Republican Party

Subterms

    More stories

    • 75 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      How DeSantis Transformed Florida’s Political Identity

      by

      The state has become an unlikely laboratory for right-wing policy, pushed by a governor with presidential ambitions.MIAMI — Florida feels like a state running a fever, its very identity changing at a frenetic pace.Once the biggest traditional presidential battleground, it has suddenly turned into a laboratory of possibility for the political right.Discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity prohibited in early elementary school. Math textbooks rejected en masse for what the state called “indoctrination.” Schools and employers limited in what they can teach about racism and other aspects of history. Tenured professors in public universities subjected to new reviews. Abortions banned after 15 weeks. The creation of a law enforcement office to investigate election crimes. A congressional map redrawn to give Republicans an even bigger advantage.And, perhaps most stunning of all, Disney, long an untouchable corporate giant, stripped of the ability to govern itself for the first time in more than half a century, in retaliation for the company’s opposition to the crackdown on L.G.B.T.Q. conversations with young schoolchildren.“It does have this feeling of, ‘Oh, what the hell just happened?’” said Kristen Arnett, a novelist and Orlando native who now lives in Miami. “It’s overwhelming.”Florida has transformed over the past two years as Gov. Ron DeSantis has increased and flexed his power to remarkable effect, embracing policies that once seemed unthinkable. That has made the Republican governor a favorite of the party’s Fox News-viewing base and turned him into a possible presidential contender.Mr. DeSantis displayed the signed Parental Rights in Education law, known by opponents as “Don’t Say Gay,” while flanked by elementary school students.Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times, via Associated PressMr. DeSantis has demurred on the question of whether he will seek the White House in 2024 even if former President Donald J. Trump runs again. Mr. Trump has retired — for now — to his Palm Beach estate of Mar-a-Lago and looms as his party’s king or kingmaker. Yet it is Mr. DeSantis who has kept Florida in the national spotlight — relentlessly.Bob Buckhorn, the former Democratic mayor of Tampa, blamed a combination of factors for Florida’s sudden turn: Mr. DeSantis’s ambition, national culture wars and Mr. Trump, for having “given voice to all of the ugliness and the demons that inhabit Americans.”“It’s just an unholy alliance of circumstances that have come together that allow this type of politics to occur,” Mr. Buckhorn said.Not long ago, such a shift would have seemed out of the question in a state notorious for its tight election margins and nail-biting recounts. Mr. DeSantis won the governorship by about 32,000 votes in 2018, hardly a mandate. His aloof personality did not exactly sparkle.Read More on Florida’s Fight With DisneyWhat to Know: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Disney, the state’s largest private employer, are clashing over a new education law.‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill: In a move seen as retaliation for the company’s criticism of the legislation, Florida lawmakers revoked Disney World’s special tax status.Facing the Real World: Disney spent decades avoiding controversy. But it has increasingly been drawn into the partisan political fray.A G.O.P. Shift: The battle in Florida showed how combative Republicans have grown toward corporations that take a stand on political issues.But beginning in 2020, a politically attuned Mr. DeSantis seized on discontent with coronavirus pandemic policies, betting that economic prosperity and individual liberties would matter more to voters in the long run than protecting public health. More than 73,000 Floridians have died of Covid-19, yet public opinion polls have shown that Mr. DeSantis and many of his policies remain quite popular.Parents, especially, who cheered the governor’s opposition to Covid-19 restrictions in schools, have remained active on issues of curriculum and culture.“I think the governor is more popular than Disney — I think the governor is more popular than the former president,” said Anthony Pedicini, a Republican strategist in Tampa. “If you’re running for office as a Republican in Florida and you aren’t toeing the DeSantis mantra, you will not win.”The question now for Mr. DeSantis — and virtually everyone else in Florida — is whether the rightward lurch will stop, either by court intervention, corporate backlash or, come November, electoral rebuke. But given Florida’s trends in recent years, the more likely outcome could be a sustained campaign toward a new, more rigid conservative orthodoxy, one that voters could very well ratify this fall.The state’s swift and unexpected rightward tilt has happened as Florida has swelled with new residents. Between July 2020 and July 2021, about 260,000 more people arrived than left, a net migration higher than any other state. The trend began before the pandemic but appeared to accelerate as remote workers sought warm weather, low taxes and few public health restrictions.Culturally, Floridians have been less conservative than their leaders. They have voted by large margins to legalize medical marijuana, prohibit gerrymandering and restore felons’ voting rights. (Last year, Republican lawmakers passed limits on the use of such citizen-led ballot initiatives.) So the recent rash of legislation has been met with trepidation in the state’s big cities, which are almost all run by Democrats.