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      Peter Meijer, a Republican Who Voted to Impeach Trump, Is Running for Senate in Michigan

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      The one-term representative of Michigan who was defeated by a Trump-backed primary challenger is aiming for a political comeback.Peter Meijer, the one-term Republican congressman who lost his seat after voting to impeach President Donald J. Trump, has announced he is running for Senate in Michigan, jumping into a crowded primary in a key battleground.“We are in dark and uncertain times, but we have made it through worse,” Mr. Meijer said in a statement announcing his candidacy on Monday.Mr. Meijer, an heir to the Meijer supermarket empire and an Army Reserve veteran who served in Iraq, joins a field that includes Mike Rogers, another former representative who served seven terms in the House and led the House Intelligence Committee, who announced his candidacy in September.Also running in the Republican primary are James Craig, former chief of the Detroit Police Department; Nikki Snyder, a member of the State Board of Education; Dr. Sherry O’Donnell, a physician and former 2022 congressional candidate; Sharon Savage, a former teacher; Ezra Scott, a former Berrien County commissioner; Alexandria Taylor, a lawyer; J.D. Wilson, a technology consultant; and Michael Hoover, a businessman.The crowded Republican field reflects a party eager to make gains in Michigan after Democrats swept to victory in the state in 2022. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer handily won re-election that year, part of a political trifecta as Democrats won total control of the state government.President Biden narrowly won in Michigan in 2020 and the state is considered a battleground in next year’s presidential election.Mr. Meijer, 35, is competing for the seat held by Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat who announced this year that she would not seek a new term in 2024. The race for the open seat is competitive but has been leaning toward the Democrats, according to a projection by the Cook Political Report.Ms. Stabenow’s retirement set off a frenzy among ambitious Democrats in Michigan who are now aiming to succeed her.Among them is Representative Elissa Slotkin, a moderate and former C.I.A. analyst who has earned a national profile and scored victories in several close races for her House seat. Also in the running are Nasser Beydoun, a businessman from Dearborn; Hill Harper, an author and actor; Leslie Love, a former state representative of Detroit; Pamela Pugh, the president of the State Board of Education; and Zach Burns, a lawyer and Ann Arbor resident.Mr. Meijer was elected to represent his Grand Rapids-based district in 2020. He was thrust into the national spotlight just days after taking office when he voted to impeach Mr. Trump for inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.Only two of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump survived the retribution from Republican voters that followed. Mr. Meijer narrowly lost his primary to a Trump-backed opponent, John Gibbs, who was boosted by Democrats and who was defeated by his Democratic opponent in the general election.After Mr. Meijer’s announcement, the Michigan Democratic Party criticized him in a statement for, among other things, his position on abortion rights — an issue that helped put Democrats over the top in 2022. More

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      Ballot-Stuffers Caught on Camera Have Upended a Race for Mayor

