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      Elise Stefanik Believes She Can Turn New York Into a Republican State

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      AMSTERDAM, N.Y. — The event, hard by the Mohawk River, was a meet-and-greet opportunity for some of the Republican Party’s most notable candidates in New York. But Representative Elise Stefanik’s focus clearly extended far beyond her re-election bid.“We are seeing the results of one-party Democrat rule both in Albany and in Washington, and it has created crisis, after crisis, after crisis,” Ms. Stefanik said, with her attacks on the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and other Democrats drawing the biggest applause lines.“The bad ideas that start in Albany, often times they percolate to Washington,” she added.Ms. Stefanik, the chair of the House Republican Conference, is at the forefront of a push for her party to regain control of Congress, and she believes that New York — perennially a Democratic state — can lead the way. She predicts that Republicans will win 15 of the state’s 26 House seats.And her efforts in New York — appearing at fund-raisers and news conferences across the state — are predicated on a message that New York’s Rockefeller-era Republicanism, with moderate positions on social issues girded by fiscal and budgetary austerity, is over.“America First is here to stay,” said Ms. Stefanik, 38, adding, “and parties are determined not by the political leaders, they’re determined by the people.”Indeed, of the eight Republican members of the state’s current congressional delegation, only one, Representative John Katko of central New York, is generally considered a consistent moderate, and he is retiring, a decision that the former president greeted with joy.“Great news,” former President Donald J. Trump said after Mr. Katko announced he would not run in 2022. “Another one bites the dust.”Veterans of the party — which hasn’t won a statewide race in two decades — say the move away from Rockefeller Republicanism is a part of larger shift, as moderate Republicans from urban areas moved away and the party’s faithful increasingly began to be found in more conservative, rural areas.Ms. Stefanik drew applause as she criticized Nancy Pelosi at a recent political event in Amsterdam, N.Y.Cindy Schultz for The New York Times“A lot of the Republican base, what was part of that movement, has left the state,” said the former congressman Tom Reed, a Republican who served as chairman of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus and who resigned last spring from a district encompassing the state’s Southern Tier. “They are just not there anymore.”Others were even more blunt about the status of the Rockefeller model.“That’s over,” said Al D’Amato, the former Republican senator from New York. “That’s over.”The shift in the Republican Party echoes the arc of Ms. Stefanik’s political career.A Harvard-educated striver from upstate New York, Ms. Stefanik was the youngest woman ever elected to Congress in 2014, running as a moderate in a district that had previously been represented by Representative Bill Owens, a centrist Democrat.She rose fast in the ranks, banking right with the election of Mr. Trump as president in 2016 and quickly earning his approbation after she staunchly defended him during his first impeachment hearing.By May 2021, she had effectively deposed Representative Liz Cheney to become chair of the House Republican Conference, making her the third-highest ranking Republican in that chamber. She voted against certifying the vote confirming President Biden’s victory and now describes herself as “Ultra MAGA” and “proud of it.”If, as is expected, Ms. Stefanik wins a fifth term next month, she will be the most senior member of the state’s Republican delegation. She is also the first New Yorker to hold a position of leadership in the Republican Party since Representative Tom Reynolds, from western New York, served as chair of National Republican Congressional Committee from 2003 to 2006. And she’s proven a potent draw for donors, raising more than $10 million, often in small dollars, for congressional races and party committees nationwide, according to her campaign, while giving money to conservative candidates from Rhode Island to California.Her influence on candidates has already been seen across the state, with candidates in races in Long Island trumpeting and raising funds off Ms. Stefanik’s endorsement, including Nicholas J. LaLota, a former Navy lieutenant who is running to fill Mr. Zeldin’s seat, and George Santos, a financier who attended the Jan. 6 rally and is running in the Third Congressional District.With New York potentially being a battleground for control of the House, Ms. Stefanik’s efforts have also been backed by national party leaders: At a September fund-raiser in Washington, D.C., for Mike Lawler, who is trying to knock off Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, she appeared alongside Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.In early October, Ms. Stefanik also co-hosted a $1,000-a-ticket reception at the Women’s National Republican Club in Manhattan, alongside Representative Tom Emmer, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, raising more than $120,000 for seven of the state’s Republican congressional candidates.Her principal campaign committee — Elise for Congress, currently home to a $3 million bankroll — has also given steadily to other congressional candidates across New York, as well as to county committees and small-bore races like county judgeships. She also leads the Elise Victory Fund (a joint fund-raising committee), and E-Pac, which works to elect female Republicans.That sort of beneficence, as well as her outspoken appearances on conservative cable news shows and constant critiques of President Biden and Democratic policies, have positioned Ms. Stefanik to become one of New York’s few Republican kingmakers, on par with Mr. Trump and, previously, Mr. D’Amato.“She’s one of the coolest rock stars we have,” said Sally Hogan, who leads a Republican women’s organization in the Capital region which expresses “100 percent support” for Mr. Trump. “She stands up for women and for Republican values.”Ms. Stefanik, addressing farmers at a recent event in Fultonville, N.Y., has also traveled across the state to bolster the chances of her Republican colleagues.