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      These Trump-Endorsed Candidates Are on the Ballot Today

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      Candidates endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump have had mixed success so far in contested Republican primaries for the 2022 midterm elections.Most of Mr. Trump’s endorsed candidates are running unopposed or face little-known, poorly funded opponents. But many Republican candidates this year, whether endorsed by Mr. Trump or not, have embraced his style of politics, including false claims about the integrity of the 2020 elections.Here is a look at Mr. Trump’s endorsements in closely watched races today in Georgia, Arkansas and Texas.GeorgiaA campaign rally for former Senator David Perdue at the Wild Wing Café in Dunwoody, Ga., where he appeared on the John Fredericks Show, on Monday.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesDavid Perdue, the Trump-backed former senator, has trailed in public opinion polls and fund-raising in his effort to unseat Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican who angered the former president by refusing to help overturn the results of Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss in the state. Mr. Perdue has made lies about the 2020 election results a focal point of his campaign. Mr. Kemp has stood by the results, while supporting new restrictions on voting.Mr. Trump is also supporting Representative Jody Hice in his bid to unseat Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who also refused Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. Mr. Hice, a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, has made Mr. Trump’s baseless claims about the 2020 elections the center of his own campaign.Herschel Walker, the former professional football player whom Mr. Trump endorsed, has led a crowded field in the Republican primary for Senate, looking to challenge Senator Raphael Warnock, a well-funded Democrat, for the seat Mr. Warnock won in a high-profile special election in early 2021. Mr. Walker has been accused of domestic abuse and embraced skepticism about the 2020 election, but his celebrity and the Trump’s backing have buoyed him in public polling and fund-raising.In the crowded race for an open congressional seat just north of Atlanta, Mr. Trump endorsed Jake Evans, the son of Randy Evans, Mr. Trump’s former ambassador to Luxembourg. Mr. Evans has been attacked by his rivals for past remarks criticizing Mr. Trump. He has raised less money than Rich McCormick, a former Marine and a physician who narrowly lost a House race in 2020. Dr. McCormick has echoed Mr. Trump’s false claims about the 2020 elections and has refused to concede his own 2020 loss.ArkansasArkansas Republican gubernatorial candidate Sarah Huckabee Sanders, second from right, with her husband Bryan Sanders, right, greeting supporters in Harrison, Ark., on May 20.Terra Fondriest for The New York TimesMr. Trump endorsed two candidates who are heavily favored to win their primaries today. Sarah Sanders, Mr. Trump’s former press secretary and daughter of former Gov. Mike Huckabee, is facing Doc Washburn, a conservative talk radio host who was fired after not complying with the radio station’s vaccine mandate.In the race for attorney general, Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin, whom Mr. Trump endorsed, has raised and spent far more money than his rival, Leon Jones Jr., the state’s former labor secretary.TexasTexas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, in July 2021.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesAttorney General Ken Paxton has some problems. He has been indicted on criminal securities-fraud charges that are still pending. Several of his top aides claimed he abused his office by helping a wealthy donor. And he has faced abuse-of-power and bribery accusations. But he also has Mr. Trump’s endorsement and that could prove powerful enough to survive a re-election challenge from George P. Bush, the Texas land commissioner and nephew of former President George W. Bush who has clashed with Mr. Trump. More

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      McCormick Sues to Count Undated Mail-In Ballots, Trailing Oz

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      In a lawsuit filed on Monday in Pennsylvania, the Republican Senate candidate David McCormick demanded that undated mail-in ballots should be counted in his primary race against the celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz, whom he trailed by less than 1,000 votes.Mr. McCormick, a former hedge fund chief, asked the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania to allow election officials in the state’s 67 counties to accept mail-in ballots from voters who turned them in by the May 17 deadline but did not write the date on the outer return envelopes.That step is required by a state law, one that Republicans have fought to preserve.The legal action could be a prelude to a cascade of lawsuits and challenges in one of the nation’s most intensely watched primaries, one that could ultimately determine control of the divided Senate. The seat will be open after Senator Patrick J. Toomey, a Republican, steps down this year.The filing preceded a May 26 deadline for Pennsylvania’s secretary of state to determine whether a recount is triggered in the race, an automatic step when the top two candidates are within half a percentage point. About two-tenths of a percentage point separated Mr. McCormick on Monday from Dr. Oz, whom former President Donald J. Trump has been nudging to declare victory. The McCormick campaign was said to have invested heavily in its absentee-voting efforts.