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      In Bridgeport, Conn., a judge found evidence of mishandled ballots in the Democratic primary for mayor and ordered a revote. But first, the city will hold a general election. After that? Stay tuned.Residents of Bridgeport, Conn., are preparing to cast their ballots in what may be the most confusing election in the country.A judge this week tossed out the results of the Democratic mayoral primary, citing surveillance video that appears to show significant voting irregularities. He ordered election officials to hold a new primary but had no authority to postpone the general election in the meantime. And so, on Tuesday, the general election will go on as planned.What happens after that is uncertain.“Obviously, we’re in very uncharted legal waters here,” said State Rep. Steven Stafstrom, a Democrat from Bridgeport and a co-chair of the legislature’s judiciary committee.The city finds itself in this mess after videos surfaced that showed suspicious activity at absentee ballot drop boxes. In clip after clip, two women are seen stuffing wads of paper into the boxes.“The videos are shocking to the court and should be shocking to all the parties,” Judge William Clark of the Superior Court in Bridgeport wrote in his ruling. He added, “The volume of ballots so mishandled is such that it calls the result of the primary election into serious doubt and leaves the court unable to determine the legitimate result.”Although voting fraud is rare across the country, Bridgeport, a city of about 150,000 people in the southwest part of the state, has been dogged by election improprieties in recent years.In June, the State Election Enforcement Commission, which is investigating the primary, said there was evidence of possible criminality in the 2019 mayoral primary. Last year, a judge ordered a new Democratic primary in a state representative race over allegations of absentee ballot fraud. In 2017, a judge ordered that a Democratic primary for City Council seats be rerun after a single absentee ballot, which was improperly handled, decided the race.The incumbent mayor, Joe Ganim, was first elected in 1991 and served until 2003. He was convicted on federal corruption-related charges, resigned and spent seven years in prison. In 2015, he mounted a comeback and has been mayor ever since.“We’ve been faced with a lot of disappointment, just over and over and over and over again,” said Joel Monge, 23, who runs Bridgeport Memes, a popular social media page.The current legal fight started after the September primary in which Mr. Ganim beat his opponent, John Gomes, by 251 votes. Mr. Gomes challenged the outcome in court, citing the video clips, which were taken from municipal surveillance cameras stationed near the city’s four absentee ballot drop boxes. A clip appeared on social media days after the primary, leading Mr. Gomes’s lawyers to file a lawsuit to get all 2,100 hours of tape on the drop boxes.Judge Clark ruled that just two women made or were directly involved in 15 incidents of drop boxes being stuffed with ballots. He wrote that the videos showed “credible evidence that the ballots were being ‘harvested’” — a process by which third-party individuals gather and submit completed absentee ballots in bulk, rather than individual voters submitting them for themselves, in violation of election laws.Both women, the judge wrote, were “partisans” for Mr. Ganim.Bill Bloss, Mr. Gomes’s lawyer, said his own review of the surveillance videos showed that no more than 420 people submitted ballots at Bridgeport drop boxes, but at least 1,253 ballots were submitted there.Mr. Ganim denied any involvement. “I was as shocked as everyone when the video came out,” he said.Both candidates said they were dismayed by the videos, and both men acknowledge that some of their supporters submitted multiple ballots.“On both sides, there is video of the irregularities,” Mr. Ganim said. He added: “That’s not acceptable. We all want everyone’s vote to count. We all want fair elections.”Mr. Gomes said his supporters had acted legally and had been submitting ballots for family members. The entire scandal is unfortunate, he said, adding, “Another black eye for Bridgeport.”But the judge’s order focuses on Mr. Ganim’s supporters, some of whom appear to have submitted many ballots, many times.“These instances do not appear to the court to be random,” Judge Clark wrote. “They appear to be conscious acts with partisan purpose.”As a result of the primary confusion, choosing the city’s next mayor has become exceedingly complicated.On Tuesday, the general election ballot will feature four candidates: Mr. Ganim; Mr. Gomes, now running as an Independent; David Herz, a Republican; and Lamond Daniels, an unaffiliated candidate.If Mr. Gomes wins the general election, he intends to withdraw his complaint about the Democratic primary and, if necessary, formally ask the judge to cancel his order for a new vote. In that scenario, presumably, Mr. Gomes would just become mayor.If Mr. Gomes does not win on Tuesday, but does win the second primary, he would advance to a second general election as the Democratic nominee. (Mr. Ganim would still be on the ballot, this time with the New Movement Party, according to Rowena White, his campaign spokeswoman.)Alternatively, if Mr. Ganim wins the general election on Tuesday, and then wins the second primary, there would be no second general election, Mr. Bloss said. Mr. Ganim would be re-elected.If one of the other two general election candidates wins on Tuesday, Bridgeport would hold a new Democratic primary and then a new general election.Officials have yet to decide when a second primary would occur. Mr. Ganim or the city could still appeal the judge’s order calling for the new vote. And both campaigns would need time to get back into gear, even for a do-over vote.For voters, the bizarre election spectacle has been dispiriting.“There’s just not the checks and balances,” said Anthony L. Bennett, the lead pastor of Mount Aery Baptist Church, adding, “It’s a great city, with great people, that has had a troubling history with unchecked and unaccountable governmental leadership.”Officials are trying to regain voters’ confidence. This week, Stephanie Thomas, the Connecticut secretary of state, appointed a temporary election monitor to oversee the mayoral election.“The public should know that everything that can be done is being done,” Ms. Thomas said.But critics noted that many absentee ballots have already been submitted for the general election — and questioned how one person could appropriately monitor the whole election.And election skeptics across the country, who have long pushed to restrict voting by absentee ballot, have seized upon Judge Clark’s ruling.They argue that Bridgeport — a historically Democratic city in a deeply Democratic state — is just one of the first places that absentee ballot fraud has been caught on camera.“That this happened here is beyond reasonable doubt,” Elon Musk wrote on X, the site formerly known as Twitter. “The only question is how common it is.”That worries many Democrats in Connecticut, including Mr. Ganim, who noted that many of his constituents struggle to access voting places on Election Day and need the option of absentee ballots. They may have health concerns, he said, or cannot get enough time off work to vote.Many would-be voters in Bridgeport believe they have been let down by the government once again.“A lot of people in Bridgeport just don’t vote in general just because they always assume Joe Ganim is going to win,” said Mr. Monge, who runs Bridgeport Memes.But, he said, the videos had angered many of his friends, perhaps spurring them to participate: “I think a lot of people are going to go out and vote.” More

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      Lauren Boebert, Facing Primary, Is Haunted by ‘Beetlejuice’ Episode