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesThe embrace of Trumpism is not complete among Republicans in New York. Representative Andrew Garbarino of Long Island, and a pair of competitive candidates in the Hudson Valley, Mr. Lawler and Marc Molinaro, have taken some centrist positions, while Representative Nicole Malliotakis of Staten Island — who is in a rematch against Max Rose, the former Democratic congressman — has expressed measured support for new gun laws and abortion rights, while remaining a staunch Trump backer.And there are Republicans who still identify with the Rockefeller era, including Mr. Katko, the soon-to-be congressional retiree who espouses a bipartisan philosophy, and was one of just 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump in 2021.“My bread and butter is always that the other side is not the enemy,” he said in an interview earlier this fall. “The Democrats love the country just as much as we do. They just have a different approach.”Another New York Republican who strayed from the party’s orthodoxy — Representative Chris Jacobs — is also retiring, after embracing gun control policies in the wake of a racist massacre in Buffalo, adjacent to his district in western New York.Mr. Jacobs’s decision led Ms. Stefanik to a somewhat surprising endorsement of Carl Paladino, a Buffalo-area developer and former candidate for governor with a long history of racist and sexist slurs, in a June primary to fill that seat. (Among other remarks, Mr. Paladino, who lost to Andrew Cuomo in the race for governor in 2010, commented that Hitler is “the kind of leader we need today.”)The endorsement of Mr. Paladino signaled Ms. Stefanik’s willingness to take on the status quo in the state party: Mr. Paladino’s opponent was Nick Langworthy, the party’s chairman, who was assailed by one of Ms. Stefanik’s top aides who called on him to resign. Mr. Langworthy fired back, accusing Ms. Stefanik of a “vendetta.” she did not back down, lending staff to Mr. Paladino during his primary campaign.He did not win, though he has continued to criticize Mr. Langworthy, calling him a “nightmare” for the state party in a recent interview, while lavishing praise on Ms. Stefanik.“She’s very bright. She’s got that North Country thing going for her: She’s so practical and down to earth,” Mr. Paladino said. “And yeah, she helped me and I’m very thankful for that and all the help that she sent me. I can’t say enough good things about her.”Mr. Langworthy, who is expected to be elected to Congress next month, declined to comment on Mr. Paladino or Ms. Stefanik, who, for her part, says the feud is settled. “We haven’t spoken,” she said, of Mr. Langworthy, “but we’re working great with the New York G.O.P.”Jay Jacobs, the Democratic state party chair, said that Ms. Stefanik’s predictions of a “red tsunami” were overblown. “My advice to the congresswoman is, ‘Don’t count your chickens till they hatch,’” Mr. Jacobs said. “A lot can happen in the last 10 days of any campaign, particularly because that is when most voters really begin to pay attention.”In her own race, Ms. Stefanik, who lives in Schuylerville, in Saratoga County, N.Y., is expected to prevail in the 21st Congressional District, an enormous, solidly Republican district that encompasses all or part of 15 counties in northern New York. Her opponent is Matt Castelli, a former C.I.A. officer specializing in counterterrorism, who has attacked Ms. Stefanik for the very ambition that has made her famous, claiming it has come at a cost to her constituents.“She sold out her district in order to advance her career, and that is readily transparent to voters across the political spectrum,” Mr. Castelli, 41, said. “And people are really turned off by it.”Matt Castelli, a former C.I.A. officer making his first run for office, has raised more than $1 million in the last quarter in his run against Ms. Stefanik.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesMr. Castelli, a first-time candidate and a Democrat, established a third-party line — the Moderate Party — to appeal to voters that might be put off by Ms. Stefanik’s complete embrace of Trumpism, and he has brought in more than $1 million in donations between July and September, a haul he says been helped by donors nationwide who understand “the stakes of this particular race.”“I’ve made the argument that this is the frontline in the battle for the soul of America, because there is no person on the ballot this November that probably represents this ongoing threat to our democracy, more so, than Elise Stefanik,” he said.Ms. Stefanik insists she is not a pure partisan, noting her work on northern border issues as well as on veterans affairs, as part of her role on the House Armed Services Committee. “It’s to the media’s detriment that they don’t want to focus on that,” she said.By the same token, she also reminded voters at the recent meet-and-greet in Amsterdam of her prominence in Republican circles, something she said “gives this district a seat at the highest levels.”“And I’m never going to apologize for that,” she said. “You deserve more than a backbencher.”Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting. 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      A Beginner’s Guide to the U.S. Midterm Elections

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      What’s at stake, and how does it work? Let’s start with the basics.If you are broadly aware that the upcoming midterm elections in the United States have major global implications, but you’re not up to speed on the American system of government or you’re having trouble following along, you’re in the right place.In the United States’ two-party system, control of two crucial bodies of government — the Senate and the House of Representatives — is essential for getting laws made, and it will be decided by a vote on Nov. 8. Democrats currently control both bodies and the presidency, and losing either the House or the Senate to Republicans would significantly decrease Democrats’ power in the next two years of President Biden’s term.Hundreds of elections will take place, but many candidates are considered shoo-ins and control in each body will most likely be decided by a few tight races.I need the basics: What is decided in this election?The Senate, which is now at a 50-50 deadlock but is controlled by Democrats because Vice President Kamala Harris casts the tiebreaking vote, has 100 members, with two from each of the 50 states. There are 34 seats up for grabs in November, and winners serve six-year terms.The House, with 435 voting members, is controlled by the Democrats, 222 to 213. All 435 seats are up for election, with winners serving two-year terms.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: The debate performance by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is still recovering from a stroke, has thrust questions of health to the center of the pivotal race and raised Democratic anxieties.G.O.P. Inflation Plans: Republicans are riding a wave of anger over inflation as they seek to recapture Congress, but few economists expect their proposals to bring down rising prices.