“These ballots were indisputably submitted on time — they were date-stamped upon receipt — and no fraud or irregularity has been alleged,” Ronald L. Hicks Jr., a lawyer for Mr. McCormick, wrote in the 35-page lawsuit.Mr. Hicks, a trial and appellate lawyer in Pittsburgh, was part of a phalanx of lawyers enlisted by Mr. Trump who unsuccessfully sought to challenge mail-in ballots after the 2020 presidential election. He later moved to withdraw from that case.In the McCormick campaign’s lawsuit, Mr. Hicks took the opposite view of mail-in ballots, saying that election boards in Allegheny County in Western Pennsylvania and Blair County in the central part of the state have balked at counting the undated ballots. Those counties, he said, were delaying taking action until after Tuesday when they are required to report unofficial results to the state.“The boards’ refusal to count the ballots at issue violates the protections of the right to vote under the federal Civil Rights Act and the Pennsylvania Constitution,” Mr. Hicks wrote.In the lawsuit, the McCormick campaign cited a recent ruling by a federal court panel that barred elections officials in Lehigh County, Pa., from rejecting absentee and mail-in ballots cast in the November 2021 municipal election because they were not dated.“Every Republican primary vote should be counted, including the votes of Pennsylvania’s active-duty military members who risk their lives to defend our constitutional right to vote,” Jess Szymanski, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCormick’s campaign, said in an email on Monday night.Understand the Battle Over U.S. Voting RightsCard 1 of 6Why are voting rights an issue now? More

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      Georgia, a New Battleground State, Is Once Again the Center of Attention

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      It’s the crucible of American politics.Georgia’s got everything: disputed elections, rapid demographic change, celebrity Democrats, a restrictive new voting law, an open criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s meddling in the 2020 election, a deep rural-urban divide and unending drama between the Trump wing of the Republican Party and the local G.O.P. establishment.It’s a longtime Republican stronghold that has become a battleground state. Trump won Georgia by more than 200,000 votes in 2016, then lost it by fewer than 12,000 votes four years later. Georgia was where President Biden made his doomed final push to pass voting rights legislation in the Senate. It was where Democrats picked up two crucial Senate seats on Jan. 5, 2021, giving them the barest control of both chambers of Congress.But those gains are fragile, and Republicans are confident they can win the governor’s race and regain one of the Senate seats. It’s largely for the usual reasons: high prices for the two Gs — gas and groceries — as well as Biden’s low job approval ratings. Either way, millions of campaign dollars will flow into Georgia between now and November.Before all that, though, we’ll have to get through Tuesday’s primaries. Here is what else is going on:Trump vs. PenceOn Monday, Trump and Mike Pence, his former vice president, held dueling events for their respective candidates in the Republican primary for governor: David Perdue, a former senator and Dollar General executive who entered the race at Trump’s insistence, and Brian Kemp, the incumbent.Pence attended a rally for Kemp at the Cobb County airport in suburban Atlanta, while Trump appeared remotely for Perdue, who took a racist swipe at Stacey Abrams, the presumptive Democratic nominee, during a news conference at a wings-and-beer restaurant north of the city. As Jonathan Martin writes, Pence and Trump are circling each other warily in advance of a possible clash in the presidential primary in 2024, so their standoff in Georgia has national implications.It’s not looking good for Trump’s leading candidate in the state, for the reasons our colleagues Reid Epstein and Shane Goldmacher reported this weekend. Polls show Kemp ahead by an average of 25 percentage points, leading Perdue to try to reset expectations last week. “We may not win Tuesday,” he said, “but I guaran-damn-tee you we are not down 30 points.”Along with Representative Jody Hice, who is hoping to unseat Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Perdue is running a campaign that is almost single-mindedly focused on Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.Understand the Georgia Primary ElectionThe May 24 primary will feature several Trump-backed candidates in closely watched races.A New Battleground: Republicans have fought bitter primaries in Georgia. But just two years after Democrats flipped the state, it’s trending back to the G.O.P.G.O.P. Governor’s Race: David Perdue’s impending loss to Brian Kemp looms as the biggest electoral setback for Donald Trump since his own 2020 defeat.Trump vs. Pence: With the ex-president backing Mr. Perdue and his former vice president supporting Mr. Kemp, the G.O.P. governor’s race has national implications for 2024.Fighting Headwinds: Democrats in Georgia — and beyond  — are worried that even the strongest candidates can’t outrun President Biden’s low approval ratings.Perdue and Hice are speaking to a “small and shrinking crowd in Georgia,” said Chris Clark, the president and chief executive of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, which is backing Kemp and Raffensperger.“Nobody asks about it at events,” Clark added, referring to the 2020 election. “They’re asking about jobs and inflation.”Alexis Hill, a canvasser with the New Georgia Project, went door to door in Fairburn, Ga., to encourage people to register to vote.Alyssa Pointer/ReutersDemocrats look ahead to a difficult autumnThe Rev. Raphael Warnock, the preacher turned senator, and Stacey Abrams, the former state lawmaker and voting rights champion, ran unopposed in their primaries for Senate and governor this year. That doesn’t mean they’ll have an easy time of it in the fall, with a base that leading Democrats are describing openly as “quite demoralized.”Abrams is one of those Democrats, like Beto O’Rourke in Texas or Amy McGrath in Kentucky, whose national stardom and appeal among activists sometimes outstrip their local support. Polls show her behind Kemp by about five points in head-to-head matchups.