“I’m not exactly sure what DeSantis is trying to prove,” Brian Hill, an energy consultant, said on a sun-swept morning this week in downtown Orlando’s Lake Eola Park, near the Walt Disney Amphitheater, which is painted in rainbow colors in celebration of the L.G.B.T.Q. community.In 2016, a gunman killed 49 people and injured 53 others at Pulse, a gay nightclub in town. The amphitheater, Mr. Hill said, is “a symbol of how far we’ve come.” He contrasted it with the law restricting sexual orientation and gender identity discussions through third grade, a measure that supporters said promoted parental rights but critics called “Don’t Say Gay.”“The bill is taking schools back to the ’80s, to be honest,” said Mr. Hill, 52, who has lived in Orlando for two years. “It’s not realistic with today’s society.”Mr. DeSantis has demurred on the question of whether he will seek the White House in 2024 even if former President Donald J. Trump runs again.Doug Mills/The New York TimesGoing after Disney seemed doubly strange to some Orlando residents, considering how Mr. DeSantis fought to keep businesses open during the pandemic, a boon to tourism and theme parks. “The magic is back!” his Twitter account proclaimed in August 2020 after a Disney vice president took part in one of his events.Even some residents who generally like the governor worry that his battle with Disney has gone too far. One DeSantis supporter interviewed outside a sports club in the Orlando suburbs declined to give his name but said revoking Disney’s special tax status was “cancel culture-esque.” (Disney told investors this week that its tax district cannot be dissolved unless the state assumes its existing bond debt, the Orlando NBC News affiliate WESH reported.)May von Scherrer, 35, came to Florida from Puerto Rico in 2017 and said she had found it “thrilling” to support the Black Lives Matter movement in marches during the summer of 2020. That time now feels very distant.“I’ve never felt more like those sci-fi dystopian futures,” she said. “That’s what’s happening now. We’re living in them.”But few political observers expect distaste with Mr. DeSantis and his policies to translate into robust opposition come Election Day. Florida Democrats lack the organization, funding and leadership required to mount a vast and expensive campaign. They have also lost their edge in voter registrations; Republicans now hold a narrow advantage.“People who love DeSantis are super jazzed,” said Nate Monroe, metro columnist for The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville and a frequent DeSantis critic. “People who don’t — and there are a considerable number of people who don’t in the state — are just kind of like, ‘Eh, it’s hopeless, why even bother at this point.’”Mr. DeSantis holds near daily public events in which he bashes President Biden while supporters lavish him with unmitigated praise. He exerts such dominance over Florida Republicans that a candidate for agriculture commissioner dropped out after the governor endorsed his opponent on Twitter. And he has raised more than $100 million, an extraordinary sum, from donors all over the country.Last Friday, Mr. DeSantis signed into law the restrictions on how racism and other aspects of history can be taught in schools and workplaces, known as the “Stop WOKE Act,” in an elaborate ceremony in which supporters described him as brave and bold.Among those present were parents who opposed school closures, quarantines and mask mandates during the pandemic — and then remained engaged on other education matters. Mr. DeSantis has repeatedly featured those voices to cast his policies as common sense.Christine Chaparro said she would be pulling her children out of the Broward County public schools after her son brought home language arts workbooks that cited the co-author of an antiracism book and mentioned Black Lives Matter and Stacey Abrams’s voter suppression claims in the 2018 Georgia governor’s race.“I disagree that what is in my kids’ benchmark assessment workbooks is accurate history or a lens that belongs in an elementary school classroom,” she said.A day earlier, Democrats had briefly shut down a special legislative session to protest the passage of the new congressional map. Mr. DeSantis had demanded the redrawing of two districts held by Black Democrats, and Republicans had acquiesced. Democrats staged a sit-in on the House floor.State Representatives Travaris McCurdy and Angie Nixon protest a redistricting proposal pushed by the governor and approved last week. Phil Sears/Associated Press“You can only hold people down for so long before they will do anything that it takes to make their voices heard,” State Representative Fentrice Driskell, Democrat of Tampa, said. “The governor has interfered in this process, and it’s wrong.”Meantime, parts of Florida remain unaffordable, especially for its many low-wage workers. Property insurance rates rose 25 percent on average in 2021, compared with 4 percent nationally, according to the Insurance Information Institute. Another special session has been called for May to address the crisis.Despite all the charged rhetoric and national headlines, Ms. Arnett, the novelist, said her daily life was not much different from before.“If you put on the TV or you look at the news at what’s going on, it seems like Florida is a conservative hellhole,” she said. “When you’re living in Florida and interacting with people and moving through your day-to-day life, it doesn’t feel that way at all.”The challenge, she added, is understanding what the changes in the state mean and what to do about them.“Every day, every other day, something is happening, so you don’t have time to address and solve a problem,” she said. “It’s like warp speed on all of this stuff.”Eric Adelson More

