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      Former Trump Lawyer to Oversee Election Review in Texas

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      The selection of a new secretary of state arrives as Gov. Greg Abbott is facing pressure to allow an expanded 2020 election audit in Texas.HOUSTON — Amid pressure from former President Donald J. Trump to support a broad review of the 2020 election in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday appointed as secretary of state a lawyer who briefly joined Mr. Trump’s challenge to the 2020 results in Pennsylvania.The new secretary of state, John Scott, will oversee Texas elections at a time when a new law imposing further restrictions on voting and a Republican redistricting plan have raised alarm among voting rights advocates that the state’s growing nonwhite population would not be fairly represented.More immediately, Mr. Scott, a Fort Worth lawyer who worked for Mr. Abbott when he was the state’s attorney general, will take charge of a limited review of the 2020 election results that Mr. Abbott, a Republican, ordered last month for four of the most populous counties in Texas.“I am confident that John’s experience and expertise will enhance his oversight and leadership over the biggest and most thorough election audit in the country,” Mr. Abbott said in a statement announcing the appointment.Though he must eventually be confirmed by the State Senate, Mr. Scott can serve in the role in the interim. The Senate is not in regular session again until 2023.The appointment brought immediate criticism from Democrats and voting groups. “The timing of this announcement is clearly intended to subvert our democratic process in a way that allows Greg Abbott’s completely unsuitable nominee to oversee our 2022 elections without having to face confirmation hearings,” said Stephanie Gómez, the Texas associate director for Common Cause.Mr. Scott was among the lawyers representing Mr. Trump’s campaign as it filed suit to challenge the results of the November 2020 election in Pennsylvania, a state that President Biden won by 80,555 votes.But Mr. Scott withdrew from the case, as did another member of his law firm, Bryan Hughes, on the eve of a hearing, after a circuit court ruling that effectively gutted their arguments. The case was ultimately dismissed.“The lesson from the Pennsylvania case is that John Scott is a guy you can trust to follow the law,” said Mr. Hughes, a Republican state senator from Tyler, Texas. He added that, while in the attorney general’s office, Mr. Scott represented Texas in litigation over the state’s voter identification law, “so this area of the law is not unfamiliar to him.”Mr. Hughes was the lead sponsor of Texas’ restrictive new election rules, which passed this year over concerted opposition from Democrats. The new rules broaden the authority of the secretary of state in elections.No credible evidence has emerged of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 election in Texas or in any other state. Mr. Trump carried the state by more than 5 percentage points and Republicans maintained a lock on the statehouse despite a well-funded effort by Democrats to try to flip control.Still, with supporters of Mr. Trump believing he should have won the state by an even greater margin, Mr. Abbott has faced growing calls for legislation authorizing a “forensic audit” of the 2020 presidential vote in Texas. Last month, Mr. Trump wrote a letter to Mr. Abbott urging him to back the legislation.“Despite my big win in Texas, I hear Texans want an election audit! You know your fellow Texans have big questions about the November 2020 Election,” read the letter, steeped in arcane Texas legislative language and signed by the former president.Political operatives in the state have suspected that the former president received assistance in his foray into Austin politics by Texas conservatives, perhaps the lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, who twice chaired Mr. Trump’s campaign in the state. Under Mr. Patrick’s leadership, the Senate has already passed a 2020 election review bill.Trump’s Bid to Subvert the ElectionCard 1 of 6A monthslong campaign. More

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      The Irony in Glenn Youngkin’s Push for Early Voting in Virginia

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      Glenn Youngkin, the Republican nominee for governor, is encouraging early voting despite catering to the Trump base that believes the former president’s election conspiracies.Sign up here to get On Politics in your inbox on Tuesdays and Thursdays.With the much-watched election for Virginia governor 12 days away, Glenn Youngkin, the Republican nominee, has been getting the word out: Vote early.His campaign texts supporters asking if they know their early voting site, and door knockers ask if voters have requested a mail-in ballot. Youngkin holds rallies near early polling locations, including a recent one in Rockingham County after which the campaign said 100 people walked in to vote.