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      Democrats Ask if They Should Hit Back Harder Against the G.O.P.

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      Many of the party’s voters are hungry for their candidates to go on offense against Republican cultural attacks, even if it puts them on less comfortable political terrain.If Democrats could bottle Mallory McMorrow, the Michigan state senator who gave a widely viewed speech condemning Republicans’ push to limit discussions about gender and sexuality in schools, they would do it.McMorrow’s big moment, which we wrote about on Monday, made her an instant political celebrity on the left. Her Twitter following has rocketed past 220,000. Democrats raising money for state legislative races have already found her to be a fund-raising powerhouse.McMorrow’s five minutes of fury was so effective, Democrats said, in part because it was so rare.It tapped into a frustration many Democrats feel about their party leaders’ hesitation to engage in these cultural firestorms, said Wendy Davis, a former Texas lawmaker whose filibuster of an abortion bill in 2013 made her a national political figure.‘What we’re fighting for’“There comes a point when you simply need to stand up and fight back,” Davis said.“The strategy of not meeting the right wing where they are can only take you so far,” she added. “I think people have been really hungry to see Democrats pushing back and pushing back strongly, like Mallory did.”Other Democrats are urging candidates to defend their beliefs more aggressively, rather than ignoring or deflecting Republicans’ cultural attacks by changing the subject to pocketbook issues.“Democrats are afraid to talk about why we’re fighting about what we’re fighting for,” said Tré Easton, a progressive strategist. “It was exactly the kind of values-focused rebuttal that I want every Democrat to sound like.”Finding the messageAnother lesson of McMorrow’s speech, said Rebecca Katz, a senior adviser to Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democratic Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, is that voters are searching for authenticity and passion rather than lock-step ideological agreement.“Voters want candidates who talk like actual people instead of slick, poll-tested performers,” Katz said. “They like candidates who are unfiltered, not calculated and scripted. And even if they don’t always agree with you, if a candidate is direct and honest, voters tend to respect that.”Fetterman, who is leading polls ahead of the May 17 primary, is a progressive aligned with the Bernie Sanders wing of the party. His main opponent is Representative Conor Lamb, a centrist from a suburban district outside Pittsburgh. Fetterman has worked to reassure Democratic Party leaders in and outside the state that he is not too far left to win a seat that is crucial to their hopes of retaining their Senate majority.But the fault lines within the party are about how to communicate with the public just as much as they are about traditional arguments between progressives and moderates.Party strategists in Washington, led by centrist lawmakers facing tough re-election bids, have settled on a heavily poll-tested midterm message that emphasizes the major legislation Democrats have passed in Congress: the $1.9 trillion economic relief package known as the American Rescue Plan and the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law.It’s an approach that leaves some Democrats wanting a little more Mallory McMorrow.“I agree that we should be making sure every single day to tell the American people what we’re doing to benefit them and their families,” Davis said, measuring her words carefully. “But we also need to fight fire with fire.”What to readNew York’s highest court ruled that Democratic leaders had violated the State Constitution when drawing new congressional and State Senate districts, ordering a court-appointed expert to draw replacements for this year’s critical midterm elections.Democratic lawmakers released a report alleging that in 2020, top Trump administration officials had awarded a $700 million pandemic relief loan to a struggling trucking company over the objections of Defense Department officials.The White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner is returning in person on Saturday after a two-year pandemic absence. It has some in Washington calculating the risks involved. President Biden will be there. Anthony Fauci is skipping it.pulseSeventy-three percent of college-educated women have an unfavorable opinion of Trump, while 59 percent have a very unfavorable view of him.Sergio Flores/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt’s the gender gap, stupidIt might be the most important rift in American politics: the gender gap between the two major parties. And it’s growing larger.New public opinion research by the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank in Washington, explores just how far apart Democrats and Republicans now are on a bevy of issues, including their contrasting approaches to sex and sexuality and their spiritual practices.Driving the split, in large part, is the steady migration of college-educated women to the Democratic Party. In 1998, the study’s authors note, only 12 percent of Democrats were women with a college degree. That figure is now 28 percent — making them a dominant bloc in the party. For comparison, men without college degrees now make up 22 percent of the Republican Party, up from 17 percent in 1998.That gender gap is a quiet driver of political polarization, said Daniel Cox, the director and founder of A.E.I.’s Survey Center on American Life.He was struck by the stark differences of opinion between women with college degrees and men without them on two issues in particular: climate change and abortion.Sixty-five percent of college-educated women favor protecting the environment over faster economic growth, A.E.I. found, versus only 45 percent of men without college degrees. Seventy-two percent of college-educated women say abortion ought to be legal in most cases, while just 43 percent of men without a college education agree.The gender gap was growing well before Donald Trump, Cox said. But his election “supercharged” the political activism of millennial women in particular, he said.It was primarily college-educated women who rallied on the National Mall in 2017 to express their opposition to Trump, a Republican president swept into office by — as he put it — “the poorly educated.”College-educated women rallied to Joe Biden during the 2020 election, repelled by Trump’s brash and aggressive political style.Those feelings have only intensified. Seventy-three percent of college-educated women have an unfavorable opinion of Trump, A.E.I. found, while 59 percent have a very unfavorable view of him. By contrast, 48 percent of men without college degrees view Trump unfavorably.— BlakeIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Kay Ivey Races to the Right in Alabama Governor Race

