets like Ms. Collins to Trump allies like Kevin Cramer of North Dakota — have lobbied Mr. Thune over dinner, on the Senate floor and, since lawmakers went home for Christmas recess, via text messages.“I let him know how much I appreciate him,” said Mr. Cramer, who has known Mr. Thune since they were young executive directors of their state parties. “He knows both Dakotas really need him.”Mr. Thune first angered Mr. Trump during the former president’s final days in office, when Mr. Thune said any challenge to the election results “would go down like a shot dog.” Mr. Trump derided the senator as “Mitch’s boy” and urged Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota to run against him in the state’s primary.Since then, though, Mr. Trump has trained his fire on Mr. McConnell, whom he has labeled “Old Crow,” and largely ignored Mr. Thune.Two top Senate Republican allies of Mr. Trump said he would probably refrain from targeting Mr. Thune simply because the senator, who is popular at home and has a well-stocked campaign war chest, is unlikely to lose a primary in the state that first elected him to Congress in 1996.“He likes winners, and John Thune is a winner,” said Mr. Cramer, predicting that Mr. Trump would at most be “a nuisance” to Mr. Thune.Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was similarly blunt about why Mr. Thune need not sweat a competitive primary. “Trump worries about his win-loss record,” said Mr. Graham, who is the de facto liaison between the former president and Senate Republicans.Mr. Graham, who along with Mr. Thune and Ms. Collins is part of a small group of senators who often dine together in Washington, said that before they left for the holidays, he had reassured Mr. Thune about any Trumpian intervention.“I told John that’ll be fine,” Mr. Graham recalled. “John will be fine.”Asked if he thought the threat of a Trump-inspired primary bothered Mr. Thune, Mr. McConnell said, “No. No, I don’t.”But if Mr. Thune ascended to Republican Senate leadership, Mr. Trump could still prove a headache.The former president does not have the influence in the Senate, where 19 Republicans defied him to support the infrastructure bill, that he does in the House. Yet Mr. Trump’s regular attacks on Mr. McConnell and on anything that has the air of cooperation with President Biden are not lost on Senate Republicans.The Infrastructure Bill at a GlanceCard 1 of 5The bill receives final approval. More