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      The “Beetlejuice” incident continues to haunt the once-unrepentant congresswoman from Colorado. The state’s old guard is lining up behind a primary challenger.At a casino bingo hall in southwestern Colorado, Lauren Boebert, the Republican congresswoman, bounced her 6-month-old grandson on her knee.“The election’s still a ways away,” she said, as the guests arriving for the Montezuma County Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day dinner trickled into the room. “And in talking with people at events like this, you know, it seems like there’s a lot of mercy and a lot of grace.”The month before, Ms. Boebert, then in the midst of finalizing a divorce, was caught on a security camera vaping and groping her date shortly before being ejected from a performance of the musical “Beetlejuice” at the Buell Theater in Denver for causing a disturbance. The footage contradicted her own initial claims about the incident, and the venue’s statement that Ms. Boebert had demanded preferential treatment added to the outrage.The episode has proved surprisingly sticky for Ms. Boebert, a politician who more than almost any other has embodied the gleefully provocative, no-apologies politics of the party’s right wing in the Biden era. Several local Republican officials have since announced their endorsement of Jeff Hurd, a more conventional Republican challenging her for the nomination this year.Mr. Hurd’s candidacy has become a vessel for Republican discontent with the perceived excesses of the party’s MAGA wing. His backers include old-guard party fixtures such as former Gov. Bill Owens, former Senator Hank Brown, and Pete Coors, the brewery scion, former Senate candidate and 2016 Trump fund-raiser, who will soon be offering his endorsement, according to Mr. Hurd’s campaign.Other Hurd supporters are more narrowly concerned about extending the party’s recent run of defeats in the state, and some are one-time fans of Ms. Boebert who complain that she has been changed by her political celebrity.“That crap she pulled in Denver pissed me off,” David Spiegel, a 53-year-old road traffic controller and Montezuma party activist, told Mr. Hurd as he mingled with guests at the dinner, near where Ms. Boebert was sitting.Jeff Hurd, a moderate Republican who is challenging Ms. Boebert for the nomination this year, has received endorsements from several local Republican officials.Polls have not yet been released in the primary race, and the question of whether Ms. Boebert, whose political celebrity far exceeds her official influence in Congress, has actually fallen in favor among the party’s voters remains theoretical for now. In interviews around the district, it was easy to find supporters who still stood by her.“She’s aggressive, she’s young, she’s got better ideas than most of them,” said Charles Dial, who runs a steel fabrication and recycling business in deep-red Moffat County, which Ms. Boebert won by more than 59 points in 2022. He shrugged off the theater incident and compared the attention it generated to “what they’re doing to Trump.”But Mr. Hurd’s endorsements suggest a concern among some party stalwarts that if Ms. Boebert remains a spirit animal for the right, she may be a wounded one.In 2022, despite the solidly Republican lean of her district, she won re-election by just 546 votes. The near-loss established her as the most vulnerable of the party’s most base-beloved politicians, and has made her defeat this year a sought-after trophy for Democrats.Adam Frisch, an Aspen businessman and former city councilman who ran as a Democrat against her in 2022, is hoping to challenge her again next year, though he first faces a primary contest against Anna Stout, the mayor of Grand Junction. Mr. Frisch has pulled in nearly $7.8 million in donations, more than any 2024 House candidate besides Kevin McCarthy, the recently deposed Republican speaker, and Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader.Adam Frisch, a Democrat who is challenging Ms. Boebert, has pulled in nearly $7.8 million in donations: more than any 2024 House candidate besides Kevin McCarthy, the recently deposed Republican speaker, and Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader.In August, before the theater incident, a poll commissioned by Mr. Frisch’s campaign found him leading Ms. Boebert by two points.In a rematch with Mr. Frisch, “I’ll definitely vote for Lauren,” said Cody Davis, a Mesa County commissioner who switched his endorsement from Ms. Boebert to Mr. Hurd. “But at the same time, I don’t think she can win.”Ms. Boebert burst onto the political scene in 2020 after winning a primary upset in Colorado’s Third District, which spans the entirety of the state’s western slope and nearly half of the state’s area.Then a 33-year-old owner of a gun-themed, pandemic-lockdown-defying bar and restaurant in the small town of Rifle, she was an immediate sensation in the right wing of the party, which had transparently longed for its own answer to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the social media-savvy young left-wing Democratic congresswoman from New York.