“When you lift someone up that high, people love to see you fall,” said Martha Zoller, a former aide to Perdue who now hosts a talk radio show in Gainesville, Ga.Abrams’s campaign released a memo on Sunday outlining what it described as her strengths heading into November. It makes three basic points:Democratic turnout is holding up. The Abrams team says that “Democrats are on track to break records” in Tuesday’s primary, a fact that has Republicans arguing that Georgia’s new voting law has not suppressed voting.As Nick Corasaniti and Maya King reported on Monday morning, however, “It is too soon to draw any sweeping conclusions, because the true impact of the voting law cannot be drawn from topline early voting data alone.” We’ll know more after tomorrow.So-called crossover voters will go for Democrats in November. Abrams aides say they have identified “nearly 35,000 voters who we expect to vote for the Democratic ticket in November but who cast Republican ballots for the primary,” a group they are calling “crossover voters.” Of the 855,000 Georgia voters who had cast their ballots as of Friday, when early voting closed, the Abrams campaign estimates that more than half — 52.9 percent — were Republicans, while only 46.5 percent were Democrats. (Georgia does not register voters by political party.)The Abrams team spins this as “a remarkably close margin,” given all the attention the news media has paid to Georgia’s big G.O.P. primaries, which are more competitive than the major Democratic ones. But it also could be an ominous sign for Democrats that Republican voters are more energized heading into the fall.Georgia is growing more diverse, and that will help Democrats. The speed of voter registration has slowed in Georgia, which was once a model for the ability of grass-roots organizing to overcome entrenched obstacles to voting. That slowdown could hurt Democrats in the fall, although the Abrams campaign says it has identified about 42,000 Georgians who have already voted in this year’s primary but did not vote in the 2018 general election. Her team also says it has found more than 100,000 Black voters who skipped the 2018 primary but have already voted this year, as well as 40,000 additional white voters and an unspecified number of new Asian American and Latino voters. Abrams lost her first race for governor against Kemp by just under 55,000 votes, so those new voters could be significant.It’s not a safe assumption that voters of color will choose Democrats at the same rates they have in the past, however. Biden has lost support among Black and Latino Americans since taking office. As of April, the president’s approval rating was just 67 percent among Black adults, down 20 percentage points since the start of his term. Not only is turnout a question mark, but it’s also by no means clear that Democrats will be able to hang on to all of those voters if inflation continues to bite into their pocketbooks in November.What to readPresident Biden pledged to defend Taiwan against attack, moving a step beyond longstanding U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity.” Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Peter Baker report from Tokyo and Seoul.Representative Mo Brooks, a hard-right Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama, seems to be making an unlikely comeback after his low poll numbers prompted Donald Trump to take back his endorsement, Trip Gabriel reports.In Texas, the closely watched House race between Representative Henry Cuellar and his progressive challenger, Jessica Cisneros, encapsulates the tensions within the Democratic Party on immigration, Jazmine Ulloa and Jennifer Medina report.how they run George P. Bush talking to members of Texas Strong Republican Women before an event for the attorney general’s race.Shelby Tauber for The New York TimesPaxton’s legal troubles haven’t amounted to political onesKen Paxton, the Texas attorney general, has faced his share of legal concerns in recent years, something that George P. Bush, his rival in the primary this year and the state’s land commissioner, has seized upon as he seeks to oust him from office.But, if history is any indicator, Bush has his work cut out for him.In March, Paxton topped the primary field with 43 percent of the votes, short of the 50 percent required to win the nomination outright. Bush placed second with 23 percent, and their runoff election is on Tuesday.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Stefanowski, G.O.P. Hopeful in Connecticut, Tests Positive for Coronavirus

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      One day after attending an anti-mask group’s “Freedom Family Cookout,” Bob Stefanowski, the presumptive Republican nominee for governor in Connecticut, announced on Monday that he had tested positive for the coronavirus.Mr. Stefanowski, 60, who is seeking to avenge his 2018 election loss to Ned Lamont, a Democrat, said in a statement that he was asymptomatic.“I just wanted to let everyone know that I tested positive for COVID-19 this morning after finding out I had a positive exposure,” Mr. Stefanowski said. “I am vaccinated, boosted, and feeling fine so far. I will continue to follow all C.D.C. protocols.”Mr. Stefanowski and his campaign would not elaborate about the circumstances of his exposure to the virus, which has come roaring back in Connecticut this spring, making the state one of the nation’s hotspots for infections.How cases, hospitalizations and deaths are trending in ConnecticutThis chart shows how three key metrics compare to the corresponding peak per capita level reached nationwide in January 2021. More