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.The odds are against Democrats, but this has been a strange year.Historically, the party that controls the presidency — currently the Democrats — has fared poorly in the midterms. Frustration with the president often leads to success for the other party, and Mr. Biden has low approval ratings.Currently, Republicans are favored to win the House, and the Senate is considered a tossup, according to FiveThirtyEight. Democrats enjoyed a major polling bump after the Supreme Court made an unpopular ruling in June that removed the constitutional right to abortion, giving the party hope that it could defy historical trends, but that advantage has mostly faded.Read more here on how to follow the polls and the predictions, and on the wide range of outcomes possible.Why it matters: If Democrats lose control of either body, Biden’s agenda is in trouble.In highly polarized times, it is exceedingly difficult to pass legislation unless one party controls the presidency, the House and the Senate. If Republicans win either the House or the Senate, they can prevent much of what Mr. Biden and the Democrats would hope to accomplish before 2024, the next presidential election. You could kiss any major Democratic legislation goodbye.On the other hand, if Democrats hold onto the House and increase their lead in the Senate, it could give them more ability to pass new laws. And, since senators serve six-year terms, running up a lead now would give them some breathing room in 2024, when analysts say Republicans are likely to be highly favored..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.If Republicans gain power, they could block Democratic efforts to codify abortion rights and take action on the climate, and question the aid sent to Ukraine.Historically, the party that controls the presidency — currently the Democrats — has fared poorly in the midterms. Sarah Silbiger for The New York TimesRepublicans could gain investigative and impeachment powers.If the Republicans take one or both of the chambers, they could use their new powers to create an onslaught of investigations into Democrats, as opposition parties have long done in Washington. With subpoenas and court hearings, they could highlight perceived incompetence or alleged wrongdoing on a variety of subjects, including the search of former President Donald J. Trump’s private club and residence in August, the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the pandemic response.Democrats expect that Mr. Biden and his family would be among the targets, along with Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top medical adviser in the Trump and Biden administrations.Some Republicans have also pledged to impeach the president, a complicated process that could force Mr. Biden to stand trial in the Senate, as Mr. Trump did for separate impeachments in 2020 and 2021. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican, said last year that there would be “enormous pressure” on a Republican House to impeach Mr. Biden “whether it’s justified or not.”An important power of the Senate: Approving court nominations.Control of the Senate includes the power to approve federal court justices, up to and including the Supreme Court. If Republicans claim control, they could use their power to block President Biden’s nominations.When President Barack Obama, a Democrat, had to work with a Republican-controlled Senate, the Republicans blocked his Supreme Court nomination in 2016. But Mr. Trump was able to speed through three Supreme Court nominations, thanks to the friendly Senate.Though not as high-profile, lower-court nominations can also be highly influential. As president, both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden have used same-party Senate control to appoint dozens of their preferred judges to important posts across the nation.State races could have a huge effect on issues like abortion rights and voting.A governor will be elected in 36 states. Among other powers, they could be highly influential in determining whether abortion remains legal in several states.The races for each state’s secretary of state do not usually receive much attention, but this year they have attracted major interest because of the office’s role in overseeing elections. It could become a key position if there are election disputes in the 2024 presidential election, and some of the Republicans running in key states supported Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. More

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      The 2022 Race for the House, in Four Districts, and Four Polls

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      President Biden is unpopular everywhere. Economic concerns are mounting. Abortion rights are popular but social issues are more often secondary.A new series of House polls by The New York Times and Siena College across four archetypal swing districts offers fresh evidence that Republicans are poised to retake Congress this fall as the party dominated among voters who care most about the economy.Democrats continue to show resilience in places where abortion is still high on the minds of voters, and where popular incumbents are on the ballot. Indeed, the Democrats were still tied or ahead in all four districts — three of which were carried by Mr. Biden in 2020. But the party’s slim majority — control could flip if just five seats change hands — demands that it essentially run the table everywhere, at a moment when the economy has emerged as the driving issue in all but the country’s wealthier enclaves.The poll results in the four districts — an upscale suburb in Kansas, the old industrial heartland of Pennsylvania, a fast-growing part of Las Vegas and a sprawling district along New Mexico’s southern border — offer deeper insights beyond the traditional Republican and Democratic divide in the race for Congress. They show how the midterm races are being shaped by larger and at times surprising forces that reflect the country’s ethnic, economic and educational realignment.“The economy thing affects everyone while the social thing affects a minority,” said Victor Negron, a 30-year-old blackjack dealer who lives in Henderson, Nev., and who was planning to vote for the Republican vying to flip the seat from a Democratic incumbent. “If everyone’s doing good, then who cares what else everyone else is doing.”The Four Districts Polled More

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      No, That Democrat Didn’t Vote ‘100% of the Time’ With Nancy Pelosi