“We’ve been encouraging all Virginians to come vote, vote early,” Youngkin said when he cast his own ballot weeks before Election Day on Nov. 2.There is no small irony in that message. Former President Donald J. Trump has loudly, falsely and egregiously claimed that early voting, especially by mail, led to a “rigged” election in 2020 that cost him a second term. (His latest provocation was a statement on Thursday: “The insurrection took place on November 3, Election Day. Jan 6 was the protest!”)In response to baseless claims of fraud, Republican-led states around the country have enacted laws this year to narrow access to the polls by groups that tend to vote for Democrats.Virginia, where Democrats are in charge, has gone the opposite way, expanding voting access, including establishing a 45-day window to vote early in person or by mail, and extending the hours and locations of early polling sites.Youngkin, a former financial executive who reminds many of an even-tempered Mitt Romney more than the bullying Trump, has still catered to the Trump base that believes the former president’s election conspiracy theories.Youngkin early on said his top issue was “election integrity,” code for the false view that the 2020 vote was stolen, and he offered supporters a “membership card” in his Election Integrity Task Force. He campaigned with State Senator Amanda Chase, a prolific spreader of conspiracy theories about Jan. 6. This month he said voting machines should be audited, even though Virginia’s Elections Department audited machines after the 2020 vote and confirmed the results. (Trump lost by 10 points.)Still, Youngkin has invested heavily in turning out his supporters early, a strategy at which Republicans once excelled in many places. An early vote, cast in person or by mail, means a campaign doesn’t have to pursue that voter with phone calls and door knocks in the final frenzied weeks.Kristin Davison, a senior strategist for the Youngkin campaign, rejected the notion that Youngkin was sending supporters mixed messages about early voting through his emphasis on election security.“Glenn has been consistent the entire way through that the best way to ensure a safe and fair election is to go and be a voter,” Davison said.As of Wednesday, 515,000 Virginians had voted early, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, drawing on state Elections Department data.Virginia voters don’t register by party, but the Democratic data firm TargetSmart, using demographic information, has modeled the early voters. It estimates that 55.4 percent of early ballots have been cast by Democrats, 30.1 percent by Republicans and 14.4 percent by independents.The overall early voting total is 31 percent of early votes cast in the same period in 2020. Even though off-year turnout is bound to drop off from a presidential year, the Youngkin campaign maintained that it was an ominous sign for Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee, showing low enthusiasm from his supporters.“Republicans typically don’t win the early vote,” Davison said. “If Terry were in place to win, turnout would be at least 10 points higher.”McAuliffe’s campaign dismissed that analysis. It argued that there were important differences between early voting this year and last year, when the pandemic drove up the use of mail ballots. Last year was the first time Virginia offered no-excuse absentee voting; in 2021, the McAuliffe campaign said, Virginia voters are returning to what they are used to, namely Election Day voting.“The comparison to 2020 isn’t really a good one,” said Simon Vance, a data adviser to McAuliffe. “What you’re seeing is not any drop-off, but people reverting back to behaviors they’ve done for years.”The McAuliffe campaign pointed to the large number of mail ballots that have been requested but not yet returned — around 175,000. “We know those are our people and we’re aggressively chasing them,” Vance said.To boost his get-out-the-vote effort, McAuliffe is welcoming top Democrats, including former President Barack Obama and President Biden, to campaign with him in coming days. Last Sunday, Stacey Abrams, the Georgia voting rights activist, visited three churches in Norfolk, Va., and appeared with McAuliffe at a rally outside an early voting site. “We’ve got to get everybody out to vote,” McAuliffe said at the event.Total in-person early voters in Norfolk that day was 370. The Youngkin campaign called that an anemic figure. “If Terry’s base was excited, that number should have been at least three times that,” Davison asserted.Vance disagreed. He said that McAuliffe was on track to have the turnout needed to win.“If we’re seeing 70, 65 percent of the total electorate voting on Election Day, that’s where the real story will be told,” he said.nine days of ideas to remake our futureAs world leaders gather in Glasgow for consequential climate change negotiations, join us at The New York Times Climate Hub to explore answers to one of the most urgent questions of our time: How do we adapt and thrive on a changing planet? Glasgow, Scotland, Nov. 3-11; in person and online. Get tickets at nytclimatehub.com.On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is 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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      Donald Trump Shouldn’t Be Underestimated

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      Like most Democrats, I initially underestimated Donald Trump. In 2015, I founded a super PAC dedicated to electing Hillary Clinton. Through all the ups and downs of the campaign, I didn’t once imagine that Americans would vote Mr. Trump in.He was an obvious pig (see the “Access Hollywood” tapes), a fraud (multiple failed businesses and bankruptcies) and a cheat (stiffing mom-and-pop vendors). Not to mention the blatant racism and misogyny. About the outcome, I was spectacularly wrong.Once he was in office, I misread Mr. Trump again. Having worked inside the conservative movement for many years, I found his policies familiar: same judges, same tax policy, same deregulation of big business, same pandering to the religious right, same denial of science. Of course, there were the loopy tweets, but still I regarded Mr. Trump as only a difference of degree from what I had seen from prior Republican