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      Evans Defeats Caraveo in Colorado, Flipping a Key House Seat for the G.O.P.

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      Representative Yadira Caraveo, Democrat of Colorado, lost her first re-election battle to her Republican challenger, Gabe Evans, a state representative, former Army captain and police officer with ties to the far right, The Associated Press declared on Tuesday, handing the G.O.P. a key pickup as it closes in on retaining its House majority.Mr. Evans’s win puts Republicans just two seats shy of the majority, with about a dozen races left to be called.A moderate Democrat, Ms. Caraveo kept a relatively low profile after winning her seat two years ago in a new swing district north of Denver. Her campaign heavily emphasized Ms. Caraveo’s background as a pediatrician and the daughter of Mexican immigrants, highlighting how her stances on reproductive rights and access to health care contrasted starkly with her opponent’s.She was Colorado’s first Latina elected to federal office.Mr. Evans, who has refused to say that former President Donald J. Trump lost the 2020 election and also downplayed the severity of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, was one of several election deniers and skeptics who sought to flip tossup districts.He also backpedaled his stance on abortion, saying in a recent debate that he would no longer support a national ban after endorsing one in 2022. As a state representative, he voted against a ban on corporal punishment in Colorado public schools, and refused to say during a debate with Ms. Caraveo when he believed it would be appropriate for a teacher to strike a child. More

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      Whitesides Defeats Garcia in California, Handing House Democrats a Win

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      George Whitesides, a former NASA chief of staff, narrowly defeated Representative Mike Garcia, Republican of California, The Associated Press said on Tuesday night, flipping a key seat in the Antelope Valley that Democrats had long sought to win.Mr. Garcia conceded on Monday night even as votes were still being counted, after Mr. Whitesides jumped out to a roughly 7,000-vote lead.Democrats had widely seen Mr. Garcia’s Santa Clarita-based seat in the northern suburbs of Los Angeles as one of their best pickup opportunities in the Golden State. The district supported Mr. Biden in 2020, but Democrats came up short in their attempts to defeat the Republican former military pilot after running weak candidates two cycles in a row.This year, they pinned their hopes on Mr. Whitesides, the clean-cut former chief executive of Virgin Galactic who billed himself as a moderate Democrat — and also happened to be a prolific fund-raiser, a talent that helped push him over the edge in the district’s expensive Los Angeles-based media market.Democrats had hoped that by running up victories in New York and California, their party could take back the House. But while votes were still being counted in California, it appeared that after a number of setbacks for Democrats in races across the country, including in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Colorado, House Republicans were on track to win a narrow majority.On the campaign trail, Mr. Whitesides stressed in equal measure the importance of protecting women’s reproductive rights and working across the aisle. But he also spoke frequently about the jobs he created while leading Virgin Galactic, noting that the economy and affordable housing were among the top issues he heard about from voters.“In Congress, you can count on me to fight to create more good local jobs, lower everyday costs, build safe communities, protect Social Security and Medicare, and protect reproductive freedom,” Mr. Whitesides said in a statement on Monday night.The race was one of a handful in California and New York, two coastal bastions that emerged this cycle as the unlikely heart of the fight for control of the House of Representatives.Mr. Garcia, a former Navy fighter pilot, had relied heavily on his military credentials in the aviation-heavy district to help paint himself as more mainstream than many in the House G.O.P. conference. He billed himself as a check against the state’s Democratic supermajority in Sacramento, hoping to tap into a well of voter discontent with California’s high cost of living.But he was ultimately unable to withstand the overwhelming number of Democratic voters who came out to cast their ballots in this cycle’s presidential election. More

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      Trump Allies Push Him to Block Thune From Becoming Senate G.O.P. Leader

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      Advisers to the president-elect, who already has a strong hold on congressional Republicans, want him to tighten his grip by torpedoing the bid of the establishment front-runner for the post.Some of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s closest allies are privately counseling him to try to block a onetime Republican nemesis from becoming the Senate majority leader, pushing him to impose his will more forcefully on an already compliant G.O.P. Congress.Mr. Trump has been considering the counsel of advisers who believe he should join an effort on the right to stop Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican, from winning the top post, according to people familiar with the talks who insisted on anonymity to discuss them, though one person close to the president-elect noted that he had not weighed in on the race.Doing so would be an extraordinary move even for Mr. Trump, who during his first term and since he has left office has had an iron grip on congressional Republicans, demanding and almost always receiving loyalty from them on matters of policy and personnel.Intervening in an internal leadership struggle in the Senate, which has at times been more resistant to the former president’s dictates and where members are fiercely protective of their independence, would signal Mr. Trump’s determination to dominate the legislative branch in his second term. The majority leader controls the Senate floor, including what proposals and nominees receive votes — and when.Mr. Trump has already indicated his desire to hold a tighter rein on the Senate in the days since he was elected. He posted an ultimatum on social media on Sunday in which he demanded that any new Senate leader cooperate in his efforts to circumvent the confirmation process by calling recesses during which he could appoint personnel without winning Senate approval. All three candidates vying to lead the Senate next year quickly promised to speed through his choices.Republican senators and senators-elect are set to vote by secret ballot on Wednesday on who should serve as majority leader in the next Congress. Mr. Thune, an establishment Republican who like Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the current leader, is reviled by some on the MAGA right, is competing against Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Senators Vying to Be G.O.P. Leader Vow to Quickly Confirm Trump Nominees