“She was a firebrand,” Kevin McCarney, at the time the chairman of the Mesa County Republican Party, recalled admiringly. Last year, Mr. McCarney defended Ms. Boebert in the media after she was criticized for heckling President Biden as he spoke about his son’s death in his State of the Union speech.Ms. Boebert burst onto the political scene in 2020 after winning a primary upset in Colorado’s Third District, which spans nearly half of the state. But her celebrity is far greater than her official power in Congress.For some Colorado Republicans, the primary contest for Ms. Boebert’s seat is a proxy battle in the ongoing conflict between an old guard of politicians and donors and the right-wing grass-roots activists that have come to dominate its state and county organizations.“I was still standing with her until her little escapade,” he said, referring to Ms. Boebert’s behavior during “Beetlejuice.”After that, Mr. McCarney endorsed Mr. Hurd.A 44-year-old attorney from Grand Junction, Mr. Hurd is, by his account, a lifelong conservative but a newcomer to politics. The son of a local medical clinic director, he attended the University of Notre Dame and was planning on becoming a Catholic priest when he met his wife, Barbora, at an American Enterprise Institute seminar in Bratislava. He went to law school instead.Soft-spoken and cerebral — he cites the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius’s “Meditations” as his favorite book — Mr. Hurd holds similar policy views to Ms. Boebert on gun rights and conservative but less absolute views on abortion.He is presenting himself as a reprieve from the turmoil, tabloid headlines and Trump-centricity that Ms. Boebert has represented to her detractors.Mr. Hurd appears only peripherally in his first campaign ad, in which Barbora describes her journey to American citizenship after a childhood in Communist Czechoslovakia and warns that “we can’t take this freedom for granted” — a Reagan-revivalist pitch that also nods toward his concern about the risk of authoritarianism within his own party.Mr. Hurd is presenting himself as a reprieve from the turmoil, tabloids and Trump-centricity that Ms. Boebert has represented in the eyes of her detractors.Asked if he had voted for Mr. Trump in past elections, Mr. Hurd declined to answer, but then described a vision of the Republican Party where “we believe in, you know, the rule of law, the peaceful transfer of power in elections.”“When we as Republicans lose an election,” he went on, “we need to figure out how we go about winning the next one.”Ms. Boebert was early and vocal in promoting Mr. Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.For some Colorado Republicans, the primary contest for her seat has become a proxy battle in the ongoing conflict within the party between an old guard of politicians and donors and the right-wing grass-roots activists that have come to dominate its state and county organizations — a fight in which 2020 election denial is a major dividing line.Others are simply concerned that Ms. Boebert could easily lose to Mr. Frisch, a self-described conservative Democrat. “We all know what happened last cycle,” said Bobbie Daniel, a Mesa County commissioner who supported Ms. Boebert last year and is now backing Mr. Hurd. “There wasn’t a lot of room for error.”Mr. Frisch’s near-victory came as a surprise in a race that few in either party expected to be competitive. “We got blown off by everybody,” Mr. Frisch recalled. His campaign effectively ran out of money two weeks before the election, at which point his operation was “just me doing another couple of thousand miles in the pickup truck,” he said.He will not have that problem this year. Mr. Frisch and outside Democratic groups have already reserved $1.2 million in advertising for the race — more than any other 2024 House race so far and more than 100 times what Republicans have spent in the district, according to Ad Impact, a media tracking firm.Drew Sexton, Ms. Boebert’s campaign manager, noted that her campaign last year spent little time trying to shape voters’ impressions of Mr. Frisch, and argued that 2024 would be a different contest.“A lot of folks sat out the midterm election, whether it was apathy or a belief that there was a red wave and they didn’t need to participate, or just the fact that President Trump wasn’t on the top of the ticket,” he said. “Those folks are going to come back in droves this cycle.”On the stump, Ms. Boebert has worked hard to show supporters that she is not taking their votes for granted. In her speech at the Montezuma County dinner, she had only one applause line about investigating the Biden family and had many particulars about water policy. There was also contrition.“You deserve a heartfelt, humble apology from me,” she told the crowd.Many of her backers have accepted the apology, if not unconditionally. “Lauren’s made it harder for herself,” said Kathy Elmont, the secretary of the Ouray County Republican Party, who has supported Ms. Boebert since her first campaign. “But I look at it as a Christian.” She recalled the passage in the Gospel of John in which Jesus admonishes a crowd against stoning an adulterous woman: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”But Mrs. Elmont pointed out that wasn’t the last of the story. “He ended with, ‘And sin no more,’” she said. More