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      G.O.P. operatives, like a classic rock station playing “Stairway to Heaven,” believe that the hits work, and so they eagerly link vulnerable Democrats to the “radical San Francisco liberal.”It’s a phrase you’re hearing a lot in debates and Republican attack ads: that Democrat X voted “100 percent of the time” with Speaker Nancy Pelosi.Whenever you hear a claim like that, be skeptical. It’s probably false.Some of these ads go even further. An ad for J.D. Vance in Ohio, for instance, claims his Senate opponent, Representative Tim Ryan, “votes with Biden, Pelosi 100 percent.” He repeated that statistic in a news release today.Ryan actually ran against Pelosi for House speaker in 2016, winning 63 votes. In 2018, he signed a letter calling for her ouster. He’s probably been her most vocal critic among elected Democrats, at some risk to his career in the House.Republicans have tried the same tactic against other Democratic rebels — notably Representative Abigail Spanberger, a lawmaker from Northern Virginia who is another of Pelosi’s in-house critics. “Abigail Spanberger votes 100 percent with Pelosi,” one G.O.P. ad says. “It is like having our very own Pelosi mini-me.”Pelosi has been a boogeywoman in Republican campaigns for more than a decade. Remember “Fire Pelosi” in 2010? The haircut thing during the pandemic? The ice cream freezer drawer? For G.O.P. operatives, linking vulnerable Democrats to Pelosi, or the “radical San Francisco liberal” in their words, is akin to a classic rock station that always plays “Stairway to Heaven” or “Free Bird” — they do it because they think it works.And has Ryan voted with Pelosi and Biden 100 percent of the time? Has Spanberger? Not really. Republicans have leveled the same cookie-cutter accusation at Cindy Axne, Angie Craig, Elaine Luria, Chris Pappas, Dean Phillips and Susan Wild — all of them known to be among the least partisan Democrats in the House.Let’s unpack where those statistics come from, and why they’re so misleading.There are two main sources that track congressional voting records: FiveThirtyEight, which rates lawmakers on how often they align with Biden, and ProPublica, which built an online tool that allows you to compare head-to-head voting records of any two members of Congress.ProPublica’s tool lists only “votes designated as major by ProPublica.” In the current Congress, there have been 123 such votes. And when you do a comparison between Pelosi and Ryan, it does return a result of 100 percent, along with the text: “They have disagreed on 0 votes out of 123 votes in the 117th Congress.”But that’s “really misleading,” according to John Lawrence, a former chief of staff to Pelosi and the author of a new book on her first tenure as speaker, “Arc of Power.”Not only, he said, does the tool cherry-pick votes, but it doesn’t capture how often Pelosi has had to deliver what Lawrence called “bad news” to the left wing of her caucus when the Senate balks. During the negotiations over the Affordable Care Act, for instance, Senator Joe Lieberman refused to support a public insurance option — so Pelosi had to twist the arms of disappointed progressives in the House to get them to support final passage.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: The debate performance by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is still recovering from a stroke, has thrust questions of health to the center of the pivotal race and raised Democratic anxieties.G.O.P. Inflation Plans: Republicans are riding a wave of anger over inflation as they seek to recapture Congress, but few economists expect their proposals to bring down rising prices.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Here are six more reasons that the 100 percent thing is bunk:First: Because she’s speaker, by House tradition, Pelosi usually doesn’t vote. So on a purely factual basis, it’s flat wrong.“We could estimate with some confidence, but it’s not a great metric,” said Sarah Binder, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and George Washington University who studies Congress. But that’s a minor point.Second: Centrists like Ryan will sponsor or co-sign reams of legislation that never gets a vote because it doesn’t match the priorities of their more liberal Democratic colleagues. Along with Spanberger, for instance, he’s a co-sponsor of the Trust in Congress Act, a bill to bar lawmakers and their families from trading individual stocks. Pelosi initially opposed it. Ryan also broke with Pelosi by opposing the USA Freedom Act of 2014, which would have cut off the National Security Agency’s collection of bulk telephone records.Third: The “100 percent” sound bites also don’t capture all the times Ryan, for one, voted with the man who hopes to replace Pelosi as speaker: Representative Kevin McCarthy of California. ProPublica’s tool finds that, in the 116th Congress, Ryan and McCarthy voted together 256 times out of 744 total votes, including 11 “major votes.”Drew Hammill, a deputy chief of staff in Pelosi’s office, also noted that legislation on gun safety, infrastructure and semiconductor manufacturing had passed with Republican votes.Fourth: Like a duck paddling beneath the surface of the water, there’s a lot that goes on in Congress that is not easy to see and is impossible to quantify: Lawmakers shape legislation through committee meetings, private exchanges or random hallway encounters with colleagues, public statements and amendments.As Lawrence pointed out, lawmakers will often withhold their vote in exchange for concessions that make a bill more palatable for their districts. Ryan, for instance, insisted on beefing up pro-union provisions in the CHIPS Act, the bipartisan semiconductor bill, and he got his way before voting yes.If you’re a Capitol Hill reporter or a whiz at using Congress.gov, the government’s extremely clunky vote-tracking tool, or the even more arcane Congressional Record, you can trace some of that. But a lot of the give-and-take is hard to capture with data.Fifth: Lawmakers on the left are just as likely to break with leadership as centrists are, if not more so. By ProPublica’s measure, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York voted with Pelosi 94 percent of the time — but nobody would describe her as more moderate than Ryan or Spanberger. Binder noted that, on paper, Ocasio-Cortez often votes with Republicans when she opposes the Democrats’ party line. So she shows up as a “moderate” in some indexes, as do Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib.Sixth: The House and the Senate are different institutions, with different structures and traditions. The House, for instance, has a much more powerful Rules Committee, which enforces more party-line voting. As Binder pointed out, most votes are “procedural votes” that don’t tell us much about a lawmaker’s ideological predilections.In the Senate, where any senator can hold up a bill for pretty much any reason, there’s also the filibuster — which, for better or worse, promotes more collaboration