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      Senators Rick Scott, John Thune and John Cornyn quickly responded to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s demand on social media, the latest example of his influence over Republican lawmakers.Senators vying to become the next leader of the Republican conference pledged on Sunday to quickly push through President-elect Donald J. Trump’s appointees after he demanded on social media that they do so.Senator Rick Scott of Florida was the first to make such a vow in an attempt to curry favor with Mr. Trump. Mr. Scott quickly picked up the endorsement of one of the president-elect’s biggest backers, the billionaire Elon Musk.Not to be outdone, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, who is considered a front-runner in the race, released a statement saying that he, too, would push to swiftly staff Mr. Trump’s administration.“One thing is clear: We must act quickly and decisively to get the president’s cabinet and other nominees in place as soon as possible to start delivering on the mandate we’ve been sent to execute, and all options are on the table to make that happen, including recess appointments,” Mr. Thune said.Senator John Cornyn of Texas was not far behind.“It is unacceptable for Senate Ds to blockade President @realDonaldTrump’s cabinet appointments,” he wrote on social media on Sunday. “If they do, we will stay in session, including weekends, until they relent. Additionally, the Constitution expressly confers the power on the President to make recess appointments.”Mr. Cornyn’s staff pointed out that he had already been advocating for quick approval of Mr. Trump’s nominees.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      There Were Two Huge Problems Harris Could Not Escape

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      Sarah Isgur, a longtime Republican campaign operative — and my friend and a senior editor at The Dispatch — has a brilliant sports analogy for the process of campaigning. She compares it to … curling.For those unfamiliar with the sport (which enjoys 15 minutes of fame every Winter Olympics), it involves sliding a very large, heavy “rock” toward a target on the ice. One person “throws” a 44-pound disc-shaped stone by sliding it along the ice, sweepers come in and frantically try to marginally change the speed and direction of the rock by brushing the ice with “brooms” that can melt just enough of the ice to make the rock travel farther or perhaps a little bit straighter.The sweepers are important, no doubt, but they cannot control the rock enough to save a bad throw. It’s a matter of physics. The rock simply has too much momentum.What does this have to do with politics? As Isgur writes, “The underlying dynamics of an election cycle (the economy, the popularity of the president, national events driving the news cycle) are like the 44-pound ‘stone.’ ” The candidates and the campaign team are the sweepers. They work frantically — and they can influence the stone — but they don’t control it.One of the frustrating elements of political commentary is that we spend far too much time talking about the sweeping and far too little time talking about the stone. Political hobbyists in particular (and that includes journalists!) are very interested in ad campaigns, ground games and messaging.Those things do matter, but when facing an election defeat this comprehensive, you know it was the stone that made the difference.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Democratic Blind Spot That Wrecked 2024

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      The 2022 election went better than Democrats could have hoped. The party picked up governor’s mansions and state legislatures and expanded their Senate majority. It held down losses in the House. The promised “red wave” never crashed ashore. Perhaps it would have been better if it had.Looking back, the seeds of Democrats’ 2024 wipeout were planted in the quasi-victory of 2022. Three things happened in the aftermath. The pressure on President Biden not to run for re-election, and the possibility of a serious primary challenge if he did run, evaporated. Democrats persuaded themselves of a theory of the electorate that proved mistaken. And as a result, the Biden-Harris administration avoided the kind of hard, post-defeat pivot that both the Clinton and Obama administrations were forced to make after the midterm defeats of 1994 and 2010.In 2020, Democrats had worried over Biden’s age, but were comforted, in part, by the soft signals he sent that he would serve only one term. “Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” he said in 2020. By mid-2022, as Biden signaled his intention to run again, the party was growing alarmed. In June of that year, The Times interviewed nearly 50 Democratic officials and found that among “nearly all the Democrats interviewed, the president’s age — 79 now, 82 by the time the winner of the 2024 election is inaugurated — is a deep concern about his political viability.”Nor was the public thrilled about the results the Biden administration was delivering. In October of 2022, amid widespread anger over inflation, the Times-Siena poll found Biden with a 38 percent job approval rating and trailing Trump in a hypothetical rematch.If Democrats had been wiped out in the midterms, the pressure on Biden to be the transitional figure he’d promised to be would have been immense. If he’d run again despite that pressure, he might have faced serious challengers. But Democrats fared far better than they had expected. The president’s saggy approval rating and the widespread anger at inflation were nowhere to be found in the election results. In their first referendum under Biden, Democrats did much better than they had under Clinton or Obama. Any pressure on Biden to step aside — and any possibility of a real primary challenge — ended.In its place, a new theory of the electorate emerged, based on the way Democrats over-performed in contested states, like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and underperformed in safe states, like New York and California. There were two coalitions: the MAGA coalition and the anti-MAGA coalition. The anti-MAGA coalition was bigger, but it needed to be activated by the threat of Donald Trump or the Dobbs abortion ruling. A slew of special election victories in 2023 seemed to confirm the theory. Democrats were winning elections they had no business winning, given Biden’s low approval rating and public anger over inflation. But the anti-MAGA coalition’s hatred of Trump had changed the electoral math.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Won’t Have Haley or Pompeo in New Administration