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      DeSantis Leans Into Vaccine Skepticism to Energize Struggling Campaign

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      The Florida governor has so far found little success in getting his criticism of the Trump administration’s Covid-19 policies to stick, but that has not stopped him from trying.Gov. Ron DeSantis had hoped that his response to the coronavirus pandemic, which helped propel him to a resounding re-election in Florida last year, would produce similar results in the Republican presidential primary.But despite leaning into his record on Covid-19, Mr. DeSantis remains adrift in the polls and badly trailing former President Donald J. Trump, whose administration he has castigated for how it handled the pandemic. Mr. DeSantis points to how he guided Florida through the pandemic — reopening schools and businesses early and forbidding local governments and businesses from imposing mask and vaccine mandates — as a model for the nation.While Mr. Trump recently warned against the return of “Covid hysteria,” his administration led the rapid development of the Covid-19 vaccines that many Republicans now question. Studies show the shots prevented millions of deaths and hospitalizations in the United States. But over the summer, Mr. Trump acknowledged to Fox News that the shots were “not a great thing to talk about” in his party.Mr. DeSantis has sought to exploit that anti-vaccine sentiment as a way to pry primary voters away from Mr. Trump, publicly casting doubt on their safety and effectiveness against the coronavirus. Scientific experts have labeled his views — and his administration’s decision to recommend that Floridians under 65 not receive the updated Covid-19 shot — as dangerous and extreme, even as many acknowledge that the school closures that Mr. DeSantis opposed went on for too long in some states.On Wednesday, Mr. DeSantis again tried to rally vaccine-skeptic voters to his side, headlining a “Medical Freedom” town hall at a ski area in Manchester, N.H., alongside Florida’s Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo. During the event, which was hosted by Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC, the Florida governor insisted that federal public health agencies had spewed “nonsense” throughout the pandemic and needed a complete overhaul.He claimed that the Covid shots have been rolled out without proper clinical studies and that federal officials had either lied or were flatly wrong about the benefits and risks — a view that has been roundly condemned by a wide array of public health experts, academics and scientists. “We know the federal government muffed this in many different ways and we need a reckoning,” the governor said.Mr. DeSantis has found little success in getting his criticism of the Trump administration’s Covid-19 policies to stick, demonstrating the former president’s remarkable resilience with Republicans in the face of criminal indictments, growing attacks from rival candidates and his own verbal missteps.In interviews with The New York Times across the early nominating states, many voters have said they do not fault Mr. Trump for his response to a new and unknown virus, saying that he did his best in an uncertain situation. Such attitudes are common even among some of Mr. DeSantis’s supporters.“I’m always inclined to cut President Trump some slack on the epidemic because he was listening to people who supposedly knew what they were talking about,” said Richard Merkt, 74, who attended the town hall on Wednesday and said he plans to vote for Mr. DeSantis in the New Hampshire primary. Mr. Merkt is a former New Jersey assemblyman who has run for office in New Hampshire, where he retired. Bob Wolf, an undecided Iowa voter, said he admired Mr. DeSantis’s handling of the pandemic but did not blame Mr. Trump. “When Trump was in charge, I don’t think everyone knew what the facts were,” Mr. Wolf, a 44-year-old firefighter, said in an interview this fall.Still, Mr. DeSantis is clinging to his Covid policies as a pillar of a campaign. In September, he and Dr. Ladapo recommended that Floridians under the age of 65 should not get the updated Covid shot that targets the virus’s more recent variants. That guidance contradicted the advice of the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which had recommended the shot for most Americans six months and older.At the town hall, Dr. Ladapo praised Mr. DeSantis.“To read the data, to reach a conclusion, to know that conclusion is right, and all of these Harvard Ph.D’s and M.D.’s are wrong? That takes courage,” said Dr. Ladapo, who himself holds degrees from Harvard.Florida’s Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, regularly appears with Gov. Ron DeSantis at events in the state, but this week joined him on the campaign trail. Chris O’Meara/Associated PressMore than 1.13 million Americans have died from Covid-19 since the pandemic began, with the fatality rate far higher for the unvaccinated than for the vaccinated. A partisan divide has emerged in the nation’s death rate, which has been greater in Republican-leaning counties. Republicans now tend to be more skeptical than Democrats of vaccines of all types, a post-pandemic development.Florida was an early leader in vaccinating older residents against Covid, but achieved far lower vaccination rates for younger age groups as the governor shifted from a vocal advocate to a skeptic of shots. A New York Times analysis in July found that unlike the nation as a whole, Florida lost more lives to Covid after vaccines became available to all adults, not before.Mr. DeSantis has suggested that he is the only Republican who can capture general election voters who are angry about the government’s response to the pandemic, particularly with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist, in the race as a third-party candidate.“RFK Jr. will be a vessel for anti-lockdown and anti-Fauci voters, if Trump is the nominee,” Mr. DeSantis said last month, in a reference to Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s former top infectious disease expert, whom he has said should be prosecuted. “If I’m the nominee, they all go to me.”When Mr. Kennedy was still running in the Democratic primary against President Biden, Mr. DeSantis even suggested that the longtime liberal might have a place in his presidential administration — a clear sign that he hoped to court supporters of Mr. Kennedy who share his views on vaccines.But so far, Mr. DeSantis’s efforts to break through in the Republican field have failed.Although the Florida governor generally has high favorability ratings among G.O.P. voters, Mr. Trump has maintained his dominant lead in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. One recent poll showed that former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina had caught up to Mr. DeSantis in Iowa — where he has staked his entire campaign. Polling averages put Ms. Haley ahead of him in both New Hampshire and South Carolina.Not only have the governor’s criticisms of Covid vaccines produced few political dividends in the primary, scientific experts characterize them as dangerous public health policy.Dr. Paul A. Offit directs the vaccine education center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and serves on the F.D.A.’s panel of outside vaccine experts that authorized the vaccines. He said tens of millions of Americans under the age of 65 suffer from underlying medical conditions that increase their risk of severe disease or death from Covid.“Does he think that only those over 65 are at risk?” he asked, referring to Mr. DeSantis’s refusal to recommend the shots for younger age groups. “We’ve moved, sadly, from scientific illiteracy to scientific denialism. Science doesn’t matter.”Dr. Scott Rivkees, Florida’s state surgeon general for more than two years under Mr. DeSantis, said the state was now quite isolated in its approach to Covid vaccinations.“I’m not aware of other states that have said that individuals younger than 65 should not get vaccinated against Covid,” said Dr. Rivkees, who left the administration in September 2021 and is now a professor at Brown University’s School of Public Health.Mr. DeSantis’s team dismisses such criticism as more grousing from a “tyrannical medical establishment” that led the nation astray during the pandemic.“His actions have exposed the ‘experts’ for the political actors that the country now knows them to be — and that’s why they continue to attack him with failed science and fake narratives,” Bryan Griffin, press secretary for the DeSantis campaign, said in a statement. He said that Mr. DeSantis had “prioritized the truth” as governor and would “do the same for our nation as president.”Sarafina Chitika, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement: “Ron DeSantis’s attempt to resurrect his old and tired anti-vaccine tantrum today is a reminder to voters that he played political games with Florida’s Covid response at every turn in a cheap effort to score political points with the extreme MAGA movement.” Public health authorities give Mr. DeSantis credit for insisting that Florida schools open their doors to students in the fall of 2020. Many experts now agree that too many school districts offered only remote learning for far too long. But they have heaped criticism on him for casting doubt on Covid shots.Mr. DeSantis claimed Wednesday, as he has previously, that federal authorities misled people into believing that the vaccines prevented infection. In fact, shots were authorized based on evidence that they reduced risks of severe disease and death, not infection.The governor also claimed that Dr. Ladapo had properly identified risks of the shots for young men. But the heads of the F.D.A. and the C.D.C. publicly warned Dr. Ladapo that his statements were misleading, saying such misinformation “puts people at risk of death or serious illness.”Mr. DeSantis also played up a state grand jury investigation he instigated nearly a year ago into what he claimed was possible criminal misconduct by Covid vaccine manufacturers. Critics labeled it a political stunt, and it has so far come to naught.But at the town hall Mr. DeSantis suggested that the issue would continue to come up on the campaign trail, saying: “There may be a report or something like that pretty soon.” More

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      Nikki Haley and Trump Meet Separately With Miriam Adelson, G.O.P. Megadonor