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      Early Voting Surges as Georgia Watches for Impact of Election Law

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      ATLANTA — Early voting turnout in Georgia’s primary elections surged past previous milestones, signaling an energized electorate in a newly minted political battleground that remains ground zero in the national fight over voting rights, and setting off a fresh debate over a major voting law that had largely been untested before this year.Republicans quickly pointed to the early totals — more than 857,000 ballots were cast in an early voting period that ended Friday, roughly three times as many as in the same period in the 2018 primary elections — to argue that the law, passed last year by the G.O.P.-led legislature, was not suppressing votes.Democrats and voting rights groups said that the numbers were evidence that their redoubled efforts to overcome the law’s effects by guiding voters through new rules and restrictions were paying off so far, and that any focus on total turnout ignored whether voting had been made harder or had placed new burdens on marginalized groups.It is too soon to draw any sweeping conclusions, because the true impact of the voting law cannot be drawn from topline early voting data alone. The picture will grow slightly clearer on Tuesday, when Election Day turnout can be observed; clearer still in the days afterward, when final absentee ballot rejection rates and precinct-level data will emerge; and will fully come into focus after the November general election, when turnout will be far higher and put more strain on the system.The early aggregate statewide turnout figures could obscure the effects of the new law on specific groups, like Black voters, that advocates contend were targeted by it.Ultimately, election experts cautioned, it remains unclear if the law made voting harder, if Democrats have been energized by the legislation or if some combination of the two is unfolding.“Just because turnout is up doesn’t mean that voters face no hurdles,” said Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine. “It could well mean that voters overcame those hurdles, and that means that time and money were put into efforts to assure that voters could overcome those hurdles. And that seems unjustified if those hurdles serve no important anti-fraud or other purpose.”The top election official in the state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican running for re-election, underlined his confidence in the state’s elections under the new law, adding that he was sure county elections administrators would be adequately prepared for what will most likely be a steep increase in voter participation on Election Day.“It’s been tested and it’s coming through with straight A’s,” he said in a recent interview. “We’re having record turnout. We have record registrations, and lines have been short. Everything’s really been running very smooth.”Brad Raffensperger, a Republican and Georgia’s secretary of state, is running for re-election.Audra Melton for The New York TimesGeorgia was one of the first states to pass a new voting law after the 2020 election, when former President Donald J. Trump targeted the state with a flurry of falsehoods about its results.Republicans in the legislature passed the voting law to address what they argued were widespread problems with election oversight and expanded ballot access that could create openings for voter fraud. (Multiple recounts and audits after the election found no evidence of meaningful fraud or other wrongdoing.) Other states soon followed: At least 19 passed 34 laws last year that included new restrictions on voting or changed the way elections are administered.Democrats, civil rights groups, businesses and voting rights organizations denounced the Georgia law. President Biden called it “Jim Crow 2.0,” and Major League Baseball moved its All-Star game out of Atlanta in protest. But some of the public outcry focused on provisions that ended up being removed from the final version, such as banning voting on Sundays (the law allows counties the option of providing Sunday voting, and added a second mandatory Saturday of early voting).In this week’s primary, there are no major statewide battles for a Democratic nomination, with Stacey Abrams running largely uncontested for governor and Senator Raphael Warnock running as an incumbent for re-election. In the three weeks of early voting, 483,149 Republicans voted early, compared with 368,949 Democrats.The law instituted new regulations for mail voting, such as additional identification requirements and limits on how drop boxes could be deployed. During the 2020 election, counties across the state relied heavily on drop boxes, which were permitted by a ruling from the state’s election board, to help voters returning absentee ballots.But the new law sought to rein in their use, capping the number of drop boxes at one per 100,000 registered voters in a county — which could cut the amount of drop boxes in urban areas by as much as two-thirds — and limiting their availability to office hours. The law did, however, codify drop boxes as an option for voters into state election law.Overall turnout for absentee voting has been difficult to parse so far.During the 2020 election, when voters turned en masse to mail ballots because of the pandemic, more than 1.1 million Georgians voted by mail in the primary, and in 2018, fewer than 30,000 voted absentee. This year, more than 61,000 voted absentee in the primary, an increase over 2018 but less than 10 percent of the 2020 totals.Voters in primaries also tend to be more motivated and engaged than general-election voters, and they are more likely to be aware of new rules and willing to work through them to cast ballots.“The people who are highly engaged are the people who are voting in primaries, and those highly engaged people are often most equipped to get around any sort of change to voting,” said Michael McDonald, a voter turnout expert at the University of Florida.Gov. Brian Kemp, campaigning in the final days of his Republican primary race for governor, condemned Democrats for their criticism of the law, suggesting that their claims that it was “suppressive” were hyperbolic and politically motivated.Understand the Battle Over U.S. Voting RightsCard 1 of 6Why are voting rights an issue now? More