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      The governor has a conservative track record, but in the face of a primary challenge, she is increasingly wading into divisive cultural issues.Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama was never a moderate Republican. But in 2018, when she ran for her first full term, she artfully dipped into conservative talking points in a mild manner.Four years later, as she runs for re-election, she’s again airing ads with music suitable for 1990s family sitcoms. The message, however, is far different.In one ad, Ivey claims that “the left teaches kids to hate America.” Later, she boasts that she ended “transgender sports” in Alabama schools. In another ad, she falsely accuses President Biden of “shipping illegal immigrants” into the country, warning that “we’re all going to have to learn Spanish.”Facing pressure from her right, Ivey has shed her image as a traditional salt-of-the-earth Alabama conservative — leading the charge on restrictive abortion laws and protecting Confederate monuments — and transformed into a Trump-era culture warrior.Her election-year shift demonstrates how even in the Deep South, Republicans whose loyalty to the party is unquestioned are tilting to the right and making red states even redder.“Politics is about doing what people like. Statesmanship is about doing what’s right,” said Mike Ball, a longtime Republican state representative who is retiring. “But before you get to be a statesman, you have to be a politician.”“I do think this campaign has moved her rhetoric too far — or a long way — to the right,” he added, though he still believes that Ivey is the best choice in the May 24 primary, which will head to a runoff if no one receives more than 50 percent of the vote.Ivey’s stepped-up ideological intensity goes beyond her ads. This year, she signed one of the most stringent laws in the country restricting transition care for transgender youths, threatening health care providers with time in prison. She also signed legislation limiting classroom discussions on gender and sexual orientation, similar to parts of the Florida law that critics call “Don’t Say Gay.”Ivey’s campaign says it is all a continuation of her record of conservatism, which has left her on solid footing for re-election. Asked about the change in her messaging from 2018 to 2022, her campaign said in a statement, “What’s changed is that Alabama is now stronger than ever.”A governor who ‘kicks so much liberal butt’Ivey’s entry to politics was gradual. Before running for office, she worked as a high school teacher, a bank officer and assistant director of the Alabama Development Office.Then, in 2003, Ivey became Alabama’s first Republican state treasurer since Reconstruction. In 2011, she won election as lieutenant governor. Six years later, she ascended to governor when the incumbent resigned amid a sex scandal.When she entered her 2018 race for re-election, Ivey faced several primary challengers. She ran ads that shored up her conservative bona fides while keeping an even tone.The Alabama N.A.A.C.P. criticized her campaign for an ad expressing support for preserving Confederate monuments. In it, Ivey argued that we “can’t change or erase our history,” but also said that “to get where we’re going means understanding where we’ve been.”Another primary ad showed two men at a shooting range, preparing to fire at their target. Then someone hits the target first. The camera turns to Ivey — a silver-haired woman in her 70s — with a gun in her hands.After that primary, her catalog of general election ads included titles like “My Dog Bear,” “Dreams Come True” and “A Former Teacher.”Now, as Ivey again fights in a primary, her first ads make clear that she’s anti-critical race theory, anti-abortion, anti-Biden and pro-Trump. Her campaign has also revamped the 2018 ad at the shooting range, with one of the men saying that Ivey “kicks so much liberal butt, I bet her leg’s tired.”A couple of weeks ago, things really took a turn.The ads keep the same peppy music, and Ivey still smiles as she narrates, but the language crosses into new territory. In the one accusing Biden of “shipping illegal immigrants,” she says, “My message to Biden: No way, Jose.”Representative Maxine Waters, a Democrat from California, told MSNBC the ad was “plain racist ignorance, in your face.”In another ad, Ivey falsely declares that the election was stolen from Donald Trump — a departure from previous ads, in which she said simply that she had worked to ensure Alabama’s elections were secure. “The left is probably offended,” she says. “So be it.”This year, Ivey signed a law restricting transition care for transgender youths, threatening health care providers with time in prison.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesPressure from the rightBut Ivey’s ads aren’t the most provocative of the Republican primary for governor. That distinction would probably go to Tim James, a businessman and son of a former governor, who said in an ad that “left-wing bigots” were teaching children things like that there are “50 genders.”Another candidate, Lynda Blanchard, a businesswoman and former diplomat, aired an ad criticizing Ivey for suggesting that unvaccinated people carried some blame for a prolonged pandemic.Ivey opened herself up to a primary challenge in part by extending a mask mandate in the spring of 2021, when many fellow G.O.P. governors were lifting them.After Biden was inaugurated, Ivey tweeted her congratulations to him and Kamala Harris. And she was one of just a few Republican governors who joined a November 2020 call about the pandemic with Biden when he was president-elect.Ivey’s campaign denies reports of a rift between her and Trump, who has not endorsed a candidate in the race. Asked about their relationship, an Ivey spokesman said: “Governor Ivey has a great relationship with President Trump and would welcome his support and endorsement. We’re going to win on May 24.” A spokesman for Trump did not respond to a request for comment.‘You can’t govern contrary to the will of the people’ Mike Ball, the retiring Alabama lawmaker, offered a deeper explanation of Ivey’s political calculus.While the governor is reacting in part to her primary challengers, he said, she is also responding to the Alabama Legislature, which Ball said was the true initiator of the recent legislation on health care for transgender youths.“She really had to sign it with the election coming up, because they would’ve killed her if she didn’t,” said Ball, who sat out the vote. Ball said that if Ivey won again, he believed she would govern with a more moderate agenda than her campaign messaging suggests, perhaps addressing prison reform and transparency in government.“I think she’s been around enough not to drink anybody’s Kool-Aid for long,” he said. “But she’s also been around enough to know what she’s got to do — that you have to build coalitions of support and you can’t govern contrary to the will of the people.”What to readKevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, feared after the Jan. 6 riot that several far-right members of Congress would incite violence against other lawmakers, identifying several by name as security risks in private conversations with party leaders, our colleagues Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin report.Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas chartered buses to send migrants to Washington in an effort to rattle President Biden. But, Eileen Sullivan and Edgar Sandoval report, Abbott’s actions have actually fit into Biden’s strategy to work with state and local governments to support migrants.The two front-runners in the Republican primary for Senate in Pennsylvania — Mehmet Oz and David McCormick — debated for the first time on Monday. Reid Epstein describes how the face-off played out.listening postKristina Karamo, a candidate for Michigan secretary of state, had a podcast on “theology, culture and politics.”Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesIn Michigan, a secretary of state candidate says yoga is a ‘satanic ritual’It turns out that Kristina Karamo has opinions about a lot more than how to administer elections.Karamo, who was endorsed on Saturday by the Republican Party of Michigan in her bid for secretary of state, espouses many of the usual conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. Given that she’s vying to oversee elections in the future, her views on the subject are receiving close scrutiny.But Karamo is also a prolific podcaster, the host of a now-defunct show on Christian “theology, culture and politics” called Solid Food. The shows tend to be delivered in a monologue, and those monologues have an unstructured, stream-of-consciousness quality to them.The commentary illustrates why some Michigan Republicans have warned that putting forward candidates like Karamo in a general election could be dangerous for the party, allowing Democrats to paint the G.O.P. as promoting fringe views. Karamo did not respond to a request for comment.Sex is a consistent topic of discussion on her podcast: Kicking off one show on Sept. 17, 2020, Karamo declares, “Satan orchestrated the sexual revolution to pull people away from God and to tie people into sexual brokenness.”She goes on to claim that Alfred Kinsey, the American biologist known for his pioneering research into human sexuality, “was totally into Satanism” — quickly amending that to say that Kinsey “never necessarily proclaimed allegiance to Lucifer, but he was inspired by Satanists for their revelry.”On another podcast episode a day later, Karamo describes the rapper Cardi B as a tool of “Lucifer.”She also describes yoga as a “satanic ritual.”“This is not just dance to dance,” Karamo says. “It is to summon a demon. Even yoga. The word ‘yoga’ really means ‘yoke to Brahman.’ So people are thinking they’re doing exercises. No, you’re doing actual — a satanic ritual and don’t even know it.”In another episode, on Nov. 24, 2020, after offering scattered thoughts on political blackmail and Jeffrey Epstein, Karamo embarks on a lengthy tangent about “sexual deviancy.”“There are people who are willing to be eternally separated from God for an orgasm,” Karamo says. “That is wild to me.”A professor at Wayne County Community College, Karamo most recently taught a class on career and professional development.Presented with Karamo’s comments, Jason Roe, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party, said simply: “Wow. Michigan is going to be nuts.”— Leah & BlakeIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      McCarthy Feared G.O.P. Lawmakers Put ‘People in Jeopardy’ After Jan. 6

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      New audio recordings reveal Kevin McCarthy worried that comments by his far-right colleagues could incite violence. He said he would try to rein in the lawmakers, but has instead defended them.Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, feared in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack that several far-right members of Congress would incite violence against other lawmakers, identifying several by name as security risks in private conversations with party leaders.Mr. McCarthy talked to other congressional Republicans about wanting to rein in multiple hard-liners who were deeply involved in Donald J. Trump’s efforts to contest the 2020 election and undermine the peaceful transfer of power, according to an audio recording obtained by The New York Times.But Mr. McCarthy did not follow through on the sterner steps that some Republicans encouraged him to take, opting instead to seek a political accommodation with the most extreme members of the G.O.P. in the interests of advancing his own career.Mr. McCarthy’s remarks represent one of the starkest acknowledgments from a Republican leader that the party’s rank-and-file lawmakers played a role in stoking violence on Jan. 6, 2021 — and posed a threat in the days after the Capitol attack. Audio recordings of the comments were obtained in reporting for a forthcoming book, “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future.”In the phone call with other Republican leaders on Jan. 10, Mr. McCarthy referred chiefly to two representatives, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Mo Brooks of Alabama, as endangering the security of other lawmakers and the Capitol complex. But he and his allies discussed several other representatives who made comments they saw as offensive or dangerous, including Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Barry Moore of Alabama.The country was “too crazy,” Mr. McCarthy said, for members to be talking and tweeting recklessly at such a volatile moment.McCarthy Expresses Concern About Republican Lawmakers’ RhetoricOn a Jan. 10, 2021, conference call with House G.O.P. leaders, Representative Kevin McCarthy expresses concern that Republican lawmakers’ rhetoric could lead to someone getting hurt.Mr. Brooks and Mr. Gaetz were the prime offenders in the eyes of G.O.P. leaders. Mr. Brooks addressed the Jan. 6 rally on the National Mall, which preceded the Capitol riot, using incendiary language. After Jan. 6, Mr. Gaetz went on television to attack multiple Republicans who had criticized Mr. Trump, including Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a member of the leadership team.Those comments by Mr. Gaetz alarmed Mr. McCarthy and his colleagues in leadership — particularly the reference to Ms. Cheney, who was already the target of threats and public abuse from Mr. Trump’s faction in the party because of her criticism of the defeated president.Mr. McCarthy considered remarks made by Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida a threat to the security of other lawmakers and the Capitol complex.Audra Melton for The New York Times“He’s putting people in jeopardy,” Mr. McCarthy said of Mr. Gaetz. “And he doesn’t need to be doing this. We saw what people would do in the Capitol, you know, and these people came prepared with rope, with everything else.”Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican, suggested that Mr. Gaetz might be crossing a legal boundary.