    • 100 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      How N.Y. Democrats Lost a Critical Redistricting Battle

      by

      When an independent redistricting commission failed to reach consensus, Democratic leaders decided to make their own maps and risk a lawsuit.It was 2020, more than a year before New York began its once-in-a-decade redistricting process, when Carl Heastie, the Assembly speaker, foresaw a problem.New York voters had empowered a bipartisan commission to guide the task of drafting new legislative maps for the House and local state districts. But Mr. Heastie worried that constitutional language behind the new process would give incentive to Republicans to undermine the commission, according to two Democrats familiar with the discussions.If the commission failed to complete its work, Republicans could try to push the mapmaking process directly to the courts, rather than the Democrat-dominated Legislature.With a handful of crucial House and State Senate seats hanging in the balance, that outcome could have been disastrous for Democrats. They drafted a constitutional amendment to head off Republicans, but voters soundly rejected it last November. Lawmakers then tried another workaround, passing a bill authorizing the Legislature to act if the commission failed to complete its work.Mr. Heastie’s fears came to pass in January, when Republican commissioners refused to approve a final recommendation to the Legislature.But rather than defer to the courts, Democratic leaders decided to make a bet: They disregarded the commission’s work, unilaterally approved maps that positioned their party to pick up key House seats, and hoped that their legal change would withstand scrutiny.Carl Heastie, the Assembly speaker, had warned colleagues that a new redistricting commission might intentionally deadlock.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesOn Wednesday, the Democrats’ maneuver imploded.In a sharply worded decision, the New York State Court of Appeals said that the Legislature’s actions violated the State Constitution, accusing Democratic leaders of placing partisan interests above the will of the voters who, in 2014, created the commission and outlawed partisan gerrymandering.A majority of the seven-judge panel — all appointed by Democrats — explicitly found fault with Mr. Heastie’s attempted procedural fix, ruled that the congressional maps had been “drawn with impermissible partisan purpose,” and empowered a court-appointed special master to redraft the congressional and State Senate lines.The ruling threw New York politics into chaos and scrambled the national fight for control of the House of Representatives this fall.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.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Deepening Divides: As political mapmakers create lopsided new district lines, the already polarized parties are being pulled even farther apart.“Any Democrat in New York today who you get on the phone and tells you anything other than this was an unmitigated disaster, is just not telling you the truth,” said Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who helps lead the Republicans’ national redistricting effort.Democrats had been counting on the new maps in New York to provide as many as three new House seats, offsetting expected Republican gains through redistricting in other states.The final outcome of the 2022 battlefield may still depend on whether Florida courts strike down Republicans’ new map there as a gerrymander. But for now, Republicans appear poised to best the Democrats nationally for the second consecutive redistricting cycle, making it increasingly difficult for Democrats to hold onto their slim House majority.The situation in New York was even more tenuous. Not only will it take a court-appointed special master weeks to draw new lines — significantly scrambling contests that have already been going on for months — but election lawyers said on Thursday that they were not certain how the state could even comply with the order and other election-related requirements.For instance, while it at first appeared that primaries for statewide offices like governor and lieutenant governor had not been affected by the ruling, those contests may be called into question, after all. To qualify for the ballot, the State Board of Elections requires candidates for statewide office to collect petitions from voters in multiple congressional districts. No one could immediately say whether those petitions, filed weeks ago, were now invalid.“Boy, that could really upend the elections much more than I originally thought,” said Jerry H. Goldfeder, a Democratic elections lawyer who wrote a leading textbook on New York election law, as he puzzled through the ruling Thursday morning.Mr. Goldfeder and other Democrats strenuously disagreed with the Court of Appeals’ decision, the first time in half a century that the judges have struck down a map approved by lawmakers. They called it judicial overreach and heaped blame back on Republicans, who they say intentionally sabotaged the commission’s work in hopes of achieving the outcome they ultimately won in court.“It would have been impossible for us to actually meet the threshold laid out by the Court of Appeals because the Republicans refused to come to a meeting to vote,” said David Imamura, the Democratic appointee who chaired the redistricting commission.He called the current system “unworkable” and warned that the Court of Appeals decision, while attempting to vindicate the will of the voters, would actually ensure that one party or the other always has a political incentive to deprive the Legislature of the ability to draw lines.Jack Martins, Mr. Imamura’s Republican counterpart, did not return requests for comment.In reality, both parties entered this year’s redistricting cycle knowing that the commission was legally untested and had serious flaws that made it different from those that have worked in other states.Created out of a compromise between former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Republicans who controlled the Senate at the time, the panel consisted of even numbers of Democratic and Republican appointees. It lacked clear incentives to compromise, and its work could always be overruled by the Legislature if lawmakers rejected two consecutive proposals by the body.But voters, sick of years of political mapmaking in New York, enthusiastically enshrined it in the State Constitution alongside language outlawing partisan gerrymandering.For a time, the commission appeared to be working. That changed late last year, when the members began to draft final congressional, State Senate and Assembly maps. Rather than sending the Legislature one set of maps to consider in January, the commission sent competing partisan maps.When those maps were rejected, the commission simply collapsed without submitting a second proposal required by the State Constitution, eventually laying the groundwork for the Republicans to sue.Democratic lawmakers insist that after the commission failed, they proceeded in good faith, acting on what courts in New York have long recognized as the authority of the representative branch of government to draw maps.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Republican Primaries in May Will Test Trump’s Continued Pull