presidents and candidates, not a difference of kind.When a raft of books and articles appeared warning that the United States was headed toward autocracy, I dismissed them as hyperbolic. I just didn’t see it. Under Mr. Trump, the sky didn’t fall.My view of Mr. Trump began to shift soon after the November election, when he falsely claimed the election was rigged and refused to concede. In doing so, Mr. Trump showed himself willing to undermine confidence in the democratic process, and in time he managed to convince nearly three-quarters of his supporters that the loser was actually the winner.Then came the Capitol Hill insurrection, and, later, proof that Mr. Trump incited it, even hiring a lawyer, John Eastman, who wrote a detailed memo that can only be described as a road map for a coup. A recent Senate investigation documented frantic efforts by Mr. Trump to bully government officials to overturn the election. And yet I worry that many Americans are still blind, as I once was, to the authoritarian impulses that now grip Mr. Trump’s party. Democrats need to step up to thwart them.Are Democrats up for such a tough (and expensive) fight? Many liberal voters have taken a step back from politics, convinced that Mr. Trump is no longer a threat. According to research conducted for our super PAC, almost half of women in battleground states are now paying less attention to the political news.But in reality, the last election settled very little. Mr. Trump not only appears to be preparing for a presidential campaign in 2024; he is whipping up his supporters before the 2022 midterms. And if Democrats ignore the threat he and his allies pose to democracy, their candidates will suffer next fall, imperiling any chance of meaningful reform in Congress.Going forward, we can expect bogus claims of voter fraud, and equally bogus challenges to legitimate vote counts, to become a permanent feature of Republican political strategy. Every election Republicans lose will be contested with lies, every Democratic win delegitimized. This is poison in a democracy.As of late September, 19 states had enacted 33 laws that will make it harder for their citizens to vote. The Republican National Committee’s “election integrity director” says the party will file lawsuits earlier and more aggressively than they did in 2020. Trump wannabe candidates like Glenn Youngkin, running for Virginia governor, are currying favor with the Republican base by promoting conspiracy theories suggesting that Virginia’s election may be rigged.More alarmingly, Republicans in swing states are purging election officials, allowing pro-Trump partisans to sabotage vote counts. In January, an Arizona lawmaker introduced a bill that would permit Republican legislators to overrule the certification of elections that don’t go their way. In Georgia, the legislature has given partisan election boards the power to “slow down or block” election certifications. Why bother with elections?Democrats now face an opposition that is not a normal political party, but rather a party that is willing to sacrifice democratic institutions and norms to take power.The legislation Democrats introduced in Congress to protect our democracy against such assaults would have taken an important step toward meeting these challenges. But on Wednesday, Republicans blocked the latest version of the legislation, and given the lack of unanimity among Democrats on the filibuster, they may well have succeeded in killing the last hope for any federal voting rights legislation during this session of Congress.Having underestimated Mr. Trump in the first place, Democrats shouldn’t underestimate what it will take to counter his malign influence now. They need a bigger, bolder campaign blueprint to save democracy that doesn’t hinge on the whims of Congress.We should hear more directly from the White House bully pulpit about these dire threats. The Jan. 6 investigators should mount a full-court press to get the truth out. Funding voting rights litigation should be a top priority.Where possible, Democrats should sponsor plebiscites to overturn anti-democratic laws passed by Republicans in states. They should underwrite super PACs to protect incumbent election officials being challenged by Trump loyalists, even if it means supporting reasonable Republicans. Donations should flow into key governor and secretary of state races, positions critical to election certification.In localities, Democrats should organize poll watching. Lawyers who make phony voting claims in court should face disciplinary action in state bar associations. The financiers of the voting rights assault must be exposed and publicly shamed.The good news is that liberals do not have to copy what the right is doing with its media apparatus — the font of falsehoods about voter fraud and a stolen election — to win over voters. Democrats can leapfrog the right with significant investments in streaming video, podcasting, newsletters and innovative content producers on growing platforms like TikTok, whose audiences dwarf those of cable news networks like Fox News.Issues like racial justice, the environment and immigration are already resonating online with audiences Democrats need to win over, such as young people, women and people of color. Democratic donors have long overlooked efforts to fund the media, but with so much of our politics playing out on that battlefield, they can no longer afford to.David Brock (@davidbrockdc) is the founder of Media Matters for America and American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic super PAC.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      In Debate, Adams Acts Like Front-Runner, While Sliwa Goes on Attack