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      Donald Trump Is Desperate for Vindication in Georgia

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      ELLIJAY, Ga. — In some ways, Brian Kemp looks the part of a popular incumbent governor currently kicking butt in a high-stakes, high-profile re-election race. Decked out in boots and jeans, his checked shirt crisp and his gray hair flawless (despite the cyclonic ceiling fans), he has a casual manner as he addresses the crowd standing around the market shop of BJ Reece Orchards, one of the many orchards tucked into the Appalachian foothills of North Georgia. Standing beside a counter laden with crispy fried pies, Mr. Kemp runs through a laundry list of accomplishments from his first term: signing a fetal-heartbeat law and a parents’ bill of rights, successfully crusading for a permitless-carry gun law, keeping schools and businesses open during most of the pandemic and so on.From a conservative viewpoint — the prevailing viewpoint in these parts — it is a catalog worth cheering. Yet the governor’s expression remains serious bordering on concerned, and he sounds defensive at times, especially when talking about the new “election integrity” measures the state put in place after the uproar over the 2020 elections. There were “a lot of decisions that were made by other people” that he “never got to weigh in on,” Mr. Kemp insists, obviously uneasy about the entire topic. “So it was proper that we had discussions and talked to people about those issues to make sure everybody has confidence in the elections.”The edge of anxiety and defensiveness makes sense, though. After all, the reason Mr. Kemp has been campaigning so hard this primary season — running a bus tour through some of the state’s most conservative corners — is that he has been targeted for removal in the primary by Donald Trump, who is hellbent on punishing him for refusing to help overturn the 2020 election results.Mr. Trump’s chosen vessel for revenge is former Senator David Perdue, who lost a runoff with Democrat Jon Ossoff in January 2021. Mr. Perdue has servilely fashioned his campaign around Mr. Trump’s election-fraud nonsense — and little else — basically acting as a proxy for the former president and his Big Lie. But Mr. Perdue threatens to become one of Mr. Trump’s biggest disappointments. Mr. Kemp has been dominating the polls and is expected to come out on top in Tuesday’s primary — very possibly hitting 50 percent and avoiding a runoff. (Mr. Perdue’s situation is considered so dire that even Mr. Trump has reportedly given up on him, according to NBC News.) This would be a humiliating defeat for the former president, who has worked to turn the race into the ultimate grudge match between himself and his nemesis Mr. Kemp.Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia joining Chris Christie onstage at a rally in Alpharetta.Damon Winter/The New York TimesDavid Perdue at a campaign event on Thursday.Damon Winter/The New York TimesThanks to Mr. Trump’s machinations, Georgia’s elections are once again freighted with outsized import, its primaries having become something of a referendum on the health of the Republican Party — and of American democracy. A Kemp win would be a blow not only to Mr. Trump but also to the election denialism with which he has infected the G.O.P. Just this week, “stop the steal” truthers, determined to prove that Joe Biden cheated his way into the White House, won key primaries in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Another election denier with Mr. Trump’s endorsement, Representative Jody Hice, is running for Georgia secretary of state against the Republican incumbent Brad Raffensperger.A strong win by Mr. Kemp would be the most promising signal to date that many Republican voters, at least in Georgia, are ready to move on — not from Mr. Trump per se, but from his toxic fixation on 2020. It could also provide a hopeful model for other results-oriented Republican governors, evidence that they can thrive even without bowing to the former president’s anti-democratic obsessions. And if Mr. Trump plays things wrong, he could wind up damaging his own political fortunes as well.Georgia is a sore subject for Mr. Trump. Voters didn’t simply reject him as president; they followed up by handing control of the Senate to the Democrats. Outside the ultra-MAGA bubble, within the state and beyond, even many Republicans recognize that Mr. Trump’s election-fraud ravings most likely helped depress turnout here among his followers. The former president is desperate for vindication — and, of course, vengeance.It’s not simply that Mr. Trump persuaded Mr. Perdue to take on Mr. Kemp. Nor that he worked to clear the field of other challengers, disrupting several races in the process. Nor that he took the unprecedented step of cracking open the coffers of his Save America PAC, forking over $500,000 to an anti-Kemp PAC. On a more personal level, Mr. Perdue is this election cycle’s purest stand-in for Mr. Trump: a 2020 loser desperate to reframe his failure as a theft perpetrated by nefarious