      by

      If you doubt the power of Donald Trump’s endorsement, look no further than the Ohio Senate race.Since April 15, when Trump backed J.D. Vance in the Republican primary, the venture capitalist and author of “Hillbilly Elegy” has zoomed to the top of the public polls. Vance jumped from 11 percent of likely voters in March to 23 percent now, according to Fox News.The real test of Trump’s party boss mojo, however, is fast approaching: actual elections, beginning with Ohio’s on Tuesday. Trump has endorsed candidates in at least 40 Republican primaries that are taking place in May, my colleague Alyce McFadden has tabulated. Most of these contests involve an incumbent who faces no serious challenger. But in statewide races from Pennsylvania to Georgia and Idaho to North Carolina, Trump’s imprimatur could prove decisive.Republicans are watching these races closely for signs that Trump’s hold over the party is waning. Privately, many G.O.P. operatives view the former president as a liability. And while he has shown a unique ability to energize the party’s base and turn out new voters, those operatives are still dreading the likelihood that he runs again in 2024, anchoring candidates up and down the ballot to an erratic, divisive figure who was rejected by swing voters in 2020.Everyone knows Trump still has juice. But nobody is sure just how much juice.“The risk for Trump is that if the candidates he has endorsed end up losing, his influence over Republican primary voters looks substantially diminished,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster.Already, there are signs of what one G.O.P. strategist called a “re-centering” of Republican politics — with Trump as the party’s strongest voice, but no longer its sole power broker.In Alabama, he withdrew his endorsement of Representative Mo Brooks, an ardent Trump loyalist who has floundered as a Senate candidate. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Trump’s top 2016 foe, has endorsed his own slate of candidates, as have conservative groups like the Club for Growth. And Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, is drawing rapturous receptions within the party as he gears up for a likely presidential run in 2024.The stakes for American democracy are high. In Georgia, Trump is trying to unseat Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, two Republicans whose refusal to help overturn the 2020 election results have made them the former president’s top targets. In both cases, Trump is backing challengers who have embraced his false narrative of a stolen election.Trump’s endorsement is no magic wand. In a recent poll by Quinnipiac University, 45 percent of Republicans said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate endorsed by Trump, whereas 44 percent said it would make no difference.“Every candidate has to lose or win their race themselves,” cautioned Ryan James Girdusky, an adviser to a super PAC supporting Vance.With that caveat in mind, here’s a look at the key primaries to watch:J.D. Vance appears to be on the rise in Ohio after Trump endorsed him.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesOhio Senate, May 3Vance was looking wobbly before Trump’s endorsement. His fund-raising and campaign organization were anemic; his past comments, such as his comparison of Trump to “cultural heroin,” were hurting him.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.Now, G.O.P. strategists largely expect that Vance will win the primary. Support for Mike Gibbons, a businessman who spent more than $13 million of his own money on ads, is crumbling. Most of his voters appear to be migrating toward Vance rather than Josh Mandel, the other leading candidate in the race, said Jeff Sadosky, a former political adviser to Senator Rob Portman, who is retiring.But Mandel, a well-known quantity in Ohio conservative politics, appears to be holding his ground.“If Vance wins, it’ll be because of the Trump endorsement,” said Michael Hartley, a Republican consultant in Columbus who is not backing any of the candidates.Mehmet Oz is locked in a tight primary race for Senate in Pennsylvania.Hannah Beier/ReutersPennsylvania Senate and governor, May 17In some ways, Pennsylvania offers the purest test of Trump’s appeal.Trump recently endorsed Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor, in the Republican Senate primary. But unlike in other states, the public polls haven’t moved much. Democratic strategists still see David McCormick, a wealthy former hedge fund executive and the other leading Republican candidate, as a potent threat.“No one here thinks it’s locked up,” said Christopher Nicholas, a Republican consultant in Harrisburg, though the Oz campaign’s internal polling has shown a shift in the doctor’s favor.Trump has yet to endorse a candidate for governor here, but his shadow looms large. He issued an anti-endorsement to Bill McSwain, a former U.S. attorney who served in the Trump administration, calling him “a coward, who let our country down” by not stopping “massive” election fraud in 2020.Two other candidates are ardent backers of his stolen election claims: former Representative Lou Barletta, whose campaign is managed by former Trump advisers; and Doug Mastriano, a state lawmaker and retired colonel who helped organize transportation to the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6.With Trump cheering him on, Senator David Perdue is trying to oust Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia.Audra Melton for The New York TimesGeorgia, May 24The biggest test of Trump’s influence will come in Georgia, where control of the machinery of democracy itself is on the ballot.It was Georgia where Trump pressured the state’s top elections official to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn the presidential election results, a phone call that is under investigation. Trump is hoping to oust Raffensperger, the secretary of state, who was on the receiving end of that phone call. The former president has backed Representative Jody Hice, who supports Trump’s debunked election fraud claims. Court documents released by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot place Hice at a meeting at the White House to discuss objections to certifying the election.In the governor’s race, Trump dragooned former Senator David Perdue into trying to unseat Kemp, the incumbent.Perdue, who lost to Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, in 2021, has dutifully made 2020 the theme of his campaign. But polls show Kemp comfortably ahead, suggesting that dwelling on the past is not a path to victory despite the power of Trump’s endorsement.Lightning roundA few other primaries we’re watching:May 10: In West Virginia’s Second Congressional District, redistricting has pitted two Republican incumbents against each other. Trump endorsed Representative Alex Mooney, who voted against the bipartisan infrastructure law, while Gov. Jim Justice is backing Representative David B. McKinley, who voted for it.May 17: In North Carolina, Trump’s preferred Senate candidate, Representative Ted Budd, is surging in the polls against former Gov. Pat McCrory and Representative Mark Walker. May 17: Gov. Brad Little of Idaho faces a primary challenge from a field that includes his own lieutenant governor, Janice McGeachin, who has Trump’s endorsement. The two have feuded bitterly, to the point where McGeachin issued her own executive orders while Little was traveling out of state. McGeachin also has a history of associating with extremists. In February, she gave a virtual speech at an event sponsored by white nationalists, leading to calls for her resignation.Alyce McFadden contributed reporting.What to readReporting from Columbus, Ohio, Jazmine Ulloa notes a new fixation in G.O.P. messaging: the baseless claim that unauthorized immigrants are voting.Jonathan Weisman, from Toledo, Ohio, reports that Democrats are in jeopardy because they can no longer rely on firm support from unions.Patricia Mazzei explores how, under Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida has become a laboratory for right-wing policies.Emily Cochrane spoke with Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska about whether her centrist credentials will appeal to Republican voters in November.how they runMadison Gesiotto Gilbert, a Republican House candidate in Ohio, was endorsed by Trump.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThis Ohio House race has everythingIt’s a shining example of Democrats’ challenges in 2022, the confusion caused by whiplash over new congressional maps and, yes, the power of a Trump endorsement: This is the race for Ohio’s 13th Congressional District.The district — whose lines are changing and whose current representative, Tim Ryan, is running for Senate — is one of just a few in Ohio expected to be competitive in the fall.President Biden would have carried this newly drawn district by just three percentage points, making it a must-win for Democrats as they face challenges in maintaining their House majority.“If 2022 is as bad for Democrats as most everybody else, myself included, expects it to be, Republicans will flip this district,” said Ryan Stubenrauch, a Republican strategist in Ohio who grew up in the area.An added wrinkle is that the boundaries of the district aren’t technically final: Ohio’s redistricting process has been tied up in the courts, and the State Supreme Court could still rule against the current maps. But most experts believe that the lines will remain in place through the general election.For Democrats, the primary election on Tuesday should be straightforward. Emilia Sykes, a state representative and former minority leader, will be the only Democrat on the ballot. The Sykes name is well known in the Akron area, where her father, Vernon Sykes, remains in the state legislature. His wife, Barbara, also once served in the state House.On the Republican side, Trump endorsed Madison Gesiotto Gilbert, a conservative commentator who worked on Trump’s campaigns in 2016 and 2020. She faces Shay Hawkins, a Republican who narrowly lost a state House race in 2020. He’s the only candidate who has aired a campaign TV ad, but he trails Gilbert in fund-raising. A third Republican to watch, Gregory Wheeler, has an endorsement from The Plain Dealer.No candidates have had much time to make a mark. They learned their district lines — tentatively — just a few weeks before early voting started. And with the primaries split, with state legislative voting postponed to later this year, turnout is a big question.Some of the usual efforts to inform voters about important dates, like when to register and the deadline for early voting, didn’t happen this year with details in flux, said Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, which is in litigation over the maps in front of the Supreme Court.“The delay and the fact that we have to have a second primary for the State House maps is really confusing for voters,” Miller said.— Blake & LeahIs 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