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      Eric Adams, the Democratic nominee in the New York City mayor’s race, and Curtis Sliwa, his Republican opponent, clashed on vaccine mandates and congestion pricing.For the better part of an hour on Wednesday, Eric Adams was accused of spending too much time with “elites,” losing touch with working-class New Yorkers and being a carbon copy of Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose popularity has steadily waned during his tenure.Yet when he was given openings to respond during the first general election debate of the New York City mayoral contest, Mr. Adams — the typically voluble Democratic nominee for mayor — often flashed a placid smile instead.Mr. Adams, the overwhelming favorite in the race, seemed to approach the matchup against his Republican foe, Curtis Sliwa, as if it were an infomercial for a mayoralty he had already secured.“I’m speaking to New Yorkers,” Mr. Adams said. “Not speaking to buffoonery.”Mr. Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels and an animated orator, worked to knock the front-runner off balance and strained to sow the kind of doubts about his opponent that could alter the trajectory of the race. There was little evidence he succeeded.Mr. Adams cast himself as a steady former police captain who is preparing to move past Mr. de Blasio and his divisive eight years in power and sought to chart a vision for a city still reeling from the pandemic and its consequences. He relied heavily on his biography as a blue-collar New Yorker with firsthand experience grappling with some of the most significant challenges facing the city.The debate, hosted by ​​WNBC-TV and unfolding three days before early voting is to begin, marked the most direct engagement to date between the candidates as they vie to lead the nation’s largest city.For an hour, Mr. Adams and Mr. Sliwa — both longtime New York public figures with colorful pasts — clashed over wide-ranging issues that the city confronts, from a new vaccine mandate for city workers (Mr. Adams backs the mandate, Mr. Sliwa does not) to a congestion pricing plan (again largely backed by Mr. Adams, with Mr. Sliwa expressing strong concerns) to whether outdoor dining structures should stay. (Mr. Adams said yes, Mr. Sliwa said they should be reduced in size.)At every turn, Mr. Sliwa sought to undercut Mr. Adams’s working-class credentials, criticizing his opponent’s support from real estate developers and the endorsement he has earned from former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, even as he also tried to link Mr. Adams to Mr. de Blasio, casting them both as career politicians.“How about we do something novel and stop trusting these politicians, like Eric Adams and de Blasio?” Mr. Sliwa said, as he expressed his objections to congestion pricing.Mr. Adams, for his part, noted his differences with Mr. de Blasio in his first answer to a question, suggesting that while he supported the mayor’s new vaccination mandate for municipal workers, he would have taken a more collaborative approach to implementing it.Mr. Adams sought to portray Mr. Sliwa as a candidate unfit and and unqualified to be mayor.WNBC-TV and the New York City Campaign Finance BoardMr. Adams, who has a meditation routine, appeared keenly focused on rising above many of Mr. Sliwa’s attacks. But he also sought to define his Republican opponent early in the evening as an untrustworthy public figure who does not have a significant record of accomplishments. He repeatedly referenced Mr. Sliwa’s own admission that he had fabricated crimes for publicity.“New Yorkers are going to make a determination of a person that wore a bulletproof vest, protected the children and families of the city and fought crime, against a person who made up crimes so that he can be popular,” Mr. Adams said. “He made up crime, New Yorkers. That in itself is a crime.”Given New York’s overwhelmingly Democratic tilt and Mr. Sliwa’s reputation as something of a celebrity gadfly, Mr. Adams is seen as far more likely to prevail in the Nov. 2 election, and he is poised to be New York’s second Black mayor. He has spent much of his time since winning the Democratic nomination in July focused on fund-raising and transition-planning and has only begun to accelerate his public events schedule in the last week, reflecting his front-runner status.Mr. Sliwa worked at every turn of the debate to goad Mr. Adams into a confrontation. At best, he managed to coax an occasional complaint from Mr. Adams that Mr. Sliwa was breaking the rules of the debate by speaking for too long.But while Mr. Adams tried to avoid engaging extensively with Mr. Sliwa, he found himself on the defensive at other times, especially when pressed on questions of his residency. He has said that his primary residence is an apartment in a multiunit townhouse he owns in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn — but he has had to refile his tax returns in part because of irregularities concerning his residency, among other issues, the news outlet The City reported. Mr. Adams said, as he has in the past, that he takes responsibility for omissions on his tax returns, even as he faulted his accountant, who he said was homeless.“He went through some real trauma,” Mr. Adams said of his accountant. “And I’m not a hypocrite, I wanted to still give him the support that he needed.”He pledged that the mistake would not be repeated.Mr. Adams also co-owns a co-op in Fort Lee, N.J., with his partner, and he has said that he moved into Brooklyn Borough Hall for a time after the pandemic arrived. Mr. Sliwa recently led a journey from Manhattan to Fort Lee “to find out where Eric Adams really lives.”Mr. Adams declined to specify how many nights he has spent at the Brooklyn apartment in the last six months, but did say again that it was his primary residence.Mr. Sliwa was also pressed on issues of transparency and trustworthiness.