“It’s potentially illegal what he’s doing,” Mr. Scalise said.McCarthy on Comments by GaetzRepresentative Kevin McCarthy and Representative Steve Scalise, along with a number of aides, discuss Representative Matt Gaetz criticizing other Republicans by name in the days after the Jan. 6 attack.On Tuesday night, Mr. Gaetz responded with a blistering statement, castigating the two House Republican leaders as “weak men.”“While I was protecting President Trump from impeachment, they were protecting Liz Cheney from criticism,” he said.Mr. McCarthy, referring to Mr. Brooks, said the Trump loyalist had behaved even worse on Jan. 6 than Mr. Trump, who told the crowd assembled on the National Mall to “fight like hell” before his supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the electoral vote count. Mr. Brooks told the rally that it was “the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.”“You think the president deserves to be impeached for his comments?” Mr. McCarthy asked rhetorically. “That’s almost something that goes further than what the president said.”Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama gave a fiery speech at the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the Capitol riot.Jacquelyn Martin/Associated PressSpeaking about rank-and-file lawmakers to his fellow leaders, Mr. McCarthy was sharply critical and suggested he was going to tell them to stop their inflammatory conduct.“Our members have got to start paying attention to what they say, too, and you can’t put up with that,” he said, adding an expletive.McCarthy Says He ‘Can’t Put Up With’ Inflammatory TalkKevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise discuss incendiary comments made by multiple G.O.P. lawmakers on a Jan. 10, 2021, conference call with other Republican congressional leaders and their aides.Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Scalise did not respond to a request for comment.Mr. Brooks on Tuesday dismissed the Republican leader’s criticism and noted that a lawsuit brought against him by a Democratic member of Congress for his Jan. 6 speech had been dismissed in court.“Kevin McCarthy spoke before knowing the facts,” Mr. Brooks said, adding that he did not recall Mr. McCarthy ever speaking with him directly about his speech.During the Jan. 10, 2021, phone call, Mr. McCarthy was speaking with a small group of Republican leaders, including Mr. Scalise, Ms. Cheney and Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, as well as a number of aides.It was on this G.O.P. leadership call that Mr. McCarthy told his colleagues he would call Mr. Trump and tell him, “it would be my recommendation you should resign.”The House minority leader has in recent days lied about and tried to downplay his comments: Last week, after The Times reported the remarks, Mr. McCarthy called the report “totally false and wrong.” After Mr. McCarthy’s denial, a source who had confidentially shared a recording of the call with the book’s authors agreed to let The Times publish parts of the audio. In the days since that recording has been made public, the Republican leader has repeated his denial and emphasized that he never actually carried out his plan to urge Mr. Trump to quit.Mr. McCarthy’s comments casting other Republican lawmakers as a menace within Congress illustrate the difference between how he spoke about his own party right after Jan. 6, in what he imagined to be strict confidence, and the way he has interacted with those lawmakers in the 15 months since then.On the Jan. 10 call, Mr. McCarthy said he planned to speak with Mr. Gaetz and ask him not to attack other lawmakers by name. The following day, in a larger meeting for all House Republicans, Mr. McCarthy pleaded with lawmakers not to “incite” but rather to “respect one another.”McCarthy Calls for Party UnityKevin McCarthy tells Republican lawmakers during a meeting of the G.O.P. conference on Jan. 11, 2021, that they should not attack each other over their views on the 2020 election.But in his determination to become speaker of the House after the 2022 elections, Mr. McCarthy has spent much of the last year forging a closer political partnership with the far right, showing little public concern that his most extreme colleagues could instigate bloodshed with their overheated or hateful rhetoric.In recent months Mr. McCarthy has opposed punishing Republican members of Congress who have been accused of inciting violence, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and, most recently, Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, who posted an animated video on social media that depicted him killing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, the left-wing Democrat.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3Trump allies’ involvement. 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      Ohio Senate Race Pits Trump and Son Against Big G.O.P. Group

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      The Club for Growth has lined up behind Josh Mandel. Donald J. Trump and his eldest son, Donald Jr., are backing J.D. Vance. Tuesday’s outcome will be a crucial test of the former president’s sway.Not long after Donald J. Trump was elected president, the Club for Growth, a conservative anti-tax group that had opposed his 2016 campaign, reinvented itself as a reliable supporter, with the group’s president, David McIntosh, providing frequent counsel to Mr. Trump on important races nationwide.But this spring, as Mr. Trump faces critical tests of the power of his endorsements, an ugly fight over the Ohio Senate primary is threatening what had been a significant alliance with one of the most influential groups in the country.The dispute broke into plain view days ago when in support of Josh Mandel, the former Ohio state treasurer, for the Republican Senate race, the Club for Growth ran a television commercial showing the candidate Mr. Trump has endorsed, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance, repeatedly denouncing Mr. Trump in 2016.Mr. Trump’s response was brutish: He had an assistant send Mr. McIntosh a short text message telling him off in the most vulgar terms. The group, one of the few that actually spends heavily in primary races, responded by saying it would increase its spending on the ad.That escalation drew an angry response from Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son, who had spent months urging his father to support Mr. Vance and has invested his own energy and influence on Mr. Vance’s behalf.The standoff over the Ohio primary encapsulates some of the critical open questions within the Republican Party. Mr. Trump has held enormous sway despite being less visible since leaving office, but other power centers and G.O.P.-aligned groups over which he used to exert a stranglehold are asserting themselves more. And his ability to influence the thinking of Republican voters on behalf of other candidates is about to be tested at the ballot box.Until now, even after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol by Trump supporters seeking to keep him in office, many Republican candidates have fallen over themselves to court Mr. Trump’s endorsement. That’s proven especially true in Ohio, where the primary for the Senate has been dominated by candidates like Mr. Mandel and Mr. Vance, who have emulated Mr. Trump’s reactionary politics.