Democrats and enabled by weak RINOs. His political brand exemplifies that awkward MAGA posture of strength coupled with victimhood.A troubling percentage of Republicans tell pollsters they believe the stolen-election fiction. But it can be hard to know precisely what that means — or how much they really care. For many, “it’s more of a vibe than anything else,” said Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump Republican strategist. It has become a cultural signifier, something Republicans grumble to their friends about but “don’t hold to that firmly,” she said. “There’s an element of voters kind of being like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, the election was stolen, but do we have to keep talking about it?’”In Georgia, this ambivalence seems to be reflected in an April poll of Republican-primary voters, only 5 percent of whom cited election integrity as their top issue.Certainly, this sentiment is prevalent among Kemp supporters. Andy and Patricia Bargeron were among the attendees at a breakfast meet-n-greet that Mr. Kemp held in Chatsworth — part of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s district — before heading to Ellijay. After 64 years of marriage, the Bargerons know the value of agreeing to disagree on certain issues. She believes that the 2020 election was stolen. He remains unconvinced and thinks Mr. Trump has “gone too far” in pressing the issue.No matter: Both are voting for Mr. Kemp because they feel he has done a crackerjack job. And even if he could have done more to deal with the 2020 monkey business, Ms. Bargeron reasons, “No one’s perfect.”Debra Helm — who quips that she is “one of those right-wing” evangelicals — claims to still be undecided in the race. Waiting around for the Chatsworth event to start, she says she has no idea if Mr. Kemp handled the 2020 election mess well. But after listening to his sales pitch, she is clearly impressed by his record. “To use lower-class language,” she says, “he’s pretty ballsy.”A small crowd gathered for Governor Kemp at a campaign stop in Thomaston.Damon Winter/The New York TimesPretty much everyone at Mr. Kemp’s events spoke approvingly of Mr. Trump’s presidency, and plenty had lingering doubts about the 2020 election. But they had other, more pressing items on their lists of concerns as well — many of which their governor has been busy addressing.Herein lies Mr. Kemp’s advantage over many of the candidates targeted by Mr. Trump. Governors, more than most public officials, have high-profile posts and clear records to run on. Voters expect concrete results from them. And, for better or worse, they are known quantities — a little like presidents. This can reduce the need for, and in some cases the impact of, outside endorsements, even from someone like Mr. Trump.Mr. Kemp might be in a tougher spot if Mr. Perdue were a fantastic retail politician or a charismatic speaker. But he’s not. In this matchup, the former senator has little to offer beyond his Trump ties and his Stop the Steal blather. Worse, the stench of his 2021 loss is still fresh. “Perdue didn’t beat Ossoff,” Mr. Bargeron reasons. “How is he going to beat Stacey Abrams?”In the Trump Republican Party, anything can happen come Election Day. But plenty of Republicans are poised, eager even, for Mr. Perdue to crash and burn so that they can point to the failure as proof that Mr. Trump’s Big Lie has run its course — or, better still, that Mr. Trump’s grip on the party is slipping. Some are actively working to help the cause, including former President George W. Bush, who was scheduled to attend a fund-raiser for Mr. Kemp this month.Supporting Mr. Kemp is also a way for some party players to put some breathing room between themselves and Mr. Trump without taking him on directly. Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, and former Vice President Mike Pence are among the boldfaced names hitting the trail with the governor. Both men have evinced an interest of late in fashioning themselves as independent, principled conservatives — a brand they may anticipate will play well in a future presidential contest.The more it looks as though Georgia voters will reject Mr. Perdue, the more Republicans feel empowered to criticize his campaign. A recent CNN piece featured a parade of his former Senate colleagues expressing dismay over his election-fraud focus — again, a far safer route than directly criticizing Mr. Trump.If Mr. Kemp trounces Mr. Perdue, and by extension Mr. Trump, the key question then becomes how the former president responds — especially as people play up the Trump-is-losing-his-juice narrative. The sensible course would be for him to shrug off the taunting and walk away, letting the loss fade to just another entry in his long endorsement record.But if he bows to his ego and continues assailing Mr. Kemp deep into the general election, many Republicans could start having ugly flashbacks to 2021, posits Jay Williams, a Republican strategist in Georgia. If the party winds up faring less well in November than expected, part of the blame will most likely fall on the former president. And if Stacey Abrams wins, Mr. Williams adds, that could be traumatic enough to sour many Republicans on Mr. Trump’s Big Lie — and possibly the man himself.Georgia Republicans may still be enamored of Mr. Trump. But that doesn’t mean they want to carry his 2020 burden around with them forever — or even into November.“The people who are supporting Perdue are living in the past,” said Brian Wilson, a Kemp supporter at the breakfast event. “I want to live in the future.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Pence, Tiptoeing Away From Trump, Lays Groundwork for ’24 Run