across the aisle.So if you run two senators against one another in ProPublica’s app, you’ll find far more Democrats voting with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer at rates in the 80s. But that doesn’t tell you all that much about whether, say, Senator Jon Tester of Montana is to the left of Representative Jared Golden of Maine. And the Senate tends to vote on lots of nominations, which clogs up the data.Representative Tim Ryan, campaigning at Ohio State University, lands in the middle of the pack among Democratic members of Congress in terms of voting against the majority.Gaelen Morse/Getty ImagesSo which metrics are more accurate?Political scientists prefer more sophisticated measures of ideology, but they don’t tend to be easy to use. There are two main ones: VoteView, which I wrote about earlier, and Congressional Quarterly’s “Party Unity” score.Party Unity scores are proprietary, but C.Q. occasionally releases rankings to the public. The publication’s list of the Democrats who voted most often against their own party’s majority makes intuitive sense. The top 10 of these “opposition Democrats” in 2020 all represented swing districts: They include Golden, Spanberger, Luria of Virginia, Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania, Max Rose of New York, Joe Cunningham of North Carolina, Anthony Brindisi of New York and Stephanie Murphy of Florida.By VoteView’s more complex measure, Ryan scores a -0.402, which puts him around the middle of the Democratic pack. Spanberger scores a -0.176, implying that she is more conservative.For comparison’s sake, Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the leader of the Progressive Caucus, scores a -0.681, while Golden, the most conservative Democrat, is at -0.114. Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, who voted with Pelosi 99 percent of the time according to ProPublica’s online tool, is right up there with Golden at -0.15.But that’s not exactly the stuff attack ads are made of, let alone rebuttals. You probably won’t see Ryan out there promoting his VoteView rating of -0.402 on the hustings — it’s far easier for him to say, as he often does, “Well, I ran against Nancy Pelosi.”What to readMany American entrepreneurs have mixed politics and business. No one has fused the two quite like the election-denying chief executive of MyPillow, report Alexandra Berzon, Charles Homans and Ken Bensinger.As was the case in 2020, Republican votes are more likely to be counted and reported first in several battleground states, giving the party’s candidates deceptively large early leads. Nick Corasaniti reports on the “red mirage.”As Cheri Beasley and Val Demings run competitive Senate campaigns in North Carolina and Florida, some Black female Democrats say party leaders are leaving them to fend for themselves, writes Jonathan Weisman.A Tennessee man was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for dragging a police officer protecting the Capitol into an angry pro-Trump crowd that brutally assaulted the officer on Jan. 6, 2021. Alan Feuer has sentencing details.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      OSCE Election Observers Warn of Republican Election Deniers

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      Attempts by candidates to discredit the integrity of the vote have “snowballed enormously” since the 2020 election, the head of the observation mission said.WASHINGTON — Election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe warned this week of “intensely divisive” rhetoric ahead of the midterm elections in the United States, noting that Republicans who have denied the 2020 election results are running for offices that directly oversee future contests.In a 16-page interim report released on Wednesday, the organization highlighted a number of concerns for the midterms, including threats of violence against election officials, widely circulated election misinformation, and potential voter suppression and voter intimidation. The group, an international security organization whose members include the United States, routinely monitors the elections of its member states at their invitation.The report noted that “a number of Republican candidates in key races” who could be in charge of overseeing future elections have “challenged or refused to accept the legitimacy of the 2020 results.” Attempts by candidates to discredit the integrity of the vote have “snowballed enormously” since the 2020 election, Tana de Zulueta, the head of the organization’s election observation mission for the U.S. midterms, said in an interview.The report offered further evidence of international concern about the state of democracy in the United States in the wake of President Donald J. Trump’s time in office and his attempts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election.Despite the concern, the World Justice Project, an organization that tracks the rule of law internationally, said on Wednesday that the situation in the United States had actually improved slightly in 2022 after several years of decline. In newly released rankings, the group placed the United States at No. 26 out of 140 countries and jurisdictions.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: The debate performance by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is still recovering from a stroke, has thrust questions of health to the center of the pivotal race and raised Democratic anxieties.G.O.P. Inflation Plans: Republicans are riding a wave of anger over inflation as they seek to recapture Congress, but few economists expect their proposals to bring down rising prices.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.“The U.S. is not out of the woods by a long stretch,” Elizabeth Andersen, the organization’s executive director, said in a statement. “Authoritarian trends have weakened both trust and accountability, and our democracy is not as healthy as it should be.”The report from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or O.S.C.E., made note of “intensely divisive and at times inflammatory rhetoric” in campaigns by Republicans and Democrats, including what it described as “allegations by some political leaders and candidates from both sides that their opponents were seeking to subvert democracy and were a threat to the United States.” As examples, the report pointed to remarks by Mr. Trump and President Biden about each other.The report also said that election monitors had observed language at rallies and on social networks that “sought to delegitimize the other party, was potentially defamatory and in several instances invoked racist, xenophobic, transphobic and homophobic tropes.” At one rally, for example, an incumbent Republican lawmaker “made inflammatory xenophobic remarks,” according to the report, which did not identify the lawmaker.Ms. de Zulueta said that the use of divisive language was not equal between the two parties and that reports by election observers about Democratic campaigns were “more low-key.”The report said that both Republicans and Democrats “campaigned on platforms of ensuring electoral integrity” but went about it in very different ways. “Republicans emphasized the perceived need to prevent the casting and counting of illegal votes,” the report said, “while Democrats focused on preventing what they see as the potential for rejection of legitimate votes.