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.The Ohio contest has also divided Mr. Trump’s own circle, as rival candidates have hired various formal and informal advisers to the former president in hopes of influencing his eventual endorsement.Much like Mr. Vance, Mr. McIntosh and the Club for Growth opposed Mr. Trump in 2016, but the group then recast itself as closely aligned with him.By the time Mr. Trump left office, Mr. McIntosh was frequently speaking with him by phone and visiting him at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club in Florida, according to an aide to Mr. McIntosh. His frequent attempts to sway Mr. Trump’s thinking on politics reached the point that it rankled others in Mr. Trump’s circle, which is constantly in flux and populated by people seeking influence.In a brief interview after receiving the text message from Mr. Trump’s aide last week, Mr. McIntosh minimized the dispute over Ohio, noting that the former president and the Club for Growth had both endorsed Representative Ted Budd, a Republican in North Carolina running for the Senate, a race on which the group has spent heavily.“I very much view this as one race where we’re not aligned, we’re on opposite sides, which doesn’t happen very often,” Mr. McIntosh said of the clash over Ohio.Still, the Club for Growth also stuck with Representative Mo Brooks in Alabama’s Senate primary after Mr. Trump withdrew his own endorsement.The dispute over the group’s attack on Mr. Vance touched a nerve with both Mr. Trump and his eldest son.The former president has long taken special delight in bringing to heel Republicans who, having criticized him, are forced to acknowledge his supremacy in the party and bow and scrape for his approval. That was the case with Mr. McIntosh, and also with Mr. Vance, who courted the former president with the help of the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and the billionaire Peter Thiel, as well as that of Donald Trump Jr.All of which explains why the Club for Growth’s ad showing Mr. Vance expressing scorn for Mr. Trump in 2016 aggravated not only the former president, but also his son.The younger Mr. Trump, who is trying to flex his own political muscle within the Republican Party, treated the tiff between his father and Mr. McIntosh as an opening to attack the group and also to try to tear down Mr. Mandel.When he visited Ohio this week on Mr. Vance’s behalf, the younger Mr. Trump attacked Mr. Mandel by name for his support for a no-fly zone in Ukraine, and also criticized the Club for Growth, saying, “They spent $10 million in 2016 to fight Donald Trump,” and suggesting the group was “soft on China.”The Senate candidate J.D. Vance is ahead in private polling, according to strategists — a fact that Mr. Trump can point to even if another candidate ultimately wins, experts said.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe younger Mr. Trump also said he might oppose candidates newly endorsed by the Club for Growth unless it stops running the ads about Mr. Vance and removes Mr. McIntosh from the group’s board, according to an adviser who spoke anonymously.Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist and former top aide at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said that while Mr. Trump’s approach with his endorsements has been fairly random in recent months, the Vance endorsement is different because of the composition of the primary. “This is the first time Trump’s political might has been tested on a level playing field among broadly acceptable candidates,” Mr. Donovan said.In both Ohio and North Carolina, Mr. Donovan said, “the Trump nod may lift his picks from the middle of the pack to victory over established favorites with lengthy statewide resumes. That would be an objectively impressive display of power.”Mr. Trump’s backing has elevated Mr. Vance’s standing in the primary, according to a Fox News survey released on Tuesday evening. Mr. Vance received 23 percent of the primary vote, an increase of 12 percentage points from the last survey, overtaking Mr. Mandel, who received 18 percent. Some 25 percent of voters remain undecided, the poll found.Mr. Trump had been advised that he could have the most effect by giving his endorsement in mid-April, as early voting was set to begin in the state.There is always the chance that the Club for Growth emerges successful in the fight in Ohio. Mr. McIntosh said he believed that Mr. Mandel was the most conservative, pro-Trump candidate in the field.Still, Republican strategists said a late surge by Mr. Vance, even if he does not win, would give Mr. Trump renewed bragging rights.David Kochel, a Republican strategist who has advised past presidential nominees, said that Mr. Trump appears “to have breathed life into a campaign most people assumed was dead,” adding, “even if Vance loses, Trump will be able to argue that he turned his campaign around.” More

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      New York Democrats Make Last-Ditch Bid to Save New Congressional Maps

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      The state’s highest court heard arguments on Tuesday on whether to uphold earlier rulings that voided maps drawn by Democrats as illegal gerrymanders.New York Democrats made a last-ditch appeal to the state’s highest court on Tuesday to overturn a pair of lower-court rulings and salvage newly drawn congressional districts that overwhelmingly favor their party.In oral arguments before the New York State Court of Appeals, lawyers for the governor and top legislative leaders said that Republicans challenging the lines had fallen short of proving that the state’s new congressional map violated a state ban on gerrymandering.But the arguments turned tense at times, especially as several members of the seven-judge panel scrutinized the constitutionality of the mapmaking process itself.Voters created a new redistricting commission in 2014 to help wean politics from the mapmaking process, at the same time that they outlawed gerrymandering. But after the commission’s efforts broke down this winter, the Democratic-led Legislature quickly shunted aside the commission’s proposals in favor of more politically favorable maps.“Isn’t that evidence of a purpose to gerrymander?” Judge Michael Garcia asked lawyers for the Democrats.The court’s decision, expected as soon as Wednesday, could have far-reaching implications for New York and the rest of the country.A bare-knuckle political fight over representation and power lies beneath the complex legal arguments. National Democrats are relying on New York to help offset Republican redistricting gains in other states. Without it, their path to maintaining the House of Representatives in Washington could become considerably more difficult.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Analysis: For years, the congressional map favored Republicans over Democrats. But in 2022, the map is poised to be surprisingly fair.