“I made mistakes,” he said, when asked about faking crimes — a practice he cast as a youthful folly. “I’ll continue to apologize for it, but I’ve earned the trust of New Yorkers. Just follow me in the streets and subways, I’m there, I’m the people’s choice. Eric Adams is with the elites in the suites.”For all of the stark differences between their candidacies, Mr. Sliwa and Mr. Adams have some political commonalities, reflecting Mr. Adams’s position as a relatively center-left Democrat and Mr. Sliwa’s more populist instincts. Indeed, the debate was far more civil than the matchup Mr. Sliwa had during the Republican primary. It was also less of a brawl than some of the multicandidate debate stage clashes that defined the crowded Democratic primary earlier this year, where Mr. Adams often found himself under fire on several fronts.Mr. Sliwa and Mr. Adams are both keenly focused on issues of public safety and support expanding access to the gifted and talented program in New York City schools, though they did not offer clear prescriptions for the fate of the controversial admissions test that governs the initiative.But they did not appear eager to dwell on any common ground. Mr. Sliwa even turned a prompt designed to elicit a positive response — to pitch those New Yorkers who left during the pandemic to return — into an attack on Mr. Adams, questioning whether he really intended to fly to Florida and collect wayward New Yorkers as he has pledged.Mr. Adams, in contrast, promised a safe, exciting and diverse city.“You will be bored in Florida,” he warned. “You will never be bored in New York.” More

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      This Election Season, Look Out for Virginia

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      We’re heading around the bend, people! Elections are just a couple of weeks away and the two biggest races in the nation are …You have no idea, right?OK, most of the voting is going to be about local government — mayors and council members and holders of even smaller offices. But there are a couple of contests for governor, in Virginia and New Jersey.It’s Virginia that’s obsessing the world. Or at least the world that’s already terrified about what’s going to happen in 2022 (Dems lose Congress?) or 2024 (Trump? Trump? Trummmpp?).The candidates are the Democrat Terry McAuliffe, a former governor who left office after one term because Virginia is the only state in the union that makes governors do that. Versus Glenn Youngkin, a former business tycoon who’s chipped in at least $16 million of his own money.McAuliffe isn’t exactly a pauper — Virginia’s very loose filing rules show he’s worth at least $6.9 million. But he’s always been a star at raising money. He once recalled a political event he was involved in when he was 7: “Nobody got in that door unless I got 50 dollars from them. Unfortunately, for a lot of people, 35 years later I’m still making sure that they pay.″OK, not all that inspiring, but everybody knows how important money is in these off-year elections. Virginia has evolved into a Democratic state, but what if McAuliffe loses — or just squeaks in? What if the turnout is puny? Will the nation read this as a prelude to disaster for congressional candidates next year?Democrats can’t think of anything else, and if you’ve wound up on any party mailing lists — truly, it can happen to anyone — you may have been getting more letters about Terry McAuliffe than you got greetings on your last birthday. Certainly bigger presents are involved.“I’m flabbergasted, Gail … ” reads one of the many, many missives I received from him recently. “We’ve been sending you email after email about just how important this race is, but it’s October, and it’s looking like a tossup right now.”Given my profession, I have never made a contribution to a political campaign in my life, but this doesn’t seem to have any impact on McAuliffe’s expectations.One of my all-time favorite donor requests came from Ellie Warner, McAuliffe’s finance director:“Gail, I’m freaking out right now! I meant to send this email earlier … but I forgot to press send, and now, we’re even more behind on our fund-raising goal than we were before.”That is so 2021. If, God forbid, McAuliffe somehow loses the election, “I forgot to press send” is going down in modern political history.New Jersey’s race has also had its moments. Republicans are trying to beat Gov. Phil Murphy over the head with his 2019 remark that if you’re a person whose only concern is tax rates, New Jersey is “probably not your state.”Now really, this is pretty obvious. Anybody who sits down with the family in, say, Montana, and announces, “Well, we’re going to relocate in the East, and the only thing we care about is taxes,” is not under any circumstances going to discuss real estate opportunities in the Trenton area.New Jersey is diverting but Murphy is expected to win handily. And the political world won’t be all that impressed. It’s Virginia that’s mobilized a national get-out-the-money campaign.“Gail, we don’t have much time, so I’ll make this quick,” wrote the political consultant James Carville in a mass email about a “critical fund-raising deadline.”Carville, who recently referred to himself as “an email-signing slut,” has reportedly sent out over 40 pleas for donations to various campaigns in the last three months, one darkly demanding to know if the recipient wants “Democrats to lose every election from here to eternity.”Meanwhile, Donald Trump is, of course, online constantly (“Did you see my RALLY in IOWA? It was INCREDIBLE”). He is supporting Youngkin, but not with nearly the enthusiasm he’s dedicating to raising money for his own political action fund.