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      As Nikki Haley has jumped in presidential polling, her campaign has stepped up its outreach efforts.Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador who has been climbing in Republican presidential polls, met with the casino mogul and megadonor Miriam Adelson over the weekend in Las Vegas, two people familiar with the meeting said.Ms. Haley, a former South Carolina governor, is gaining momentum in the Republican primary, with some polls putting her behind only former President Donald J. Trump after she edged out Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for second place, albeit a distant one.Ms. Adelson had dinner with Mr. Trump on Saturday night, a nearly three-hour meal at her home, according to a person familiar with the event. The two have history dating back years: Her late husband, Sheldon Adelson, was the largest donor to Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, and Mr. Trump awarded Ms. Adelson a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018.Reuters previously reported Ms. Haley’s meeting with Ms. Adelson, and The Messenger reported Mr. Trump’s dinner. Both took place during the annual gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition at the Venetian in Las Vegas, a sprawling casino, hotel and event complex that was once the Adelsons’ marquee property.Ms. Adelson has stayed out of the primary battle so far, and has not contributed to federal campaigns in the 2024 cycle, records show. But she and her husband, who died in 2021, have a record of contributing to committees tied to both Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley.In 2020, the Adelsons together gave $90 million to a super PAC that backed Mr. Trump, along with $585,000 each to Mr. Trump’s joint fund-raising committee. In 2022, Ms. Adelson gave $25 million to Republican congressional and Senate committees, records show.In 2019, the Adelsons each gave $250,000 to a social welfare nonprofit Ms. Haley formed shortly after leaving the Trump administration, according to a report in Politico that cited tax documents. In 2022, Ms. Adelson gave $5,000 to a political action committee Ms. Haley had formed.Ms. Haley and Ms. Adelson also had a private meeting at the R.J.C. gathering in 2021, Politico reported at the time.They are not the only candidates who have met with Ms. Adelson this cycle. In April, Ms. Adelson was seated next to Mr. DeSantis at a dinner in Israel. Mr. DeSantis had not yet officially joined the race. Bryan Griffin, the press secretary for Mr. DeSantis’s campaign, said Ms. Adelson and Mr. DeSantis had been “friends for a long time.” He added, “We respect her continued commitment to stay neutral during the primary and are grateful for all she does for the United States, Israel and the Jewish community.”Ms. Haley has surged into second place in polls in New Hampshire and South Carolina and has been closing the gap on Mr. DeSantis in Iowa. A Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa poll released this week showed that they were tied, far behind Mr. Trump among likely Republican caucusgoers.The Haley campaign has ramped up its outreach to donors and supporters in recent weeks, and officials and volunteers have been working to expand its grass-roots groups for women, veterans and young people. With the momentum has come more scrutiny from Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Trump and their allies. Even Senator Tim Scott, from her home state, criticized her record as governor during the last presidential debate, a heated exchange that led to one of Ms. Haley’s most memorable lines of the night: “Bring it, Tim.”At the South Carolina State House on Monday, where she officially filed to appear on her home state’s 2024 presidential primary ballot, Ms. Haley kept her message focused on her successes in the state and path to victory — and mostly refrained from attacking her rivals, though she warned that Mr. Scott’s critiques were “a mistake.”“When I’m attacked, I kick back,” she said.Asked if she would consider former Vice President Mike Pence as a running mate, she said she was solely focused on winning in the early states.“It is slow and steady wins the race,” she said. “You win it based on relationships. You win it based on touching every hand, answering every question and earning the trust of the American people.” More

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      Vivek Ramaswamy and Ro Khanna Debate in New Hampshire

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      The meeting between Vivek Ramaswamy, a presidential candidate, and Representative Ro Khanna of California, was largely a showcase for Mr. Ramaswamy to try to rescue a flagging campaign.Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican presidential candidate, and Ro Khanna, a Democratic member of the House, squared off on Wednesday in New Hampshire in what was billed as a civil discussion between two Indian Americans over the future of the United States.But over the course of an hour at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., Mr. Ramaswamy repeatedly slipped into his stump speech on the “black hole” in America’s collective heart and his belief that the nation was not, as he once thought, the declining Roman Empire, while Mr. Khanna tried to articulate his economic ideas and talk up the record of President Biden against his opponent’s blizzard of words.“It is, I think, regrettable to be carrying the water of Joe Biden when the fact is that everyday Americans know they’re suffering at the hands of policies that came from this administration,” Mr. Ramaswamy snapped back.The appearance of Mr. Khanna, a California Democrat, on a stage in New Hampshire — the second time this year for him — was a testament to the frustrations that he has said he feels about how Mr. Biden and other Democrats have ceded ground to Republicans on putting forth an economic vision. The meeting was initially to be a conversation on race and identity at the University of Chicago, but when Mr. Ramaswamy backed out, Mr. Khanna challenged him on social media — and chased him to the first Republican primary state.On Nov. 30, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, who has tried to extend the White House’s message to audiences he does not believe it’s reaching, will debate Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Fox News.In the end, the Saint Anselm meeting was largely a showcase for Mr. Ramaswamy to try to rescue a flagging campaign, which has slipped to fourth place in polling averages in the state, behind Mr. DeSantis, Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, and Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who has surged into second. All of them are well behind the front-runner, Donald J. Trump.Mr. Ramaswamy demonstrated that his dogged “America First” isolationism has not been jarred by the bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas. At one point, he declared, “I could care less about leading in the Middle East,” saying of Israel, “Let’s get out and let our true ally defend itself.”To that, Mr. Khanna asked: “Why do you have such an impoverished vision of America that the only thing America is going to have is a provincial sense of its own interest?”Mr. Ramaswamy also showed his propensity to not allow the facts to get in the way of his views. When Mr. Khanna boasted of the 13 million jobs that have been created under Mr. Biden, his opponent cautioned that the government was “the sector with by far the greatest growth in jobs.”While it is true that in recent months the government sector has shown signs of recovery, government employment, as of last month, remained below its prepandemic level by 9,000 jobs, while the private sector has now recovered all the jobs lost in the pandemic and then some.Mr. Khanna has been outspoken in challenging his party and his president to get more aggressive in sharing a vision for more inclusive economic growth. He tried again Wednesday, talking up government investment to rebuild manufacturing: “For the Republicans, and I see some of this in what you’ve adopted, they see any problem, and they say let’s cut taxes, let’s deregulate,” Mr. Khanna said. “How is that putting a steel plant up in Johnstown, Pennsylvania?”But he largely missed the opportunity to highlight Mr. Biden’s biggest legislative achievements in industrial policy, which got only glancing references: a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, a $280 billion measure to rekindle a domestic semiconductor industry and the Inflation Reduction Act, with its spending to combat climate change.Meantime, Mr. Ramaswamy’s well-worn talking points dismissing the threat of climate change, calling for eliminating three quarters of the federal government, and cutting education spending largely went unchallenged. More