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.The congressional map, approved by Democratic supermajorities in February, threatens to cut the state’s eight-member Republican House delegation in half and creates three new Democratic friendly seats on Long Island, Staten Island and in central New York. The map, which favors Democrats 22 to four, shores up several swing districts that Democrats hold now with more left-leaning voters.But an Appeals Court ruling could also determine the future of the 2014 reforms to the redistricting process, which takes place once a decade. If the court upholds the maps and the process behind them, its ruling could effectively neuter the redistricting commission after just one cycle of activity and would set a high bar to prove maps are partisan gerrymanders.“It’s a total disregard for the Constitution and what the voters chose in 2014 as a process to try to improve the way the lines were drawn,” Laura Ladd Bierman, executive director of the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of New York State, said of the Legislature’s actions. “That’s what just makes me so frustrated: They just seem to have no regard for what the public wanted.”Ms. Bierman’s group has submitted an amicus brief in the case siding with Republicans to argue that the courts should strike down the maps and draw new ones using a special master.The Court of Appeals judges, all of whom were appointed by Democratic governors, appeared to be wrestling with how to balance the interests of the voters, the longstanding right of the Legislature to set district lines and more pragmatic questions about how and when this year’s critical midterm elections should proceed.The court has traditionally shown deference to state lawmakers to set boundaries that they feel are appropriate. But the questions this time were particularly thorny because the case — Harkenrider v. Hochul — is the first time that the courts have tested the 2014 constitutional changes.The challengers, New York voters backed by national Republicans, have argued that the mapmaking power should have gone directly to the courts, not the Legislature, when the commission collapsed this winter. Instead, they contend, Democrats hijacked the process and drew lines expertly devised to knock out Republicans.The commission violated the law, the Republican lawyer, Misha Tseytlin, said, “but then the Legislature attempted to take a step that it had no legal authority to take.”Democrats rejected both claims. They maintain that the commission was an advisory body whose maps required lawmakers’ approval to become law. And they defended their congressional map as a good-faith effort to balance competing requirements to preserve the cores of existing districts and communities of interest — which includes racial and ethnic groups — while achieving maximum compactness and adjusting for population shifts that generally benefit Democrats.“Maybe the petitioners would have drawn the map a little differently, maybe someone from a think tank or the editorial board of a newspaper would have drawn these maps differently, or somebody on Twitter,” said Craig R. Bucki, a lawyer for State Assembly Democrats. “But the fact is they are not the Legislature, and they are not elected by the people, and that’s why all these maps should be upheld.”How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Front-Runners in G.O.P. Pennsylvania Senate Race Are Put on Spot at Debate

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      Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick, when not sparring with each other, faced attacks from three other challengers.When the leading Republican candidates for Senate in Pennsylvania — the Trump-endorsed celebrity surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive — shared a debate stage for the first time on Monday night, they faced sharp attacks not only from each other but also from three other candidates vying to chip away at their polling lead.With few substantive policy disagreements among the five candidates, attacks instead addressed how long each had lived in Pennsylvania (for Dr. Oz and Mr. McCormick, not much, recently); past commitments to other countries; and Dr. Oz’s statements during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic encouraging people to wear masks — now a verboten position among the Republican faithful.Dr. Oz rarely failed to remind viewers that he had won an endorsement from former President Donald J. Trump, a victory he used to proclaim himself the true “America First” candidate in the race. His rivals disputed the designation.“The reason Mehmet keeps talking about President Trump’s endorsement is because he can’t run on his own positions and his own record,” Mr. McCormick said. “The problem, doctor, is there’s no miracle cure for flip-flopping, and Pennsylvanians are seeing right through your phoniness and that’s what you’re dealing with and that’s why you’re not taking off in the polls.”The latest public polls of the race, when taken together, show Dr. Oz and Mr. McCormick locked in a near tie for the lead ahead of the May 17 primary, a fact that was close to the minds of their rivals Monday.The three others on stage — Kathy Barnette, a political commentator who has written a book about being Black and conservative; Jeff Bartos, a real estate developer; and Carla Sands, who was Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Denmark — sought to attack the front-runners both individually and as a pair of carpetbaggers trying to buy a Senate seat.“The two out-of-staters, the two tourists who moved here to run, they don’t know Main Street Pennsylvania,” Mr. Bartos said. “They haven’t cared to spend time there until they decided to run for office.”The Cleveland-born Dr. Oz, a son of Turkish immigrants who attended the University of Pennsylvania for business and medical schools and who has spent most of his adult life living in New York and New Jersey, recently changed his voting address to his in-laws’ home in the Philadelphia suburbs.Mr. McCormick, who was born and raised in western Pennsylvania, moved back to the state from Connecticut, where he served as chief executive of Bridgewater Associates, a hedge fund.The debate also reflected the efforts of the second-tier candidates to make jingoistic appeals while painting Dr. Oz and Mr. McCormick as having loyalties to other nations ahead of the United States. Ms. Sands, who also moved back to Pennsylvania ahead of the Senate race, said neither could be trusted to place America first.She said that Dr. Oz was “Turkey first,” adding, “He served in the Turkish military, not the U.S. military, and he chose to do that. He chose to put Turkey first.” She said that Mr. McCormick “is China first. He made his fortune in China, and he is China first.”Dr. Oz defended his stint in the Turkish military as compulsory to maintain his Turkish citizenship, which he said he needed in order to visit his mother in the country. Mr. McCormick said his international business career would be a benefit to decision-making in the Senate.The Republicans vying for the Senate in Pennsylvania, clockwise from top left: Kathy Barnette, Jeff Bartos, Dave McCormick, Carla Sands and Mehmet Oz. Matt Rourke/Associated PressAnd Ms. Barnette reflected the other candidates’ attempts to appeal to Trump voters. She even included a rare — for Republican primary circles — critique of the former president.