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump ruled out roles for Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo, who served in his previous administration.President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Saturday that he would not invite Nikki Haley, his former ambassador to the United Nations, or Mike Pompeo, his former secretary of state, to join his incoming administration.Mr. Trump’s announcement on Truth Social, his social media platform, was an early indication of the decision-making process of the president-elect as he navigates the ideologic differences within the Republican Party.Days after his election win over Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump’s team has already started his first formal transition meetings and ramped up the process for building his new cabinet.By ruling out Mr. Pompeo and Ms. Haley, Mr. Trump was rejecting two Republicans who had backed U.S. support for Ukraine at a time when Mr. Trump and many of his allies have pushed to curtail American aid for allies and military involvement overseas.“I will not be inviting former Ambassador Nikki Haley, or former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to join the Trump Administration, which is currently in formation,” Mr. Trump said in the post. “I very much enjoyed and appreciated working with them previously, and would like to thank them for their service to our Country.”Mr. Trump was also turning away two top officials in his first administration who in recent years had shared criticism of him.Many in Mr. Trump’s orbit, including David Sacks, a major Trump donor, viewed Mr. Pompeo as being too eager to use the military overseas. Mr. Trump also likely did not forget that, in 2023, Mr. Pompeo warned during the Conservative Political Action Conference that Republicans should not follow “celebrity leaders with their own brand of identity politics — those with fragile egos who refuse to acknowledge reality.”Days later, during an interview with Fox News, Mr. Pompeo claimed he was not talking about Mr. Trump, while also criticizing his former boss’s fiscal policy.Mr. Pompeo in 2022 also criticized Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents after the F.B.I. raided his home in Mar-a-Lago.“No one gets to keep classified information outside of a place classified information should be. That is certainly true,” Mr. Pompeo said, while also denouncing the Justice Department for its handling of the case.Ms. Haley was also Mr. Trump’s last rival to drop out of the race for the Republican nomination. Just days before the election, Ms. Haley said the Trump campaign’s rhetoric was driving away women and minorities, citing the racist and misogynistic remarks by speakers at a Trump rally held at Madison Square Garden in October.“This bromance and this masculinity stuff, it borders on edgy to the point that it’s going to make women uncomfortable,” Ms. Haley said. Despite repeated offers to provide advice to the campaign, Mr. Trump mostly kept her at a distance during his presidential run. Mr. Trump’s gamble to mobilize men, despite them historically voting less than women, would end up paying off.Both Mr. Pompeo and Ms. Haley did eventually vocally support Mr. Trump and endorse his nomination. More

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      California Shifts Rightward on Crime in an Election Fueled by Frustration

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      Voters in the Democratic-run state overwhelmingly approved a measure to impose harsher sentences for crimes and were on their way to ousting two progressive district attorneys.California has shown no signs of going Republican anytime soon, but in Tuesday’s elections the reliably liberal state lurched to the right in ways that might surprise other Americans.Fed up with open-air drug use, “smash-and-grab” robberies and shampoo locked away in stores, California voters overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure, Proposition 36, that will impose harsher penalties for shoplifting and drug possession. Voters in Oakland and Los Angeles were on their way to ousting liberal district attorneys who had campaigned on social justice promises to reduce imprisonment and hold the police accountable. And statewide measures to raise the minimum wage, ban the forced labor of inmates and expand rent control, all backed by progressive groups and labor unions, were heading toward defeat.Amid a conservative shift nationally that included Donald J. Trump’s reclamation of the White House, voters in heavily Democratic California displayed a similar frustration, challenging the state’s identity as a reflexively liberal bastion.And Mr. Trump appears to have gained ground in California compared with four years ago, based on initial election returns, despite facing Vice President Kamala Harris in her home state. (She was still ahead by nearly 18 percentage points after a vote count update on Thursday, but Joseph R. Biden Jr. won in 2020 by 29 points.)The mood this year was “very negative about the direction of the country especially, but also the state,” said Mark Baldassare, who is a political scientist and the statewide survey director for the Public Policy Institute of California. “Lots of concerns about the direction of the economy, and worries about the cost of living and public safety.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More