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      G.O.P. Concocts Threat: Voter Fraud by Undocumented Immigrants

      by

      COLUMBUS, Ohio — Six years after former President Donald J. Trump paved his way to the White House on nativist and xenophobic appeals to white voters, the 2,000-mile dividing line between Mexico and the United States has once again become a fixation of the Republican Party.But the resurgence of the issue on the right has come with a new twist: Republican leaders and candidates are increasingly claiming without basis that unauthorized immigrants are gaining access to the ballot box.Voter fraud is exceptionally rare, and allegations that widespread numbers of undocumented immigrants are voting have been repeatedly discredited. Yet that fabricated message — capitalizing on a concocted threat to advance Mr. Trump’s broader lie of stolen elections — is now finding receptive audiences in more than a dozen states across the country, including several far from the U.S.-Mexico border.In Macomb County, Mich., where Republicans are fiercely split between those who want to investigate the 2020 election and those who want to move on, many voters at the county G.O.P. convention this month said they feared that immigrants were entering the country illegally, not just to steal jobs but also to steal votes by casting fraudulent ballots for Democrats.“I don’t want them coming into red states and turning them blue,” said Mark Checkeroski, a former chief engineer of a hospital — though data from the 2020 election showed that many places with larger immigrant populations instead took a turn to the right.Tough talk on illegal immigration and border security has long been a staple of American politics. Both Republicans and Democrats — especially the G.O.P. in recent years — have historically played into bigoted tropes that conflate illegal immigration and crime and that portray Latinos and Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners in their own country or, worse, an economic threat.But the leap from unsecure borders to unsecure elections is newer. And it is not difficult to see why some voters are making it.In Ohio, where Republicans vying in a heated Senate primary are discussing immigration in apocalyptic terms and running ads showing shadowy black-and-white surveillance video or washed-out images of border crossings, Mr. Trump whipped up fears of “open borders and horrible elections” at a rally on Saturday, calling for stricter voter ID laws and proof of citizenship at the ballot box.The campaign commercials and promos for right-wing documentaries that played on huge television screens before Mr. Trump’s speech seemed to alternate between lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him and overblown claims blaming unauthorized immigrants for crime. Speakers in one trailer for a film by Dinesh D’Souza, the conservative author and filmmaker Mr. Trump pardoned for making illegal campaign contributions, denounced “voter trafficking,” compared the work of what appeared to be voter outreach groups to the “Mexican mafia” and referred to people conveying mail-in ballots to drop boxes as “mules.”It is legal in some states for third parties, like family members or community groups, to drop off completed ballots — a practice that became vital for many during the pandemic.Yet the messages seemed tailor-made for rally attendees like Alicia Cline, 40, who said she believed that Democrats in power were using the border crisis to gin up votes. “The last election was already stolen,” said Ms. Cline, a horticulturist from Columbus. “The establishment is, I think, using the people that are rushing over the borders in order to support themselves and get more votes for themselves.”Alicia, left, and Cindi Cline at former President Donald Trump’s “Save America” rally last week in Delaware, Ohio.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe latest fear-mongering about immigrants supposedly stealing votes is just one line of attack among many, as Republicans have made immigration a focal point in the midterms and Republican governors face off with the Biden administration over what they paint as dire conditions at the border.Last week, governors from 26 states unveiled “a border strike force” to share intelligence and combat drug trafficking as the Biden administration has said it plans to lift a Trump-era rule that has allowed federal immigration officials to turn away or immediately deport asylum seekers and migrants.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The 2022 election season is underway. See the full primary calendar and a detailed state-by-state breakdown.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.And in Washington Thursday, Republicans on Capitol Hill previewed their midterm plan of attack on the administration’s immigration policies, trying to make the homeland security secretary, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, accept blame for a historic spike in migration across the border.Jane Timken, a U.S. Senate candidate and former chairwoman of the Ohio Republican Party, said the border with Mexico loomed large for Ohioans because many saw the state’s drug and crime problems as emanating from there. “Almost every state is now a border state,” she said.Some G.O.P. strategists warn that the focus on immigration could backfire and haunt the party as the nation grows more diverse. But political scientists and historians say Republicans’ harnessing of the unease stirred by demographic shifts and a two-year-old pandemic could mobilize their most ardent voters.“When we feel so much anxiety, that is the moment when xenophobic, anti-immigrant sentiment can flourish,” said Geraldo L. Cadava, a historian of Latinos in the United States and associate professor at Northwestern University.Few races nationwide capture the dynamics of the issue like the G.O.P. Senate primary in Ohio. Contenders there are taking after Mr. Trump, who, in 2016, tried to blame illegal immigration and Mexican drug cartels for the deadly opioid crisis.An ad for Ms. Timken opens with grainy footage over ominous music, showing hooded men carrying packages presumed to be filled with drugs across the border, until Ms. Timken appears in broad daylight along the rusty steel slats of the border wall in McAllen, Texas.An advertisement released by Jane Timken, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Ohio, showed her at the Mexican border wall encouraging border security and raising fears of drug cartels.Jane Timken for U.S. SenateMs. Timken said she understood the state needed immigrant workers, citing her Irish immigrant parents, but said people still must cross the border legally. And Mike Gibbons, a financier at the top of several Ohio polls, said insisting on law and order was not xenophobic. “You don’t hate immigrants if you tell that immigrant they have to come here under the law,” he said.But across this state in the nation’s industrial belt, anti-immigrant sentiment tends to run as deep as the scars of the drug epidemic.Anger and resentment toward foreigners started building as manufacturing companies closed factories and shipped jobs overseas. The opioid crisis added to the devastation as pharmaceutical companies and unscrupulous doctors profited from pain medications.But with the shuttering of “pain clinics,” federal and local law enforcement officials say, Mexican criminal organizations have stepped in. In Ohio, the groups move large amounts of meth and fentanyl, often in counterfeit pills, along Route 71, which crosses the state through Columbus. Statewide overdose rates remain among the nation’s highest.An ad for suboxone, a medication used to treat opioid addiction, hanging on a building. For the past three years, Ohio has remained among the 10 states with highest rates of drug overdoses, according to federal data.Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesJ.D. Vance, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author whom Mr. Trump endorsed, goes right at those scars, telling voters in one ad that he nearly lost his mother, an addict, to “the poison coming across our border.”Republicans like Mr. Vance argue that they are being unfairly attacked for raising legitimate concerns, pointing to enormous drug seizures and a rise in border apprehensions that, last June, reached a 20-year high.Ohio immigrant-rights lawyers and advocates say Republicans are wrongly framing a public health emergency as a national security problem and contributing to bias against Latinos and immigrants regardless of their citizenship.The G.O.P. critique, they say, is also detached from reality: Many if not most immigrants who reach Ohio have been processed by federal immigration agencies. Many are asylum seekers and refugees, and an increasing number arrive on work visas.Angela Plummer, executive director of the nonprofit Community Refugee and Immigration Services, called Republican Senate candidates’ characterizations of immigrants a disturbing flashback to Mr. Trump’s 2015 campaign rhetoric. “It is good to have politicians with different immigration platforms, but not ones that stray into racism and hurtful, harmful accusations.”In the same campaign ad, Mr. Vance goes on to say that Mr. Biden’s immigration policy also meant “more Democrat voters pouring into this country” — explicitly asserting that unauthorized immigrants are crossing over and gaining access to the ballot to support the left.Mr. Trump himself made that false claim in 2017, asserting without evidence that between three million and five million unauthorized immigrants had voted for Hillary Clinton. But the idea that immigrants, and Latinos specifically, are illegally entering the country to vote Democratic has been a fringe right-wing trope for years, said Mike Madrid, a Republican political consultant and co-founder of the Lincoln Project.The difference is that purveyors of the idea have become much more “brazen and overt,” he said. “It is all part of this sense of an invasion and a lost America and that Democrats are trying to steal elections.”Rhetoric on immigration started heating up last year amid an influx of asylum seekers and migrants from Haiti, Guatemala and Honduras. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott and local officials described illegal immigration as an “invasion” as Mr. Abbott unveiled plans to finish Mr. Trump’s border wall.It has only intensified with the midterm campaign season. Since January, Republican candidates in 18 states have run ads mentioning the border and slamming illegal immigration, including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, according to AdImpact, which tracks ad spending. In the same period in 2018, that number was only six, and most of the ads ran in Texas.At least one ad warns of an “invasion,” and others carry echoes of the “great replacement” trope, a racist conspiracy theory falsely contending that elites are using Black and brown immigrants to replace white people in the United States.In Alabama, a re-election ad for Gov. Kay Ivey shows a photo of Latinos at a border crossing wearing white T-shirts with the Biden campaign logo and the words, “Please let us in.” If Mr. Biden continues “shipping” unauthorized migrants into the United States, Americans could soon be forced to learn Spanish, Ms. Ivey says, adding: “No way, José.”An Ivey spokeswoman dismissed as “absurd” suggestions that the ad played into fears of replacement or perpetuated bias against Latinos or immigrants.Heavy-handed anti-immigrant appeals haven’t always worked. Mr. Trump’s attempts to stir fears over caravans of Central American immigrants making their way north largely failed as a strategy for Republicans in the 2018 midterms.But Democrats then had a punching bag in Mr. Trump’s policy of separating migrant families at the border, which sparked international outcry. This cycle, Democrats themselves are sharply divided on immigration, leaving them either on defense or avoiding the subject altogether.Republicans like the Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance argue liberals are calling conservatives racist for raising legitimate concerns about drug seizures.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesThat said, some Republican voters continue to press candidates for more than just new reasons to fear immigration, and the subjects of those fears can turn out to be far less sinister than the faceless migrants depicted in grainy campaign ads.At a campaign stop at a brewery in Hilliard, Ohio, Bryan Mandzak, 53, a factory manager, asked Mr. Vance how he planned to address what he called a broken immigration system that provided workers few paths to legal status. He said he himself had seen “vanloads of Hispanics” arriving at a hotel in Marysville, about 20 miles northwest of Hilliard, but explained that they had been brought in to run an automotive plant that was hurting for employees.As it happened, white vans were indeed picking up Hispanic workers at the hotel in Marysville, for factory shifts ending at 2 a.m. But the workers were mostly American-born citizens like Moises Garza, who said he had applied on Facebook, moved from Texas and was enjoying decent pay, transportation and free lodgings.In between bites of syrupy waffles a few hours after a Friday-night shift assembling tires, Mr. Garza, who is originally from upstate New York, said he wasn’t following the Senate race and shrugged off being mistaken for an immigrant.He had two days to rest up and explore Columbus. On Monday, he would be back at work. More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      After Elevation of Trump Allies, Revolt Brews in Michigan G.O.P.