“President Trump specifically told us he wants this one-of-a-kind HAND-SIGNED football to go to YOU, Friend,” says one missive, looking for a contribution for a chance to be in a drawing for said memento.In the Virginia race, Youngkin, whose nickname is reportedly “Yunk,” is delicately dancing around the Trump issue. It’s tricky — if you want to be a winning Republican, you have to keep his fans happy while assuring the suburban moderates that you know Joe Biden was actually elected president.McAuliffe’s job is to make voters turn out, and one main strategy is to terrify them into action. (“I thought folks would be fired up to get out the vote, but at this point, it seems like enthusiasm is at an all-time low.”)Same thing goes for money. (“You can imagine how confused I am about why people aren’t stepping up and donating. We’re blowing this one, Gail.”)Everybody’s jumping in. John Fetterman, the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania who’s planning to run for the U.S. Senate next year, wrote suggesting that I split an early bird $10 donation between his campaign and McAuliffe’s. There’s quite a lot of this going on, but Fetterman’s campaign website is notable for including the picture of a dog on the bottom, saying: “Hi, I’m Levi Fetterman. Boop my nose to donate $1.”Indeed, if you poked Levi’s nose, a special donation box did pop up. Like I said, they’re everywhere.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      What We Learned in the Latest Campaign Cash Reports

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      Financial disclosures show who has the early money edge in key races, as well as the value of a Trump endorsement.Sign up here to get On Politics in your inbox on Tuesdays and Thursdays.A startling amount of money is pouring into American elections, especially the race for control of Congress in 2022. Every House and Senate candidate in the country was recently required to detail their spending and fund-raising through the end of September. Here are some takeaways, tidbits and trends from those financial reports.How Trump factors inFormer President Donald J. Trump has been doing a lot of endorsing in Republican primaries ahead of the 2022 midterms. His backing is, by far, the most coveted in the party. But a Trump blessing has not necessarily translated to a cash boom for those Senate hopefuls he backs, the records show.In Alabama, Mr. Trump is supporting Representative Mo Brooks — who has literally worked the endorsement into his logo — but Mr. Brooks was nonetheless badly out-raised for the second consecutive quarter, pulling in only $670,000 compared with $1.5 million for Katie Boyd Britt, a former chief of staff to Senator Richard Shelby.In Alaska, Mr. Trump is supporting Kelly Tshibaka, a primary challenger to Senator Lisa Murkowski, who voted to convict Mr. Trump in his second impeachment trial. Ms. Murkowski doubled Ms. Tshibaka’s haul. In North Carolina, Mr. Trump’s preferred choice, Representative Ted Budd, was narrowly edged by former Gov. Pat McCrory.In Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump’s endorsement did seem to boost Sean Parnell, who has been a regular on Fox News and whose fund-raising doubled in the most recent quarter. But Mr. Parnell still faces a former Trump-appointed ambassador, Carla Sands, in the Senate primary and she gave her campaign $3 million from her personal fortune.In House races, Mr. Trump has made clear he is focused on defeating those who voted to impeach him. One such Republican has already retired. But none of the other nine House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump in January were out-raised last quarter by a primary challenger, with Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming setting the pace by raising $1.7 million. (In some races, challengers combined to out-raise the Republican incumbent.)One notable fund-raising haul was from Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina. She verbally lacerated Mr. Trump in January for his incitement of the Capitol riot but ultimately didn’t vote to impeach. She has since, as my colleague Catie Edmondson put it over the summer, “quietly backpedaled into the party’s fold.” Now, the $973,000 she raised is among the highest sums for a freshman.The House leaderboardAmong the rank and file, the strongest Democratic fund-raiser in the House was, by far, Representative Katie Porter of California, who represents a swingy region in Orange County. She raised $2.7 million and spent only $1 million — and now has $14.5 million in the bank. That could help her no matter how her district is redrawn in 2022 — or in a potential future Senate bid. One problem with the latter is that the only House member with more money currently in their treasury is Representative Adam Schiff, another ambitious Democrat from California with $15.3 million in his treasury.On the Republican side, Representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas has emerged as a top fund-raiser, pulling in nearly $3 million. But Mr. Crenshaw was spending far more to raise those funds: He spent roughly 88 percent of what he raised in the third quarter, records show, including more than $1 million related to direct mail.On the left, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York continues to be one of her party’s strongest fund-raisers, bringing in nearly $1.7 million. On the right, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the freshman congresswoman from Georgia, has continuously stirred controversy and cashed in along the way, raising $1.5 million, roughly the same sum as Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of Mr. Trump’s favorite pugilists on the Hill.In the political center, two moderate Democrats, Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Tom Suozzi of New York, both topped the $1 million threshold.Democrats have an early money edge in key Senate racesTo keep the Senate next year, Democrats must first defend four incumbents up for re-election in the battleground states of Nevada, New Hampshire, Georgia and Arizona. The good news for the party is that all four incumbents far out-raised their Republican challengers, with Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia raising the most of anyone in the country, $9.5 million.The picture is murkier in three Republican-held battlegrounds: North Carolina and Pennsylvania, where the Republican incumbents are retiring, and Wisconsin, where Senator Ron Johnson has not said for certain if he is running again. Democrats face potentially messy primaries in all three races as do Republicans in the two open seats.But in each of the three states, the top fund-raiser last quarter between the two parties was a Democrat (not including those donating to themselves, like Sands).In Florida, Representative Val Demings, a Democrat, has emerged as the surprise fund-raising star of the cycle, raising nearly $8.5 million — nearly $2.5 million more than the Republican she is challenging, Senator Marco Rubio. But Ms. Demings is spending extraordinary sums to raise that money — $5.6 million in the last quarter alone, much of it devoted to Facebook ads seeking new online contributors.What campaigns are spending to raise money — known in the industry as the burn rate — is a key indicator, because it shows how much of what is raised will be available when voters are paying closer attention.Of the top dozen Senate fund-raisers last quarter, Ms. Demings had the highest burn rate at 66 percent.One Democratic senator on the ballot in 2022 actually spent more than she raised last quarter: Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire. She raised $3 million last quarter, but she spent $3.1 million. Records show she made a $1.5 million media buy to highlight her work for veterans.The early ad was an unusual strategic choice. Most operatives believe TV ads that air a year from an election will be long forgotten when voting begins. But with money already flooding key states, the ad could be a chance to make an early, positive impression, especially with outside Republican groups on the airwaves.nine days of ideas to remake our futureAs world leaders gather in Glasgow for consequential climate change negotiations, join us at The New York Times Climate Hub to explore answers to one of the most urgent questions of our time: How do we adapt and thrive on a changing planet? Glasgow, Scotland, Nov. 3-11; in person and online. Get tickets at nytclimatehub.com.On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is 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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      in Elections

      Book Review: ‘Midnight in Washington,’ by Adam Schiff

      by

      MIDNIGHT IN WASHINGTONHow We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still CouldBy Adam SchiffThe impact of Donald J. Trump’s presidency on the Republican Party has been a story well told, from reporters and scholars to Republicans of all stripes. Less frequently related, to the detriment of the reading public and the American voter, has been Trump’s impact on the Democratic Party.Few Democrats at the outset of 2016 believed he could be nominated, let alone win the presidency. “The G.O.P. is not that suicidal” and the “Democratic Party is not that lucky,” Representative Adam Schiff of California assured audiences that year. So naturally, when Trump became the Republican standard-bearer, Democratic lawmakers were at once horrified and delighted. They were shocked Republicans would nominate somebody they viewed as wildly unfit for the job but thrilled because surely the electorate would reject a crass demagogue and the party that enabled him.Voters would eventually punish Republicans, but it took Trump’s failed campaign for a second term before Democrats were able to claim control of the White House, House and Senate. In the meantime, Democratic leaders were left to grapple with what his ascent said about the country, their colleagues and the very system of American government.Few Democratic officials have done so in print, however, because they are still serving and because the Trump story is still unfolding. Schiff is one of the first to try to account for the last five, tumultuous years in American politics. As the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a top lieutenant to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Schiff is well positioned to deliver insights on the time of Trump, at least from the perspective of a Democratic insider.“Midnight in Washington” delivers on that promise. Fittingly for a regular on television news shows, Schiff’s volume reads like a well-composed MSNBC segment on the Trump presidency — but with behind-the-scenes details on the working of Congress to go with the liberal commentary. The book is also something of a midlife memoir, as Schiff recalls his career as a prosecutor, his early campaigns and his first years in Congress following his 2000 election. There are recurring touches about his wife, Eve — yes, he notes, Adam and Eve — and some attempts at grounding himself by recounting how his two children responded to his Trump-era fame. (His daughter, borrowing Trump’s favorite insult for him, told him why so many strangers now recognized him: “Well, Dad, it’s the pencil neck.”) Mostly, though, this is a blistering indictment of Trump and his Republican enablers set alongside a what-I-saw-at-the-revolution account of Schiff’s role investigating Trump’s misdeeds..