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      The former vice president is part of a group of Republicans who have visited early nominating states as they weigh a challenge to their party’s most dominant force.AMES, Iowa — For months, former Vice President Mike Pence has been edging away from his alliance of convenience with former President Donald J. Trump.After four years of service bordering on subservience, the increasingly emboldened Mr. Pence is seeking to reintroduce himself to Republican voters ahead of a potential presidential bid by setting himself apart from what many in the G.O.P. see as the worst impulses of Mr. Trump. He’s among a small group in his party considering a run in 2024 no matter what Mr. Trump decides.Mr. Pence first used high-profile speeches to criticize the former president’s push to overturn the 2020 election results, stating flatly that Mr. Trump was “wrong” in his assertion that Mr. Pence could have blocked the Electoral College ratification on Jan. 6, 2021. Mr. Pence then unsubtly visited the Charlottesville, Va., memorial to Heather Heyer, who was killed in the 2017 white supremacist riot there that Mr. Trump sought to rationalize by faulting “both sides.”Now, on Monday outside Atlanta, Mr. Pence is taking his boldest and most unambiguous step toward confronting his former political patron. On the eve of Georgia’s primary, the former vice president will stump with Gov. Brian Kemp, perhaps the top target of Mr. Trump’s 2022 vengeance campaign against Republicans who didn’t bow to his election lies.Mr. Pence grew close with Mr. Kemp during the pandemic and 2020 campaign, and now he is lining up against Mr. Trump’s handpicked candidate, former Senator David Perdue. But more than that, Mr. Pence is seeking to claim a share of credit in what’s expected to be the starkest repudiation yet of Mr. Trump’s attempt to consolidate power, with Mr. Kemp widely expected to prevail.It is an emphatic break between the onetime running mates, who have not spoken for nearly a year but have also not publicly waged a proxy war until now. Mr. Pence, his aides say, knows full well what going down to Georgia represents and the symbolism alone will stand without him targeting Mr. Trump or even Mr. Perdue in his remarks.In a statement ahead of Mr. Pence’s visit to Georgia, Mr. Trump belittled his vice president through a spokesman. “Mike Pence was set to lose a governor’s race in 2016 before he was plucked up and his political career was salvaged,” said Taylor Budowich, the spokesman. “Now, desperate to chase his lost relevance, Pence is parachuting into races, hoping someone is paying attention. The reality is, President Trump is already 82-3 with his endorsements, and there’s nothing stopping him from saving America in 2022 and beyond.”Georgia may represent only the beginning of a new rivalry.In Texas on Jan. 6, 2021, a Trump supporter cut Pence’s name from a campaign sign.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesMr. Pence on Monday will stump with Gov. Brian Kemp, perhaps the top target of Donald Trump’s 2022 vengeance campaign.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesIn an interview before a speech last month in Iowa, Mr. Pence pointedly declined to rule out running even if Mr. Trump also enters the 2024 primary. “We’ll go where we’re called,” Mr. Pence said, explaining that he and his wife would act on prayer. “That’s the way Karen and I have always approached these things.”How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.A Modern-Day Party Boss: Hoarding cash, doling out favors and seeking to crush rivals, Mr. Trump is behaving like the head of a 19th-century political machine.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.Recalling the gratitude he gets from resisting Mr. Trump’s demands that he block Congress from affirming President Biden’s victory, he said: “I have been very moved traveling around the country how much people have made a point to express appreciation, it has been very humbling to me.”Yet in the same interview, he recalled spending “five years in the foxhole” with Mr. Trump, noting that he was “incredibly proud of the record,” before giving a dinner speech trumpeting the “Trump-Pence” administration multiple times.His approach amounts to the first soundings of a sort of Trump-without-the-chaos strategy, a bet that Republican primary voters crave the policy record of the last administration but without the impulsiveness, norm-breaking and naked demagogy.There may yet be a constituency for such an appeal, as this year’s G.O.P. primaries demonstrate how Trumpism is flourishing no matter whom its architect blesses.However, it’s far from clear that the sober-minded Mr. Pence is the best vessel for that message at a time many G.O.P. voters thrill more to closed-fist Trumpian pugnacity than paeans to the power of prayer.As of now, Mr. Trump is the clear favorite. Yet all his hints about becoming the first former president in over a century to try to reclaim the office haven’t stopped a host of other potential aspirants.Mr. Pence and the president he served for four years on the campaign trail in Michigan in 2020.Doug Mills/The New York TimesWhether it’s Mr. Pence or former Trump cabinet members or a range of other elected officials, ambitious Republicans are already visiting early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire, courting influential lawmakers and cultivating relationships with donors.Even if Mr. Trump runs, many Republicans believe there will still be a hotly contested race.