      by

      For Republican supporters of Donald J. Trump in Michigan, it seemed like a crowning moment: The state party chose two candidates endorsed by the former president, both outspoken preachers of 2020 election falsehoods, as its contenders for the state’s top law enforcement officer and its chief of election administration.But instead, that move at a convention last weekend — where Republicans officially endorsed Matthew DePerno for attorney general and Kristina Karamo for secretary of state — has ruptured the Michigan Republican Party. After months of strain, it appears to finally be snapping as what remains of the old guard protests the party’s direction.This week, Tony Daunt, a powerful figure in Michigan politics with close ties to the influential donor network of the DeVos family, resigned from the G.O.P.’s state committee in a blistering letter, calling Mr. Trump “a deranged narcissist.” Major donors to the state party indicated that they would direct their money elsewhere. And one of Mr. Trump’s most loyal defenders in the State Legislature was kicked out of the House Republican caucus.The repudiation of the election-denying wing of the party by other Republicans in Michigan represents rare public pushback from conservatives against Mr. Trump’s attempts to force candidates across the country to support his claims of a rigged 2020 vote. That stance has become a litmus test for G.O.P. politicians up and down the ballot as Mr. Trump adds to his slate of more than 150 endorsements this election cycle.Yet some Republicans in Michigan and beyond worry that a singular, backward-looking focus on the 2020 election is a losing message for the party in November.“Rather than distancing themselves from this undisciplined loser,” Mr. Daunt wrote in his resignation letter, “far too many Republican ‘leaders’ have decided that encouraging his delusional lies — and, even worse — cynically appeasing him despite knowing they are lies, is the easiest path to ensuring their continued hold on power, general election consequences be damned.“Whether it’s misguided true belief, cynical cowardice, or just plain old grift and avarice,” Mr. Daunt continued in the letter, which was addressed to a Republican colleague, “it’s a losing strategy and I cannot serve on the governing board of a party that’s too stupid to see that.”Mr. Daunt’s resignation shocked party insiders in Michigan, in part because of his close ties to Dick and Betsy DeVos, prominent conservative donors who have often acted as kingmakers in state Republican politics and have marshaled millions of dollars through their political arm, the Michigan Freedom Fund. Ms. DeVos served in Mr. Trump’s cabinet as education secretary.Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party and critic of Mr. Trump, said of Mr. Daunt’s letter, “Him taking a step like this is indicative of where their thinking is.” Mr. Timmer added, “It seems highly unlikely that he would do this and tell them afterward when they read it in the press.”A spokesman for the Michigan Freedom Fund did not respond to a request for comment. But some people within the DeVos network have also expressed frustrations about the direction of the state party, though they still want Republicans to do well in November, according to two people who have spoken with donors connected to the network and who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.Betsy DeVos, the former education secretary, and her husband, Dick DeVos, at a White House event in 2019.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesIn an interview on Thursday morning, Mr. Trump disputed that a lasting focus on the 2020 election might hurt Republicans in November.“I think it’s good for the general election because it’s made people very angry to get out and vote,” he said. He declined to say whether he would provide financial backing for Mr. DePerno or Ms. Karamo, though he praised Mr. DePerno as a “bulldog” and called Ms. Karamo “magnetic.”A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The 2022 election season is underway. See the full primary calendar and a detailed state-by-state breakdown.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.Mr. Trump declined to comment on the DeVos network, saying only of Ms. DeVos, who resigned from his administration after the Capitol riot, “She was fine, but the one that I really liked in that family was the father, who was essentially the founder.” (Ms. DeVos’s father, Richard M. DeVos, who died in 2018, was also a major Republican donor.)The most recent campaign-finance reports for the state party show that some big-dollar contributors have shifted their giving.“A lot of the traditional donors, they just walked away,” said John Truscott, a Republican strategist in Michigan. “I don’t know how it survives long term.”By the end of 2021, campaign finance reports show, the number of direct contributions greater than $25,000 to the Michigan Republicans had dwindled. The money the party took in included $175,000 in November from Ron Weiser, the party’s megadonor chairman.Mr. Weiser, who drew criticism last year when he joked about assassinating two Republican congressmen who voted to impeach Mr. Trump, gave the party at least $1.3 million for the cycle, according to the reports.In an email on Wednesday, Gustavo Portela, a spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party, said it was financially sound and cited the generosity of Mr. Weiser, saying he had committed to give and raise “the money we believe is necessary in order to win in November.”Ron Weiser, the chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, is also a major donor who has pumped cash into the party.David Guralnick/Detroit News, via Associated PressBut the names of other prolific donors, like Jeffrey Cappo, an auto-dealership magnate and philanthropist, no longer appeared in the reports for late 2021.Mr. Cappo said on Wednesday that he had found other avenues to give money to Republicans.“Our political state,” Mr. Cappo said, “is more dysfunctional than it’s ever been.”He said of Mr. Trump, “I think the guy really, really cared, but he cares more about himself than anybody else.”Republican divisions had been growing for weeks before the state party convention last weekend. And frustrations with Meshawn Maddock, a co-chair of the state party with close ties to Mr. Trump, boiled over as she endorsed candidates before the convention, including Mr. DePerno and Ms. Karamo.Mr. DePerno, a lawyer who challenged the election results in Antrim County, has pledged to investigate “all the fraud that occurred in this election,” including inquiries of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Attorney General Dana Nessel, all Democrats.Ms. Karamo rose to prominence after challenging the state’s 2020 results as a poll worker, arguing that she had witnessed fraud. Her claims were later debunked, but she quickly gained fame in conservative circles.When Mr. DePerno and Ms. Karamo all but clinched their nominations, it was not through a traditional party primary. Michigan instead nominates many statewide offices through a convention system, in which party activists serve as “precinct chairs” and vote on the nomination.The campaigns for Ms. Karamo and Mr. DePerno did not respond to requests for comment.Amid the fallout from the convention, Matt Maddock, a Republican state representative whom Mr. Trump had supported to become speaker next year, was pushed out of the House Republican caucus this week.Matt Maddock and Meshawn Maddock have been power players in Michigan Republican politics. Emily Elconin/ReutersA spokesman for Jason Wentworth, the current State House speaker and a Republican, confirmed in an email on Wednesday that Mr. Maddock had been “removed” from the Republican caucus. He declined to give a reason, saying he was not authorized to discuss internal business. On the website of the Michigan House Republicans, a member page for Mr. Maddock had been removed.Mr. Maddock’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Nor did Ms. Maddock, a chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party and Mr. Maddock’s wife. The Maddocks had been vocal supporters of Trump-aligned Republican candidates before the convention, including some Republican challengers to incumbents in the Legislature.“When you’re a member of a team, you can’t expect the benefit of being on that team while you’re simultaneously trying to trip your teammates,” said Jase Bolger, a Republican former speaker of the Michigan House. “So it wouldn’t be reasonable to expect him to remain on that team while he’s out actively opposing his teammates.”Removing Mr. Maddock from the House Republican caucus does not doom his re-election chances, but it will make it harder for him to raise money and maintain influence. Of course, outside money from groups allied with Mr. Trump could help offset any loss in fund-raising for Mr. Maddock, the state party or other candidates aligned with the former president.Despite the chaos, veteran Michigan Republicans are still bullish on the coming elections, provided the party’s message shifts.“We need to return to focusing on issues, on principles, on empowering people and turn away from the divisiveness and personalities,” Mr. Bolger said, “and certainly need to focus on 2022 and not 2020.” More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Democrats Lose Control of N.Y. Election Maps, as Top Court Rejects Appeal