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      Election Day Guide: Governor Races, Abortion Access and More

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      Two governorships are at stake in the South, while Ohio voters will decide whether to enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution.Election Day is nearly here, and while off-year political races receive a fraction of the attention compared with presidential elections, some of Tuesday’s contests will be intensely watched.At stake are two southern governorships, control of the Virginia General Assembly and abortion access in Ohio. National Democrats and Republicans, seeking to build momentum moving toward next November, will be eyeing those results for signals about 2024.Here are the major contests voters will decide on Tuesday and a key ballot question:Governor of KentuckyGov. Andy Beshear, left, a Democrat, is facing Daniel Cameron, Kentucky’s Republican attorney general, in his campaign for re-election as governor.Pool photo by Kentucky Educational TelevisionGov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, is seeking to again defy convention in deep-red Kentucky, a state carried handily by Donald J. Trump in 2020.He is facing Daniel Cameron, Kentucky’s attorney general, who was propelled to victory by an early endorsement from Mr. Trump in a competitive Republican primary in May.In 2019, Mr. Cameron became the first Black person to be elected as Kentucky’s attorney general, an office previously held by Mr. Beshear. He drew attention in 2020 when he announced that a grand jury did not indict two Louisville officers who shot Breonna Taylor.In the 2019 governor’s race, Mr. Beshear ousted Matt Bevin, a Trump-backed Republican, by fewer than 6,000 votes. This year, he enters the race with a strong job approval rating. He is seeking to replicate a political feat of his father, Steve Beshear, who was also Kentucky governor and was elected to two terms.Governor of Mississippi Brandon Presley, a public service commissioner who is related to Elvis Presley, wants to be the state’s first Democratic governor in two decades.Emily Kask for The New York TimesGov. Tate Reeves, a Republican in his first term, has some of the lowest job approval numbers of the nation’s governors.Rogelio V. Solis/Associated PressIt has been two decades since Mississippi had a Democrat as governor. Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican in his first term, is seeking to avoid becoming the one who ends that streak.But his job approval numbers are among the lowest of the nation’s governors, which has emboldened his Democratic challenger, Brandon Presley, a public service commissioner with a famous last name: His second cousin, once removed, was Elvis Presley.Mr. Presley has attacked Mr. Reeves over a welfare scandal exposed last year by Mississippi Today, which found that millions in federal funds were misspent. Mr. Reeves, who was the lieutenant governor during the years the scandal unfolded, has denied any wrongdoing, but the issue has been a focal point of the contest.Abortion access in OhioAs states continue to reckon with the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court last year, Ohio has become the latest front in the fight over access to abortion.Reproductive rights advocates succeeded in placing a proposed amendment on the November ballot that would enshrine the right to abortion access into the state constitution. Its supporters have sought to fill the void that was created by the Roe decision.Anti-abortion groups have mounted a sweeping campaign to stop the measure. One effort, a proposal to raise the threshold required for passing a constitutional amendment, was rejected by voters this summer.Virginia legislatureIn just two states won by President Biden in 2020, Republicans have a power monopoly — and in Virginia, they are aiming to secure a third. The others are Georgia and New Hampshire.Democrats narrowly control the Virginia Senate, where all 40 seats are up for grabs in the election. Republicans hold a slim majority in the House of Delegates, which is also being contested.The outcome of the election is being viewed as a potential reflection of the clout of Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican with national ambitions.Philadelphia mayorAn open-seat race for mayor in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s foremost Democratic bastion, is down to two former City Council members: Cherelle Parker, a Democrat, and David Oh, a Republican.The advantage for Ms. Parker appears to be an overwhelming one in the city, which has not elected a Republican as mayor since 1947.It has also been two decades since Philadelphia, the nation’s sixth most populous city, had a somewhat competitive mayoral race. More

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      A Primary Fight Brews Over Jamaal Bowman’s Stance on Israel