“I don’t think it ends the primary,” said Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, who is mulling a presidential campaign. “My sense is you’re still going to have a very robust primary here just because everyone has to earn it.”So far, Republican contenders are voting with their feet.Among those who have beaten a path to the early nominating states: Mr. Pence; former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley; and Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Tim Scott of South Carolina and Rick Scott of Florida.Should Mr. Trump run, he would most likely sideline some Republicans who would either find him difficult to beat or just as soon wait it out. A smaller group of contenders, however, may find the less crowded field more appealing.Those ranks include former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who was one of Mr. Trump’s earliest and most prominent supporters in 2016, but who has broken with him since the 2020 election.“Given the problems the country is facing at home and abroad, if you only feel up for it if somebody else doesn’t run, well, then you better not run,” Mr. Christie said. “Everybody who is considering running for president in ’24 should have a moral obligation to make that decision regardless of who else runs.”As for his own plans, he said: “Sure, I’m thinking about it.”Mr. Trump’s populist and pugilist imprint on the party has been cemented, whether he runs or not. That’s why Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is being so closely watched by conservative voters, donors and activists.Seizing on every chance to confront the left and the news media, and to draw coverage on right-wing media for both, Mr. DeSantis has risen to second place behind Mr. Trump in a series of way-too-early polls of Republican voters.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who split with Mr. Trump over the 2020 vote, campaigning for Governor Kemp in Georgia.Elijah Nouvelage/Getty ImagesConservative voters, donors and activists are watching for a possible run by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesBut he’s steadfastly refused to visit Iowa and New Hampshire as a would-be White House candidate, leaving Florida mostly just to stockpile more money for his re-election. That’s not to say he’s not keeping his eye on national politics — he reached out to Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa to wish her well before her response to President Biden’s State of the Union address this year.Mr. DeSantis, though, is hardly beloved among his fellow Republican governors, a group that’s unlikely to rally around him in the same fashion they did George W. Bush, then the Texas governor, in 2000.“I know there’s a lot of talk on Fox News and stuff like that on the national level or in Florida but there’s really not talk about him here in New Hampshire,” Mr. Sununu said of Mr. DeSantis.What there is there, said the longtime Republican strategist Jim Merrill, is a quiet but persistent appetite among many in the rank-and-file to turn the page on Mr. Trump, at least as the party’s nominee.“There is a desire to move on here and it’s not just among the John Kasich and Bill Weld crowd,” said Mr. Merrill, alluding to two former Republican governors who ran as anti-Trump moderates in the state’s primary.Yet if Mr. Trump faces a divided Republican field as he did in the first wave of caucuses and primaries in 2016, he could again claim the nomination with a plurality rather than a majority in many states because of his seemingly unshakable hold on a third of his party’s electorate.At a county G.O.P. dinner in Ames — a college community that’s more upscale, and decidedly less Trump oriented, than much of Iowa — it was not difficult to find Republicans eager to find a fresh nominee, even if they edged into saying as much with Midwest Nice euphemisms.“He’s calm and predictable so that’s a good thing,” Eric Weber said of Mr. Pence.Mr. Trump was “too divisive even though what he did is great,” Mr. Weber said as his wife, Carol, suggested another Trump bid “may divide people.”Yet they weren’t ready to sign up with Mr. Pence, as both noted their affection for Mr. Cotton and Mr. DeSantis.Mr. Pence’s speech was received well if not overwhelmingly so. It had all the bearings of a Republican in Iowa leaning toward a presidential bid — knowing references to local politicians, Midwest totems like John Deere and attacks on the Democrats in power in Washington.Yet it also had the distinct air of a pre-Trump brand of Republicanism, with only the slightest criticism of the news media (and that was even gloved with “all due respect”), references to becoming a grandfather and G-rated jokes that could have just as easily been delivered by Mitt Romney (it involved Washington, D.C., and “hot air.”)Mr. Pence’s Iowa speech featured references to local politicians and attacks on the Democrats in power in Washington.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesFew at the gathering liked Mr. Pence as much as Kevin and Linda Lauver.Their phones blaring with tornado warnings, the Lauvers took shelter in the Ames Country Club basement ahead of the April G.O.P. dinner. And they bumped into the evening’s keynote speaker.“We want somebody from the Midwest,” Ms. Lauver told Mr. Pence, nudging him to run for president in 2024. “I like Mike,” Mr. Lauver chimed in.Mr. Pence earnestly patted his heart and offered his thanks.As Mr. Lauver headed back upstairs after the tornado false alarm, he wanted to be clear that he liked Mr. Trump.“He did what he said what he was going to do,” said Mr. Lauver, before adding in Iowa deadpan: “When he said the least it was the best.”Now, he continued, “We need him to say, ‘OK, I’ll step aside.’” Then Mr. Lauver paused.“I don’t know if he’ll do that.” More

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      How Trump’s 2020 Election Lies Have Gripped State Legislatures

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      LANSING, Mich. — At least 357 sitting Republican legislators in closely contested battleground states have used the power of their office to discredit or try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to a review of legislative votes, records and official statements by The New York Times. The tally accounts for 44 […] More