“MAGA does not belong to President Trump,” she said, using the acronym for Mr. Trump’s campaign slogan, Make America Great Again. “Our values never, never shifted to President Trump’s values. It was President Trump who shifted and aligned with our values.”The debate demonstrated how a commitment to Mr. Trump serves as the centerpiece for the Oz campaign. He mentioned the former president’s endorsement in nearly all of his responses, and, while Mr. McCormick dodged a question about whether Republicans should “move off 2020” and stop discussing Mr. Trump’s defeat, Dr. Oz said the party must lean into the false claims surrounding the 2020 election.“We cannot move on,” Dr. Oz said. “There were draconian changes made to our voting laws by Democratic leadership, and they have blocked appropriate reviews of some of those decisions. We have to be serious about what happened in 2020, and we won’t be able to address that until we can really look under the hood.”Monday’s debate was the first to feature the race’s two front-runners after Dr. Oz and Mr. McCormick skipped a televised debate in February. Both entered the race after the previous Trump-endorsed candidate, Sean Parnell, a former Army Ranger who received the Purple Heart for his service in Afghanistan, dropped out in November after losing a child custody dispute with his estranged wife. Both Dr. Oz and Mr. McCormick have primarily funded their campaigns themselves. According to the most recent campaign finance reports, $11 million of the $13.4 million Dr. Oz has raised has come from his own pocket. Mr. McCormick has given his campaign $7 million of the $11.3 million he has raised.For months the two engaged in fierce public and private campaigns to win the affection of Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump this month chose Dr. Oz, playing up his success as a television show host while also being wary of Mr. McCormick’s past business dealings in China.Pennsylvania Democrats have their own contested primary between John Fetterman, the lieutenant governor and the front-runner; Representative Conor Lamb; and Malcolm Kenyatta, a state representative from Philadelphia. More

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      L. McCrae Dowless Jr., 66, Dies; Operative at Heart of Election Scandal

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      Federal prosecutors charged him with absentee-ballot tampering in North Carolina, and the state ordered a historic rerun of a federal election.L. McCrae Dowless Jr., the North Carolina political operative who was at the center of a scandal involving absentee-ballot harvesting and tampering that led to the first rerun of a federal election in some 40 years, died on Sunday at his daughter’s home in Bladen County, N.C. He was 66.His daughter, Andrea Heverly, confirmed the death in a statement but did not provide a cause. He was diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer last year.It was said that if there were 30,000 people in rural Bladen County, in the southeast corner of North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District, then Mr. Dowless knew 25,000. He grew up there, born on a peanut farm in a house without indoor plumbing. Aside from a short stint working construction in California, he never left.Starting in 2006, he turned that intimate knowledge into a get-out-the-vote operation that served both Democrats and Republicans, and that soon earned a reputation for unproven but potentially illegal tactics.Though there were significant concerns about Mr. Dowless’s work on a 2016 U.S. House race, in 2018 Mark Harris, the Republican nominee for the Ninth District, hired Mr. Dowless in his race against Dan McCready, a Democrat.Mr. Harris won the race that November by just 905 votes. He did especially well among absentee voters: Though only 19 percent of ballot requesters were registered Republicans, 61 percent of absentee voters picked Mr. Harris.Almost immediately, things unraveled. Witnesses came forward saying that Mr. Dowless had paid them to gather absentee-ballot request forms, or absentee ballots themselves, a felony under North Carolina law.Others attested to a wide-ranging operation in which Mr. Dowless directed them to fill in ballots, specifying the type of pen to use and how to mail them (never in large batches, always from post offices near the voters’ homes).The North Carolina Board of Elections ordered a redo. It was the first time that a federal election had been repeated because of allegations of fraud, according to voting experts. Mr. Harris decided not to run again, and in the 2019 redo Dan Bishop, another Republican, defeated Mr. McCready.Mr. Dowless was arrested in February 2019 on charges of ballot tampering and obstruction of justice related to the 2016 and 2018 primary races; four others faced charges. That July he was indicted on similar charges related to the 2018 general election, along with six others.The case faced multiple delays related to the Covid-19 pandemic and Mr. Dowless’s health. That did not prevent an unrelated fraud case from going forward. In June 2021, he pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud for failing to report his income from the Harris campaign while receiving Social Security disability benefits.Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr. was born on Jan. 3, 1956, near Lumberton, N.C., where Leslie Sr. worked on a 200-acre peanut farm. His mother, Monnie (Pait) Dowless, was a homemaker. He was the youngest of 11 children in the household, though the only child his parents had together.The family’s first home, tucked into the woods near the farm, had no indoor plumbing, and Mr. Dowless later recalled bathing in a 55-gallon oil drum. When he was 10 years old, his family moved to a modern home in nearby Bladenboro, where he ran from bathroom to bathroom, turning the taps on and off in amazement, he told Michael Graff and Nick Ochsner for their book “The Vote Collectors: The True Story of the Scammers, Politicians and Preachers Behind the Nation’s Greatest Electoral Fraud” (2021).Along with his daughter, Mr. Dowless is survived by his brother, Harry; his sisters Myrtice Johnson and Filena Carson; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.Mr. Dowless Sr. ran a fertilizer store with his brother, and his son helped out after school and on weekends. And Leslie Jr. continued to work on farms, mostly growing peanuts, a prime crop in that corner of the state.By the late 1980s he was managing a used-car lot with a girlfriend, whom he hoped to marry once he had enough money saved. When one employee died unexpectedly, they took out life insurance on him, with the check illegally backdated.The scheme quickly fell apart, and Mr. Dowless and his girlfriend were charged with insurance fraud. But while she was sentenced to community service, he went to prison — a fact he chalked up to a crooked district attorney.When he got out after six months, he set his mind on revenge, and soon found it in politics, distributing campaign material against the prosecutor who had put him in jail. The prosecutor won the race, but Mr. Dowless was hooked.He dabbled in politics as a candidate as well. He won a seat on the Bladen County Soil and Water Conservation Board in 2012 and was re-elected in 2020.Immediately after his death, Lorrin Freeman, the Wake County district attorney, said that all charges against Mr. Dowless were now moot, but that the charges against the remaining defendants remained in place. More