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.The report added that those campaign messages from the two parties had “contributed to a diminishing trust in a fundamentally robust electoral process.”Ms. de Zulueta said the report was not meant to present the two parties’ election-related campaign messages as equally damaging, noting that it was Mr. Trump who transformed election denial into “a defining characteristic of his campaign” and of later Republican primaries. Instead, she added, the report sought to highlight that warnings by Democrats of potential election interference could also be damaging to the credibility of elections.“You have to be careful,” Ms. de Zulueta said. “You can actually by challenging — in some ways you can actually feed into this.”The O.S.C.E. has routinely monitored elections in the United States, but its efforts took on increased prominence when Mr. Trump refused to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election. The election observation mission for that contest condemned Mr. Trump’s “baseless allegations” of fraud and expressed confidence that the vote was secure.For this year’s election, the organization will have far fewer election monitors than had been planned. A report from the group in June recommended a full election observation mission of about 500 observers “given the highly polarized environment” and “diminishing trust in the integrity of elections” in the United States. But the size of the mission was reduced to 57 people because of a shortage of available observers.Ms. de Zulueta said the downsizing would not significantly affect the mission’s work. A spokesman for the organization noted that its observation mission for the 2020 election had also been limited because of the coronavirus pandemic.The mission for the midterms will present its preliminary findings on Nov. 9, the day after Election Day, and a final report will be released about two months later. More

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      Is New York (of All Places) About to Go Red?

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      Stella Tan and Marion Lozano and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherAs Democratic Party leaders assessed their vulnerabilities in this year’s midterm elections, the one state they did not worry about was New York. That — it turns out — was a mistake.Despite being a blue state through and through, and a place President Donald J. Trump lost by 23 points two years ago, the red tide of this moment is lapping at New York’s shores.Why is New York up for grabs?On today’s episodeNicholas Fandos, a Metro reporter for The New York Times.A televised New York governor’s race debate this week. The race, among others in New York State, are closer than many Democrats expected.Pool photo by Mary AltafferBackground readingAhead of the midterms, New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country.Republicans are pressing their advantage deep into Democratic territory in the closing stretch of the 2022 campaign, competing for an abundance of House seats.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Sofia Milan, Ben Calhoun and Susan Lee.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Desiree Ibekwe, Wendy Dorr, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello and Nell Gallogly. More

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      Biden Hopes to Amplify Contrast With Republicans on Economic Policy

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      WASHINGTON — President Biden will travel to Syracuse, N.Y., on Thursday to highlight investments in semiconductor manufacturing and make a last-ditch attempt to win over voters on inflation, the economic issue that is dragging on Democrats ahead of the midterm elections.At a time when polls show that voters disapprove of the president’s handling of rising prices and trust Republicans more on the issue, Mr. Biden will seek to frame the elections as a choice between his administration’s ongoing efforts to lower costs for families and Republican aspirations to cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy — which could fuel even higher inflation — and other plans that Mr. Biden says would raise health care and electricity costs.Senior administration officials told reporters on Wednesday afternoon that Mr. Biden would use his trip to celebrate the chip maker Micron’s announcement this month that it would spend up to $100 billion to build a manufacturing complex in the Syracuse region over the next 20 years, creating up to 50,000 jobs in the process. Company officials said that investment was enabled by a bipartisan advanced manufacturing bill that Mr. Biden championed and signed into law earlier this year.The administration officials said the area exemplified a community benefiting from Mr. Biden’s economic policies, which have also included a bipartisan infrastructure bill approved in 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act, signed late this summer, which raises taxes on corporations, seeks to reduce prescription drug costs for seniors and invests hundreds of billions of dollars into new energy technologies to reduce the fossil fuel emissions driving climate change.They also said it was the right backdrop for Mr. Biden to amplify the contrast he has sought to draw with Republicans on inflation. Republican candidates have campaigned on rolling back some of the tax increases Mr. Biden imposed to fund his agenda, extending business and individual tax cuts passed by Republicans in 2017 that are set to expire in the coming years, reducing federal regulations on energy development and other business and repealing the Inflation Reduction Act.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz clashed in one of the most closely watched debates of the midterm campaign. Here are five takeaways.