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      Representative Jamaal Bowman’s calls for Israel to stand down on Gaza may fuel a perilous primary challenge for one of the left’s brightest stars.Representative Jamaal Bowman was already facing blowback from Jewish leaders in his district and a growing primary threat for bucking his party’s stance on Israel.But on Friday, he did not show any hesitation as he grabbed the megaphone at a cease-fire rally back home in the New York City suburbs to demand what only a dozen other members of Congress have: that both Israel and Hamas lay down their arms.He condemned Hamas’s brutal murder of 1,400 Israelis. He condemned the governments of the United States and Israel for facilitating what he called the “erasure” of Palestinian lives. And with Palestinian flags waving, Mr. Bowman said, “I am ashamed, quite ashamed to be a member of Congress at times when Congress doesn’t value every single life.”Forget about retreating to safer political ground. In the weeks since Hamas’s assault, Mr. Bowman, an iconoclastic former middle-school principal with scant foreign policy experience, has repeatedly inserted himself into the center of a major fight fracturing his party’s left between uncompromising pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian factions.Mr. Bowman frames his actions as a moral imperative, but they are already courting political peril. Local Jewish leaders have denounced his approach as blaming both sides for the gravest attack against their people since the Holocaust. A potentially formidable primary challenger, George Latimer, the Westchester County executive, has begun taking steps toward entering the race.Even some Jewish supporters publicly defending Mr. Bowman have grown wary. When a group of constituents who call themselves “Jews for Jamaal” held a private call with the congressman last week, they warned him he should be prepared to pay a political price if he does not support a multibillion-dollar military aid package for Israel now pending before Congress, according to three people on the call.Similar coalitions are lining up primary fights across the country against other members of Democrats’ left-wing “Squad” over their views on Israel, including Representatives Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Cori Bush of Missouri and Summer Lee of Pennsylvania.But perhaps no race promises to be so explosive, expensive or symbolically charged a test of the Democratic Party’s direction as a potential matchup between Mr. Bowman and Mr. Latimer.Mr. Bowman won his seat three years ago by defeating the staunchly pro-Israel chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Eliot L. Engel, in a primary. And the district he represents is home both to one of the best-organized Jewish communities in the country and a nonwhite majority who sees him as a paragon of progressive Black leadership.The anger toward Mr. Bowman could scarcely have come at a worse time for him. Just last Thursday, he pleaded guilty to setting off a false fire alarm in a House office building as he raced to a vote last month. To avoid jail time, he agreed to pay a $1,000 fine and apologize.Mr. Bowman’s allies — including many Jewish ones — insist his position on the Israel-Hamas war will be vindicated. They argue that he is speaking for many of the district’s Black and Latino voters who identify with the plight of Palestinians, and that he is voicing the conflicting views of many American Jews.“He is not ‘anti-Israel,’ and to refer to him that way is to deliberately distort his record, which includes many votes in favor of military and economic aid to Israel,” 40 members of the Jews for Jamaal group wrote in a recent letter warning Mr. Latimer that a primary would be “needlessly wasteful and terribly divisive.”On the call with the group earlier this month, Mr. Bowman framed his position as a matter of personal conviction. He said he would never be Representative Ritchie Torres, a staunchly pro-Israel Democrat who represents a neighboring district. But he also said it was unfair to lump him together with lawmakers like Ms. Tlaib or Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who have taken far more antagonistic stances toward Israel.Unlike them, Mr. Bowman has voted in the past to help fund Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. In late 2021, he traveled to Israel on a trip organized by J Street, a mainstream liberal pro-Israel advocacy group that still backs him. Both actions drew sharp blowback from allies on the left and prompted Mr. Bowman to quit the Democratic Socialists of America.In a statement, Mr. Bowman said that he would “always stand with the Jewish community” but also would work to bridge differences among his constituents, the majority of whom remain more focused on issues like health care and gun safety.The district, which includes more than half of Westchester County, is about 50 percent Black and Latino, according to census data; studies suggest around 10 percent of residents are Jewish, though Jews probably make up two to three times that share of the Democratic primary electorate.“True security for everyone in the region begins with the de-escalation of violence, which means the immediate release of hostages taken by Hamas, a cease-fire, humanitarian aid to Israel and Gaza,” and avoiding military escalation, Mr. Bowman said.Since Hamas’s attack, though, some Jewish leaders in Westchester said Mr. Bowman has been too quick to move past the carnage overseas and growing fears about antisemitism closer to home. They took particular offense last week when he was one of just 10 House lawmakers to vote against a bipartisan resolution standing with Israel.The American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobby that has spent millions of dollars targeting Mr. Bowman’s left-leaning allies in recent cycles, has privately offered its support to Mr. Latimer. So have local business leaders who detest Mr. Bowman’s critiques of capitalism and his vote against President Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill.And two dozen local rabbis have condemned his calls for a cease-fire as “a position of appeasement toward Hamas’s terror regime.”“Since being elected, Bowman has led the effort to erode support for Israel on Capitol Hill and within the Democratic Party,” they wrote in a recent letter urging Mr. Latimer to run.George Latimer, the Westchester County executive, has been encouraged by a pro-Israel group to challenge Mr. Bowman.Jonah Markowitz for The New York TimesIn an interview, Mr. Latimer, 69, said he would wait until mid November to announce his plans. But he described watching with growing alarm as protesters shaking college campuses cleave his party and, in his view, abandon Jewish Americans.“There are people in my county who are solid progressive Democrats,” said Mr. Latimer, who is Catholic. “But they also support the State of Israel, and they are frustrated that there is an element of the left that doesn’t see the historic oppression of the Jewish people in the same light as we’ve seen oppression of other groups.”Hours after Mr. Bowman spoke on Friday at the rally — organized by Jewish Voice for Peace, a Jewish anti-Zionist group — Mr. Latimer stood at the bimah of Kol Ami in White Plains to offer his unequivocal support to the Jewish congregation. He did not mention Mr. Bowman but drew subtle distinctions.“It was not some event that happened because of years of something else,” he said of Hamas’s attack. “It was the express hatred of Hamas toward Jewish people because they do not want Jewish people to live.”Mr. Bowman, for his part, has yet to visit a synagogue since the attack. His office indicated it is planning a series of meetings focused on strategies to combat hate.Mr. Latimer appears to have picked up at least one influential Democratic supporter even before entering the race.In an interview, Mr. Engel said he had resisted publicly criticizing Mr. Bowman since his defeat so as not to look bitter. But he said his successor had been an “embarrassment” who was “particularly awful” on Israel.“George is a class act; he works hard and he would really attempt to represent the people,” he said. “Whereas Bowman is more comfortable demonstrating, picketing and pulling fire alarms.” More