      by

      The Court of Appeals said Democrats violated the State Constitution and ignored the will of the voters. The judges ordered a court-appointed expert to draw replacements.New York’s highest court ruled on Wednesday that Democratic leaders had violated the State Constitution when they took it upon themselves to draw new congressional and State Senate districts, and ordered that a court-appointed special master draft replacement lines for this year’s critical midterm elections.In a sweeping 32-page ruling, a divided New York State Court of Appeals chided Democrats for ignoring a constitutional amendment adopted by voters in 2014 to curb political influence in the redistricting process. The amendment also created a new outside commission to guide the process.The judges additionally found that the congressional districts designed by Democrats violated an explicit state ban on partisan gerrymandering, undercutting the party’s national campaign to brand itself as the champion of voting rights.Writing for the four-judge majority, Chief Judge Janet DiFiore said that Democratic lawmakers created congressional and State Senate maps in a way that was “procedurally unconstitutional,” and that the congressional map in particular was “drawn with impermissible partisan purpose.”The ruling, which is not subject to appeal, was expected to delay the June 28 party primaries for the congressional and State Senate districts until August, to allow time for new maps to be drawn and for candidates to collect petitions to qualify for the ballot.The verdict delivered a stinging defeat to Democrats in Albany and in Washington and cast this year’s election cycle into deep uncertainty.Party leaders had been hopeful that the Court of Appeals, with all seven judges appointed by Democratic governors, would overturn earlier decisions by a Republican judge in Steuben County and a bipartisan appeals court in Rochester.Instead, the high court issued an even more damning verdict that denied the Democrat-dominated State Legislature a chance to redraw the maps itself. That task, the judges said, should be handled by a politically neutral special master, who would be overseen by a trial court.National Democrats had been counting on the New York congressional maps adopted in February to deliver as many as three new seats this fall and offset redistricting gains by Republicans across the country. Now, with Democratic gains likely to be erased or minimized in New York, Republicans are on track to make modest gains nationally, easing their path to retaking control of the House of Representatives this fall.Democrats were likewise expecting the State Senate maps they adopted in February to help safeguard the party’s supermajority in Albany.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.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Deepening Divides: As political mapmakers create lopsided new district lines, the already polarized parties are being pulled even farther apart.Wednesday’s decision was a milestone in New York jurisprudence, the first time since the 1960s that the Court of Appeals has struck down district lines approved by lawmakers in their once-in-a-decade redistricting process.But the ruling is part of a growing trend across the nation in which state courts have taken up more active stances against partisan gerrymandering as federal courts have been removed from these battles by the Supreme Court.This year alone, state courts in Ohio, North Carolina, Kansas and Maryland have scrapped plans put in place by lawmakers because they ran afoul of state constitutional language outlawing partisan mapmaking, like that adopted by New York voters in 2014. The courts are widely expected to scrutinize new lines in Florida that overwhelmingly favor Republicans, as well.“States can be the laboratories of redistricting reforms,” said Samuel Wang, the director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. “And this just goes to show that if a state court is willing to look carefully to its constitution and laws, it will find principals that can restrict the most extreme partisan acts.”Unlike New York, though, some of those courts have indicated they will allow 2022 elections to take place on tainted maps, potentially putting Democrats at a greater disadvantage nationally.The judges in New York were silent on whether to reschedule primary elections for other contested seats — including for governor, lieutenant governor and the State Assembly — leaving it to a trial court judge, Patrick F. McAllister, and the State Board of Elections to work out the details with “all due haste.” The board said Wednesday evening that it did “not foresee” moving those contests.But the judges appeared to bless the idea of separating them, pointing out that New York has a history of holding bifurcated primaries. They were more explicit in rejecting Democrats’ plea to allow this year’s elections to proceed on tainted lines and fix them later.“We reject this invitation to subject the people of this state to an election conducted pursuant to an unconstitutional reapportionment,” Judge DiFiore wrote in the majority opinion.Justice McAllister has already appointed Jonathan Cervas, a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, as special master to draw the congressional and State Senate lines by late May.Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said Wednesday afternoon that she was reviewing the decision. Michael Murphy, a spokesman for Senate Democrats, said they still “believe in the constitutionality” of their maps and plan to argue their case to the special master.Republicans and several nonpartisan public interest groups lauded the decision.“The will of the people prevailed over the Corrupt Albany Machine in a tremendous victory for democracy, fair elections & the Constitution!” Representative Nicole Malliotakis, a New York City Republican, wrote on Twitter.Ms. Malliotakis’s Staten Island-based district was among several that the Democrats’ congressional map would have made more challenging for Republicans, in her case by adding liberal voters from Park Slope in Brooklyn. The map also created new Democratic pickup opportunities on the eastern end of Long Island and in Central New York, and shored up Democrat-held swing seats in the Hudson Valley, by cramming conservative voters into just a handful of districts.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

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

      by

      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

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Kay Ivey Races to the Right in Alabama Governor Race

      by

      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