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      Kemp and Perdue Debate, Looking Back at 2020 and Ahead to Abrams

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      Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia and his Republican primary opponent, former Senator David Perdue, bickered over the previous election — and over who would be more likely to defeat Stacey Abrams in November. ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia and former Senator David Perdue, a former ally who is challenging him in the Republican primary next month, met in an explosive first debate on Sunday night that was marked by a lengthy rehashing of the 2020 election’s outcome and testy attacks each other’s veracity.During the hourlong exchange, the candidates sparred over their conservative bona fides, a handful of policy issues popular on the right and who would ultimately be the stronger candidate against Stacey Abrams in November.Mr. Perdue, who was defeated in a runoff last year by Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, repeatedly echoed former President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 election had been “stolen and rigged” against the two of them, though multiple ballot recounts confirmed they had lost fair and square. Mr. Perdue, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump to challenge Mr. Kemp in the May 24 primary, assailed Mr. Kemp for refusing to call a special Georgia legislative session to try to overturn the election’s results.Mr. Perdue insisted he would still be a sitting United States senator if Mr. Kemp hadn’t “caved.”But when Mr. Perdue claimed that he had repeatedly asked Mr. Kemp to call such a special session, the governor pushed back forcefully, reminding voters of the many days he and his family had spent on Mr. Perdue’s campaign bus, trying in vain to help him win a second term. “Folks, he never asked me,” Mr. Kemp said. And when Mr. Perdue repeatedly accused the governor of lying, Mr. Kemp challenged him to produce witnesses to back up his claims.Each man portrayed the other unfavorably in light of 2020: Mr. Perdue said Mr. Kemp had betrayed Republican voters by failing to overturn the election, and Mr. Kemp pointed to Mr. Perdue’s loss to Mr. Ossoff as proof that he is too weak to defeat Ms. Abrams, the Democrat who narrowly lost to Mr. Kemp in 2018 and is making a second run for governor this year.Ms. Abrams’s candidacy loomed large over the entire evening, as both men underlined the danger they said she posed to Georgia if she wound up in the governor’s mansion. While Mr. Kemp holds a double-digit lead over Mr. Perdue in several polls, Mr. Perdue sought to remind voters of Mr. Kemp’s 1.4-percentage-point victory margin in 2018.“He barely beat Stacey Abrams in ’18, when I helped him secure President Trump’s endorsement, which he still today doesn’t think helped him at all,” Mr. Perdue said. The slugfest never let up, as a focus on Georgia policy issues in the debate’s second half-hour devolved into a fight over who was more authentically conservative, each candidate seeking to outflank the other from the right on education, public safety and jobs. Mr. Kemp doubled down on his support for a bill that prohibits teaching of “divisive concepts” on race and history, saying that Republicans in the state “passed this piece of legislation to make sure that our kids are not going to be indoctrinated in our schools,” and that curriculums should focus on “the facts, not somebody’s ideology.”But Mr. Perdue accused Mr. Kemp of abrogating his responsibility to protect students, parents and teachers alike. “They need to make sure that the woke mob’s not taking over the schools, and you’ve left them high and dry,” he said, asserting that the Atlanta schools were “teaching kids that voter ID is racist.”Answering a question about Latino voters, Mr. Perdue criticized Mr. Kemp’s record on immigration, recalling a 2018 campaign ad in which Mr. Kemp promised to use his own pickup truck to “round up illegals.” “Governor, what happened? Your pickup break down?” Mr. Perdue asked.Mr. Kemp said that the Covid-19 pandemic had intervened, saying that “picking up” people would only have helped spread infection in the state — and then reminded voters, for the umpteenth time, of Mr. Perdue’s defeat last year.“The fact is, if you hadn’t lost your race to Jon Ossoff, we wouldn’t have lost control of the Senate, and we wouldn’t have the disaster that we have in Washington right now,” Mr. Kemp said.A few clear-cut policy rifts did come into view over Georgia-specific issues.The two took opposite views of a new factory to produce electric trucks that is being built by Rivian Automotive in the state. Mr. Kemp exalted the project for the thousands of jobs it is expected to create, while Mr. Perdue cited an investment by the Democratic megadonor George Soros to dismiss Rivian as a “woke company,” saying that the project would redirect Georgians’ tax dollars into Mr. Soros’s pocket.Mr. Perdue attacked Mr. Kemp from several angles over rising crime in Atlanta, saying the governor had shrunk the size of the Georgia State Patrol and faulting him for failing to get behind an effort by some residents of Atlanta’s wealthy Buckhead neighborhood, alarmed about the surge in violent crime, to secede from the city. He accused the governor of staying out of the fray over the Buckhead secession movement for the sake of the “big company cronies downtown that are his big donors, that are desperate to not let that happen.”Mr. Kemp said he had raised troopers’ salaries, enhanced their training, created a crime suppression unit and deployed more troopers in metro Atlanta. And he pointed to his signing this month of a law allowing Georgians to carry concealed firearms without a permit.That was another way of fighting crime, he said.“The bad people already have the guns,” Mr. Kemp said. “We’re trying to give law-abiding citizens the ability to protect themselves, their family and their property.”Right to the end, both candidates were on message, and the message was largely a dim view of each other.In his closing, Mr. Perdue called Mr. Kemp a “weak governor trying to cover up a bad record.”Mr. Kemp, in his own summation, said Mr. Perdue was attacking his record in office “because he has none of his own, which is why he didn’t win his Senate race.” More