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The 61-year-old congressman is, understandably, appalled at Trump’s blithe disregard for the country’s foundational political norms. To read this recent history is to remember how brazen Trump was when, for example, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked him in 2019 if in his 2020 re-election bid he’d accept information from a foreign power on an opponent or contact the F.B.I. “I think maybe you do both,” Trump replied, adding: “I think I’d take it.”The heart of the book is the first impeachment of the former president: Schiff oversaw the inquiry from his committee perch and then served as the lead impeachment manager. He moves far more quickly through Jan. 6 and the second, more historically significant impeachment, in part because he was not as central a figure in those events.After the House voted to impeach Donald Trump, Dec. 18, 2019; Adam Schiff on left.Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesIn more readable prose than most politicians are known to produce, Schiff recounts his conversations at high-stakes moments during Trump’s tenure. There was the time he and Pelosi determined that, with evidence growing that Trump had pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joseph R. Biden Jr., they decided to drop their longstanding reluctance to pursue impeachment. Speaking with Pelosi on his cellphone in a parking lot in September 2019, Schiff told her he thought it was time to move ahead on impeachment — but that he was appearing on a Sunday television news show the following day and did not want to get ahead of her. “You just tell ’em what you think,” the speaker responded in her clipped style, before taking his measure one last time as they hung up: “Are you ready to do this?” she asked.Just as vivid, if certainly one-sided, are Schiff’s vignettes about his Republican colleagues on the Intelligence Committee. Revealing conversations and text messages, he portrays them as reasonably good-faith actors at the outset of Trump’s tenure before becoming foot soldiers for the White House. These are names only the most committed political follower will recognize — Devin Nunes, Trey Gowdy, Michael Conaway — but in some ways their stories are more telling, and certainly fresher, than one more account of Trump raging in the Oval Office.After Schiff was told that Gowdy, a now-retired South Carolinian, was uneasy about holding public hearings into connections between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia, Schiff tracked down his colleague in the Republican cloak room. In Schiff’s telling, Gowdy confessed that the real reason for his reluctance was that Republican lawmakers felt the then-F.B.I. director James Comey’s recent public testimony, acknowledging a federal investigation into Trump’s campaign, had been “an unmitigated disaster.”“Now things began to make a perverse sense,” Schiff writes, adding: “The hearing was a disaster in their eyes precisely because the public learned Trump campaign officials were under investigation, and that was evidently a fact that some of the Republican members of our committee would have preferred to remain secret.” This and similar realizations left Schiff in a state of near-despair about the opposition, although he had had congenial relationships with many of them through his career in Congress.For example, he once got along well with Nunes, a fellow Californian: The two would text about their favorite N.F.L. team, the Raiders. They both served on the House Intelligence Committee when Republicans were in the majority during the Obama years, and Nunes, Schiff writes, was “in the mold of a country club Republican.” Recounting Nunes’s transition to loyal MAGA man in the first year of Trump’s presidency, however, Schiff offers little by way of explanation. The only apparent attempt Schiff made to get through to Nunes resulted in his Republican colleague acting like something of a zombie. “He stared back at me impassively,” Schiff says.Schiff writes thoughtfully in the first chapters about the appeal of populist demagogues overseas, and how it could happen here, but he is less eager to delve too deeply into why Republican lawmakers fell into a Trump trance. Perhaps as a serving congressman, he senses political danger in pointing a finger at Republican voters who have made their party a personality cult.This suggests one reason that, as a genre, books by active politicians are typically not very edifying. Self-serving and less than candid about those they’ll need to further their careers — be they donors, voters or colleagues — the authors usually produce accounts that are closer to extended political pamphlets than works of history. Schiff’s is better than most, offering valuable contributions to the historical record. However, he’s still constrained by his present position and future ambitions.He muffles even mild criticism of Democratic lawmakers, though he’s clearly tempted to let loose as he alludes to those who, unlike him, have never faced a contested race. “Listening to the debates among my colleagues in Congress from time to time, I wished that all of them had run in a competitive general election just once,” he writes. Please, Mr. Schiff, go on.Perhaps he will when he retires. More