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Strategy Change: In the final stretch before the elections, some Democrats are pushing for a new message that acknowledges the economic uncertainty troubling the electorate.In a memo released by the White House on Thursday morning, officials sought to frame those Republican proposals as potential fuel for further inflation, posing a risk to families struggling with high prices. “Their economic plan will raise costs and make inflation worse,” administration officials wrote.The memo suggests that among his other attacks in Syracuse, Mr. Biden will hit Republicans for what he says is an effort to raise costs for student borrowers. Several Republican-led states have sued to stop his plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt for qualifying individuals.Mr. Biden has struggled in recent weeks to persuade voters to view inflation as an issue that shows the contrasts between him and Republicans, rather than a referendum on his presidency and policies.Polls suggest the economy and rapid price growth, which touched a 40-year high this year, are top of mind for voters as they determine control of the House and Senate. Nearly half of all registered voters in a New York Times/Siena College poll this month named economic issues or inflation as the most important issue facing the country, dwarfing other issues in the survey, like abortion. Other polls have shown voters trust Republicans more than Mr. Biden and his party to handle inflation.Through the start of this month, Republican candidates had spent nearly $150 million on inflation-themed television ads across the country this election cycle, according to data from AdImpact. Those ads blame Democratic policies under Mr. Biden, including the $1.9 trillion economic relief package he signed in 2021, for inflation; economists generally agree that the spending helped fuel some price growth but disagree on how much.Mr. Biden previewed his renewed attacks on Republicans on Wednesday evening, in a trio of virtual fund-raisers for Democratic members of Congress. In each one, Mr. Biden focused almost exclusively on economic issues, championing the laws he has signed and warning that Republicans would seek to roll them back.The president criticized Republicans for promoting what he called “mega-MAGA trickle-down economics,” and he said the tax cuts Republicans support risk creating turmoil in financial markets. He drew a direct parallel between the Republican proposals and the tax cuts for high earners in Britain pushed by former Prime Minister Liz Truss, which prompted a harsh backlash in financial markets that led Ms. Truss to resign after a brief tenure.“You read about what happened in England recently, and the last prime minister, she wanted to cut taxes for the superwealthy — it caused economic chaos in the country,” Mr. Biden said. “Well, that’s what they did last time, and they want to do it again.” More

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      Kari Lake, Glenn Youngkin and a Post-Trump Era

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      TUCSON, Ariz. — It can be hard to make sense of endings and beginnings in politics and history, but what if we’ve already reached the post-Trump era?Consider the case of Glenn Youngkin, Virginia’s former private equity co-C.E.O. governor with a sunshine demeanor, and Kari Lake, Arizona’s Republican nominee for governor, a wild proponent of Donald Trump’s claims that the election was stolen from him. Theoretically, a Youngkin-Lake event would be a clash of vibes, an effort to mainstream Ms. Lake. But Mr. Youngkin campaigned for her last week, across several events — a decision that drew anguish from a segment of conservatives and hard questions from reporters in televised settings. In real life, there was no clash. It wasn’t one of those awkward, painful episodes in which a more traditional Republican makes an explicit transaction with a party dominated by Mr. Trump. Everything was smooth and cohesive — a joint case about the Republican Party of today.Mr. Youngkin cheerily warned the crowd that everything — our American values and institutions — could fall apart just like that, bam. “You take your eye off the ball and you lose an election, because remember, elections have consequences, and the next thing you know, everything can change.” And Ms. Lake is smooth as hell, a real pro after decades on TV, fluidly moving from offhandedly claiming that Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy and the founding fathers would have been America First Republicans to offering a self-deprecating joke to giving advice on persuading independent voters to telling a nighttime crowd to “vote these bastards out,” dialing it up or down, depending on the situation.Looking at this pair one way, you could see Donald Trump’s endless influence over the Republican Party. But if you zoomed out, neither of these people has that much to do with Mr. Trump personally. Neither Mr. Youngkin nor Ms. Lake owes him an inarguable debt for name recognition, neither particularly mimics his mannerisms, neither cropped up in the background of surreal scenes at the White House, neither has lived some embarrassed, poisoned-in-real-time transition from Trump critic to supporter before a national audience. Really, neither Mr. Youngkin nor Ms. Lake had much to do with anything that happened nationally between June 2015 and January 2021.This observation — about their distance from a formative era of American life, and its centerpiece — felt very true in Arizona last week, and like a real break from other things in Republican politics. It also coexists with another possibility: that Mr. Trump could be fading politically at the same time that his core support is hardening. This dual reality would not necessarily diminish the force and reverb of his actions, but it might produce asymmetrical results. When people talk about a post-Trump era, there’s usually a subtext that it would involve a clean break and his permanent exit from political life. If we are entering a post-Trump period, though, rather than Mr. Trump being something to get past, he could remain a major factor in politics but no longer the sole reference point around which each development moves.So much in the political conversation still centers on the prospective choices of Mr. Trump and people’s responses to them, as if we were forever in the loop of the period when Mr. Trump’s prominence still felt surreal. But time has passed, and people’s lives have continued — and things have already changed. Arguably, you can see this in some conservatives’ intense focus on restricting trans health care or avoiding Covid recommendations, two issues that have outpaced Mr. Trump’s promotion of them, even if he opened the portal to their prominence.Consider Ms. Lake and Mr. Youngkin, there in the morning light of a Tucson sports bar. Their political careers would probably not exist without Mr. Trump, but their appeal to Republicans rests on a post-Trump political foundation.For a segment of Republicans — and particularly conservative writers and operatives — Mr. Youngkin reflects a fusionist dream, in which a Republican can win without entirely handing himself over to Mr. Trump while adopting MAGA’s aggressive education politics, including on gender identity. Ms. Lake has taken up Mr. Trump’s principal cause, that of the 2020 election result — and she continues to allege fraud — but sets that aside when she wants to, in favor of talking at her rallies last week about fentanyl, the intense anti-Covid-vax vibes she’s embraced, taxes or an idea to two-track high school so juniors have the option of switching into vocational training.You can see the possible fissures between Mr. Trump and Republican politics, in the efforts, too, of Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis. Like Mr. Youngkin, he has undertaken a similar pre-presidential-campaign trip around the country to rally for midterm Republicans, even Doug Mastriano, Pennsylvania’s Republican nominee for governor, who was in Washington on Jan. 6 and whom many national Republicans have avoided. Mr. DeSantis exists in a more transitional space between the initial Trump era and wanting to challenge him in 2024. But he has also isolated and advanced a strain of Trumpism: a kind of power politics that emphasizes public displays of, depending on your vantage point, accountability or retribution. In Pittsburgh at the event for Mr. Mastriano, after detailing various accomplishments and fights, Mr. DeSantis moved into a segment on restricting trans health care for minors and ideology. “We must fight the woke in our schools,” he said. “We must fight the woke in our businesses. We must fight the woke in government agencies. We can never ever surrender to woke ideology. And I’ll tell you this, the state of Florida is where woke goes to die.”The Lake-Youngkin events involved a looser vibe — one featured vintage airplanes on display and Abba’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!” blasting. Both public events also involved Mr. Youngkin leading a crowd in reciting the opening of the Declaration of Independence — the kind of slightly sentimental thing that draws a certain kind of conservative to Mr. Youngkin, the type of conservative who flipped out when Mr. Youngkin announced he would campaign for Ms. Lake, who is maybe the most prominent stop-the-steal type on the ballot this year, running to oversee a battleground state.On the question of the 2020 election, there are a few ways to look at the Lake campaign. One is that it doesn’t matter what she believes, only what she says, because people straight up listen to what politicians say, without the metatextual strategic filter often applied by political operatives and the media. Over the past year, a lot of Republican discourse centered on ballot drop boxes, and now in Arizona, guys in tactical gear are reportedly staking them out.If Ms. Lake is elected, though, the belief question matters, given that she would help oversee a state’s next elections. Maybe she really does believe fraud corrupted the 2020 election. A third way to consider it is that she’s playing it up with laser focus on the Republican base. This seems to have been the opinion of Jan Brewer, a former Arizona governor and a proto-Trump politician herself. “I want to hear her tell me she did all this because she wanted to win and that it got a little bit out of control,” Ms. Brewer told The Times this summer.Mr. Trump has reportedly told donors that you can ask Ms. Lake about anything — the weather, the family — and she’ll work it back to the 2020 election: “Oh, the weather in Phoenix is OK, but you can never have great weather unless the election is fair.” You can even hear him tell Blake Masters a version of this line over the phone. Anecdotes like this capture Mr. Trump’s central destabilizing essence: compulsively advancing something wild or false even as he comments on those who go along with it. Then again: Ms. Lake told this exact anecdote herself, in public.In Scottsdale, after Mr. Youngkin and Ms. Lake’s last event of the day, a Swiss reporter brought up confidence in the voting process, citing local Republicans’ concerns that some candidates might not accept the results of the election. (“I’m going to win the election, and I will accept that result,” Ms. Lake recently said on TV.) “People in Switzerland also feel like,” the reporter said, “does democracy work if you don’t accept the outcome?”Ms. Lake responded by calling her opponent, the current secretary of state, incompetent and unprepared for the upcoming election. Then Mr. Youngkin, unprompted, jumped in to talk about his own record on election processes — arguing that it isn’t just Republicans who doubt elections, citing 2000 and 2016. “This is not a Republican problem; it’s an American challenge,” he announced, sitting next to someone who last year said the Arizona secretary of state “should be locked up.”Ms. Lake then pulled out a printed stack of news stories from over the years in which, e.g., Jimmy Carter suggested Mr. Trump was an illegitimate president and Russians tried to hack voting machines. One reporter shouted several times, “Governor, has any other president besides Donald Trump tried to overturn an election?” with Mr. Youngkin defaulting to the things he’d already said, avoiding mention of Mr. Trump. Multiple aides called the next question as the last, which Ms. Lake disregarded and continued calling on people until some staffer finally cranked up Laura Branigan’s “Gloria.”In the cold light of politics, for Ms. Lake, in a country where a sizable chunk of voters say they would consider supporting a candidate who doesn’t believe Joe Biden won the election he won, transforming voter fraud concerns into an atmospheric, passive problem would be a way to crab-walk out of a year spent personally amping up the idea that the election was stolen. And for Mr. Youngkin, it’s a way to commit to the Republican Party such as it is, as though time had begun in 2021.Mr. Trump has become predictable in a certain way: You can usually anticipate what his reaction will be to things and what he’ll demand from people, no matter how staggering and corrosive. What happens if a party that orbited him starts to detach from him a little bit and becomes, therefore, even more unpredictable? It’s hard to truly know what will happen if Ms. Lake becomes governor of a large state and how she’d govern.And in politics more broadly, it might still come to pass that Mr. Trump rolls through a presidential primary and straight into 2024, ushering in an eternal Trump era. But you can also imagine, in a party that has reshaped itself to Mr. Trump, his own obsession with the past puts him at a disadvantage with people who, unlike him, can discard it when they want.Katherine Miller is a staff writer and editor in Opinion.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More